Worship From the Depths - Job 1-2 - November 11, 2012
We’ve all had bad days before - those days when nothing seems to go right no matter how hard we try. I’ve had some pretty bad days but I’m not sure that many of them come close to the experience of a man I will simply call Joe. Joe was having a decidely bad day. And as I relate his story to you, I’ll be reading Joe’s words as he wrote them on the Workmen’s Compensation Board’s accident reporting form. Joe writes:
“Dear Sir: I am writing in response to your request for additional information in Block #3 of the accident reporting form. I put "Poor Planning" as the cause of my accident. You asked for a more complete explanation and I trust the following details will be sufficient.
I am a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident, I was working alone on the roof of a new six-story building. When I completed my work, I found I had some bricks left over which, when weighed later, were found to weigh 240 lbs. Rather than carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to lower them in a barrel by using a pulley which was attached to the side of the building at the sixth floor.
Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out, and loaded the bricks into it. Then I went down and untied the rope, holding it tightly to insure a slow descent of the 240 lbs of bricks. You will note on the accident reporting form that my weight is 135 lbs.
Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the building.
In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel which was now proceeding downward at an equally impressive speed. This explains the fractured skull, minor abrasions, and the broken collarbone, as listed in Section 3, accident reporting form.
Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley which I mentioned in Paragraph 2 of this correspondence. Fortunately, by this time I had regained my presence of mind and was able to hold tightly to the rope, in spite of the excruciating pain I was now beginning to experience.
At approximately the same time however, the barrel of bricks hit the ground and the bottom fell out of the barrel. Now devoid of the weight of the bricks, the barrel weighed approximately 50 lbs.
I refer you again to my weight. As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent down the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles, broken tooth and severe lacerations of my legs and lower body.
Here my luck began to change slightly. The encounter with the barrel seemed to slow me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell into the pile of bricks and fortunately only three vertebrae were cracked.
I am sorry to report, however, as I lay there on the pile of bricks, in pain, unable to move and watching the empty barrel six stories above me, I again lost my composure and presence of mind and let go of the rope.” (Source Unknown)
Some of my days don’t seem so bad in light of Joe’s experience! Now I doubt that those events actually occurred but certainly none of us are strangers to bad days. But an occasional bad day is one thing – they come and go. But what if they don’t? What if that one bad day turns into a week and a week into a month? What if that month turns into a year, a year into a decade and a decade into a lifetime? How do you respond when the bad days just don’t stop coming? What if that “one more test” that the doctor wanted to run comes back with bad news which will affect the rest of your life? What if those tough times in marriage end in shattered dreams and broken trust? What if you lose a child? My mom lost a set of twins the year after I was born – she still struggles with that today. What if your home or your farm is foreclosed on because you can’t make the payments? What if the stock market crashes and all of your investments are worthless? What if your crops are ravaged by the weather so extensively that you can’t salvage a thing and you don’t have insurance? What if your cattle were to come down with mad cow disease and all had to be destroyed? How do you respond?
When I went through some of the worst moments of my life I didn’t yet have a relationship with Jesus but I came to know him very shortly thereafter and in him I found hope. But it is one thing to have your life disintegrating apart from God, and then finding hope in him, but what if you’re already committed to God and your life begins to fall apart? How do you respond?
And we need to ask that question because there are committed Christians whose lives are full of hardship and disappointment, struggle and fear, turmoil and dread. Perhaps some of you here this morning can relate in your own way. You have your own struggles and fears and illnesses that you have lived with for years and perhaps you’ve never been able to find a satisfactory answer as to why these things have happened to you. And I can’t give you those answers. What I can do though is share with you the story of a man who would understand your struggles all too well. If you could sit awhile and talk with him you would feel a camaraderie with him based on shared heartache, fear, and disappointment.
His name is Job and his story is found in the book which bears his name. His story is really quite remarkable. The opening chapter of that book tells us that Job was “a truly good person who respected God and refused to do evil.” He was living a good and godly life. He didn’t join in the sins of his day and when he found he had sinned he would always offer the appropriate sacrifices. He was blessed with ten children and great wealth and some might have looked at his life and said that for his faithfulness God had truly blessed him for he was the richest man in the East. But while he was one of the few who was able to live the good life righteously his world was about to crumble.
