Sovereignty And Suffering, Job 1:13-20
Introduction
A minister’s son was caught skipping school for three days. His father reprimanded him and prayed for him and though the boy wept and was truly contrite, he was still punished. “Son, one of the facts of life is that where there is sin, there is suffering,” the father said. “You have been living a lie for three days, so for 72 hours I am banning you to the attic, with a bed and three meals a day, but you must stay up there and make amends,” he charged. The boy did as he was told. When supper was served, the minister prayed with his wife, but he was restless and could not eat. When it was time to go to bed he knew he would have no rest. “Honey, I am going upstairs to sleep with our boy,” he told his wife. He found his son wide awake and he hugged him and lay down beside him. Each night, the father took the place of punishment with his child. How like our own God, who despite our transgressions loves us enough to send His Son to be with us and to die for us.
Transition
In this life there is suffering of every kind. The curse of sin rests like a blanket over the entire earth. We look around us and see its presence. We look in our own lives and see that the world is not all that it should be. Within all of us is a sense of wrestling between the “is and the ought.” That is we all perceive a tension between the way the world is and the way that it ought to be.
The world is not always fair. Commonly the righteous suffer while the wicked prosper. In light of the realities of suffering, The classic question is raised, “Is God to blame for human suffering?” For many unbelievers it is this very notion which keeps them away from Christianity and compels them toward a rather low view of its God and His claims. But there is a difference between justice and fairness. While the world is often unfair; God is always just.
The relationship between God’s sovereign rule of the universe and the suffering which is rampant upon the earth is a source of great perplexity among people of faith as well. Such questions are indeed difficult to answer with any level of honesty and compassion. It is altogether too easy to paint of picture of God as a tyrant or as a God of whimsical love with little power.
Many great minds have wrestled with these questions. I will lay no claim to giving the final resolution upon such matters. I will, though, seek to offer some insight, some perspective we can apply to our lives to aide us in understanding and dealing with the suffering, pain, and hurt in our lives and in the lives of those around us.
Exposition
Job’s Prestige. The book of Job opens with Job as a prosperous man who had great faith in God. “… This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.” (Job 1:1 NIV) In order to understand the theology of Job when disaster strikes, we need to look to his view of God before that time. Job’s reaction to suffering is intrinsically linked to his view of God prior to that time.
Reactions are formed prior to the events which trigger them. Foundations are laid prior to full construction. Is it any wonder that when people ignore God in their life until they are in need of Him that they do not understand Him?
Job was a man who feared the Lord. The text literally says that he was a man “Without moral blemish,” or “morally whole” and upright “straight” in the sense of not deviating from God’s standards.” In Job we see that the suffering which befalls humanity is not reserved purely for the wicked or unbelieving people. This is a motif that is consistently presented throughout the Bible.
In the gospel of Luke 13:1-5 Jesus is asked about some Galileans who were murdered by Pilate and other people living in Jerusalem who apparently died during an accident which occurred during a construction project. The question is raised to Jesus, “Were these men worse sinners than others living in the same area?” Jesus answer was a plain spoken no.
Rather than condemning those who were killed by government authorities or those who were killed by accident, Jesus exhorts all present to repent because similarly, they do not know when the time of their death will be at hand.
We live in a fallen world where Satan has deceived humanity into believing that God does not have their best interest at heart. According to Dr. Greg Boyd, “This is the foundation of all sin: the lie that God is untrustworthy, the lie that God is not altogether loving and that he doesn’t have our best interests in mind.” The pain and suffering found in the world is not reserved only for the evil and wicked; experience tells us that all people from every background experience pain and suffering. The point that Jesus makes in Luke 13 is that the state of the world after the fall of mankind into sin is such that tragedy may befall anyone at anytime.
As a result of believing the lie of Satan, Adam and Eve fell into sin and we have not inherited their sin nature, alas we have also received our inheritance from them; a broken and fallen sin-filled world, where even the pure in heart often suffer pain, loss, sickness and disease.
In this fallen world all people and all of creation is subject to the consequences of the fall. The fall is universal with regard to creation and specific in origin and scope with regard to humanity. When bad things happen to people it is not necessarily because of a bad choice or some hidden sin they have committed.
Henry Thiessen writes, “That sin entered the world through Adam means that sin commenced its course in the race and man began to commit sin, that human nature became corrupt, and that man became guilty.” In the following section of his work he goes on to write, “Even inanimate nature is represented as suffering the curse of man’s sin.” The world isn’t all that it should be. But there is a difference between the world being often unfair and God being always just. I’ll get back to that later.
