Job 7 1-7
“Life Can Be Breath Taking”
Epiphany 5 February 7, 2003
Introduction: Many people have experienced the wind being knocked out of them. I remember the first time it happened to me. I was visiting my grandfather at his home in Saginaw Michigan and I was riding my tricycle on the sidewalk outside. As I made a sharp turn the bike flipped over and the handlebars hit me in my stomach. Fear gripped my heart because I could not breathe. It felt like I had totally lost the ability to take a breath. Panic set in as I walked toward the house groping for a life giving breath and someone to help me. Tears streamed from my eyes from the hopelessness I experienced and the pain that I felt. Perhaps, you too have felt this terrible pain. While most of us associate the wind being knocked out of us to physical activity like a fall off a bicycle. I think we can all remember a time when the experiences of life have taken our breath away leaving us with the feeling that we will never breathe again. Times when we feel panic and we grope, as if for life-giving oxygen, but there seems to be no relief. The circumstances of life grip us like a snake curling around us, squeezing and constricting the breath out of us. Sometimes life can take our breath away.
Sermon
Job felt like this as he spoke the words recorded in our Old Testament lesson. Job too found himself in circumstances that knocked him to his knees, taking his breath away and wondering where to find hope. Job is one of the best-known examples of undeserved suffering. In a matter of minutes, Job, a prominently wealthy and godly man, lost all his material possessions, all his children, and his health. His wife gave him no support; she even suggested he end his misery by cursing God. Then, adding anguish upon anguish, his friends condemned him rather than console him. Furthermore God seemed to be ignoring Job, refusing for a long time to answer him and rise to his cause and save him.
Job’s intense suffering was financial, emotional, physical, and spiritual. Everyone was against him including, it seemed, God, whom he had served faithfully. Yet the Bible tells us that Job was a spiritually and morally upright man (1:1, 8; 2:3). Could any suffering seem more undeserved? Should not such a righteous person be blessed, not badgered, by God? The fact that Job, an outstanding citizen and upright person, had so much and then lost so much makes him a supreme example of affliction that defies human explanation.
Many individuals can identify with Job. Many people wonder why they undergo affliction, why they experience tragedy, heartache, and adversity. For all of us, suffering is hard to comprehend, especially when it strikes the undeserving. The story of Job addresses the mystery of unmerited misery, showing that in adversity God may have other purposes besides retribution for wrongdoing.
Job’s story also addresses the problem of attitudes in human suffering. Job’s experience demonstrates that a believer, while undergoing intense agony, need not renounce God or curse Him. Question Him, yes; but not deny Him. Like Job, we may long for an explanation of our experiences; but being unable to comprehend the cause of our misfortune, we need not curse God. Though Job came close to doing so, he did not actually denounce God as Satan had predicted.
The story Job also teaches that to ask why we are suffering, as Job did (3:11-12, 16, 20), is not wrong. But to demand that God answer why, as Job also did (13:22; 19:7; 31:15), is wrong. To insist that God explain one’s affliction is inappropriate for it places man above God and challenges God’s dominion.
1. In our text Job is knocked breathless.
A. The life tests that Job experiences have laid him flat. We can see in our text just how “short of breath” Job is. We can hear this as he uses such phrases as hard service, months of futility, lying down longing to get up, nights dragging on, tossing till dawn, clothed with worms and scabs, with skin broken and festering. Finally he gasps that life is but a breath and his eyes will never see good again…life, it seems is without hope.
B. What experiences in our lives convey similar feelings? How many of us are going through such experiences now? How many of us know someone who is experiencing such pain right now? How many of us have experienced these things in our lives from one time to another? All of us are or have been acquainted with physical, emotional and spiritual pain. We are intimately aware of the hopelessness these bring as we feel like our eyes will “never see good again.” At times like these we feel broken and life itself takes our breath away like a blow to the stomach.
C. Perhaps even worse then physical and mental wounds, is the pain and suffering that result from giving into the temptations of this life. This too can take the breath away from our very spirits. There are the times when the people of God gasp for breath in the temptations of this world. Hopelessness surrounds us with our own sin and guilt. The big squeeze of Satan, the snake that originally squeezed the human race to death, knocks both breath and life from our souls.
