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Job 2
We now read of another conversation between God and Satan in which God says how Job has remained blameless despite all he has gone through. Satan argues that a man values his life more than all his possessions but if his life is affected he will curse God to his face.
God gives Satan permission to affect Job's health but not to take his life. Satan then strikes Job down with boils all over his body.
As Job sits amongst the ashes of mourning, scrapping his boils with a piece of broken pottery his wife asks him why he doesn't curse God and die, but Job tells her she is speaking foolishly and that we should accept good and evil from God.
When Job's three friends hear of what has happened to him they arrange to come together to mourn with him and comfort him. Not initially recognising him, they mourned and sat with him for 7 days and nights, none speaking, because they could see how great his grief was.
The verse that stood out out me today was verse 10 when Job reproved his wife saying, 'Shall we receive good at at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?' (Or as my Study Bible suggests for evil 'calamity').
Job continued to express complete submission to God's sovereignty in the things that were happening to him. He would not accuse his beloved God of wrong towards him. But how are we to understand this? We have already touched on this recently - the question of why God allows suffering? It is a mystery that we often grapple with - which those who do not know God cannot understand, and which those who do know God may cry out against.
In my own journey as a Christian there has been a particular time when I have silently and angrily in my thoughts asked why God has allowed something to happen - something which has caused suffering, tested me to the extreme and been too big for me to cope with. It has shown me what my natural self is like as I have responded to the trial - it has shown me my sinful response - it has driven me to God for help, for grace to respond differently. I believe it has changed an aspect of my character which needed changing.
My study Bible summarises that this book of Job illustrates five perspectives about suffering: that it is pernicious, a puzzle, penal, purifying and providential. It refers to a verse in Genesis 1:27, 'God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them', but since 'The Fall' in Adam our image has become impaired. It suggests that God's purpose in our lives today is to conform us to the image of Christ and make us more like him.
Elisabeth Elliot writes of this extensively in her 'A Path through Suffering'. She says,
' repeatedly throughout our lives we encounter the roadblock of suffering. What do we do with it? Our answer will determine what we can say to another who needs comfort...I know of no answer to give to anyone except the answer given to all the world in the cross. It was there that the great Grain of Wheat died - not that death should be the end of the story, but that it should be the beginning of the story, as it is in all the cycles of nature. The grain dies. The harvest results.'
'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit' (John 12:24).
It is a painful process of dying to ourselves - our own wants and wills. It is part of the 'taking up our cross', the very emblem of suffering. Not that we suffer for the sake of it, but that we might become more like Jesus - and the outcome is that we, like the pruned vine, will bear more fruit.
Suffering is 'meant for the correction of the sufferer himself', as a loving Father chides his son, or 'to help somebody else. Like all gifts, the gift of suffering is not for ourselves alone, but for the sake of the body of Christ' ( A path through Suffering, page 72). Elliott suggests that 'God's ultimate purpose in all suffering is joy. Scripture is full of songs of praise that came out of great trials...the thoughts of His cross and what it did for me is in times of deep sorrow the only pure joy I can know' (page 81, 84).
I was reminded by a sermon* recently, what kept Christ sustained throughout his suffering? - the joy that was set before him (Hebrews 12: 2) - and then at the Day of Pentecost we see the firstfruits of the harvest resulting from his death and resurrection - 3000 believers! (Acts 2: 41). And his harvest continues - a harvest of which I pray that you and trust that I am also part of.
Corrie ten Boom, when imprisoned for her work of saving Jews in the Netherlands, isolated and unwell, full of fear for her loved ones and friends was secretly given some Gospels by a kind nurse. She writes that as a 'starving man' she,
'gulped entire Gospels at a reading', as she did so 'an incredible thought prickled the back of my neck. Was it possible that this - all of this that seemed so wasteful and so needless - this war, Scheveningen prison, this very cell, none of it was unforeseen or accidental? Could it be part of the pattern first revealed in the Gospels?... Hadn't Jesus been defeated as utterly and unarguably as our little group... But ... if the Gospels were truly the pattern of God's activity, then defeat was only the beginning . I would look around at the bare little cell and wonder what conceivable victory could come from a place like this' (page 142).
This is such an extensive subject and I am aware that in this world right now there is so much suffering, so much of which to us seems pointless and unnecessary. It may challenge us in our faith to believe that there is a God in heaven, who holds all things in his control.
May we read our Bibles, with that new thirst and hunger, as given to Corrie, to hear our Father's voice and understand more. May we be given much compassion as we deal with those in the midst of suffering - not glibly telling them that it is all for their best - but let us with compassion as the Lord deals with us, just be there, to listen and to help, and to pray for them, that the Lord will help them, that they might come to know him as their Saviour and receive the only real lasting joy that there is.
*Mr Paul Tyler
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