When the Righteous Suffer - Part 1

Would you pray with me? Father, we take up now a theme, a reality that is so raw and so real for many that I tremble to think of the presumption of just talking for an hour about it. Whom have we in heaven but You? And on earth, there is nothing that we desire besides You. Our flesh and our heart may fail, but You are the strength of our heart and our portion forever. I count everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Father, come, work the miracles that we long for in this room, and there are two. One is healing, and we believe in it, and I pray for it, that some would date their deliverance from disease or a broken marriage or a wayward child or a depression from this night. And Lord, for others who are to suffer longer, the miracle of, though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him. So these double miracles we ask for, I can't make them happen, but the Holy Spirit can, so I invite Him to come. Would you help me to be faithful to Your Word? To be true to what it says? Let there be a spirit about this time together that is in accordance with the truth and the weight of the truth. I thank You, Lord Jesus, for the words. Blessed are You when men persecute You and revile You and say all kinds of evil against You falsely on my account. Rejoice in that day and be glad, for great is Your reward in Heaven. Not here. For so men persecuted the prophets who were before You. So, Lord, come and give us the assurance of Heaven and help us to know that this slight momentary affliction that lasts only 80 years or 90 is not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed and is working for us a weight of glory beyond all comparison. Build these convictions down to the roots of our being, I pray through Christ. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much for being here. It's a great fearful honor to me that you would come to hear about these things because it is so easy to get it wrong, wrong theologically and wrong emotionally. Job's friends, Eliphaz, Bill, Dad, and Zophar got it mainly right theologically. Not always. And they just got it so wrong practically. And so I hope you'll be praying for each other and praying for me that we won't get it wrong either way, that we'll be faithful to the Word and what it says and in our speaking and in our dealing with each other between the sessions, we will be very, very alert to where people are on this issue. People are here because they're dying. You need to know that. I have emails. People are here because others have died. So if it felt from the beginning like there was an unusual seriousness about this, there is. I have 10 or 11 reasons for why I've come to talk to you about suffering from Job. And we list them off. They don't take long, but I'm gonna give you these. You wonder, why did you come to this place to talk about this to us? Here they are. Number one, hundreds of you have suffered or are suffering and you are looking for light in the darkness. For example, one of you wrote me, I prayed that God would show me how to respond, that He would anoint John Piper this weekend. I am praying that God would speak through John Piper in His words about suffering and that this would help me better understand God's purpose for me and my family now after that. Number two, your suffering is coming for sure. Basic discipleship included for the Apostle Paul in Acts chapter 14, verse 22. You remember, he's coming back on the missionary journey, going to every church, strengthening the souls. Strengthening the souls of the disciples, saying through many tribulations, you must enter the kingdom. There is no other path. That's basic discipleship. If you work discipling people, that should be on your agenda early. You come to Christ, you come to suffer. There is no other path to heaven. That's number two. Number three, persecution, disease, war, disability, disaster, freak accident, assault, they're all the same with regard to two things, which is why I don't want anybody to start making distinctions about, oh, that's just relating to persecution, not disease. They're all the same with regard to two things. Number one, the design of the devil is the same in all of them. Destroy your faith. And the design of God in all of them, strengthen your faith. Doesn't really matter whether somebody's putting a gun to your head or cancer is in your head. It's the same issue. The faith issue is the same, and that's why I'm here. I want to deal with that. I want your faith to be stronger. I don't want the devil to win in your life. Number four, natural disasters have put theodicy, that is the justification of God and his ways, in the news more than ever in my lifetime in the last five years. Say, since 9-11 or since the tsunami or the cyclone in the early 90s, we just forget these so fast. Half a million people were swept away in Bangladesh in 1991, way bigger than the tsunami, and we just forget them. Tornadoes down in your neck of the woods here and flooding up in my neck of the woods. These are strange days, and almost whenever anything like that happens, NPR and the stations, they're