Job: the revelation of God to suffering

Mark Eddison, 3rd june 2007

In chapter 38 the Lord answered Job, it's been a dialogue throughout the book and now God speaks.

Two questions: What have you learned about suffering through this teaching series, and what is the practical application?

The Job sandwich:

Prologue: The heavenly council, the contention between God and Satan. The nature of faith as materially based or as love based. Written in prose.

Dialogues: Chapters 3-41. Is suffering is morally based or love based. Job’s comforters conclude that suffering is the result of sin. Written in poetry in the original manuscript.

Epilogue: Chapter 42. Contentions answered. Suffering is relieved when Job prays for his friends, not when he repents of any sin. Job does not curse God as predicted. Faith can be love based. Written in prose.

Did the writer use prose to represent the heavenly debate, and poetry to represent earthly debate? Maybe heavenly poetry cannot be written down!

What have we learnt?

Thoughts from the congregation:

Be prepared for change because you will not always be in prosperous circumstances.

God is love but God is pain, he understands fully.

There are three elements to suffering: Gods purposes, our faith, and spiritual opposition to God (cosmic conflict). Not a dilemma but a trilemma!

Suffering is caused by many things: things we do to ourselves; things people do to us; oppressive or flawed institutions; our own mortality; natural disasters (sometimes man made).

When we are in suffering we often try to think of how the interplay of the factors in the trilemma above works out, we try to figure out the logic of it.

Or sometimes we say we just have to trust God.

Or sometimes we think we have to learn a lesson, or we are being discipled. These are good questions to ask.

Or we might think that maybe God willed it for the good of the world.

God isn't powerful enough to do anything about it

Job teaches us the spiritual factors which are outside of our control, in this case the debate between God and Satan. We know there is serious spiritual warfare going on but we don't know the full extent and what it involves. We are involved in the fallout.

We might need to expand out understanding to take on board this whole area.

What brought Job to terms with his suffering?

See Ch 42 v 5-6. He says this before he is relieved of his suffering. What caused him to come to this place? Ch 38-42.

Job was never given an explanation for his suffering. Did he need to know the answer? We may never know the reasons behind our suffering. Would it have helped him to know? He came to terms with it without knowing the answer. The same could be true for us.

How did the writer of the book know? Good question!

We may seek the lessons to learn, and we may need to improve our choices, but in the end we need to trust God.

Ch 42 v 3 Job declares his lack of understanding. But in verses 4-6 he has an experience of God which blows away his mindset.

We know the effectiveness of prayer to relieve pain, but sometimes when we pray for others they don't get healed. A world formed by love cannot be predictable. Element of mystery.

Apples rule!

Imagine apples want autonomy, they want to dictate where they grow, when and how they are picked, they want to rule the world. Some humans want to send in the troops, some want to negotiate. Some of us say let's give them autonomy and let them try to run themselves. The apples get themselves into a right mess trying to do it themselves, they don’t harvest at the right time, and they get afflicted with fruit flu.

But mystery bring us to our right place in creation, brings humility. The world is not predictable.

Job hears God’s voice. We often find it hard to hear God when we're ill; when we're feeling lousy and self absorbed it's hard to hear. We can pray for those in suffering that they will hear the voice of God.

There's a revelation of who God is as Job's creator.

There's talk of two beasts - Behemoth and Leviathan. What are they, what do they represent. Roger Forster thinks they are references to cosmic demonic powers, or Satan.

We don’t need to know about these but we can take hope from the knowledge that God can speak directly into our pain. Sometimes our healing is only a word away, one word which we need to perhaps respond to at the right time. For Mark it was stand up and go forward for prayer, and this was part of Jane’s subsequent healing.

What is the revelation of God to suffering?

Suffering leads us to worship, which seems strange.

God's revelation to suffering is Jesus. He lived and suffered and lost contact with God, as Job did.

Jesus has already been there, God is not removed from the pain of the world.

God could have rested after the seven days of creation, accepting that some humans would disobey but there would be some who would obey. But instead he didn't baulk at the sacrifice needed to deal with the problem of human pain. ‘God's self definition in a sea of ambiguity’. Jesus was resurrected unlike Job although Job prophesied it 'I know that my redeemer lives'

Jesus has been a refugee, has known hunger, been rejected by his friends, tried by an unfair court, rejected by his country, been painfully killed, he has experienced it all.