Word of Salvation - November 2015

 

When the Going Gets Tough - by Rev. Dr. Steve Voorwinde

Text: James 5:11b

Scripture Readings: Job 1:1-2:10; 42:1-17; James 5:7-12

 

“You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.”

 

Introduction

It’s the middle of WW2. A baby girl is born into a deeply religious family. Her mother has all the gifts and graces of a mature Christian woman. Her father is a hypocrite. He has affairs with different women and when his daughter is a teenager he divorces his wife.

In her twenties the daughter becomes a nurse and gets married. For many years the marriage seems happy and all goes well. But then her husband also proves to be unfaithful. He too has affairs with other women and the marriage ends in divorce. The wife is left with the lion’s share of raising their three children. But their lives aren’t easy either:

The one daughter is severely disabled. She has a condition so rare that it is never properly diagnosed.The son has mental health issues and as a young adult he is diagnosed with schizophrenia.When the other daughter reaches adulthood she attends a prestigious university, but while she is there she is raped by another student.

When her mother, the nurse, is asked about her faith in such trying circumstances, her answer is very down to earth: “Why should I kick God out of my life just because things are difficult?”

A middle aged couple has nine children. While the children are still quite young the mother is diagnosed with cancer. Throughout it all the father stays remarkably calm and has unwavering faith. He tells himself and others, “God is good and he won’t let me raise nine children on my own.” And so it was. His wife became a cancer survivor and together they raised their nine children.

But they weren’t out of the woods yet. When one of their sons turned 18 he bought a motor bike. And you guessed it. On the way home from work one Friday evening he was hit by a truck. He suffered horrendous chest wounds and died instantly. Later that night their minister was with the family at the morgue. He asked the parents what they would like him to preach on at their son’s funeral. The father thought for a moment and then he said, “The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away . . .” He paused for a moment and then he remembered the rest of the verse, “May the name of the Lord be praised.”

The minister looked across to the wife and asked if she would be happy with that verse as a sermon text, and she said “yes”. In the face of great tragedy these parents could sincerely echo the words of Job, “The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised” (Job 1:22).

Job may have lived 4000 years ago but he is still with us today. Many people can still identify with the sufferings of this OT saint. There are Jobs all around us. Maybe you are one of them. In fact, the older I get the more I realise that there are very few people who don’t identify in some way with the story of Job. None of us is immune from hardship, suffering and distress. So what can we learn from the story of Job? What is the take-home message from this remarkable book? What are the basic lessons it teaches? What is its bottom line when it comes to its application to Christians today?

For that I want to take you to the only verse where Job is mentioned by name in the NT, and that is in our text in James 5:11: “You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.” If nothing else, this is the very least that we should take away from the book of Job. This is how the NT summarises its message. This is James’ take on Job and he wants it to be our take as well.

Essentially James says three things about the book of Job:

(a) You have heard of Job’s perseverance.

(b) You have seen what the Lord finally brought about.

(c) The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

And I would also like these to be the three points to my sermon today:

You have heard of Job’s perseverance – the perseverance of Job

You have seen what the Lord finally brought about – the purpose of the Lord

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy – the Lord’s person.

So the second part of James 5:11 is really the preacher’s dream text. It has three points and they all begin with P:

The perseverance of Job

The purpose of the Lord

The person of the Lord

If we get nothing else out of the book of Job, we should at least get these three points.

I. So let’s begin where James begins and that is with the perseverance of Job. “You have heard of Job’s perseverance,” he says. Yes, we have. We have just read about it. But what is it supposed to mean to us?

Let me begin by saying what it doesn’t mean. I don’t want to sound picky, but this is not about the patience of Job. We often think of Job as a model of patience. I once heard of a missionary to Japan who was home on furlough and he was asked about how he was doing with the Japanese language. He gave a memorable reply. He said that learning Japanese takes “the patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon and the age of Methuselah.” You see, the patience of Job has become proverbial. And it has actually come into the English language through the translation of our text in the King James Bible. It says, “Ye have heard of the patience of Job.” And the phrase has stuck. But James doesn’t say, “You have heard of the patience of Job.” He says, “You have heard of the perseverance of Job.” The NIV is spot on here. It’s not about patience; it’s about perseverance.

