When You Feel Like You're Going to Break

Keith Falconer

Job • Sermon • Submitted 6 years ago

Job 2:1–10

Saving Faith

Suffering

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When You Feel Like You’re Going to Break

OUTLINE:

Back Around the Throne, vv. 1-6

Suffering Increased, vv. 7-8

Another Choice to Make, vv. 9-10

We live in relative comfort and ease. But our brothers and sisters in the Lord - so many of them - live in a

Trials and tribulations. Job has lost everything that he has. All of his money, his savings, his business .... and worst of all - his 10 children.

He responded to the tragedy in his life with extraordinary faith - -

The committed Christian and critical skeptic of Christianity both have at least one thing in common: The question of pain and suffering is the greatest challenge to believing in God.

God is ALL-POWERFUL: He can do whatever He wants

God is ALL-LOVING: He cares with an intense value for His creation

EVIL IS A REALITY: Suffering has come to saturate this world that God Himself created.

G.K. Chesterton: “When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from him - but in heaven’s name, to what?”

Remember where we are, as the curtain opens on a new act in . We are at a place in the life of Job that so many of you can identify with.

Satan had made a bet with God. He charged (because that’s what the Accuser does) - he charges God that the only reason Job worships God is b

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1 BACK AROUND THE THRONE, vv. 1-6

The scene changes again and goes back to where the heavenly court - where chapter 1, verse 6 took us. If you read these verses and think, ‘Hey, this sounds familiar’, well you’re right. 2:1-6 is almost identical to the picture in 1:6-12. Again, the angels have come into the throne room to present themselves before the Lord. Again, Satan is with them. And again the conversation between God and ‘the Satan’ takes place.

Verse 3, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” Those are exactly the same words that He used in chapter 1:8 - the words that started the whole trouble for this man.

Then God adds - He still holds fast his integrity, ALTHOUGH YOU INCITED ME AGAINST HIM TO DESTROY HIM WITHOUT REASON.” That’s terrifying. That’s terrifying. And if you don’t have that response when first reading God’s words here - then I would suggest that you aren’t paying attention. Here is God, speaking to Satan - saying to His archenemy and the one who hates you … God says to him, “… you incited me against MY FAITHFUL SERVANT - to destroy him WITHOUT REASON.” “WITHOUT REASON”.

… That there could be something in Almighty God that could make Him do something to harm His child WITHOUT REASON. WITHOUT CAUSE. Something arbitrary - as though the Sovereign God of the universe is playing some divine game, in the heavens way up there … and you are the poor pawn, caught on the game board, with YOUR LIFE in the balance?

At least to our eyes - that’s what it looks like … that

God is speaking in terms we can understand. In the history of the universe so far and to time eternal … God has done and will do NOTHING without reason. But He wants us to think that sometimes He does. That’s the point here - - the disaster comes down into your life - shakes you to the core of your being … and you lay awake at night, sleepless on your bed, trying to understand: “Why me? Why this? Why now?” .... and for the life of you - you cannot come up with a reason why this would happen. Why a God in heaven who claims to love you … you allow you to find yourself here. In this place.

Maybe you have found yourself in a darkness that envelops you - - - - - Is God a divine Cat, playing with a mouse - as if my life destroyed is of no concern to Him?

God is as close to evil as its possible to get. God is talking to Satan here. He’s giving permission to Satan. He’s saying, “Have you considered my servant Job?” And some of us are saying, “With friends like this ....?” Maybe Satan hadn’t even noticed him.

C.S. Lewis, lost his dear wife - American woman whom he loved with all his heart. Found her later in life - they had found a piece of heaven, here on earth ....

Interesting, earlier in life he had already written a book about suffering. He called that one, “The Problem of Pain” - and tried to explain why pain and suffering are not good enough reasons to reject God.

After his wife died, wrote another book about pain, this one was titled, “A Grief Observed”. This one had a very different tone to the one written when pain was just an academic subject for his mind to explore. In fact, he wrote this book under a pseudonym. Didn’t want people to know it was the same man. When his life fell apart, the reflection on suffering became a whole lot more captured by emotion. In “A Grief Observed”, Lewis Writes about the unimaginable thoughts that went through his mind: That God was some kind of cosmic Sadist. What’s the point of this all?”

Alfred Lord Tennyson - poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, Crimean war against the Russians: “Ours not to reason why. Ours just to do … and die”. Is that it? There’s no point here? No purpose? No plan? We are just a cog in a massive machine?

Well, the damage is done. Job has lost everything. Now at least God knows that Job is faithful - that He can be brought from Riches to Rags and still, he will worship the Lord. Surely Job has proven himself. God can gloat. And we can move on.

Oh, but that’s not how the story goes. Some time has passed by - we don’t know how long it’s been. Maybe a few days. Maybe a few months. Whatever the time passed, Job has experienced hell.

