I like the comment that I recently read which said, “If you tell a man that there are 568,678,934,341 stars in the universe, he’ll believe you. But if a sign says, “Fresh Paint,” he has to make a personal investigation.”
Certain things in life create questions that move us to “personal investigation.” In addition, we have studied questions throughout the summer that people have for God that has placed us on a quest of personal investigation. We have fielded questions on many different issues such as child neglect, loving our enemies, and the beginning and end of human life.
This morning we deal with questions that are probably the most asked questions of all - questions about evil and suffering.
Questions like, “Why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer?” Why do bad things (disease, death, loss of employment) happen to good people?
Why does it seem that the people who do believe have the worst things happen to them? Why do the people that don’t believe seem to have everything go their way?
Someone else asked, “Why (knowing that we would sin and some of us would ultimately go to hell) did He created us anyway? Why has so much evil been allowed to flourish on the earth, i.e. child molesters, killers?
These questions are hard questions because they are questions that raise issues about the nature and purpose of God, the nature and purpose of good and evil, and the nature and purpose of humankind.
Philip Yancey tells the story in his book, Disappointment With God, about a friend named Douglas who went through a series of terrible events. First, his wife developed breast cancer. Then one night, he and his family were involved in a head-on crash with a drunk driver. Douglas received a severe head injury that caused sudden and debilitating headaches that kept him from working a full day and enjoying the ability to read like he used to while still having to caring for his wife.
Yancey called Douglas and asked if he could interview him for the book and noted, “By then I had interviewed a dozen people and heard the full range of disappointment with God. If anyone had a right to be angry at God, Douglas did.”
Yancey began the interview with a couple of questions, “Could you tell me about your own disappointment? (And) What have you learned that might help someone else going through a difficult time?”
To Yancey’s great surprise, Douglas said, “To tell you the truth, Philip, I didn’t feel any disappointment with God…. The reason is this. I learned, first through my wife’s illness and then especially through the accident, not to confuse God with life.”
He continued, “I’m no stoic. I am as upset about what happened to me as anyone could be. I feel free to curse the unfairness of life and to vent all my grief and anger. But I believe God feels the same way about that accident-grieved and angry. I don’t blame him for what happened.”
It is interesting to note that in the chapter (titled, by the way, “Is God Unfair?”) that Douglas’ story appears under the section entitled, “A Modern Job.” This brings us to our main text for this morning.
I want to read it again then make some comments on it as well as some segments from Job 1.
One day the angels came again to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan the Accuser came with them. “Where have you come from?” the LORD asked Satan.
And Satan answered the LORD, “I have been going back and forth across the earth, watching everything that’s going on.”
Then the LORD asked Satan, “Have you noticed my servant Job? He is the finest man in all the earth—a man of complete integrity. He fears God and will have nothing to do with evil. And he has maintained his integrity, even though you persuaded me to harm him without cause.”
Satan replied to the LORD, “Skin for skin—he blesses you only because you bless him. A man will give up everything he has to save his life. But take away his health, and he will surely curse you to your face!”
“All right, do with him as you please,” the LORD, said to Satan. “But spare his life.” So Satan left the LORD’s presence, and he struck Job with a terrible case of boils from head to foot.
Then Job scraped his skin with a piece of broken pottery as he sat among the ashes. His wife said to him, “Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die.”
But Job replied, “You talk like a godless woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” So in all this, Job said nothing wrong.
This is quite a passage of scripture. It makes some people uncomfortable because it challenges their assumptions of God due to what He did in chapter 1 by allowing Satan to destroy Job’s possessions and then kill Job’s sons and daughters leaving Job penniless and childless and then again in this chapter by allowing Satan to afflict Job with terrible boils all over his body.
Yet this is also an interesting passage because we are permitted to get a peak backstage and behind the curtain at God in action. We have a similar passage in Matthew 4 that includes the temptation of Christ and the book of Revelation paints a brilliant portrait of the larger struggle between God and Satan. However, nowhere else in scripture can I recall are we given such a clear view of God and Satan face to face with each other.
Probably the main action in this passage that makes people uncomfortable is God has intentionally allowed Job to experience suffering. He permitted the death of Job’s children, the loss of his possessions, and an attack on Job’s health. WHAT KIND OF A GOD WOULD ALLOW SUCH A THING?
“Not my God,” we say. “He is a good God. He is a loving God. He loves people too much to permit such things to happen.”
But Job does not see it that way. He asks his very angry and upset wife who seems to be done with God, an interesting question “Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?”
Evil, at times, seems to be everywhere. (It really is). It seems more powerful than Good. It seems to be winning more and more and this passage does nothing it seems to ease our anxiety about Evil and the suffering of the righteous. Yet, we need to look carefully at what is said in these opening chapters of Job.
“All right, do with him as you please,” the LORD, said to Satan. “But spare his life.”
In Job 1 we read, “Then the LORD asked Satan, “Have you noticed my servant Job? He is the finest man in all the earth—a man of complete integrity. He fears God and will have nothing to do with evil.”
Satan replied to the LORD, “Yes, Job fears God, but not without good reason! You have always protected him and his home and his property from harm. You have made him prosperous in everything he does. Look how rich he is! But take away everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face!”
“All right, you may test him,” the LORD said to Satan. “Do whatever you want with everything he possesses, but don’t harm him physically.” So Satan left the LORD’s presence.
