The Lutheran Hour
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"Honest to God"
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Text: Job 1:21
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“And what’s your favorite Bible story?”
That was one of the questions asked in a door-to-door religious survey conducted between 2021 and 2024, with 2,670 American households—”What is your favorite Bible story?” Even among the people who didn’t attend church regularly, many of them could still name at least one favorite story from the Bible. Of course, there were the favorites. #1 was the Christmas story; #2 was Noah’s Ark; #3, David and Goliath. But there was one on the list that surprised me when I saw it. The #7 favorite Bible story among these average American that were surveyed—it was Job, the account of the guy who went through all that suffering—all his possessions were either stolen or burned in a freak fire, and all ten of his children were killed when a tornado plowed through their house. And then Job himself was afflicted with painful boils all over his body. But somehow, he survived it, he weathered it. And he never found out, as far as we know, that it was all over a wager, a bet between God and Satan.
So when I heard the results of the survey, I was puzzled. Why are so many people drawn to the book of Job? Why would anyone want to read or listen to Job? Maybe it’s because misery loves company? Why listen to Job? Well, if nothing else, you hear his plight, and at least you know you’re not alone.
I was talking with a young woman recently—I’m guessing she was in her 20s. We were in a church basement, at a free community dinner hosted by my church in St Louis. She wasn’t a member of our church but had come there that evening for the meal. She was with this guy who might have been her boyfriend, but I wasn’t sure about that. She was helping him take care of his two sons, one in kindergarten, the other in preschool. I don’t think their mother was in the picture. And the father—this young woman’s friend or boyfriend—he was suffering from some debilitating disease and clearly needed help raising these two spirited and curious boys. And so this young woman that I was talking to, she was there helping him. And by the end of the night, she looked exhausted.
We were in a church basement, and so naturally the subject of the Bible had come up. She mentioned that she read the Bible. I asked her what her favorite story from the Bible was. She thought about it for a moment and said, “Job. I like Job.”
“Why Job?” I asked.
She said, “I can relate to what he went through.”See, when people hear Job’s story, most everyone can relate on some level. If life’s ever felt too short, you can read Job and know that 3,000 years ago, he felt the same way. He said, “Man who is born of woman is few of days and full of trouble. He comes forth like a flower and fades away” (Job 14:1-2). If life’s ever felt unbearable, read Job and know that it was for him, too. He said, “The thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me” (Job 3:25). If you’ve ever wanted to give up, so did Job. He said, “I despise my life. It’s all one thing” (9:21). If you’ve ever been dealt a bad hand; if your friends and family didn’t understand what you were going through; if you’ve ever asked, “Why me?” or wondered, “What did I do to deserve this?” then you’ve got a friend in Job. If you’ve ever wanted to say to God, “Your hands have made me and fashioned me, an intricate unity, yet You would destroy me … You made me like clay. And will You turn me to dust again?” (Job 10:8-9) If you needed someone to pray with, Job’s got you covered. And that alone would be reason enough to listen to the book of Job.
But if you know Jesus, if you’re one of His followers, if you’re a Christian, you know that’s not enough. It’s not enough because the central message of the Christian faith is not just that we’ve got Job to commiserate with, but God—Jesus, the Son of God become human, Jesus, our brother, commiserates with us. It’s not a generic truth—”misery loves company,” but a specific, historical event: God, in love, shared our misery (see Acts 8:32-35). God continues to share it by His Spirit in us, with groans too deep for words (Romans 8:26). The central image of the Christian faith is not just a cross, but an innocent Man on a cross, God on the cross, bruised and bloodied. And so, whatever Christians say about God and humanity and suffering, it doesn’t start where Job had to start—with God up in heaven, making some shady back-room deal with the devil, and with us, poor, miserable, ignorant humans down here, suffering in dust and ashes.
No, Christians don’t start there, because Jesus broke open the door for us. Christians start with God with us, with Christ on the cross to cover us. We don’t start where Job starts, but we can go where Job goes. We can go with anyone who suffers, and be good company for them, because Jesus has us all covered. Christian reasons for listening to Job are different. It’s not just that misery loves company, but that God shares our agony. That’s where Christians start with the book of Job. But sadly, sometimes it’s also where Christians stop. Sometimes we’re not good company for those who suffer.