Job’s Misfortune. At the end of the very first chapter of Job we the account the of Satan’s accusation against the nature of Job’s godliness and integrity. Satan asserts that Job is only godly because he has been blessed of God. He further says that if the Lord should remove the “hedge of protection” which He has placed around Job, surely he will curse God to His face. Satan is allowed by God to come against Job upon the condition that he may only not harm Job directly. Satan comes against Job by causing all of his livestock and family to be killed. In the mists of such calamity, Job’s response is breathtaking. “Then Job got up and tore his robe. He shaved his head, and then he threw himself down with his face to the ground. He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return there. The LORD gives, and the LORD takes away. May the name of the LORD be blessed!” In all this Job did not sin, nor did he charge God with moral impropriety.” (Job 1:20-22 NET)
At the heart of Job’s view of God (his theology) is a complete and total devotion to the sovereignty of God. That is, no matter circumstances that Job went through he believed that God was good. Job did not link his comfort, his happiness, or even his terrible misfortune to the nature of God. I find this incredibly interesting because unlike so many today, Job saw a distinction between God’s character and the pain which often characterized our lives.
The Bible that I preach from every week is wrapped in black leather. It is a black Bible. In the dark, it is still black. In the light, it is still black. Whether on a mountain top, in a valley, under distress by being placed under a heavy stack of other books, it matters not; the Bible is necessarily black because that it what it is. Although in the dark I may not see its color; that doesn’t change what it is because that is what it is. God is necessarily good because that is who He is. He is by definition good; He, not me, is the measure of all things.
Inherent in his reaction to the news of his calamity, rather than raise his fist at God, Job immediately tears his robe as a sign of his great morning and then turns his heart toward God. Job declares that the entirety of what he is and all that he has is the gift of God. His source of strength is God alone!
Job declares in no uncertain terms that he possesses nothing in this life save for what God entrusts to him. In times of calamity and uncertainty, we learn from Job our task in this life is not that of a wealthy land owner, but that of a steward set to watch over what has been entrusted to us. Control in this life is an allusion. In an age of self-reliance believers and unbelievers alike do well to consider the theology of Job in light of the common false belief that each of us are in full control of the things in our lives.
Our possessions, our families, our very lives, are on loan from God. In misfortune it is very easy to lose sight of this perspective but it is in the very letting go of the control that we seek that we find the freedom to trust God. This is why Jesus said, “He who seeks his life will lose it but he who loses it for my sake, shall find it.” According to Dr. John Piper, “God is absolute and eternal and infinite. Everything else is dependent and finite and contingent. God himself is the great supreme value. Everything else that has any value has it by connection with God.”
When our lives are full of bliss, God is sovereign and in control of our lives. When we do not understand what is happening to us, God remains ultimately sovereign and in control of our lives.
The point is not that God creates difficult circumstances in our lives in order to prove His sovereign reign over the earth or in our lives. The point is consistent with the core declaration of Job’s theology; everything that we have and all that we are is contingent upon God’s hand of provision and grace and He is worthy of adoration. God is our creator and sustainer. Even the very breath that we breathe from moment to moment is rightly understood as the gift of God!
Retribution, The Theology Of Job’s Friends. After an unmentioned period of time, Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar arrive to show sympathy for him and to console their friend. Their initial time spent with Job shows the depth of friendship and love they held in common for Job. Upon seeing the level of despair and pain of Job, each man tore his robes as a sign of profound mourning. Then they sat in silence with their friend as they comforted him with their presence and silent identification with his pain.
After seven days of silence Job breaks his own silence with a diatribe in which he laments his own birth and expresses his unfathomable suffering. Each man then offers his theological perspective with regard his particular understanding of God in light of Job’s circumstances. In each man’s offering we see that the overall theme is a theology reflective of a view of God as retributive and full of judgment. God is seen as only handing out punishment or allowing evil things in the life of those who have earned it. This theology stands in stark contrast to the actual blamelessness of Job.
Once Job has broken the silence, his friend Eliphaz is the first to speak. His manner of speech is at first mild; giving attention to Job’s great reputation. Then he goes into a lengthy monologue where he asserts that good people are not judged by God, but aided by His hand, and that bad people are judged and hindered by God. In so doing, Eliphaz creates the same logical quandary that all of Job’s friends create in their monologues in one way or another. The friends of Job create a situation where Job’s righteousness necessitates the conclusions that either Job is hiding some secret sin or that God is not just.
“This is the teaching that all the friends will affirm in one way or another. It is also Job’s belief. They cannot say anything else without suggesting that moral effort is not worthwhile or that God is somehow unfair. But a terrible pitfall is not far away from all of them. The friends must infer from Job’s suffering that he has sinned; Job must infer from his innocence that God is unjust.”
