The life of Job.

In one sense, in light of what we saw at the first point was, there is no such thing as innocent suffering in an absolute sense. There is a lot of reflection in Scripture on innocent suffering in some lesser sense, and no book reflects on it more probingly than the drama of Job.

It’s cast as an epic, and it forces us to think through the principles that are involved.
The book begins in chapter one with an introduction to the man. We’re told he is a righteous man. The Hebrew word is tam, often used for perfect. It doesn’t mean that he’s sinlessly perfect. That’s not the point, it means He is just as good as good of a person as there can be.

He is a remarkable man, he prays preemptively for his 10 children. That means, he doesn’t wait until they sin and then say, “Oh dear Lord, forgive them.” He’s praying preemptively for them, lest they should ever sin in their hearts in any respect.

If there were any that were poor in his neighborhood, he made sure that he provided for them. On every arena that you can think about, this was a good man. He was filthy rich and all of that, but generous with it. He was the richest man in the East.

However, Job did not know there was a time when Satan actually comes before God and offers God, as it were, a wager. That’s the way the drama is set up. God says, “Satan, have you considered my servant Job? If you want to see what a righteous human being looks like, this is as good as it gets. Have you considered him?”

Satan says, “Yeah, You protect him. You give him money and lots of wealth. He’s protected all around by your sovereignty. I can’t even get at him and destroy him. No wonder he thanks you.” God says, “Go ahead, take it all away ,let’s see what happens then. Just don’t touch his body.

So in an array of accidents, marauding Chaldeans, and marauding Sabeans, all of his herds are stripped away. Then a horrible storm comes up. The house where his 10 children are partying collapses, and they’re all crushed to death. Job says, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Even when this happened, Job did not sin or curse God foolishly. Then Satan comes back, and he says, Yeah, but anybody can still be pious if they have their health, at least. Take away their health God, and Job will turn around and curse you to your face.

So God says, Go ahead, afflict him, but spare his life. Job breaks out with sores and scabs. He sits on an ash pit, in the detritus of his life, and takes a piece of broken pottery to scratch himself.

Then his three friends arrive, acquaintances from former years. They fly in, see the wretched man, and do one wise thing: they sit with him and say nothing for a whole week.

Then the theological debate that constitutes the drama of Job begins.

They begin, Job, do you believe that God is good? Yes. Do you believe that God is sovereign? Yes. Do you believe that God is just? Yes.

Then, if you’re suffering like this, must it not be because you’re being punished for something?

Job says, whoa, wait a minute. Human beings are born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward. I know that God is good, and I know that God is sovereign, I’m not doubting that, but, quite frankly, I don’t deserve this.

They say, wait a minute Job. Are you challenging the fairness of God? If God is sovereign and God is good, then you can’t be suffering like this unless, in some sense, you deserve it! Or else, you’re disputing, questioning the justice of God!

Don’t you think that what you ought to do is admit your sinfulness?

Job says, I know that God is sovereign. I know that God is good, but quite frankly, what’s happening to me is not fair. I know that too. I can’t put all this together, but what’s happening to me is not right. It’s not fair. In fact, if you push me hard enough, what I really wish is for God to come down so that I could ask him a few questions! I don’t want to deny that God is good, but boy, do I have some questions to ask him!

Job, are you going to stand in judgment of God? He’s sovereign, He’s righteous. If you have the attitude that you’re going to ask him questions, then you really are disputing his goodness or his greatness or his sovereignty somewhere, aren’t you? I don’t know about that, Job says, but I do know that there are times when I wish I had a lawyer.

He says. “I wish I had a mediator, somebody to go between. I can’t go up to heaven and have a chat with him. He’s not coming back down here. He’s hiding his face from me. I don’t have the answers to all of this, but I sure wish I had a lawyer, some sort of mediator to go between God and me. At one level, though he slay me, yet will I trust him. On another level, I wish I had him to hold to account, because what’s happening to me is not fair.

