Job's Great Test (Aug. 19, 2007)

JOB: M1 Job’s Great Test:

August 19, 2007

A number of people summer sabbatical… thank you Bruce Smith and Mardi

Doug Banister, a pastor I trained with and who now serves in Knoxville, Tennessee, describes how a mother of a 14-year-old girl named Kristy handed him a folded sheet of notebook paper (use prop) when he saw her that Saturday outside her daughter’s room in the hallway of the children’s hospital.

Doug said he slowly unfolded the paper and on it he saw that Kristy had written a question, “Why does God let 14-year-old girls die from leukemia?”

Kristy was losing a 2-year battle with cancer. She was dying and she knew it. Several hours after Doug had read this note, Kristy slipped into a coma. Many of Kristy’s friends and family had prayed earnestly that Kristy would be healed. Kristy’s elders had anointed her with oil and prayed for her. And then Kristy died.

A week later, Doug was chopping wood in his back yard when the phone rang. It was the children’s hospital. Doug was asked, “Can you please come down immediately?” A routine ultrasound had identified a 3-pound cancerous tumor on Doug’s daughter’s kidney.

The doctor, Dr. Pace, who was also Kristy’s doctor, would see them in an hour. The same people who Kristy also came around Doug and his daughter and prayed earnestly for her. She was also anointed with oil and prayed over. This time God answered, “yes,” and Bryden was healed. Today she is free of cancer.

And we ask the question, “Why? Why was Kristy not healed and why was Bryden healed?” Some people might say that Doug and those prayed who for Bryden had more faith than those who prayed for Kristy. But Doug would say without any exaggeration, “no”, he had no more faith than Kristy’s dad and mom, and many of the same people who had prayed for Kristy had prayed for his daughter.

We ask the question, “Why one, and not the other?”

One of my close friends, Elizabeth Archer Klein, loves to ride horses. One afternoon, a number of years ago when Elizabeth was off her horse and walking behind him, he kicked her in the head, fracturing her skull and causing her to become blind in her right eye... People gathered around Elizabeth. They prayed over her, and after that prayer within a 24-hour period sight came back in her blind eye. God miraculously healed her.

Last year, my friend Elizabeth was thrown off her horse and badly injured her back. I remember seeing her hobbling around. And while people prayed for her healing, she did not experience any kind of miraculous healing as before, though, in fact, her faith is considerably deeper and stronger than when she was kicked in the head by her horse.

Sometimes we ask, Why does God occasionally intervene with a miraculous healing, and at other times does not?”

“We ask, “Why does God allow suffering?”

Perhaps use words similar to Rabbi Harold Kushner’s best-selling book and ask, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” (We’re generally ok if bad things happen to bad people… if Conrad Black… committed crimes, if he was in fraud and in fact store millions from Hollinger shareholders, we’re ok if he’s punished for those crimes… but we have trouble, if bad things happen to good people.)

This morning and over the next two Sundays we are going to take a brief walk through the book of Job….

The book of Job describes a good person, a person of faith who suffered deeply. While the book of Job does not give us any kind of definitive answer to the question, “Why does God allow suffering?” it does give us a window that enables us to see suffering in a wider context….

(If you have your Bibles, please turn to Job, Chapter 1, just before Psalms.

Job is a book with 43 Chapters. We are not going to read all 43 chapters this morning, or over the next 2 Sundays. We will look at excerpts. As you are turning, let me give you a brief summary of these 2 chapters.)

As we see in Job 1:1-3:

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.

Job, in these opening verses of the book that bears his name, is described as a righteous person. In the context, “righteous” does not mean “self- righteous”; it simply means that he was a person with integrity. A person devoted to God. He was also a successful entrepreneur. He was wealthy—had 7000 sheep, 300 camels, 500 of teams oxen, 500 donkeys, a huge staff of servants. In the eyes of many in his days, these material blessings would have been a sign of God’s blessing in his life.

Job also had a wonderful family life. He was married and had 10 grown children, 7 sons and 3 daughters who loved to get together and have house parties for each other. Job was not only devoted to his relationship with God, but also to his family’s relationship with God. After his sons and daughters had a party, Job had a habit of making a sacrifice on their behalf, just in case they sinned.

