The Bible Binge: The Redemption of Doubt (Job 38:1-11)

I have my doubts

Earlier this year, Alaska Flight 1282 landed in Portland, Oregon with a gaping hole in the fuselage. In a story released this week, flight attendants said they were certain that they had lost passengers through the hole that opened up at 16,000 feet when a panel that had been improperly installed blew off the plane. The attendants were relieved to find out that no one flew out of the airplane when the hole opened up. However, they also expressed that they did not want to get on a Boeing MAX airplane any time soon. Attendants expressed high levels of DOUBT about the trustworthiness of that airplane. While flying on an airplane is safer than riding in a car, their experience in one of the few instances of airplane accidents has created the kind of doubt that is crippling. Life-altering doubt. Based on, what in their minds, is a very tangible fear.

As we work our way through the Bible Binge we are again in the book of Job. In fact, we’re finishing up Job in our Bible reading tomorrow and we will be in Ecclesiastes for most of the rest of the week. Job is a great book. I’ve loved reading this book again. So many of life’s basic questions are tackled in this book. A couple of weeks ago we talked about how the book of Job addresses the issue of suffering. Job suffers tremendously in this book. We are going to jump back into this story, to look at what is happening in Job via a different camera angle.

Let’s revisit the story. Job is someone who lived, most likely some time during the 400 years that Israel was in Egypt. The locations and names given suggest that Job was a descendent of Esau, Jacob’s brother who we read about in the book of Genesis. Job is a very wealthy man. And Job is one who has faith in the Promise, one who believes the Promise given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Job was a real guy, and everything in the book really happened.

Along the way, Job loses it all. God allows Satan to take away Job’s wealth, Job’s children, and Job’s health. His wife says “curse God and die”. “You don’t have God on your side, Job”. Job has four friends. They are a little more subtle than Mrs. Job. But they end up pretty much where she does. All of them are convinced that Job has sinned some great sin and his sin is to blame for all the terrible stuff that has happened. And they are twisting Scripture to make their point: God punishes the sinner, not the saint. If Job had faith, if Job didn’t have some big sin, none of this would have happened.

The author of this book goes out of his way to let us know that Job has done nothing wrong. And you can imagine, when your four best friends show up and they are blaming you for all of the loss and all of the suffering… Job gets very despondent. While Job doesn’t curse God and die, he talks along the way about wishing he had never been born and wishing he were dead. Job’s suffering is off the charts. His body is covered with painful sores that he cannot get rid of and has no pain relief. Day after day after day.

And the key question for Job throughout the entire book is this:

Can God be trusted?

And for long periods of time in this book, Job has no answer to that question. One of the questions we like to toss around in philosophical discussions is “why do bad things happen to good people?” A well-known theologian once quipped, “The question should be ‘why do good things happen to bad people’ because none of us are good.” He’s right. The bible tells us there are no good people in our standing with God. But there’s also Job’s argument that bad things happen to good people. And if that happens, “can God be trusted?”

There’s nothing wrong with asking the question. But it is a question that has a very bad beginning. At the very beginning of our story in the garden, the serpent shows up and asks our first parents, Adam and Eve, “did God really say?” He is sowing seeds of doubt that God can be trusted.

But that brings us to this: yes, the serpent is sowing doubt. The question then becomes, is doubt “sin”? We come to the book of Job and we have to answer, no. As Job is talking to his friends, Job says this about God to God:

Job 10:12–13 “You gave me life and faithful love, and your care has guarded my life. Yet you concealed these thoughts in your heart; I know that this was your hidden plan:”

This is doubt, in all of the mess. Yes, you gave me life and I’ve seen your love. But what have you done for me lately? You don’t have my best intentions in mind. Job is struggling with the deepest and darkest of thoughts. Even as he defends God on the one hand… he looks at his awful and painful circumstances and he is saying “how does this happen, God?” And then there’s this:

Job 17:15–16 “Where then is my hope? Who can see any hope for me? Will it go down to the gates of Sheol, or will we descend together to the dust?”

