August 12, 2018 Job: Be Careful What You Wish For

Several years ago, an ABC News story featured the work of Julie Exline, a psychologist at Case Western Reserve University.  Her area of expertise is a bit unusual, as she studies anger, and, specifically, anger at God.  Exline’s work discovered that a good many people are mad at God.  They are mad because they believe he allows bad things to happen, such as babies starving in third world countries.  She says that anywhere between one third and two thirds of people we've surveyed in the United States admit they sometimes feel angry at God in response to some current thing they are suffering with, such as a cancer diagnosis.  She goes on to describe anger toward God as one of several spiritual struggles that humans deal with throughout their lives. And spiritual struggles like anger towards God are like a fork in the road for people. It can be a turning point.  You have a choice. Are you going to disengage from the relationship, deciding that a loving God couldn't do this, and stop believing in Him? Others might suppress their anger and sweep it under the rug. And still others could work things out in their relationship, with another person or with God.

(http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/angry-god-thirds-americans-blame-god-problems-survey/story?id=12540557)

This morning we conclude our series of messages on the book of Job.  I don’t think it’s been an easy study, going through Job’s story.  There aren’t a lot of encouraging passages in the book and it’s unnerving to read the anguished words of Job.  Once Job loses everything he has, he keeps pleading for an audience with God.  He wants to plead his case.  Job finally gets his opportunity, and let’s read part of God’s response.

Job 38:1-12; 40:1-5 –

1 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

2 “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?

3 Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.

4 Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?  Tell me, if you understand.

5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?

6 On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—

7 while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?

8 Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb,

9 when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness,

10 when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place,

11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’?

12 Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?”

1 The Lord said to Job:

2 “Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?  Let him who accuses God answer him!”

3 Then Job answered the Lord:

4 “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth.

5 I spoke once, but I have no answer—twice, but I will say no more.”

What do you make of God’s response to Job?  On the surface, it doesn’t sound very comforting, does it?  It comes across as though God is scolding Job, doesn’t it?  Poor Job.  We really have to feel for the guy.  His life was going extremely well, so well that he was undoubtedly the envy of all, and then it fell totally apart.  His friends come to see him, which probably encouraged him when they arrived, but it turned out they weren’t any help, because they didn’t come to comfort Job, encourage Job, or to offer their help; instead, they came to criticize and condemn Job and to tell him his suffering was his fault, claiming that no one suffers unless they have done something to deserve it.  Could things have been any worse for Job?  Unfortunately, yes.  Job expressed his wish for an audience with God, but when he gets that opportunity it doesn’t turn out quite like he had hoped.  Job believed he had a legitimate complaint about what had happened to him and believed God needs to hear him express that complaint.  But when God does speak with him, Job is quite humbled by the response, and says, basically, I’m going to keep quiet.  I’ve not opening my mouth again.

I think it’s true that most people have pondered the question of why God seems to allow some very difficult things to happen in our world.  What I find very interesting about the story of Job is that his primary interest is not in understanding the larger question of suffering; it doesn’t seem that he is all that interested even in an answer to his own suffering.  Job’s greatest interest is in gaining an audience with God in order to plead his case that he believes he has been mistreated.  Job lived a righteous life and believed such a life should have brought him blessing and not suffering.  It wasn’t so much that Job wanted an answer for suffering in general, but an answer to what he thought was the unjust suffering he faced in his life.

This is one of the difficulties we face in suffering – its perceived unfairness.  But what the story of Job teaches us, I think, is that there is no guarantee against unfair and unjust suffering.  In fact, Jesus reminds us that God causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45).  What the book of Job brings to our attention, then, is the question of how we understand God.  So as we complete our study of Job this morning let us consider briefly three things about the nature of God that we learn from Job’s story.

1.  There is a good deal of mystery to God.

St. Augustine said we are talking about God. What wonder is it that you do not understand? If you do understand, then it is not God.  I don’t know that I would go so far as to say we can’t understand anything about God, but I think Augustine had a point.  There are times, I believe, when we are far too confident in some of our assertions about God.  There are certainly things we can know about God, but the answer God gives to Job clearly teaches us that we don’t have God figured out to the extent we think we do.

