Remember when presidential candidate Howard Dean was asked his favorite New Testament book and he answered Job, which happens to be in the Old Testament and represents the first book written in the entire Bible?

Instead of giving any meaningful insight into Job that might actually indicate he even ever read the book, Dean simply added, “But I don’t like the way it ends.”

The last chapter of the Book of Job reports that “the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before” and “blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters.” After living another 140 years, and as the last verse in the book says, “Job died, being old and full of days.”

Perhaps it was to assure his constituents that he really had no sincere regard for the Bible that Dean made only this lame comment in defense of his short assessment: “Some would argue, you know, in some of the books of the New Testament, the ending of the Book of Job is different. I think, if I'm not mistaken, there's one book where there's a more optimistic ending, which we believe was tacked on later."

For time immemorial, noted men in history have praised the Book of Job as one of the greatest written works in existence.

Victor Hugo once said: “The Book of Job is perhaps the greatest masterpiece of the human mind.”

Thomas Carlyle once wrote: “I call this book, apart from all the theories about it, one of the Grandest things ever written. Our first, oldest statement of the never-ending problem: Man’s Destiny, and God’s Ways with him in the earth. There is nothing written, I think, of equal literary merit.”

My pastor, Richard Jordan of Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill. (www.graceimpact.org) , says Job, among many other things, represents an unrivaled textbook in psychology.

“When you study the Bible you don’t need that human viewpoint out there in the world,” says Jordan in a study I have on tape. “Psychology is supposed to be the study of the soul and yet there’s not a human viewpoint-trained man in the world who ever knew what your soul was. But the Bible identifies what your soul is, and how it is to be properly related to your spirit, and to the flesh, and to God. You could put a shrink right out of business with the verses in Job.”

Jordan says not only is Job the perfect study book in human psychology, it’s full of humor.

“The conversation Job has with his so-called friends from chapter four on down to chapter 35, along in there, is hilarious; I mean, it's a hoot,” he explains. “They go back and forth at each other and they don't leave any dig undone.

“Just look at the discourse Job is having in Job 11. They're called his friends but he calls them ‘miserable comforters, forgers of lies.’ That's what friends get to be some times when they're trying to explain life to you.

“Zopher is actually trying to talk Job into not appearing as if to try and justify himself. He says in verse 2, ‘Should not the multitude of words be answered? and should a man full of talk be justified?’ Zopher’s saying, ‘Job, you're just a big talker.’ Later he comes back at him and says, "You're just full of the east wind.’ That's a way of saying, ‘You're just full of hot air. You're a windbag.’ Now you thought that all that kind of name-calling just started in 21^st century politics!

In Job 11:3, Zopher goes on to say, “Should thy lies make men hold their peace and when thou mockest, shall no man make thee ashamed?”

Jordan explains, “He’s saying, ‘Job, you're a liar. You're just a fast-talking liar." Drop down to verse 6 and he says, ‘And that he would shew thee the secrets of wisdom, that they are double to that which is! Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth. Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?’

“Really, that's pretty good counsel. When you think you know everything, well, the queen of Sheba said it to Solomon: ‘The half hasn't been told.’ There's twice as much as you're ever going to know out there to know, and when it comes to your sin, and you trying to justify yourself—and Job, he certainly was doing that. . .

“The problem with Job is he was the most righteous man you'll ever meet. You look at the way he describes his conduct. There's not a person, man or woman in this room, who could live up to the kind of conduct that Job could publicly stand up and say, ‘This is the way I've lived; the covenant I've made with my eyes and my mind about what to think about, what to look upon, where my hand's are to go, the way I've treated people.’ And he's saying that in a public forum where anybody could contradict him!

“Even so, Zopher tells him, ‘God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserves.’ You know, man even in his best state is altogether vanity. Now, the problem with what Zopher's doing here is not that it isn't good advice, but he's saying, ‘The reason this is happening to Job is because he’s a sinner,’ and that wasn't why it was happening. There was an angelic conflict going on that Zopher didn’t know about. Zopher doesn't take his own advice!

“When Zopher says, ‘Canst thou by searching find out God?’ the answer is ‘No.’ Job, on his own, just like you and me on our own, could never find God.

“Do you remember in the late ’50s and early ’60s when they were putting men up in space for the first time and the first Russian cosmonaut sent back a message and said, ‘I looked around up here and I didn't find God.’ Well, by searching you thought you were going to find out God?! I mean, a little near-sighted, peanut-of-a-brain fellow like you?! Why you can't find your socks half the time if you lose one of them!”

“Zopher says, “It is as high as heaven, deeper than hell." In other words, God is so big and so vast and this issue is so much, you can't find it out. You can't search Him out by your own intellect; by your own wisdom, by your own seeking.

“People say, ‘God's so vast you can't know Him. God's so high you can't get up there. It's so deep you can't get down there. It's so long you'd never be able to get around it. It's so broad you'd never be able to fathom it. You'd just never find God.’

The problem with that is that's the first book in the Bible. That isn't all the Bible has to say.

“Verse 7 says, ‘Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?’, but do you remember what II Tim 3:16-17 says? ‘All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.’

“God's word gives you the capacity to search something out and to find it out unto perfection. As the Apostle Paul makes clear, without God revealing Himself, you'd never know Him, but the good thing is God has revealed Himself. That's the point!

“Where Paul is describing this special message committed to his trust, he says, ‘I Paul am made a minister.’ Notice that God had planned and purposed to do this thing all along from eternity past. He just chose not to reveal it all until it came time to do so, and he did that through the ministry of the Apostle Paul. That's why Paul is in your Bible and that's why he calls it ‘the mystery, the secret.’ That's why he says in Eph. 3:2, ‘If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to youward.’

“I talked to fellow just the other day who asked, ‘Why do you keep using all these theological terms?’ I said, ‘No, that’s a good Bible term. I showed him the verse from Ephesians 3 and he about fell off his seat! He said, ‘That word’s in the Bible!’ and I said, ‘Yeah, and that's not the only place.’ Then he said, ‘Maybe I should think about this a little bit.’ ”