Now, Satan is permitted to make Job suffer – first emotionally and then physically. However, he makes an interesting point that we need to remember. “You have always protected him… you have made him prosperous…”
Yet God also makes a very important point that we likewise must remember, “Do whatever you want with everything he possesses, BUT don’t harm him physically… “All right, do with him as you please, BUT spare his life.”
Evil and suffering have their limits. God sets those limits. Satan has only as much power as God allows him to have and no more!
Satan makes a powerful attempt to bring Job down through suffering just as he made a powerful attempt to bring Jesus down through temptation. God limits Satan in what he can do.
Nevertheless, we must consider Job’s wife this morning as well. She seems to have crumbled under the weight of all the tragedy that has befallen them. She seems to have given up on God and turned her back on Him. He is no longer the source of pleasure but a source of trouble.
Job’s wife illustrates something very important that we must keep in mind regarding suffering – we have a choice in how we will respond to suffering. That is a choice that God has given us because He has give us a choice to choose between living life God’s way or not living life God’s way. Job and his wife illustrate the responses to suffering each of us is faced with daily.
But scripture has more to say as well that we need to hear and find strength and hope in. Psalm 37 is one place that has much to say to us. Here are some segments of that Psalm:
Don’t worry about the wicked.
Don’t envy those who do wrong.
For like grass, they soon fade away.
Like springtime flowers, they soon wither.
Trust in the LORD and do good.
Then you will live safely in the land and prosper.
Take delight in the LORD,
and he will give you your heart’s desires.
Commit everything you do to the LORD.
Trust him, and he will help you.
He will make your innocence as clear as the dawn,
and the justice of your cause will shine like the noonday sun…
For the strength of the wicked will be shattered,
but the LORD takes care of the godly.
Day by day the LORD takes care of the innocent,
and they will receive a reward that lasts forever.
They will survive through hard times;
even in famine they will have more than enough.
But the wicked will perish.
The LORD’s enemies are like flowers in a field—
they will disappear like smoke…
Once I was young, and now I am old.
Yet I have never seen the godly forsaken,
nor seen their children begging for bread.
The godly always give generous loans to others,
and their children are a blessing…
Then there is Romans 8:31- 39 that says,
What can we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since God did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else?
Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? Will God? No! He is the one who has given us right standing with himself. Who then will condemn us? Will Christ Jesus? No, for he is the one who died for us and was raised to life for us and is sitting at the place of highest honor next to God, pleading for us.
Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or are hungry or cold or in danger or threatened with death? (Even the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love. Death can’t, and life can’t. The angels can’t, and the demons can’t. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can’t keep God’s love away. Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Then there is Matthew 5:45 that I quoted a few weeks ago, For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and on the unjust, too.
So what do we say to our questioners of the morning?
God will take care of us. Suffering does come, suffering will come, but ultimately God will end suffering and suffering will no longer afflict us. Suffering and the bad that happens also comes to the wicked who will not always prosper like they seem to much of the time. God will deal with them.
So why do the righteous suffer? Why do bad things happen to good people? Because we live in a world that has been eaten up by sin. If Satan would not have chosen to rebel against God, then Adam and Eve would not have been tempted and we would not be living with the results of thousands of years of human disobedience and disregard for God!
So why did God create us if some of us will disobey God and end up eternally paying for it? Because God still hopes that we will turn around and walk to and then with Him and not away from Him because His love for us is great!
So why has so much evil been allowed to flourish? I like what Paul says in Romans 6:16, “Don’t you realize that whatever you choose to obey becomes your master? You can choose sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God and receive his approval.”
Evil flourishes because we continue to make the kind of choices we make that allows evil to flourish. But, we also have been given the choice to let sin no longer be our master and as Paul also says, “overcome evil with good.”
Life is therefore a series of choices, often tough ones, that can keep us moving toward and with God and respond to life, honestly but with hope in the power and purposes of God or will be choices that lead us away from Him. Speaking of life, I like how Philip Yancey’s friend made an important distinction between God and life.
He said to Yancey, “We tend to think, ‘Life should be fair because God is fair. But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life-by expecting constant good health, for example-then I set myself up for a crashing disappointment…. Frankly, I’ve had more time and opportunity to work on my relationship with God during my impairment than before.”
I second that view. 12 years ago this summer, I was on unemployment. I remember feeling so alone and so awful and afraid after the apartment complex where Susan and I lived and I had worked part-time for three years was sold and new management was brought in.
However, the next day, the church that I served in Grand Rapids before coming here called me and asked if I was interested in a position at their church. I knew after getting that information I would be okay and I spent the rest of the summer keeping busy on projects (that paid some money) and working on my relationship with the Lord.
I know that today’s topic has made us aware about people who are suffering physically or facing evil head on. We continue to pray for them. Our hearts go out to them. We continue to wrestle with “Why them?”
I don’t know. But God knows. And I choose to keep trusting Him to do what is right because I know one day, one day, He will make everything right. And suffering will cease to exist. Evil will be completely defeated. That day is coming and is closer now than it was yesterday.
So, is God fair? Yes, God is fair! God is good! God is just! God loves! God does care!
Have faith! Keep faith! Have hope! Express hope! Keep trusting! Not in circumstances but in the Lord who is above those circumstances. Amen.
The NLT version is used in this sermon. Zondervan Publishing Company publishes Philip Yancey’s book, Disappointment With God.
