I read Richard Wurmbrands book, “Tortured for Christ” several times as a young man and would find myself sometimes on my knees as I read it…I was so challenged and moved by it.
He was a Romanian pastor who spent 14 years in soviet prisons being tortured for his faith.
To consider his life, in comparison to my own relatively easy life…was very important for me at the time.
It helped me with perspective…it challenged me to see my own meager struggles in a bigger light…to push myself more.
It can be helpful to consider what others have endured and are enduring…in order to get perspective on your own life, your own struggles.
Having said that, it is foolish to think that you can weigh one person’s suffering against suffering.
It is not true that thinking about “how so many people are suffering in the world” will make your own suffering become easy…it won’t.
It can give perspective…but even that doesn’t always help…sometimes for people I know personally, it just adds the suffering of others to their own suffering…their struggle increases.
CS Lewis wrote, there is no such thing as the “Weight of human suffering.”
No person can suffer more than their own personal suffering…this can be immense but cannot be measured person against another person…there are simply too many factors.
I’ve done funerals for many people, who have come to the end of themselves…their suffering was just too much for them.
How do you suffer MORE than that?
I’ve known people who would prefer to have physical suffering rather than their mental suffering.
Invisible wounds can be harder for some than visible wounds.
But the one in incredible physical pain may disagree.
Not to mention that when there is physical suffering it cannot be detached from the mental…we are not component parts, we are human wholes…body and mind.
Then watching someone we love to suffer takes a terrible toll…it can be worse, for some than their own personal suffering.
We cannot, we must not try to measure suffering to suffering…it is foolish to attempt to do so.
Today we are in the book of Job.
It will not be an easy day for us, especially if we take seriously what is in this book.
Or more precisely, what this book tells us about the world we live in.
When I say it won’t be easy, that doesn’t’ mean it won’t be comforting or helpful.
It can be, depending on how we respond to God…it can be both difficult and helpful as we look at this great book.
I’ve read Job many times over the years.
As a younger man…I read it more casually, more intellectually…scrutinizing its words and perspectives…trying to figure out its design and content.
To read it then, before I had seen and experienced much difficulty in life…it was very different than reading it today.
I read it again recently with respect, and even fear…it can be a terrifying book.
I read it reverence for the suffering of a man…and with new respect for the answers to human suffering that God DID NOT give Job or us in this book.
While I was on the Elliptical at the Y last week I was watching a biographical movie about a man who did some noble and difficult things
The name of the movie doesn’t matter…it could have been any number of many stories that do this to me.
Do what?
I could not help but cry and cry…I kept wiping my sweat and my tears…happy that no one was next to me on a machine…I couldn’t stop crying.
Why did I react that way?…I wouldn’t have a few years back.
I’ve seen things, experienced things…many things are more personal for me now.
I’ve tried to read Job more personally this time, not merely intellectually.
By the way, if you read the Bible and think, “I’m not getting much out of it.”
Don’t worry…keep reading throughout your life…you will…in surprising ways at surprising times find yourself impacted by the word.
Not to mention the culminative effect of staying in the truth over a long period of time.
It’s like community…show up and great things might happen…don’t show up, I can promise great things won’t happen.
If you stop reading, I can promise, you won’t get anything out of the Bible…keep plodding.
When I say I read Job more personally I don’t mean I’m looking for a feeling…or that I disregarded my rational mind.
Because I almost always read the Bible with a commentary at hand…my heart isn’t touched if my mind doesn’t understand to a degree what is going on.
But Job is a book that needs to be “understood” with both heart and head.
If you miss either one, you will likely miss the point.
Job is the ultimate antidote to Meism.
If you don’t know what that is…listen to last week’s message.
Job touches our hearts with human suffering and challenges our minds with its LACK of reasoned answers for Job’s suffering.
It is not irrational…it just doesn’t tell us what we would like to, or demand to know.
It does offer us what we most need to do…to trust God even when, or especially when, we don’t understand what he is up to.
It is rational, not irrational…to believe that God is smarter and better than we are.
