Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Job 1-2 | Date: June 27, 2010 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Ryan has asked if I would preach on Job, so if you would take your Bibles please and turn to Job chapter 1. It occurred to me many years ago in pastoral ministry that one of the pastor’s responsibilities is to prepare his people for suffering. Suffering is going to come to all of us, almost inevitably, and Job is, of course, one of those books that gives itself to teaching us in that regard.

And I’m going to take the time to read chapters one and two, Job chapters one and two. “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. They were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 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’s a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came among them. 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 from walking up and down on it.” And I take that to mean something like, I’ve been doing pretty much as I please and running things down there, something to that effect. “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? Satan answered the Lord, 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 works 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. 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 from 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 worshiped. And he said, Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return. The Lord gave. 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. The Lord said to Satan, from where have you come? And Satan answered the Lord and said, from going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on 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 to 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’ll give for his life, but stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh and he will curse you to your face. 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. His wife said to him, do you still hold fast to 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 the Lord and shall we not receive evil? In all 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 from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come 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, this is your word. This is your word given to us to instruct us in our living before you, to teach us how to become more faithful worshipers. We ask that you would bless us to that end. For Jesus’ sake we ask, amen.

The book of Job, as you no doubt know, is a drama that is presenting the story of Job in the form of a drama, and it’s designed, it seems, to answer simply the question of God’s dealings with men in this world. It is what we often call a theodicy, a justification of the ways of God with men. There are many places in the Bible where we can turn to learn what should be our response in suffering, and this book deals with that to some extent. But the question here itself is bigger than just that. The question here is simply: is the world well managed? What does suffering say about God? Or as we often put it, why do bad things happen to God’s people? And this we learn through the experience of this man Job.

Job was introduced to us as a man of great prosperity in every way, both materially and spiritually. He’s a man who is the greatest man in all of the East, but more importantly than all of that wealth is his piety. He’s a man that’s portrayed for us as one who fears God, shuns evil, a man who out of genuine piety loves the Lord and seeks to serve him faithfully. It’s reflected in his home and the way that he cares for his children even though they are grown, looking over them spiritually and praying for them.

So here’s the man Job. He’s prosperous in every way, a good and a godly man, and we have it from God’s own lips that he is such. And then in a series of events that happen in just rapid-fire succession, he loses his wealth, and then he loses his children, and then he loses his health, and then he loses the support of his wife. And then his friends show up for counsel. We don’t have time to read through the rest of the book. I’m sure you’re familiar at least somewhat with the counsel that these men give. We call them Job’s comforters. You remember how Job described them: “Miserable comforters are you all.”

And you remember what they had to say. They sat there and thought about it for a few days and looked at it and saw that the suffering was so severe and they finally arrived at the conclusion: “Job, you are suffering greatly. Evidently, you have sinned greatly. You need to repent and be restored to the Lord.”

Now, before we are too hard on them—and we need to be hard on them at some point—but before we are too hard on these comforters, we should recognize that it’s really not too difficult to understand how they arrived at that conclusion. These men believed in God. Like us, they believed that God was sovereign. They believed that God ruled over all that is. They believed that God was powerful. And they also believed that God was just. Now, if you put all of that together, it’s not difficult to come up with what is today very popular in the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel. And that is: if you’re good, God will bless you. If you’re bad, God will get you.

And that’s the theology that these men hold. And through three rounds of debate, they press this matter to Job, exhorting him to repent. Job stands firm against their arguments, but very clearly he has lost their support. Later in the book, another man shows up, a young man. These men were older counselors and now a young man shows up by the name of Elihu. When I was a younger man, I enjoyed this part of the book a little more than I do now. But his first words when he arrives on the scene—he looks at these old guys and says, “Old men are not always wise.” And he criticizes Job’s friends for wrongly accusing Job.

But then what is interesting is Elihu turns to Job and he criticizes Job for wrongly accusing God. And what happens as the story unfolds is that although here in the opening chapters Job so vigorously holds on to his integrity and does not charge God with wrong, there are times through the book where Job begins to waver. And through the book we find this back and forth with Job. He’s a man who trusts God, he loves God, and you see through the book these bursts of faith like, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” But at the same time, we find Job just searching for answers, and searching for answers comes up with some bad thoughts about God.

