Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Job 1 | Date: June 12, 2016 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

We’re missing this morning a very nice piano. We’ve paved the parking lot. We’ve put a new roof on the building. I think it’s time for a piano. Last Sunday after the service, I asked four or five people if they had $30,000 they could give us, we could buy that piano. And every one of them said, “Sure.” And you would think out of four or five people at RBC, at least one of them would keep their word. I’m really disappointed.

I have to apologize this week. I forgot to send you again in the emails the weekly verse and question. Today when we were—I was going to say reciting—when we were reading it, I saw a lot of heads down and I stumbled on it myself. I will try to remind you of that this week so that we can memorize it a little better. Also, I’ll just follow up with what Pastor Greg said. I would encourage the children to make sure you use these kids’ notes in the bulletin. And as Pastor Greg suggested, perhaps you can find other use for it as well at home.

If you will, open your Bibles, please, to the book of Job. I have mentioned to a couple of you that we are going to begin soon a series of messages on the Bible’s teaching about salvation and what salvation is and what God has done to secure our salvation in Christ, and I look forward to that series. But I think first we’ll do some studies on the general subject of suffering, but also primarily from the book of Job. We will not take time to work through the book, verse by verse, through the whole book. We would be here for many years if we did. But I do want to take some big-picture looks at the book and try to find what the message of the book is.

Job chapter 1, and I think I will take the time to read through the first two chapters.

“There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. And that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East.

His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters and eat and drink with them. And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all, for Job said, ‘It may be that my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.’ Thus Job did continually.

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves.” The sons of God there is very obviously a reference to the fallen angels in cohort with Satan. “There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, ‘From where have you come?’ Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘From going to and fro on the earth and walking up and down in it,'” which I take to mean something like, “I’ve been doing pretty much as I please, thank you, and I’ve been doing a good job of running things down there.”

“Verse 8, the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job, that there’s none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’ Then Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.’

The Lord said to Satan, ‘Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.’ So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.

Now there was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, and there came a messenger to Job and said, ‘The oxen were plowing and the donkeys feeding beside them, and the Sabaeans fell upon them and took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you.’

While he was yet speaking, there came another and said, ‘The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them, and I alone have escaped to tell you.’ While he was yet speaking, there came another and said, ‘The Chaldeans formed three groups and made a raid on the camels and took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you.’

And while he was yet speaking, there came another and said, ‘Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house. And behold, a great wind came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead. And I alone have escaped to tell you.’

Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshipped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ In all of this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.

Again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. And the Lord said to Satan, ‘From where have you come?’ Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and walking up and down in it.’ The Lord said to Satan, ‘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? He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason.’

Then Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘Skin for skin, all that a man has he will give for his life, but stretch out your hand and touch his bone and flesh and he will curse you to your face.’ And the Lord said to Satan, ‘Behold, he is in your hand, only spare his life.’ So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, and he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes.

And then his wife said to him, ‘Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.’ But he said to her, ‘You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil?’ In all of this, Job did not sin with his lips.

Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came, each of them from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to show him sympathy and to comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. They raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.”

Let’s look to the Lord in prayer.

Our Father, we are thankful for this famous portion of your word and we ask that you would instruct us from it today. This wisdom literature is given to teach us how to live as Christians where the rubber meets the road. Suffering is a thing we will all face. We ask that you would give us instruction here not only to learn how to suffer faithfully, but may we learn here how to think rightly about you in our suffering that we may worship you aright. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The Book of Job records the historic events of this man by the name of Job, about whom we know very little other than what we have right here about what happened to him, when he lived, where he lived. We’re not exactly sure, but we do have the land of Uz. But his events are portrayed for us in the form of a dramatic poem. And we have this drama unfolding throughout the book with Job, his wife, his three friends, and primarily the bulk of the book is the conversation back and forth between Job and his three friends as they wrestle with the big question of why all of this has happened.

The book of Job is what’s called a theodicy. A theodicy is a justification of the ways of God in dealing with men. It’s a vindication of the goodness of God in view of the evil that happens. And the book of Job is the classic theodicy. How shall we think about God understanding that so much evil exists?