In Eliphaz statements he implies that God only punishes the wicked he underscores a theology which plainly views God as primarily retributive in nature. If God only punishes the wicked then he must invariably bless the upright; those who fear God. His practical theology is comparable to the hyperbolic statement found in Psalms 37:25 where the Psalmist writes, “I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.” (NIV)
While the Psalmists seems to be making a sweeping poetic statement of encouragement to the believer, Eliphaz gives the rather plain impression that he is implying that Job must have secret sin if God is dealing with him in this fashion at this time in his life. There are a great number of believers in the modern body of Christ who have been deceived into the very same theological perspective as that of Eliphaz and Job’s other friends. When things are good, it is because I believed rightly. When they are bad, it is because I didn’t have enough faith. Nothing could be further from our experience of reality or the message of the Bible.
While this may very well be the case in some circumstances, clearly just as this is not the case with Job, it is not the case with many other people. While there is a prevailing motif of man reaping that which he sows with regard to moral choices the New Testament as well as the Old Testament, experience as well as the account of Job tells us that routinely this is not the case. Mankind suffers generally as the consequence of sin. The general state of brokenness of the world is the direct consequence of sin having entered into the world. Each specific instance of suffering is not necessarily brought about by the direct actions, good or bad, of the person afflicted. “The Bible traces the entrance of suffering and evil into the world to the grand but terrible quality of human freedom. What makes us different from porpoises, muskrats, and grizzly bears? Alone, homo sapiens have been released from the unbreakable pattern of instinctual behavior. We have true, self-determining choice.
As a result of our freedom, human beings introduced something new to the planet – a rebellion against the original design. We have only slight hints of the way earth was meant to be, but we do know that humanity has broken out of the mold. “We talk of wild animals,” says G.K. Chesterton, “but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type.”
Job’s friends have not brought him any comfort. Indeed, rather than understanding his plight and offering hope and encouragement, Eliphaz has only rather strongly implied that Job must have some secret sin that he is hiding from those around him. In Job 6:14-17 Job speaks of his friends as he says, “A despairing man should have the devotion of his friends, even though he forsakes the fear of the Almighty. But my brothers are as undependable as intermittent streams, as the streams that overflow when darkened by thawing ice and swollen with melting snow, but that cease to flow in the dry season, and in the heat vanish from their channels.” (NIV)
Bildad only further heaps judgment upon the plight of Job as he asserts that not only asserts that Job must have sinned against God but that for God to allow or to cause Job’s children to suffer, they too must have offended God. Bildad only further espouses the retributive doctrine of God that Eliphaz began. In Job 8:4-6 he says, “When your children sinned against him, he gave them over to the penalty of their sin. But if you will look to God and plead with the Almighty, if you are pure and upright, even now he will rouse himself on your behalf and restore you to your rightful place.” (NIV)
The theology of Job’s friends is fundamentally retributive, seeing God as a Heavenly accountant who ensures that the scales of good deeds and evil deeds are appropriately rewarded or punished. Job’s friends, while obviously deeply devoted to their friend, offer to him an empty misguided understanding of God’s role in Job’s calamity.
The crux of their misunderstanding is the presupposition that God always rewards the righteous with good things and that he always punishes the wicked with evil things. A simple observation of the world around us disproves the theology of Job’s friends because it does not correspond with reality. In the real world it is very often the case that “no good deed goes unpunished!”
Consider the words of the prophet Jeremiah who was dismayed at the prosperous way of the wicked that he saw in his day. “You are always righteous, O LORD, when I bring a case before you. Yet I would speak with you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease?” (Jeremiah 12:1 NIV) In Job we see the righteous suffering and elsewhere in the Bible – as well as in our own experience – we see the wicked prospering in spite of their evil deeds.
The very fact of this seeming inconsistency, though, does not highlight an inconsistency with God’s love for us and our experience; it highlights the brokenness of man’s relationship with His creator. God is necessarily good because that is His nature; that is His character. This is what Job relates to us.
Resting In God’s Sovereignty, Job’s Theology. Job’s theology unfolds throughout the book which bears his name. His theology is tested not only by his trials but also by the theological confrontation of his friends. It is only in the face of opposing ideas that one’s view of God truly flourishes. Just as a stone is shaped by the jeweler’s knife, Job’s theology seems to have been refined through the conversation with his three friends.
In his book, “Disappointment with God,” Phillip Yancey says it this way, “After hearing all the alternatives, Job was driven to the conclusion I have suggested as the one-sentence summary of the entire book: life is unfair! It came to Job more as a reflex reaction than a philosophy of life, and that it how it strikes anyone who suffers. “Why me?” we ask. “What have I done?” The point that Elihu makes and that Yancey echoes in his contemporary work is that life is unfair, but there is a distinction to be made between the character of this life and the nature of God.
There is not man or woman yet born who has escaped the effects of the fallen condition of the world; the world which bears the marks of man choosing his own way over the way of God. Our hearts are moved toward the question, as was Job’s, is that the end of the story?
