10/06/2024
Scripture Reading, Job 1.1; 2.1-10
Our Scripture reading presents the story of a righteous man with a wretched life, a stellar saint who falls like a star, a real riches to rags tale.
We have one verse introducing Job in chapter one, and then we will read the first ten verses of chapter two.
Read Scripture text. [After reading.] Please take your seat.
It seems incongruous to us that bad things should happen to good people, especially when tragically bad things happen to extraordinarily good people. But that is just what we have here. To alleviate the philosophical tension, we might either try to believe Job wasn’t that good or that his sufferings really weren’t that bad, but the text forcefully stops us from considering either option for every long. The praise of Job’s goodness in the first verse is rare in Scripture. Very few if any others besides Christ could be praised so highly as Job is here for his spirituality and morality. And the sufferings of Job are proverbial and not to be minimized. He endured a combination of just about the worst traumas that can ever befall people in this life.
Well, then, how could an all good, all powerful, and all wise God allow these circumstances to arise? As readers of the book of Job, we know much that Job did not know at the time. We know it was because of Job’s goodness that he suffered, not his badness. God was pleased to prove to the devil how good Job really was. Job did not worship God for His gifts, but for God Himself. That was proven when all the gifts were taken away and Job still worshipped God. Just about the only potential blessing that remained to Job, his wife, actually turned against him and tempted him to curse God and die. No wonder the devil didn’t kill her as he killed Job’s children. But even then, Job rebuked his wife in love and said, “Shall we receive good from God and not receive evil?” Job trusted that God knew best, even when God’s plan for Job’s life was not so wonderful in Job’s experience.
So there is something of a philosophical solution to the problem of evil here in this story of Job. When bad things happen to good people, God is still wise, and righteous, and almighty.
Let us now graduate to reflect upon a more thorny problem. If Job was righteous, Jesus Christ was infinitely more righteous. If Job suffered, Jesus Christ suffered far more when He died upon the cross, the devil ravaged Him body and soul, and the wrath of God was poured out upon Him. How can we explain that, consistent with the existence of God? How can we account for the pains of the damned in hell being poured out from above upon the one who is righteousness itself, God Incarnate, the holy one of Israel?
All of Scripture helps us to know the answer to this most significant riddle of the ages. We can only explain it very briefly now. Jesus Christ was bearing the penalty of the sins of others upon Himself when He died on the cross. It wasn’t for His own sins that He suffered so; He had none. It was for yours and for mine if you are believing on Him. On the cross, He endured my hell to deliver me from hell. Upon that bloody tree, he forfeited His heaven so that I might go to heaven. His death was an atonement for sins, a substitutionary satisfaction of the penalty I owed for my own sins.
We rightly admire Job for trusting God in adversity. Behold, a greater than Job is here. Let us worship Him with all our hearts, with grateful love to Him for enduring all this to be our Savior. Ω