I was talking with a middle-aged Christian man recently who remembers when his mother died of cancer. He was five, but he remembers like it was yesterday. At the funeral in the church, as he’s standing next to his dead mother’s casket, people kept repeating pious platitudes at him. They said things like, “Your mom was such a good singer, God took her to be in His choir,” or “Your mom was so lovely, God took her to be a flower in His garden.” These platitudes that they were telling him could have been inspired by one of the most-quoted verses in the book of Job, from chapter 1, verse 21. It’s what Job says initially when he sees his burned-up property and his dead children. He says, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the Name of the LORD.” Christians sometimes say this to themselves and others, or some version of it, when they face loss and tragedy: “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the Name of the Lord.” It’s true, but Christians become bad company when we show up only long enough to spit out some one-liner, or print it on a T-shirt, because Job doesn’t stop after chapter 1, verse 21.
Later, when people start repeating pious phrases at Job in his suffering, you know what he said? He says, you all are “miserable comforters” (Job 16:2). You all are “forgers of lies,” and “worthless physicians” (Job 13:4) whose “platitudes are proverbs of ashes” (Job 13:12). So, maybe it would do well for us Christians if we sat a while, and listened to all of Job, and not just for the one-liner.
So, we’ve got a couple of reasons for listening to Job. Some people listen for solidarity in suffering and some listen for pious phrases. These aren’t necessarily bad reasons for listening to Job. They’re just insufficient. They’re not enough, because, as much as misery wants company and Christians want one-liners to print on T-shirts, God wants honest conversation. That, it seems, is what God wanted—above all—for Job. On one level, the story is about a bet between Satan and God. But on a deeper level, it’s about Job’s relationship with God. And through the ordeal, Job undergoes a transformation in the way he relates to God. It’s not exactly a transformation from guilt to forgiveness, because we’re told throughout the story that Job is innocent from beginning to end, already. Job is justified. He’s already in the right with God (Job 2:3, Job 42:7-8).
Job’s transformation is in how he talks—how he talks about God and to God. At the beginning, Job speaks proper, pious, guarded, reserved words about God. But by the end, Job is speaking open, honest, raw words to God. And so, Job’s pious, one-liner from chapter 1, verse 21—”the LORD gives and the LORD takes away, blessed be the Name of the LORD”—that should not be the only thing we listen for.
Try to imagine where those words might be coming from. Put yourself in Job’s situation. You’re the faithful role model for your family, for your church, for your community. People look up to you because you’ve got such strong faith. And now, when this tragedy strikes, you know you just have to grin and bear it. You gotta be the strong one for everyone. You have to say the right thing. And so that’s what Job does, he says the right thing. But there is more going on inside him that he’s holding back. And after sitting in silence with his thoughts for seven days, he starts to let out what he’s feeling.
His pious friends who came to the funeral are shocked. They say, “You can’t say that stuff, Job. God might hear you! And then you’ll have it even worse. Just stick to the script, man. Say the magic words. Give God His due. And He’ll give you your blessings back.”
But Job is not having it. And the more they tell him to keep it in, the more he lets it out—his questions, his complaints, his anger and bitterness and confusion and rage against God. Job stops talking “proper” about God, and starts he talking “honest” to God.
But maybe Job goes too far? In the traditional translation near the end of the book, it appears to be the case. God answers Job in storm—God speaks out of a whirlwind, which normally signifies God’s wrath (see Jeremiah 23:19 and Isaiah 29:6). God essentially says to Job, “You need to dial it back, little man. Take a seat and shut your mouth” (see Job 38:3). God challenges Job’s tirade. God answers Job—not with explanations about why all this is happening—but with the facts of the Almighty’s power and majesty. And this is where it gets interesting, because Job answers God back. What does he say?
Well, the traditional translation has Job saying to God, in chapter 42:5-6, “I have heard of You … but now my eyes see You; therefore I despise myself, and I repent in dust and ashes,” which sort of sounds like Job is admitting that he was too honest with God, and that from here on, he’ll just stick with the pious phrases.
But a teacher of mine, Dr. Tim Saleska, whom we’ll talk with after the sermon, Dr. Saleska has challenged me to reconsider this understanding.i He points out that the original Hebrew of Job could be translated differently. It could be that Job actually says something like—”I have heard about you God, and now my eyes have seen You. Therefore, I am fed up, and I have pity on dust and ashes,”—with “dust and ashes” being a poetic way of referring to humanity.
And so, perhaps Job’s words are less repentance, and more stubbornness. He says, “Yes, I agree that you are God, and I am no match for you. But I am fed up with Your non-answers. And I have pity on my fellow mortals.” In this reading, Job is not backing off, he is doubling down. He doesn’t need to be guarded with God. He doesn’t need to kowtow to God or placate God because he knows he’s already justified. He knows he’s already innocent before God. And God knows it, too. And so, you can see why Job might still be fed up.