God very pointedly asks Job “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?  Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions?  Surely you know!  Who stretched a measuring line across it? (38:2-5). We do not have the capacity to understand the full nature of God.  When we consider the eternal God who created the infinite universe in which we live, how could we understand the fullness of who God is?  I think we can understand enough about God, but there is much that is so far beyond our comprehension. Now, I’m going to offer what may be the worst sermon illustration ever, at least according to my family it is, but I’ll use it anyway.  Our family has three cats.  One of the cats – Midnight – has been with us for 18 or more years.  The other two – Alex and Campbell – we rescued 7 or 8 years ago when they were abandoned in the church parking lot.  None of the three like our vacuum cleaner.  When the vacuum cleaner is turned on they scatter, running as though it is some terrible machine that is coming for them.  I could pick the cats up, one by one, and hold them, stroke them, and tell them that the vacuum cleaner is not going to hurt them.  I could tell them it will not catch them by their tails and, in fact, it is not even interested in them.  I could do all that, but the result will be the same – when the vacuum comes on they will still run for the hills and go into hiding.  They will do this because they cannot understand language and they cannot understand something that is as simple and as basic to us as a vacuum cleaner.  They simply do not have the intellectual capacity to understand.  As advanced as we humans are, there is still a limit to our intellectual capacity, in terms of what we can and cannot understand.  Even if God were to descend from heaven in all of his glory and explain to us about suffering and the mysteries of the universe, there is still much we would not understand, because our minds are limited in what we can comprehend.  God basically says this in the book of Exodus, where we read the story of Moses.  When Moses flees Egypt and settles in the land of Midian, God eventually speaks to Moses from the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-14).  One of the fascinating elements of the story is the desire of Moses to know the name of God.  Suppose I go to the Israelites, he says, and say to them, “the God of your fathers has sent me to you,” and they ask me, “what is his name?”  Then what shall I tell them?  God will not give a name to Moses, instead simply answering I am who I am.  This is what you are to say to the Israelites:  I am has sent me to you (Exodus 3:13-14).  I think that answer tells us several things about God, one being that he has a sense of humor.  Imagine Moses, before the people, and the people ask, who is this God that sent you Moses?  And Moses answers I am.  You are, ask the people?  No, replies Moses, I am.  It’s almost like Abbott and Costello’s whose on first routine.  But it also tells us that God is saying to Moses, and also to Job, that you are not going to get every answer about me that you desire.  You are going to have to live with some measure of mystery.  I know you want all the answers, but not all the answers will be forthcoming.  That is not a comforting thought, but it is the reality.

I think we have to accept the fact that just because we live in a knowledge/information-based, scientific age, there are some things we just can’t know, and in spite of our advanced intellectual capacities, we can neither know or understand all the ways of God.  I’ve decided I’m okay with that.  I say I don’t know a lot more than I used to when people ask me questions.  I’ve decided to not presume I will have every answer to every question in this life.  If you can’t live with some mystery about God you will find faith to be very difficult.

2.  God is not a transactional God.

Clearly, Job misunderstood God, in terms of what he expected God to do for him.  Job saw his relationship with God as being transactional, that is, Job did something for God – he lived a righteous life – so God should do something for him, such as give him a life of blessing, comfort, and ease.  But God doesn’t work on a transactional basis; there is no quid pro quo (Latin for something for something).  This is part of the answer that Job receives when he finally is given his audience with God, where God clearly reminds Job that he is now owed anything.  It’s hard for us to escape transactional thinking, as we have a tendency to believe that God is busy doling out rewards and punishments based on what we have done or have not done.  The book of Job “flattens out” humanity; that is, the ground on which we all stand is level in terms of suffering.  You might be a better person than me (and granted, being better than me is a fairly low bar) but does that get you further with God?  No.  We’re the same – we call that grace.  We are also the same when it comes to suffering.  No one is immune; not the rich, the poor, the powerful, or the weak.  Everyone suffers and no one is immune to its effects.

The language of church – not the language of faith, but of church, and they are sometimes different – can be revealing.  In church we sometimes use phrases such as being fed, being ministered to, getting something out of the worship service or getting something out of church.  That is church language; it is not language of the kingdom.  Such language reveals the expectation and the assumption that God is our servant rather than the truth that we are God’s servants.  We are not the objects of worship, although the temptation always exists to make ourselves the objects of worship.  We are not called here for what we can receive but are called here for what we can give.  The reality is that we often make ourselves the object of worship, such as when we ask questions such as what am I getting out of this, rather than what am I offering to God because of this worship?  We are not called here for how we can be ministered to but are called here in order to learn about how we can minister to and serve others.  When God is the object of our worship, and not ourselves, when we are not here to receive but to give, when we are here not to be ministered to but to minister, we will actually receive those things in abundance, because it is in giving that we receive. 

