Job 1:6 -21 – War is Hard
Well, a week ago I had planned to start a series on the life of David, from now until the Lent season. As the week progressed, I felt the growing need to speak about the situation in Asia. Three years ago, after 9-11, I preached on, ”Why, God?” And after the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, I felt that I should revisit the topic of evil in the world.
I heard one man on TV ask the question, “Why did God let this happen?” That’s a pretty common question. And some would claim that it’s an easy answer. Some would likely say that since many of the flood-damaged nations are persecutors of Christians, then this is God’s punishment on them. For example, Indonesia was the worst hit, losing over 80,000 people. Well, according to a Christian persecution watchdog, Indonesia is the world’s 36th worst persecutor of Christians. Although it is legal to believe in Jesus, the Muslim majority, especially in Sumatra, the hardest hit section of Indonesia, puts some restrictions on evangelism, and many Christians avoid antagonizing the Muslims.
Then, there’s Sri Lanka, which lost over 28,000, and it’s the world’s 34th worst persecutor of Christians. India lost over 8900, and it’s the 33rd worst. But then, there’s Thailand, which lost over 4800. It doesn’t persecute believers at all. Although the Thai church is hardly thriving, they are still allowed all rights and privileges as other religions too. So if this tsunami is a judgement of God on misbehaving nations, why would Thailand be swept up into that as well?
Plus, you have to consider the Christians in these countries as well, faithful in spite of hard times. And yet they are among the lost. I read that in Sri Lanka, horribly affected, with reports of whole churches and congregations washed away.
And then there’s India. Compassion International is a Christian program that exists to break the cycle of poverty for children. They provide food, shelter, clothing, education, healthcare and Christian training to poor kids around the world.
And I read that in India, more than 25 fathers of Compassion-assisted children were lost at sea. There was also one project in India that all the homes in the project - representing over 400 families - were swept away. I have a hard time believing that it was God’s will to cause all this death and destruction to happen. If the simple truth of 1 Thess.5:9 is true, “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,” then what do we make of it all?
Let’s read Job 1:6-21. Let’s look at some basic truths about this passage. First, as far as unseen beings go, there is a good One and there is a bad one. That’s not to say that God and Satan are on equal footing – equal strength, intelligence, power, importance – they’re not. But just as God exists, so does Satan. Second, this bad unseen being, Satan, wanted to cause a man’s downfall. This Job fella was blameless and upright, feared God and shunned evil, as v8 tells us. But Satan wanted to overthrow him.
But the third truth is where things get tricky. Third, God gave Satan permission to cause some calamities in Job’s life. Satan used 2 different tactics: 1) he incited foreign armies to hurt Job – v15, 17, and 2) he used natural disasters to hurt Job – v16, 19. God allowed Satan to provoke people to do evil. And God allowed Satan to use nature to wreak havoc on unsuspecting, innocent bystanders.
So you can see how this gets tricky. It’s not God doing it, it’s Satan. Now, I find it entirely possible that this earthquake and resulting tsunami is part of what Romans 8 calls the groanings of creation, the pain that this world is in because of years and years of sin. And, I find it entirely possible that Satan is behind this too. Job seems to show that Satan can use nature for his own purposes. BUT, Satan can only do it because God lets him. That’s the tricky part.
And that’s where so many stumble in this thing. So many can’t get past the notion that God allowed it to happen. Whether it’s the earthquake, the tsunami, the Twin Towers, that divorce, that death, that emptiness… somehow it’s God’s fault. All these horrible and hurtful things that happen in the world, somehow it can be all traced back to God, and if we can blame all our problems on Him, somehow we’ll feel better about ourselves.
But that doesn’t really solve anything. Nobody ever continued to feel better when they blamed God. Sure, it may ease the burden momentarily, but blaming God doesn’t wind up filling the emptiness left behind by painful circumstances. Blaming God for your lack of what you feel you deserve doesn’t fill you. Blaming God for your difficult circumstances doesn’t fill you. Blaming god for your lack of spiritual vitality doesn’t fill you. No, what you need is to realize that we are at war. And until you understand that there is a being whose sole desire in life is to destroy you and your family and your spiritual life – until you understand that, you will never be satisfied with God’s performance.
