Today’s Bible reading will come from the book of Job.
I thought I’d introduce it to us before we hear our reading.
Job’s a long book, tucked just before the Psalm in our Bibles. It tells the story of a man named Job, who probably lived about the time of Abraham. We’re told he was rich and righteous. He was rich, with 7 sons, 3 daughters, and so many cattle that he was the greatest man in the east. He was righteous, obsessively devoted to God, concerned that he and his family did not sin.
Then one day, Satan goes to see God. “Of course Job loves you,” he says, “you’ve bought his loyalty. He only loves you for the goodies you give him.”
So God gives Satan permission to hurt Job. He can destroy his possessions. He can take away his lovely family. He can ruin his health. But he may not touch his life “Then,” says God, “we’ll see if he only loves me because I look after him.”
So Satan does. It’s a tragic tale. Job has three friends. They’re called Eliphaz the Temanite, the spectacularly short Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They’ve heard what’s happened, so they come to see Job to sympathise. They barely recognise him, and they just sit with him for a whole week.
Then Job opens his mouth to express how he feels. His friends reply, Job speaks again, and so on. Most of the rest of the book is a series of speeches, back and forth, Job and his friends. Until finally, they run out of things to say, and a fourth friend makes a longer speech. Job sums up. And finally God himself speaks. The story ends happily, but let’s not run ahead of ourselves.
Our reading today comes from the first cycle of speeches. So Eliphaz speaks; Job replies; Bildad speaks in chapter 8, and that brings us to chapter 9 – Job’s reply.
Introduction
Why do bad things happen to good people?
A peace-loving journalist, James Foley, was working in Syria, trying to show the world how the Syrian people were suffering. In 2012, he was abducted. Nobody knew where he was until this last week. Islamist militants released a video showing his execution. He and his family were Christians. His mother said to their Roman Catholic priest, “Father pray for me that I don’t become bitter. I don’t want to hate.”
Why are the Syrian people suffering as they are? What have they done? And why is James Foley dead? He was working for peace, working to help. There are lots of people in Syria that, had they died, we’d feel there was some sense of justice. Not James. Why do bad things happen to good people? And does God care when they do?
That’s the question that the book of Job is tackling. The whole Christian faith is on trial here. If the Bible has nothing to say about this, Christianity is not a religion fit for the real world.
Actually, it’s not quite the question that the book of Job is tackling. Job is even more raw than that. Asking why bad things happen to good people is an intellectual question. It’s asked from an armchair.
But the story of Job is not told from an armchair. It’s told from a wheelchair. Job does not ask why bad things happen to good people. It asks why bad things happen to me. Why does my life hurt? Does God care about me?
Bildad
Job chapter 9 is Job’s reply to his friend Bildad.
Bildad spoke in chapter 8. In a nutshell, Bildad said that God is perfectly just and fair. Job’s family must have one some terrible things wrong. Job survived, so he can’t be quite so bad. That means he’s still got time to come back to God. Bildad is sure that if Job approaches God, and seeks his help once again, Job’s fortunes will improve.
Look at chapter 8, verses 5 to 7: But if you seek God earnestly and plead with the Almighty, if you are pure and upright, even now he will rouse himself on your behalf and restore you to your prosperous state. Your beginnings will seem humble, so prosperous will your future be.
Or verses 20 and 21: Surely God does not reject one who is blameless or strengthen the hands of evildoers. He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy.
Basically, Bildad is saying this to Job: “Have you tried praying about it?”
Poor Job! This doesn’t help at all. Job would love to pray about it. He’d love to know that he’s right with God. He’d love to approach him and know he’s been heard. But he just can’t.
Chapter 9 is moving and powerful poetry, that I’ve only got time to show us briefly this morning. But let me show you what Job says to Bildad. He gives two reasons why Bildad’s suggestion that he prays is no help to him.
Job: I can’t approach God
First, he says he can’t approach God. I can’t approach God. This comes in verses 3 to 24.
Verse 3, God doesn’t answer his emails. Though they wished to dispute with God, they could not answer him once in a thousand times. I’ve tried asking God, but he doesn’t answer.