2. The Question still stands. Why do bad things happen, especially to good people? After all God is in control. The problem of evil and suffering is one of the most challenging of life’s questions. In these circumstances how can we see Him as the Loving God that He is?
A. God does allow us to experience pain and suffering. This is not to say that God is responsible. Satan must take full responsibility for all that happened to Job. There were boundaries that were set by God, thus proving he still in control.
Satan had a cause or a reason for what he did; it was to discredit God and to ruin Job. But God had other purposes in mind. He wanted Job to grow through this experience. In the end Job and his faith in God were vindicated and God Himself was glorified.
B. Pain and suffering are common in this world. These are the consequences of the fall into sin. It is devastating. Still, God can and does use pain and suffering as His instruments for our ultimate good and for His glory. Pain and suffering sometimes work as God’s loud speaker to get our attention. This is often the case for drug addicts and alcoholics as God uses the consequences of their actions to bring them back to Him. Other times God allows his children, us, to go through pain to refine us like silver, to purify and strengthen our faith in Him. Unfortunately some people only call on God when they are in trouble. Is it any wonder then that God would allow trouble into their lives? God, through suffering, may simply be calling us into a closer relationship with Him. In this way that which is bad, pain and suffering, result in something good. Some times God allows us to go through pain so that we can be witnesses to the world. This is, after all why God allowed Job to suffer, to discredit Satan, to vindicate Job and ultimately to glorify God. Job had no understanding that there was a purpose for his suffering. As a result he challenges God by questioning Him. We may never know why we go through the things we do. But we have His promise that He will use all things for the good, for those who believe in Him. Some times God allows us to suffer to bring about his good and gracious purposes. This was the case when God allowed Josephs brothers to sell him to the Egyptians. God then used this to save many people. Sometimes God allows us to suffer so that we can be His instruments to comfort other people. St. Paul writes, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.”
3. God remembers our needs while we focus on our troubles.
A. God is not aloof in heaven, looking down at our trials and tragedy. He has connected himself to us. He has made a covenant and commitment in the waters of Baptism. In these grace-giving waters he breathed into our body and soul the life breath of eternity. This life breath is faith that trusts in Jesus for forgiveness, life and salvation. He bestows upon us the ability to breathe in His life, to breathe in His forgiveness, and to breathe in His Gospel.
B. The Lord spoke with Job and brought Him to understand who He was and what He needed. He speaks to us in His Word leading us to understand who we are and what our need is. He speaks to us in our breathlessness and reminds us of his willingness to breathe life into our whole being.
4. Jesus Christ is our life-breath.
A. Through Him God has again breathed into us His breath of life. Jesus took the breath of the air of this world into his perfect and holy lungs. It was a stagnant, sinful, and toxic air. Jesus went to the cross and exhaled life itself as He gave up His breath and died. Then in his resurrection he offered to us mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to breathe forgiveness and life into our very soul.
B. The Iron Lung was developed in 1928. In the 1950’s during the polio epidemic this device saved many lives. The Iron lung was a device used to treat paralysis of the muscles and organs used in breathing. In cases of paralysis, the chest loses its muscle action, and patients were in danger of suffocation because they could not get enough air into their lungs. The use of the iron lung helped afflicted people breathe. We are privileged to reside in the iron lung of our Lord God—the church. Here we receive His Word and Sacraments. Through these He gives us the very breath of life. The Lord God formed the first man out of the dust of the earth and then breathed into him the breath of life. Satan came along in the form of a snake and in a way, constricted and squeezed that life away. Though we were left for dead, paralyzed and breathless, God now gives us our breath back again. For the sake of Jesus Christ who became breathless for us we know that these present sufferings cannot be compared to the glory that will be revealed. In Jesus we have hope to endure.
Conclusion: Breathe deeply the life-breath of our Lord and Savior. Breathe deeply, even though life may sometimes take your breath away. Breathe deeply the breath of the almighty and life-giving God. Remember the words of Job, “Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath” (Job 7:7). This breath has been given to us from a risen and breathing Savior Jesus Christ, who by his Spirit has breathed into us the breath of life for all eternity. Amen.