3.  Suffering teaches us to be like God.

The central tenet of Christianity is the Incarnation – the belief that God became a man in the person of Jesus.  As the gospel of John reminds us, the word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14).  We are to model the Incarnation in the lives of others by entering into their suffering and in doing so we demonstrate the type of love that God demonstrates to us.  Our suffering ought to make us more compassionate and tenderhearted to others when they suffer.  We are to be like God in that we are to emulate the Incarnation.  That God became a person in Jesus is the central truth of the Bible.  God became like us in order to demonstrate in a powerful way his love for us, and asks us to be like him in becoming present in the lives of others.

And we should also, I think, be very careful about the claim that God is not doing enough about the suffering in the world.  That is the claim we continually hear from skeptics, that if God exists, he ought to be doing more about the suffering in the world.  I believe only the person who is doing everything – and I mean everything – they can do about suffering has the right to ask that question of God.  I don’t ask God why don’t you do more about the suffering in the world?  I believe it’s more appropriate to ask that question of myself – Dave, why aren’t you doing more about the suffering in the world?  I don’t generally ask it of others, because I don’t know what they are doing to ease the suffering of others, but I will admit that when someone who is living in a 20,000 square foot house, has a garage full of luxury cars, stacks of money in the bank, lives a lavish lifestyle and claims God ought to be doing more, well, I think they should look in a mirror and ask why they aren’t doing more.  Considering the suffering in the world, I do know this – God is not the author of warfare, he is not the author of hunger, God is not the author of hatred, or of any of the other ills in the world.  God is the author of the solution to those problems – love – and is the one who asks us to practice that love in order to ease the sufferings of our neighbors.

As difficult as I find the book of Job to read, I find a great deal of hope there.  As difficult as life can be, there is always hope.  I received an email from an organization some time ago.  As I was reading it, and looking at a couple of the pictures in it, a theological message jumped out of it to me.  The two pictures come from Patagonia National Park in the nation of Chile.  A wildfire erupted and swept through 7,400 acres of land.  The first picture is one taken before the fire.  It is a beautiful place.  The second picture is taken after the fire, and you can easily see the devastation.  What’s fascinating about the second picture is the new, green growth in the front center.  It is a single bit of green in the midst of the charred landscape.  I think that picture is very representative of Job’s life, and sometimes of your life, or mine.  There’s a lot of bleakness and loss, but there is still life.  There is always life.  Always.  This is the great gift and hope of God – life.  And that is the message of the book of Job, I believe.  There is always life.  Where God is, there is life. 

I heard Erwin McManus speak recently (Erwin is the founding pastor of Mosaic Church in Los Angeles), and I think it might have been the most powerful and moving sermon I have ever heard, and I’ve heard a lot of sermons.  Two things he said really stuck with me, and they won’t sound nearly as powerful when I say them, as they will be separated from the context of his message, but I believe they are great words to hear.  He said that God does not give us a life without pain, but he gives us a way through the pain.  He went on to say that your faith doesn’t make your life easier; it makes you stronger.  I really love those words.

I want to leave you with this to think about – how is God going to get you through your pain?  We are all like Job to some extent.  We all have pain, but here is how God will get you through that pain – God has given you faith and it has made you strong!  Be strong!  Be faithful!  And know, always, that God is faithful to you!

August 5, 2018 Job: Passing the Test of Faith

My mom and dad never said so, but I suspect they believed something about my siblings and me.  Actually, there were times when they probably believed a lot of things about my siblings and me, and not all of them positive!  But one of the things I imagine they believed about us was the difference between our experiences as children and theirs, specifically, that we had it rather easy, and I wonder if they worried that we might not be prepared for the struggles of life because we did not suffer difficulties.  I did not suffer want as a child.  I did not suffer loss.  I did not suffer hardship to any great degree, but my parents did.  My dad was nine years old when his father passed away, and that was difficult enough but was made more difficult when his father’s family tried to take him and brother and sister away from their mother.  My mom, as I’ve told you before, was adopted as an infant by her aunt, who was a widow already struggling to raise eight children on her own.  My parents faced a lot of struggle as they grew up, and I believe their struggles made them stronger emotionally, spiritually, and in many other ways.  I believe their experiences, and those of their generation, provided lessons that enabled them to manage the difficulties in life that come their way, and I worry that my generation – and succeeding generations – often find ourselves ill-equipped for the difficulties because our lives were (on the whole) relatively easy.

As we continue our series of messages from the book of Job, which we will conclude next week, I have noted that Job’s story is greatly lacking in cheerful content.  There are many other books of the Bible that make plain the struggles of life, but they have upbeat passages that balance out the plain talk about life’s difficulties.  The book of Philippians, written by Paul as he awaited execution, has a tone of great joy in spite of the difficult circumstances in which he wrote.  The psalms have some very difficult to read passages, such as 22:1, where David cries out my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  (Job could have also said those words, but, interestingly, he did not).  The psalms have, however, many beautiful and upbeat passages that outnumber the difficult ones.  The book of Job is a relentless drumbeat of his difficulties, and it is tough and difficult to read because it reminds us that life is so often tough and difficult, and we cannot be in denial of that fact. 