Now there are other portions of the Bible, of course, that treat the subject of suffering also. Primarily, though, in other portions of the Bible that address it specifically, the point of it is to teach us the proper response to suffering and how to suffer faithfully. And of course we find that in the book of Job as well, but we should understand that the larger picture of the book of Job is not just that. The larger picture is this bigger question of: how shall we think about God in respect to human suffering? Why do bad things happen? Why do bad things happen to good people, as the question is so often framed today? Is the world well-managed? What does this fact of evil say about God, who is supposedly sovereign and good? And this we learn through the experience of this man named Job.

Job is introduced to us as a man of great prosperity materially. He is the greatest man in all of the earth. He has evidently, from all appearances here, a wonderful family. He’s a man of prosperity in terms of his spirituality as well. He’s faithful to God. His devotion to God is obvious. His sons and his family routinely are together, and that’s a wonderful thing, but Job wonders, perhaps they have sinned. And so we see Job praying faithfully for his family, interceding for them on their behalf to God. He’s faithful in his home. He’s faithful in every respect that we can tell.

And then in a quick series of events that happen, as we saw in chapter 1, in just rapid-fire succession, Job loses his wealth. Then he loses his children, and then in chapter 2 he loses his health, and then he loses the support of his wife. And then his friends show up late in chapter 2, and then this conversation with them dominates through the rest of the book till we get through to chapter 38. His friends show up—you would never call them friends, except that the text does. So evidently they had been friends of Job, but the counsel that they give to Job is not very encouraging.

And so with these rounds of debate that go on between Job and his three friends, one at a time, they give their counsel to Job and they surmise: what about this situation? And they give their counsel to Job accordingly. And all of it summed up is very simple: “Job, these sufferings are great. Therefore, your sin must be great. You need to repent.”

Now, it’s not really difficult to understand their counsel. These friends of Job had wonderful—and I mean that—wonderful and high and lofty concepts of God. They have expressed some wonderful theology throughout their book. And some of it even is picked up, particularly from Eliphaz, and quoted in the New Testament. These friends have a wonderful concept of God. The problem is not that they start with a bad concept of God. The problem is they do some reasoning that just takes them a little askew and ends up with a terrible conclusion.

But you can understand their reasoning. God is sovereign. And they express that. God is good. God is just. Now you put all of that together, throw out the conclusion, and it means that if you behave yourself and are faithful, God will bless you. And if you are unfaithful and you sin a lot, God will get you. And if you sin a whole lot, God will really get you. This is nothing less than today’s health, wealth, and prosperity gospel. It’s not difficult to understand, as I say, how they come up with that. God is sovereign. God is just. He’s going to do what’s right. And that means that justice must prevail. And that means, and here we take another conclusion from a conclusion, that means that if you behave, he’ll bless you. And if you don’t behave, he’ll get you.

Through three rounds of debate throughout the rest of the book and these long speeches that they give to one another, they press this matter on Job. And although Job stands firm against them and the counsel that they are giving him, obviously he has lost their support. Later in the book, another man shows up on the scene, besides the three who are introduced here in chapter 2. We have Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Later in the book, we have another man that shows up on the scene. His name is Elihu. I appreciated Elihu much more when I was younger than I do now that I’m older. But his first words, right out of the gate, are really funny—well, funny if you’re young. Old men are not always wise.

And Elihu comes on the scene to correct matters, and he directs his attention first of all to Job’s other three friends. And he criticizes them for wrongly accusing Job. “You guys don’t have the answer. You’ve reasoned wrongly.” But then on the other hand, Elihu also takes issue with Job himself, and he criticizes Job for wrongly accusing God. And this brings us into the whole wrestling match, as it were, throughout the book of Job that we find. Job loses his argument with Elihu. Elihu argues against Job’s friends, but now he argues against Job as well, and he argues against him for speaking wrongly about God.

And the problem that Job has now throughout the book, as it’s exposed particularly later in the book, the problem is that Job seems to share in common the theology of his friends. God is just. God is sovereign. You behave, God will bless you. You misbehave, God will get you. And he seems to share that kind of theology. The problem is it doesn’t seem to make sense with regard to Job himself. “Because here I have been faithful. I have tried to follow God. My heart has been true to Him. And now not just some sickness and some suffering, but calamity of the most unimaginable kind, all of it has come to me all at once. And it just doesn’t make sense.”