When you think about it, Job wasn’t all that patient. He wasn’t patient with his circumstances. He wasn’t patient with his friends. He wasn’t even all that patient with God!

Let me give you some examples:

When Job’s three friends came to see him, they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. They didn’t say a word to him because they saw that his suffering was very great.

Finally Job himself breaks the silence. Listen to what he said. This is how he starts out:

3 "May the day of my birth perish, and the night it was said, 'A boy is born!'

4 That day-- may it turn to darkness; may God above not care about it; may no light shine upon it.

11 "Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?

12 Why were there knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed?

13 For now I would be lying down in peace; I would be asleep and at rest

16 Or why was I not hidden in the ground like a stillborn child, like an infant who never saw the light of day?” (chap. 3)

These are hardly the words of a patient man!

Or think of how he lashes out at his friends when they have all had a turn to speak:

"I have heard many things like these; miserable comforters are you all!

3 Will your long-winded speeches never end? What ails you that you keep on arguing?” (chap. 16)

But some of his choicest words are directed against God. Listen to how he argues with God in chapter 7:

11 "I will not keep silent; I will speak out in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

12 Am I the sea, or the monster of the deep, that you put me under guard?

13 When I think my bed will comfort me and my couch will ease my complaint,

14 even then you frighten me with dreams and terrify me with visions,

15 so that I prefer strangling and death, rather than this body of mine.

16 I despise my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone; my days have no meaning.

17 "What is man that you make so much of him, that you give him so much attention,

18 that you examine him every morning and test him every moment?

19 Will you never look away from me, or let me alone even for an instant?

20 If I have sinned, what have I done to you, O watcher of men? Why have you made me your target? Have I become a burden to you?

21 Why do you not pardon my offenses and forgive my sins? For I will soon lie down in the dust; you will search for me, but I will be no more."

But he’s not finished yet. In chapter 30 he continues his complaint against God:

20 "I cry out to you, O God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me.

21 You turn on me ruthlessly; with the might of your hand you attack me.

22 You snatch me up and drive me before the wind; you toss me about in the storm.

23 I know you will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living.”

So I put it to you: Job was not always patient. One of the commentators goes even further and says: “He was anything but an example of a godly person who was patient in the midst of adversity” (Martin, 194). He was impatient with his circumstances. He was impatient with his friends. He was impatient with God.

But if Job isn’t patient what’s so good about him? Why does James hold him up as such a glowing example?

The answer is simple. Job may not have been patient, but he did persevere. He was steadfast. He endured. He managed to hang in there and he never walked away from God. In fact even the book of Job gives him very high marks:

At the beginning of the story Job is introduced as blameless and upright, a man who feared God and shunned evil (1:1). It says so three times (1:1, 8; 2:3)!At the end of each of the terrible tests that came his way we are first told that “Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (1:22) and that “Job did not sin in what he said” (2:10).Then in the very last chapter of the book God finally addresses Job’s three friends, “You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (42:7, 8). And he says it not once but twice!

Did that ever strike you? It never struck me as much as when I was preparing this sermon. God says about Job, “He has spoken of me what is right.” And to make sure that Job’s three friends got the point, the Lord says it again, “You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.”

This is remarkable. Job questioned God. Job complained against God. Job argued with God. You could even say that Job got angry with God. But in the end God says, “Job has spoken of me what is right.” Isn’t it amazing what Job gets away with? You see, God has very broad shoulders.

I once found some great pastoral advice in a very unlikely place. A generation ago there was no one in Western society who challenged the taboos about death more than the Swiss doctor, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross. She was an agnostic but in her book on death and dying she gives grieving Christians some wise advice: “Get angry with God. He can take it.” Well, if the book of Job is anything to go by, she was right. Job questioned. He complained. He argued. He got angry.

