Scripture: Job 2:11-13 (but really the whole book)
Listen link: https://www.lcepc.org/Sermons
People crave a sense of security. We like to feel in control of our own world. And we like to give advice to others so that they can stay safe too. These are expressed as rules for safe living. Follow the rules and you’ll be safe. That general principle is one we all accept and appreciate. We only laugh at the idea when people go to extremes and needlessly state the obvious.
Some fun examples of our attempts to keep safe, and keep others safe, are the variety of warning labels that appear on modern products. Smart little sayings like, the one on the electric hair dryer: Warning, do not use while sleeping. Or on the microwave oven: Not to be used for drying pets. There’s a warning on a package of those iron-on transfers: Do not iron while wearing shirt! And on the bottom of a skate board: This product moves when used. Exercise caution when riding.
Admittedly, most of those labels are generated by the manufacturers’ fear of getting sued. But that only means that the manufacturers also believe that if they follow the right rules, they can keep safe from litigation!
Job’s friends were trying to help Job with his problem. I really believe they meant well. They thought they had it all figured out. Job must have broken the rules. But they were wrong. Job had followed all the rules. And he too, had really believed it would keep him safe. But it didn’t. Calamity struck anyway, and as we read, Job’s suffering was too great for words.
Now, most sermons I have heard from the book of Job, focus on helping us know how to deal with our own suffering. But this time, let’s talk about how to deal with sufferers. In other words, let’s use the wisdom we can glean from Job to prepare ourselves for compassionate ministry. We can do better than Job’s friends did for him. Let’s make this an other-centered message, in which God comes, in the power of his Holy Spirit, to teach us how to care for others, when they are suffering.
In my reading, I gleaned three guiding principles from the long story of Job and how his friends mistreated him. In summary, they are: Don’t get stuck in cause and effect, karma theology. Don’t be ignorant of spiritual warfare. And don’t blame the victim. It’s basically a matter of seeing what Job’s friends did and being intentional about avoiding their mistakes by doing the opposite.
The only thing that makes this difficult is that doing what will really bless suffering people doesn’t come naturally. What comes naturally is, believing in the rules. Job’s friends did what comes naturally. In many ways, it was all they had. But we can do better because we know more about God today than they did then. And yet, it’s what we all still tend to do if we don’t live by the Biblical wisdom that is provided for us in Scripture.
So, let’s take a closer look at the three guiding principles that led Job’s friends into their errors. First, they lived under a simplistic cause and effect theology that was supposed to work the way we think of Karma today. That means, good things happen to good people. Bad things only happen to bad people. Even if a bad person is getting away with something and looks like he’s having a good time, it won’t last. A bad person will end up suffering for it. And when he finally gets what he deserves, that’s what we call Karma. It is what Job and his friends would have called God’s justice.
This idea is not foreign to the Bible. The book of Proverbs is full of it! For one example, Proverbs 21:7 sounds just like Job’s friends’ advice: “The violence of the wicked will drag them away, for they refuse to do what is right.” Even in the New Testament, Paul gives a rule of this type of wisdom in Galatians 6:7-8 “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”
Please note. Job believed in God and justice and cause and effect theology just as his friends did. He firmly believed that the evil people should be punished for their crimes and suffer for it before they die. The only reason Job stands apart from his friends and argues with them is because he knows that his suffering is underserved! He has done no evil to earn the sort of physical torture that he was suffering. But his friends, of course, conclude that he must have, because God is just, and he wouldn’t give Job anything he didn’t deserve!
Job had a big problem. His own personal experience did not fit with his current understanding of wisdom. He was innocent. But he was suffering the fate of the wicked. His bigger problem was that his friends were no help. They were no comfort, because they didn’t believe he was innocent!
Because of the first two chapters of Job that set this all up, we know something that the characters in the story don’t know. Job was a victim of a satanic wager. Satan challenged God to make a bet with him. Satan believed that Job was only worshipping God because God had materially blessed him. But Job’s friends blamed Job himself for his predicament. That’s called blaming the victim.
Job’s friends have a problem too. If they don’t blame Job, if they believe that he is innocent, then maybe Job is right about God doing this to him for no reason! But, they maintain that God is perfect and must be just and good. Therefore, Job must be lying, he must not be as innocent as he claims. To them that conclusion is inescapable. God does no wrong. But, there was the one fact about satan’s involvement that they did not have access too, although, I believe they could have.
