“If God does not help you when you are down, what good is God?”
“I am disappointed in God. I really tried and my life still fell apart. He and I have gone our separate ways.”
“I prayed for my friend’s healing and she still died. I no longer believe in God!”
Can you relate to these question and statements that I have heard over the years? I can. There have been times when I felt God did not respond to my prayers or my needs the way I thought he should. I trusted him but, from my perspective, he failed to show up.
Faith in God is a lot easier when life works out the way we would like or think it should. It is easy to believe in God when we pray and God steps in with amazing answers. It is painless to believe in God when we prosper financially, our family is doing well, and we are experiencing good health.
One of guys working on a complicated project here at the church said, “I will be a happy man if this works out.” I responded to him that the real question is this: “What will you be like if it does not work out?”
How do we respond when we are confronted with disappointment? What happens when we experience tragic loss? What happens when our plans unravel and the life we so carefully constructed begins to fall apart?
You might even ask yourself: What am I like when I do not get my own way at work, or home, or church? How do I react when someone in authority says “No” to what I want to do?
When your plans or your expectations are not fulfilled, how do you respond? It is the difficult times that reveal a great deal about our character and the depth of our faith.
Unfortunately for Job, his life, faith, and circumstances were at the centre of a discussion between Satan, the Accuser, and God. God brings Job to the attention of Satan as an example of righteousness. Job 1: 8 reads: “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.”
Satan was not impressed. The Accuser responds by saying: “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
Satan is a cynic! In his eyes, there is no such thing as pure righteousness. From Satan’s perspective Job respects God and lives a blameless life because of the rewards. In essence, the Accuser is saying, “God, Job does not serve you out of love. Job only serves you for the benefits. Take away the benefits and he will curse you. He will not serve you if his life were to fall apart.” Or in the words of the text: “Job will not serve you for nothing.”
Satan is not only a cynic he also hates righteousness. Righteousness can be defined as blameless living before God out of respect and love for Him. Satan wants no one to live in relationship with God. He is out to do whatever he can to drive a wedge between God and his created beings. God, on the other hand, loves humanity. When people respond to him out of love and respect, he is honoured. You might even say proud. God delights in our love for him.
God allows Satan to go and do to Job what the Accuser does best – bring chaos into Job’s life through a series of catastrophic losses. I think Satan was delighted at the opportunity. I can see him leaving the presence of God with lips twisted and eyes gleaming in wicked glee.
Satan maximized his opportunity. He did to Job absolutely everything he was allowed to do. Four messengers, one after another, came to Job on a single day. Each reported severe losses. The final and most devastating loss was the death of all his children as a result of a tornado like storm.
Satan waits in expectation. “Now we will see how deep Job’s righteousness runs.” He waits. “He has no reason to serve God now.” More waiting. “Okay, Job, it is time to curse God.” Hmmm.
Listen to Job’s response: “At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: "Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised." In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. (Job 1:21-0-22)”
Imagine Satan’s distress and God’s delight at Job’s response. Job’s righteousness was not a reward based or blessing based righteousness. His love for God, his respect for God, and his submission to God ran deep. Job would continue to worship God even though his life had fallen apart.
Was Satan convinced? Never! He may have been taken back a little –even a bit surprised – but he remained cynical. We move to chapter two.
God once more points Job out to Satan, holding him up as an example of righteousness. He says to Satan, “And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.”
Satan’s reply reflects his continued cynicism. “You are still protecting Job. There is more I can do. You allowed me to destroy his business, deplete him of all his wealth, and take away all his sons and daughters but he still has his health. Take away his health and he will curse you.”
God responds by saying, "Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life."
Satan in his cynicism must have said to himself, “Okay I got him this time. I know just what to do to inflict on him the most painful physical problem imaginable.” We read: “So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.” Notice that there was not a place on Job’s body that was screaming in pain.
Once more Satan waits. He is elated by Job’s wife’s response to her husband’s painful physical condition. She says to him, no doubt as a result of her own pain and suffering, “Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!”
Satan says to himself, “That a girl! Thanks for your help. That is exactly what I want him to do.”
