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Job 1: 13-22
We now read of Satan's power in initiating disasters on Job.
Firstly, Job's children were feasting at his eldest son's house and a great wind caused the house to collapse and kill them all, excepting one person.
Secondly, the Sabeans attacked Job's servants who were with his oxen and asses. They took all the animals and killed all the servants except one.
Thirdly, fire from heaven suddenly burnt up all Job's sheep and the servants looking after them, except one.
Fourthly, the Chaldeans attacked the servants who were with Job's camels, killing them all except one and taking the camels.
Job received the bad news from the four people who had escaped the disaster, one after the other.
We are told that rather than sinning and foolishly or wrongfully accusing God, he fell before God in an attitude of worship and outward display of mourning (ie torn clothes and shaved head) saying,
'Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither; the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD'.
How do we respond to personal disaster?
Job received his bad news one after the other. We are told that as each person was giving Job the bad news, the next person came in with their bad news.
I can imagine being bowled over by it. Overwhelmed. Broken, as if each one were the last straw in being able to bear it.
Jacob was a bit like that - when he (as he thought) experienced the loss of son after son he spoke of being brought to the grave through a grief stricken heart. He said to his sons, 'Me have ye bereaved of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: all these things are against me' (Genesis 42: 36).
But we are told Job didn't sin.
He didn't angrily say, 'Why did God do this to me?' or 'Why did he allow it to happen?' What a lesson this has for us! Being in a position of advantage to Job we know that Satan was behind all the disasters and that God was only permitting it. We know that the LORD would bless 'the latter end of Job more than the beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters' (Job 42: 12,13). But Job didn't know this. What must have prompted his response of worship and submission to God?
As we saw earlier in this chapter, Job had a deep reverence and respect of God's power and position. As part of this reverence would it not have been a deep trust and faith in God?
Some of you may have read of the late missionary Elisabeth Elliot, who with four other missionary women was bereaved of their five husbands all in one day - speared by Waodini warriors in the Ecuador jungle. In their reactions to this 'disaster' we also see trust, faith and submission towards God. We read that whilst waiting for news from a search party who had gone to look for the missing men, the five wives, 'prayed constantly. They slept little. They somehow prepared meals, cleaned up, changed diapers, and took care of the children as well as well-wishers and curiosity seekers'.
As the wives got radio reports about the search and one after the other the bodies of their speared husbands were found, Elisabeth recalled, 'The Lord has stood by us in a way unimaginable...All of us women are so happy that the men died in such a way - in the fullness of their might. Jim (her husband) and Ed (another of the husbands) could have wanted nothing more than to die together - and in such a project. They were ready - every one of them' (page 163, Becoming Elisabeth Elliot).
Elizabeth and the other widows were not superhuman. We read of the 'heart stabs' which she experienced when others spoke of husbands and wives; of the great loneliness and grief which she experienced in the dark hours of night, longing to be able to reach out to her husband and feel his strong arms around her; of feeling so helpless without her husband in regard to daily practical things; of 'sobbing uncontrollably' when re-reading his letters, wondering how she could continue to live without him.
But she also writes of the 'perfect peace' in which God kept her, of being in a place of 'yieldedness and utter prostration before Him' who had planned her life, and prayed for 'conforming to the acceptable will of God'.
God has created us with feelings and emotions. It cannot be that he expects us to be inhuman and not experience these - we read of Jesus weeping at Lazarus' grave - but as Elizabeth later wrote of a lesson she had learned from another missionary, Amy Carmichael, 'In acceptance lieth peace'.
So we read of our dear Lord, and his pure sinless example which he set before us when he was faced with death - in our eyes the ultimate personal disaster - but he laid down his life in utter submission and acceptance to the will of his Heavenly Father 'nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt' (Matthew 26: 39). The outcome? - the greatest fulfilment of the promise in Romans 8:28, 'all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose'.
Are you facing personal troubles today? Devastating losses or trouble after trouble? May the Lord comfort you with these thoughts, and give you his peace to trust him.
May he help us to reverence him, to fear and love him more, to submit to his will for us, that we may become more like him and when we are faced with personal disasters and troubles to cling to him and be filled with the 'peace of God which passeth all understanding' (Philippians 4: 6).
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