From an early age we are taught that rewards come to people who do the right thing. Remember this well-known children’s Christmas song:
You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I’m telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town
He’s making a list
He’s checking it twice
He’s gonna find out who’s naughty or nice
Santa Claus is coming to town
He sees you when you’re sleeping
And he knows when you’re awake
He knows if you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness’ sake
My parents taught me this song one year as the time for Christmas shopping drew close. They told me if I wanted the presents I had asked for, then I’d better be good otherwise Santa (we called him ‘Father Christmas’ in our house) wouldn’t come. I tried so hard—I really did! And then two hours later I cracked it about something—I can’t even remember what about—but I remember fretting for days thinking I’d done my dash with Father Christmas!
Society puts a lot of emphasis on performance and achievement. Society says that if we want to be accepted, we have to perform—we have to measure up to expectations. Society tends to push aside those people who cannot or do not perform as we think they ought. Our inbuilt tendency is to live our lives trying to prove ourselves, showing by our performance and appearance that we are as good as the next person, perhaps even better. And if we put in the performance, we expect to get the recognition. We expect God to rate people the same way we do: God ought to give the highest rating to the best performers[1].
That’s what James and John thought. And it was what Job thought too.
In the Book of Job we are told that Job was blameless and upright. He feared God and shunned evil. We are told that he was the greatest man among all the people of the East, and God himself declares of Job “There is no one on earth like him.”
Job was blessed with an abundance: he had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. But then Job experiences immense suffering. A number of catastrophic disasters befall him. Invaders stole his oxen and donkeys and killed his servants. Fire consumed his sheep and shepherds. Other raiders came and took away his camels and killed the servants tending them. And Job’s sons and daughters die when the house in which they were in collapsed upon them.
Doesn’t quite fit the picture of good things happening for good people, does it? Yet despite this, Job still acted righteously. He acknowledged he had no right to anything—he came into the world with nothing (just like we all do) and all he had was really God’s anyway. He said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
may the name of the Lord be praised.”
In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (Job 1:20-22).
We might expect, then, to see some relief for Job. But then a second wave of disaster—Job is afflicted with painful sores from head to toe. Job’s wife encourages Job to curse God that he might die and be freed from his suffering. But with the same faithfulness, Job replies: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” In all this, Job did not sin in what he said (Job 2:7-10).
Throughout the chapters that follow, Job pours out his immeasurable anguish. His friends come to counsel him, but, well…you’ve heard of the term: Job’s comforters. Instead of offering comfort they inflict more pain with their cause-and-effect thinking—Job and his family surely must have done something to deserve this. Job’s companions counsel him to discern his sin through deeper introspection, so that he can confess and God can show mercy to him (Job 8:3-6).
Job’s assertion of his innocence occupies a large section of the book from this point. Job implores God to give him an audience so he can plead his case. He wants God to give him some answers. He wants God to justify him and in so doing, straighten out the erroneous and hurtful claims of his friends. If he is guilty, God should tell him what he has done so he can repent, that his suffering might be brought to an end. Reflecting on his situation, Job wants justice from God. He questions why it seems that the wicked seem to prosper, but the upright suffer.
But then, having been silent for so long, God finally speaks to Job—out of the storm.
What are the raging storms at the moment? Countries still blowing each other to bits, and the immense suffering of those, who like Job, have lost families when their houses have come crashing down? Or closer to home, tobacconists being firebombed in a turf war, and anti-social and criminal behaviour all around us. Does it seem, as Job lamented, that God has confused the naughty and nice lists: “Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power?” (Job 21:7).
What are the storms in your life? Does Job’s feeling of abandonment by God and the unbearable silence from him seem to be your experience too? Do you know the storms of grief, suffering and seeming affliction? It was only a few weeks back that death hit us hard with the passing of Dan, and the Overduins, like Job, know the deep grief of farewelling a loved one. Others of you are grieving over the loss of life as you knew it, as Job was, with the storms of declining health raging against your frailty. Others are grieving for our church. Some say our church is in the midst of a storm, since General Convention untied the good ship LCANZ from its moorings on the word, and set sail full steam ahead on a completely different course…one that’s about to get stormier.
Whatever the storm might look like for you, where does our hope come from?
God is in the storm! “Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. God does not answer Job’s questions but illustrates how higher his ways are than human ways, his thoughts than our thoughts.
Job had imposed his framework for justice and reward in life upon God, but God shows Job the right order for who should challenge who:
“Who is this that obscures my plans
with words without knowledge?”
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me. (Job 38:2-3).
The human way tends to demand that God align with our worldview, on any and every issue. C S Lewis once wrote: “The ancient man approached God…as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defence for being the god who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock.”[2]
By pointing to his wisdom in establishing and ordering all things, God shows Job that there is a limit to his mind:
4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone…” (4-6).
There are mysteries beyond human comprehension, such as why bad things happen to good people. Job wasn’t there when the world was made. Job can’t measure the sea. He doesn’t know how to run a solar system. If the world was built according to Job’s (and our) ideals of justice—of being rewarded for being good and punishing those who have done wrong—then there would be no innocent sufferers…but there would also be nobody left. Because there would be no room for grace. We would all only ever get what we deserve, and there would be no place for Jesus’ self-sacrificial love.
Jesus is the better Job. He is more than upright. He is the perfect Son of God; the Holy One. He did more than shun evil—he confronted it head on and won the victory for us. You see, in the account of Job, it was not actually God that afflicted Job. It was Satan. Jesus said that Satan comes only “to kill, steal and destroy” and Peter warns us “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8)
Satan was looking to devour Job. He thought that he could prise the most upright man in the land away from God by causing him to curse God. But Satan’s attacks were only ever in the limits that God set.
We have a better Job; One who is greater than Job; indeed the greatest, Jesus the Son of God. Yet he became the least, and servant of all. He was the one covered with sores, as it were—lashings on his back, wounds in his hands and feet, and in his side. It is by his wounds we are healed. We are cleansed. It is by these wounds, by this precious blood, and not with silver or gold that Jesus has redeemed you, and it is because of that blood that no one else and nothing else, not even Satan, can snatch us out of his Father’s hand, as the storms rage around us. For though he was innocent, Jesus took upon himself our sin, to be the One in whom God’s justice on sin is satisfied, and the One in whom God’s love for you and the world is given. He gave up his life as the ransom for many—for you, and for the whole world—for us who can’t meet God’s standards.
When the storms hit, it might seem as though God is distant and removed from us. But they are not signs that God has rejected you. As Paul said: “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).
Because of Christ, God is with you in the storms, to speak with us that we might have order in the midst of chaos. He would have us simply wait on him by going to his word, where we hear him speak to us. Like he did with Job, God calls us to trust him, even when we cannot understand him, even when he is thoroughly confusing to us. We might suffer—perhaps even unjustly so—but we will always experience love we don’t deserve. For even in the midst of the storm, Christ is the way, and the truth and the life, forever. Amen.
[1] Excerpt taken from Strelan, David (2018) God for us: an introduction to Lutheran teaching (LPH: Adelaide) p5-6
[2] C S Lewis (1970) God in the Dock – Essays on theology and ethics Ed Walter Hooper (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge UK) p268
