Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Job 1 | Date: June 19, 2016 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

from your Bibles, if you will, to the book of Job again. Kids, you have some questions to answer on the inside of the bulletin. If you follow along and answer those questions, we’d love for you to do that, and I’d love to see your answers afterwards if you’d like to show them to me.

Job, let’s read through chapter 1 again.

“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 on the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them and 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 before the Lord and Satan also came among them. 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 in it.’ And 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?’

And 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’ll curse you to your face.’

And 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 on 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 their 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 upon the young people and they are dead. And I alone have escaped to tell you.’

And 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 shall return. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.”

Now in chapter 2, you remember how the story progresses, that Satan reports back in. He’s frustrated that he hasn’t been able to win his little wager and prove his point to God. And so he presses it further and says, “Yeah, well, you touch him himself, and he’ll curse you.” And God gives the permission. Satan goes against Job, and he’s struck with loathsome sores all over his body. His wife then comes and encourages him to curse God and die, and then at the end of the chapter, his friends show up.

And then first of all, we have Job speaking in chapter 3, and let’s take time to see that. After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth, and Job said:

“Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’ Let that day be darkness. May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it. Let the blackness of the day terrify it. That night, let thick darkness seize it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months. Behold, let that night be barren, let no joyful cry enter it, let those curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up Leviathan, let the stars of its dawn be dark, let it hope for light but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning, because it did not shut the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hide trouble from my eyes.

Why did I not die at birth, come out from the womb and expire? Why did the knees receive me? Why the breasts that I should nurse? For then I would have lain down and been quiet. I could have slept and I would have been at rest with kings and counselors of the earth who rebuilt ruins for themselves, or with princes who had gold who filled their houses with silver? Or why was I not a hidden, stillborn child as infants who never see the light? There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners are at ease together, they hear not the voice of the taskmaster. The small and great are there, and the slave is free from his master.

Why is the light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasure, who rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they find the grave? Why is the light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? For my sighing comes instead of my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water. For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet. I have no rest, but trouble comes.”

Let’s look to the Lord in prayer.

Our Father, suffering has been the common lot of your people since the fall in the garden. We ask that you would use this famous model sufferer in so many ways, and yet his errors as well, to instruct us how we may honor you in our suffering. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.

As we said last week, the Book of Job is a dramatic poem. It’s properly a theodicy—that is, a justification of the ways of God in his dealings with men. The point here is not just to tell us how to respond to suffering, but the picture is much bigger, and that is to show us, or to open this question: Is God fair? Is God just in his dealings with men? Given the problem of suffering, given the problem of evil, and that good people suffer as well, what does that say about God? And then, how should we respond accordingly?

And all of that is taught to us through the experience of this man named Job. As we’ve read in chapter one, and then as we saw in chapter two, in a quick succession of events, Job loses his wealth, he loses his children, he loses his belongings, he loses his health, and then loses the support of his wife. And as we saw then last time as well, he also clearly does not have the support of his friends either.

Beginning in chapter 4, they begin to speak and they criticize him for his sin that evidently has brought on his suffering. And through it all, God himself remains silent, and Job cannot hear from him. He’s frustrated that God doesn’t speak and that God doesn’t explain things—why this has happened. And so Job is suffering on virtually every level. He’s lost virtually everything a man can have in this life. And it came on him, as we saw, in just rapid-fire succession and really all at once.

His friends come on the scene, as I mentioned: Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar. And they give their counsel, and essentially with different nuances to each. Their counsel is: “Job, God is sovereign. God is just. Add it up and it simply means if we behave, God will bless. And if you are suffering like this, it only can indicate that you have sinned. And so you must repent of your sin and be restored to God’s favor.”

Job has a big problem with that. The problem is that on one level, he seems to agree with that kind of theology—that if you’re good, God will bless you; if you’re not good, God will zap you and get back at you for it. He seems to kind of believe that kind of theology also. The problem is he is insistent throughout the book—he’s just insistent—that that does not explain this situation; that he has been a man of integrity, he has served God, he does not claim to be sinless in an absolute sense, but he does insist that his sinfulness cannot be the explanation of this great suffering. There must be another factor.

