Sermon: A Test of Job or of God
August 9th, 2020 Rev. Betsy Perkins
Scripture passage: Job 1:1-22 First Baptist Church, Delavan WI
It is so good to be back with you all in worship after 2 weeks away on vacation! One of the things I did to just relax and escape this exhausting season was to read. I started with a light “whodunit”, a book from The Cat Who… mystery series by Lilian Jackson Braun. I started with The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern, and after a couple other more serious books, I ended with The Cat Who Turned On and Off. The Cat Who author does a good job of setting the scene – unsolved murders, mysterious thefts and unusual circumstances all pile up along with a whole host of possible suspects – and you’re kept wondering, right up to the last page, ‘What is going on here?’
Well-known Christian author, Philip Yancey, has described the book of Job like a “whodunit” detective story. As the scene is set in chapters 1-2, we get a glimpse at the cosmic drama unfolding in heaven. But Job, the star detective, from his earthly perspective within the story, is trying to solve the mystery of the crazy series of disasters: what’s going on here? why me? is God trying to tell me something? Job, along with his wife and friends, spend the rest of the book trying to make sense of this great suffering and loss. And we, as readers of this story, are drawn in by the mystery of how Job is going to respond. Who’s going to be right – God or the satan?
In the original Hebrew of this book, whenever the word ‘satan’ is used, the definite article is always attached – “the satan”. It’s not so much a name as a title – a position or function. The verb ‘to satan’ in Hebrew means ‘to accuse’. So the satan is the accuser or the adversary, something like the role of a prosecuting attorney. The heavenly scene is like a heavenly courtroom; the satan like the district attorney serving as an employee of God’s government, to investigate problems and place charges when things don’t seem quite right. The satan here does not appear to be the Devil and his role is limited. After the first 2 chapters, he is not mentioned again and God is clearly God the One in charge. As Job will declare in 12:10, “God is sovereign and He holds all things in His hands – every living soul, yes, every breathing creature.”
But the whole set-up for this story seems bizarre and just plain wrong. I don’t know about you, but it makes me feel uncomfortable as I read it. Is this heavenly conversation for real? Why does God need an accuser to work on God’s behalf? Why does God draw attention to Job, who is kind and good, honest, generous, and in right relationship with God, only then to allow him and his family to be targeted? It is especially shocking when the adversary says to God in the court scene of chapter 2, “…you incited me against Job to ruin him without any reason”(2:3). That description of God just does not jive with the picture of God in any other book of the Bible! So what is going on here? How are we to understand it?
One of the things that helps me make sense of this, is the issue of genre – the kind of literature this book is. Most biblical scholars do not regard the story of Job as a historical account in which the author is somehow granted a vision of actual heavenly events. Rather we are to read this story more like a parable – a story that allows the questions about undeserved pain and suffering to be explored. Uz is not an actual place documented in other literature or maps. Uz may be more like the Land of Oz, a place that opens up the imaginative space to think about what it means to have a brain, and a heart, and courage. The story of Job in the Land of Uz opens up the imaginative space for us to think about what it means to have faith, to have integrity in faith.
This is a story of a crisis of faith. Job has his faith in God tested by a series of disasters that befall him and, after a second scene in heaven, by a terrible illness that strikes him – painful sores from head to toe. As uncomfortable as these opening scenes make us feel, they open up the space for us to think about why bad things happen to good people. Because as we listen in on God’s perception of Job, we have no doubts that God is pleased with Job. God calls him “honest and of absolute integrity.” Even as Job goes on to try to figure out why all these disasters happened, and as his friends make accusations that Job must have done wrong, something amiss in his relationship with God, knowing what God thinks we can be reassured that nothing that happened to Job as a result of a failure on his part. His suffering was not the result of sin.
Over the years I have heard many people express doubt in the face of terrible events in their life: am I being punished for something I did or didn’t do? Is God angry with me? Is God out to get me for some reason? Many are wondering that in these days, as the pandemic surges, as locust plagues descend in parts of Africa and Asia, as storms and floods, earthquakes and uprisings rage, as people starve – is God punishing the world? Or as Greg shared last week, the question Aubrey asked him – is this the end of the world? Is God or some evil power deliberately bringing disasters upon us?
We all know that poor choices can indeed bring unpleasant consequences, but this story of Job confirms that life can be difficult even when your heart is right with God. You can have the strongest faith and the greatest love for God, and still face painful losses and difficult challenges. The story of Job debunks the theology of retribution – where those who behave in accordance with God’s laws can expect only rewards, and those who behave badly will be ruined. This story debunks the prosperity gospel that promises wealth for the faithful and sees poverty as a result of sinfulness.
God doesn’t operate on a tit-for-tat basis. That is not how God works! That is not God’s heart! By overhearing the conversation of heaven, in fact, we know that what happens is not simply a test of Job’s faith. It is ultimately not a test of Job, it is a test of God! The book really isn’t about Job, it’s about God! Listen again to the satan’s accusation: “Does Job revere God for nothing?” Or as Eugene Peterson words it in The Message: “So do you think Job does all that out of the sheer goodness of his heart? Why, no one ever had it so good! You pamper him like a pet, make sure nothing bad ever happens to him or his family or his possessions.” The adversary is accusing God of buying Job’s love and loyalty. He suggests that Job is only devoted to God because God has protected him and blessed him. The adversary cynically implies that humans are incapable of loving God just for who God is, but only for what they can get out of God and what they can get out of the relationship. No wonder God must address the question of whether we are created to freely and truly love, and whether God is worthy of worship for more than just the benefits God can provide. What do you think? Is it possible for you to love God simply for who God is?
God has a lot at stake on Job’s response. God is trusting Job to prove the satan wrong. Over the next few weeks we will take a look at Job’s response, at how he wrestles with his grief and tries to understand his undeserved suffering. We’ll find out what happens to his faith in God through that process.
The Good News is that God doesn’t leave humanity to wrestle alone, or to carry the weight of proving God to be good by ourselves. God entered into the world, into the human struggle Himself, to walk alongside us and answer the challenge on our behalf. God sent His Son, Jesus, to experience the worst that the world can do – lies and false accusations, betrayal of family and friends, hunger, pain and undeserved suffering. Jesus even experienced that very human sense of abandonment by God, crying out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Yet through it all, through it all Jesus was faithful. His love for God and his love for all people did not waver. Nor did he abandon his purpose of ensuring that every person can love God and love others genuinely, unconditionally, freely, selflessly with the help of the Holy Spirit.
God may have a lot at stake in our response, as we wrestle with the ‘whodunit’ questions to the tragedies and disasters of this day, as we look to place blame or to make sense of it. It’s a mystery… how is your story going to turn out? How will you respond? Will you love God only for what God has given you? Or will love God because of who God is?
Song: “I Surrender All”
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