“Job, you’re blaspheming! You’re right on the edge of the most horrible language. To talk about God being unfair? Don’t you understand that our sins are such slippery things? They hide in such dark little corners. Believe me, God’s knowledge of your sin is so absolute. He remembers sins that you have committed that you can’t even remember with your brain.

Even if you don’t know that there are sins, even if you can’t think of specific sins that you’ve committed, what you really ought to do is just sort of confess them in general terms, because at least that would acknowledge that God is right and you’re not. If you say that you believe that God is sovereign and God is good, and you’re being punished like this, then it must be because of sin in your life.

You can confess all your sins before God: all the sins that you don’t remember and all the sins that you might have done and all the sins that he knows about that you can’t quite recall. Just confess them before the Lord, and the Lord will restore to you all the blessings that would then be yours.”

Job says, How can I possibly confess things that I don’t know about? If I do that, then I’m treating God as if he’s just some sort of blessing dispenser. I just want the blessings, so I’ll just confess sins. I’ll say anything so long as I can get more blessings. How can I do that?

I would be dishonest. I am not aware of a whole lot of sins that I should really confess. How can I do that without being dishonest before God?

Eventually, God speaks.

For two chapters, chapters 38 and 39, God speaks. He asks rhetorical questions: “Job, have you ever designed a snowflake?” “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Were you around when I cast the constellation Orion into the heavens?

Have you ever designed a hippopotamus, Job? Did you make this planet and suspend it in space? Did you draw the boundaries where the sea is and where the land is, Job? Have you done that?” God asks question after question of this sort.

So at the beginning of chapter 40, Job says, “I obviously spoke too soon. Obviously, there are all kinds of things I don’t know. I’d like to back off. I’m sorry I’ve spoken like that.” God says, “Stand up on your feet like a man. I’m not finished yet! I have some more questions.”

He asks another chapter and a half of these rhetorical questions. “What about the storehouses of the hail, Job? Do you know how that all comes about? Hmm? Did you put the moon to rotate as it does? Hmm? Did you do that?” Another chapter and a half.

Until, at the very end, what does Job say after God is finished talking? Does he say, “Ah, now I understand”?

No, He says, “I repent.” Now you need to understand what he’s repenting of. He is not following the advice of the so-called friends, the miserable comforters. He is not repenting of some putative evil that he can’t remember, in order to swing God’s favor back to him.

What he’s repenting of is the attitude that he has had toward God, as if knows enough to judge God.

What God says is, “Job, basically, you did say the right things about me, and your friends did not.

Your friends, who thought that they were defending me, who thought that they were protecting my goodness and my sovereignty?

In fact, I am very angry with them. I’m very angry about the way they treated suffering, for the way they treated you. They are such miserable wretches because, in the name of this theology, where they had all of the little propositions right, they didn’t actually get compassion right. They didn’t get the truth of the whole right.

They didn’t get any mystery of God right.

They thought they understood everything about me. In fact, they stand under my wrath, unless you, Job, intercede for them now in prayer. I want you to pray for them. Because, basically, Job, you did get it right. You recognized there’s a mystery here. You didn’t work out the entailments very well. Yeah, you do need to repent in some sense.

Basically, you defended me while still preserving your integrity, whereas their defense of me was so neat and boxy. It was all nicely shaped, but there was no mystery anywhere.

There was no worship, no compassion. They just had all the propositions formally correct, turned the crank, and out popped the right answer. At the end of the day, they reduced me. You pray for them, Job.”

There are not a lot of easy answers. There is mystery hiding all over the place. Then you get to chapter 42, and what God does is give Job twice as many sheep, twice as many cattle, and twice as many asses as he had before, as well as the same number of kids as he had before, all over again.

So now Job has his family back. He’s twice as wealthy as he was.

The critics come along today and say, “This is so bad.” In a book full of mystery and ambiguity and moral indignation, now you come to the end of the book, and it all has a happy ending.

It’s clearly not written by the same author. Clearly, that’s been written by some later redactor, some later editor who put a happy ending on the whole thing, with lots of sheep and babies around!