Hope is fading for Job. Where are you, God? Do you even care? How do I even know that you even care any more? Job lost everything, including his children. How can a loving God allow that? For all Job knows, God doesn’t care. God isn’t listening.

And God is silent. Chapter after chapter goes by. The friends pile on. Job continues to suffer in pain and torment. Job wants to die. Job doubts the goodness of God. Job doubts God’s presence. This is hell on earth.

And it’s not the physical and psychological pain, it’s not just the wife, it’s not just the friends. You know why Job doubts? It’s the silence. Deafening silence. Not from the friends… they aren’t silent at all. No. For thirty-five chapters God is silent. For thirty-five chapters God doesn’t say a word. For thirty-five chapters Job cries out. And for thirty-five chapters Bildad, Zophar, Eliphaz, and Elihu point fingers, debate, accuse, and pontificate. But God? He says nothing. That is hell on earth.

We need to sit here with Job and allow this to sink in… it is OK to doubt. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about the false promise of prosperity. You can’t find that promise in Job. But this week there’s this:

Total certainty about God is also a false promise.

We live in a Christianity that has made an idol of certainty. I grew up being told doubt in God is a sin. And just as there are millions being spent on the prosperity God, there are millions being spent on being absolutely certain about all things pertaining to God. I spent some time this week putting the word “doubt” into the search boxes of Christian bookstores online and the results were everything I thought they would be. Books claiming to erase doubt about God, books determined to make you certain that God exists and to let you know that your faith is securely grounded in reason and facts. There’s a big boat that has been built in Kentucky for precisely this reason.. making us certain.

Tell that to Job. Don’t get me wrong… there is a time and place for what we call “apologetics”, or giving a reasonable defense of our faith. And some day I plan to visit the Ark in Kentucky. Certainty is not the end-all-be-all for our salvation or even our faith. We must see this in Job:

Our salvation is not grounded in our certainty

What Job needs in that moment of doubt is not certainty. It’s not another bunch of facts. In fact, his friends have been giving him facts and facts and facts… totally distorted, totally out of context. The facts are of no help. What Job needs is exactly what happened. Job 38:1 may be one of the most underrated verses in all of the Bible

Job 38:1 Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind.

The silence is over. God speaks. But God doesn’t just speak. God himself shows up. And yes, this is exactly what it sounds like and looks like.. this is that great and glorious whirlwind that shows up time again in the Old Testament as the second person of the Godhead, the Son of God, reveals himself… just like he did at the burning bush, just like he did at the Red Sea, just like he did at Mt. Sinai… this is another appearance of the glory cloud.. God’s presence. God is finally speaking and he is present with Job. It’s what Job anticipated when he said that he would see his Redeemer. You’re right, Job, here he is. He is present. In the whirlwind storm... FOR YOU.

That’s as great an answer for Job’s doubts and the awful, unbearable silence as it could be. The presence of God himself is what Job needs in all of the doubts. And for the next few chapters… God rattles off question after question after question.. 70 unanswerable questions fired off one right after the other.. And now Job is the one who is silent. He has no answer for all the questions coming from the God who thunders from the whirlwind. God reminds Job, through the questions he cannot answer, that He is the one who created all things, controls all things, and He cannot be explained. The very first question sets the tone for all the rest:

Job 38:4 “Where were you when I established the earth?”

There’s only one possible answer for this. Job knows it. You know it. I know it. I didn’t exist yet. And the questions only get grander from there… Who did this with the earth? Who controls this terrible creature? There is no answering these questions.