But there was also a line that he never crossed. He never cursed God. He never blamed God. He never charged God with wrongdoing. The theologian William Barclay put it like this:

“The very greatness of Job lies in the fact that in spite of everything that tore at his heart, he never lost his grip on faith and his grip on God. Job’s faith is no groveling, passive, unquestioning submission; Job struggled and questioned and sometimes even defied, but the flame of faith was never extinguished in his heart.”

To put it simply, Job persevered. He never let go of God. He stuck with it. And if Job-like trials come our way, that’s all God expects of us. Don’t give up. Hang in there. When the going gets tough . . . the saints persevere.

The nurse who was left to raise her three children didn’t give up. She is one of the most gentle, wise and mature Christians that I have ever met.The parents who lost their son in the motor-bike accident didn’t give up. Their son died on a Friday night. In church the following Sunday morning they joined right in singing the opening hymn:

“The lovingkindness of my God

Is more than life to me,

So I will bless Thee while I live

And lift my prayer to Thee.”

So that’s the first lesson to take home from Job. He left us an example of perseverance. And down the ages many have followed it.

II. But if the first lesson is the perseverance of Job, the second is the purpose of the Lord. Here we come to our second P.

The first point to notice here is that there is a purpose in our sufferings.

The celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins recently did a documentary aiming to show that all religions are just so much nonsense. At one point he visits the American state of Oklahoma where he interviews a Catholic priest. The scene where the interview takes place is one of utter devastation. A tornado has just ripped through the town where the priest serves. As you can imagine, the place lies almost completely in ruins, but mysteriously here and there you see a house that has stayed completely intact. The local Catholic church has just the front wall remaining and a cross can still be seen at the top. Dawkins asks the priest how he copes. The priest throws his hands in the air. “I know God has a purpose in this. That’s all I can say.”

Later when Dawkins reviews the footage he of course takes exception to the priest’s answer. “There is no purpose to devastation like this,” he says. “Any tornado happens purely because of natural forces. It all happens by chance.”

But the priest was right. When tragedies come a believer’s way, they have a purpose. They don’t just happen by chance. Job’s troubles didn’t happen by chance. They had a purpose. When difficulties come our way they don’t happen by chance either. They serve a purpose. They serve a divine purpose. But what is that purpose?

That’s the big question, isn’t it? In the Christian life what is the purpose of suffering? Why did Job suffer all that he did? Why does a single mother have three children all with big challenges in their lives? Wasn’t she already suffering enough? Why does a couple who have lived through cancer both survive to live through the death of their teenage son? Could Dawkins be right? Don’t all these things just happen by blind chance? Or could there be a purpose behind it all? If God does have a purpose, what is it?

We need to answer this question at two levels. When we read Job and James carefully we will notice that God has an immediate purpose and an ultimate purpose, and that the two really dovetail into one another. Let’s begin with the ultimate purpose first.

James says, “You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about.” And what did the Lord bring about? We read about it in Job 42, the last chapter in the book. God restored Job’s fortunes. He ends up with twice as many sheep, oxen, camels and donkeys as he had before. He is also blessed with a new family. Seven sons and three daughters replace the ones who died so tragically at the beginning of the book. And the three daughters are just drop-dead gorgeous. The Bible tells us that “nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters” (Job 42:15). They must have been stunning.

But what is the message in all of this for us? At the end of every bout of suffering does God promise us a handful of goodies? You lose your house in a bushfire, but you end up with a bigger and better one. You lose heavily on the stock market but it bounces back and you are better off than before. You undergo major surgery but you recover and now you are fitter and healthier than you have ever been. Is that how it works? Does Job play into the hands of some health and wealth theology?