The truth is, that there are chunks of the Bible, texts of the Bible, literary genres or forms of the Bible, that do emphasize absolutes. There are other forms that emphasize ambiguity.

Jesus, often, is a great wisdom preacher. Jesus preaches in many different kinds of genres, but at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, you hear this wisdom polarity. You’re going to build a house. Are you going to build it on rock, so it can withstand all the storms? Or are you going to build it on sand, so it’s going to be wiped away.

Jesus says, “Blessed is the man who goes in at the narrow gate, on the straight path. Not many go in that way, but there’s life at the end of it. Cursed is the one, in effect, who goes in at the broad gate, the very broad way. Many be that go in there, but that is the way to destruction.” You think, “Well, I don’t want either of them. I mean, that’s really dirty over there, and that’s a bit narrow and fundamentalist over here. I’d like a sort of medium-size gate.” Jesus doesn’t offer that, either.

So there are lots of passages in the Bible that offer these absolute polarities. On the other hand, there are many passages in the Bible, especially narrative passages, that tell you about the moral ambiguity. So Abraham is a great man, but he’s a flawed great man. Peter, who speaks on Pentecost, is also the man who swears with oaths that he never knew Jesus.

David is the man after God’s own heart, but he’s sleeping around. The Bible speaks of moral ambiguity in the narrative passages of Scripture too.

If you have only the narrative passages that speak to the moral ambiguity, then you might draw the wrong inference. You might say, “Well, if David did it, it’s not too surprising if I do it, after all.” If you had only the passages that speak of moral absolutes, then either you start preening yourself that you can live above it all or you feel absolutely desperate because you’re never quite good enough.

The Bible gives us both. It gives us passages full of moral ambiguity and it gives us passages that speak of absolutes. The difference, however, between the passages that speak with moral ambiguity and the contemporary world today that likes moral ambiguity is this: In our world, moral ambiguity is an intrinsically good thing. Moral ambiguity is the apex of sophistication. Moral ambiguity is something to be praised.

Whereas in the Bible, moral ambiguity is always to be regretted. It’s not the last word. The last word is on the last day, where not only will justice be done, but it will be seen to be done. Every mouth will be stopped and every tongue shut, and everyone will confess that God’s ways are right and that Jesus is Lord.

So the moral ambiguity is acknowledged. It’s where we live. It’s where we move. It reflects all of our own duplicity, our own double standards. Even those of us who know the Lord and have been forgiven, God help us, still sometimes live according to the flesh. God help us! Yet it’s not the last word. The moral ambiguity is not something to be cherished. It’s something to be regretted as we wait for the final display of a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness, when we will be transformed, and there will be no more sin.

Job 42 functions, in the book of Job, the way the book of Revelation functions in the New Testament. Job 42 is not a mistake. Job 42 is saying that despite all the moral ambiguity … despite the fact that human beings, even good human beings like Job, may not have all the answers and still have to acknowledge that God is so much greater than they … on the last day, God will be vindicated.

Not only will justice be done, but it will be seen to be done. Chapter 42 is not a mistake. It’s the vindication of God. We have already seen this built right into the whole Bible structure when we remember the second pillar. There is a heaven to be gained and a hell to be shunned. So what do we learn from the book of Job?

There is such a thing as innocent suffering. It’s in a relevant sense, but it’s still there, isn’t it? Or else, what do you do with the book of Job? There may come a time in our lives when we don’t see the immediate justice of it all. We still have to acknowledge, first, that we don’t understand very much. We never designed a snowflake. We did not set out this universe.

At some point, we have to say the right thing … as Job said the right thing, even in the midst of his suffering, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him” … in the sure and certain confidence that Job 42 is coming. Justice will be done and will be seen to be done on the last day. In other words, no thoughtful Christian will ever adopt the stance that says, “Yeah, yeah, if you have problems with suffering, let me give you all the answers.”

Rather, at the end of the day, will still recognize there is mystery and hurt and a God who is still bigger.