Milford Baptist Church  16 September 2001
Faith under fire


I. Some questions

It's being called "the world's worst ever terrorist assault." Eighty-seven percent of all Americans are calling it, "the most tragic news event in their life time." The final death toll could be higher than 10,000. Ten thousand mums and dads, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters crushed under rubble in downtown Manhattan. Their families must themselves be crushed by questions. Questions like: Why did this happen? What did we do wrong? Where is God in all of this? If there really is a powerful, loving God, why did he allow this tragedy to happen? Is there any hope for our fractured, hate-filled world as it possibly lurches towards world war III?

Have you ever faced these sorts of questions? Do you know anyone who has? These questions can emerge every time a drunk driver loses control, or a doctor whispers "cancer", or a marriage flounders, or a company fails and jobs are lost. Every time you scan the news about Israel or Ireland or the Balkans. Why does God allow this sort of suffering to happen? Is he really in control? Does he really care? Is there any sort of hope for our world? Bertrand Russell said, "We cry into the night and there is no reply." There's no answer to our questions. Or is there?

If we were to flick through the Bible, we'd find that one book has a disproportionately higher number of questions than any other. In its forty-two chapters it has 330 questions. Which book is it? The book of Job. A story about tragedy and pain, about faith under fire.

How does the story go? Job is a good man, the best. God says, "There is no one on earth like him; he is a blameless and upright man, a man who fears God and shuns evil" (1.8). But Satan retorts that Job trusts God only because God has spoiled him with an easy life. Satan assaults God's character. He implies that God is not worthy of being loved for who he is. And so, in this story, God enters something resembling a wager with Satan, in which God stacks the odds against himself. Poor Job must undergo a terrible ordeal to determine whether his faith will stand...

So one day, without warning, two rogue Middle Eastern groups strike at the heart of Job's business empire, taking away all his wealth, executing all his employees. While this news is still breaking, Job learns that a freak desert storm has struck the house of his oldest son. The house collapsed and all ten of his children are dead. No survivors. But that's not enough. After hearing all this shocking news, Job is crushed by an appalling disease. He breaks out in painful sores from head to foot. Job loses his business, his family, his health. Sitting in ashes, scraping himself with broken shards of pottery, Job (not surprisingly) gives voice to the very questions that we sometimes ask. Why me? How can God let this happen? Where is God in all this? Is he really in control? Does he really care? Is there any hope?

II. Our answers

How do you answer questions like this?

One response is to acquit God of any failure or wrongdoing by condemning the victims of tragedy. I've heard some Christians say that this tragedy in America is God's will, that he's punishing America for its sins. In effect, they're saying that God was in the cockpit, flying those planes into the buildings. Job's three comforters take the same line. They insist that a powerful, loving God can only be punishing Job for sins that he must have committed. But that doesn't add up. God himself has said that Job is "blameless and upright."

Another possible response, on the evidence, is to acquit the victims and condemn God. Some people, like Rabbi Kushner, who wrote the best seller, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, claim that God is just weak and lacks the power to prevent human suffering. Others assume that God, though strong, is distant - that he runs the world at a distance without personal involvement. In other words, they claim that God just doesn't care. I think one of my cousins came to this conclusion when his young boy died of meningitis. His faith in a loving God crumbled. Job's faith nearly crumbles too. He asks the same questions that we do. He screams at God, "Does it please you to oppress me, to spurn the work of your hands?" (10.3). Don't you care?

III. God's answers

What's God answer to these questions?

Is God in control?

After thirty-five chapters of speculation by Job and his "comforters," God turns up in a storm, and presents his defense (38.1). But his defense is less an answer to these questions than a series of his own questions. He asks Job 86 questions. "Do you have an arm like God's, and can your voice thunder like his?" (40.9) Have you laid the earth's foundations and marked off its dimensions (38.4)? Did you shut up the sea behind its doors when it burst forth from the womb (38.8)? Do you bring forth the constellations in their seasons (38.32)? Do you send lightening bolts on their way (38.35)? Do you give the horse its strength (39.19)? Do you command the eagle to soar on wings and build its nest on high (39.27)? Did you give the behemoth its size (40.15-24) and the Leviathan its power (41.1-34)? God piles up the evidence for his power. And Job can only meekly reply: "I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted" (42.1). God is in control.

Does God care?

But if God is in control, why does he allow pain and tragedy to occur? He might be in control, but does he care? To Job, it seemed like God didn't care, that he was keeping his distance. Job screams, "Though I cry 'I've been wronged!' I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice" (19.7). To Job God seemed far away; but in one sense God was never closer to Job. As the opening chapter tells us, God was letting his reputation ride on the response of this one human being. At the very time when Job felt most abandoned, God was giving him personal, almost microscopic scrutiny. God heard Job's every cry.