It is rational, and emotionally powerful…to trust him and not ourselves.
It is irrational to believe we can contain all God is up to with our rational minds alone.
If you are looking for easy, safe answers to the most personal of all human questions.
Then don’t read Job.
But please do read it and realize that easy, safe answers were what Job’s friends gave him…and God called them to account for those simplistic answers.
They were not all wrong…they were just incomplete, and they assumed to know more than any human can know about someone else’s suffering.
Or about the ways of God.
Now, don’t hear me say the Bible doesn’t give good, solid answers to the question of why there is evil and suffering in the world, it does.
Last week we found several answers in one man’s life: Joseph suffered in order to grow his faith (sanctification), reveal God’s glory through his actions, and to save a people group.
Joseph, was able to understand “Why”.
Job will not find out why…but he does gives us a Biblical answer to WHY…mystery.
That is a key biblical answer to the question of “Why?”…mystery.
Deut. 29:29…the secret things belong to God.
We often won’t know why we are suffering in this way at this time.
We will not know why that child died and that man lived to be quite old.
We will not know why that evil person prospered and that good person suffered.
Why God seemed to not answer that prayer, but did answer this one…a “lesser one.”
Why Job’s great family, the first healthy family it seems that we have encountered in the Bible…all die!
Is the Bible meant to be intentionally confusing?
No, the Bible is real and true.
Real life is not neat, tidy, and safe.
We can read the news of war and suffering, watch war movies…sitting safe and warm in our homes.
But War, is terrible, and confusing, and impossible…and real
I watched a film called “Number 24” about Norway’s most decorated civilian soldier in World War II.
He was a part of the underground resistance movement that fought the Nazi’s who occupied his country starting in 1940.
I am not recommending you watch it, or that you don’t watch it…it is hard to watch…you need to decide.
I did not watch it with my wife because it is not something that would help her to see.
I bring it up because it is one of several films that deals honestly with the moral complexity of war.
It deals in heart wrenching ways with the impact of human sin on entire nations and on individual lives…and the impossible choices that people are sometimes faced with.
God sees all this…it is amazing that he is a being of pure joy when you consider he sees it all.
He doesn’t just see it all, God oversees it all…what he does is complex beyond any possible understanding.
Job has to understand this, understand that he can’t understand it all…that he sees through his narrow, painful straw.
God has a view of all it.
Job will never be told “WHY”…he will be given the choice to trust God in spite of not understanding why all these things have happened to him.
Spoiler alert: Job responds in faith to God in the end without getting an answer to his “why?”
There have been many in history, who have not ended in that faith…they died thumbing their noses at God.
Or just turning away from him because they don’t understand him, or they think that they do understand…but they really don’t.
I will give you one of the most tragic epitaphs every written:
“In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa developed a disease in his feet, and his disease became increasingly severe. Yet even in his disease he didn’t seek the Lord but only the physicians.” 2 Chron. 16:12
This was written about a man who when he was a young king had a driving passion for the glory of God.
Sadly, he did not end that way.
The change in his heart is seen in those two words…EVEN and ONLY.
Yet even in his disease he didn’t seek the Lord but only the physicians.
There was no problem in his seeking medical help…but the status of his heart was revealed in that he had become a Meist…no longer a Theist.
No longer thinking or hoping that God either would or could help him…he turned away from God to himself and to other men.
Job’s story ended a different way.
Background:
Job was non-Israelite, living in the east.
For the Israelites living west of the Jordan, everything across the river was “East”
We don’t know exactly where this land of Uz was.
We know that he was devout and moral
Two things Israel was not…at least not consistently
I said last week that every family in Genesis was a mess.
Job’s wasn’t…it was exemplary…the kids got along, had regular dinners together.
Dad was involved and led the family spiritually.
Every character in Genesis is, to varying degrees, a mess.
Job, God’s word says…was not.
He was sinner and he admitted as much…but Scripture tells us that God called Job…a good man.
Not a sinless man, but a really good man.