The problem is, there doesn’t seem to be another factor. God then seems to have been unfair. And Job struggles with this question. Is God being fair? Is God unjust? What is he up to? And there are times, as we saw last time, that Job—not like a Bertrand Russell who’s rejecting the faith altogether and a skeptic, but as a saint with a struggling faith—comes on the edges of accusing God of being unfair. God has done this. I’ve been a man of integrity. I’ve served him. The given in all of that is that God is sovereign, and so in some sense, at least, God has to stand behind it. And if God has done this, and if I have been a man of integrity, maybe God has been unfair.

Then Elihu comes on the scene in chapter 32, and he says, “You guys all have it wrong,” and he criticizes Job’s friends for wrongly accusing Job, but then he turns on Job and criticizes him for wrongly accusing God. And we have some fabulous theology throughout it all, Elihu as well, but still in all of it, there’s no answer to the question: why the suffering? And we never do have an answer to it in this book. Now we, the reader, have the answer, but Job doesn’t have the answer. Even at the end, when Job’s fortunes are restored, Job still has not been let in on what we have seen early in the book.

And so we ask, what’s the point of all of this?

Suffering May Come as the Result of an Unseen Conflict in the Spirit World

And we said last time, the first lesson that just lies on the surface of the story is that suffering may come as the result of an unseen conflict in the spirit world. And this is one of the distinguishing and interesting features of the book of Job, that we know something about his situation that he himself does not know. We’re let into it in these first two chapters, and we’re given this look behind the scenes, behind the curtain, if you will, and we see Satan reporting into God and bragging about how he’s running things down there, and God pointing out the faithfulness of Job, and Satan then maligning Job’s motives, and offering a test case, and then going after Job, and God bragging on Job once again, and Satan taking it a step further, and Job maintaining his integrity despite the assault that has come upon him from Satan himself.

Job knows nothing about any of that. We see it, we’re introduced to it at the beginning, but he has no clue of any of it. And we said this is just enormously important for us to see. We are accustomed to hearing of persecution, that Christians will suffer persecution. Christ has warned us of that. The apostles have warned us of it. But what bothers us is in times like this, when the suffering seems so random, so irrational: what can explain this fire that comes? What can explain this stray gang that comes by and robs me? What can explain this disease, the ill health that I have? This seems so random, it doesn’t seem to have any explanation.

And the answer the book of Job gives to us is: it just may be that because of faithfulness, we’ve drawn enemy fire. And this completely cuts against the health and wealth and prosperity gospel that is so prevalent today. That if you are faithful, God will bless you. And if you just are more faithful, he’ll give you financial prosperity. It cannot explain the situation of Job.

And Job, at the very least, gives us this: that there’s an unseen conflict in the spirit world all around us that may well give explanation to some of the suffering that we face. That is not to deny that we may suffer for other reasons. It is not to deny that God may chastise us. It is not to deny that God may use suffering to teach us, to educate us, to improve us, whatever. But it does give us this factor that we cannot know. It may be that because of faithfulness—not because of sin, but because of faithfulness—we’ve drawn enemy fire and God has set out to honor himself once again before Satan and his hosts, and to honor himself by means of a worshiping sufferer. All that we saw last time. So the first lesson then is suffering may come as the result of an unseen conflict in the spirit world.

Human Reason Is Not Sufficient to Account for Tragedy and Suffering

Our second point then that we’ll try to explore this morning—and I don’t know if we’ll get any further than this today—is: Human reason is not sufficient to account for tragedy and suffering. And then let me give you the flip side of that: Human reason is not sufficient to account for tragedy and suffering; God calls us to trust him.

I think this again lies on the surface of the text as well. We know Job’s situation. He doesn’t. And the most obvious, from their perspective, the most obvious explanation for Job’s suffering is his sin. Again, it’s almost mathematical. God is sovereign. God is just. God will reward evil and good accordingly. God will punish evil. And he will reward in a positive way those who are good. And that is good theology. That’s sound thinking. Now they’re leaving out one factor, and that is the timing of it all. And we’ll talk about that again.

But the most obvious explanation is that Job has sinned, and because he has sinned, all of this suffering has come. That’s the most obvious explanation, and that is the wrong explanation. Job is cleared of those charges right up front in chapters 1 and 2, and again later in the book when God speaks, He himself again clears Job from those kinds of charges. We have it on God’s authority that this did not come as a result of Job’s sin. Job was right in his insistence all along that his sin was not the explanation of his suffering. There were other factors at play that were beyond Job’s ability to grasp, but it was not his sin that brought the suffering.

And so we come to chapter 3. And here we have all of the why questions. Job starts out by cursing the day of his birth, cursing the night of his conception, wishing it had never happened, wishing I’d never come. What an awful day. But then the questions: verse 11, “Why did I not die at birth?” Why couldn’t I have just been stillborn? Why’d I have to be conceived? Why’d I have to be born? Verse 16, “Why was I not as a hidden stillborn child?” Verse 20, “Why is the light given to him who’s in misery?” Verse 23, “Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?” Why does all of this have to happen? Job is asking the why question.

I think we should mention up front that there are two ways to ask that question. There’s a good way and a bad way. There’s nothing at all wrong in a worshipful sense to say, “God, I don’t understand why this has happened. Could you teach me?” But there’s another way to ask that why question and that is to shape it in the form of a knife and stick it in and turn it: “Why does this have to happen to me?” And Job is somewhere between in all of that throughout the book.

The rest of the book, we have an affirmation by all the parties of the sovereignty of God; He stands behind all that is. In some sense or other, he stands behind everything. Therefore, in some sense, God stands behind this suffering. At least in a sense, we have to say he has allowed this suffering to come. And so the question is, why?

And you remember the expression of that in chapter 19 and verse 6, where Job says, “Know then that God has put me in the wrong and has closed his net about me.” God has wronged me. It doesn’t make sense that I should have to suffer like this. I’ve been faithful. God’s not being fair. And again, one of the distinctives of the story is that we know more about Job’s situation than he does. And we know from reading the introductory chapters that there is such a thing—and this is one of the big points of the book—there is such a thing as innocent suffering.

That just lies on the surface of it, doesn’t it? There is such a thing as innocent suffering. Now that doesn’t mean that there’s anybody out there who doesn’t have sin. It doesn’t say that there are people sinless in an absolute sense. And it is true that if it weren’t for sin, there wouldn’t be any suffering. But it does not follow from that that there is no innocent suffering. And Job’s suffering, we are told explicitly, did not arise because of his sinfulness. In fact, we are told the opposite. His suffering arose precisely because of his faithfulness.

But from their standpoint, not being let in on those first two chapters that we can read, what is the most obvious explanation for Job’s suffering? Well, it’s divine justice. “Job, you’ve sinned. You should repent.” And again, that’s the wrong explanation. Job is cleared of it all. Job protests against his friends, and he says, “I will not repent.” And again, he’s not saying that I’ve never sinned and in that sense will not repent. But I will not repent in this sense: I will not confess that this suffering has come because of my sinfulness. It does not speak to my situation. And as a matter of integrity, Job holds on to that. I cannot confess a sin that has given rise to this suffering. That would be to deny the truth of the matter.

Now the frustration is that it seems like then God has brought it unfairly. And he’s caught in that conundrum. But what he couldn’t see is that there were factors at play that were beyond his ability to grasp. It was not his sin, but his lack of sin that brought it.

Now, if you’d like to turn to chapter 16, we will see that Job was able to recognize that his friends did not get it right. In fact, he protests against that all through the book. Notice how he tells us that in chapter 16. Job answered and said, “I have heard many such things. Miserable comforters are you all.” And then notice this, verse 3, “Shall windy words have an end?” You bunch of windbags. You think you’ve got it all figured out, and you talk, and you don’t know what you’re talking about. And you call yourself friends. Miserable comforters are you all.

That is to say, their counsel did not satisfy Job as an explanation of his situation. However grand was their theology—and at many points it was, and they had set out to defend God—however grand was their theology in all of this, they could not speak to Job’s situation. But Job’s problem was, neither could he. He couldn’t speak to his situation either. He couldn’t find an answer, an explanation, a reason why his suffering had to come. However he might try, he couldn’t figure it out. And so he’s struggling in his faith.

The justice of God is a given. The sovereignty of God is a given. It seems that God is after me. But I don’t deserve it. And so: is God unfair? And so again, we have Job struggling with his faith. If you’d like to see it back in chapter nine, you see him grappling with this. Opening verses, and really all through the chapter, Job answered and said, “Truly I know this so, but how can a man be right before God?” How can I make my case and make God see me right and explain all of this? I wish I could argue my case—and on through the chapter he talks like that. I wish I could argue my case, but then who in the world, he goes on in this chapter, who in the world can argue with God? God would just overpower you.

Verse 15 of chapter nine: “Though I am in the right, I cannot answer him. I must appeal for mercy to my accuser.” Notice he refers to God as his accuser. “If I summon him and he answered me, I would not believe that he was listening to my voice, for he crushes me with a tempest and multiplies my wounds without cause.” If I talk to God, why would he ever listen to little puny me? And if I did get him to hear me, oh, he would just overpower me.

Verse 24 is another one of his kind of lows: “The earth is driven into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of his judges.” That is, he blinds the justice system. And then he says, “If it is not he, then who could it be?” And so he complains in verse 33, “There’s no arbiter between us. There’s no umpire who might lay his hands on both sides and talk.” There’s no one so exalted that he could speak for God to me. No one who could take my cause to God and speak for him and bring us together in this dispute. And all I can say then is that, as we saw in chapter 19 verse 6, God is being unfair.

I go through all of that again to just demonstrate this point: that with Job struggling for all of this, there was no rational explanation for him to find as to why his suffering happened. There’s no way to make sense of it. And so Job wishes that God would hear him. He’s convinced of his integrity, but he can’t make God hear him. He wishes that God then would either listen or, at the very least, explain himself to Job.

Now that’s always the problem, isn’t it? In our suffering, somehow we feel that God ought to let us in on things and explain himself. And we somehow feel that if God would let us in on it all and tell us all the whys and the wherefores, then somehow the pain would be reduced to manageable proportions. But God never did tell Job why, even after he was restored. And all through the book then we see Job grasping, looking, wishing, wondering, so much so that finally in frustration, he laments life itself.

Well, there’s Job’s frustration. He’s trying to figure it out. He’s trying to find some factor that would make sense of all of this suffering. And he’s never given the answer.

An Audience with God

What he is given is late in the book, if you’ll turn to chapter 38. What he is given is an audience with God. He wants to talk to God. He’s wanting his day in court. And so finally he has it. In chapters 38 and following, finally God speaks. And he responds to Job’s challenge to explain himself. But the response is not what Job would have expected.

Look at chapter 38. The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action. Brace yourself. And now I’ll question you, and you can make it known to me.” And here the questions come. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Who determined its measurements? Verse 6: On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut in the sea with doors? Or verse 12: Have you commanded the morning since your days began? Do we have daylight and darkness at your command, Job? Verse 16: Have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare if you know all this. Where is the way to the dwelling of light? Where is the place of darkness?

Verse 22: Have you entered the storehouses of the snow? Verse 24: What is the way to the place where the light is distributed? Verse 25: Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain? Verse 28: Has the rain a father? And are you that? Verse 29: From whose womb did the ice come forth? Verse 31: Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Here’s the speaking of the constellations, the stars of the heavens. Did you have anything to do with all of that? Have you measured it? Have you established the rule? Verse 34: Can you lift up your voice to the clouds that a flood of waters may cover you? Can you send forth lightnings? Verse 36: Who has put wisdom in the inward parts? Verse 37: Who can number the clouds by wisdom? Verse 39: Can you hunt the prey for the lion? That is, you feed the animals. Who provides for the raven? Verse 41. Chapter 39: Do you observe the calving of the does? Can you number the months that they fulfill? Verse 5: Who has let the wild donkey go free? Verse 9: Is the wild ox serving you? Can you bind in the furrow with the ropes? Verse, jumped out in 19: Do you give the horse its might? And here he speaks of more animals. Verse 26 again: the birds. Verse 27: Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up?

All right, you get the drift. Job had asked for his day in court, and now that it’s given, God says to him, chapter 40 and verse 1: The Lord said to Job, “Shall a fault finder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.” That is to say, will you presume to correct me? Job, you know so very little about so very much, and you presume to tell me how I should order this world. Job, you want your day in court, you’ve got it. Talk.

Verse 3, chapter 40, verses 3, 4, and 5: Job says, “Now I’ve, I think I’ve said enough already. I’ve talked too much, now I’ll put my hand over my mouth and I’ll not talk anymore.”