Job asks a lot of questions, and as he did so he also spent a good deal of time defending himself against the accusations of his friends.  As he did so, it is obvious that Job was in great despair, and he certainly must have felt like giving up at some point, even on life itself.  But, interestingly, Job never questioned his faith, or the idea of faith.  No matter how painful his loss, no matter how deep his grief, no matter how alone he felt, Job held to his faith, revealing that faith is indeed one of the great resources that helps us face our difficulties.

So let’s read our Scripture text for this morning, a passage where we hear the pain and struggle of Job, a passage where he speaks to his three friends out of his despair and out of the hurt of their accusations, but ends with Job making an amazing declaration.

Job 13:1-15 –

1 My eyes have seen all this, my ears have heard and understood it.

2 What you know, I also know; I am not inferior to you.

3 But I desire to speak to the Almighty and to argue my case with God.

4 You, however, smear me with lies; you are worthless physicians, all of you!

5 If only you would be altogether silent!  For you, that would be wisdom.

6 Hear now my argument; listen to the pleas of my lips.

7 Will you speak wickedly on God’s behalf?  Will you speak deceitfully for him?

8 Will you show him partiality?  Will you argue the case for God?

9 Would it turn out well if he examined you?  Could you deceive him as you might deceive a mortal?

10 He would surely call you to account if you secretly showed partiality.

11 Would not his splendor terrify you?  Would not the dread of him fall on you?

12 Your maxims are proverbs of ashes; your defenses are defenses of clay.

13 “Keep silent and let me speak; then let come to me what may.

14 Why do I put myself in jeopardy and take my life in my hands?

15 Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.  I will surely defend my ways to his face.

Isn’t that an amazing declaration Job makes at the end – Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.  Allow me, this morning, to ask a few questions, the first of which is –

What Will We Do With Our Suffering?

I don’t know where I first heard the story, but a young lady came home from school one day very upset.  She had done poorly on a test and had an argument with a friend.  Across her test she had written the words this is the worst day of my life and slammed it down on the kitchen table.  Her mother picked up the paper and wrote underneath her daughter’s words, I hope and pray this is the worst day of your life.  She then had it framed, wrapped it up, and presented it to her daughter.  Not to minimize what any young person experiences, but if those kinds of disappointments constitute the biggest problems we face in life, it would be a very blessed life.  I guess it would be a blessed life, but perhaps we are not blessed when we escape suffering, because suffering is one of life’s greatest classrooms and those sufferings teach us some of life’s most important lessons.  Our sufferings can teach us compassion and can build within us a strength of faith that might come to us in no other way. 

For some, however, the suffering becomes unimaginable.  Eli Weisel is the author of the book Darkness, which is his account of surviving the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald.  The title of Darkness symbolizes his belief that he lived in a world without God’s presence, and also of his belief that God does not exist.  Along with members of his family, his faith died in the concentration camps.  I have not read all of his book, Darkness, but I have read some of it, and it is incredibly difficult to read, so much so that of the few passages I considered sharing I decided not to do so.  The suffering he and so many others experienced can keep one up at night wondering how people can be so cruel to one another.  It can also make one wonder, would my faith survive such an experience?  Is there a limit to what my faith could endure?  Suffering, I said at the beginning of this series of messages, does one of two things in relation to faith – it strengthens faith, or it weakens faith.  More than one person has abandoned faith when experiencing suffering, while many others have found their faith strengthened through suffering.  That we will suffer is an unavoidable truth of life.  What we do with that suffering, however, is up to us.

There are some people who truly earn the right to speak their mind, and Job earned that right.  Job, as one who lost everything dear to him in life, had a right to speak his mind.  And he did.  He speaks against his friends, he asserts his desire to plead his case before God, and most impressively, Job finishes this deeply emotional speech by affirming his faith in God, even to say that though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.  How does one manage to get to the point of such a deep and abiding faith?  And, are we able to follow the example of Job and pass the test of faith when life is coming apart around us?  The question is not whether or not we will face difficulty, or even how much difficulty we will face, but what will we do with that difficulty?  How will we respond to that difficulty?  Will that difficulty break us, or will it strengthen us?