Verses 4 to 10, God is destructively powerful. Look at the mighty creation language here. Verse 5. He moves mountains. Verse 6: He shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble. Verse 7: The sun and the stars. Verse 9: The constellations – Ursa Major and the Pleiades, massive groups of stars many light-years away.
And yet this is not the language of God building the world. He’s tearing it apart. He’s overturning mountains. In the Bible, the earth and its pillars are usually symbols of things being safe and established; here God’s shaking them. He’s putting the sun in the cupboard under the stairs and locking the door, asking it to stop shining.
God is pictured here like a child in a tantrum. Flinging things around. Breaking things like the sun. Smashing up his bedroom. Only it’s Job’s world that’s being thrown across the room. Destructively powerful.
Then verses 11 and 12, God is hidden. When he passes me, I cannot see him; when he goes by, I cannot perceive him. Have you ever tried actually finding God, Job asks? Pinning him down is like pinning jelly to the wall. You don’t know where he is. You can’t see what he’s doing. He’s invisible. He’s useless.
And finally verses 14 to 24, God is too strong to take on. Job imagines he does finally get an audience with God. God’s the judge, and Job gets to present his case. What would happen? Verse 15: I’d not be able to find the words. At best, I’d resort to saying “please don’t hurt me.” Verse 17: He would crush me with a storm and multiply my wounds for no reason. It would be like meeting a thug in a dark alley not a judge in court. He’d leave me winded in a heap on the floor. Verse 18: He would not let me catch my breath but would overwhelm me with misery. And then even if I managed to put a case together, verse 20: Even if I were innocent, my mouth would condemn me. I’d open my mouth, and incriminate myself, even though I’d done nothing wrong.
That’s Job’s first reason why praying isn’t the answer. He can’t approach God. God doesn’t answer his emails. God is destructively powerful. God is hidden, you can’t pin him down. God is too strong to take on.
Job: I’m not right before God
But Job has another reason why he can’t just pray about it. Not only can he not approach God, he’s not right before God. I’m not right before God.
Verse 25: My days are swifter than a runner; they fly away without a glimpse of joy. Many of us know how that feels. His life is hurtling by, faster than the countryside out of the window of an express train. And things aren’t going well. Yet what can he do?
He comes up with 3 proposals to make things better. But then he says why each of them won’t work.
Proposal number 1: Forget about it. Verse 27: I will forget my complaint, I will change my expression, and smile. I’ll get over it. I’ve gone through the stages of grief. It’s time to move on. At the end of the day, it’s how we all have to cope with tragedy.
But Job knows this won’t work. He has a bigger problem than just his sufferings. Verse 28: I still dread all my sufferings, for I know you will not hold me innocent. Since I am already found guilty, why should I struggle in vain? Job knows that his sufferings are because he’s not innocent before God. That’s not something you can smile and it will go away. He’s guilty.
Proposal number 2: Wash myself. Verse 30: If I washed myself with soap and my hands with cleansing powder. I’ll make myself clean. I’ll have a thorough bath.
That wouldn’t work. Why? Verse 31: You would plunge me into a slime pit so that even my clothes would detest me. To God, he’d be as smelly as if he’s just climbed out of a bog. And I don’t mean a peat bog. Job knows what God thinks of him. He knows because he’s seen how God treats him. He could never make himself clean enough, totally innocent before God.
So proposal number 3: Find a mediator. The problem with God is that he’s God. He’s in a different league from Job. Verse 32: He is not a mere mortal like me that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court. They’re not peers.
So he needs someone to bridge the gap. Someone he can speak to. Someone who’s close enough to God for God to listen. Someone who’s human enough for Job to speak to.
But this can’t be done either. There is no mediator. No arbiter. No go-between. The chapter ends: But as it now stands with me, I cannot.
Job says: I’m not right with God. I’m guilty before him, not innocent. I’m unclean. I can’t forget about it. I could never wash myself. There is no-one to mediate for me.
So, Bildad, don’t just tell me to pray about it. God is unapproachable. And I am unclean.
