Job's Response to suffering and Tragedy Part 2 By Andrew Davies

I want us to look at chapter 1 verse 13 through to chapter 2 verse 10 this evening is the count of Job's loss of his property and children and then of his health and his response to these triple tragedies. The book is about the challenge of godliness and the challenge to godliness. Remember how Paul writing in his letter to Titus talks about the grace of God that brings salvation appearing to all men teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live soberly, righteously and godly in the present age. Now Job was a man who tried to do that and indeed succeeded in doing that because he's described for us as an upright and blameless man who feared God and shunned evil. But behind the scenes unknown to him there was a conflict taking place between God and Satan and a serious charge was leveled against Job by Satan and therefore against God. The charge does Job fear God for nothing. Satan accused Job of fearing God for selfish reasons. That itself is a challenge to us. We are forced to ask why we fear God.
Is it because of his blessings? Is it because he, as we're told here, hedges us around and helps us and blesses the work of our hands and enables our possessions to increase? Is it because of material blessings that we fear and love God? There are many people who seem to think that today.
They seem to think that they have a right, as they put it, to health, wealth and prosperity and that their trust in God is in order to receive those blessings. But suppose those blessings are removed, health, wealth and prosperity. What then? The book is about that. And in making this charge against Job, Satan was really attacking God. He was seeking to discredit the name of God and God had invested a great deal in this man, Job, and therefore he chose Job as the battleground between himself and Satan. The Lord had commended Job, as we're told. Satan condemned him.
So who is right? The Lord who commends him or Satan who condemns him? And the Lord gave Satan
permission to afflict the man so that both Job and the Lord himself is on trial.
How then would Job respond? How would you respond if this sort of thing happened to you or if it
happened to me? Is this cynical charge that was made against him, does Job fear God for nothing?
Is it true? Is that actually true? And is Job going to deny that charge or is he going to
prove the reality of God's grace to him? When faith is on trial, when darkness comes our way
and disaster strikes, how do we actually respond? There are two stages, aren't there, as I'm sure
most of us will know, to the sufferings of Job. The first is recorded in verse 13 through to 22
in chapter 1 and it tells us about the loss of his property and his children. It's interesting
actually just to notice how the story is told to us. It happened with these disasters.
It happened suddenly when Job was least expecting it to happen. In the morning everything was well.
Life was normal, prosperous, healthy. He was going about his works over his sons and his daughters.
The farms were prospering. Everything seemed to be going well.
But by the end of the day it had all gone. The same day it had all disappeared. It was perhaps
the most evil of days in Job's experience. It happened suddenly. It happened quickly.
He had no time to recover from one shock before the next shock came his way. There was no interval.
We are told for the wounds to heal. There was no relief from the unrelenting attacks upon him.
And the refrain of the servants who came to report to him what had happened was the same.
I alone have escaped to tell you. And that refrain, four times repeated, was ringing in Job's
ears as he was receiving one catastrophe after another. So it came suddenly. It came quickly.
And it seemed to him like total disaster. Not a crumb of comfort was left to him. It seems
he was apparently left with none of his oxen, with none of his donkeys, none of his camels.
All his children died. He was left with his own life to be true, that of his wife. But all his
possessions and all his children had gone. It seemed that everything was against him.
His enemies had come upon him, and it seemed that the hand of God was against him.
There's a description here of human atrocities and natural catastrophes. The human atrocities
are referred to in verses 14 and 15. The oxen were plowing, the donkeys feeding beside them. When the
Sabeans raided them, took them away, they've killed the servants with the edge of the sword. And then
they've killed the servants with the edge of the sword. And then again in verse 17,
the Chaldeans formed three bands, raided the camels, took them away, and killed the servants
with the edge of the sword. So there were the human atrocities that he had to handle,
and then what we sometimes call acts of God. Notice how it's the fire of God that fell from
heaven in verse 16 and burned up the sheep and the servants. So it was both human atrocities
and natural catastrophes that he had to take, and it seemed as if God was behind it all and
that God was against him. He's a godly man. Well, surely then his godliness was in vain.
He'd prayed for his children, as we were reminded last week, but now all his children for whom he
had prayed were dead. Well, were his prayers in vain. He'd lived a blameless life and had feared
God and departed from evil. Did that mean, therefore, that a godly man was being called
upon by God to suffer? Is that God's way of dealing with godly people?
It seemed as if his godliness was in vain. His prayers were in vain, it seemed, and his
godliness was in vain. So how did he respond? What was Job's reaction to all of this?
Not with stoical indifference. He didn't despise the chastening of the Lord,
nor with utter collapse. He didn't faint when he was rebuked by him.