Well, that’s not how James sees it. He mentions Job in the context of the second coming. “Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming,” he says. “You, too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.” (vv. 7-8). Job persevered till his fortunes were restored. We are to persevere till the Lord returns. In the meantime God may give us some relief from our sufferings, but that’s not what he promises. What he promises is something far better – a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells, a restored universe where sin and death will be no more. That’s what our sufferings are preparing us for. God is shaping us for a world where there is no cancer, no schizophrenia, no cerebral palsy, no motorbike accidents, no mourning, no crying, no pain – because every tear will have been wiped away.

So that’s the ultimate purpose of suffering. God uses it to prepare us for a better world where suffering will be no more. So we say, “Maranatha. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!”

But suffering also serves a more immediate purpose. This is what James has in mind right at the beginning of his letter:

2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds,

3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.

4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Yes, we are to be like Job and persevere to the end. But in the meantime perseverance yields some remarkable results – “that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” You see, there is a reason for suffering and that is to produce believers who are mature and complete. And that explains so much in life, not just the major tragedies but also the everyday difficulties that come our way:

Why did your baby keep you awake for most of the night yet again?Why did your computer decide to crash just when you could least afford it?Why did that careless driver run into the back of you at a traffic light and give you all those hassles with panel beating, repair bills and insurance claims?Why do trials like this come our way? James tells right at the beginning of his letter. It is so that we may become mature and complete.

What if there were no suffering in this sinful world? What if there were no suffering in our sinful lives? What would we be like?

The British journalist, Malcolm Muggeridge, once put it like this (perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek):

“Suppose you eliminated suffering, what a dreadful place the world would be. I would almost rather eliminate happiness. The world would be the most ghastly place because everything that corrects the tendency of this unspeakable little creature, man, to feel over-important and over-pleased with himself would disappear. He’s bad enough now, but he would be absolutely intolerable if he never suffered.”

So God has at least two purposes in our sufferings. They don’t just come out of the blue and hit us by chance. They have an immediate and an ultimate purpose. They are designed to make us mature Christians and to prepare us for glory.

The nurse who was left to raise three children seemed to have a favourite prayer, and it’s one that we should all learn to pray, “Lord, make us better people.” Through our sufferings the Lord answers that prayer, and one day he will make us perfect.

III. But James not only reflects on the perseverance of Job and on the purpose of the Lord.

He makes one more point. Here we come to our third “P”. He also reflects on the person of the Lord – “the Lord is very compassionate and merciful.”

Now I must confess that I had very often read these words before. I had even learned this verse off by heart. But only recently did it really strike me. And it hit me right between the eyes. I read this verse after once again working my way through the book of Job.

Now some people have come away from reading the book of Job with the impression that God is cruel. He seems to use Job as a pawn in some kind of supernatural game. Others think that God is cold. He just doesn’t seem all that concerned about what Job is going through.

I must say that’s never how I read Job. I came away with the strong message that God is sovereign. No matter what comes our way, God is in control, he is in charge, and he will work it all out in the end. In the meantime just hang in there. You knuckle down and trust him as best you can.

Now there’s truth in that. God is in control and he will work things out. But if that’s where we stop, we haven’t seen the whole picture and we’ll just become stoics when it comes to suffering. We’ll just grit our teeth. We’ll grin and bear it. But the book of Job doesn’t just teach that God is sovereign, it teaches that God is very compassionate and merciful. That’s how James wants us to read the book of Job. That’s how James wants us to see God in the book of Job. For James that is the bottom line – the Lord is very compassionate and merciful.

Now I don’t know about you, but I find that profoundly challenging. That would not be my first thought after reading Job:

That God is powerful – yes.That God is almighty – yes.That God is in control – yes.

But that God is very compassionate and merciful – that was never the first thought that crossed my mind. At the end of the story I am prepared to let God be God, and so I should. But what kind of a God is he? He is very compassionate and merciful!

But how is God very compassionate and merciful? Recently my wife and I were discussing this question with some of our friends:

We all agreed that God was very compassionate and merciful to Job at the end of the book. In chapter 42 he restores Job’s fortunes. He even forgives Job’s friends. No doubt about God’s compassion and mercy at the end.