Job chapter 1:
There was a man in the country of Uz named Job. He was a man of complete integrity, who feared God and turned away from evil. 2 He had seven sons and three daughters. 3 His estate included seven thousand sheep and goats, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very large number of servants. Job was the greatest man among all the people of the east. 4 His sons used to take turns having banquets at their homes. They would send an invitation to their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5 Whenever a round of banqueting was over, Job would send for his children and purify them, rising early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of them. For Job thought, “Perhaps my children have sinned, having cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular practice. 6 One day the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. 7 The Lord asked Satan, “Where have you come from?” “From roaming through the earth,” Satan answered him, “and walking around on it.” 8 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil.” 9 Satan answered the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing? 10 Haven’t you placed a hedge around him, his household, and everything he owns? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11 But stretch out your hand and strike everything he owns, and he will surely curse you to your face.” 12 “Very well,” the Lord told Satan, “everything he owns is in your power. However, do not lay a hand on Job himself.” So Satan left the Lord’s presence. 13 One day when Job’s sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, 14 a messenger came to Job and reported, “While the oxen were plowing and the donkeys grazing nearby, 15 the Sabeans swooped down and took them away. They struck down the servants with the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you!” 16 He was still speaking when another messenger came and reported, “God’s fire fell from heaven. It burned the sheep and the servants and devoured them, and I alone have escaped to tell you!” 17 That messenger was still speaking when yet another came and reported, “The Chaldeans formed three bands, made a raid on the camels, and took them away. They struck down the servants with the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you!” 18 He was still speaking when another messenger came and reported, “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house. 19 Suddenly a powerful wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on the young people so that they died, and I alone have escaped to tell you!” 20 Then Job stood up, tore his robe, and shaved his head. He fell to the ground and worshiped, 21 saying: Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will leave this life., The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. 22 Throughout all this Job did not sin or blame God for anything
That is a horrible, unthinkable story.
It gets worse…Job completely loses his physical health.
It is hard to handle great loss when you feel good physically, it is impossible when you feel terrible physically.
Chapter 3 begins with Job cursing the day he was born.
I do not judge Job for this, nor did God…I have had people near and dear to me wish they had never been born.
I have had many people tell me they want to die.
The bulk of the book of Job is a back and forth of three rounds of speeches between Job and his friends.
Then a fourth younger person joins the fray and gives his perspective.
Finally, in chapters 38-42 God begins to speak.
This is not a story of cosmic dualism, Satan versus God.
Good vs Evil…who will win?
God is sovereign, he has no competition…the outcome is never in doubt at that level.
The real tension, the drama is…what will the outcome be for Job’s faith.
Satan has to ask God for permission to test Job, and God sets the limits on that testing.
This leads to another “problem” for the human mind.
Why would God allow this evil in order to make a point?
There was clearly more than just making a point, but it is the question of questions.
If God is good and powerful, why is there so much evil and suffering?
The book of Job doesn’t offer a philosophical answer, but it does give a theological one, the bottom line is this: God is good and what he does is right…period.
Job’s friends are preaching to the choir…telling Job what he already knows and believes.
Job doesn’t doubt God’s power or his right to do what he wants with that power, but he just wants to know why God has done this to him.
He doesn’t even ask God to heal him, but he does ask God to tell him, why?
God remains silent while his “friends” wax eloquent.
They are sure that they know why Job is suffering…it is because he has sinned.
In their worldview…bad stuff happens to bad people, and good stuff happens to good people…pretty cut and dried.
Job dismantles this simplistic view…he says, “Look around, clearly this is not true.”
Job unleashes on his friends. He is not going to passively take their foolishness, nor should he.
He calls them worthless healers and urges them to just stop talking.
“Job’s friends” has become an idiom for someone who offers empty comfort to someone who is suffering.
Job himself vacillates between hope and despair.
He despairs the finality of death but holds on to hope in a life after death.
At this point in history God had revealed little of life after death, and our own post-gospel knowledge of a future resurrection was beyond his view.
It is important to note that none of the characters in this book are Israelites.
They represent the best theological thinking among humans of the time, but they were often incorrect.
Job’s friends give us a picture human wisdom unguided by divine revelation.