We're told that he rose, that he tore his robe and shaved his head and fell to the ground
and worshiped. He prostrated himself before God in an agony of grief and sorrow.
He felt the weight of his sufferings. His heart was broken within him. His mind was reeling with
the shock and the numbness that followed it. He was being torn apart, as it were, psychologically,
as well as now being intimidated physically. But he arose, tore his robe, shaved his head,
and worshiped. He worshiped the Lord. That's his response. And in worshiping the Lord,
you will notice that what filled his heart was not a sense of God's omnipotence, God's
power, God's sovereignty, God's justice. Although, of course, he was aware of those realities,
what filled his heart was the knowledge of God's goodness. He worshiped the Lord and said,
Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave,
and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. He thought of God's goodness to him
as he worshiped the Lord. He'd suffered bitter loss, but acknowledged that it was God who had
given him everything in the first place. It was the Lord who had taken away what he had given
him in the first place. So the gifts were precious to him because God was precious to him, and they
were God-given gifts. And he'd enjoyed them for many years, but now they were gone. They'd been
removed. But God had been good to him. God had been kind to him. He hadn't deserved any of the
blessings that he'd received from the Lord over those many years. So he celebrates the goodness
of the Lord in giving those things to him in the first place. The Lord gave, and now the Lord has
taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. He'd had more than he deserved in the first place.
So when he worships the Lord, he acknowledges his goodness. It's the goodness of God that he is
particularly worshipping the Lord for him. Now, I wonder, do we see the blessings of life
in the same way? God has endowed us with families. He's given us possessions.
He's given them to us as a sacred trust. We are stewards of what we've received from the Lord.
And if they are removed, if God takes them away from us, can we still worship God as good?
We can certainly acknowledge him as sovereign and as omnipotent and as the God who can do what he
chooses. But do we worship him as good? It's the goodness of God in particular that Job was
conscious of when he worshiped him despite his sufferings. I think we can only do that if we
live before God every day in the conscious appreciation of his gifts. And his fundamental
attitude of mind was one of gratitude to God for his goodness. So because he thought about that
every day when the evil day came, he thought about the same thing. If we are going to survive
the crises of life, we need to live in preparation for them. If we are going to die in faith, we have
to live in faith. If we are going to understand the goodness of God to us when days are evil,
then we need to understand the goodness of God to us when days are easy. He lived like that,
and so when the crisis moment came, it was the goodness of God that occupied and filled his heart.
And he was given no reason, no understanding of what was going on. He had very little light as to
the actual meaning behind his sufferings. He didn't know about the conflict in the heavenly places,
but he worshiped the Lord nevertheless. The cost, the pain to him were enormous,
but God, he said, is good, and there is a purpose behind these afflictions that are happening to me.
I'm reminded of the news that was brought to the family of Jonathan Edwards at his death.
He died very tragically, Jonathan Edwards. He died actually of a vaccination against smallpox,
and he contracted the disease and died. It was a tragic end to a brilliant man and the man greatly
used by God. And when the news was broken to his wife, Sarah, and she wrote to her daughter to tell
her what had happened, she spoke about her heart being broken and her loved one being taken away
from her. But in that letter to her daughter, there were these wonderful words, my God lives.
My God lives. She was full of gratitude to God, as she says in the letter, that he had given this
beloved husband to her for the years that she had known him. And now that he'd gone, her God
lived. She was full of a sense of gratitude to God for his goodness. Well, it's the same thing here
in Job. He lifted up his heart to God as he bowed his head before him, and he worshiped him
on account of his goodness. And then those sufferings, serious though they were in and of
themselves, were followed by even further sufferings, and in chapter two we have an account
of the physical and emotional sufferings that followed them. And again, you have the same
challenge being repeated. There was a day in verse one of chapter two when the sons of God came
to present themselves before the Lord again, and Satan comes with them as a servant of God
unwilling but nevertheless his servant. And again, you remember the question is put to Satan where
he would come from, and he replies from going to and fro on the earth and from walking back and
forth on it. And again the challenge of the Lord to Satan, have you considered my servant Job?
There's no one like him on the earth, blameless, upright, one who fears God and shans evil. And
then the words are added, and still he holds fast to his integrity, although you incited me against
him to destroy him without cause. Then once again the charge from Satan, skin for skin, says Satan
to the Lord, yes, all that a man has he will give for his life, but stretch out your hand now and
touch his bone and his flesh, and he will surely curse you to your face. And the Lord gives Satan
permission to afflict Job physically. He is in your hand, but spare his life. So Satan went out
from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the
crown of his head. And there is Job, a pathetic figure, with a pot's head to scrape himself with
as he sat in the ashes. And his wife says, do you still hold to your integrity? Curse God and die.
