Job 1-1-22
Prologue of Job
1 In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. 2 He had seven sons and three daughters, 3 and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.
4 His sons used to hold feasts in their homes on their birthdays, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5 When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular custom.
6 One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. 7 The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”
Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”
8 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job?There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”
9 “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. 10 “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. 11 But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
12 The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”
Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.
13 One day when Job’s sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, 14 a messenger came to Job and said, “The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, 15 and the Sabeans attacked and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
16 While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “The fire of God fell from the heavens and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
17 While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, “The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and made off with them. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
18 While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, “Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, 19 when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!”
20 At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship 21 and said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
may the name of the Lord be praised.”
22 In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.
Job 2:1-13
Job Loses His Health
1 On another day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them to present himself before him. 2 And the Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”
Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”
3 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity,though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.”
4 “Skin for skin!” Satan replied. “A man will give all he has for his own life. 5 But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
6 The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life.”
7 So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. 8 Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.
9 His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”
10 He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.
11 When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. 12 When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads.13 Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.
John 11:1-44
The Death of Lazarus
1 Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”
4 When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days,7 and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
8 “But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”
9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light.10 It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”
11 After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”
12 His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” 13 Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.
14 So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, 15 and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”
16 Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
17 On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem,19 and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.
21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
27 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
28 After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” 29 When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.
32 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34 “Where have you laid him?” he asked.
“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.
35 Jesus wept.
36 Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father,I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
Mark 15:33-34
Jesus Dies on the Cross
33 At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. 34 And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
Some people question their faith after a tragedy...And I do not think there are perfect answers in tragedies...There are mostly questions...The why questions come to my mind...We often ask why didn't God do something, or why didn't He do more?...Or why didn't He intervene?...Why did God allow this to happen to him or her?...Where was God in my time of need?...My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?...
When I think of these tragic questions, Job comes to mind and what happened to him...Job lost his sons and daughters, his oxen and donkeys, his sheep, and his camels...Then Job loses his health, right after these great family and financial losses...And I also think of the tragic death of Lazarus and how his sisters Martha and Mary cried when Jesus got to their home and they were explaining their brother's death to Him...And I think of the most tragic death of Jesus, Himself, on the cross and how He hung suffering and tortured on the cross until He died...
These three events have a common thread...God could have intervened and He does not...God could have not allowed the evil one to enter Job's life, but God allowed that to happen...Jesus could have gotten to Lazarus before he died, but He decided to wait and go to Lazarus' home later after his death to show the Glory of God...And God could have prevented and saved Jesus from the cross and saved His Son from dying on the cross, but God decided to let His Son be crucified for our sins and die...In each of these cases God could have done something...But God allowed them to happen...God allows tragedies...
These tragedies happened, but could have been prevented...God has His reasons for the timing and the way these tragedies happened and played out...God has His reasons for all tragedies, otherwise He would intervene...And because these specific tragedies happened, these people and their friends and families had to deal with these great tragedies...Job has lost his sons and daughters...Job's wife is not much help, and tells Job to curse God and die, with all the problems he has just been through -that does not help him...Job's friends are not much help to Job either...Job seems not to connect with their answers of why these tragedies have happened to him...Mary and Martha are two in grief with their brother's death, and Jesus coming to their sides helps, but they still have lost their loving brother...
Now the friends and family of Job and Lazarus would be naturally grieving...They might think this is a part of life, and is part of the troubles in life, and they could lose their faith, but as these stories play out, the happenings do seem to be a part of Job and Lazarus' life, but we know that God and Jesus are involved in them...They are Both involved in these two tragedies...And They could have done something...They could have done something before these tragedies became tragedies, which is what we as man want to happen..But we read it was not what God and Jesus wanted as these two tragedies unfolded...Man would rather not have to deal with the pain and the grief and loss as Job's and Lazarus' family and friends had to...It would have been much easier on their emotions and their feelings if God had intervened and done something to prevent the tragedies...It would have have been an easier life for Job and his family and Lazarus and his family...But Both, God and Jesus are a part of what happened and happens to Job and Lazarus...
The two cases are mysterious and different because Job loses his sons and daughters...He would always miss them...The rest of his life he would not forget his children...Lazarus, on the other hand had died, but Jesus would raise him from the dead, and he will live again...But still at the time of Job's sons and daughter's death and Lazarus' death, there is a lot of painful grieving for both family and friends...In both cases there is sadness and despair and grief in the death of family and friends...But was there a purpose for Job's tragedies and Lazarus' death?...
I might say that God was always near Job (as well as Lazarus) when the evil one tragically entered his life...The Book of Job, chapter one, makes that clear...Job in the end gets to meet His Creator and is wonderfully surprised by joy meeting the Presence of God, even though God does not tell him why these bad things happened to Him...God meets Job and then peppers him with deep God-type questions which only God can answer...And in these questions, Job sees that God has complete understanding of all things...Martha, Mary, and Lazarus learn that Jesus can do anything...Jesus can even bring a life back from death that has been in a grave for four days...We learn that God is in control of not only tragedies but all things...
If we would ask Job and Lazarus after (Job) meeting God and (Lazarus) being raised back to life, we can easily believe they are closer to God at this point in their lives than ever before...But if we could go back and ask Job right after the death of every one of his children (at the time of his tragedies) about God and then his almost complete loss of health, he probably would have given us a different answer about his faith...I think Mary and Martha, if we could have ask them right before their brother's death about God or Jesus their tones and attitudes, emotions, and feelings would have been much different...They, at this time, all were having to deal with their losses with their emotions and feelings in the time of a great tragedy...Life seems at times, at least for me, survive on and endure...And these families endured through tragedy that God and Jesus had allowed...
And in the case of Jesus, God has planned Jesus to die on the cross and be crucified...God did not insulate Himself of His Son from tragedy...God would lose a Son...And His Son cried out in Gethsemane before His tragic death to take this cup from Him, if it is possible...Jesus is asking His Father to take away His upcoming tragedy...The tragedy would happen...God's completely Human Son dies in front of Him and on a cross...God is greatly saddened by this...God is in control of all these tragedies...His Son's death is God's Plan for salvation for us and God saves us from our sins with Jesus' death...Is God telling us with His Son's death, in this human-earthly life, you will suffer?...
From these things, I believe, God is in control...God has a Plan...But it is sometimes harder to fight the good fight and to finish the race...We must survive and endure...We must keep the faith...There will be a time when our Father will wipe away all tears from our eyes...