If you’re one of those Christians
who never has a doubt; has never wondered why their prayers just seem to hit
the ceiling and bounce back; if your faith never feels challenged or you have a
swift and spiritual solution to all of life’s brickbats, then today’s sermon is
not for you. Please just sit quietly –
maybe read a few more chapters in your Bible.
Or you might pray quietly for the poor doubters, the strugglers with
their faith or (as I usually call them) the ordinary Christians just like
me. I promise I won’t keep you for very
long before we go for our tea and cake.
Why are we dipping in to Job this
morning?
Well unless I am invited to speak
on other topics or passages I usually preach from the lectionary: the collection of Bible readings offered
Sunday by Sunday. It means that many, many churches around the world will today
be thinking about Job (if, that is, their preachers have not chosen the
alternate passages in Mark 10 or Hebrews 4.) I fancy that most preachers will
have ducked this passage – I cannot remember preaching on it before nor hearing
another sermon.
The story of Job is one of the oldest
we find in our Bibles. Job is a good guy who God allows to be tested to see how long he
will go on trusting in in God, in spite of financial loss, the sudden death of
loved ones, physical and emotional pain and finally depression. And, as if that
wasn’t enough, Job has some so-called friends who turn up with the kind of
cheery, uplifting spiritual comfort that makes you grit your teeth and reach
for good, heavy, cast-iron skillet to whack them with. Chapter 23 begins as a response by Job to
advice from one of these friends.
This morning, I would like to draw
our attention to 3 things.
1.
Oh if only
The hymn that we sung just now has
an interesting verse 2: “From the fears
that long have bound us, free our hearts to faith and praise.”
Job complains that while he suffers
God is nowhere to be found, seen or heard. One of the complementary readings in
the lectionary for today is in Psalm 22, which begins:
“My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest."
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest."
These words, of course, have a
particular resonance for us when we remember the crucifixion.
If only things were different!
If only I didn’t have to
struggle with the challenges I face.
With the pain or the loneliness or the lack of money or the bleakness. If only God was here.
Note that Job has not lost faith in God (v6-7).
Note that Job has not lost faith in God (v6-7).
Have you had the experience of
wondering where God has got to? I have,
many times. It does not mean a loss of
faith but a missing of the sense of God present with you. We pray and we try to
do all the right things (as Job says he does here). But if
only God might show up now and again…
2. Then, secondly, Job’s gloom
continues in v8-12 as he says:
“But if I go to the east, he is not there;
if I go to the west, I do not find him.
9 When he is at work in the north, I do not see him;
when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him.
if I go to the west, I do not find him.
9 When he is at work in the north, I do not see him;
when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him.
The poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins,
wrote this line in one of his poems: “I
greet Him the days I meet Him and bless when I understand.” It suggests that we only might only encounter
God from time to time. From time to time
we may catch a distant glimpse of God in passing as we go about our daily
lives. Hopkins was a priest so he
understood the journey of faith. And he
wrote those words in a poem about a terrible tragedy: the death by drowning of some Christians when
their boat sank in a snowstorm in the North Sea. In other words, the kind of
situation where we might hope that God would show up.
Yet, once again, Job tempers the
felt reality of his troubles with a bold declaration of faith in the God who he
cannot see or hear [v10]
But he knows the way that I take;
when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.
when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.
This man takes some comfort in knowing
that, even though he cannot discern the presence of God, he is convinced that
God is watching over him: all-seeing and
all-knowing.
Sometimes, when God feel at arm’s
length or even further away – we too can carry on, trusting that we are known
and loved by the ever-watchful God.
Verses 11 and 12 tend to
suggest that Job is rather keen on protesting his uprightness of living, as
something therefore deserving of God’s love in return. We see this quite often in the OT – a
righteous life undertaken as a contract with God. I live your way; you bless me with material
possessions and keep the bad guys off my back.
Some Christians believe this today, though I find that this view is
somewhat adjusted by the teaching and example of Jesus in the NT.
Yet we may still draw comfort from
some of the great promises of the Bible. When dark times strike us and God
seems distant, we lean on what God has said to people in the past as a sign
that He is faithful despite the circumstances.
3. Finally, we come to the heart of
the matter – a theme that we find repeated again and again in the story of Job
[v13]:
“But he stands alone, and who can oppose him?
He does whatever he pleases.
He does whatever he pleases.
Which does not mean that God is
capricious or arbitrary. It is simply that when we try to
condense God, His motives and actions in to something that we can readily grasp
or understand or even manage, our arms are too short, our eyes are too weak to
see and our mind and understanding are too small to comprehend. That’s why Job
says:
“That is why I am terrified before him”
This speaks not of cringing fearfully before a dictator or
monster but that, suddenly, we glimpse that God is immeasurably bigger, higher
and deeper than the simple, cardboard figure that we so often try and reduce
him to be. We can say with the singer songwriter, Paul Simon:
“And God only knows and God makes His plans; the information is
unavailable to the mortal man.”
At the end of this chapter, we are reminded again that the
life that we love is so often clouded with darkness. We are in the dark. We are in the dark about why bad things
happen to good people. We are in the dark why God just seems to clear-off and
leave us on our own to face life’s challenges.
Life has its share of shadows and there are times when the shadows
lengthen into thick darkness.
By the very end of Job’s story he is left simply having to
let God be God. He says:
“I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
4 “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’
5 My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
6 Therefore I humble myself
and repent in dust and ashes.”
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’
5 My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
6 Therefore I humble myself
and repent in dust and ashes.”
Here at Clementswood you live among neighbours who use the
phrase “Insha’Allah” many times a day – the Muslim Arabic for ‘if God’s wills
it.’ A meek acceptance that whatever
happens is God’s will. Fate, if you like.
Well that isn’t the message of the story of Job. God doesn’t
send misfortunes. God doesn’t cause cancer or arthritis, although (and I say this
reverently) I do think that He might let on why He doesn’t step in more often to
prevent bad things happening.
In this broken world, there is much pain as well as some joy.
Not everyone gets to live happily ever after. It is not helped when Christians
fixate on permanent ‘bliss.’ Sometimes
it is right to ask why or, with a sigh, exclaim “If only.”
We may blunder around seeking answers or trying to impress
God with the quality of our upright living.
Perhaps we are sometimes left silent with nothing to answer
to the enormity of God.
Are you struggling with the absence of God this morning? You know He is there but it would be super if
He gave you just a hint that that He was around.
Have you tried so hard to live a ‘good’ life? You are not one
of life’s major rule-breakers. Yet, instead of being rewarded, you seem to have been
deserted?
Well the message for you today is one that countless saints
of God have experienced these things. It
is often part of the journey of faith. To you I say this. There is
a God of love. Job believed it; I believe it and you can believe it. I do not
know why sometimes He is not more apparent.
But the story of Job – thousands of years old – resonates with us and
comforts us today. For us, the journey of faith is one of acting even though we
do not see; continuing faithfully when all human emotion tells us to pack it in.
We trust in the God of Job. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God of Moses. Every one of these giants of faith faced,
like us, the apparent absence of God. And yet they carried on trusting that one
day, like Job, their distant hearing about God would be replaced once again by clarity
and presence.
Unlike all of these, of course, we have benefit of knowing of
Jesus Christ. As His followers, we have
the edge on poor Job. His relationship
with God was based on rightful living alone – keeping the rules and then
expecting God to keep His side of the bargain.
That way never works. It cannot
work. And that is why Christ died.
In Christ, we are invited simply to follow, with trust,
though we may not see the path ahead at all clearly. Because He has been
through the darkness for us and is with us there all through it.