Ephesians 6:12 says that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against unseen forces. Some Christians would just end the verse, “For we wrestle not… period.” Most Christians don’t generally think twice about the war we are in. Maybe we’ve overlooked it; maybe we’ve chosen not to see it. I don’t like this fact, but really, this is not Mayberry. This is not Central Perk. This is not Green Acres. We are living in a battleground, where 2 sides fight to the death. You were born in it, you will die in it. But you can’t escape it. Satan’s job description, as given by Jesus, is “to steal and kill and destroy.” Which is why we miss out on what God wants to offer us.
The 2nd half of that verse I just read is Jesus’ job description: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” Full life? Do we have that? John 7:38 says, “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” Do we have that? Do we have what Jesus said we could have, should have? Psalm 27:13 says this: “I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.” The land of the living is right here, right now. It’s not just for later or part of our retirement plan. It’s now.
Jesus made a promise in Luke 18. "I tell you the truth," Jesus said to them, "no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life." In this age and the next. Now and later. Here and there. This offer of eternal life is not just for when we die, but while we are alive too. God wants us to be fully, really, completely, whole-heartedly alive.
And old saint of the church, Irenaeus, said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” Do you suppose that God’s happiness and my happiness are tied together? That what God wants for us is to be completely satisfied with Him? But doesn’t this sound rare to you? Doesn’t this sound so distant, so foreign? Why? Why is life so hard? Why does life seem either that we are blowing it, that we are failures, that we are constantly messing it up? On the other hand, why does life seem that God is holding out on us? Failure after failure, discontentment after discontentment, leads us to think that perhaps, God doesn’t mean us well? That He’s holding out on us? That He’s trying to prove something to us, that He’s trying to teach us a lesson?
I believe the answer to those questions and others like them, like “What’s really going on here?” and “what am I missing?”, is this: we are at war. Our lives, this world, are not how they were meant to be for us because there is someone trying to steal, kill, and destroy.
As much as we would like to be in a war-free zone, we are not. As much as we wish eternal life were easy to grab hold of, it’s not. As much as we wish earthquakes and tsunamis and 9-11 and divorces and rapes and murders and sickness and senseless deaths didn’t happen in this life, they do. I think of the movie, “Saving Private Ryan”. It pictures a group of Americans fighting in occupied France during World War II. There’s a scene where this group slowly approaches a blown-out building in a demolished town. A family is crying, and a father wants to hand down his daughter to one of the soldiers. Despite the sergeant’s warnings, one private goes over to the building to get the frightened girl. When he does, though, an unseen German sniper gets him in his sights and kills him. That sniper used a little girl as unwitting bait to kill the enemy.
Now, it wasn’t the girl’s fault she was in a war. It was not fault that she was scared. It’s not her fault that she was involved in a bigger story than she could see at the time. She didn’t start the war, and she didn’t finish it. As much as we wish we could live war-free lives, we can’t. That’s not where we are right now. That’s not where we are in the story. Someday, the fighting will be over, and Jesus will be declared the winner.
But until then, we must fight. We must reject lies that say God is not who He says He is. We must reject lies that say we are not who He says we are. We must reject bitterness and anguish about how our lives are turning out. We must understand that Satan doesn’t care if he has our allegiance, as long as he can take it from God, its rightful owner. We must understand that complaining about how things are doesn’t do any good. Whether it’s about the church or about the weather or about the country or about our families, complaining doesn’t enter us into God’s blessings. That eternal life comes from simply trusting that He will win in the end. It comes from that resolution that “even if nobody else does the right thing, I will.”
You see? In the same way that Satan’s work has wreaked havoc in Asia this week, no less serious is what his work has done in our hearts. As if serving God could be summed up in how often we attend church, or how many verses of the Bible we read everyday. Satan has robbed us of our vitality, our life-blood, the power given to us by the One who was raised from the dead. We have settles for cheap dollar-store imitations of the real things that God offers us. Folks, let’s take hold of that life. Let’s walk into His presence more often in 2005 than we did in 2004. Let’s pray better, let’s study better, let’s give better. Let’s come alive in hearts of trust and obedience.