Now God says to Satan - “Look at Job. He is still holding on tight to me, in faith. He still worships.”

The Accuser takes not a single step backwards from his original charge. Verse 4, “Skin for skin!” he says. “All that a man has he will give for his own life!” In other words - “You can take everything that a man holds dear outside of himself and you can hurt him. But he will sacrifice everything and everyONE - if it means protecting his own body - his own skin. And until he feels the pain in his own body - you can’t really say that he’s been tested.

Verse 5, “But stretch out Your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.”

Another challenge is thrown down. And you already know how the Lord responds. Verse 6, “And the LORD said to Satan, ‘Behold he is in your hand; only spare his life.”

Does that not blow you away?

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2 SUFFERING INCREASED, vv. 7-8

Verse 7, the scene changes from heaven back to the earth, once again. Satan is on a mission. In fact, notice how eager he is to get on with his challenge? In chapter 1 and round one of his dastardly work, things seem to move along at a measured pace. , “Now there was a day ...”, when all hell broke loose for the man of faith. Not this time. See verse 7: “Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and STRUCK JOB”. It’s an immediate disaster, the pace has picked up. And there is no instrument of the human race - no Sabean or Chaldean. There is no impersonal force of nature … no lightning, no wind come to do damage. This is clearly and directly Satan’s work - that’s what the text says, in v. 7, “SATAN … STRUCK JOB”.

Don’t know what physical problem Satan strikes Job with. Nobody knows for sure. Some have suggested Elephentiasis - it sounds like … AIDS. Loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. From head to toe - - festering, pussing, painful sores. In other parts of the book, Job describes other symptoms of his condition: anorexia, fever, fits of depression, weeping, sleeplessness, nightmares when he can fall asleep, failing vision, rotting teeth, rotting bones, putrid breath, emaciation ....

In fact, Job’s condition is so bad that v. 12 of chapter 2 tells us that when his friends come to try and comfort him, as soon as they hear the bad news - when they see him from a distance, “They did not recognize him.” “THEY DIDN’T RECOGNIZE HIM”. So harsh was the effect of this physical attack on Job - that his own friends don’t even recognize him.

Can you identify with any of this? You are not the person you used to be. Hurt has come, suffering has hit and you know you’ve changed. That’s Job

The point is - this is total and intimate suffering with no relief. Oh he suffered before when he lost everything .... but now the suffering has come home to his very own body. There is no outer protection anymore - nowhere to hide. Job feels like he is going to break.

In this physical condition - he can’t be around people anymore. He has already lost his home, his business, all of his money and retirement savings, all of his children … and now, as if things cannot get any worse, he has lost his health AND his place in society. A person with a disease like his, why such a person can’t stay in the city - - what if he’s contagious.

So watch the innocent, faithful man, penniless and homeless, walk outside of the city he has lived in all of his life … walk to the city garbage dump, where the trash is continually burned in a heap outside the city gate. It was a dump like this that Jesus, when he walked this earth, Jesus pointed to a dump like this, outside of the walls of Jerusalem, to use as the best human image to represent hell.

See the pathetic scene in v. 8 - “And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes.” There is Job, sitting. All alone. To stand - is pain. To sit - is pain. There is no escape from the constant pain, while he uses the trash around him to scrape the puss from the erupting boils on his body. This is a taste of hell, here on earth.

“God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” - I’ve heard the evangelistic offer time after time … and it’s true. Oh, but WONDERFUL doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it does.

You can identify. So many of you can, to one degree or another - you can identify with this man. Suffering, not because of anything he’s done. Just - suffering.

See Job here, as a pale, foreshadowing of Jesus Christ, who centuries later, will walk outside of the city, of His own will, carrying his own cross on his shoulders, and there on a hill, all alone, the suffering servant of God will not just suffer … but die, to pay the price for our sins?!

Question: Is sickness a part of God’s will? We touched on this when we were going through the book of James. The answer we found there, is the same answer we find here in Job - that, yes - sickness must be part of God’s will, for the simple reason that there IS sickness and suffering in this world - and God is Sovereign.

Nothing happens in this world without His permission - without Him not only knowing that it’s going to happen, but also allowing it to happen. We see that here - Satan the Accuser who hates you, can only do the damage that God allows and only with His permission to do it.

And that, right there leads us to the great challenge for people to believe in the God of the Bible. The PROBLEM OF PAIN. (17:30)

Insoluble - Unsolvable trilemma (not dilemma). Skeptic: 3 claims that a Christian MUST hold to at the same time - which ultimately destroys the logic for trusting in God:

God is ALL-POWERFUL: He can do whatever He wants

God is ALL-LOVING: He cares with an intense value for His creation

EVIL IS A REALITY: Suffering has come to saturate this world that God Himself created.