When the storms of this life rage and we feel like a leaf blown about by the wind, it is not systematic theologies that our souls crave, it is a connection to our ultimate hope. If this life is unfair, then surely in the end God will restore justice and turn not His eye from my affliction!
In the closing section of the book, Job comes into a new and more complete picture of his role in relation to the enormity of God. As the Lord begins to speak to Job, he it overwhelmed by the gravity of such a conversation and humbled by God’s voice. “Indeed, I am completely unworthy – how could I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth to silence myself.” (Job 40:4 NET) It is now that Job realizes the unfathomable nature of the God who created Him and the immense expanse which separates the knowledge and wisdom of God and that of man. “Job is awed by God’s majesty and puts his hand over his mouth, vowing to content with God no more.”
Indeed, who is worthy to question the Almighty? What jar of clay is able to debate with the master potter who created it? Job comes fully into the realization that ours is not to question God but to trust Him as He has commanded us, and to rest in the provision of His sovereign grace.
“Job is satisfied. His vision of God has been expanded beyond all previous bounds. He has a new appreciation of the scope and harmony of God’s world, of which he is but a small part. But this discovery does not make him feel insignificant. Just by looking at ordinary things, he realizes that he cannon even begin to imagine what it must be like to be God. The world is beautiful and terrifying, and in it all God is everywhere, seen to be powerful and wise, and more mysterious when he is known that when he is but dimly discerned. The Lord has spoken to Job. That fact alone is marvelous beyond all wonder. Job has grown in wisdom.”
In life we learn from Job that our ultimate response to suffering is to learn to rest completely in the sovereignty of God. He who has created the universe has also made Himself available to us directly. He is our comforter and our provider, our hope and our resting place. God’s character is that of justice and love, mercy and redemption. If anyone doubts the beauty of God’s live in light of the suffering of this world, one need look no further than to Jesus Christ to learn of God’s loving nature. In this conversation we must separate the pain of this life with the character of God; as did Elihu and ultimately Job as well.
Consider the following words of Jesus during His earthly ministry. “If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” (John 14:7 NIV) Jesus is saying that if we desire to understand the nature and character of God, we need look further than His ultimate expression; the word of God made flesh, Jesus Christ!
Time again in the New Testament we see Jesus having compassion upon those who were in pain, those who were suffering, or those who had nowhere to turn for help. God’s compassion is our ultimate source of hope in the trouble, pain and suffering of this life. We are not alone in our pain! God has not abandoned us!
This is what Job discovered during his discourse with his friends. This is what we must discover if we are to find true and lasting hope as we endure the many trials which befall both the wicked and the righteous in this life. God does reward the righteous; he rewards them with His presence. He may not remove the pain but He will always be present with us in it. The message of the modern “faith healing” preacher who asserts that if you have “enough” faith God will heal will is false and it is completely at war with the more substantive message of the book of Job, because faith is not a commodity to be used for barter with God, it is a tool used to engage the presence of God in our lives.
The biblical message is that our ultimate hope is in the Lord for sustenance and solace in the trials of this life as well as for a place of eternal rest in the life to come. C.S. Lewis wrote, “Scripture and tradition habitually put the joys of heaven into the scale against the sufferings of earth, and no solution of the problem of pain which does not do so can be called a Christian one.”
All that we have experienced and will experience in this life are but shadows of the eternal life to come. As Job discovered, the ultimate aim of this life is to learn dependence upon our creator. While so many believers and unbelievers alike live with the impression that this life is primarily about them and that God is primarily concerned with their pleasure, the theology of Job compels us away from a view of God as a “cosmic genie” who grants our every wish, and toward the much higher view of God as creator, sustainer, and Lord. The ultimate objective of this life is to begin to do what believers will do for eternity; rest in the sovereign provision of God’s grace!
Conclusion
In this life trials, pain, and suffering are unavoidable. Our frail human bodies give way to sickness and diseases of every kind. Our lives are cut short by tragedy or the simple reality of aging. If suffering and tragedy do not strike us directly, they will affect someone we love.
The consequences of human rebellion, sin, are easily observable all around us. People hurt us, friends disappoint us, yet God remains the same! “Then Job replied to the LORD: “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” (Job 42:1-3 NIV)
If you are suffering today, it is not because God has afflicted you; God is available for you. If you are in pain today, it is not because you didn’t have the right kind of faith or enough of it; God according to the simplest of faith, that which is like mustard seed, as Jesus says, is available to comfort you.
One day, the Bible tells us, He will wipe away every tear; until that day comes, He is in our pain with us, comforting us, carrying us through. God’s ultimate aim in the universe is to express His glorious nature and God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Amen.