And so Job wrestles with this problem. What does this say about God, who is sovereign over all? And the only conclusion Job can come up with is that God has done him wrong. You find an expression of that in chapter 19, if you would like to look ahead. Job chapter 19 verses 6 and following, where Job replies to Bildad and he says, “Know then that God has put me in the wrong.” He’s made this crooked, the idea of the original. I like the translation of all the other translations more than I like this one in the ESV. I think it gets the situation a little better: “Know then God has wronged me.” He even expands on that: “He’s closed a net about me. Behold, I cry out violence, but I’m not answered. I call for help and there’s no justice. He’s walled up my way so I cannot pass. He set darkness on my paths.”

And Job here is complaining that God seems to be unfair. He seems to be an unfeeling tyrant. He seems to be capricious in the way that he deals with us. “I have been faithful. I should be blessed.” And so what for Job’s friends seems to be an indication of Job’s sinfulness, now for Job is an indication of God’s injustice. Now understand here, Job never turns on God as such. And these are not the expressions of a contemptuous unbelief, but they are the expressions of a man with a struggling faith, not unlike many of us have faced at times.

And so Job is struggling with how to make sense of all of this. And in fact, throughout the book, you will find some marvelous bursts of faith. In fact, we will look at those in weeks to come, Lord willing, but let’s take a glance at a couple of them. Look at chapter 13 and verse 15, a famous outburst of faith where Job is speaking here and he says, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him. Yet I will argue my ways to his face.” “I trust him. I really do. Even if he kills me, I trust him. I really do. But boy, I wish I could argue my case with him.” You see the struggle of his faith, I believe, but it’s not making sense.

We have another outburst of faith in chapter 19. Actually, several in this passage are marvelous, and we hope to get to that at some point. But you’ll notice the famous expression of his faith in verse 25 of chapter 19: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.” And verse 26 then speaks of his own resurrection when he will be vindicated. So here we have a great expression of faith. Chapter 23 as well, verse 10: “But he knows the way that I take, and when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.”

Now I think that that passage is usually misunderstood. We have a song about it. “When he’s tried me, I’ll come forth as gold.” It speaks of, in the songs, it speaks of God trying us and purifying us so that we become better and at the end we’re better than we were when we started. That’s a thoroughly biblical idea. But I don’t think that’s what this verse is about. I think he’s saying that in the end you’ll see that God will vindicate me. “I’ll come forth as gold and he’ll be the one to tell you so.” It’s justification, not sanctification, if we can put it that way. But this is a great expression of Job’s faith.

And so he’s struggling back and forth with what’s going on. It doesn’t make sense. “I trust God, but he seems capricious and unjust. How do I make sense of all of this?” And so what we find then in the book of Job, in his speeches, he summons God to court, as it were. That is, “I want to argue my case with God.” But then that’s a frustrating thought as well, because “if I argue my case with God, he’ll just overpower me. How does anybody argue with God? Given his greatness, how could I ever argue with him?”

And so he’s frustrated. “I know if I could just make my case with God, he’d understand because I really do believe he’s just. But how can I argue with him?” And so we have in chapter 9, for example, verse 33, this cry of frustration: “There’s no arbiter between us who might lay his hand on us both.” “I wish, I wish, I wish I had someone who could stand and argue with God for me. I can’t. I want to make my case, but who can argue with God? And there’s no one who could ever take my case who is so exalted that he could argue with God for me.”

Now you can tell that at some point here in this series on Job I’m going to get to Jesus’ answers to Job, and we’re going to get there, but you see in the context what Job’s frustration is. This seems so unfair. “I wish I had someone to argue my case for me.” Chapter 9, verses 1 and following, we have the expressions of all of that: “Truly I know that it’s so, but how can a man be right before God? How could I ever argue with him and win? If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand times. So I wish I had someone to go to him in my place.”