Islam denies the ‘Goodness’ of God. It is the ‘inscrutable will of Allah’ - but they are not sure about His goodness.

Is it always God’s will to heal our sickness. Again, we touched on this not too long ago and saw how the Bible makes it clear that God does heal, but not always is healing his will. That’s why, when Timothy was sick with some kind of a stomach problem, Paul gave him some advice: “Drink a little wine for your stomach.” Paul loved Timothy like a son - if there was a sure way to heal him in the name of Jesus, don’t you think he would do it? But he couldn’t. “Drink a little wine for your stomach”. “Go to the doctor, take some medicine”. Paul’s own thorn in the flesh. He prays three times for God to heal him of whatever it was - it was that serious. And God answered: “NO. NO. NO. My strength is sufficient for you.” And Paul stopped praying and accepted God’s will for him.

The godly get sick - and sometimes for no reason that we can see. Sometimes we get sick because God is trying to teach us a particular lesson. The only way that He can get us to listen, is to take us low. But we recognize that He is in control of it all.

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3 ANOTHER CHOICE TO MAKE, vv. 9-10

In vv. 9-10, we find Job with another choice that he must make. In so many ways, Job is an utter pawn. Destroyed in every possible way - his money is gone, his business is gone, his security is gone, his children - all gone. And, now his health itself is gone. He has no say in any of it. But just as we saw last week - He is not only utter object here, receiving action. He is also an acting SUBJECT: He still has the choice: “How will I respond?” How would you respond?

Mrs. Job comes along in v. 9, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!”

Now Mrs. Job hasn’t got very good press from the Bible commentators over the years. Augustine called her, “Diabola Jutrix" - - Don't need to know Latin to know it's not a compliment - - she is the devil's advocate.

Calvin preached 159 sermons through the book of Job. He called her: "Organum Satani" - “The Tool of Satan”. Thomas Aquinas said that Satan had spared Job’s wife from death for this very purpose - so that she would say these things to Job, at his lowest point - and tempt him even further.

And Job says, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak.” “This is NOT wisdom”. The fool says in his (or her!) heart that there is not God.

"Organum Satani"

Don't be too hard on her: I have some sympathy for Mrs. Job. Don’t you? She has lost 10 children too. She has lost everything … and now she is watching her husband die, right before her eyes. She can’t bear to watch his suffering - - it’s only prolonging the death that seems so inevitable. This is her desperate attempt to put an end to his misery: “Just get it over with!”

There is no welfare system for Mrs. Job. She has no future. No children to support her, no husband to provide. She’s lost everything too - and probably sees herself not far behind Job in going to the grave. So she makes her choice. This is how she will respond. “Curse God and die!”.

Job’s response is so different from his wife’s. When I look at his response and consider what he’s suffering and I wonder how I would respond if I was sitting on that garbage heap. Job says in v. 10, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

“Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?”

Same attitude as Joseph, in the book of Genesis. Hated by his brothers, almost murdered by them, but they hated him so much, they wouldn’t even give him the dignity of killing him according to their principle - they see a slave caravan coming by and they decide they’ll just sell their brother and put some cash in their pockets. When God works all things in that situation out, and the brothers are cowering for their lives in the presence of this very same brother, who is now ruler of Egypt, and has their lives in his hands. He says, “You meant it all for evil … BUT GOD meant it for good.” “God is in control and turned your evil intentions into blessing for me.”

It’s what Paul means in , “We KNOW that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.”

God works ALL THINGS - not just the good things. ALL things … the bad things, the evil things: the cancer, the abandonment, the physical and sexual abuse. God works ALL things together for the good.

So why the cancer? Why did God allow my

My honest answer to those questions is this: “I don’t know.” “I don’t know”. I don’t know why your loved one died so soon. I don’t know why bad things happen.

It has something to do with Satan. It has something to do with cosmic forces. But this much I can say for sure - At no point is God out of control. It may look like that.

The lesson of and 2 is this: How can I know that God has

When the Darkness Will Not Lift: Doing What We Can While We Wait for God—And Joy Give the Devil His Due, but No More

the decisive blow against Satan’s destructive power was delivered by the death of Jesus for our sins (Col. 2:15; Heb. 2:14). This means that Satan can harass us and even kill us, but he cannot destroy us. Only unforgiven sin can damn the human soul. If Christ has covered all our sin by his blood, and if God imputes to us the perfect righteousness of Christ, then Satan has no grounds for any damning accusation, and his case against us fails in the court of heaven. “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died” (Rom. 8:33–34).

“Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” That’s Job’s good response - “Will we only trust in God as far as we can see Him? Will we praise Him when He gives us His good gifts and curse Him when He gives us only Himself?”