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Peace be with you.
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Friends, I'm always delighted
when the Church gives us
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the opportunity to reflect
on the book of Job.
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The book of Job is one of the
profoundest, most difficult,
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challenging books
in the entire Bible.
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I might encourage you to read it
—I mean, of course—
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but probably with a good commentary,
because Job
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is a bit like approaching T.S. Eliot
or some very complicated poet.
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The central theme of Job,
trust me when I tell you,
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has been massively on the minds of
people ever since the book was written,
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and it's very clearly on the minds
especially of a lot
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of our young people today
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—namely, the problem of how do you
reconcile God's existence in love
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with the terrible suffering
that we see in the world,
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especially the suffering
of the innocent?
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There's no better Old Testament
wrestling with that problem
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than the book of Job.
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Which is why I think anyone
interested in apologetics
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or trying to explain the faith
could really benefit from
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a serious consideration of this book.
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Now, I know you know
the basic story well.
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Job is presented as this
entirely righteous man,
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good man, upright man
that walks with the Lord,
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and he enjoys the blessings of his
moral excellence and so on.
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He has family and he has wealth
and he has position in society
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—all these good things.
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And then there's kind of a
conversation between God and Satan,
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and Satan says,
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"Well, sure. Job is your friend because
you've given him every blessing.
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But if I took away all these
blessings, he'd curse you."
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So God sort of accepts the challenge,
and he allows Satan to strip Job
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of all these benefits.
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And so in one terrible fell swoop,
Job loses everything.
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He loses his family,
his loved ones.
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He loses all of his possessions.
He loses his health.
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Everything's stripped away.
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But Job does not curse God.
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But he falls, understandably,
into a kind of a depression,
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and three friends come to visit Job.
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And beautiful thing—anyone involved
in pastoral ministry,
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this is a good lesson—
they sit for seven days in silence.
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And that's a beautiful gesture.
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When someone's in great pain,
words probably aren't the best remedy.
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They sit with him in silence.
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Then, unfortunately,
they begin to speak.
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And so again, pastoral ministers,
take note
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what not to say to someone
who's suffering.
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Their speeches are variations
on the theme of,
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"Well, Job, you must have done something
to bring all this evil upon yourself.
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I know you look like you're righteous,
but you must've done something wrong
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because God is punishing you."
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And they go on and on
for several chapters.
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Job finally, in disgust, after
protesting his innocence consistently,
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he dismisses the
three interlocutors,
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and in one of the most dramatic
moments in the whole Bible,
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he calls God into the dock.
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And here he speaks for anyone
who's endured great suffering.
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And that's to varying degrees
all of us, every one of us,
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especially those who know they
haven't done some terrible thing
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to merit the suffering, and
yet it's been visited upon them.
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And so Job, as it were, speaks for
all of us in calling God into the dock,
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challenging God: Why?
Why would you allow this?
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Why would you do this?
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You know, in my years of
pastoral ministry,
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you face this issue all the time.
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Because people will come often to
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religious leaders when they're suffering,
when they're in pain,
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and Job is the one who
speaks for all of us.
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Well, I'll tell you,
if you want to read the central,
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key passages, it begins
chapter 38 of Job,
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covering 38, 39, 40, and 41,
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four chapters of a
lengthy speech of God
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—by far the longest speech
of God anywhere in the Bible.
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Which is interesting, isn't it?
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That when God speaks the clearest
and the longest in the Bible,
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it's on this particular issue.
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Listen now how Job 38 begins:
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“Then the LORD answered Job
out of the whirlwind.”
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Don't pass over “the whirlwind.”
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Think of a desert storm,
sand storm, which obscures vision.
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Think sand getting in his mouth
and into his eyes,
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and he can't see,
can't articulate himself.
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See, God's ways will always be
confounding to us,
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and that shouldn't surprise us.
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God, who's the Creator of all things,
the infinite God whose mind
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covers all of space and time
and what lies beyond space and time
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—of course God speaks to us
out of the whirlwind.
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What does he say?
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“Who is this that darkens counsel
by words without knowledge?
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Gird up your loins like a man,
and I will question you,
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and you will declare to me.
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Where were you when I laid
the foundation of the earth?
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Tell me, if you have understanding.
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Who determined its measurements
—surely you know!”
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Well, there's the commencement
of this marvelous speech.
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And what God does now, he takes Job
on this elaborate tour of his cosmos,
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asking him all the time,
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"Well, where were you
when I did these things?
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You surely understand my ways."
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Listen now to a little more
of the speech:
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“Have you entered into
the springs of the sea,
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or walked into the
recesses of the depths?
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Have the gates of death
been revealed to you...
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Have you comprehended the
expanse of the earth?...
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Have you entered the
storehouses of the snow,
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or seen the storehouses of the hail...
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Do you give the horse its might?
Do you clothe its neck with mane?...
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Is it by your wisdom that
the hawk soars...
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Is it at your command that the eagle
mounts up and makes its nest on high?”
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You get the idea.
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And now the reading for today is a little
excerpt from this section of the speech.
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Listen: “Who shut within doors the sea,
when it burst forth from the womb...
