Good people should have an easy life; God shouldn't let them suffer?
Agree or Disagree?
Bad people deserve a hard time
and if you suffer you must have done something to deserve it.
Agree or Disagree?
The Bible often seems to teach views like that.
There is even a teaching called the 'Prosperity Gospel'
which looks at the way God blessed people like Abraham
and then concludes that if you are faithful
God will bless you in every way
with health and wealth as well as spiritual things.
The down side of that is that if you lose money or fall sick
then you are automatically under some kind of curse or punishment.
But it is not as simple as that.
Yes, when we believe, we may enjoy the blessings of God
and when we disobey, we may lose them:
the story of the Israel in the Old Testament was like that,
blessed when she remained faithful
defeated and sent into exile when she lost her love for the Lord.
But there is a story which reminds us that it is not always as simple.
Here is the story of Job,
we don't know when he lived, nor where exactly was the land of Uz;
maybe that helps him to stand as kind of 'Everyman'
a universal example of anyone who believes in the Lord God
anyone who seeks to be devout and good and kind
and yet who suffers greatly.
Introducing JOB
1 'blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.
We are told of his large family and great wealth in some detail
'He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.'
His children loved to party
and maybe Job was concerned for what happened at their parties
5 'When a period of feasting had run its course,
Job would send and have them purified.
Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them,
thinking, "Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts."
We are left in no doubt that Job is clear with God, prosperous, devout
a father concerned for the spiritual protection of his children.
Is it any wonder that the Lord commends him to Satan
8 'Have you considered my servant Job?
There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright,
a man who fears God and shuns evil."
Satan of course cynically thinks his piety depends on his prosperity
Make Job suffer, and he will lose his faith
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 stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face."
That is the crunch question
Is Job's faith based on his blessings or on God?
That is the big question for us.
Where is your faith based, in the blessings of God
or in the God who blesses and sometimes stops blessing?
Introducing SATAN ...
He is a heavenly being but set apart from the other angels
one who roams the earth and tries to see the weak points in people
and to undermine faith
His name in Hebrew means the adversary, the accuser.
Everything that is said about Satan here is reflected in the New Testament.
Satan does not have ultimate power nor is he even equal to God.
he is given a power to test, to sift, as Jesus says in Luke 22.31
but the Lord places limits on what he can do.
Why should it be that the Lord allows him this role
of remorseless probing and accusing
and, worse than that, the power to wound and destroy?
I cannot tell you fully.
The mystery of suffering is what the book of Job is about.
It is enough for us to have this glimpse into the heavenly places
to appreciate the reality of Satan, and his permitted power
to probe and accuse,
always remembering that ultimately he has no claim,
on those who humble themselves
and simply trust in the shed blood of Christ to take way their sins
Remember this too.
When the hammer blows fall and Job loses so much, he does not blame Satan.
Job does not know what is going on in the heavenly places.
We are privileged to see a bit behind the scenes
but the main drama of the book is not what Satan gets up to.
The story is not intended to make us more conscious of Satan
but much much more of how Job reacts and how he struggles to come to terms with all these tragedies and all this trauma.
How does Job react?
Is it with resignation? 'It's just one of those things. Whatever will be, will be'?
No, Job is not a fatalist.
Is it with resentment? 'How dare you God, when I have been so good and kind?'
No, Job is not self righteous, as if he could bargain with God.
Job reacts with truly realistic response to God: he worships.
He shows that he loves the Lord for himself
and not for what he can get from him.
20 'At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head.'
the accepted way of expressing grief
'Then he fell to the ground in worship 21 and said:
"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart.
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
may the name of the LORD be praised."
22 In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.
Don't we so badly need that realism that responds to God
that understands that much as we love what we have in this life
they are all gifts from God - we do not own them, we do not have a right to them
we give thanks when we have them
and we give thanks when we do not have them!
The film 'Cool Running' is based on the true story
of the Jamaican Bobsleigh team in the Winter Olympics
a team that does remarkably well, but loses in the end.
But the film shows that it is not the result that matters
but what is happening to the members of the team
and what is happening to their coach
a man who had disgraced himself as a cheat
trying to win by any means.
It is a profound moment in the film when he says, reflecting on his past
'If winning made a difference to me it made too much of a difference'
What mattered was, being the same, win or lose.
And these words help his team retain great dignity
when their sledge breaks down.
Job's story has a lot to say to us about how to lose.
Not just losing family and wealth and later on in c 2 health
but how we cope when we lose anything that is dear and precious to us.
David Watson was a great Christian speaker and writer in the 1970s and 1980s
He was renowned for pastoring a Church of England Church in York
which went from a handful of members to being packed to the doors
and a model for many other churches of new spiritual growth.
Then in his mid 50s, David contracted terminal cancer.
He had to come to terms with a painful illness
and the agony that all the prayers for healing went unanswered
(and he believed that God did intervene to heal.)
David faced a year or so on the sidelines
as he became less and less able for his previously active life.
But in his last book about how he coped with his illness
he writes this:
'God showed me that all my preaching and achievements
all the things I had done for him
were as nothing compared to my love relationship with him.
Paradoxically in his time of weakness, inactivity even indignity
he found space to get know God better and to prepare for the reality of heaven
I am challenged by people like David Watson and Job
people who can have stripped away from them so much that they had valued
and yet continue to praise the name of the Lord.
That's not to say we know all the reasons why a great servant of God
should be taken we think too soon from this life
to the grief of his wife and children
and of so many who had benefited from his ministry,
nor do we know why you or those close to you can suffer
sometimes suddenly, undeservedly, seemingly pointlessly.
But Job c 1 presents this big question:
when life is hard and harsh will you still believe
or do we have a fair weather faith?
David Atkinson writing on Job puts it as
the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic religion.
Extrinsic religion is on the surface
it is religion used for some other purpose
for social status, for political gain, even as a set of rituals for relieving anxiety.
It is very common; I as a minister may even say to you:
Why don't you pray? You'll feel better
But that is using faith rather than living it
I should be saying to people instead.
Why don't you pray? You will meet God
and then, secondarily, you may feel better
Intrinsic religion happens when someone does not use but lives their faith.
It is the faith that goes deeper than disappointments and difficult circumstances.
Job's calamities showed that he was living his faith
it wasn't just an expression of getting on in society
it didn't depend on a happy family and a big bank balance.
David Watson's illness showed and deepened his inner relationship with God
in the times when he was no longer the preacher in a crowded church
'For some people their faith in God serves as a means to some other end, whereas for others, God is seen as an end in himself.
This question at the centre of the book of Job is addressed to us all.
Why do we serve God? Is it just for what we can get out of it?
Or is ours a faith rooted in the reality of a personal communion with God himself - for his sake? '
(David Atkinson; The Book of Job)
I remember when I was at college a lad I knew in our home church
died from a diabetic coma alone in his flat one weekend,
a death that could have been avoided.
I wrote to his parents to try and express sympathy.
I will always remember the reply card they sent.
It quoted Job's realistic response
'The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord'
I am sure it did not for a moment quench their grief and their questions
and we may see next week that it did finish Job's grief and his questions
but I knew it to be a demonstration of true faith, intrinsic religion if you like
(something we will see in our closing hymn which George Matheson wrote
in the dark time of his engagement being broken by his fiancee
who could not face ,marrying a blind man)
that we need to trust God for himself and not for what we get from him.
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