THE MISERY OF SUFFERING: WHEN LIFE SEEMS UNFAIR --Job 2:1-13
Proposition: God will help us during the misery of suffering when life seems so unfair if we rely on and trust Jesus as our Savior in every experience of life.
Objective: My purpose is to see God’s people realize that God always does the right thing for our good and His glory even experience the misery of suffering.
INTRODUCTION:
Illus: Listen to the story of Chippie the parakeet. "Chippie never saw it coming. One second he was peacefully perched in his cage, sending a song into the air; the next second he was sucked in, washed up, and blown over. His problem began when his owner decided to clean his cage with a vacuum. She had stuck the nozzle in to suck up the seeds and feathers at the bottom of the cage when the nearby telephone rang. Instinctively she turned to pick it up. She had barely said hello when--ssswwwwwpppppp! Chippie got sucked in. She gasped, let the phone drop, and switched off the vacuum. With her heart in her mouth, she unzipped the bag. There was Chippie--alive but stunned--covered with heavy gray dust. She grabbed him and rushed to the bathtub, turned on the faucet full blast, and held Chippie under a torrent of ice-cold water, power washing him clean. Then it dawned on her that Chippie was soaking wet and shivering. So she did what any compassionate pet owner would do: she snatched up the hair dryer and blasted him with hot air. Did Chippie survive? Yes, but he doesn’t sing much anymore. He just sits and stares a lot. It’s not hard to see why. Sucked in, washed up, and blown over! It’s enough to steal the song from any stout heart." Life is like that sometimes. You never see it coming, but life just sucks you up, washes you up and blows you over.
Job is a profile of courage in the face of adversity, because Job did not give up on his character, give in to his pain, and give way to Satan. It is one thing to bear a sudden tragedy. It is quite another to suffer its pain for weeks and months and even years afterward.
Ask Job, “Do you understand why you lost 500 yoke of oxen, 500 donkeys & 3,000 camels that were stolen in enemy raids, 7,000 sheep were struck by lighting & killed, & all 10 of your children by a wind storm (tornado)?” He would have said, “Yes, I know what happened suddenly, but I do not know why it happened.” There are no easy answers to what the sources of adversity are. Again, we know by experience that sin may be the source of our suffering. “Here we go again” with a second round of controversy between God & Satan with the same sequence in chapter 1: heaven’s council, Satan’s appearance, God’s iniquity, Satan’s inquiry, God’s acceptance, Job’s calamity & response. Then Satan attacks Job’s health & a new person comes onto the scene--Job’s wife. We get a glimpse of her character as well as another in-depth look at the character of Satan, God & Job. Then three of his friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite & Zophar the Naamathite, from three different cities, covenant together to meet & comfort their friend. Job struggles & suffers the misery of suffering when outward circumstances seem to be unfair for this man who loved God & worshiped Him. We learn in the book of Job that what Job did when life seemed unfair was to stay true to his character. He remained true to himself, true to form, & true to the end.
Illus: “If God takes you to it, He’ll lead you through it.”
I. THE CHALLENGE: TRIALS WILL CHALLENGE YOUR FAITH (vvs. 1-6) “One who feared God & shunned evil”-- Think of how the angels in heaven praised God as they saw Job remain faithful. Satan does not give up easily, for he returned to God’s throne to accuse Job again.
1. CONFERRING: HERE WE GO AGAIN (vvs. 1-2) “Again there was a day…Satan came”--If Satan had one virtue it is persistence. He intrudes into a meeting of heaven’s council once again & acts as if nothing has happened. The angels are all around God’s throne & Satan among them. One would have expected him to come & confess his malice against Job & his mistake concerning him, to say, I was wrong for attacking one of whom God has spoken well of & to beg for pardon. So, but, instead of that, he comes up with another plan to attack Job. Satan refuses to give up easy.
Illus: Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst; he promises honor & pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure & pays with pain; he promises profit & pays with loss; he promises life & pays with death. (Brooks)
2. CONSIDERATION: JUST LOOK AT HIM (v. 3) “Have you considered My servant”-- God commends His servant Job for holding his integrity under test. He proves Job’s integrity by this that he ceased not to fear God when his plagues were grievously upon him. We learn that Satan is free to go about his business under the sovereignty of God.
3. COMPUTATION: IS THAT REALLY TRUE (vvs. 4-5) “Skin for skin! …All that a man has he will give his life for his life “Skin for skin” was a proverb of the east which may mean that Job has only been tested on a superficial level and Job has only given a superficial response. So Satan wants him to allow him to test in bone and flesh, and Job will then curse God. Self-centeredness dominates all of Satan’s thinking. So he uses this as his method to touch Job. He uses this as a way to advance his next challenge to God. Then he approaches God something like this, ”--“Every man has a price,” says Satan. “Job can raise another family and start another business because he still has health and strength. Let me touch his body and take away his health, and You will soon hear him curse You to Your face.” The devil knows human nature and knows most people are just this way.