Here's why. Adam and Eve knew about satan. He was the serpent that tricked them in to disobeying God in the first place. Surely, Adam and Eve they told that story to their children and their grandchildren, etc. Adam and Eve’s descendants could have remembered that there is a spiritual realm in which God lives, and that it also has at least one character named satan who is trying to mess with God’s creation, and who is a source of evil. But apparently the human race forgot about satan. After Genesis 3, he is not mentioned again in the Biblical record until we get to the book of Job, at least chronologically. If Job’s friends had remembered that, they would have had someone else to blame besides Job or God and they might have been of greater help to Job.
But, as the story shows, neither Job nor his friends ever thought that maybe satan could be behind the vicious attack on Job’s possessions and body. They were ignorant of the spiritual warfare going on invisibly behind the scenes being played out on earth. They never even guessed at it, not a hint! Only the readers after the fact know of satan’s involvement, and the only reason we know is because the person who wrote down this account had received that information by way of inspiration.
If Job and his friends had known what we know, it would have greatly broadened their perspective on Job’s predicament. With that key piece of information, they could have solved their dilemma much more neatly. Job and God can both be innocent of any wrong doing once they know that satan is the bad guy! The only remaining sticking point would then be for them to figure out how a God who is just could even allow satan to do such a thing. The answer to that one is, this is a test. This is only a test.
And one condition of the test was that Job could not know it was a test, because that would skew the outcome. If he knew ahead of time that it was only test, that would give him the courage and a reason to press on in good faith. Just like soldiers go through a difficult and challenging obstacle course in boot camp because they know it is part of their training. Otherwise there is no point in subjecting themselves to that hardship.
So, if Job knew it was just a test, of course he would have the courage to keep his faith in God! But as long as he didn’t know what God was really up to, then Job’s passing of the test is truly God’s triumph! And that’s how it went down! Praise God! Let me say this about God’s sovereignty. He already knew Job would pass the test. But satan doesn’t know everything. That’s why he didn’t know his accusation of Job was false. He didn’t know he was going to lose this bet. It shows you how much faith satan has in humanity, none.
What we learn about Job is, that Job wasn’t worshipping God just because God had blessed him. Job was worshipping God sincerely and loved him with all his heart, mind and soul, even when he didn’t understand what God was doing with him! In that context, all of Job’s complaining about his suffering, even wishing he were dead, or had never been born, is perfectly acceptable to God. God understands and sympathizes with our weakened condition under the effects of the curse of Adam’s sin, the subsequent corruption of all creation that leads to all kinds of suffering, and the blindness of human nature to God and his purposes.
So, let’s bring this all back into our own lives and our ministry to people who are suffering and struggling with the big “why?” question. Why did this happen? First, don’t jump to conclusions. Be a comfort. Don’t blame the victim! Be very careful about that, even when it is obvious that they brought some trouble on themselves by their own foolishness. Even with people like drug addicts, it’s easy to condemn them because they should have known better.
And they are responsible. But there’s all kinds of reasons why people get into these messes. They need a lot of help to get back out. They don’t need our accusations. Most of them are already condemning themselves for their weaknesses and failures. And the ones who aren’t doing that, aren’t miserable and seeking help aren’t going to listen to anything you say anyway. They don’t think they have a problem! So, you may as well offer everyone hope for recovery, instead of just blaming them for their situation.
Also, don’t be ignorant of spiritual warfare! We know that there is a satan actively attacking people to weaken them and rob of them of faith in God. That doesn’t explain every instance of suffering, but we don’t want to be ignorant of it, especially as we pray for people.
And finally, because we have this wider perspective on God and how He uses suffering to discipline us, and that his ultimate justice is at the throne in heaven, we don’t have to get stuck in any cause and effect karma theology! Only unspiritual people who don’t believe in an afterlife, make up for it by believing in something like karma. It’s the only security left to them. They are the ones who are stuck thinking that if they obey the rules they’ll be ok. They are the ones who can’t solve the problem of evil and conclude that because bad things do happen to good people, God must either be not there, or not all powerful, or not very loving.
But we know better! And wise old Job was so close to figuring it out! I believe Job was wiser than his friends because he said all the best things. It was Job who said, in the 19th chapter near the middle of this book, “Oh, that my words could be recorded. Oh, that they could be inscribed on a monument, carved with an iron chisel and filled with lead, engraved forever in the rock.”
