As we’re going through the book of Job this spring/summer we’re asking the question – “Is God worthy of our love/adoration/worship/trust no matter our circumstances?” 

At the same time, we’re considering the question “Where is wisdom to be found, and where is the place of understanding?”

How then should we live?

Particularly in the face of suffering.  This is the story.  Job has lost his possessions, his great wealth.  Job has lost 10 children.  Job has lost his good health.  He’s asking “Why?”  He’s crying out, “Why?” really.  This is his situation and we do well by not turning our faces away from him.  Someone has said that it’s good for the family of God to be preparing ourselves for suffering before it comes.  It is good for us to be prepared for when suffering and loss comes.  Suffering and loss are going to come.  We may be in the middle of suffering and loss right now.  We need to be preparing one another to know what it means to put our hand in the hand of the one who stilled the water when it’s dark and God’s hand is hard to see and we’re saying “Where are you in this God?” We’re not supposed to ask those questions or look for His hand on our own.  So here we are.  I was talking to Nicole about this whole Job thing recently and I said that it’s good, maybe, for us to be looking at this story in the sunny days of June and July rather than the short dark grey days of January/February and Blue Monday and all that kind of January/February thing in our part of the world.  Taking a look at our Sunday folder from a couple of weeks ago brought home the truth about living between joy and sorry or hope and despair.  On the front cover is a picture of lamenting despairing Job.  On the inside page “Church Picnic June 23^rd!” with a nice red gingham tablecloth! 

Are these two images incompatible?  Is God worthy of our love/praise/trust no matter what?  Maybe at this point we should be saying “Well that depends on what God is like I suppose.”  So what is God like?  Do we not want wisdom on this question of what God is like?  Do we not want a deeper understanding of what God is like?  Let’s come to God now and ask for help as we look at some of the conversation between Job and his friends.   Let us pray.

We left Job with his friends’ silence.  Job could not remain silent and so we have chapter 3, which ended like this, “I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest; but trouble comes.” (3:26)  From chapters 4 through to 27 we have three cycles of conversation which go Eliphaz/Job, Bildad/Job, Zophar/Job.  Three times.  The talk starts out fairly polite.  “If one ventures a word with you, will you be offended?” says Eliphaz.  “See you have instructed many; you have strengthened the weak hands. Your words have supported those who were stumbling, and you have made firm the feeble knees.” (4:3-4)  Let us do the same for you now Job!  Things will go downhill.  “If your children sinned against him, he delivered them into the power of their transgression,” from Bildad.  (8:4)  If your children were killed, they brought it on themselves.  Job becomes fed up.  “… miserable comforters are you all.  Have windy words on limit?  Or what provokes you that you keep on talking?” (16:2-3)  Why are you still talking?  They’re fed up listening to Job, “How long will you hunt for words?” asks Bildad (18:2).  This is all poetry remember. 

What it all comes down to is this.  Job’s friends maintain that he has done something to deserve what happened to him.  Job maintains that he hasn’t and wonders about the God’s justice.

The thing about the words that Job hears from his friends.  There is some truth in them.  “As for me I would seek God, and to God I would commit my cause.  He does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number.” (5:9)  “How happy is the one whom God reproves, therefore do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.” (5:17)  The problem is that they are saying that they know that Job has brought his situation on himself.  Someone has described their position like this:  1)  God is absolutely in control  2)  God is absolutely just and fair  3)  Therefore God always blesses righteousness and punishes wickedness (soon and certainly in this life)  4)  Therefore if I suffer I must have sinned and am being punished justly for my sin.

I have heard this kind of thinking from Christian leaders all my life.  AIDS is a punishment from God.  COVID 19 is a punishment from God.  Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was a punishment from God on the city of New Orleans (and I suppose the surrounding area too?).  The earthquake in Haiti in 2010 was a punishment from God because of occult practices. So they got what they deserved.  So what goes around comes around when it comes to God.

It's the kind of thinking that makes us say “What have I done to deserve this?”  I don’t have a lot of personal experience with this I must say.  I remember once reading a story from a man called James Bryant Smith who wrote a series of books on spiritual formation.  This one is called The Good and Beautiful God.  Smith and his wife were going to have a baby, and were told by doctors that the little girl his wife had been carrying for 8 months had a rare chromosomal disorder which would likely cause her to die at birth.  Smith writes “Up to that point in my life nothing terrible had happened to me.  Now I was faced with one of life’s worst problems – dealing with the coming death of a child.  How does on survive this kind of news?  How do you move from painting your child’s nursery to planning her funeral?  How does a Christian, one who believes in the goodness of God, respond to something so tragic and heartbreaking?”  Their daughter Madeline was born and lived just over two years.  During this time, Smith tells of going to lunch with a pastor friend.  “One day a pastor I had known for years took me to lunch in an effort to comfort me.  While I was in the middle of eating my salad he asked, “Who sinned Jim, you or your wife?”  I said, “Excuse me…. what do you mean?”  He said, “Well, one or both of you must have sinned at some point to have caused this to happen.”

