Mystery of Christ: Restored Job 42:1-6, 10
- This morning we finish our time with the story of Job. We have not covered the whole story, but we have covered enough ground to see the landscape.
- We first saw Job disoriented when he lost everything he had including material wealth and family. He was tempted to curse God and die, but Job chose instead to affirm life, saying I must learn to accept the good and the bad in life.
- Next, we saw Job deserted, even by God, it seemed to him, but he insisted, “I will not let the darkness silence me.” Which we took to mean that he would not be overcome by his circumstances.
- Last we saw the Lord finally respond to Job’s question of why. The Lord told Job that he did not know the half of it. We really don’t have enough knowledge of the full picture to accuse life or God, so we should affirm life instead. Trust. God is in the hope. Stop listening to the little voices and narratives in our head that want to accuse life and follow the path of bitterness and instead listen for the still small voice of Christ who teaches us to overcome.
- The overarching question in this whole story is will Job curse God and die? And that is a central question for all of us. Because at some point Satan will show up in your life and turn it upside down. Satan, or in Hebrew pronounced Saw-Tawn means accuser or adversary. You will encounter adversity and you will want to accuse life, accuse God. You will be tempted to curse God and die. The combination of adversity and accusation is a recipe for spiritual defeat.
- You can certainly do that, curse God, accuse life, accuse God, in the midst of your adversity and suffering, but it leads to destruction. When you accuse life rather than affirm it, you are at the end. There is nowhere to go, you are decaying at that point, your mind, your heart and your soul.
- You remember at the beginning of the story of Job, we first encountered Satan moving to and fro across the earth looking for someone who he could destroy. He did not bother with Job, because Job had it all, but when Job lost it all, Satan was ready to complete his work, to get Job to curse God and die.
- You see Satan’s work is not done when he injures us, takes a loved one from us, brings illness upon us, causes financial ruin. Those things are just a means to Satan’s ultimate goal. Satan’s ultimate goal is to get you to curse God and die. As long as you have not cursed God, you still have the will and the launching pad to overcome. But if you meet adversity with accusation, cursing God, you have lost the battle.
- Adversity wants to bring you down, destroy you and get you to throw in the towel. And adversity only gets the best of you, not when the terrible event happens to you, but when you respond to the event by cursing life, giving up and begin waiting around to die.
- Oh, you would be surprised how many people, because of some adversity in their life, have accused life, cursed God, so to speak, and are just waiting to die. When I attended graduate school at U of L in the early nineties I went to work part-time on the weekends for a man in my church who needed some young men to help him with moving heavy things. He was a nice fellow at church, amiable, friendly. But on the job he was a mean, angry man. Not just a tough boss. I can handle that. It was clear this guy was angry at life, that his Sunday morning face was just a mask, a persona. He had had serious setbacks and disappointments in life, but rather than trusting and affirming life, he had in effect cursed God and died spiritually. He told me at one point, he did not plan to live beyond 50, because he was already tired of life.
- When the adversary can get in your head and convince you of that, he has got you. You have in effect cursed God and died. And this one chance, this one beautify opportunity you have at life, you choose to accuse life, curse God and die spiritually, waiting to die physically.
- This was Job’s’ temptation all along, to throw in the towel. To give up. To be so blinded by his current circumstance that he could not see a future ahead of him. I think of the pictures of the men jumping out of buildings when the stock market crashed in 1929, who could see no further than their decimated stock portfolios. I have seen many lives halted by a tragedy, people who have accused life and God and then chosen to die spiritually until they finally die physically. I do not judge them. Life can be terrifying and demoralizing when we lose something beautiful. But I know that when a person accuses life and curses God, that the adversity wins, that Satan has gained a victory that does not belong to him.
- Victory, as David said in Psalm 3:8, belongs to the Lord. But we have to give the Lord room for victory. We have to give the Lord space to bring light to our darkness, to bring order to our chaos, to bring glory to our present agony.
- Job did not throw in the towel. He felt anguish, fear, disorientation, frustration, searing pain. Who wouldn’t? He lost his children to disease. He lost his fortune. He questioned He brought a bitter complaint before the Lord. But in the face of adversity, he did not accuse life. Instead, there came a point where he experienced an awakening. He realizes something in the midst of his pain that is crucial for you and me to acknowledge.
- This morning, we see Job’s life restored, but not until he works through some things in his mind and heart that he has to get right.
- First, he acknowledges that he doesn’t know the half of it and affirms God’s power and purpose. He takes a leap of faith. He trusts.
- Second, he acknowledges that because his counsel is without knowledge his role is not to ask why. He realizes he has to get beyond the why. And get to the how. When you start asking how, you’ll begin to notice that there has been a knock on your door that you had not notice. Tapping, Tapping, Tapping. And you hear the voice of Jesus say, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and sup with him, and he with me (Rev. 3:20).
- Next, he acknowledges that he has been hearing but not seeing. That takes us back to last week when he was hearing these stories play in his mind about what was going on, but those stories were false narratives, incomplete. But when he finally was silenced, he could now see clearly what was happening. He began to see how his life could be different. Notice it was not the same life. It was different, but it was good.
- In response to this awakening, Job despises who he is and repents. Has a change of mind, of worldview, of how he understands God. What does it mean he despises who he is? It means he despised the bitterness of his current life. He was sick and tired of being sick and tired and realized the only way out was to stop questioning God, accusing life, getting up and moving on to the next chapter of his life.
- The great American sage of Concord Ralph Waldo Emerson lost his father when Emerson was only eight years old. He lost his newly-wed wife, Ellen Tucker, to tuberculosis. He lost his dear five-year-old son Waldo to scarlet fever. He struggle for a while keeping his family out of poverty. So when he speaks on the purpose and role of suffering in life, he speaks with some credibility. What he says about suffering echoes Job’s experience. Listen to what he says in his essay Compensation: The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.
- We all have to face our adversity in our own way, in our own time. There are seasons appropriate to grief, to asking why, to offering up a bitter complaint. But if Job teaches us anything, it is this. You adversity cannot destroy. The only one who has the power to bring defeat in your life is you when permit Satan, the great Adversary, to claim you as another victim. You are not a victim, when life happens. Life happens to all of us. You become a victim, when you remain bitter, curse God and die in your spirit.
- For this reason, Jesus says in Matthew 10: 26 “So do not be afraid of [adversity], for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known [in other words, it will all become clear one day]… 28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
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