Illus: Many people will sell their souls to save their skins. Some years ago during a communist scare a man was seen bearing a sign in a protest group which read, "I would rather be Red than dead." Do you have a "selling out" price?
4. CONCESSION: THAT’S WHERE I DRAW THE LINE (v. 6) “He is in your hand, but spare his life”--In 1:12 He could not touch Job as a person, while now He cannot take his life (only health). God permits but limits Satan again, for Satan cannot go beyond God’s will. Yet God knew that Job would not deny Him.
Illus: Writing in Moody Monthly, Carl Armerding recounted his experience of watching a wildcat in a zoo. “As I stood there,” he said, “an attendant entered the cage through a door on the opposite side. He had nothing in his hands but a broom. Carefully closing the door, he proceeded to sweep the floor of the cage.” He observed that the worker had no weapon to ward off an attack by the beast. In fact, when he got to the corner of the cage where the wildcat was lying, he poked the animal with the broom. The wildcat hissed at him and then lay down in another corner of the enclosure. Armerding remarked to the attendant, “You certainly are a brave man.” “No, I ain’t brave,” he replied as he continued to sweep. “Well, then, that cat must be tame.” “No,” came the reply, “he ain’t tame.” “If you aren’t brave and the wildcat isn’t tame, then I can’t understand why he doesn’t attack you.” Armerding said the man chuckled, then replied, “Mister, he’s old—and he ain’t got no teeth.”
II. THE SUFFERINGS: TRIALS WILL CHANGE YOUR FACE (vvs. 7-10) “Curse God and die.”-- When Job’s three friends arrived, they didn’t recognize old Job. He looked so bad to them that he seemed like someone else.
1. THE DISEASE: OUCH THAT HURTS (v. 7) “Satan…struck Job with painful boils”-Job proves his integrity by these experiences when he ceased not to fear God even when his plagues were grievously upon him. God permitted this, but he has been limited by the Lord. So Satan cannot go beyond what God has allowed.
Illus: During World War II, Dr. Victor Frankl was imprisoned by the Nazis because he was a Jew. His wife, children, and parents were all killed in the Holocaust. At one point, the prison guards cut his wedding band off his finger. Frankl said to himself, "You can take away my wife and children, you can strip me of my clothes and my freedom, but there is one thing no person can ever take away from me-and that is my freedom to choose how I will react to what happens to me." That is the secret to successfully surviving the prison experiences of life.
2. THE DISTRESS: IS THERE NO END? (v. 8) “He took …a potsherd…to scrape himself”-- Here Job is sitting in a pile of ashes, scrap-ing himself with a broken piece of pottery, 2:8. Is it possible that those ashes are the remnants of his continual sacrifices to the Lord, Job 1:5? Whatever it was that Satan caused, the symptoms were terrible: inflamed, ulcerous sores (v. 7), severe itching (v. 8), nightmares (3:13-14), bad breath (19:17), weight loss (19:20), chills and fever (21:6), diarrhea (30:27 KJV) and blackened skin (30:30), etc. He was filled with pain, his appearance was horrible and there seemed to be no hope.
3. THE DISPLEASURE: IS IT WORTH THE FIGHT? (v. 9) “Curse God and die”- Satan uses the same instrument against Job, as he did against Adam. Job’s wife comes to him & tries to get him to curse God & go to his death with some dignity. Her husband, once the greatest man of the east, v. 1:3, now is sitting on a garbage dump scraping his disease ridden body with a piece of broken pottery. No wonder she is a little upset.
4. THE DEDUCTION: WHY NOT ME? (v. 10) “Shall we…accept good from God…and not accept adversity”--That is, to be patient in adversity as we rejoice when He sends prosperity, and so to acknowledge Him to be both merciful and just. He so bridled his desires with patience so that his tongue did not murmur against God. Many times we ask, “Why me?” while Job suggests “Why not me?” Job lost much: Family, Fortune, Fitness, and Friends
Job did what Sarah Edwards did when she received word that her husband Jonathan had died at the age of 54 from a smallpox inoculation one month after becoming the president of Princeton College in l758. She picked up her pen and wrote to her daughter Esther whose husband Aaron Burr had died six months earlier:
“My very dear Child, What shall I say! A holy and good God has covered us with a dark cloud. O that we may kiss the rod and lay our hands upon our mouths! The Lord has done it. He has made me adore his goodness, that we had [your father] so long. But my God lives; and he has my heart. O what a legacy my husband and your father has left us! We are given to God; and there I am
III. THE COMFORTERS: TRIALS WILL REVEAL THE CHARACTER OF YOUR FRIENDS (vvs. 11-13) “Three friends…came…Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite”--Job is now the repulsive symbol of rejection by God and man. There can be only one answer to Job’s sufferings according to his friends. “You have sinned.” They give only a dogmatic assertion that there was only one solution to his problems. When the friends of Job arrived, they did not come with any words of encouragement for the suffering saint. If anything, they tried their best to push him farther down in his misery.