Why would he not curse God now? Job is getting absolutely no benefit for living a righteous life. Every positive earthly joy has been stripped away. His health has been stripped away and he is living in extreme pain. Satan whispers: “Okay man . . .now go with the flow. Let your pain, your losses, your grief, drive a wedge between you and God. Give up, Job. Denounce God! It’s not that hard. You have nothing to lose (ha! ha!) I already took it away from you.”
But Job does have something to lose. It is his righteousness, his integrity, his faith. He responds to his wife: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
Amazing! What a balanced perspective. What faith! What integrity! What righteousness before God, his creator. Once more we discover Job’s righteousness, his faith in God and his love for God was greater than positive circumstance or, you might say, “greater than the blessed life.” Even though his life fell apart, he would still believe. He would continue to live a life of integrity.
The author sums it up this way: “In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.”
Job’s continued faith in God in spite of devastating circumstances substantiated God’s faith in Job. Job was a person God could trust. In answer to Satan’s question “Does Job fear God for nothing?” God could say “Yes!” Job is trustworthy.
On the other hand, Satan was proven wrong. True righteousness existed. Job’s faith became a testimony against the cynicism of Satan.
What kind of faith does it take to sustain a person when life falls apart?
First and foremost, it is a faith where we love God more than anything else. The experience of loss highlights the issue of what or whom we love more.
Chapter three reminds us that even if we love God more than anything else, loss still involves pain and grief. The devastation that God allowed Satan to inflict on Job brought intense grief. A strong faith does not mean immunity to grief. Job heroically spoke the words, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” Then he grieved. Chapter 3 is an outpouring of his intense pain. “After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. He said: May the day of my birth perish, and the night it was said, “A boy is born! That day—may it turn to darkness . . .”
Even the faithful grieve. Yet look at the courage of Job. He cursed the day he was born. He did not want to live BUT he would not take his own life. He chose the option of living with physical, spiritual, and emotional pain even as he continued to live a righteous life before God.
A faith that loves God more than anything or anyone else does not eliminate grief but it means that when the bottom falls out, one still seeks to live a righteous life. It means letting go and trusting God rather than attempting to control outcomes.
A faith that sustains a person when life falls apart is also a faith that acknowledges God is in control, not you or me. Listen to Job’s first response. “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”
We like to be in control so that we can get or have what we want. The devastation that came Job’s way was completely out of his control. There was nothing he could do. Even righteous living did not protect him. Yet Job continued in relationship with God and submitted to the God who both gives and takes away.
These first three chapters of Job come to us as a challenge and a preparation.
The challenge is to look at our own faith. Could God point to you or to me and say to the Accuser, “Have you considered my servant ___________? (Put your name in the blank.) Now here is truly a woman or a man of faith. She/he will serve me no matter what comes into her/his life? Think about it for a moment. What are some of the things or who are some of the people you hold most dear. Will your faith sustain you in the face of catastrophic loss of the very things you hold most dear?
The preparation is to realize we live in a fallen world. Bad things happen to good people. Bad things will undoubtedly happen to us. Tragedies will be or may have already been part of our life. Strong faith for difficult times is nurtured by our worship of God who through his Son Jesus suffered pain and death so that we could experience his love and acceptance. A prepared faith enables us to say with the Apostle Paul, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)”
We may not know how God is working in a particular event. His logic may totally escape us, but we know he is trustworthy and it will all be for our good. We know this because of God’s gift of his Son. In the words of Paul (Romans 8: 32), “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
The Apostle Paul tells us that God’s gracious gift of his Son means “that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)”
Horatio G. Spafford knew about the personal pain and devastation of loss. While he and his wife were still grieving the death of their only son, Spafford also suffered a great financial loss in the Chicago fire of 1871. Feeling the need to get away, he sent his wife and four daughters over to England. He planned to join them later. The ship was struck by another ship. Only his wife was rescued. His four daughters were lost as the ship went down.
Following these tragedies, Spafford wrote the hymn “It Is Well With My Soul”. Some believe the hymn was written while Spafford was sailing to England to join his wife shortly after he crossed over the place where his four daughters had lost their lives.
The hymn starts out with an affirmation of faith in God under any circumstance.
“When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll,
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
“It is well, It is well with my soul.”
Let these words be an expression of our own faith in a trustworthy God.