It seems that Job, in theory at least, bought into the same theology of his friends: that if you are good, God will bless you; if you’re bad, God will get you. He believed that. The problem was, it didn’t seem to answer his situation. And so it frustrated him. How can I make sense of this suffering? What does this say about God? I believe he’s just, I believe he’s powerful, I believe if you do good he’ll bless you, I believe if you sin he’ll get you, but I don’t think I’ve sinned. And he’s not claiming to be sinlessly perfect or anything like that, but he is reasoning that, at least comparatively speaking, this suffering that I am undergoing simply cannot be accounted for in terms of God “getting me” because of my sin.

And so the only conclusion that Job could come up with is that God has done him wrong. You’ll see some expressions of that if you would like; look on your own in chapter 19 where he says that exactly: “Know then that God has wronged me.” Now I think it’s important for us to note before we go on that Job here is not expressing the words of contemptuous unbelief. He is not a man who has turned on God. But he’s a man with a wavering faith and he is questioning. And he’s caught up in the throes of his suffering and things aren’t making sense. And so he begins to think, “God has wronged me.” And what for his friends was an indication of his sinfulness was for Job an indication of God’s injustice.

And so then we find Job through the book wanting to plead his case before God. And he summons God to court as it were. “If I could only argue my case before God, he would hear me, he would understand.” But then he thinks, “How in the world can anyone argue his case before God? God would just overwhelm me.” And so he’s frustrated again with that. And then he comes out with that familiar phrase that he speaks in chapter nine, verse 33: “If I only had some mediator, some arbiter, some umpire to come between us, lay his hands on both parties and bring us together in this dispute.” He cries out with frustration, “How can a man be just before God?”

And so he’s frustrated with his suffering, but now his frustration has led him to even deeper frustrations, and that is with God. So he’s lost his wealth, he’s 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 as if that weren’t enough, it seems—it seems, at least—that he has lost God. And throughout the entire affair, until the very end, God remains hauntingly silent as Job just searches, gropes his way through, trying to find where is God in all of this. Well, that’s a quick overview of the book and of the story. Now, what’s the point? We can’t work our way through the entire book, but we can at least draw from a few of the lessons that lie just on the surface of the text.

Number One: Suffering Often Comes as the Result of an Unseen Conflict in the Spiritual World

Now let me say that again. Suffering often comes as the result of an unseen conflict in the spiritual world. One of the most striking things about this story is that we know something about Job’s experience that Job himself does not know. There’s something very real going on all around Job of which he is completely unaware. We know about it because we’ve read the opening act. But Job comes on the scene in this drama after that, really, and he has no idea of all of these things that are going on. He didn’t see what we saw in chapter 1 and in chapter 2 of Satan reporting in before God and boasting of what he’s doing on the earth, carrying out his will. And Job has no idea that this is going on.

And Satan boasting and Satan then charging Job with ill motives before God and Satan challenging God and throwing down the gauntlet: “You do this and that to Job and he won’t serve you anymore.” God taking up the challenge and allowing Satan with his permission to go after that. We see all of that. Satan sending the Chaldeans and the Sabaeans and the bad weather and all of that. We see it. And Job was completely unaware that behind all of these things that happened, there was an accuser who had come after him.

Now this fits very well with several other biblical passages and actually a larger theme in the Bible of some kind of angelic connection with the affairs of the human race. I don’t think—at least I have not been able to find it—I don’t think that the Bible gives us exact definition of what that connection is. But we do see it at different places. For example, in the New Testament we find that Christ has done his saving work on the cross in order that—this is God’s purpose in it—in order that God may display his glory before the angels. Or Christ has performed all of this great work of salvation for us that God may display his kindness and his wisdom before the demonic world.

I don’t think we have all of the definitions of what that connection is, but it certainly traces back at least to the garden where Satan had come against Eve, tempting her, and God in judgment saying, “I’ll put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed.” And there is this interest on the part of the demonic world in the affairs of the human race. Whatever the exact nature of that connection, it is clear that there is this warfare between God and Satan. And the battleground in this warfare is what Bunyan called, in his allegory, the holy war, the city of man’s soul.

Satan is hard at work to keep men away from God. He is the god of this world who’s blinded the minds of those who do not believe. Peter says he’s like a roaring lion, walking about seeking whom he may devour. And after our conversion, Satan may well understand—he may well know very well—that he cannot ultimately take us away from God, but he also knows that he can destroy in practical ways the experienced blessedness of our salvation and take away the joy. As John Calvin commented, he can drive the saints to madness through despair. And here we learn from the book of Job that he is capable of doing that through what? Rogue gangs, upheavals of nature, tornadoes, wind storms, fires, stray bullets. All of this is at Satan’s disposal in his attack against God’s people.

Now it’s of all of this that Job and his friends are completely unaware. We see it in the opening act, but Job has no clue of it. We find that—we don’t have time to look through it, but in chapter nine, if you would like to see—well, let’s do see that. Look at chapter nine. Here we see Job struggling with this. And he says in verse 24, “The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; he [God] covers the faces of his judges.” That is, all of this violence is happening in the world and God blinds the eyes of the judges. And then Job struggles and he says, “If it is not he, then who is it?” You can just see Job struggling with this. God is being unfair. Why has God done this to me? I think it’s God. Well, who else could it be? If it’s not God, then who else? And just then we want to shout back up on the stage, “Job, it’s not God, it’s Satan who has come after you in all of this!” But you see, Job is completely unaware of all of that.

You see this in pastoral situations on occasion where—and I don’t mean to criticize these dear people, but otherwise good Christians, and I mean that, good Christians, who in other circumstances know better, but caught up in the emotion of some awful suffering—maybe you’re in the hospital room with them, and caught up in the struggle and the bitterness of it all, they’ll say something like, “Pastor, why is God doing this to me?”

Now the great question that puzzled Job and his friends was the question, “Why?” Why is this happening? For Job’s friends, this was an indication of Job’s sinfulness. For Job, it was an indication of God’s injustice. But what they were never able to consider was that maybe both of them were wrong—that there was another reason entirely. And we should understand this very clearly and very carefully. Job was not suffering because he had sinned. Job was suffering precisely because he had not sinned. Isn’t that right? God clears him of that charge. God is the one who says that. He is suffering not for his faithlessness, but for his faithfulness. Precisely because he was dedicated to God, he had come into all of this suffering.

And it never occurred to all of them that Satan had instigated this entire affair, that Satan had come in boasting before God. God, in fact, had bragged on his servant Job and his faithfulness. Satan challenged the motives of Job in all of this and laid down the gauntlet and said, “You take away this and that, and he’ll curse you to your face.” And God says, “All right, have at him. I’ll show you.” And now Job was suffering, not for his faithlessness, but Job was suffering for God’s honor. And Job was suffering in order to shame the great accuser of the brethren.

Now I think this is just immensely important for us to remember in our sufferings. We Christians are accustomed to hearing about persecution. We experience it in our society very little, but we know something about it. We’ve heard of the lions, we’ve heard about the stakes and all of that. And we’ve heard Jesus’ warnings, “If they hated me, they’re gonna hate you.” And we’ve heard the warnings from the Apostle Paul, “If you live godly in Christ Jesus, you’ll suffer persecution.” And when the world comes after us in that kind of a sense, we don’t like it, but at least we have some understanding, some category to put it in and we understand this is persecution.

But when the suffering that we endure is more happenstance than that—sickness, a windstorm, stray bullet from some gang, some random disease—we tend to think this is so haphazard and we just don’t have a theological slot to drop it in and we’re frustrated that things seem out of hand. The first great lesson of the book of Job is that even that may be persecution. It may be that because of faithfulness we have drawn enemy fire. Wasn’t that Job’s experience? Precisely because of his faithfulness he had drawn enemy fire. And it may be in our suffering that God has taken up this challenge once again. And once again God is seeking to silence Satan by means of a suffering worshiper or a worshiping sufferer.

Our critics might say, for example, of a lot of preachers, “Oh, he’s only in it for the money.” Not too many people would say that about me. Or “You only go to church because, well, it’s expected of you and your family; in the little community that you live in, it’s expected, it’s respectable to be in church, that’s why you go.” But when they see that same Christian in the clutches of some awful suffering, saying with Job, “The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord,” they can say nothing.

Now I don’t want to imply or even question that a person may be suffering because of divine chastening. That’s taught in the scriptures as well. It might be that we suffer simply out of a pedagogical tool in the hands of God wanting to teach us some virtues that we haven’t learned well enough yet. It may be any of a combination of reasons. But it has often struck me through the years in ministry—it has often struck me that I think it’s right to say most often in the church, most often, it is not what we would call the worst Christians who suffer the most. It’s the best Christians that seem to suffer the most.

That’s frustrating. Again, we just don’t have a theological category, a slot to drop that in, and it just seems not to make sense. I gotta tell you, if I were God, it wouldn’t be that way. I would take, if I were God, I would take the theology of Job’s friends. If you were faithful, I’d bless you. If you’re bad, I’d get you. If you cheated me on Sunday morning at the offering, you’d know it by Monday. If you ignored me in your devotional time on Monday, you’d know that by Monday night. But God doesn’t do that. And that’s what’s so often frustrating in all of this.

But the encouraging lesson of the book of Job is that it might be—it might be that God is putting us on display once again in order to silence Satan by means of a worshiping sufferer. It might be that in our suffering God has taken up the challenge once again and he is intending to silence our accuser. And if I can scratch an itch here, I think it’s very important. All of this demonstrates for us not only that this health, wealth and prosperity gospel is so wrong—if you’re good, God will bless you; if you’re bad, God will get you—but not only is it so wrong, this shows it to be a very cruel doctrine. Here’s one of God’s dear people caught in some suffering, and you’ve got some preacher telling them it’s because you’ve not trusted God enough. Well, there it is. We have to hurry on. The first lesson: suffering often comes as the result of an unseen conflict in the spiritual world.

Number Two: In Our Suffering, God Calls Us to a Robust Faith

In our suffering, God calls us to a robust faith. Or we might say this is a lesson in the inadequacy of human reason in suffering. Well, again, this lies on the surface of the story. What is the most obvious explanation for Job’s suffering? Well, the answer to that obviously is sin. That was the obvious answer that Job’s friends, his counselors, took. That was the answer Job wanted to bite into, but couldn’t for his own circumstances. But at the very outset, Job is cleared of this charge. We’re told explicitly by God himself that Job is a faithful and a pious man, a man of genuine piety.

And it was explained to us that it was not Job’s sin that brought him into all of this, but it is his sinlessness that brought him into all of this. Job did not know all that we know from that opening act, but he did know that his friends were all wet. In chapter 16, he calls them a bunch of windbags and says, “You guys don’t know what you’re talking about. Words with all this wind have no end.” Their counsel wasn’t able to satisfy him in his situation. Their counsel was not able to give comfort. They could not speak to his situation. And he was convinced of that.

But what frustrated him was that neither could he speak to his situation. He couldn’t explain it either. That’s always the problem in our suffering, isn’t it? “If only God would let me in on this. Lord, why is this happening? If only God would explain this to me, I could make sense of it, and I could trust Him.” And all through the book of Job, we see Job searching for that answer. “Where’s God? How can I be right with Him? Where’s someone to plead my case?” And there’s these bursts of faith: “Though He slay me, I’ll still trust Him, but I think He’s wronged me.” Back and forth and he’s struggling with his concept of God in his suffering. He doesn’t have an answer why his suffering is happening.

And that’s our problem, isn’t it, in suffering? Somehow we feel that if God would just let us in on things and explain to us why this is happening, well then we could take it better. But God never did tell Job. And he often does not let us in on things either. Well, that finally brings us to the very end of the book, where finally God speaks. And God responds to Job’s challenge. And you’ll remember how this famous passage plays out. God comes on the scene and he begins to speak. He says, “All right, Job, you want me to talk? I’ll talk. Where were you when I created the world? Where were you when I put all of the seasons in place? Who do you think it is that feeds the great beast? Who do you think it is that put the stars in place? Who do you think it is that feeds the lion? Who do you think it is that makes the rain, the snow, the ice? Who do you think it is that has this whole food chain in order? Who do you think it is that controls this world as it is? Job, talk to me! Who has done all of this?”

And Job’s getting a clue now. And he says, “No, I’ve talked too much already. Remember, I’ll put my hand over my mouth and I won’t speak again.” And so God continues with more of the same. “Job, where were you when I put this world in order? Isn’t it too bad I didn’t have you to counsel me then? How have I made it without you, Job? Job, you know so very little about so very much. Would you really presume to counsel me and tell me how I ought to run this world?”

Now, that’s a Zaspel paraphrase of chapters 38 and following, but it’s something like that. But you see the point. When you find yourself in suffering, do you trust God? Or do you feel that he owes you an explanation? In one sense, the whole argument of the book of Job comes down to this bottom line: when you are caught up in suffering, God does not owe you an explanation. You owe it to Him to trust Him. We do God no honor—we do Him no honor at all—when we trust Him only when we understand why He is doing what. It honors God when we say to Him with Job, from a heart of love, “Though you slay me, I’ll trust you. I don’t know what you’re up to. I don’t have to know. I know you know what you’re up to, and I trust you in that.” That’s what honors God. He calls us to a robust kind of faith.