And so God continues, chapter 40, verse 7: “Dress for action like a man. I’ll question you. You make it known to me,” and here come more questions. “Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right? Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his? Adorn yourself with majesty and dignity. Clothe yourself with glory and splendor. Pour out the overflowings of your anger, and look on everyone who is proud, and abase him. Look on everyone who is proud, and bring him low, and tread down the wicked where they stand. If you want justice, go ahead, do it. You’re so knowledgeable about these things.” Verse 13: “Hide them all in the dust together, bind their faces in the world below. Then will I also acknowledge to you that your own right hand can serve you.”

Well, again, Job asked for his day in court. He gets it. It’s not what he had wanted. Now it is important to note in all of this that God here nowhere condemns Job for sin that brought this suffering to his experience. He’s not saying that the suffering is because of Job’s sinfulness. God charges Job with sins, but not with sins that have brought on the sufferings. Job’s protest is allowed to stand. He was a man of integrity. The fault that God finds with Job at this point is simply that in order to vindicate himself, Job was willing to vilify God.

Nor does God give the answer to the question here, why? He never does answer that. He doesn’t say, “Job, well, let me tell you. It’s because, you see, Satan came against you.” He didn’t do any of that. The mystery is allowed to stand also. But what God makes very clear is that you will never be able to explain your suffering by finding fault with God. You will never be able to explain your suffering by finding fault with God. God has not been cruel. God has not made a mistake. God is God. And for his own reasons, he has allowed this. Whether you understand those reasons is completely irrelevant. What you are called to do is to trust him. And that’s the point.

Now at some level in all of this, we sympathize with Job. And in fact, we sympathize with his friends. If you were Job’s friends, and he asked you for counsel, how would you advise him? Pastor Boyd, why has this suffering come? Ian, why has this suffering come? Jim, why is this suffering? What do you say? All you can say is, “Job, I don’t know why, but God does.” And that’s the point. In all of our sufferings, God does not call us to figure it all out. He calls us to trust him.

Brothers and sisters, it is not important—it is not important at all—that we understand the whys and the wherefores. What is important is that we trust God. And be very careful: do not presume in your suffering to be wiser than God.

I remember, it must be a dozen or so years ago now, when Jim Boice down at 10th Presbyterian in Philadelphia was diagnosed with cancer—liver cancer as I remember. I remember the announcement he made to his congregation when he told them about it, and told them that he only had a matter of time and he would be dying. And his counsel to his congregation was just marvelous, and it grasped this point, I think, so well. He exhorted them, of course, we’re second-guessing: “Why does this have to be?” But he says, “I have to say that if this is what God has ordered, it is best.” What am I supposed to say, that I would do better?

You’ve heard me say many times before that if I were as powerful as God, things would be different around here. I’d adopt, I told you, I’d adopt the theology of Job’s friends. Man, the good people would be wealthy and the bad people would be poor. And if you forgot the offering on Sunday morning, you’d have a car breakdown on the way to work Monday. If I were as powerful as God, things would be different around here, but I have to say that if I were as wise as God, it’d be no different at all.

And that is the point. God in our suffering does not call us to figure it out; he calls us to trust him. Brothers and sisters, you must check your heart, because in your suffering, you will be tempted to think that God owes you an explanation. And I have to tell you, God does not owe you an explanation. You’ve got that all backwards. We owe it to Him to trust Him. It does God no honor to trust Him only when we understand what He is doing. It honors Him only when we trust him implicitly, because he is the God who he is. We honor God when, with Job, we can say, “The Lord has given”—and he was free and unobliged to do that—”and now the Lord has taken away”—and he is just as free in that. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

God does not give us all the details, but he has given us more than enough information to trust him, hasn’t he? We’ll see some of this in Job, and there’s some darkness in Job’s thinking that he just can’t figure things out because he doesn’t have the revelation that we have. We’ll see more of that next time. But hasn’t God given us enough to trust him? This is the God who created everything. This is the God who orders all of the affairs of the entire world. And can’t we say as Christians, this is the God who has given us his own son? A God who has delivered his son to bear the curse of our sin. Hasn’t he given us enough that we can trust him implicitly? Amen.

Let’s bow for prayer.

Our Father, we need this reminder from your word and we are grateful for it. We pray that you would strengthen us, your children, to help us to see your greatness and your trustworthiness and give us a faith that honors you. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

As the men prepare for the Lord’s table, why don’t