At the close of World War II, Jurgen Moltman, a young German, became a prisoner of war. He was taken to a labour camp and confronted with the full brutality of the holocaust. As he realized what his fellow Germans had done, he fell into a black hole of depression. In the depths of his depression and shame someone gave him a Bible. He stumbled through the story of Jesus until he came to that cry: "My God my God why have you forsaken me?" And then, he said, "I knew with certainty: This is someone who understands me. And I began to understand the forsaken Christ because I felt that he understood me." Jurgen Moltmann realized that God does care, he cared enough to give his own life for his suffering creatures. And so Moltmann entrusted his life to Jesus, and is now one of the foremost theologians in the world today.

Is there hope?

So God is in control and God does care. But evil persists. Terrorist attacks continue. Innocent people still die. Cancers still strike. Marriages still fail. And the world doesn't seem to be getting any better, does it? Some people say it's lurching towards world war III. Is there hope? Will things get better?

On the last page of Job's story the author includes one poignant little detail. In his old age, having passed the test, all of Job's material possessions are doubled. Once the owner of 7,000 sheep and 3,000 camels, he now possesses 14,000 sheep and 6,000 camels. But, significantly, his family does not double. The father of seven sons and three daughters becomes the father of seven new sons and three new daughters, not fourteen and six. So even here, in the middle of the Old Testament, which at best has only a shadowy concept of the afterlife, the story of Job clearly suggests that Job will one day get his family back. The ten children he lost will be restored to him, to live with him in a glorious recreated world.

A friend was telling me recently about his family. His sister - a relatively young woman - died of cancer last year. His father, who has been very ill with a heart condition, has had to cope with both his own sickness and the grief of losing his daughter. One day a while back his father was lying in bed when he suddenly saw his daughter standing in the room. She said, "Dad, I've been sent to tell you that you will get better." The old man just looked at her and then he said, "Tell me, what's it like on the other side?" She smiled and said one word: "glorious." My friend's dad will see his daughter again, when they are reunited in a glorious new world where there is no pain, or grief or tears. So there is hope for our crumbling world, there is justice, if we will just look beyond this life, to the day when God's miracle of transforming Bad Friday into Easter Sunday transforms the whole universe.

IV. Conclusion

So what's the answer? Why does God allow the sort of suffering which we have witnessed on our television screens this week? If you've read the book of Job you might notice that God doesn't actually answer all of Job's questions. In fact, incredibly, God avoids directly addressing the question of suffering altogether. The book of Job does not contain any compact theory of why good people suffer. The reason is that, from the opening chapter, the real issue is not the cause of Job's suffering, but his response to that suffering. Will Job continue to trust in God when everything goes wrong? Job does. He never follows his wife's advice to "curse God and die." Instead he gasps, "Though he slays me, yet will I trust him" (13.15). Job learned that God rules the world, and that God cares for him. That was enough.

For us, thousands of years later, Job's questions have not gone away. We may not face the extreme disasters that Job faced, or the calamitous suffering that some Americans now face, but we may face different struggles: a terminal illness, a career failure, a floundering marriage, a face or body shape that seems to turn people off, not on. The story of Job affirms that no matter how bad things get God is in control of this world, and he does care for each one of us. David Watson once said, "Sometimes there are no good answers, just good responses." "Though he slays me, yet will I hope in him" Will you?


Questions

1. How have you struggled with the problem of pain? When have you ever doubted that God is in control or that he cares? How would you answer a friend who tells you that they are struggling with believing in a God who allows the World Trade Center tragedy to occur?
2. The novelist, Virginia Woolf, once wrote to a friend, "I read the book of Job last night - I don't think God comes well out of it." Why do you think she says that and how would you reply to her?
3. The first two chapters of Job make the subtle distinction that God did not directly cause Job's problems. He permitted them, but Satan caused the suffering. How important is this distinction?
4. Does Job decisively refute the theory that suffering always comes as a result of sin?
5. In the book of Job God seems to suggest that Job was basing his judgments about God on incomplete evidence (38.2-42.3). How does this fact - the fact that no one has all the facts about suffering - help you respond to the problem of pain?
6. Do these other passages help you address the questions raised by suffering: Romans 8.18-39; Hebrews 11; Philippians 1; 1 John 4.12?

1

In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.

2

He had seven sons and three daughters,

3

and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.

4

His sons used to take turns holding feasts in their homes, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.

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." This was Job's regular custom.

6

One day the angels^[1] came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan^[2] also came with them.

7

The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered the LORD, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it."

8

Then the LORD said to Satan, "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."

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."

12

The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger." Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.

13

One day when Job's sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house,

14

a messenger came to Job and said, "The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby,

15

and the Sabeans attacked and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!"

16

While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, "The fire of God fell from the sky and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!"

17

While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, "The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!"

18

While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, "Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house,

19

when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!"

20

At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship

21

and said: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart.^[3] 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.

 

1. [6] Hebrew the sons of God
2. [6] Satan means accuser.
3. [21] Or will return there

Follow this link for the rest of the book of Job and to look up the other passages quoted