But the more we talked and the more we thought about it, the more we came to see that you can’t limit God’s compassion and mercy to the last chapter of the book. It will hardly do to say that in a book of 42 chapters God is compassionate and merciful in just one of those chapters. He’s pretty cold and aloof the rest of the time, but at least he comes through in the end. That’s hardly the way to read one of the longest books in the OT.

So here’s the point, the very challenging point that James makes. God is very compassionate and merciful not only at the end of the book of Job. God is also very compassionate and merciful throughout the book of Job.

Let’s think this through for a moment:

Is God compassionate and merciful because Job perseveres?

OR

Does Job persevere because God is compassionate and merciful?

And again:

Is God compassionate and merciful because he has a purpose?

OR

Does God have a purpose because he is compassionate and merciful?

You see, God’s compassion and mercy undergird everything else. Because God is very compassionate and merciful Job perseveres and God has a purpose for his suffering. God is compassionate and merciful not only after Job’s suffering but even in the midst of Job’s suffering.

Now let’s take that one step further. God’s compassion and mercy also undergird us in our suffering. We persevere and there is a purpose in our suffering because God is very compassionate and merciful. He doesn’t just reward us with his compassion and mercy when we end well. His compassion and mercy are there all along:

His compassion and mercy were there when that mother gave birth to a very disabled child.His compassion and mercy were there when that teenager died in a motorbike accident.

And as Christians we know that even better than Job did. We know what God is like because of Jesus. Time and again in Jesus’ ministry we read “and he had compassion on them,” “and he had compassion on them.” Whether it was hungry crowds or a blind beggar or the father of an epileptic boy Jesus had compassion on them. And that Jesus is still with his people today.

Because of Jesus God never leaves us or forsakes us. As one of our old liturgical forms used to say, “He was forsaken of God that we might nevermore be forsaken by him.”

Job might have felt forsaken. Sometimes we might feel forsaken. But the only one who was ever really forsaken by God was Jesus when he died on the cross.

And if Jesus died for us then we will persevere and our suffering does have a purpose. Nothing happens to us by chance. No suffering that the believer goes through, no matter how bad, is just a stroke of bad luck or a bolt out of the blue. In the midst of it all God is still very compassionate and merciful.

I’ll be the first to admit it’s not always easy to see things that way. It’s not easy to read Job that way and it’s not easy to see our own sufferings that way. As the Bible says, “Now we see through a glass darkly.” But one day it will all be crystal clear. One day we will share James’ perspective completely. When we get to glory and look back we will all say, “Yes, the Lord was very compassionate and merciful.”

The mother who gave birth to that severely disabled baby will say, “The Lord was very compassionate and merciful.”The parents of the teenager who died in the motorbike accident will say, “The Lord was very compassionate and merciful.”

Conclusion

Before I close I want to give credit where credit is due. My wife has just completed an in-depth study of the book of Job. It’s taken her about 18 months. I think it’s probably the best Bible study she has ever done. It’s been intensely personal. If it wasn’t for her I don’t think I would have ever written this sermon.

As many of you will know, Nancy was diagnosed with MS in 1971, and she has been suffering a whole raft of MS symptoms ever since. So for her to turn to the book of Job seemed like a natural thing to do. This is how she did it.

She worked through it a chapter at a time. She studied each chapter carefully and then she wrote her own version of it. Where a chapter spoke about the sufferings and troubles of Job, she would update it and personalize it and write about her own difficulties and her own faith. So Job chapter 1 becomes Nancy chapter 1 and so forth. It’s been a great spiritual exercise.

But at the end of the day what is the bottom line? After all this Bible study what are we to do with it? At the end of such a long project you don’t want to just file it away. You want something to stay with you for the rest of your life.

And what should that be?

This is where James is such a big help. When suffering comes your way, you remember a very simple message: those three P’s – the perseverance of Job, the purpose of the Lord and the person of the Lord. When adversity strikes here is the bottom line:

Persevere

Know that God has a purpose

And remember that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful.