4 Unexpected Truths To Understand Why God Allows Suffering Series

Job is one of the most unique stories you’ll hear – not just inside the Bible but anywhere. It’s the story of man named Job, a man whose character was tremendously strong but suffered exceedingly. But one day Satan says to God, “The reason Job follows you is because you’re so good to him. Stop blessing him and he’ll turn away from you in a heartbeat.”

Lots of people turn to this book in crisis. Just this weekend, Vanderbilt basketball coach, Scott Drew, was asked how he is weathering such a terrible season – his team is winless in league play. The coach said that his father, also a coach, had similar bad seasons early in his career. The father told his son to read the book of Job to endure the hard times.

But Job is helpful to people who go through much harder stuff than losing seasons. This week, I’ve heard from people who have lost children and suffered through terrible tragedies. We find Job’s life and his book endlessly interesting because he asks God the question we all want to ask – “Why?” But the “why” question is always closely related to another question for people who are hurting and that’s the “How” question.

How will get through this? Over the course of the next few minutes I want to speak to you about “Four Unexpected Truths to Understand Why God Allow Suffering.”

Truth #1: The Time to Understand “Why” is Now

People will turn to this book because they’ve heard it has the answers for why people suffer but then they quickly become disinterested when they arrive. For many, if we don’t get the answer in one second after we ask Google, we’re moving on. So I want to speak to those of you who need to be better equipped when hurting arrives. You see, the time to do this isn’t when suffering crashes down your door.

Years ago, Traci and I were serving a church some hours from here. We had just arrived at the church and everyone was new to us. Our children were small and they welcomed us with big, open arms – they showed us some tremendous hospitality. The church had a tradition of doing a “pounding,” which doesn’t mean they beat us up but they arrived at our door with a pound of something (coffee, flour, etc.). Now, they did this “pounding” on one Sunday evening and some big men of the church brought all the goods to our home. There was so much that it was multiple truck beds full of stuff and all this was brought when we had just moved into our home. So boxes are everywhere and our small kids are loving playing in empty boxes. Our house is disorganized that we simply have a trail from the bathroom to the kitchen to our beds. And then we have some wonderful people with about 500 pounds of food added to all of this. My wife was overwhelmed. Why? Because we didn’t have a organized framework to receive this tremendous amount of groceries. Had we been there a year or more, then the entire house would have been as well-running machine purring like the hub of a UPS terminal! But absent this organization, we had a mess. And this is how it is when suffering crashed in on you.

If you haven’t taken the time to carefully weigh through the Bible’s teaching on the character of God and His way, you’ll feel overwhelmed. And you’ll likely to quit on God. Or worse, you’ll fire God.

The time to understand why God permits you to experience great amounts of pain and hurt is before you experience great pain and hurt. Understand God’s ways and God’s character before the time when it seems God is hiding from you because you will lack the motivation to understand. You need the book of Job.

1.1 Major Characters

Every major character in Job is introduced in chapters one and two except one person (Can you name him?). Let’s look at the major characters briefly. Job is a man who is really wealthy and really godly. The whole story of this Old Testament book is built around his life. He has a happy family, he’s incredibly wealthy, and he’s the most godly man you’d know for miles around. Job’s wife has a minor part as does his children – seven sons and three daughters. Job’s wife quits on God. The children all die and Job has more children at the end of the book.

Much more central to the story is Job’s three friends: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. They appear in 29 of the 42 chapters of the book. Sometime later, a younger man named Elihu shows up and adds to the conversation. Elihu waits to speak because he respected his elders. We’ll focus on them next week in a message entitled, “With Friends Like These…”