Job 38:1-11

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

“Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?

Sermon Text

 I really like to book of Job, but I am also really afraid of the book of Job. Afraid of a book in the Bible?! What could I possibly mean by that?! Well, let me tell you. The problem with Job is that about three fifths of it is a trap. Job has a bunch of friends that speak a lot about God and about why Job is suffering. If you read through their speeches, you may even agree with them! Yet, we are told, they are all of them wrong, all of them misguided, and all of them in their own ways misrepresented who God was.

The problem they faced was that their friend was in pain, he had lost everything, and they wanted to do something to help him. As he sat in that Ash Pile, calling for God to answer him about what he could have done to deserve what he suffered, his friends made a mistake that so many of us make when comforting a friend. They tried to answer the question that only God would be capable of answering. They reached out a hand to their grieving friend and, rather than showing him comfort in the face of adversity, they tried to pull him up before he was ready. In doing so, they ended up stepping into God’s place – explaining things they had no understanding of.

God eventually enters in at the end of the story, thundering from the midst of a storm cloud. God does not address Job initially, instead calling to his friends. “Who darkens counsel with words without knowledge?” What follows is something like God’s bona fides, a long list of the wonders God has worked.

God looks to around and starts pointing. “See the earth? I formed it from dust! See the Heavens, I placed every star and planet in their orbits! See the sea and its creatures? I can fish up the biggest of them! See the giant beasts of the savannah? They are mere pets to me!” God establishes that all things, natural and otherwise, are God’s domain. God alone can speak to Job’s pain.

Oddly though, God does not. Job never gets an explanation for why Satan was pulled in to test his faith. Why did his children die when a house collapsed on them? Why did his riches get stolen away by thieves? Why did fire burn the rest of his possessions? Why? Why? Why?

The work of explaining God’s response to evil in the world is known as “Theodicy.” It is any attempt at answering the question, “How does a good God allow bad things to happen? Millions of pages have been written about this and millions more have been lost to time. Worst of all, the work that these writings set out to accomplish can never be done… The answers we write will always be insufficient. Like Job’s friends we step up to the plate, we ready ourselves to all at once answer the most significant question in the universe, and we whiff, we foul, and often times strike out in the attempt.

The fact is, we are simply unable to provide a sufficient answer. We cannot conceive of why pain exists the way it does. We could lean on the idea that God gives us freedom, and that freedom necessitates that we might suffer, but no one chooses to face natural disasters or disease. We could lean on the idea that God allows some evil for greater good, but then we have to decide if we are willing to be collateral for someone else’s good day. We could lean on a million compromises to who God is and how God works, but that will always land us in the same place Job’s friends were. God looking down on us, asking why we would make things worse by opening our mouths.

There is only one answer to pain in this world, one answer to the problems that we face. I have a feeling you could guess what it might be. The answer I give you to all these problems, in all sincerity, and without glib of any kind… is Jesus Christ. The person of Jesus Christ, and the revelation God’s character through Jesus Christ, gives what I consider to be the only acceptable answer to evil in this world. If we are to derive any sense of why the universe is the way it is, Christ alone will give us an answer that does not frustrate, confuse, or demean us.

Usually when we talk about Job we take a hold of God’s words to Job’s friends and make them an answer to Job himself. We cast God as working in mysterious ways beyond ourself, and say that any amount of trouble that comes against us in life is just a part of that higher understanding. God doesn’t seem to be content with that answer though and I do not think we usually are either. See, Job understood God throughout the book, what he didn’t understand was his pain.

When Job sat on the Ash Heap he did so in a way that balanced two realities – God is good, and God would vindicate the oppressed of the world and his pain was real, it was unwarranted, and it was brutal. It was this dual reality that made Job shout at one time, “I know my redeemer lives!” And in another, “If only I had a lawyer, I’d win my case against God!” He knew God was good, and that is why pain seemed to be so strange, “Why would the God I know do this?!” I’m sure there are people in this room that have felt this way before. You are not alone, plenty of people have, and yet… We still know God is good, even as we struggle through.

We know this because Christ showed us God’s love. God was not content to sit in Heaven and watch us struggle, God took on flesh and suffered alongside us. The mystery of pain was not theoretical to God, it was felt in God’s own flesh and bones. God knew sorrow and anger and fear and doubt… God felt all of this, so that God could stand beside us on our hardest days and on our greatest ones. Christ’s life, Christ’s Death, and Christ’s Resurrection, those are an answer enough to pain and suffering, because they show that God is invested in all parts of life.

We can never answer the question of why bad things happen the way they do. Maybe the particular causes of specific events, but if we want to explain away evil, we will never find something that will satisfy every potential situation we find ourselves in. It is not admitting defeat to say a problem is too big to explain all at once – it is a declaration of honesty and of humility. More than that… Would we want an answer to our question or our experience more?

If God came to me and gave me a reason why cancer is as painful as it is, why war is allowed to become atrocity, why people go hungry or hurt or struggle… would I be happy with the answer I was given? I’m not sure I could be… I am just not sure any “answer,” would be enough. Like Job, in the face of God’s enormity and knowledge and strength, all I can do is say, “I don’t know…” and focus on what I do.

I know that God is good, I know that God has shown me love again and again in this life. I know that Christ chose to enter the mess of this world in every way he could, and facing all pain and strife he went on to die a criminal’s death so that in all things he might share in our experiences. After he had accomplished all things, he rose from the dead as a promise that death would not rule in the end, the pain was not the only thing we had to look forward to, and that life blossoms in unexpected and wonderful ways. I do not have an answer for why bad things happen, but I have an answer to all evil – and that answer is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We embrace this truth, this answer, not so that we become complacent in the face of suffering and pain, but so that we have a model of how to move forward, even as we acknowledge the present depravity of things. Scripture asks, “Why do you spend money for that which is not bread?” In a similar way I ask, “Why seek answers for the question that will not bring life?” Christ is with us, in all things, may that be sufficient in the face of evil. – Amen.