When Job said that, he probably didn’t think he’d live long enough to do it, and he probably was pretty sure that the attitude his friends had toward him meant that they never would. But Job’s words were recorded. They were not just etched in stone but preserved in the very Word of God which shall never pass away! And it is possible that Job himself wrote this book in his latter years. It may be that later on he came to understand the role of satan in the whole ordeal. If so, he still wisely wrote the story as he experienced it in those days, mystified to the end, but grateful for God’s intervention when it finally came.
I am grateful to God that he inspired someone to write it. With its true perspective on human suffering and its examples of how not to comfort the suffering, this book is a great gift to the human race!
Job also wrote in the very next verses, something that occurred to him by faith in the midst of his trials. “But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and he will stand upon the earth at last. And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God! I will see him for myself. Yes, I will see him with my own eyes. I am overwhelmed at the thought!” Truly it is an overwhelming thought! What faith it would take for Job to believe that! He didn’t know about Jesus as we do. Oh, the gospel revelation makes it so much easier for us to believe in a redeemer. Just for that one statement, I believe Job should have gotten a place in that great hall of famous faith in Hebrews 11!
The greatest gift of all to the human race is the fact of our redeemer, Jesus the Christ, our Messiah, who makes sense out of all suffering and who personally, as God, willingly took on himself the worst of all human suffering, specifically so that God the Father would not have to blame the victims of sin’s death dealing effects. One day he will wipe away every tear and there will be no more suffering! Our redeemer lives!
Also, in Christ, we have this wider spiritual perspective that there is a spiritual war going on between good and evil. We know that satan plays a role in our lives to discourage and destroy faith and keep us away from realizing how much God loves us. We have a far better theology than Karma. We have a theology of GRACE!! It’s not follow the rules and you’ll be safe. It’s believe in Jesus and you’ll be saved!
Because of this we have a wonderful gospel of grace and mercy to offer to all who suffer. In other words, let’s use the wisdom we can glean from Job to prepare ourselves for compassionate ministry. We can do better than Job’s friends did for him. Let’s rejoice in the gift of the ministry of reconciliation that is ours because we are ambassadors for Christ. We have this other-centered message and ministry, in which God comes, in the power of his Holy Spirit, so we care for others in the power of his love, and truly help to alleviate much suffering. Amen.
Listen link: https://www.lcepc.org/Sermons
People crave a sense of security. We like to feel in control of our own world. And we like to give advice to others so that they can stay safe too. These are expressed as rules for safe living. Follow the rules and you’ll be safe. That general principle is one we all accept and appreciate. We only laugh at the idea when people go to extremes and needlessly state the obvious.
Some fun examples of our attempts to keep safe, and keep others safe, are the variety of warning labels that appear on modern products. Smart little sayings like, the one on the electric hair dryer: Warning, do not use while sleeping. Or on the microwave oven: Not to be used for drying pets. There’s a warning on a package of those iron-on transfers: Do not iron while wearing shirt! And on the bottom of a skate board: This product moves when used. Exercise caution when riding.
Admittedly, most of those labels are generated by the manufacturers’ fear of getting sued. But that only means that the manufacturers also believe that if they follow the right rules, they can keep safe from litigation!
Job’s friends were trying to help Job with his problem. I really believe they meant well. They thought they had it all figured out. Job must have broken the rules. But they were wrong. Job had followed all the rules. And he too, had really believed it would keep him safe. But it didn’t. Calamity struck anyway, and as we read, Job’s suffering was too great for words.
Now, most sermons I have heard from the book of Job, focus on helping us know how to deal with our own suffering. But this time, let’s talk about how to deal with sufferers. In other words, let’s use the wisdom we can glean from Job to prepare ourselves for compassionate ministry. We can do better than Job’s friends did for him. Let’s make this an other-centered message, in which God comes, in the power of his Holy Spirit, to teach us how to care for others, when they are suffering.
In my reading, I gleaned three guiding principles from the long story of Job and how his friends mistreated him. In summary, they are: Don’t get stuck in cause and effect, karma theology. Don’t be ignorant of spiritual warfare. And don’t blame the victim. It’s basically a matter of seeing what Job’s friends did and being intentional about avoiding their mistakes by doing the opposite.
The only thing that makes this difficult is that doing what will really bless suffering people doesn’t come naturally. What comes naturally is, believing in the rules. Job’s friends did what comes naturally. In many ways, it was all they had. But we can do better because we know more about God today than they did then. And yet, it’s what we all still tend to do if we don’t live by the Biblical wisdom that is provided for us in Scripture.