Jesus
I don’t know about you, but I’m desperate to tell Job about Jesus.
If only Job knew of Jesus’ finished work, as he died and rose again. Why can’t someone tell him?
Surely it would help Job to know of the suffering Jesus. Job was righteous. Jesus was sinless. And yet Jesus suffered even more than Job. Jesus shows that truly perfect people can still suffer. God allows it, so he must have a good and fair reason for doing so.
But more than that, it would help Job to know of the cleansing Jesus. Job had 3 reasons why he could never be right before God, and the cross of Christ deals with them all.
Job couldn’t just forget about it, because his guilt would follow him to the grave. But Jesus went to the grave in our place, and in the process removed our guilt as far as the east is from the west.
Job couldn’t just wash himself, because God would still find him dirty, and he’d stink like he’d just crawled out of a sewer. But one way the Bible speaks of the death of Jesus is as cleansing. God takes off the filthy clothes of our guilt, and clothes us in brilliant white instead.
And Job couldn’t find a mediator, because there was no-one to stand in the gap. But Jesus is fully God, and perfect man. He, truly, could stand between Job and God in heaven.
I’m just longing to tell this man about Jesus.
And yet at the same time, Job makes me hold back from doing so.
Job’s friends are a warning in the book of Job. They are experts at saying things that are true about God, and yet are the wrong thing to say. Almost everything Bildad just said was true. Yet it was not what Job needed or wanted to hear. It didn’t help.
If Job chapter 9 makes me want to tell Job about Jesus, the wider context of the book is designed to make me hold back, hold my tongue, not say the first thing that comes into my mind. The book of Job repeatedly warns us that the right thing to say is something the wrong thing to say.
Application
This chapter of the Bible is a hard one to read, and a refreshing one to read. It’s refreshing for its honesty. It is hard because it resonates so deeply with how we sometimes feel. It touches parts of us that other passages don’t reach. It’s profoundly in touch with our lives.
Those of us who are not going through hard times at the moment need this chapter.
We need it because one day we will. When the going gets tough, there’ll be lots of true things about God that we need to know but that we won’t be able to hear. This chapter points, quite wonderfully, to the Lord Jesus. This world is full of sick and suffering people, and Jesus is exactly what it needs. While life is not so bad, let’s drink deeply of chapters like this. One day we’ll be glad we did.
We need it because we have friends who are suffering. Most of us do, and at times we feel powerless. Sometimes we meet agony so painful it’s hard to know what to say. And which of us has not been tempted to say: “Have you tried praying about it?” Sometimes that’s the right thing to suggest. But sometimes, things hurt so bad that prayer seems impossible. God seems unapproachable. We feel dirty before him. God feels distant. He feels callous. He feels crushingly strong.
If you’ve got friends like that, now or in the future, this chapter will give you some insights into how life might feel for them. It articulates things they dare not or cannot. It will help you pray for them in an informed way. It will help you to just sit with them and weep.
Those of us who are not going through hard times at the moment need this chapter.
But those of us who are need this chapter too. Here I want to tread really carefully.
Job’s experiences in this chapter may not describe exactly how you feel. Keep reading Job. Maybe one of his other speeches will resonate with you more.
Just because Job says something, it doesn’t mean it’s true. In Job’s despair, he isn’t seeing things clearly. The climax of Job is an encounter with God, and God says that Job has got things quite mixed up. But for all that, Job is honest. This is how he feels. This is how he experienced God. And it may be how you experience God too. The book of Job gives us permission to feel this way.
Conclusion
We live in a world that’s full of suffering. Often those who deserve it the least suffer the most. Why is this? But more importantly, does God care? And even more critically, does God care when it’s me we’re talking about?
Job’s honest talk is reassuring.
In those seasons of life when we’re not going through the mill, Job points us to the death of Jesus. It’s the only comfort there is in time of trial.
We want to be good friends to those who need our support the most. Job gives us insights into how they may be feeling. Job helps us to sit with them. To be a good friend in a helpful way. Ultimately, that may be more comfort than telling them all the comforting truths they’ve missed.