Trusting God in the Midst of Suffering Part II

Job 1:1-2:10

A very popular theology today is the Health Wealth and Prosperity teaching. It says that if you have enough faith, your business will prosper. You won’t get sick. Tragedy will not strike. You won’t be late on your bills. God wants you to live in “total victory” as one popular teacher has said. This is the exact opposite of what Christ promised us.
Acts 14:22 strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them m to continue in n the faith, and saying that o through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.
Matt 10:26, 25 “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household.
John 15:20 - Remember the word that I said to you: g ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

II. God Owes Us Nothing vs 1
God owes none of us an easy life of health, material wealth, free of sorrow. One of the points of this book is that Job was the “best” man, yet God allowed unimaginable pain and sorrow to come into his life. We must not understand pain and sorrow as purely God’s retributive justice for our actions. In other words, it is not always the case that righteous people prosper and wicked people suffer. There are many instances where the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer.

1. Remember when Katrina happened, and some televangelists said it was because of homosexuality or gambling? The truth is that if we got what we deserved Katrina would come and land in our backyard.
2. Vs 14-17 God does not owe it to us to prevent people from sinning against us. Even though it was sinful for the Chaldeans to attack Job, God in allowing them to do so was not acting in an unjust manner. Think about what this means. Anytime anyone sins against you, God could have stopped them but didn’t and He is not blameworthy.
3. Vs 6-12 God does not owe it to us to prevent Satan from attacking us.
4. The reason God does not owe us a good life is because we have sinned against Him. Even the best of us have nothing we can hold over God’s head. We cannot blame Him as being unjust. We see Job’s repentance in Job 42:6.
5. A popular question that many people ask is “Why do bad things happen to good people?” There is even a book by that title written by Rabbi Harold Kushner.

a. The logic is that some people are “good” and others are “bad” and in our minds it is unjust for bad things to happen to good people. This is a logical question to ask of this passage, but it is not a legitimate question to ask, ever. It is a loaded question like “Have you stopped beating your wife?” If someone asked me that it would be loaded. A loaded question presumes some truth and then answering the question legitimizes the asker’s inferred point. The load is that I am currently beating my wife, if I answer the question I either beat her in the past or am still currently beating her. The question about why bad things happen to good people presupposes that there is such a thing as “good people” which the Bible is explicit in saying there are none (Rom 3:9-10).
b. A better question to ask would be “Why in the world doesn’t God immediately destroy any and all who sin? Where is the outrage at God’s failure to execute justice? If there is any outrage to be had it ought to be because God forgives sin. He is the just judge of the universe and I have committed the most heinous atrocities against His great Name, and yet He forgives. What a scandal! What a brazen disregard for justice! How could He possibly overlook sin? Nobody talks that way, but that is much more legitimate than asking “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Why does anything good happen to treasonous sinners like us?

III. God intends even the worst experiences for our good. We see this later in 33:17 that God intends suffering for our good. We learn from Romans 8:28 that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. This is one of the greatest promises of the Bible, and we should constantly be banking on this.

IV. Conclusion- How should we respond to tragedy?

1. All of what we have said (God is sovereign, God owes us nothing, God intends evil for our good) does not mean that we don’t have real pain and real sorrow. It does not mean that we won’t be devastated by calamities, but it does mean that when we fall, we fall on Christ, Job had incredible, unbearable pain. As we heard in Romans chapter 8 a few weeks ago “in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.” Not “instead of these things…” Part of the Christian walk is sorrow and pain, and it is real. Experiencing pain is no sign of unbelief, but it is important to note that we do not mourn as those without hope (I Thess. 4:13). In a sense our suffering should be worship. When we mourn we recognize God's gifts as valuable. We don’t need pasted on smiles and a fake chipper attitude, be broken, yet always rejoicing. II Cor 6:10.
2. What about anger? We never have a legitimate reason to be mad at God. That doesn’t mean that we won’t be mad at God, and if we are, we should admit it.
3. We should respond to God in faith and worship (Job 1:20-21), not because we necessarily like or even understand our circumstances, but because we trust God that He means this for our good and realize we have no grounds to be angry at Him.

Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan his work in vain
God is His own interpreter
And He will make it plain

4. We should respond in repentance (Job 42:6), realizing that our time is coming to, and we need to be prepared. Luke 13:4-5
5. The answer to the question about why God doesn’t destroy us immediately is found in our evangelism verse Romans 3:24-25. “In God’s divine forbearance He had passed over former sins” Why did God pass over former sins? Answer: the cross. Why is God patient toward us? Answer the cross. Why does God plead with us, and give us opportunity after opportunity to repent? Answer the cross. Job’s situation pushes us to the cross where we can find our peace with God. That is where He made peace with us, so that is where we should go to find it. We believe that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ, and so any pain and suffering that we experience is not punishment for sin, but is a painful but necessary surgery to rid us of our imperfections.

And now come, broken, to the cross,
Where Christ embraced all human loss,
And let us bow before the throne
Of God, who gives and takes his own,
And promises – whatever toll
He takes – to satisfy our soul.
Come, learn the lesson of the rod:
The treasure that we have in God.
He is not poor nor much enticed
Who loses everything but Christ.