7 After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, I am

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1 January 11, 2015 Charles Yu Series: Wrecked: When Life Falls Apart Sermon: What did I do to deserve this? Scripture: Job 3-27 Main Idea: Suffering does not mean guilt; rather, it can serve divine purposes. Purpose: To help people better understand God and his justice I. Introduction Job doesn t explain why we encounter suffering; it doesn t explain illnesses, accidents, or the loss of loved ones. Instead the book prepares us for the hard times that come our away. The first two chapters tell a story about a morally upright and pious man named Job. God considers him the best man in the world, but something happens in the heavenly realm. God faces a challenge to how he is running the world, and God is put on trial. Job must face a series of calamities in order to vindicate God: Job loses all his wealth, all of his children die, and he contracts a disfiguring skin disease. All of this happens even though Job has done nothing wrong. While the first two chapters set up the story and there is half a chapter in the end that resolves everything, in between there are people debating non-stop about: why Job suffers, who has wisdom, whether God is fair or not, and the limits of human knowledge. Job and his friends talk in 3 cycles: (1) Eliphaz-Job-Bildad-Job-Zophar-Job; (2) Same as Cycle 1; and (3) Eliphaz-Job-Bildad-Job, but no Zophar. Then a man named Elihu provides a long monologue, and finally God talks for a few chapters. II. The Friends are Wrong Just by looking at this structure of the book, we learn something critical. It is a dialogue with characters arguing back and forth, presenting their different perspectives. If they are presenting different perspectives, then we need to consider that some of the perspectives are wrong. The author of the dialogue uses this format to present arguments that he wants to debunk. In this case the author places the wrong arguments in the mouths of Job s friends. We know this because the book tells us. Read Job 42:7-8. This is the very last chapter of the book. God just finished talking to Job and putting him in his place, God declares a winner in the argument between Job and his friends: 7 After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. 8 So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. At the end of the book, God declares that Job is right, Eliphaz and his friends are wrong. Not only that, God is mad at them for spouting nonsense. They need to go to Job, the person they ve been debating with and ask him to pray for them. Their forgiveness is contingent on Job s prayer. The statement, you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has shows up twice, and repetition is emphasis in the Hebrew Bible. Eliphaz and his friends dialogued for nine chapters. That means nine chapters in the Bible are espousing the wrong ideas. This is why it is important to read verses in the context of an entire chapter and the chapters within the context of an entire book. 1

2 The two verses at the end of the book provide the guiding principle for reading Chapters The guiding principle is that the friends are wrong. II. Suffering is Proof of Guilt There are a few representative passages that provide a good idea regarding the kinds of arguments the friends are making. Read Job 4:7-9. Consider now: Who, being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed? As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it. At the breath of God they perish; at the blast of his anger they are no more. This comes from Eliphaz s first speech to Job. Bildad and Zophar say similar things. They argue that innocent and upright people never perish and are never destroyed, rather they prosper. While those who plow evil and sow trouble will reap it. Biblical scholars call this the Retribution Principle. The Retribution Principle is the conviction that the righteous will prosper and the wicked will suffer, both in proportion to their respective righteousness and wickedness. (Walton, Job, NIV Commentary, 39) It is one thing to believe the Retribution Principle; it is another to say it to a person who just lost his wealth, children, and health. When you say the Retribution Principle to a people who have lost everything, you are saying they have done something deserving of punishment otherwise this wouldn t happen. Their suffering is proof of their guilt. Many Christ followers carry the idea that when things go wrong, it s because we did something wrong. Others believe in karma, what goes around comes around. Eliphaz developed this idea a little further. Later in the same speech, he says: Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can even a strong man be more pure than his Maker? If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error, how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who are crushed more readily than a moth! Between dawn and dusk they are broken to pieces; unnoticed, they perish forever. Are not the cords of their tent pulled up, so that they die without wisdom? (Job 4:17-21) Eliphaz is saying that Job is a flawed human being. In the presence of a pure and holy God, humans can t measure up. If God find faults with angels, humans don t stand a chance. In The Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes writes: the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Eliphaz has a low view of human dignity, worth, and morality; at the same point, he portrays God as somebody who is a stringent nitpick, constantly looking, examining, applying exacting standards that nobody can live up to. Because God is so uptight and humans are pathetic, God is mad at us all the 2