So we have Job who has lost his wealth. He has lost his children. He’s lost his health. He’s lost the support of his wife. He’s lost the support of his friends. And now it seems that he’s lost God also. It’s truly a horrible situation as described of Job here in these opening chapters and as it’s reflected on through the book. He suffers physically. He suffers materially. He’s lost his family. He suffers socially. He went from being the greatest man in the East to a man sitting on the city dump, taking broken pottery and scraping his sores, or even indications where the children in the area come and mock him and sing little songs against him—from the greatest man in the East to the bottom of the barrel. Spiritually, he’s suffering. It seems that God has abandoned him, and God, up until chapter 38 finally, God remains hauntingly silent throughout all of his struggle. Emotionally, you can only imagine his troubled thoughts, and the despair, and the loneliness that he felt. In fact, we get to chapter 3 in the opening verses there, Job says this stinking life, “I wish I had never been born.” Emotion talking, but very understandably.

Well, there’s Job. There’s Job’s story. Not to the end yet, but there’s Job’s story so far. What’s the point? I want to give four points here, and I am certain I’ll only be able to finish one this morning. But what’s the point? What is God teaching us through this experience of Job?

1. Suffering Often Comes As The Result Of An Unseen Conflict In The Spirit World

The most obvious lesson of the book, I think, is that suffering often comes as the result of an unseen conflict in the spirit world. One of the striking things—in fact one of the most striking things about this story—is that we know more about Job’s experience than Job knows. And not just some details either, but some important shaping factors that explain the situation and what gave rise to all of his sufferings.

Job is in the dark. He doesn’t know why this is happening. And on all of that, we’ve been let in in the opening scenes. Job comes into the picture after, really, the opening act. And we get to chapter 3, he’s described for us, chapter 1 and 2. But in terms of being let in on what’s really happening around him, Job is not brought in until afterwards. And he doesn’t see what lay behind the curtain and what gave rise to the whole affair. He doesn’t know anything about Satan boasting before God. And he doesn’t know anything about God’s response in which God actually is bragging on Job: “Have you considered my servant Job? Pure, and he’s upright, and he eschews evil.”

And Job has no idea that God’s been bragging on Job, and that Satan in response challenges God, and throws down the gauntlet, and says, “Yeah, he serves you, he’s faithful; it’s because of what he gets out of it. Take away what he has, he’ll curse you to your face.” And Job doesn’t see God then giving Satan permission to make the point. And he doesn’t see Satan coming back to report in yet again and having to get permission to take the suffering further. And Job doesn’t see any of that. And Job doesn’t see that behind the Sabaeans and the Chaldeans and the weather and the fire and all that happened to his family, Job doesn’t see that there’s Satan behind it all, driving his own agenda against Job and ultimately against God.

So there’s something very real going on all around Job, and it’s something that Job and his friends are completely unaware of, and that is that there is this conflict in the spirit world. He can’t see it, but it is very real, and it is what explains what has happened to Job. Now this fits very well with some other passages of scripture. In fact, it fits very well with the whole setup of the Bible in Genesis chapter 3, when we find God coming in judgment against Adam and Eve and Satan because of Adam’s sin. And God says to Satan in verse 14, “I’ll put enmity between you and the woman.” Verse 15, “I’ll put enmity between you, Satan, and the woman, between your seed and her seed.” And there’s this conflict in humanity between the followers of Satan and the followers of God. And we find that reflected all through the Bible.

But even more specifically than that, we find a particular interest on the part of the angels in the angelic world, in the spirit world—a particular interest on their part on the affairs of humanity. And so not only do you find expressions like Satan blinds the minds of those who do not believe, or the whole world lies in his lap, and so on. But you also find expressions like Christ did his saving work so that he could display God’s wisdom, and glory, and grace to the principalities and the powers. Why does he need to display his grace and his glory and all that to the angels, to the fallen angels at that? What’s that all about?

The Bible really doesn’t let us in on a lot of that. I can make some conjectures about it. I wonder sometime if this reflects something before the fall when Satan’s angels fell and perhaps accused God of injustice of some sort and God now is displaying his justice and grace to them. That fits. I don’t know. The Bible doesn’t say it exactly like that. But there are some factors—for whatever reasons, there’s this interest of the spirit world on the affairs of humanity. And we find that here in the book of Job.