To which I can only say “Lord have mercy on us all.”

To which I can also say we reject this.  I reject this because I live in the grace of God.  The grace of God tells me that none of us get what we deserve.  The grace of God is not only extended to those who are deserving.  This is the God in whom I trust.  Even when I don’t understand and even when I’m asking “Why?” 

I know we want to help each other by offering answers as to why, just as Job’s friends do.  We are well meaning.  We want to help.  Let us beware of offering pat answers in the face of suffering, or even answers that are just plain wrong.  “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.”  “God must have wanted another angel.”  “God needed him in heaven more than we needed him here.”  Job’s friends are offering up an explanation for Job’s suffering which is just making things worse for him.  “You must have done something to deserve this!”  Later on in their conversation, Eliphaz will venture to name what Job has done: “Is not your wickedness great?” he’ll ask. “There is no end to your iniquities.  For you have exacted pledges from your family for no reason, and stripped the naked of their clothing.  You have given no water to the weary to drink and have withheld bread from the hungry.  The powerful possess the land and the favoured live in it.  You have sent the widows away empty-handed, and the arms of the orphans you have crushed.  Therefore snares surround you and sudden terror overwhelms you, or darkness so that you cannot see; a flood of water covers you.” (22:5-11) We’re talking about the danger of making a causal line from suffering to sin.  Now you may be saying “Well surely there’s some sort of connection between the two.”  It is true that we can often draw a causal line from sin to suffering.  Engaging in self-destructive habits often means that things will not go well for us physically.  Cheating on your spouse is not generally conducive to a healthy relationship (to say the least).  Holding a grudge or refusing to forgive is a burden that we will carry.  It will eat away at us and this will not be good for us (or anyone else for that matter).        

We may still be objecting and saying that talk of sowing trouble and reaping the same sounds pretty biblical.  Look at Proverbs 22:8 – “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of anger will fail.”  This is wisdom but is it a promise of God for now?  Two verses earlier we read “Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray.” (Prov 22:6) Is this wisdom or an ironclad truism?  Has no one ever strayed when they are older?  Have we seen all who sow injustice reap calamity?  What do we do with this?

Here's what Violet Gray did with this in a very old Peanuts strip (from 1961). 

Good ol’ Snoopy, reminding us of the need for grace.  Good ol’ Snoopy reminding us of the One from whose fullness we have received grace upon grace.  We remember how Jesus walked alongside the two who were so downcast that first resurrection Sunday on the road to Emmaus.  We remember how he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures beginning with Moses and all the prophets and no doubt including Job.  Let’s look at Eliphaz’s question again in the light of Jesus.  “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?”

Think now.  Think now as we consider what it means to be prepared for suffering when it comes or to live with suffering or respond to suffering or sit with one another in our suffering.  Think of the One who, when he was asked why a man born blind was born blind – was it for his sins or the sins of his parents? – responded “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” (John 9:3)  He healed him.  Blindness was not the end of that man’s story.

Because of Jesus, suffering and even death is not the end of the story.  Do you believe this?  Do you trust in this God?  I do.  Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar are preaching a kind of sermon but there is another sermon that needs to be preached.  I’m a big fan of Tom Long, ace US preacher.  He was on a podcast recently talking about how two sermons are preached at every funeral.  This is what he said:

“Well, and this truth telling that we should be doing at funerals is especially important because there are two preachers at every funeral. Capital “D” Death comes to every funeral and loves to preach. And Death’s sermon is the same every time. It’s, “Damn every one of you. I win every time. You want the evidence, it’s right there. I break all loving relationships. I destroy all community. You belong to me.” And we have the duty and delight of standing there and saying, “Oh, death, where’s your victory? Where’s your sting? I tell you a mystery.” We got to say that.”

We got to say it all the time.  If I can’t say it, say it for me. If you can’t say it, let me say it for you.  “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  Suffering and death are not the end of the story.  Let us be reminded of this truth daily.  Let us remind one another of this truth constantly in our words and in our deeds.  There is coming a day when all things will be made right.  There is coming a day when justice will reign.  God’s justice may not look like what I imagine but I’m prepared to let God be God and trust in God’s mercy and justice.  There is coming a day when death will be no more and mourning and carrying and pain will be no more and God will say “I am making all things new.”

Trust in this God with me.  This is the God who is worthy of all our love/adoration/trust/worship no matter our circumstances.  Thanks be to God for his indescribable grace.

Amen