You see Job’s wealth was in his livestock. He owned 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 pair of oxen, 500 donkeys, and a large number of servants. And then one day, completely unexpectedly, a servant runs up to Job and tells him that thieves have made off with all of his oxen and donkeys and killed all of his servants. Job is still reeling from that blow when another servant rushes up to him and says that “God had sent down a fire that killed [his] sheep and his other servants.” One might think that the day can’t get much worse but before the second servant is even finished speaking another one stumbles in crying out that the Chaldeans have attacked and stolen all of Job’s camels and slaughtering the servants who watched over them. In just a few moments of time all of Job’s wealth has been lost. He has gone from the wealthiest man in the East to among the poorest. But the worst is still to come. Even as the third servant is relating his tale of woe another messenger arrives in Job’s presence. His words bring Job to his knees.
“Master,” he says, “I bring news and it’s bad - very bad. All of your children were eating together at your oldest son’s house when a windstorm from the dessert blew the house down and all of them were killed. I alone escaped to tell you this.” Fortunately not many of us will ever have to experience a day like that. But against all odds Job’s fortunes are about to get even worse. All he has left at this point is his own house, four servants, and his wife. How much worse can it get? He has lost most of his family, all of his wealth, but he still has his health. And now, just a few days after that one horrible day which will live with him forever, even that will be taken from him. Scripture tells us that painful sores suddenly break out on Job’s body from head to toe. As we read through the book of Job we get an even more detailed description of his suffering. His disease brings with it horrible boils which get infested with worms, the sores are painful, itchy, they disfigure him so much his friends have difficulty recognizing him, his skin blackens and begins to peel, he becomes depressed, loses his appetite and is made weak. Put yourself in Job’s shoes for a moment. How would you respond? Would you grow angry and curse God? That’s what Job’s wife tells him to do. Do you pull away from God because of the calamity that has befallen you? Do you renounce your faith because a God who allows these things to happen to you is not worth following? People have done all three of those things and often for far less reason than Job had. How would you respond? Perhaps we can’t truly answer that question without having been there. But if you will open your Bibles with me let’s take a look at how Job responds.
In Job 1:20 Job has just been told that he has lost all of his possessions and all of his children and Scripture tells us that when Job heard this, “he tore his clothes and shaved his head because of his great sorrow. He knelt on the ground, then worshipped God and said: ‘We bring nothing at birth; we take nothing with us at death. The Lord alone gives and takes. Praise the name of the Lord!’ In spite of everything, Job did not sin or accuse God of doing wrong.” And then jump with me over to the 2nd chapter, verse 8. At this point the sores have broken out all over Job’s body. Then Scripture tells us that Job “sat on the ash-heap to show his sorrow. And while he was scraping his sores with a broken piece of pottery, his wife asked, ‘Why do you still trust God? Why don’t you curse him and die?’ Job replied, ‘Don’t talk like a fool! If we accept blessings from God, we must accept trouble as well.’ In all that happened, Job never once said anything against God.”
Quiet astounding isn’t it? The man’s life crumbles around him and he is still faithful to God. How is that possible? And keep in mind that Job never knows the reasons why he has been so afflicted. God never tells him. We have the benefit of Scripture to look back on and we know that it is Satan who was afflicting Job and trying to make him turn his back on God. 1 Peter 5:8 tells us that Satan prowls the world looking for those he can devour - he seeks to turn people away from God. That’s what he was seeking to do in Job’s case and he would do no less with us.
When we are suffering we want to know the reasons why because we hope that in the reason will be found something to satisfy us to justify our suffering and make it worth while. But Job never knew. You may never know. So why was Job able to adore God in the midst of adversity and to worship him in the midst of his woes? How is that possible?
It’s possible because Job recognizes that blessings aren’t necessarily a sign of God’s favor nor troubles a sign of God’s displeasure. At the end of the second chapter of Job’s story he is visited by three of his dearest friends and they’ve come to comfort and help him if they can. But they’re going to see the calamity which has befallen their friend and they are going to accuse him of sinning against God because why else would God bring so much trouble on Job? They cannot comprehend that Job may be innocent of any sin because they have seen the troubles which have come upon him. And so they urge him to confess and repent and they say that God will surely restore him and make him prosperous once again. But Job protests that he is innocent, that he has not sinned, and he is right. None of what is befalling him is the result of any sin he has not confessed and repented of. Job knows that blessings aren’t necessarily a sign of God’s favor nor trouble a sign of his displeasure because he knows that he is innocent of any sin in this case and yet troubles have still befallen him. And so he says, “We bring nothing at birth; we take nothing with us at death. The Lord alone gives and takes. Praise the name of the Lord!” Scripture tells us that God causes the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. And we don’t have to look very far to find examples of those who are living apart from God and who seem to be “blessed” with wealth and success. And we can think of those committed Christians who suffer deeply and yet serve God with their lives. But Job was able to worship God because he knew that despite his troubles God was still God. God had not changed. God had given to Job and then God had taken away. We struggle today with “I” trouble. Not this type of eye [point to eye] but “I” as in “me” and “you.” Our world revolves around ourselves. We say “My house, my car, my money, my success,” and yet if we believe Scripture all that we have has merely been entrusted to us for a time by God himself. Perhaps we would hold on to our possessions less tightly, and be more willing to give and share, if we believed that what we have is merely a gift given by God. We are called stewards in Scripture for a reason for it is to stewards to whom the master gives charge of his possessions, to oversee their care and use. It’s a challenging way to think and yet if God chooses to retake what he has also given who are we to argue? I think that is the message that Job is trying to convey when he says “The Lord alone gives and takes.” And because he recognizes that, he is able to “Praise the name of the Lord!” for he recognizes that God’s hand is at work in his life even if he can’t understand the Lord’s purposes.