Job had what appears to be “a perfect life”—a dream life, a blessed life.

Then Satan appears in the court of heaven and suggests to God that Job does not really love God—Job simply enjoys God’s blessing and therefore appears to love God.

Look at Verses 9 to 11, if you will:

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."

Satan is betting that if God allows Job to suffer, Job will no longer serve God (because is only interested in serving God because serving God serves Job’s self-interest).

God in effect takes up Satan’s bet and God allows Satan to touch all that Job has, but God does not allow Satan to actually hurt Job directly himself. Satan then causes disaster to befall Job. A messenger bursts in on Job and tells him that bandits have stolen his oxen and donkeys and killed the attending servants. While that first messenger is still speaking, a second messenger interrupts to announce that the fire of God, perhaps some kind of storm, has burst from the sky and destroyed his sheep and their shepherds. A third messenger rushes in before the second has finished and announces that a tribal rival has taken the camels and murdered the keeper of the camels. Finally, a fourth messenger appears with the most dreadful news of all—Job’s sons and daughters whom he loves were enjoying a meal at the elder brother’s home and they are now dead under a house blown down by a desert wind.

Four tragedies, one after the other, Job is completely devastated, but he stands up and tears his clothes in a sign of lament in his Middle Eastern culture and worships God.
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. [c] The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised."
Job recognizes that God is all-powerful and that God is just. Job recognizes that, in these terrible events, God has simply taken back what he freely gave Job in the first place. God owes Job nothing, so Job has no grounds to complain—and he does not.
If we knew that in 2 years all that we have: our partners, our families, our houses, our money would all be taken from us… most of us, myself included, would be in total despair or great anger… or both…
But, Job doesn’t react this way because he knows that the end of his life—all that he has received as gift, as a loan will be taken from him—it’s just being taken early…
Job praises God saying:
"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. [c] The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised."

Satan as we see in Job 2, however, remains unconvinced of Job’s faith in God:
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."
And God again lets Satan inflict Job with physical suffering, but does not allow him to take his life. And Satan inflicts loathsome sores on Job from the scalp to his toes. Throughout the book, these symptoms are described “itching and open sores, ulcers, maggots, sleeplessness, nightmares, depression, ailing vision, rotting teeth, weeping, erosion of the bones, blackening and falling off skin. ”
Bible scholar, David McKenna, believes that Job is suffering from elephantiasis. Job likely looked not unlike the creature in the book and film, Elephant Man. And like the Elephant Man, Job would not just suffer physical agony of the disease, but he would suffer the rejection of his friends.
The book of Job describes the intense suffering of this man…
It does not give us an easy answer to the question of “why do good people suffer.” But it does provide us with a window through which we can see suffering in a broader context.
As we read Job 1 and 2, we are told that Job is God’s exhibit, but Job is not aware of this.
Many people are unaware we too are watched by God and by angels.
David says in Psalm 139… Lord you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise. Your discern my going out and my lying down, you are familiar with all my ways…
The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 4:9 borrowing from an image of the procession of gladiators in the Roman coliseum, said,” We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels, as well as people.”
This past week, I was with someone who recently climbed the Grouse grind with his baby son on his shoulders…… and a friend of his saw him on the news. Apparently television camera’s were placed at the base of the mountain, he didn’t know he his son were being watched, but they were!
There are times when we are being watched by others, and we don’t know it. Whetehr we know it or not, like Job we are on exhibit before God.
Like Job, God sees us.
Perhaps we wonder as one person among 6 billion plus people on our planet—as an inhabitant of simply one planet in our galaxy which among billions of galaxies… we perhaps do our lives matter to the maker of all things…
But we see from the book of Job that God not only sees us, but that he longs for our love.
We see from the book of Job that God wants us love him freely, not just because of the gifts that he gives us or the benefits that we get from knowing God, but that he longs for us to love him freely…
Suffering set a stage for us to show we really do love God.
C.H. Spurgeon tells the story of a man who grew an enormous carrot in his garden. This man loved his king, so he presented the carrot to the king, saying, “This is the best carrot my garden will ever grow. Receive it as a token of my love.” Now the king discerned his heart of love and devotion and saw he wanted nothing in return. This moved the king, so he gave the gardener far more land than he currently had for his garden. So the man went home rejoicing.
Now a nobleman at court overheard this conversation and he thought to himself, “If that is the response the King… makes to such a small gift, what will he give in response to a great one?” So the next day he brought the king a fine horse, and said, “This is the best horse my stable will ever grow. Receive it as a token of my love.” Now the king discerned the nobleman’s heart and in response he just received the horse, and dismissed the giver. When the king saw the look of confusion on his face, he said, “The gardener’s carrot was a gift indeed out of love, but you are just trying to make a profit. He gave me the carrot, but you gave yourself the horse.”
What God wanted from Job—what he wants from us—is a love freely given.
One of the opportunities of suffering is that it gives an opportunity to demonstrate to God that we love him, not just because of the things that he gives us, but for God being God.
Suffering set a stage for us to show we really do love God.


