Abstract
Our lectionary doesn’t often give us a reading from Job at the main service on a Sunday. There are perhaps only about half-a-dozen occasions across the whole three-year cycle when we get to hear passages from this long and complex – but very significant – Old Testament book. So, as we are today beginning a series of four readings that will take us through Job this month, it seems to me to be right for us to focus on our Old Testament reading this morning – Job 1:1 and 2:1-10.
A mere four readings from 42 chapters can never give us the full impact of the Book of Job. And that is the case even though all of the readings from Job that we will hear this month are what I call ‘Readers’ Digest Readings’, that is, readings made up of selected, non-continuous verses sometimes from differing chapters. When we get such edited passages as our readings, I always wonder what is being left out, and why. What is it that ‘they’ don’t want us to hear?
So, can I encourage you to make the time this month to read the whole of Job for your self, to get the full impact of this wonderful book, and to put into context the extracts we’ll hear read in Church week by week?
Today’s reading gave us the first verse of chapter 1 of Job, so the very beginning of the book, and then the first ten verses of chapter 2. So, if we’re not careful we can miss the fact that what we heard about just now is actually Job’s second ‘test’, not his first one, which is recounted in chapter 1. In chapter 1, we get the same heavenly court scene, the same question and answer between the LORD and Satan, the same invitation from the LORD to Satan (to consider the LORD’s servant Job), the same challenge from Satan to the LORD (to stretch out his hand), though in chapter 1 this is to strike everything Job has, rather than to afflict Job himself with illness as in chapter 2, and the LORD’s permission to Satan to do that. We then hear of how Job loses his oxen and his donkeys, then his sheep, then his camels, and then his ten adult children – either to marauders or to natural disasters. On hearing of all this, Job tears his robes, shaves his head, falls to the ground in worship, and speaks the well-known words, ‘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.’ And then the chapter closes with the statement that, ‘in all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.’
So, by the end of the passage we did hear, Job has lost all his possessions, all his family – except his nagging wife! – is suffering from some sort of severe skin complaint, is sitting lonely on an ash heap, scraping his body with a potsherd, but nevertheless holding on to his integrity and his faith and trust in God.
The first thing that these opening two chapters of Job force us to ponder on is the fact that Job suffers in the way that he does because God allows Satan to inflict those sufferings on Job. God allows, ultimately perhaps even causes, Job to suffer, presumably to test, to prove, to try Job’s faith, trust in God, to show that Job does not fear God ‘for naught’, simply because he is rich in material things and in relationships.
By extension, I think we have to say that some of our physical, mental or emotional sufferings may in fact be allowed or even caused by God, for the firmer foundation of our faith.
That is, of course, a tough thing to realise, and I would never say to an individual who was suffering greatly that that was indeed the case for them in their situation. It’s something that I think we have to come to realise for ourselves, as the Psalmist did, coming eventually to say, ‘It was good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn your statutes’ (119:71).
In a sense, that God might allow or cause us to suffer, to be tested, in some way, in order to make us grow spiritually, to better equip us for his service, should not come as a great surprise to us, for that is precisely how it was with Jesus, with his time in the wilderness between his Baptism and the start of his public ministry. Mark 1:9-13 tells us that immediately after he had been baptized, and had seen the Spirit alight on him as a dove and had heard the heavenly voice, ‘You are my Son, my beloved, in you I am well-pleased,’ Jesus was driven out into the wilderness by the Spirit of God to be tempted or tested by the Devil.
It was God, by the Spirit, who drove Jesus into the wilderness – and the Greek for ‘drove’ is literally, ‘expelled’, the same word as is used for driving demons out of people, so it’s very strong.
The Devil was only able to test and tempt Jesus because God had forced Jesus into the wilderness first. As with Job, God allowed, or even caused, Jesus to suffer what he did during the 40 days and 40 nights, and presumably did so in order to help prepare Jesus for his public ministry.
And this is where our passage from Job starts to connect with our reading from the Letter to the Hebrews (and, similarly, we start a series of readings from Hebrews today), for one of the themes of Hebrews is that, because Jesus suffered when he was tested or tempted (the Greek means either or both), he is able to help those who are being tested or tempted now (Hebrews 2:18) – we get a first hint of that towards the end of today’s set portion of Hebrews, at 2:10, which speaks of the author of our salvation being made perfect through suffering, and it is made utterly clear in 4:15-16 (which we will hear next week), which talks of Jesus as the high priest who has been tested in every way just as we are, yet was without sin, as the reason why we can boldly approach the throne of God, so that we may find grace to help us in time of need.
That starts to suggest that – somehow – we may find Jesus present with us within our own sufferings and that – somehow – he will help, support, strengthen us in those sufferings, and – somehow – enable us to face them, as Jesus himself did, and as Job did.
I’m desperately trying not to sound glib here, nor to under-estimate how difficult it can be to hold on to God in testing times, to continue to believe in God in testing times. Faith does not make things easy.
But faith can make things possible, despite things being black and hard and tough, and however much it feels as if you are hanging on by your fingertips, or even less, however much you feel you have to grit your teeth.
I think that Job’s words of faith and trust, ‘The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away, may the name of the LORD be praised,’ (1:21) and. ‘shall we accept good from God and not trouble?’ (2:10) were uttered anything but glibly, but out of real anguish of soul. That’s what makes them so very, very powerful, in fact.
I believe the same goes for those other declarations of faith and trust that hold onto God even in the midst of great trouble. I think of those great words in Habakkuk 3:17-18, Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vine, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, and there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my saviour.
And of those deeply poignant words written on the wall of a room in Cologne by a Jewish prisoner in the Second World War, I believe in the sun, even when it isn’t shining. I believe in love, even when I can’t feel it. I believe in God, even when he is silent.
My prayer for each of us is that, in the dark times, in the anguished times, in the times when God seems to be silent or distant, we may actually be able to hold fast to him, and may discover – in Jesus, who went through the same things – grace to help in time of need, may find what we’re going through to somehow be a cause of our growth, and may even, like Job, like Habakkuk, be able to praise God, even within what we’re going through.