And that leads to the second reason that Job is able to worship God. Let me ask you, “Why do you love God?” See, It is also possible for Job to worship God because he recognizes that our love for God is based on who God is rather than what he does. What is your love for God based on? Is it because of what he did for you on the cross? Is it because of the good things you have experienced in life because of him? Is it because he has made you prosper as he did Job? Perhaps this is what your love for God is based on but what happens if it is all taken from you as it was in Job’s case? Do you then hate God? Too many people love God for what they think they can get out of it. They think that in following God their troubles will be resolved, their wealth will increase, and they will see good things happening to them because they are following God. But God is not a talisman or a lucky charm. If our love for God is dependant on what he does for us in return than we are no different than a prostitute who sells her love for a few dollars. It’s not really love if we need to get something in return. And that’s part of the accusation Satan makes before God in the 1st chapter of the book of Job. He says God is only loved because of what he does for people. He says, “Job only loves you because of what you have done for him - if you take it all away his love for you will die and he will curse you to your face.” But God knows better, he knows that Job’s love for him is based on who he is rather than what he has done for Job and so he permits Satan to take it all away so that through Job’s trials God will be glorified for Job reminds us that God is worthy of worship even if we have nothing at all to show for it. God is worthy of worship simply because he is God.
And that ties into the third reason that it was possible for Job to worship God in the midst of his desolation. Let me ask you, “What place do you give God in your life?” You see, Job was able to worship God because he recognized God’s sovereignty. Scripture tells us that Job was a “truly good person, who respected God and refused to do evil.” God was first in Job’s life - nothing came before God. He dedicated his life to obedience and worship of God. He did not allow himself to be swayed by the ways of the society in which he lived. He understood, in the words of Scripture, that just “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so [too] are [God’s] ways higher than [our] ways and [his] thoughts higher than [our] thoughts.” While Job would have preferred that these tragedies not befall him - once they had - he knew he must accept it as being according to God’s will because God is sovereign. And perhaps that’s the biggest challenge to us today - to, as in Job’s response to his wife, to, acknowledge God’s sovereignty and accept from him “blessings as well as troubles.” For God is sovereign, even Satan answers to him, in fact in the 1st chapter of Job we are told that God is like a wall protecting Job and Satan is only able to break through that wall because God permits it. If we are to accept blessings from God we need to be willing to accept the troubles which come our way as well because, for whatever reason God has permitted them to happen. And that’s challenging today when people point to the troubles in their own lives and in the world and say “surely this is proof that there is not a God.” Yet often times we bring those troubles on ourselves by the choices we make in our own lives, by the sin we commit.
Incidentally have you ever wondered why Satan spared Job’s wife? Why leave her when he had lost everything else? It certainly wasn’t out of pity or compassion for Job was it? I think it was because Satan knew that in remaining faithful to God Job’s wife would be of no help to him. He hoped she would hinder him and help turn him away from God. And she tries to for she encourages him to curse God and die. Help like that I can do without.
But by acknowledging God’s sovereignty we are confessing that he alone is truly good, truly righteous, and truly just. No wonder Job’s immediate reaction in the face of calamity is to drop to his knees in worship for he recognizes the hand of the sovereign God moving in his life. In the midst of your troubles do you recognize God at work in your own life? We like to find meaning in the things that happen to us, we want to understand. Yet, while God never did reveal his reasons to Job they were there nonetheless. And, Satan’s challenge to God that God was only worthy of love because of his blessings was proved false through Job’s response in the midst of tragedy and, through all the trials that he faced, Job was brought even closer to God.
So we can take heart this morning because it is possible to worship God even in the midst of despair, when our world is crumbling all around us. But to do that we might need to change the way we think. Our troubles are not necessarily a sign of God’s displeasure nor should our love for God be based solely on what he has done for us. God is sovereign and if we recognize that and understand it we are freed to worship the God who created us even in the midst of our most trying moments.
Let’s Pray.