Thomas Green in his books on the spiritual life, Drinking from a Dry Well and When the Well Runs Dry, says when a couple gets married, they say to each “for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse,” and in the back of their minds, they are hoping that they will not have to love each other through the “for worse.” But Thomas Green, a Jesuit priest, points out that the “for worse” is just as important than the “for better,” perhaps even more important, because of the context of the “for worse”: experiences of adversity and hardship in the marriage, financial downturns, one spouse becoming ill, gives the other spouse an opportunity to demonstrate that they truly love the person… not because of what they are getting, but just because…
That they are not just with the other person because of something they can get, but because they truly love the person.
Suffering set a stage for us to show we really do love God.
In 1839 Benjamin Disraeli married the extremely wealthy widow, Mrs. Wyndham Lewis. The marriage was a great success. On one occasion Disraeli remarked that he had married for money, and his wife replied, "Ah! but if you had to do it again, you would do it for love." We come to God because of something we want or need…
Suffering set a stage for us to show we really do love God.
How do we become people like that? How do we become people who will serve God not only when the sun is shining down on us, when our work life is going well, when we are experiencing financial prosperity, when our family life is going well, when we have rich relationships?
How will we become people like Job who are faithful to God when the road is marked by suffering: when we lose the things we cherish? When we lose a love one? A baby, a family member, perhaps a dear friend? How do we continue to love God when things are not going in our relationships, our work, our financial lives, when perhaps like Job’s wife, we are tempted to curse God and die?
The way we become like Job is by looking to the one to whom Job ultimately points—the person who was truly righteous…truly blameless before God…a person who had infinite wealth, but allowed all his wealth be taken away so that we might be wealthy. The person who on the cross was disunited from his family so that we might be united be united with his family, with God.
When we focus on Jesus Christ and recognize that, though he was rich, as Paul points out, he became poor for our sake--so that through his poverty we might become rich--when we realize that Jesus became estranged from his father so we might be united to God, when recognize how faithful God in Jesus Christ has been to us, we also can prove faithful to God…
In the novel Kahled Hosseni’s novel A Thousand Splendid Suns describes two Afghan women Mariam and Laila who are married to an abusive man named Rascheed. One night Rascheed takes off his belt, wraps the perforated end wrapped around his fist and starts to whip Laila the younger one with the brass buckle and then began to choke her…
Mariam the other wife risks her life by trying to save Laila, first by trying pulling Rascheed off… but when that doesn’t work and Rascheed is planning to kill both them that night… Mariam gets a shovel and hits Rascheed over the head with it and Rascheed dies.
Laila urgues Mariam to escape with her and her two children to edge of some remote village…where there will be trees and fields for the children to play in, a lake with trout, where they could raise sheep sand chicken but Miriam says… no… you’d I don’t want you running scared your whole life… a suspect… a fugitive… Mariam knows that if she turns herself in that the Taliban, they will execute her, but does so anyway… and she lays her life so that Laila and her children can be free… When does that, when is willing to die so that Laila and her children can be set free, you know she loves Laila and her children…
When one human being lays down their life to set another free, you know that person loves the other…
The Bible doesn’t give us a definitive answer to the question of why we suffering, but the Bible does show us that suffering is not the a sign that we are not loved… and we recognize that when we look into the face God in Jesus Christ.
Pray.