Based on the Introduction of Eugene Peterson's translation of Job.
The Book of Job has to do with the most painful and unavoidable questions
that can arise in human experience. What are we to make of human suffering
in light of a good and powerful God that we believe is involved in our lives?
If God is really who He says He is, then why is there suffering at all? The
question that easily comes to the lips of many persons, no matter their religious
ilk, is, "How could a God of love allow this to happen?"
Surely that question has found its way into the minds of most of the people
before us on any given Sunday morning. This introductory passage from Job
gives a credible voice to the kinds of questions and struggles that lurk in
the hearts of our people.
The Book of Job does not provide a neat answer to the problem of suffering.
It rather paints a portrait of how a man of faith wrestled with God over the
circumstances of his life in light of God's sovereignty. Job asks the common
question when suffering comes, "Why is this happening to me?" We
are drawn to Job because he asks his questions of God. In fact, Job won't
let up asking his questions of God until he receives an answer.
Job's actions and his words in this passage give us simple but important instruction
on how to proceed when life becomes a struggle. First, he grieves. He tears
his clothes, shaves his head, and falls into the dirt. And God does not blame
him for it. Second, he stays with friends and does not isolate himself, even
though their comfort was less than adequate. Third, Job speaks to God. He
does not clam up and stop talking to God. He protests his suffering. He protests
loudly and bitterly, and somehow in the midst of that he will be saved.
Contemporary congregations can quickly and easily identify with the problem
of this text. We have all had times in our lives when we have asked the questions
that come screaming into Job's mind and even those found on the lips of Job's
wife. "Why is this happening to me?" is a question that will gain
the nod of recognition from our hearers.
(small sidehead): God's Answer
There's not one. After we hear God speak to Satan in these first two chapters,
we won't hear from Him again until the very end of the book. God is silent.
That's what makes this dilemma so poignant. So the critical issue here is
how we respond in that terrible silence.
(small sidehead): Our Response
Our response to the dilemma caused by suffering, especially when God seems
silent, is the stuff in which the deepest kind of faith takes root. What really
matters here is our picture of who God is. Is He aloof and uncaring? Or is
He watching with pastoral care?
This is the key attitude called for by this text. When suffering and pain
comes into my life, can I believe and trust that God loves me and cares for
me? Will I insist on defining God's care in terms of my well-being, or am
I willing to say with Job, "GOD gives, GOD takes. God's name be ever
blessed" (1:21, TM)? It seems that perhaps the most powerful statement
in all of Job is his simple, faithful response to his wife: "We take
the good days from God--why not also the bad days?" (2:10, TM).
(For a complete manuscript of this sermon, go to www.preachersmagazine.org.)
The first tasks in opening this series is to bring alive the dilemma raised
by the Job narrative. I opened this series at a time in our congregation when
it seemed that every week someone was reporting a cancer diagnosis or some
family tragedy. It didn't take long for the people to connect with the need
here and to long for an answer to the ache of knowing God's care in the midst
of suffering.
In order to get the narrative into the minds of my hearers, I read to them
this entire passage from The Message, asking them not to follow along with
their printed Bible this time, but to follow with their ears. Eugene Peterson
does a masterful job of bringing this narrative to life.
I then started from the perspective of the charges that Satan raises in the
story about why people serve God and how Job, with his words and with his
life, answers those charges. For example, Satan charges that many people love
and serve God only because He blesses them. Job will demonstrate otherwise.
The question of Job, however, must be allowed to linger in the minds of the
people. Often good churchgoing folks struggle with the questions and doubts
that come into their minds about the problem of suffering and God's providential
care. They think that if they were really spiritual, they wouldn't have such
questions. A significant outcome of this sermon is to let people know that
their questions belong. I did this by sharing my own struggle with watching
my father succumb to the terrible effects of Alzheimer's disease.
The answer of this sermon will be suspended a bit for the subsequent sermons
in the series. But the preacher can close with a declaration of Job's unshakable
faith when he says to his wife, "We take the good days from God--why
not also the bad days?" The question I left with the people was this:
"If you find yourself in Job's dilemma today, what would it take for
you to also find yourself in Job's faith?" A powerful statement of this
text is in the last verse, "In all this, Job did not sin in what he said"
(2:10).