And whatever the precise nature of it, there is obviously this warfare between God and Satan. It’s not a dualism. These are not two equal powers fighting against each other. But this is a warfare, nonetheless, of Satan against God. And the battleground for this battle and this war is what Bunyan, in his allegory The Holy War, called the City of Mansoul. The City of Mansoul. Satan is hard at work to keep men from God. As I mentioned, the God of this world has blinded the minds of those who do not believe. And even after our conversion, even Satan may know that he cannot ultimately take us away from God, that we are safe in Christ forever. But that doesn’t mean he can’t destroy our joy. Doesn’t mean he can’t bring us to despair at times. As Calvin said, I mentioned recently in our series on Ephesians chapter 6, “Satan drives the saints to madness through despair.” This is 1st Peter chapter 5 and verse 8: Satan walks around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Satan eats faith. Satan eats faithfulness. Satan eats joy.

And here we learn from the book of Job that he has all kinds of tools at his disposal to come against God’s people. He can make fire from heaven, whatever that was. He can do weather. He can bring in rogue gangs and small armies. And all of this is at Satan’s disposal to use against the people of God, and his objective in it all is to—his objective is to bring us to spiritual ruin.

Now we are told all of this up front, but you see it’s of all of this that Job and his friends are completely in the dark, completely unaware. We find a reflection of that in chapter 9. If you’ll look at verse 24: “The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He [that is God] covers the faces of its judges.” That is, there’s no justice here. And notice he blames God: “He covers the faces of its judges.” And then he struggles: “If it is not he, then who is it?” And you can see Job just struggling with this. “I know God is sovereign, so ultimately everything must be traced back to him, so he’s doing this. I think it is. I think it’s God. Who else could it be?”

Many years ago—15, 20 years ago, I don’t know—we had Sinclair Ferguson speaking at our church one time, and he was preaching from Job chapter 16, and the title of his message was, “A Case of Mistaken Identity.” Isn’t it great? And I remember saying, when he came to this kind of a verse, you just want to shout back up on the stage, “Job, it’s not God! It’s Satan! You’re blaming the wrong person!” Now, of course, we have God who is sovereign over all, but the point of Job is that this was Satan who has instigated this whole affair against Job. And Job is completely unaware of it, and he struggles with blaming God. You don’t have to be in pastoral ministry long before you see this: someone caught in the clutches of some suffering. “Pastor Fred, why is God doing this?” And you understand that, of course—emotions and confusion.

The great question that puzzled Job and his friends was the question, “Why?” Why is all of this happening? What explanation can be given? And for Job’s friends, it’s easy: “Job, you’ve sinned, and you’ve sinned a lot. You need to repent, and you need to repent a lot.” And for Job, no, this seems to mean that God’s been unfair. God hasn’t kept up his end of the bargain. But what they were never able to consider is that they were both wrong. And there was another reason entirely.

And this is very, very important to get. We must understand it precisely. Job was not suffering because he had sinned. Job was not suffering because he had sinned. Job was suffering precisely because he had NOT sinned. Isn’t that right? Job was suffering precisely because he had not sinned. Job was not suffering because of his unfaithfulness. He was suffering precisely because of his faithfulness. And because he was faithful, he had drawn attention. He’d drawn attention from Satan himself. And because of his faithfulness, he had drawn enemy fire. And because of his faithfulness, now Satan had come against him to seek to ruin him.

It never occurred to Job, and it never occurred to his friends, that Satan had instigated the entire affair, that Satan had thrown down the gauntlet, that Satan had accused God, and had falsely accused Job. And Satan had said to God, “Yeah, Job serves you because he’s afraid of you, and he serves you because you give him all of these things. That’s the only reason. When you take it away, he’ll curse you to your face. He’s got no time for you.” And Job is now suffering, not for his sins, but he is suffering ultimately for God’s honor. Job is suffering for God’s honor, and he is suffering in order to shame Satan, the accuser of the brethren.