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When I set limits for it and fastened
the bar of its door, and said:
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Thus far shall you come but no farther,
here shall your proud waves be stilled!”
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What do you know, Job, about the sea
and its movements and its activity?
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Something I love about this speech:
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it's almost thoroughly about
the nonhuman world.
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It's about the animals
and fish in the sea
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and about the cosmic realities
—not about human affairs.
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Reminding us what?
God's providence—yes, indeed—
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has to do with all of human affairs.
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But as Thomas Aquinas said,
God's providence extends to particulars.
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That means to everything in the world,
everything that we can see
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is under the providence of God.
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Here's a famous section,
too, which I love.
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We're not exactly sure whom the author
is referring to here, what animals.
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They're guessing alligator,
and then perhaps a whale.
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But listen.
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God says to Job:
“Look at Behemoth”
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—probably like an alligator
or crocodile—
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"which I made just as I made you...
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Its strength is in its loins,
its power in the muscles of its belly.
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It makes its tail
stiff like a cedar;
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the sinews of its thighs
are knit together.
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Its bones are tubes of bronze,
its limbs like bars of iron.”
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How God admires this marvelous
creature that he's made
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—"just as I made you, Job.
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My creative providence has to do
with everything that you can see
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in the fullness of the cosmos,
everything in space and time.”
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He draws attention to Leviathan
—probably a whale—
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and again, sings its praises.
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“Do you know, Job,
all about these animals?
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These mighty, beautiful,
powerful creatures?
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You probably never even think about them.
But they, too, are under my providence.”
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Now, what's the point here, everybody?
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The point is that we don't have in
this speech an answer to Job
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—meaning, "Hey, look Job, here's why
you're suffering.
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Let me lay it out to you."
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Rather, we have a placing of
Job's suffering within an
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infinitely greater context,
the context of a providence that,
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as I say, stretches across
all of space and time
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—but let's press it—
stretches beyond space and time
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to a world that we cannot even see.
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God is concerned with every bit of it.
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Does your suffering, Job, make sense
in a way that only God can see,
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within the context of this
infinitely complex providence?
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Think about something.
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Let's maybe take it away from the
most extreme examples of suffering,
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because that's where
we usually go in this.
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But think of something like this.
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"Oh, there's that job that
I wanted with all my heart.
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I was competing with other
people for this job,
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and that’s the one
I knew I could do.
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That’s the job I wanted.
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And I did not get it.
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And I was devastated.
I was heartbroken.
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How could God have allowed this?
I was prepared for it.
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It made perfect sense.
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Everyone thought
I was great for that job.
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And I didn't get it."
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Suffering—yes, indeed.
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"But then I found, because
I didn't get that job,
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I got another job that
I never even dreamed of,
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which turned out to be
so much better,
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which opened up doors that
I never imagined possible,
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that brought me to life in a way
that I couldn't have
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ever accomplished
on the other path.”
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Why did God allow that suffering?
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Well, within the rich complexity
of his providence,
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he saw something else.
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And this happened pastorally
many times, when people say,
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"Ugh, that is the lady
I wanted to marry.
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I just had my heart
set on this lady,
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and she broke off the engagement.
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And I'm devastated.
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It's the worst
suffering of my life.
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And I'm sure of it.
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But because that relationship
didn't work out,
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I met that lady whom I married
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and became the mother of my children
and brought me a joy
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and a happiness that
I couldn't have imagined."
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Does God, who sees the entirety
of the universe, visible and invisible,
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sometimes allow suffering
to bring about a good
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that we cannot immediately see?
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You know this image, I've always
liked this—I play a little chess,
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and playing chess on one board
is complicated enough, right?
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All the moves you can make, and
if I do this and he does that,
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and I'll lose this piece
if I do this.
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But there's also a form of chess
that's played on boards
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that are stacked one
upon the other,
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and a move on this board actually
affects boards at other levels.
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You're playing kind of a
three-dimensional chess.
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Imagine ten million times
ten million chess boards
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stacked one upon the other.
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All of space and all of time.
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All that God is concerned with,
even what goes beyond space and time.
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One move here is affecting
play on this board,
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but also affecting play
on all the other boards.
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Why does God allow suffering?
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Sometimes, when you're playing chess,
you seed a piece because you know
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in the grand scheme of things
it's going to lead to victory.
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Now the ten million times
ten million chess boards,
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one upon the other.
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“Where were you, Job?”
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See, we tend, understandably,
when we're in pain,
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to narrow our focus on
what we're going through,
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and all we see is that.
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How could God allow this?
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The book of Job invites us now into
this infinitely complex setting
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for all that happens to us,
and therefore invites us
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—where? Finally,
into the place of trust.
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Look, I don't know.
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I don't know why God is
allowing a particular pain.
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Maybe someday I'll see it.
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Maybe I won't see it until
I get to heaven.
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But in the meantime, I trust.
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In the meantime, I have confidence
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that the God who's the Lord
of heaven and earth
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knows what he's about.
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And God bless you.
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Thanks so much for watching.
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If you enjoyed this video,
I invite you to share it
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