The Life and Times of Joe Suttle

Friends beating him down, saying he must have done something really wrong. The old and wise reminding him that "you get what you gave."

For Job, it was kind of like someone saying to a sports team "You know, if you hadn't gone out partying all night last night, you might have been able to play hard for an hour." Job's friends, old-timers like himself were just gushing with discouragement.

Yet, for all the "down" attitudes, Job was saying "hold on, I got something to say!" Chapters twenty-six through twenty-eight were more like statements of how he remembers the God he serves.[more] Job took time to make sure his friends know that he recognized that his God was still in control.

The images in chapter twenty-nine show that Job was not just a rich man, but someone who knew how to treat others. And because of the way he had been treated, that was the treatment he passed on. He was so much a vessel for his friend, God, that people honored him for how he honored God.

Job left no stone unturned in his saga. He delivered the poor, helped the orphans. He acted righteously and with justice. People trusted him to care for them and act as an honest judge.

In the midst of all this "doing good", tragedy struck, and now a man who had done them no wrong was an outcast. All because "evil came to an evil-doer."

That is the view many took of Job. For all the good he had done was as nothing now.

Guess the question now is "How am I stacking up?"

That was the challenge from Pastor Dave yesterday. "For two weeks, read two chapters a day, Monday through Friday."

My first thought was to just push ahead in Job, but then after some thought and prayer, I am off to do both!

Okay, but what or where does the reading start? Old or New Testament? Re-read something I have already read/studied? So many places to start. So many interesting avenues.

Then, after flipping through Matthew, Luke and much of the New Testament, I went back to the Old Testament. It wasn't the Psalms or [more]the Song of Solomon. Thoughts about the Isrealites in Egypt or escaping did not "grab" me. Then it was, that Amos just kind of tapped me.

So it is! Here is the story of a well-to-do rancher (called a shepherd) in a well off country, getting a message to deliver. A message from a just and righteous God who is tired of their "stuff" – selfishness, injustice, oppression, callousness and forgetfulness.

Even though He has given them so much – has allowed them to be so great, they can't seem to remember that they were (and still are) nothing. They forget that they got where they are because He had brought them that far. As you read the story of the Isrealites, you find that so many times, they dumped what their history taught them so they could grab hold of the now. That was always when they got in trouble. If nothing else, history should be there as an empirical statement of what happened, and allow us and them to see the implications of certain actions – you know – A plus B equals C.

Amos kind of gets his marching orders. It was actually more like a super fantastic speech to be delivered for everybody to hear.

Now, in all honesty, Pastor Dave only asked us to commit to two chapters a day, but before I knew it, I had read four chapters and didn't want to stop.

This was good!

There was Job talking about wisdom – how to find it, what it's place is in life and it's value. His words clearly said that the depths don't hold it, nor the sea. I heard that as the deepest canyon or valley and the deepest sea saying "it's bigger than both of us, 'cause we don't have it."

Then came the blockbuster – in effect, he said that no one has enough gold or silver to buy it, and it could not be paid for with the gold of Ophir, or precious onyx or sapphire.

Those three things got my brain looking for what or where they were [more]- especially for Job to be talking about them as though they were common things. Earlier in chapter 28, I had looked up sapphire, only to find that it is mined in places far from Isreal or Egypt. Thinking back to the stories about sapphires and rubies in the Old Testament got reinforced as real wealth. Seems that sapphires and rubies come about the same way and from the same chemical sources. They were precious stones that had no origin in that area – they had to be imported.

But then Job got to naming places. Ophir was the place, and his reference was that wisdom could not be valued or bought with the gold found in Ophir. Made me dig. Seems that no one actually knows where Ophir is or was. Best guess is that it may have been on the Red Sea somewhere. What my search led me to was the fact that Solomon (you know, of King Solomon's Mines) got shipments (note the plural) of gold through the port at Ophir. Did a quick calculation of one shipment of gold delivered to Solomon.

$750 million at today's prices!

Check it out in First Kings 9:28. Seems that old King Solomon received 420 talents of gold, which would be like 872,000 ounces of gold!

Even giving us the worth of wisdom, Job maintains that above everything else, whether coral, crystal, topaz, gold or silver, wisdom is to be sought. After all, understanding what life is all about requires wisdom. Wisdom not wealth is the key to life.

The detour was worth it, because it made the message clearer. What you and I need is found not in what we own or possess, but in the wisdom we get. Job describes God as being able to see the ends of the earth – that is, He can see farther than any of us. Not only that, He sees everything and is powerful enough to have given force to the wind and to have divided the waters of the earth. He alone has been able to set a boundary for where it will and will not rain or lightning strike.

And then God turns to us and says "You want wisdom? Show a little respect and recognize how awesome I am – that's where it is."