And his reply, you speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from
God, and shall we not accept adversity? And in all this Job did not sin with his lips.
Again you see the challenge, again the charge, a second charge, again a new permission granted
to Satan to afflict him, and now this grotesque physical ailment. It comes from Satan
with God's permission, from Satan with God's permission. Just as the apostle Paul's thorn in the
flesh was a messenger from Satan, but with God's permission. So here Job is afflicted with God's
permission. Job, like Paul, knew what that meant. Lest I should be exalted, said Paul, above measure
by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me a messenger of Satan
to buffet me, lest I be exalted among above measure. So here is a man now afflicted in this
most horrible way. It's torment after torment, it's suffering after suffering. And then the cry
of his wife that must have cut him to the quick, curse God and die. She's at the end of her tether,
and she can't understand why he isn't at the end of his tether. She could take no more, because
of course she was sharing in his grief as well and his loss, now she was witnessing his own
sufferings, so she responds to all of that with this cry, curse God and die. Her nerve is cracked,
she's broken down, she feels unable to help him, so she actually becomes the mouthpiece
for Satan's attack upon Job. It's a picture, isn't it, of utter desolation.
Loneliness, pain, grief, battered by human atrocity and natural catastrophe,
broken in body, bruised by his wife, bullied by Satan. How can a man like this respond?
Well, he says, shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?
We accept goodness from God? Are we unwilling to accept adversity from him?
Are we only willing to accept his goodness? Are we not willing to accept his adversity?
It's a very powerful question. It's not only a powerful question, it's a remarkable
and a wonderful thing, because he was really proving here the reality of God's grace in his
life. A poor, weak and ordinary man, a feeble man, despite his virtues, he is nevertheless
able to respond to all that happened to him in this wonderfully positive way.
And in responding like that, he discredits Satan, and he honours God, and he upholds
the name of the Lord and his own integrity as a godly man. The hatred, if you like, the cynical
charge of Satan against him actually brings more glory to God, because this man who's become the
battlefield in this spiritual conflict between God and Satan, this man is now able to declare
his confidence in God in such a way that Satan is baffled, confused. He doesn't know what to do.
He can't believe what he's hearing. And actually it's all working out against Satan to the glory
and the honour of God, so that Satan is, as it were, rounded on, and he turns, as it were, on his
heels and runs away from a situation that he cannot handle. A man who is weak through the power of
God's grace can so shout the omnipotence of grace as to hound Satan out of the conflict and prove
that it's possible to love God for God's sake, just for the pure pleasure and glory of knowing
him and of belonging to him. So Satan was a fool to try to discredit God through discrediting Joe.
I wonder, do we see our sufferings like that?
Are we aware of the fact that there is this conflict going on behind the scenes?
Do we see ourselves as those who may be able, through God's grace, to actually confound Satan
and glorify God in the midst of all our sufferings? God can enable the feeblest
saint to win the day, though death and hell obstruct the way.
Feeble, weak, anguished, and as we shall see, afraid and even angry, Joe may have been.
But Satan could not destroy his trust and confidence in God. We are in a battle too,
not only Joe, but we are in the same battle. We don't see it very often as he didn't see it,
but we are. And the way we respond, both to the goodness of God and the severity of God,
proves whether or not we love God and whether the grace of God is really at work in our lives.
And this book reminds us that it's possible for the grace of God to make the weakest saint
triumph. You remember how the writer puts it? Now let my soul arise and tread the temper down.
My captain leads me forth to conquest and to crown. A feeble saint shall win the day,
though death and hell obstruct the way. So why not give the devil, as the old
man in our home church in Wales used to say in the prayer meeting, why not give the devil a bump?
Why not round on him? Why not say to him, though he slay me, yet will I trust him?
Conundrums there may be, darkness there may be, mysteries there may be, but
if God is round about us and if God is for us, then no one can be against us.
That's really the message of this part of the book of Job, and it's a wonderful message for us
this evening, because Job had no idea of what was happening, and he didn't have the light,
the clearer light of the New Testament that we have. We were thinking this morning about
the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Go back to Gethsemane and think of the agony that he endured
there. Think of the fact that our Lord came to suffer. Now Job didn't have the full light of the
New Testament, as I say. He wasn't aware, as we are aware, of the full meaning of the coming of
Christ, of his sacrifice for our sins, his suffering for us. He wasn't aware that in the
way that we are aware, that the divine anger would be dealt with and exhausted in the death of Jesus.
