Good Friday

Adapted from Lenten Sermon Series “The Book of Job: Blessed be the Name of the Lord”

Tearing Down the Spite House

(Job 42:7-9)

Grace, mercy, and peace be yours from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus, the Christ.

[Note: the illustration on the Spite House comes from Max Lucado, You’ll Get through This.]

“My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly” (Job 42:8).

There are times when people come into possession of small lots of property. I’m not talking about the rather small lots that some people have here in Las Vegas. I, for one, can stand on my balcony and see into at least 6 of my neighbors’ backyards. But I’m not talking about that. No, these lots are more common in older, larger cities, such as New York or Boston. They sometimes measure 10 ft wide by 55 ft long or even 5 ft wide and 105 ft long. Long and skinny bits of land. It’s hard to imagine what good a property of that size would be. But sometimes people actually build houses on these properties. Very skinny and oddly shaped houses.

What’s also odd is the reason that many of these houses are built. They aren’t usually cost-effective or built to be good investments. They are often built out of spite. This can take place because of a family dispute, a disagreement between neighbors, or even trying to “stick it” to a developer or city official. These houses are often built to block things. Light. Airflow. A better view. Access. They are meant to be an intentional inconvenience to someone else. Their construction is rooted in petty revenge.

These houses are commonly referred to as Spite Houses. Many of them have interesting backstories. They are a strange intersection of architectural creativity, human conflict, and property law. But basically, they are intended to be permanent monuments to grudges. A spite house isn’t built out of love but out of anger. It exists to block, to punish, to prove a point. Imagine building a whole house just to get back at someone. You’re not just mad; you are building your anger into the world.

Maybe you’ve seen one of these houses before. Perhaps you’ve even built one, if only metaphorically.

The spite house is a lonely house, isn’t it? There’s only space enough for one person. And people who live in the spite house are reduced to one goal: make someone miserable. They’re usually successful. Who is that person? Themselves.

We’ve been walking through Job this Lenten season. And if anybody had a reason to live in the spite house, with large amounts of animosity and resentment, it was Job.

At the top of the list of transgressors was his wife. Job had lost everything. But then his wife said, “Curse God and die.” If Job doesn’t already feel abandoned, you know he does the minute his wife seems to give up on him.

Then, there are Job’s three friends. They each seek to explain why Job is experiencing his immense suffering. Eliphaz says that the upright never perish and that those who sow trouble reap it. Both verses imply that Job is getting from God exactly what he deserves.

Add Bildad to the list because he says, “Your children sinned against God, so he gave them over to the hand of their transgression.” For Bildad, the only explanation for the tragic death of Job’s children is because they sinned against God. And then there is Zophar. He adopts, like the others, an aloof, stoic attitude toward Job’s suffering and grief.

These people never address God and never pray to God for Job. And they all agree that it is surprising that Job doesn’t suffer more. What Job needs to do is stop claiming that he is righteous in God’s sight and, instead, repent.

There are few experiences in life that are more painful than being rejected by friends and family members who should understand and sympathize with us.

We wouldn’t be shocked if Job decided to build a spite house and live in it the rest of his life. But, wonder of wonders, in our text from Job 42:8, God says to Job’s friends, “My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.” In Job 42:7–8, Job is called God’s “servant” four times. What does God’s servant do? He intercedes for his enemies. He blesses those who cursed him. He doesn’t return evil for evil. Though Job is still a broken man, still scraping his boils with pieces of broken pottery, he refuses to unleash weapons of revenge.

You understand, don’t you? That all of this foreshadows and previews the greatest act of forgiveness. If anybody—and I mean anybody—had a reason to live in a spite house with large amounts of animosity and resentment, it was . . . Jesus.

At the top of His list were the chief priests and scribes. They had paid Judas to betray Him, sent temple soldiers to arrest Christ in Gethsemane, brought His case before Pilate, and stirred up the crowd to demand that Jesus be crucified.

And then there were the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees were the first to actively plot to kill Jesus. And when the Savior cleansed the temple, the Sadducees joined in the plan to murder Christ, at any cost.

And don’t forget the Roman soldiers. They brutally butchered Jesus at Gabbatha; placed a crown of thorns on his head; blindfolded him and struck him in the face with their fists; spit upon him, railed against him, and finally, the Roman soldiers crucified him.

Add to the list Pontius Pilate, who had found Jesus innocent. Yet, because of Jewish pressure, the Roman governor sentenced Jesus to crucifixion and then publicly washed his hands. What a crass, political, double-faced act of betrayal!

That’s quite a list, wouldn’t you agree? But it’s not complete. There are other notorious sinners that Christ could have, should have, had huge amounts of spite toward. And who are those people? Brace yourselves. You and I are on the list. Our sins sent Jesus to the cross—our corruption, our pride, and our pettiness.