God will reveal himself to Job, but his “answers” will prove to be surprising.
He won’t answer Job, at least not the questions he is asking.
As you read you will be looking for who is “right” in their arguments.
However, they all say some things that are true and many things that are not.
Getting to a simple answer is not the point because there is no simple answer to human suffering.
The book portrays struggle…back and forth struggle…humans trying to figure it out.
Job continues to struggle with what he believes to be true and with what his own experience is telling him.
He cannot seem to correlate those two things.
All this goes back and forth until finally his friends, now probably his former friends, run out of things to say.
Again, Job does not proclaim to be sinless, but he does, rightfully so, hold fast to the fact that he doesn’t “deserve all this.”
Some read the story of Job as teaching us that because of sin we don’t deserve anything except death.
That is true, but that is not the point of the book of Job.
Job is not about teaching us that suffering is because of sin…Adams or ours.
We know, ultimately that this is true, but it is not the point here.
We know this is not the point, because of what God himself says about Job.
In the first chapter he said, Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?
Then in the last chapter he says, “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.”
You have heard of Job’s perseverence. James
Endurance: kept the faith to the end.
The point of Job is keeping faith in the face of mystery…and a great human struggle in the process.
It is a book against easy believism…
God wants to make us more resilient as we read it.
The New Testament tells us: Don’t be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering as if something strange were happening to you.
We tend to nod our heads in agreement…then be totally and utterly surprised at painful trials.
And even worse…turn from God at the very times we most need him.
Will we trust God when we don’t understand what he is doing?
Again, There are biblical answers to the question of human suffering…but Job does not offer them…except for one of the most important ones, mystery.
Why is mystery so important as an answer.
We must love and trust God in mystery because there is just going to be so much of it, because we are limited beings.
That’s why God goes on a cosmos tour…to help Job see he can’t get his mind around all that God does.
Faith is not blind or irrational…but it sees more than what the eyeball can perceive, and what human reason can understand.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11
Will you trust and love God only if you can understand him?
Job did not understand why but he did trust God.
Consider this, Job did not have, what we have…the Cross of Christ in our history.
We have God’s final answer to the question: Are you there, are you powerful, do you love me? Will you do something about all this suffering?
That answer is: Jesus on the cross.
Job often longed for a mediator, someone to go to God on his behalf…the chance to plead his case.
He also longed for personal resurrection.
Christ is our mediator, and he is the resurrection and the life.
Job spoke of God that which was right…this is surprising because he was very honest with God about his confusion, pain, and even anger.
We can and we should bring God our pain and grief, but we must trust that he knows what he is doing.
It has been said that
“Suffering is the common burden of all men and the lonely burden of each man.”
We can share each other’s loads, bear up one another’s suffering together.
However, we all know…that our suffering is our own suffering.
Even with close friends and dear family…no one can truly bear our suffering except us…not at the deepest levels.
We share it out there and helps…but in the end…it’s in here.
No one can go in there and share it with us…except for the Lord Jesus.
He is a friend who is closer than a brother.
He has suffered in every way just as we have, and without sin.
Listen to Paul in 2 Cor. 1:8
“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”
Paul and his companions were at the end of themselves…if you don’t think that is terrifying…you haven’t been there yet.
“Utterly burdened beyond our strength.”
It is God’s severe mercy that teaching us to rely on him and not ourselves.
You often hear this about some famous person who died:
“They died surrounded by friends and family.”
That’s good, but friends and family sat watching…they did not go with that loved one through death.
In the last moments of my dad’s life…I sat helpless, watching him slip away.
No doctors were present, they couldn’t do anything anyway.
This man who lived as connected a life as anyone I have ever known…had to go through that final moment with Jesus…no one else could.
Look, suffering of all kinds is terrifying to consider and terrible to endure.
God help us learn not rely on ourselves but on him…he is the one that raises the dead.
Mayh God help us say from our hearts:
“The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
“Holy and Good Father, In your giving find us grateful, in your taking find us faithful…in it all, find us worshipping.”
Amen