So, let’s take a closer look at the three guiding principles that led Job’s friends into their errors. First, they lived under a simplistic cause and effect theology that was supposed to work the way we think of Karma today. That means, good things happen to good people. Bad things only happen to bad people. Even if a bad person is getting away with something and looks like he’s having a good time, it won’t last. A bad person will end up suffering for it. And when he finally gets what he deserves, that’s what we call Karma. It is what Job and his friends would have called God’s justice.
This idea is not foreign to the Bible. The book of Proverbs is full of it! For one example, Proverbs 21:7 sounds just like Job’s friends’ advice: “The violence of the wicked will drag them away, for they refuse to do what is right.” Even in the New Testament, Paul gives a rule of this type of wisdom in Galatians 6:7-8 “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”
Please note. Job believed in God and justice and cause and effect theology just as his friends did. He firmly believed that the evil people should be punished for their crimes and suffer for it before they die. The only reason Job stands apart from his friends and argues with them is because he knows that his suffering is underserved! He has done no evil to earn the sort of physical torture that he was suffering. But his friends, of course, conclude that he must have, because God is just, and he wouldn’t give Job anything he didn’t deserve!
Job had a big problem. His own personal experience did not fit with his current understanding of wisdom. He was innocent. But he was suffering the fate of the wicked. His bigger problem was that his friends were no help. They were no comfort, because they didn’t believe he was innocent!
Because of the first two chapters of Job that set this all up, we know something that the characters in the story don’t know. Job was a victim of a satanic wager. Satan challenged God to make a bet with him. Satan believed that Job was only worshipping God because God had materially blessed him. But Job’s friends blamed Job himself for his predicament. That’s called blaming the victim.
Job’s friends have a problem too. If they don’t blame Job, if they believe that he is innocent, then maybe Job is right about God doing this to him for no reason! But, they maintain that God is perfect and must be just and good. Therefore, Job must be lying, he must not be as innocent as he claims. To them that conclusion is inescapable. God does no wrong. But, there was the one fact about satan’s involvement that they did not have access too, although, I believe they could have.
Here's why. Adam and Eve knew about satan. He was the serpent that tricked them in to disobeying God in the first place. Surely, Adam and Eve they told that story to their children and their grandchildren, etc. Adam and Eve’s descendants could have remembered that there is a spiritual realm in which God lives, and that it also has at least one character named satan who is trying to mess with God’s creation, and who is a source of evil. But apparently the human race forgot about satan. After Genesis 3, he is not mentioned again in the Biblical record until we get to the book of Job, at least chronologically. If Job’s friends had remembered that, they would have had someone else to blame besides Job or God and they might have been of greater help to Job.
But, as the story shows, neither Job nor his friends ever thought that maybe satan could be behind the vicious attack on Job’s possessions and body. They were ignorant of the spiritual warfare going on invisibly behind the scenes being played out on earth. They never even guessed at it, not a hint! Only the readers after the fact know of satan’s involvement, and the only reason we know is because the person who wrote down this account had received that information by way of inspiration.
If Job and his friends had known what we know, it would have greatly broadened their perspective on Job’s predicament. With that key piece of information, they could have solved their dilemma much more neatly. Job and God can both be innocent of any wrong doing once they know that satan is the bad guy! The only remaining sticking point would then be for them to figure out how a God who is just could even allow satan to do such a thing. The answer to that one is, this is a test. This is only a test.
And one condition of the test was that Job could not know it was a test, because that would skew the outcome. If he knew ahead of time that it was only test, that would give him the courage and a reason to press on in good faith. Just like soldiers go through a difficult and challenging obstacle course in boot camp because they know it is part of their training. Otherwise there is no point in subjecting themselves to that hardship.
So, if Job knew it was just a test, of course he would have the courage to keep his faith in God! But as long as he didn’t know what God was really up to, then Job’s passing of the test is truly God’s triumph! And that’s how it went down! Praise God! Let me say this about God’s sovereignty. He already knew Job would pass the test. But satan doesn’t know everything. That’s why he didn’t know his accusation of Job was false. He didn’t know he was going to lose this bet. It shows you how much faith satan has in humanity, none.