3 time. Which means there is no such thing as innocent suffering, we are always messing up, we are all guilty, and we deserve whatever we have coming to us. Is this how we see God? I think some of us live with a sense that God is out to get us. That in our collective subconscious is the concept of a God who is a cosmic killjoy keeping tabs on everybody, looking for mistakes. Illustration: Despite Santa Claus s jolly manners and red coat, he is a minor deity thoroughly committed to the Retribution Principle. One of the hymns contains Deep Santa theology. It describes him as making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who is naughty or nice. Santa Claus is a list-maker, somebody with a massive Microsoft Excel file with information on everybody. He sees you when you re sleeping, he knows when you re awake; he knows if you ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake. Is our God like Santa Claus, keeping watch, ready to pounce when we take one false step? This is how Job responds: What is man that you make so much of him? That you set your mind on him? That you examine him every morning? That you test him every moment? Will you never look away from me? Why do you not leave me alone until I swallow my spit? If I have sinned, what do I do to you? O man-stalker! Why have you made me your target? Why have I become a burden to you? Why do you not forgive my transgression and over look my iniquity? For now I will lie in dust; You will look for me, and I will not be there (Job 7:17-21). It would be tiresome to live with a god like this. How could anyone love a god like this? III. Lesson #1: The Friends are Wrong The friends present two views: (1) Suffering is proof of sin; and (2) God is a divine terror fixated on human foibles. Chapter 42 tells us that they are wrong. We know from the beginning that Job has done nothing wrong. God says this about Job: Then the LORD said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason. (Job 2:3) Job s suffering cannot be used to prove his wrongdoing. Suffering is not proof of wrongdoing. Disasters are not proof of God s displeasure. Hurricanes or earthquakes are not caused by sin. Cancer, AIDS or other diseases are not because of someone s secret sin. Look at God s attitude toward Job. He isn t a disciplinarian out to find the small errors. He has a relationship with Job; Job is someone he respects, someone He knows and cares about. God sees us with the same eyes. He knows us and cares about us. IV. Lesson #2: A Biblical Dialogue on Justice and Suffering 3

4 Somebody might ask if the Bible teaches the Retribution Principle. In the Bible, God blesses the righteous and punishes the sinners. We need to reconcile the idea of God s justice with the Book of Job just like we needed to read Eliphaz and friends arguments in light of the entire book of Job. We need to recognize that the Book of Job does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of a dialogue within the whole Bible on the issue of suffering and justice. In ancient times, people worshipped a variety of gods: sun god, moon god, storm god, sea god, etc. These ancient gods had something in common: Worship was quid pro quo (You offer sacrifice and they answer your prayer. You keep your gods happy and they protect you and bless you.) Ancient stories about these gods portray them as capricious, amoral, vain, and foolish. Into this world comes the story of the God of the Israelites, who claims to be the only God, the creator of the heavens and the earth and everything in it. This God demands not only proper sacrifice, but also ethical personal lives and an ethical society. To us, the idea that God wants people to live moral lives and establish just societies seems so obvious that we cannot comprehend how revolutionary this concept was in the ancient Near East. This was a bombshell, a new dawn in religious thinking. One God who himself is ethical and demands ethical behavior from his followers. Much of the Old Testament, as a way of countering the older thinking of the wider world emphasizes the Retribution Principle and God s response to people based on their ethical behavior. This is why you see this in the Old Testament, foremost in Deuteronomy, but also with the prophets and Proverbs. The Book of Job represents a turning point in this dialogue. During Israel s history the emphasis on the Retribution Principle has become so pervasive that suffering becomes widely accepted as evidence for sin. The author of Job decides to challenge this notion. God is just, but that does not allow us to read His mind and discern His intentions and it does not allow us to infer sin from suffering. This is the direction of the Book of Job. This inner-biblical dialogue on suffering doesn t stop at Job. In Isaiah, the prophet introduces the concept that an innocent sufferer can serve divine purposes by redeeming and bearing the sins of others. Suffering is therefore not only NOT evidence of guilt, but serves God s purposes. That is a strange notion, and it seems to violate the Retribution Principle. This takes us to the New Testament, and to the cross. An innocent person was tortured and killed for the sins of a guilty world. However you interpret the event, you cannot deny that at the foundation of the Kingdom of God lies an act of utter injustice, and that fact alone should cause us to radically question whether the Retribution Principle is true justice, whether it is the operating principle in the Kingdom of God. Jesus fully grasps the significance of this transformation of the meaning of suffering. From evidence of sin to serving the ultimate divine purpose, the redemption of the world. Suffering becomes the vocation of Christ-followers whose lives are shaped by Jesus s life. 11 Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11-12) Jesus s disciples certainly picked up on this. Peter says: But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. 21 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. (1 Peter 2:20b-21) V. Conclusion: Behavior Modification vs. Heart Transformation 4

5 Suffering does not mean guilt; rather, it can serve divine purposes. God is not out to catch us in our mistakes. The Retribution Principle only modifies behavior, but suffering transforms the heart. The Bible begins with the Retribution Principle, but does not stop there. It rejects suffering as evidence of guilt, then moves to suffering as redemption and vocation for the people of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:3-5) With a correct view of God, we can improve our relationship with Him, even in times of hardship and adversity. Going Deeper Traditionally, the Wisdom books have been misused in three ways: First, people often read these books only in part. They fail to see that there is an overall message according the inspired author s intensions. Bits and snatches of wisdom teaching taken out of context can sound profound and seem practical, but they can be easily misapplied... Second, people often misunderstand wisdom terms and categories as well as wisdom styles and literary modes. Thus they misdefine the terms used in the Bible in wisdom contexts... Third, people often fail to follow the line of argument in a wisdom discourse. Accordingly, they try to live by what was intended to be understood as incorrect Fee and Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, 207 5