on the phone to a Jew, an imam, an evangelical, and tell us where God was. This is news, and therefore we need to think about it. It's not private. It's not a private issue that only Christians talk about. Number five, God is rejected wholesale by many because of suffering in the world and because of these issues. The other day, I was listening to a debate between Doug Wilson and Dan Barker, an atheist. It was valuable for me to listen, not because of what Doug said, because I knew what he'd say, and I liked it all, but because of what the atheist said, which simply took my breath away. It is so good for me to be exposed to the horrors inside people's heads that come out in blasphemous words, tripping off the tongue as though the earth would not open up underneath, which in mercy it didn't. But one of the things he said was, any God who creates a hell deserves to go there and many other such things. Now, hell simply represents the worst suffering, the worst in intensity and the worst in length, and therefore, dealing with that is what many people simply cannot handle, and therefore, they write God off. He just does not exist. At least the God of the Bible doesn't. We've got to deal with it because people reject God because of these issues. Number six, there are Christian critics of the sovereignty of God. Oh, how they spoke loudly after the tsunami and in regard to personal suffering. Here's a page from Mission Frontiers, one of my favorite missionary magazines, in which my good friend, I love this guy to death, Ralph Winter, you'll probably watch this, and I'm gonna take him to task while he watches, wrote, insofar as we automatically attribute all misfortune, all disease, all sickness to the mysterious mind of God, that perspective cuts the nerve of any intense, intentional fighting back. For example, Charles Colson, is as brilliant and dedicated a Christian as they come, yet, after his daughter had struggled for many years with an autistic son, called an Alex, Colson praised her when she came to the conclusion that, quote, Alex is exactly the way God wants him to be. First, Winter says, the idea that God would want any child to be brain damaged is inconceivable. Even more important, this fatalistic perspective, no matter how brave and noble, cuts the nerve of anyone wanting to join the increasing number of parents who want to get to the bottom of why autism is skyrocketing. I don't believe either of those statements is true. I don't believe it's true that it's inconceivable that God should wield your child's disability. And I don't think it's true that those who believe in the absolute sovereignty of God are less involved in fighting evil and sickness and every other kind of horror in the world than those who don't believe in it are. I don't think historically that's true, and I don't think it's true today. But that's what some Christians are saying. Or David Hart in the Wall Street Journal says after the tsunami, no Christian is licensed to utter odious banalities about God's inscrutable counsels or blasphemous suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God's good ends. Well, I do utter that with no fear in the presence of God Almighty that it is blasphemy. Number seven, the wise, good, just, absolute sovereignty of God is pastorally precious beyond measure. I've been a pastor for 28 years. I have buried many people. I know that one of my 17-year-olds is still in a coma from the accident last week. I know these things. I live with this every day of my life. I also read the newspaper. I also look at the internet. We are, I am inundated with pain, my own and my people's. And I testify, I don't just argue, I testify after 28 years, the absolute, good, wise, total sovereignty of God over our lives is pastorally precious beyond measure. It's not an embarrassment in the hospital. I promise you, it's not. The words Satan meant it for evil and God meant it for good have sustained many a broken heart. Number eight, suffering is appointed as one way for the gospel to spread. This is what I'm gonna talk about at a conference here later on the weekend called The Purpose-Driven Death. That's a very, very, very biblical title and it's rooted in Colossians 1:24. You remember what Jesus said to Peter and John when they were talking at the end of the Gospel of John? And He said, what is that to you? And then He said, I will show him by what death He will glorify Me. I will show him by what death He will glorify Me in the last verses of the Gospel of John. That's a purpose-driven death. Now the point here is, God doesn't just use after the event suffering to spread the gospel. God designs to spread the gospel by the suffering of His agents. The suffering of His agents is one of His appointed means by which He will make Himself look magnificently superior to life. The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life. Psalm 63:3, how can you show that if you only prosper? Talk, talk, talk, talk, won't do it. One of the best histories of modern, actually, the totality of mission since Jesus is Stephen Neal's book, The History of Missions. And he has a few pages, which