What we learn about Job is, that Job wasn’t worshipping God just because God had blessed him. Job was worshipping God sincerely and loved him with all his heart, mind and soul, even when he didn’t understand what God was doing with him! In that context, all of Job’s complaining about his suffering, even wishing he were dead, or had never been born, is perfectly acceptable to God. God understands and sympathizes with our weakened condition under the effects of the curse of Adam’s sin, the subsequent corruption of all creation that leads to all kinds of suffering, and the blindness of human nature to God and his purposes.
So, let’s bring this all back into our own lives and our ministry to people who are suffering and struggling with the big “why?” question. Why did this happen? First, don’t jump to conclusions. Be a comfort. Don’t blame the victim! Be very careful about that, even when it is obvious that they brought some trouble on themselves by their own foolishness. Even with people like drug addicts, it’s easy to condemn them because they should have known better.
And they are responsible. But there’s all kinds of reasons why people get into these messes. They need a lot of help to get back out. They don’t need our accusations. Most of them are already condemning themselves for their weaknesses and failures. And the ones who aren’t doing that, aren’t miserable and seeking help aren’t going to listen to anything you say anyway. They don’t think they have a problem! So, you may as well offer everyone hope for recovery, instead of just blaming them for their situation.
Also, don’t be ignorant of spiritual warfare! We know that there is a satan actively attacking people to weaken them and rob of them of faith in God. That doesn’t explain every instance of suffering, but we don’t want to be ignorant of it, especially as we pray for people.
And finally, because we have this wider perspective on God and how He uses suffering to discipline us, and that his ultimate justice is at the throne in heaven, we don’t have to get stuck in any cause and effect karma theology! Only unspiritual people who don’t believe in an afterlife, make up for it by believing in something like karma. It’s the only security left to them. They are the ones who are stuck thinking that if they obey the rules they’ll be ok. They are the ones who can’t solve the problem of evil and conclude that because bad things do happen to good people, God must either be not there, or not all powerful, or not very loving.
But we know better! And wise old Job was so close to figuring it out! I believe Job was wiser than his friends because he said all the best things. It was Job who said, in the 19th chapter near the middle of this book, “Oh, that my words could be recorded. Oh, that they could be inscribed on a monument, carved with an iron chisel and filled with lead, engraved forever in the rock.”
When Job said that, he probably didn’t think he’d live long enough to do it, and he probably was pretty sure that the attitude his friends had toward him meant that they never would. But Job’s words were recorded. They were not just etched in stone but preserved in the very Word of God which shall never pass away! And it is possible that Job himself wrote this book in his latter years. It may be that later on he came to understand the role of satan in the whole ordeal. If so, he still wisely wrote the story as he experienced it in those days, mystified to the end, but grateful for God’s intervention when it finally came.
I am grateful to God that he inspired someone to write it. With its true perspective on human suffering and its examples of how not to comfort the suffering, this book is a great gift to the human race!
Job also wrote in the very next verses, something that occurred to him by faith in the midst of his trials. “But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and he will stand upon the earth at last. And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God! I will see him for myself. Yes, I will see him with my own eyes. I am overwhelmed at the thought!” Truly it is an overwhelming thought! What faith it would take for Job to believe that! He didn’t know about Jesus as we do. Oh, the gospel revelation makes it so much easier for us to believe in a redeemer. Just for that one statement, I believe Job should have gotten a place in that great hall of famous faith in Hebrews 11!
The greatest gift of all to the human race is the fact of our redeemer, Jesus the Christ, our Messiah, who makes sense out of all suffering and who personally, as God, willingly took on himself the worst of all human suffering, specifically so that God the Father would not have to blame the victims of sin’s death dealing effects. One day he will wipe away every tear and there will be no more suffering! Our redeemer lives!
Also, in Christ, we have this wider spiritual perspective that there is a spiritual war going on between good and evil. We know that satan plays a role in our lives to discourage and destroy faith and keep us away from realizing how much God loves us. We have a far better theology than Karma. We have a theology of GRACE!! It’s not follow the rules and you’ll be safe. It’s believe in Jesus and you’ll be saved!
Because of this we have a wonderful gospel of grace and mercy to offer to all who suffer. In other words, let’s use the wisdom we can glean from Job to prepare ourselves for compassionate ministry. We can do better than Job’s friends did for him. Let’s rejoice in the gift of the ministry of reconciliation that is ours because we are ambassadors for Christ. We have this other-centered message and ministry, in which God comes, in the power of his Holy Spirit, so we care for others in the power of his love, and truly help to alleviate much suffering. Amen.
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