Job doesn’t provide us with a list of answers as to how we should respond to our sufferings in life.  In one way, the book of Job reminds me of a college classmate of mine who actually wrote in his exam book one day I know I haven’t written the answer to the question but you have to trust that I do know the answer – I really do!  That didn’t work out very well for him, but the book of Job gives that kind of answer.  It’s not a specific answer to every difficult situation in life and there is no list offered of what you should do when you face difficulty in life.  But Job still gives an answer, and it’s an answer that doesn’t, on the surface at least, sound like an answer, but his answer is, though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.

What will we do with our suffering?  Will we feed the bitterness, anger, and hurt that it can bring, or will it become a seed out of which something new and even beautiful can grow?

2.  Why Did Job Remain Faithful?

Some of the greatest beauty comes out of our suffering.  Christian Wiman has written a fascinating book titled My Bright Abyss:  Meditation of A Modern Believer.  I like the way he puts those two words together – Bright Abyss.  He was 39 years old, and married less than a year, when he received a diagnosis of incurable cancer.  One of the very interesting comments he makes is that one speaks differently when standing on a cliff.  His illness completely transformed his life, and the major transformation was that it brought life to what he calls a long, dormant faith.  The resurrection of faith in his life came about because of struggle.  Struggle caused him to walk to, and embrace, faith.

Why did Job remain faithful?  I think that is a question well worth asking.  Why didn’t Job, after so much suffering, simply throw in the towel on faith?  What drives people to continue to have faith in the midst of deep and profound suffering?  And why do some walk away from faith in the midst of their suffering?  Biblical character after Biblical character demonstrated their willingness to hold onto faith in spite of the sufferings they encounter; in fact, they found that suffering deepened their faith.  Listen, for instance, to Paul in II Corinthians 11:23-28 – I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. 24 Five times I received…the forty lashes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26 I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. 27 I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. 28 Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.  What would compel Paul to continue in the face of such incredibly difficult circumstances?  The answer is, faith.

But it wasn’t only Paul.  Peter and others were beaten and imprisoned for their faith (a few examples are Acts 5:19 – They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail.  Acts 5:40 – They called the apostles in and had them flogged.  Stephen being martyred, in Acts 7:54–60 – 54 When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. 55 But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” 57 At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, 58 dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59 While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep).  Around the world today the suffering and persecution continues, and so does faith.  The Khai Khat family, for instance, whom we helped to settle in this country, fled their country because of persecution.  When we met them at the airport they each had one suitcase to begin their new lives.  Imagine, starting your life over, in a new land, and with only a single suitcase to carry your possessions and clothing!  And yet they maintain a vibrant faith!

3.  Will we say with Job, “though he slay me, yet will I hope in him”?

The movie The Truman Show has a fascinating concept, where Jim Carrey plays the character of Truman, a man who is the subject of a reality TV show, although he does not know that his entire life has been the subject of the show or that the idyllic community in which he lives is actually the set of the TV show.  He life is one of predictable routine and is free from trouble.  In spite of his good life and in spite of living in such a beautiful community, Truman senses there is more to life and to the world than what he knows.  He finally decides he needs to strike out into the larger world, although the creator of the TV show knows this would be a disaster for the program.  As Truman boards a small sailboat and sets off for the mainland, the creator of the show orders his staff to create a storm, in the hopes it will cause Truman to turn back.  Truman, however, keeps going, although he almost drowns when his boat capsizes.  Eventually, Truman runs into the end of the set, where his small boat hits the wall that marks the outer edge of the giant set on which the show takes place.  Truman climbs a small set of stairs and places his hand on a doorknob, ready to open it and to walk out of the safety and security he had always known and into the harshness of reality.  At that point the show’s creator speaks to Truman from high up in the control room.  He entreats Truman not to leave, saying that in my world you have nothing to fear.  And that is true.  Truman could stay in his beautiful, fear-free world, but he chooses to leave and enter into the real world, where there is sadness, heartache, and suffering.  Why would anyone leave such a idyllic setting?  Why not stay where life exists in a protective bubble?

Job asks us a question, and it is the question of whether or not we want to live in a protective bubble or in the real world.  It would be wonderful, at least on the surface, to live in an idyllic world like Truman’s, but wouldn’t we miss much of the richness of life if we did?  The great irony of life is that without our struggles and difficulties we would not know so much of the beauty of life.  If we never suffer loss we would not know the beauty of a friend who sits and mourns our loss with us.  If we never know disappointment in life we never know the joy of the sweet and good moments of life.  And on and on we could go, in terms of other examples.

Yes, life is difficult, and there is much sadness and struggle that we experience.  But in the face of all that comes our way, may we, like Job, pass the test of faith, and say with him, though he slay me, yet will I hope in him!