1. THE SORROW: HE NEEDS US NOW (v. 11) “They had…come…(to) mourn with him, and to comfort him”-- Who were men of authority, wise and learned, and as the LXX suggests, kings, & came to comfort him, but when they saw how he was affected, they conceived an evil opinion of him, as though he were a hypocrite and so justly plagued by God for his sins.
Illus: Billy Graham comments: “Nowhere does the Bible teach that Christians are exempt from the tribulations and natural disasters that come upon the world. Scripture does teach that the Christian can face tribulation, crisis, calamity, and personal suffering with a supernatural power that is not available to the person outside of Christ.”
2. THE SADNESS: BOO HOO! BOO HOO! “They lifted their voices and wept”--This was a ceremony which they used in those countries as the renting of their clothes in sign of sorrow etc. Your trials will do the same to you if you allow them to. They will rob you of your joy. They will steal your smile. They will replace the look of hope with the lines of worry. This is just human nature, but I believe that the Lord has a cure. The reason that burdens and trials can change us in the way we appear is simply because we allow them to! God desires that we learn to handle our trials by a biblical model instead of allowing them to handle us.
3. THE SILENCE: A TIMELY RESPONSE (v. 13) “No one spoke a word…for they saw that his grief was very much”--They had not expected the sight of “walking death” that greets them. No words pass between the friends. Job’s sunken eyes, blackened skin, running sores and swollen lips speak with silent horror. If death is imminent, no one speaks until the mourner speaks. And therefore thought that he would not have listened to their counsel. Any words would have been wrong.
CONCLUSION:
1. When something bad happens, we tend to ask the question, "Why me?"
2. Job thought that way. He was rich. He was comfortable. He had a nice family. He was very successful and highly moral.
3. Everything Job owned was stolen or destroyed, the people who worked for him were taken or murdered, & his children were all killed. After all these things, Job said, "The Lord gave & the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised" (Job 1:21).
4. TRIALS WILL CONFIRM YOUR FOUNDATIONS--Job stated in 1:21 “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Then in 2:10, he says, “Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” So the wise choice is to trust Christ as your Savior and follow Him completely.
5. As you have faced the trials of life, I am sure you have seen the things proven true time and again. I do not know what valley you may be walking through today, but I do know a God who wants to help you get safely through it. Will you bring your need to Jesus this very day? Will you do that now?
Illus: We received a letter from Christine Hoover on Friday before Christmas. She is the lady that lost her husband, son and father-in-law on Thanksgiving south of Fairfield, Illinois, when we lived in Fairfield. I was called to the hospital and ministered to her and her daughter while they were there. I was given the task by the Doctor of telling a 10-12 year old daughter, Donna, that she had lost the members of her family. They were from Chicago and going to Trenton, Tennessee, for Thanksgiving. It was a tough matter to cope with but she told about her daughter and her grandchildren with joy. However, she stated, “The holidays are bad for me. I still miss Byron (her second husband who has died) so much and I miss my first family too. Jimmy would be 56 years old. God is so good, He gets us through the hard times in life, I’m so thankful. What would we do with Him?” That’s what the Lord can do for us even when we don’t understand fully why things happen as they do.
Illus: Stonewall Jackson contains a beautiful and moving account of the time when, at 30 years of age, Jackson lost his wife, Ellie, and baby son: On Sunday afternoon, October 22, 1854. Ellie went into labor. The child was stillborn. About an hour later she began to hemorrhage and died very quickly. Jackson is writing to his sister, Laura: "I have been called to pass through the deep waters of affliction, but all has been satisfied," he write. "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord. It is his will that my dear wife and child should no longer abide with me, and as it is His holy will, I am perfectly reconciled to the sad bereavement, though I deeply mourn my loss. My Dearest Ellie breathed her last on Sunday evening, the same day on which the child was born dead. Oh! The consolations of religion! I can willingly submit to anything if God strengthens me. Oh! My Sister would that you could have Him for your God! Though all nature to me is eclipsed, yet I have joy in knowing that God withholds no good things from them that love and keep his commandments. And he will overrule this Sad, Sad bereavement for good."
A few weeks later he writes again: "She has now gone on a glorious visit through a gloomy portal. I look forward with delight to the day when I shall join her. Religion is all that I desire it to be. I am reconciled to my loss and have joy in hope of a future reunion when the wicked cease from trembling and the weary are at rest." Job would have said the same.
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