There is a song recorded most famously by Ray Charles (among others) but written in Nashville by a writer named Cindy Walker called “You Don’t Know Me,” and the first verse goes:
You give your hand to me
And then you say hello
And I can hardly speak
My heart is beating so
And anyone can tell
You think you know me well
But you don't know me
I think it’s basic human nature to want to be known. Some of us want to be known more than others. But even those of us who want, basically, to be left alone would like to have someone who doesn’t just know us, but – and here’s the real key, I think – understands us.
Have you ever heard yourself described by someone else? I was a minor public figure for awhile and used to hear people talk about me, and realized they didn’t really know me. I have worked for or with far more famous people, people who are well-known, but realize they are often not understood. It is amazing how people will talk about them very confidently, but as someone who knows the person being talked about reasonably well I can tell, “You don’t really know them.”
I admit I don’t mind if people talk about me and make me sound better than I am (and that’s not hard to do!).
But I don’t think any of us like being talked about in a way that doesn’t reflect who we really are, in a way that misrepresents our character, our intentions, our words, our true nature.
And as we wrap up the story of Job, we find out that God doesn’t like being talked about incorrectly either.
In Chapter 41, it says, “After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me …”
If I may be so bold as to help clarify what I think God is saying here, it is something like, “You thought you were speaking about me and on my behalf to Job, but you were only speaking from your own wisdom, which turned out to be foolishness.”
Good intentions – which Job’s friends were full of (at least initially) – don’t cut it. Particularly when God has gone to great lengths to reveal Himself (as we discussed in previous posts).
I led a study one time on the so-called Minor Prophets (are any prophets of God really “minor?”) based on a book called “What Ticks God Off” by Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz. It was a really good introduction to those books at the end of the Old Testament, back where the underlining often stops until we get going into the New Testament.
What we see here in Job is one of the things that “ticks God off” is people talking about God as if they know him. And you hear it all the time – preachers who confidently tell you what God thinks or does or would do in a given situation. But very often, just like Job’s very smart and well-meaning friends, they are just flat-out wrong.
I was reading the book of Ezekial the other day, and it spells out God’s reaction to those who take it upon themselves to speak for God without really knowing Him.
This is Ezekiel 13, from Eugene Peterson’s “The Message,’’ because the language is so straightforward (and I’ve edited it for space).
“Son of man, preach against the prophets of Israel who are making things up out of their own heads and calling it ‘prophesying.’ Preach to them the real thing. Tell them, ‘Listen to God’s Message!’ God, the Master, pronounces doom on the empty-headed prophets who do their own thing and know nothing of what’s going on! …. All they do is fantasize comforting illusions and preach lying sermons. They say, ‘God says . . .’ when God hasn’t so much as breathed in their direction. … Aren’t your sermons tissues of lies, saying ‘God says . . .’ when I’ve done nothing of the kind? Therefore—and this is the Message of God, the Master, remember—I’m dead set against prophets who substitute illusions for visions and use sermons to tell lies. The fact is that they’ve lied to my people. They’ve said, ‘No problem; everything’s just fine,’ when things are not at all fine. …”
So how do we know about God?
Now we get to the point (and forgive me, but I know I’ve written this before).
The primary way we get to understand God is by reading the Bible. God’s Word. Holy Scripture. As Luther would say, “Sola scriptura,” which means that Scripture alone is authoritative for the faith and practice of the Christian. The Bible is complete, authoritative, and true.
I’m not talking memorizing Bible verses, although that’s not a bad thing. Personally, I can’t give you chapter and verse, yet when someone starts quoting a verse of Scripture chances are I know it and can say it along with them (in one translation or another). I know people who can give you chapter and verse and I wish I was like them. I even bought a little book called “52 Verses Every Christian Should Memorize” or something like that, and really worked on memorization. At the end, I knew the verses – but still couldn’t recall book, chapter and verse!
What I’m talking about is just reading. Letting the words seep into your brain, your heart, your soul. It’s reading with a purpose – not to make ourselves smarter, but to know God better.
Jesus, in Matthew 22:37-38 (I know the verse by heart, but had to look up the reference), said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”
All your heart, soul and mind, which is pretty thorough. And as we have seen in Job and Ezekiel, wrong thoughts about God produce wrong belief about God. You can’t really love what you don’t really know.
Paul writes in Philippians 1, “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” Love “abounds” with knowledge and discernment.