He wasn't aware, as we are aware, that Jesus in the cross would triumph over principalities and
powers and make an open show of them through the cross. He wasn't aware of all of that. He knew
something of it because Old Testament believers were given light, as we know. But he wasn't aware,
as we are aware, of the fuller light that is found in the New Testament, that he triumphed, and he
triumphed in and through his sufferings. And in the same way, God through Christ and by his grace can
enable us to do the same. And because we have the fuller light of the New Testament, because we know
that the God who loves us and who sent his Son into the world to save us has become involved
with us in our sufferings and cares for us and feels for us. It's possible for us to overcome
with additional light and with greater illumination than Job had, but it's the same grace. It was the
same grace in him that operates in you and me, and if the Lord through his grace could enable this man
to triumph, then why not you and why not me? Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the
world. Why do we fear God? Do we fear God because of health he gives us, wealth he grants us,
prosperity endows us with? Of course, the Lord can give these things and often does. Job, after all,
was prior to his sufferings a very rich and prosperous and healthy man, and all of that
was part of God's goodness to him as he acknowledged. But if God should give us adversity,
will we praise him then? Will we acknowledge him to be good then? The miracle, it seems to me,
is not, so to speak, that we are allowed to die, but that we are allowed to live.
The miracle is that God is so gracious to us, kind to us, benevolent to us, that he spares us
as long as he does, and that he gives us what he has given us to the extent that he does.
Because if we really understood the depth of our alienation and rebellion against him,
then we would begin to see that everything we possess is a gift of sheer goodness and
generosity. Not only common grace, but saving grace. But both common and saving grace are part
of the immense goodness of God toward us, and we need to acknowledge that in reality and experience
when even life is difficult and hard for us. And it's possible, it's possible. It's a wonderful
thing when you see this, isn't it, in the lives of other Christians. And one of the privileges
of being involved in pastoral work is that you have seen this and know something of it.
And I could tell you about many people whom I've had the privilege to be involved with
in pastoral ministry who, in the teeth of the most appalling sufferings,
have proved the omnipotence of God's grace and who have triumphed over Satan in the midst of it all.
And it would be a wonderful thing if each of us could do the same.
So that as the devil looks at us and at our church life and our individual lives,
we are disturbing him. We are confounding him by our continued confidence and trust in God,
who is good to us whether he gives or whether he takes away.
The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Shall we indeed accept
good from God and accept adversity? The same God who is good may give us blessings,
he may give us adversity. Through it all and in it all he is working out his purposes.
Some of that we see, some of it we don't. And what we don't see is that we are able,
through our confidence and trust in God, though he slayers, to prove the reality of
his grace in our lives and so confound and battle Satan and his demons. And that perhaps is one of
the most important things that we could ever do because without our realizing it very often
we are caught up in a cosmic conflict in which God and Satan are involved.
And it's a great thing when we can shout the omnipotence of God's grace and trust him though
he slayers. Well, in all this Job did not sin with his lips. We go on and look, God willing,
at the way in which this story works itself out because Job's friends came to comfort him
and at first they succeeded but then they didn't. Job responded to them in a way that not only helps
us to understand his sufferings from his perspective but gives us a fascinating glimpse
into the psychology of grief. We are also told in the book something about the way in which God
through suffering prepares us for himself and for an encounter with himself that will transform us.
But that is to come. In the meantime, let's just remember that God may choose you and I to be the
battleground between himself and Satan. And hell is interested in knowing how we're going to respond
and so is heaven. And wouldn't it be a great thing if we, you and me, ordinary though we are,
through God's grace to us in Christ, are able to do something that is so impressive and important,
spiritually speaking, that we confound Satan and glorify God. May the Lord help us in that way.
Well, now let's sing our hymn. It's a hymn that John Newton wrote. He wrote it out of a similar
experience, I think, that Job knew, though maybe not to the same degree.
And it's 5-9-1. We sing it to the tune, to the modern chorus, Be still and know that I am God.
John Newton's lovely hymn, 5-9-1, Why should I fear the darkest hour
or tremble at the tempest power? Jesus vouchsafes to be my tower. Let's stand and sing 5-9-1.
We thank you, Lord, that in giving us your son you've given us the very best of blessings.
And if we have him, we have all that we shall ever need. We thank you that you did not spare your
only son but gave him up for us all. And with him you have promised freely to give us all things.
Help us then to trust you, even though we do not understand. Help us to shout the power of your
grace. Help us to live by the power of that grace, triumphant over all our enemies. We thank you that
you have said, if we resist the devil, he will flee from us. And we pray that you will help us
to do that day by day in the power of your gracious Holy Spirit. Fear us then and may the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with us all now and always. Amen.