Don’t believe me? Don’t think you truly are a sinner deserving God’s wrath? Here are two quick proofs. #1. There are times you try to sin. You do it on purpose. You plan it, like building a spite house. It’s not a spur-of-the-moment decision. You plot. You know you should act differently, and you don’t care. You choose not to love God and your neighbor. You try to sin. Proof #2. There are times that you try not to sin. If you weren’t a sinner, you wouldn’t have to struggle in your mind and in your heart. Good works would just automatically flow out of you continuously. If you weren’t a sinner, you wouldn’t feel bad about your actions in the quiet of your own thoughts. But you do, don’t you? I know you do, because I do too.

The soldiers hoist Jesus up, the cross swaying forward, then back until it is secured with wedges at the bottom to hold it upright in the hole. Then they gamble to decide who will get the Savior’s garments.

At that point, what does Jesus say? “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Who is the “them”? The chief priests and scribes; the Pharisees and Sadducees; the Roman soldiers; Pontius Pilate; you and me.

God’s servant intercedes for his enemies. He blesses those who cursed him. He doesn’t return evil for evil. Jesus is a broken man. He hangs in pain and misery. Yet he still refuses to unleash his weapons of revenge. Jesus refused to live in the spite house. How about you? How quickly do we lose our self-control and lash out in our actions or even just in our thoughts?

Oh, I know. It’s so easy to hold on to raw anger and bitter resentment. I know. He treated you like trash. She left you when you needed her the most. They let you down in the most crucial moment.

You can flee, you can fight, or you can forgive. Some opt to flee: to get out of the relationship and start again elsewhere, though they are often surprised when things go sour again.

Others fight. Houses become combat zones, and offices become boxing rings, and tension becomes a way of life. Still others choose to forgive. Where do they get that power? In the words of Jesus, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Does that make forgiveness easy? No. Quick? Seldom. Painless? Definitely not.

Jesus doesn’t flee from your sin. He grabs hold of it and drinks all of it, down to the dregs. For you. He knows every sinful thing you’ve ever said or done or thought and every sinful thing you will ever say or do or think and He chose to die for you anyway. There’s nothing you can do to make Him love you less and there’s nothing you can do to make Him love you more.

Jesus doesn’t fight to preserve His comfort. He doesn’t fight back when He is arrested, lied about, beaten, stripped, flogged, insulted, spit on, or nailed. He endures the cross, despising the shame. For you. Jesus doesn’t minimize what we’ve done the way we do sometimes. Someone apologizes to you and you say “Don’t worry about it.” “No big deal.” No, Jesus acknowledges that it IS a big deal.

Your sin breaks your relationship with God. We try all sorts of things to fix this problem. We think that if we build a monument to our goodness, that God will be distracted from our sin. But you cannot impress God with your “righteous deeds.” Your attempts at justifying yourself are offensive to Him.

Or maybe you’ve given up on that and you’ve resolved to live your life as YOU choose. You just pretend that God can’t see all that stuff. You can interact with Him if and when you want and push all that church stuff out of your mind when you aren’t here. That’s about as foolish as making clothes out of fig leaves and thinking you’ll win in a game of “hide and seek” with the all-knowing God of the universe. He always sees you and He always knows you. Better than you see and know yourself.

No, you can’t minimize your sin and you can’t hide it. 1 John tells us that if we say we have no sin, we are only deceiving ourselves. Jesus confronts your sin and mine head-on. He doesn’t just brush it away. He gathers up all of our sin and hoists it on his shoulders. He knows that by doing that He has put a target on Himself. The target of God’s wrath. He willingly takes the wrath of the Father for your sin and mine. He steps in between us and God’s righteous judgment, knowingly, intentionally, purposefully. He takes our place on the cross. Jesus doesn’t flee and He doesn’t fight, He forgives you.

God’s anger burned against Job’s friends for their false words about God. God’s anger burns against us as well for our sin. You may say, “when have I spoken falsely about God?” Your actions confess what you believe about Him. You think that your way is better than His when you choose to live apart from His will, when you treat those around you as if they only exist to give you what you want, instead of treating them as the gifts from God they truly are.

But there is Good News! God placed His servant Job in between Himself and Job’s friends. God promises them forgiveness through Job’s intercession for them. Job is a picture, a foreshadowing, of Christ. Our perfect intercessor. Our righteous advocate. The One who speaks on our behalf to the Father. He doesn’t try to bribe God by presenting our supposed good works but by presenting Himself. His active keeping of God’s Law, His passive suffering in our place. His Holy body broken on the cross for you and for me.

He has done everything necessary to provide complete forgiveness for every sinner and that includes you! God has no more anger or wrath left for you. Christ has taken it all. He has broken down every house of spite or bitterness or arrogance or anything else that we have built and has built instead His holy temple, the church. A place where we can all live together with Christ and with all believers past, present, and future, in peace with each other and with God Himself forever.

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.