Paul, again, in 2 Corinthians 3:18, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
We become what we behold. When I was a kid, I wanted to be like the characters John Wayne played in the movies. So I watched and, without realizing it, studied them, trying to walk and talk like the heroic characters John Wayne played (which conjures up a pretty funny image, I know).
Likewise, when we read and study God’s Word, we find it transforms us. We find ourselves suddenly losing interest in doing things we used to do; find that better person that reflects the image of God that resides in us. We start to actually act more like Christ! (Paul says we should be “imitators” of Christ in Ephesians 5).
Paul, in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, writes, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”
Most of us want to do “good works.” Young people today in particular seem more interested in getting involved in making the world a better place to live than they are in getting a good job, a career, etc. Many young people honestly desire to do something for God. But what Paul said is pretty clear: you can’t be equipped to really do good work until you are immersed in the word of God.
The Bible shows us God’s priorities, His values, His mission, His heart. It shows us what he has been doing in the world, and what He is doing. It shows us, as one writer said, how to love “the forgotten and the misfit. It shows us the value of shepherding our families. It introduces us to the generosity of other Christians (2 Corinthians 8:1–7), and calls us to be openhanded with what God gives us. It heralds the sanctity of every human life and inspires us to fight for the unborn. It declares that race should not be a barrier to Christian unity, but a beautiful occasion for it.”
But along the way, we have to know how to speak correctly about God. And that only comes from knowing God’s Word.
It’s not emotion (although certainly our emotions react to God, which is important). It’s not how we imagine a “fair and loving” God to be. It’s not what we honestly believe God “should” be like. All of that is exactly how Job’s friends talked about God – their vision of God and God’s motives – which clearly made God angry.
At the same time, we’re going to make mistakes. I have grown up in the church, and at various times had roles of leadership in my local church. I know I have said and taught things 20 or 30 years ago which I now regret because I know I was incorrect, even though I was expressing my best knowledge of God at the time.
In high school, I had a terrific youth pastor named Dan DeHaan who once gave us all a piece of advice (what that advice was is not important to this story). Years later, when I graduated college, I went back to Dan and told him I was struggling because I was trying to follow that particular advice and Dan told me, “Oh, I wish you hadn’t remembered that. I wish I’d never said it. I was wrong, and I know I’ve caused some people some pain with those words.”
We’re called to talk about God, to share our knowledge of God, and yet warned to be cautious – to speak only what we know to be true of God. It’s really a pretty awesome responsibility.
Job didn’t have Scripture. It’s one of the oldest – if not the oldest – books of the Bible. But clearly God had revealed Himself to Job. That’s still true today, that God reveals himself to us and, as it says in Romans, we are “without excuse.”
I don’t know exactly where I heard this so I don’t know who to give the credit to, so let me just say this isn’t my original idea. But the words went something like, “This world is not falling apart; God’s plan is coming together.” I like that. It is a great reminder, and a great comfort. But I don’t understand what God’s plan is unless I see the picture presented in Scripture, and really try to understand what Scripture means.
God wants us to know Him. He wants us to talk about Him. In Deuteronomy 11 it says about our children that we should tell them about God’s laws by “… talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”
Or, again to use the language from The Message, “Place these words on your hearts. Get them deep inside you. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder. Teach them to your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning until you fall into bed at night.”
It’s amazing that Job, for all his complaints and concerns about God, is never accused by God of speaking incorrectly about Him. I think that speaks volumes about God – that he can take our doubts, our anger, our frustration as long as those doubts, anger and frustrations are expressed within the confines of our faith; and that even in the midst of those issues we don’t lose sight of who God is.
How many stories are in the Bible? The answer, really, is just one – the story of God. All Scripture is designed to reveal God to us, through many mini-stories, if you will.
And you begin, as Job did, to get a sense of the majesty, the power, the sheer greatness of God.
I read a story recently that Theodore Roosevelt had a habit of staring up at the night sky with a friend. They would step outside on a clear, starry night and point out the stars and galaxies and constellations. It was said the conversation went something like this:
“That is the Spiral Galaxy of Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It is seven hundred and fifty thousand light years away. It consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our own sun.”
Then there would be a pause, after which Roosevelt would grin and say, “All right. I think we feel small enough now. Good night.”
Or, as Job said at the start of chapter 42, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
We are called to know God ... in order to make Him known.
Truthfully.
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