Now, it may be that the traditional translation is right. It may be that Job realized he crossed the line, and that he was putting himself above God. It may be that Job repents. But it’s also just as possible that the other translation is right, that Job doesn’t back down. Not that he’s trying to be God, but rather he’s talking “honest” to God. And if that’s the case, what comes next tells us something about God’s heart. Because in the end, God does not condemn Job for his honesty. Instead, God condemns Job’s friends for their pious stock phrases. God says they haven’t spoken rightly about God. But Job has. And so maybe we should listen to Job because Job can teach us something about prayer, about how we can talk honest to God covered by Jesus.
See, God doesn’t want rote one-liners. God wants your heart. He wants to hear what’s on your heart. He already knows what’s in there anyway. But when you talk to Him, even as Job did, when you cling to God’s promise as Jesus did, honesty with God means closeness with God … and company.
You remember how raw and honest Jesus was with God from the cross: “Why have You forsaken Me?” He said to His Father. Like Job, Jesus got no answer, at least not in the form of an explanation. But He got something better—not an explanation, but a resurrection, and God’s company forever—something Job’s restoration at the end of the book can only hint at.
Lots of people are drawn to the book of Job. Maybe you’re one of them. Some listen to Job because misery wants company. Others listen because they want pious phrases. But perhaps Jesus gave us Job because he wants honest conversation.
I saw this truth, recently, in another church basement conversation about the Bible. I was the guest preacher for a special celebration that weekend at a church in Iowa. The pastor had invited me to lead the Bible study after the first service that morning. I knew that I wanted to talk with you all about Job on our program this summer, so, for the Bible study, I told them that I wanted to talk Job with them, first. And by talking through it with me, they’d be helping me prepare for the message. They were gracious and agreed to this. And so I started by re-telling the opening of the book of Job—about the bet between God and Satan, about how God let Satan swallow up Job within an inch of his life, all “for no reason” (Job 2:3), at least no reason we’re ever given.
I shared the story and asked the folks there in Iowa to give their honest reaction. After some discussion, a man in the back of the room raised his hand. Later I learned that his name was Steven. Steven appeared to be in his 50s or 60s and was wearing an uncomfortable-looking neck brace.
He raised his hand slowly, wincing as he went. He explained that he’d fallen recently and broke his neck. He’d spent months in the hospital, lost his job, was in constant pain, and, now that spring was nearing, he was sad because he couldn’t work in his garden anymore, a simple hobby that had brought him meager but meaningful joy. And Steven, a quiet, pious man, right there in the church basement, on the occasion of this special weekend, he said that sometimes he’s angry at God. “I don’t understand why God would take away my gardening.”
Of course, later he told me that he also knows that God has promised him eternal life and resurrection in Jesus, and that he clings to God’s promise, and that he’s grateful for all the ways his church family has supported him through the ordeal. But what stayed with me in that brief exchange is what listening to the book of Job together that morning did for someone like Steven. Steven may have otherwise gone unheard that morning. If all we traded were pious phrases, Steven would have had nothing to share. But God, through Job, gave him a voice. There were no explanations given for Steven’s suffering. Just a promise in Jesus and an honest-to-God place in His company.
Would you pray with me? Almighty God, because of Jesus I get to know You in ways that Job had not yet known. I know You as my loving Father. So, help me to talk to You, at times like Job did, so that we could be closer, through Jesus Christ. Amen.
i Thanks to Dr Tim Saleska of Concordia Seminary, St Louis, for sharing his unpublished essay with me, “Job, Ecclesiastes, Christians, Faith, and Life” (dated April 30, 2025). Dr. Saleska also explained this view on the podcast, Tangible: Theology Learned and Lived, “Episode 34 – Job’s Platitudes,” (Feb 18, 2025), https://scholar.csl.edu/tangible/34/
Reflections for June 29, 2025
Title: Honest to GodMark Eischer: You are listening to The Lutheran Hour. For FREE online resources, archived audio and more, go to lutheranhour.org. Now back to our Speaker, Dr. Mike Zeigler.
Mike Zeigler: Thank you, Mark. Today I’m visiting with Dr. Tim Saleska, a professor of Old Testament and Hebrew language at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Thanks for joining us, Tim.