I think this is just massively practical, massively important for us to understand. We Christians are accustomed to hearing about persecution. We’ve heard about the lions. We’ve heard about the racks. We’ve been told in the New Testament from Jesus himself to Paul to the author of the book of Hebrews, “You’re gonna suffer.” And being in the world as the people of Christ, you’re gonna draw enemy fire and there’s going to be persecution. And we understand that and we get that. The problem is when there’s sickness, or financial collapse, or some rogue gang comes through and we’re caught up in it, or a stray bullet. It seems so haphazard. It seems so unaccounted for. And we may wonder, “Why in the world does that have to happen? If it were direct opposition from the world, at least I could see that, I could understand that. But what’s all this sickness about? Why do I have to have that?”

And it never occurs to us, as it never occurred to Job, that it just may be that God is seeking to vindicate himself again by means of a worshiping sufferer. People can say, “Oh, you’re in that religion thing. He’s in that religion thing because he’s afraid of God. He’s in that religion thing for what he can get out of it. He has friends there and he has to keep up the community. He needs the money and the financial support that he sometimes gets from that generous community. That’s why he’s in that religion thing.” But then when they see that same Christian in the clutches of some awful suffering and still bowing before God—”The Lord has given. The Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord”—they have nothing to say.

And it just may be, it just may be that that is the scenario going on in this world all around us that we don’t see. Suffering often comes as a result of an unseen conflict in the spirit world. Now none of this is to deny that God may have other purposes in suffering. Suffering may be a tool in the hands of God for chastening. We find that as well. It might be that suffering is a tool in the hands of God simply to teach us. It’s a pedagogical tool to teach us faith. We need that. We read of that in the scriptures as well. Perhaps it’s a combination of those kinds of reasons. But it also may be, it may be that our suffering is the result of an unseen conflict in the spirit world.

It has struck me—I’ve been in church all my life, and it has struck me since I was a child, remember noticing this—that it’s often not what we would call the best or the worst Christians. It’s often not what we would call the worst Christians that suffer the most. It’s often what we call the best ones. Faithful people suffering. My daughter suffered for years and I gotta tell you that it occurred to me along the way here and there that it wouldn’t be hard to find other people who deserve it more. See people in the church suffering, struggling with cancer as we’ve seen here, various issues, health, financial. You got to think, “I know plenty of people that deserve it more than they do.” I also got to say that if I were God, it wouldn’t be that way. If I were God, I would take the theology of Job’s friends. “If you miss church Sunday, you’d know it by Sunday night. If you miss the offering plate Sunday morning, you’d sure know that by Monday too.”

But I’m not God, and God is not like that. And it’s this observation that’s so frustrating to us. It doesn’t fit into any of our high-flown theology. We’ve got no category to put it in. Why is this suffering happening? It doesn’t seem that I’m unfair. And Job is not claiming his perfection. He’s not claiming sinlessness. He’s simply speaking in broadly relative terms. “I’ve been faithful and I’m the most suffering sufferer that I know of. This doesn’t seem to add up.” And the encouraging lesson of the book of Job is that it just may be, it just may be that we are being put on show. That God is putting us on display again to silence Satan by being a worshiping sufferer.

I think it’s very important for us to see in all of this then not just how wrong the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel is. You know, you serve God and have your faith and you’ll be rich, you’ll be healthy. What’s important to see is not just how wrong that is, but how cruel that is. It just may be that here we have another saint who, precisely because of his faithfulness, is being put on display by God himself to silence our accuser.

There’s much more to all of this. This is just half a sermon this morning. We will finish it up, Lord willing, next time. Let’s bow together for prayer.

Our Father, we acknowledge that there is much mystery around us that we don’t know, we don’t understand, many questions that are unanswerable to us. But we are grateful for all of this light that you have given to us, and we pray that you would enable us to grasp it well. Help us to believe deeply what you have revealed to us, and understand your ways with us. And may we, above all else, remain faithful. Even in the time of suffering, when it seems the worst, to recognize that God is God over all, that God is still good, God is still just. The Lord can give, the Lord can take away, and we will still say, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” In Jesus’ name, amen.