God does not give us all of the details, but you see, he has given us more than enough reason to trust him, hasn’t he? Isn’t he the one who’s created this world? Isn’t he the one who has set it all in order? And can’t we take it further? Isn’t he the one who has sent us his only son to bear the curse of our sin, precisely to redeem us out of this misery and suffering of our sin? He has given us more than enough reason to trust him. Job’s frustration was that things seemed so out of control—so much so that he’s frustratingly crying, “If it’s not God then who is it? Who’s behind all of this?” And so frustrated with it that he even at times wishes that he were dead. But just then we want to remind him that God calls us to a robust faith. That then leads us very clearly into our third point.

Number Three: God Is Sovereign and Supreme Over Satan and Our Suffering

God is sovereign and supreme over Satan and our suffering. And again, this is just lying on the surface of the story. The book doesn’t explain to us all of the methods of God and his rule over creation. But did you notice that Satan had to report in? Yeah, great. And did you notice that Satan was complaining? “Yeah, well, you put a hedge around him, I couldn’t get to him.” And did you notice that Satan had to get explicit permission to do what he did? And did you notice that there are express limits imposed on Satan? And that Satan had to come back and report it again? And he’s frustrated the whole time. Satan frustrated the whole time—God won’t let him do what he wants to do.

And again, as I say, Job’s frustration was that he thinks things are so out of control, unjust and wrong. And just when he’s at his worst and his frustration, we want to shout up to the stage, “Job, it’s not God doing this to you, it’s Satan! But don’t worry, God has him on a leash.” Isn’t that just what we need when we’re suffering? We need someone to come alongside and gently and sensitively remind us: things are not out of control. God is not absent. Satan is not God. God is God and the devil is his devil.

Now I know—and I would encourage you to be very careful when you counsel people, your friends or whatever in this regard—because there’s been too many times, I’m sure, where well-meaning Christians have run too quickly to someone in suffering and too glibly quoted, “All things work together for good.” And we can be too insensitive and too quick in that. But at the same time, ultimately, that is what we need to know when we’re suffering, isn’t it? And we need someone to come along sensitively, lovingly, caringly, remind us that God is not absent. The devil is not running things down here. God is still God.

Now without this truth of God’s sovereign rule over all things, I can understand why people go crazy with suffering. Can’t make sense of it. Things seem to have no reason. I can’t imagine going through suffering of a severe kind without this truth. But with our minds equipped with this truth that God is sovereign and supreme over not only our suffering but Satan himself, with our minds equipped with that truth, is there any suffering that we cannot face faithfully? Can it ever be right for a Christian to despair and go day in and day out with complete despair when we have this truth to hold us up? I may not know what God is after. I may not know his specific purpose in this given circumstance, but I know that God is good, and I know that God is powerful, and that God is ruling over this for his own purpose, and that purpose is good, and it is wise, and it is right. And because I know that, I can trust him.

And so it is incumbent on us in our suffering with Job to look to heaven and simply say that to the Lord: “Lord, I don’t know why things are the way they are, but I know you know, and I can trust you.” And that, I think, inevitably leads us to our final point, which I think is very important.

Number Four: We Must Learn to Read This Book as Christians

Very simple point: we must learn to read this book as Christians. Or if I can put it this way, we must learn to read this book with our Christian lenses on. Throughout this book, Job feels lost. Lost in a maze of questions. At the top of his concerns: where is God? How can I be made right with him? “If I only had someone to come and stand between us, put his hands on both parties, bring us together in this dispute. If I only had someone in heaven who could sympathize with what I’m going through.”

And despite his bursts of faith, Job is torn up because he feels so lost in this respect. Where’s God? And it’s at this point we find ourselves giant steps—giant steps ahead of Job. He searched for a mediator, someone who could put his hands on both parties and bring them together in a dispute. We have that mediator: the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord from heaven who has come to be one of us, through whose perfect life and atoning death we have been made right with God forever.

Job wanted someone in heaven who could sympathize with his suffering. And we are told that we have in heaven a man—a man who is touched with all the feelings of our infirmities. He knows our sufferings at every point. And he knows it not because he’s read it in a book. He knows our sufferings because he himself has gone through it successfully. And He knows at every point of our suffering exactly the grace that we need to make it through our suffering faithfully. And He bids us come to the throne of grace, come to heaven, and in heaven find a man on heaven’s throne—a man on heaven’s throne who knows exactly the grace that you need because He Himself has been there. And come and find the grace that you need.

With that advantage over Job, well, Job’s faith is all the more remarkable, isn’t it? And our faith is all the more reasonable. There are then reasons for our suffering that we may not know, but there’s a God whom we do know whose rule is unchangeably firm over all things, whose character is unchangeably just, and whose love—whose heart—is unchangingly good, and his love for us through Jesus Christ. I say that kind of God I can trust implicitly.