Tim Saleska: Oh, I’m really happy to be here, Michael. Thanks.
Mike Zeigler: So, as I mentioned in the sermon, I’m very intrigued by your translation of Job 42:6, basically, “I’m fed up and I pity my fellow mortals” is one way we could say it. The new perspective it’s given for me is Job undergoes a transformation, and it’s not a transformation from innocence to guilt back to innocence again, which I think is how I had read it before, but now the transformation is from guarded, pious, proper words about God to open, honest, raw words to God.
Tim Saleska: Yes, and I think that that only starts to make sense when you start to understand how his friends were arguing and then how Job came to see that they were wrong, and to resist that.
Mike Zeigler: What did Job see in their arguments that was wrong?
Tim Saleska: If we step back and look at how God formulates the Law in the book of Deuteronomy: if you obey Me and do what I ask, you’re going to be blessed in every material way. If you don’t do what is required of you, you’re going to suffer the curses of the Law. The mistake people make is in thinking that because God gives us the Law, we have the possibility of doing it. We have the power to do it. When good things happen, you’re going to assume you’re in God’s good graces, you’re doing what He says, or when bad things happen, you must have done something wrong. That’s the framework within which the friends were arguing. The Law, because you can’t do it, puts you under a curse. Let’s say I told you—I put a high-jumping pole, 10 feet up—and said, “Okay, Michael, you jump this; you’re going to be rich; you’re going to be famous; you’re going to have everything else. [If] you don’t jump it, your life is going to be miserable.” So now you start working. You get a coach; you build your muscles; you’re making some progress. Oh, I got six feet. That’s pretty good. You keep working, you keep working. Pretty soon you level off. At some point you’re going to realize, I can’t do this. Now the Law turns on you. So you’re either going to presume, well, things are going pretty good for me. I’m making progress. I’m up to six five now. Maybe I can do it, or despair, [I] can’t do it. Pretty soon you get angry at the whole thing. That’s the instrumentality of the Law. It puts you under this curse. It’s always judging you, always accusing you. It doesn’t provide a way for you to save yourself. So God shatters those presumptions by saying, I work outside the Law.
Mike Zeigler: So Job comes to this point where he realizes this about the Law, and he brings his complaint to God, and then God says he’s in the right. God says Job has spoken rightly about Me. His friends have not. And so it opens up this possibility that’s not covered in the book of Job, but for God to speak another word, another way of dealing with us.
Tim Saleska: Justification by faith is totally outside the Law. We don’t get that even when we cognitively can say the words. It doesn’t depend on anything I do—nothing, anything; that’s very hard for people to grasp what justification by faith outside of any works of the Law really is. But that’s what I think wisdom, especially Ecclesiastes and Job, prepare people to hear. Certainly dealing with this question of terrible suffering in which God turns a totally deaf ear causes people a lot of issues today. So where do you go to find a loving God? Where do you go to find a God who actually cares about you? It can’t be the God who is omnipotent and speaks from His majesty. Luther says, if you keep trying to understand that God, it’s like banging your head against a wall. In his introduction to his commentary on Psalm 51, he says that, and so it’s true.
Mike Zeigler: So you have to find God as He wants to be found in Jesus—a God who puts on flesh, who suffers and pleads for the lost, and does everything so that we might be saved.
Tim Saleska: That’s what the life of faith is. It’s a life of hearing the promise and clinging to it when all around you looks like the opposite. How do you know that He does care about you? How can you be certain of your salvation? It’s only by virtue of the promise that He has given you. He gives it in His Baptism, in the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins in Holy Communion. That’s the word that engenders faith and helps us to cling to our Redeemer, even in spite of our seeming blindness and the evidence all around us that points in the other direction.
Mike Zeigler: How has this, “I’m fed up with your non-answers, God,” that prayer of Job that God says is the right word, how has that shaped your prayer life?
Tim Saleska: So I think that it has deepened my appreciation for the fact that God sees our heart. He’s not interested in performative righteousness. Your pious talk, your pious actions don’t get you anywhere with God. We like to think there’s a little space for us to have control of our own destiny, of our own salvation. The book of Job disabuses us of that notion.
Mike Zeigler: Well, since we’re talking about prayer, could we end in prayer? Would you lead us in praying the Lord’s Prayer?
Tim Saleska: Sure. I’d be happy to. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen
Mike Zeigler: And receive the blessing of the Lord. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord look upon you with His favor and give you peace. Amen.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Come, Follow Me, the Savior Spake” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.