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(1) Sermon Script

[Coverage Job 1‐3, Reading Job 1:1‐22]

Introduction: He Loves You For Your Stuff!

Why does a person love God? Why might someone serve him? What motivates someone to live for God? Is it pure love?

It should be that a person loves God just because he’s God. He should serve God simply out of pure joy. She lives for God out of gratitude, with a pure love for God which does not expect anything from him: no quid pro quo, no ‘friends with benefits’, no ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’, but simply enjoying God for who he is.

Or perhaps we should concede that human motives are bound to be much more mixed. After all, everything we need for life comes to us as a gift from God. God decides not to send rain, and there’s no rain. Our very lives depend on what God wants or doesn’t want. So perhaps humans must be mercenaries: they can only serve God for the good things they can get for him. It’s a kind of relational prostitution: humans use God to get what they want, and that’s the only reason why they serve him.

How could such a slander, of both God and his people, be answered? How could such an accusation be countered? That is the concern of Job chapters 1 and 2.

Context

In this series of five talks, we are going to wrestle with a tough question. Our question is not just why God allows suffering in his world, although that’s part of it. But our question is, why is it that the righteous suffer? Why does God afflict those who love him? Why is it that those who serve God suffer excruciating pain, and those who hate God live long and prosper? So our problem is not just the existence of evil, but it is the seemingly unfair distribution of evil. In the words of a modern book, ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’

In looking at Job, we’re not engaged in a detached discussion of the problem of evil in the Art’s faculty café between philosophy 1 tutorials. That’s the game first year philosophy students play. They reason that bad things happen, and therefore God can’t be all powerful or all good. There you go, we’ve proven God doesn’t exist. So now let’s live how we want guilt free! I can have sex with who I want, get drunk all I want, and party hard all I want, now that I’ve proven that there’s no God!

The book of Job doesn’t resolve the problem of evil—rather, the book of Job intensifies it. In the book of Job, the problem of evil is not just an abstract debating toy. Evil gets personal, for it is the very God who delights in Job who brings Job down to the ash heap. The God who loves Job smashes down the one man who loves him properly. And the amazing thing is, as the darkness closes in around him, still Job says, ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord’. “You give and take away, blessed be your name” (Matt Redman, ‘Blessed Be Your Name’, and compare Job 1:21).

Peace on Earth: Righteous Job Prospers (Job 1:1-5)

The first scene is a close up of Job. Job is most likely an Edomite prince. He is not an Israelite, though he is a semite, but he is a descendant of Esau. Here we see, in the middle of Israel’s book, God’s concern for the nations, the gentiles. God has always wanted to be a blessing to the entire world (Gen 12:1-3). And we see in the book of Job, not only that God blesses the entire world, but also that he delights in this non-Jewish man of integrity.

Now, there are two further things we need to say about the Job.

The first thing is that Job is righteous. He fears God and shuns evil. Job is acceptable before God, and maintains a right relationship with God. It doesn’t mean sinless, because we see that Job offering sacrifices. Job confesses that he has the sins of his youth. When Job is pushed by extreme suffering, we will see that Job says some foolish, sinful things, of which he must repent. But none of this is the reason God makes him suffer. Job is presented as holy, set apart from everyone else on the face of the earth. God boasts about Job, in chapter 1 verse 8:

Job is introduced to us as performing the functions of a priest. He intercedes for his family by offering sacrifices and atoning for them. Job’s ongoing sacrificial ministry shows that he is continually acceptable to God. And Job’s blamelessness is vitally important for us to remember. Job does not suffer because he has sinned, because he hasn’t sinned to cause his suffering. He is, in fact, blameless.

The second thing is that Job is rich. Job has seven sons, three daughters, thousands of livestock, servants at his beck and call. God has blessed him, and enabled his empire to spread and grow. His prestige and influence is only increasing when disaster befalls him. Job has prospered and is immensely wealthy.

The Contest In Heaven, Round One (Job 1:6-22)

But Job’s world will soon be shattered. For in verses 6 to 12 of chapter 1, we as readers are given a glimpse into the heavenly realms. The sons of God, in other words, angels, present themselves before Yahweh. And in comes Satan. His name means accuser, and that’s what he does.

(1) God’s Pleasure and Satan’s Slander (vv. 6-12)

And God points out Job specifically to Satan. God addresses Satan and specifically shows his pleasure in Job. Chapter 1 verse 8 again: “Have you considered my servant Job?” Take a good look at him, Satan, says God. In all your slander of humans and their sins, you haven’t considered him! There is no one on earth like him; he of them all is blameless and upright. He fears me and shuns evil.

And in response, Satan accuses Job of mercenary worship. Verse 9, “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Look at all his property oozing out all over the country. Worshipping God! That’s part of Job’s business plan! He’s just making sure all his insurance policies are paid up. Wake up and smell the coffee, God, he only serves you because of all the stuff you give him. He only loves you for your money! But verse 11, strike his wealth, take all his possessions away, and Job will surely curse you to your face. That is Satan’s challenge to God.

The suffering hanging over Job has nothing to do with any sin that he might have committed. It has everything to do with this contest in heaven. Satan slanders both God and Job. And so God wants to show Satan that Job is actually everything that God has said that he is. It is not because Job is worse than other men that he suffers. It is because Job is better than other men. Job suffers because he is the best man there is. He suffers to show that Yahweh’s pleasure in him is well founded. Yahweh is about to show Satan how godly, how holy, how blameless Job is. So God pushes Job to the very limit of his endurance.

When you suffer, do you think it is because you are worse than others? Do you think you are being punished for your sins? Your suffering may have nothing to do with your sins at all. It may actually be because God is pleased with you, and he wants to demonstrate to the powers in the heavenly realms that his pleasure in you is well founded. God might want to show his work in your life. So during Jesus’ earthly ministry, we read:

9:1And as he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. 9:2And the disciples asked him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 9:3Jesus answered, “Neither this man sinned, nor his parents, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

You might be suffering because God is going to do an amazing work in you. You might have suffered because God has already done an amazing work in you, just like that once blind man, through whom Jesus revealed his glory.

But Job doesn’t know any of this. We readers know. But God keeps Job in the dark about why he is doing all this. So he is called to trust in the goodness of God in spite of what God will send him. And so it is with us. Perhaps the pain and suffering that we endure looks meaningless. We look for the silver cloud around the grey cloud, but we cannot see any. Then we are exactly like Job. Like Job, we do not know why we are suffering. And it may be that like Job, we might never know in this life why we suffered with this suffering. But we do know God, as Job knows God, and God is calling on us to trust him, and for that to be enough for us.

(2) Grief on Earth: Righteous Job Despoiled (vv. 13-19)

God allows Satan to deprive Job of everything he owns. Here Satan functions as God’s servant. Satan can do nothing without God’s say so. So Satan is far from threatening God’s sovereignty. He is in fact God’s servant and agent. [1]

Ultimately, it is God who is sending these calamaties upon Job, for God has the right of veto and is the ultimate permission giver of Satan. And so Satan after chapter 2 is never named again, and retreats to being not merely just a player behind the scenes, but in fact an irrelevance, not even worth mentioning. And Satan is not worth mentioning, for he is only able to do what God allows him to do. Job rightly takes up his complaint with God, and God never says to Job, “the devil made me do it”, because God is sovereign and completely in control.

With four blows, God takes back everything he had given Job. The Sabeans from the south, the fire of God from the west, the Chaldeans from the north, and the strong wind blowing from the east—from the four compass points, destruction comes upon Job. Both humans and natural disasters despoil him. So we see all of creation from the four corners of the earth has been turned against Job. And the deprivation is total. Only the messenger is spared to let Job know that he’s lost everything. The first three disasters take his wealth, and the last, most tragically, his children.

(3) Job Remains Righteous (vv. 20-22)

And what is Job’s response? Does he indeed curse God to his face, as Satan predicted and slanderously accused? Job chapter 1 verses 20 to 22:

1:20Then Job got up, and tore his cloak, and shaved his head, and fell down on the ground, and worshipped, 1:21and he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return there. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.” 1:22In all this, Job did not sin, nor did he ascribe wrongdoing to God.

Job doesn’t curse—he worships and praises God. “You give and take away, blessed be your name!” It is worth putting in a song, really!

The Contest in Heaven, Round 2 (Job 2:1-8)

There are some people who aren’t too worried if their kids or grandkids suffer. Good King Hezekiah is an example. When the prophet Isaiah told Hezekiah this:

Some of your descendants, your own flesh and blood, that will be born to you, will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. (2 Kings 20:18-19 NIV)

Hezekiah’s response was this:

¹⁹“The word of the LORD you have spoken is good,” Hezekiah replied. For he thought, “Will there not be peace and security in my lifetime?”

“Oh well, that’s OK, it’s not going to happen to me. It’ll happen to the kids. I’ll be OK. Always look on the bright side of life.” And we might come to this passage and think that maybe Job thinks this way. “I might have lost everything. The kids are dead. The share market has collapsed. The banks have foreclosed. The kids are useless layabout parasites. But at least I’ve got my health! That’s all you’ve got in the end, anyway!”

(1) Strike the Man Himself (vv. 4-5)

Well, we are not going to think this for long, because Satan thinks that Job is made of the same stuff as Hezekiah. Chapter 2 verses 4 and 5:

2:4And Satan answered the LORD, and said, “Skin for skin! Surely a man will give everything he has for his life. 2:5But stretch out your hand now, and strike his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.

Look God, you’ve skated around the edges with Job. When are you going to get serious? You haven’t touched him yet, not really. But when you do, your golden boy will change his tune. Then he’ll curse you to your face. And Yahweh agrees to this test. So God, through Satan, will send a terrible skin disease to Job, and Job will waste away until his bones protrude his festering flesh.

The good God knows just how far to push his servant. As Paul says,

10:13No temptation has taken you except what is human. And God is faithful, who will not permit you to be tempted above that which you are able to bear, but he will also make the way out with the temptation , so that you will be able to bear up under it. (1 Cor 10:13)

(2) Grief on Earth: Righteous Job Diseased (vv. 6-8)

And so we are presented with a pathetic picture: the once grand chief of the Edomites, the generous, righteous, and wise ruler of his people, is impoverished, bereaved, grief stricken, and in physical agony, with festering boils covering his body from head to foot. All of this was a visible sign in that culture of the wrath of God. There he is, with his bones poking out his skin. And just as Job’s deprivation was total, so his disease was total. He seeks solace in scraping his scabs with broken bits of pottery. And sitting on the ash heap, the city garbage dump, he is unrecognisable to his oldest and closest colleagues.

An Ally For Evil On Earth, Round 3 (Job 2:9-10)

“Well, at least you have your superannuation, and your insurance.” Not Job! He lost his retirement savings. “Well, my religion is my family. That’s all you have in the end.” Nope, Job doesn’t have that. “O well, at least you’ve got your health.” No, Job has lost that. “OK, then all you have is your God.” Yes. That is what Job has left, for he has kept his integrity. No matter what has happened, Job still worships Yahweh, the true God.

And even that is still being attacked. Satan now uses a different strategy: Job’s wife. Of course, this is an old Satanic manoeuvre, as old as Adam and Eve. So we read in Job chapter 2 verses 9 and 10:

2:9Then his wife said to him, ”Are you still holding onto your integrity? Curse God and die.” 2:10But he said to her, “You are speaking like one of the foolish women speaks. What? Shall we take good from God’s hand, and not take evil?” In all this, Job did not sin with his lips.

Job is faithful where Adam failed. He saw that behind his wife’s words were Satan’s suggestions. Even his rebuke of his wife is measured and careful. He doesn’t call her a fool (cf. Matt 5:22). He says she is speaking like one of the foolish women. Even in the way he resists temptation, he doesn’t sin. He holds on to his integrity. He is still complete and whole before God, despite all his earthly pain and loss.

At the loss of his possessions, he doesn’t curse. At the loss of his children, he doesn’t curse. At the loss of his health, he doesn’t curse. At the suggestion of his wife, he doesn’t curse.

Job Does Curse The Day Of His Birth (Job 3:1-26)

But Job will open his mouth and he will curse. But he will not curse God. After seven days silently sitting with his friends on the ash heap, he speaks, and he curses his birthday. Chapter 3 verse 1:

3:1After this, Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth.

It is important to notice what Job is not doing. He is not preparing to kill himself. Atheistic and hedonistic philosophy says to do this if you think it the right thing. If you can’t see any way out, euthanase yourself. Commit suicide. That will minimize your pain, and you will save everyone else a whole lot of money, because that’s really what we care about. But suicide is completely out of the question for Job. For suicide is incompatible with faith in a sovereign and good God. For with God, there is always hope in the darkest place. [2]

But in his pain, Job wishes for three things. First, he wishes that the day of his birth would perish, verses 1 to 10. [3] Second, he wishes that he had died at birth, verses 11 to 19. And third, he wonders why God does not let him die, verses 20 to 26, for that would be rest.

(1) Let My Birth Be Undone (vv. 1-10)

Let’s look at Job’s wish that the day of his birth be expunged. “Undo my birth”, is his cry. Of course, this is impossible. We cannot undo the past. Humans have no control over time. But chapter 3 verses 1 to 10 express Job’s wish to undo the day of his birth.

One reason I love MS Word is ‘ctrl+z’, the ‘undo’ command. If I want to cut something out of my essay, I highlight it, press ‘ctrl+x’ and it’s gone. But then I realize, ‘No, I need that’. ‘Ctrl+z, ctrl+z, undo, undo!’ And you can undo all your mistakes, and take your document back to the way it was.

Sometimes when I’m doing things not on computer, I think I can do ‘ctrl+z’, like when when my son Tim was little and wanted me to do a train track with his wooden train set. So of course, I have to fill the whole table and use every piece. And I think, now why don’t I try this, maybe this will fit, to use absolutely every piece. And I undo the track to try some new configuration, stupidly thinking that I can do a ‘ctrl+z’ if it doesn’t work. But of course there is no ‘ctrl+z’ in real life. You do something in life, and you cannot undo it. You cannot put the words back in your mouth once you have said them.

Job wishes that someone could do a ‘ctrl+z’ on the day of his birth. This desire is expressed by wishing that the day of his birth be buried in darkness (vv. 4-6, 9), or that it not be included in the calendar (v. 6), that it had been barren, and that no one would have had cause to rejoice in the birth of a boy child on that day.

And so in verse 8, Job calls on those who curse days to curse that day. This seems to be a call for some powerful magician or power of darkness to uncreate that day. [4] Job is reasoning that if the day of his birth never happened, then his birth never happened, and then he would never have existed to experience this pain. The reason Job speaks like this is the last bit of verse 10: If he hadn’t been born, this trouble would be hidden from his eyes.

Seen this way, Job’s desires are clearly contrary to God’s permissive will, in terms of what God actually brought about in time and space. God said, “let there be light”, and now Job is saying, “let there be darkness”. God obviously created the day of Job’s birth and wanted Job to be born. And it is foolish for Job to wish that anyone—whether pagan magician or power of darkness—would uncreate either himself or that day.

But now is not the time to tell Job that. Job here is speaking out of his pain. It is a stark and poetic expression of his deep emotional and physical agony. Perhaps it is an example of some of the foolish things Job says in his pain, but he has more excuse than almost anyone to say it. Who has never said foolish things that they later regret? That’s us, and that’s Job. Job will be corrected by God himself in due course. But it is interesting that God does not seem to raise the matter of Job wishing that he had never been born in chapter 3 later on when God directly addresses Job. That suggests that it is not this wish that God rebukes in chapters 38 and following. So at this stage, we must sympathise with Job. We must let him vent, rather than correct him in his pain. And we must remember, Job has been careful not to curse God. His integrity is still in tact.

(2) Why Didn’t I Die At Birth? (Job 3:11-20)

And this is the reason why Job then asks a series of questions.

• Verse 11, he asks why he did not perish at birth?
• Verse 16, he asks why he was not hidden in the ground like a stillborn child? For if Job had died at birth, he would now be at rest.
• Verse 13, if he had died at birth, he would be lying down in peace and be asleep and at rest
• Verse 17, in death the wicked cease from turmoil, and there the weary are at rest.

Job has no relief or rest from his torment. He is tormented in body and soul. And there is no respite for him. And to have been a miscarriage or a stillborn baby is preferable for him to his present agony.

(3) Why Does God Prolong My Agony? (vv. 21-26)

The third part of chapter 3 asks why God allows to live people who want to die. Verses 20 to 22:

3:20Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the one who is bitter in soul, 3:21who longs for death, but it does not come, and digs for it more than for hidden treasure, 3:22who are overjoyed and glad when they can find the grave? (Job 3:20-22)

Job wants to die. God has wrecked Job’s life and he is looking for God to finish the job. The irony is that we know that God doesn’t want to kill Job. Yahweh has specifically said to Satan that he must spare Job’s life (Job 2:6). We know as readers that this is part of Yahweh’s kindness to Job. But for Job, at this moment, death would be preferable, because then at least his suffering would be over. Yet the death blow doesn’t come. His misery is prolonged.

And the reason Job wants God end it all is in verses 25 and 26:

3:25For the thing which I feared has come upon me, and that which I was afraid of came to me. 3:26I am not at ease, nor am I quiet, nor do I have rest, but trouble has come. (Job 3:25-26)

At some point, in his heart of hearts, during the good times, Job had wondered whether it was all too good to be true. In his dark moments, during the good times, Job had wondered when his winning run would end. When would the bubble burst? And now it has, spectacularly. And now there is no peace and rest for him. He is agitated, depressed, with no quietness of mind, unable to eat or sleep.

This is a terrible place to be. Anyone who knows what it is like to be depressed or despairing has been there, in the middle of the night, agitated, with no peace or tranquility.

And so the three friends come to be with him. And their best ministry, the best thing they do, is to silently sit seven days and nights in sympathy with Job on the ash heap. Maybe that’s a reminder to us who can’t handle the quietness, who fill the silence with words for our own sake. Maybe sometimes the best we can do is sit with people who suffer. Of course, the three friends wreck it all by opening their mouths and spouting their theology and insensitivity. But that’s for our next talk.

Conclusion

But regarding Job chapters 1 to 3, we should notice the pattern here. We need to recognise who Job is. There is no one else like him in the whole world. He is a blameless man and distinguished by God from everyone else. He is simply the best, better than all the rest. He fears God and turns from evil. The pattern of his life was serving God and others.

But for reasons that seem inexplicable on earth, and to Job, he suffers. He suffering is intense, his grief is entire, and his confusion is total. We know there are heavenly reasons for it, that there is a contest between the malicious accuser Satan, and the good God, Yahweh, who loves Job and will protect him and not let him be tested beyond what he can bear.

But we readers only have been given this heavenly perspective. The sufferer on earth only experiences pain, loss, grief, and confusion. He must make sense of it with the resources that he has. And the only resource Job has left is faith in the goodness of God. And this he hasn’t abandoned, though it’s been sorely tested.

But others will be provoked into wrong conclusions. In this passage, we have seen the first example of a wrong conclusion, and that is Job’s wife, for she has said, undoubtedly from our own deep grief, that Job should curse God and die. We will see in our next talk that Job’s three friends likewise make a wrong conclusion, that Job should repent, because he is suffering for some sin he has committed.

Jesus too was a righteous man, different from everyone else on earth. Job was righteous, comparatively, and did nothing to deserve this suffering. But Jesus takes the idea of a righteous sufferer one step beyond Job. Jesus had not just blamelessness and integrity, but absolute sinlessness, something which Job does not claim, for he confesses the sins of his youth. Jesus knew no sin. Jesus never darkened the Lord’s counsel with words without knowledge (Job 38:2). Jesus never called on the dark powers to undo the day of his birth (Job 3:8). Jesus fulfills the pattern that Job establishes. Job sat on the ash heap outside the city. Jesus was hung up on a cross outside the city.

Job at his best said, “The Lord gives and takes away, blessed be his name”. Jesus said at the height of his suffering, “Not my will, but yours. Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. Into your hands I commit my Spirit.” Job suffers to demonstrate to the hostile powers that he truly serves God. But Jesus suffers not just to show his own servanthood, but to serve others by taking their sin (Isaiah 53).

And then Jesus goes further still. After the suffering of his soul, he saw the light of life and was satisfied. Jesus went into heaven at God’s right hand, with angels, authorities and powers not just seeing that he truly serves God, but being in submission to him as their superior. Jesus is the perfect, righteous sufferer.

And so Peter says to us Christians:

Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. ²As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. (1 Peter 4:1-2 NIV)