A couple of weeks ago, NASA celebrated 25 years of picture-taking from one of its observatories. This is one of the shots:

PICTURE

This is God’s answer to Job from the whirlwind. And please don’t miss this: God is telling Job, stop trying to explain this. Stop trying to figure out why you are suffering. You’re not me. You can’t know my wisdom. You can’t know my decision-making. You can’t know what it means to be God. Stop trying to figure it out. Stop trying to even speak for me. God never gives Job an answer for the suffering, the loss, the pain. But what God does do… is God shows up, and God speaks. And it’s what Job needs.

Ultimately, Job has to say, I really don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m just a heap of dust and ashes. When it is all said and done, Job makes a sacrifice for his friends who’ve sinned, just like he had been doing for his children at the beginning of the story. And God gives Job his health and wealth and more children.. to the point where he had more than when all of this started. This is the picture of our salvation… moving from a garden to the loss of everything, through suffering, through pain, through doubt, through the cross… to a new heavens and new earth that will be better than the original.

For thirty-five chapters Job is consumed with all kinds of questions. Where is God? Why is this happening? When will this end? How could God do this to me? But the most important question is not when, why, what, or how. It is who. Who is the God behind all of this? And who is the very same Who that Job longed to see in the midst of his pain in Job 19:25:

Job 19:25 “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the end he will stand on the dust.”

That Redeemer shows up in a whirlwind and begins speaking and it is everything Job needed and wanted.

More than a thousand years later, the Redeemer who spoke from the whirlwind, took on flesh and blood and was laid in a manger. We don’t have a God who is distant, far off, or disconnected. We have a God who is with us, a God who speaks in the storm and becomes like us in Jesus. That little baby dies for us. Rises for us. That’s our certainty.

You want certainty? Stop trying to find answers in the circumstances. We are so circumstance-oriented. God’s answer to Job is our answer. Circumstances cannot tell us a thing about the big picture. This world is fallen, and we are too. You have something go your way or you have success? Great. Give God the thanks. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that the success is reason to not doubt God. Because what happens when the success goes away? Faith in Jesus goes away. Job is telling us circumstances are flimsy. I cannot allow what I can see to tell me what God is thinking in any given moment.

This is hard. I’ve seen so many crises of faith and doubts about God and the story of salvation when there is a senseless death of a child.. or the loss of a good job. Or a divorce. Or broken relationships with the kids. There are no easy answers. There are no pat answers. Even “God is in control and he’s working all things for your good” rings hollow when life is crushing. And I would argue that’s not the answer Job is given in the 70 questions about the unseen ways of God. When there is crisis of faith, the answer is not an appeal to the God of all circumstances. God is that. But that’s not the story of Job. Job already knew all that. He already knows the answer to the 70 unanswerable questions. When Job has a crisis of faith, the answer is a God who is present, in the whirlwind, for Job, in the circumstances.

And that’s the Jesus who is present for us in our doubts. We want answers. We want answers for our suffering. We want answers as to why life isn’t working the way we want it to. Bresson wants answers. And when the answers don’t come, doubt sets it. When the answer isn’t what we want, doubt sets in. The irony here in Job is that we do get an answer, but it isn’t the answer we’re looking for: The presence of a Redeemer who gives us himself in the midst of the mess, with no guarantee that the mess is going away in this lifetime.

Jesus is does not promise that he will give you all the answers to erase doubt. Jesus promises to redeem your doubt by being everything you need in your doubt. The cross is your answer for doubts. It’s my answer. We don’t get the total certainty we crave in reason and facts. Instead… we have a Promise. That’s our certainty. Jesus is your certainty. In his divinity. In his humanity. At the cross. In the resurrection. FOR YOU. That’s the redemptive certainty that He gives for our doubts, our suffering, our hurts. Jesus is our hope. Jesus is our guarantee. We know that our Redeemer lives… and that he will have us at the last day. Guaranteed. Jesus had Job. Jesus has you.

Let’s Pray.

The Table

You want certainty? This is certainty. This is the only certainty. Jesus for you. In his body and his blood. This is Jesus present for you.

Benediction

Numbers 6:24–26

May the Lord bless you and protect you;

may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;

may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.