I copied out here, on why was it under God that the Christian movement virtually conquered the Roman Empire in 300 years? What was it about these simple people that so vitally spread throughout the Roman Empire? And he lists six reasons, and the last one was this, quote, under the Roman Empire, Christians had no legal right to exist. We Americans, we just get bent out of shape when our rights are taken away. It's like, why do you think Christians should have any right for anything? This country is a footnote on the future reality, a weird one. And we act like it's the thing, like, why the, if we can't post our commandments or we can't preach our sermons, why? Read your Bible. We don't have any rights in this world. We are aliens and exiles and refugees. Satan is the God of this world. We testify unto death. I'm starting to paraphrase. Let me get back here and read. Under the Roman Empire, Christians had no legal right to exist. Every Christian knew, every Christian knew that sooner or later he might have to testify to his faith at the cost of his life. That's why it spread. American wimpy Christianity won't spread. It's those who know it may cost them their lives who treasure Jesus more than they treasure life, let alone any lifestyle. They'll spread when the rest will just shrink into its little comfortable enclave. That's number eight. Number nine, the supreme value and glory and admirableness of Christ is shown where people see him as more valuable than anything else we could lose. I didn't say it very well. Let me try to say it again. The beauty, the admirableness, the glory of Jesus Christ is displayed, demonstrated, shown, revealed most clearly where Christians treasure Christ more than they treasure what they're losing. Child, health, life, marriage. If you get in God's face and begin to demean him or belittle him or dis him because of something that's being taken away, you're showing where your treasure is. And it doesn't speak well to the world about him being our supreme treasure. There's the big issue. That's the big issue of this seminar. That's the big issue of the book of Job. That's what Satan wanted not to be known, that God is more valuable than Job's family. He desperately didn't want that to be known. That's number nine. Number 10, Job is the main book in the Bible for dealing with this issue straight up. It can help us with all of these things. It was written, unlike any of the other books, mainly for this. The issue is all over the Bible, but Job is where it comes to a head, as we heard Scott quote from James 5, 11. I wrote down one more as I was coming over here. This is number 11. In my own name, I have no right to address suffering people about suffering. I haven't suffered much. And I thought today as I reflected on that, okay, but there aren't two classes of people in the world, sufferers and non-sufferers. There are hundreds of classes of people, namely everybody suffering at different levels. Some more one day, some less another day. Some more one year, less another year. And therefore, if we start saying who can talk to whom about how much they've suffered, almost nobody will talk to anybody about this. Besides that, I do not speak to you in my own name. And I would encourage you not to believe anything John Piper says that is not warranted by the Bible. If I cannot show you what I say in the Bible, you have a full reason to say not sure about that and put it on the question mark and go home and think about it. So mainly we're gonna be looking at the Bible in this session. So if you have a Bible, which I hope you do, let's go to Job. It's almost in the middle of the Bible, a little bit before Psalms, right before Psalms. We'll get maybe through chapter 31 tonight. You believe that? Well, I never get through 31 chapters in years, let alone minutes, but that's my goal. And if I don't reach it, I'll quicken the pace tomorrow. Job chapter one, there was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. And that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. So he sets up, the author sets up the book with a very good man, nobody like him, blameless, upright, feared, reverenced, treasured God. I don't think the word fear is slavish. Does it work in the context if it's a kind of cowering, slavish fear? It's a kind of trembling wonder and awe and delight to come into the presence of God and fear that you would do anything to dishonor him or demean him or belittle his value. He fears him and the implication or the result of that in his life was that he turned away from evil. Verse two, there were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7,000 sheep and 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys and very many servants so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East. So his goodness had been blessed with prosperity as many of yours has. Verse four, his sons used to go and hold a feast. Now this is a illustration of the kind of uprightness that he has. His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them and when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them and he would rise early in the morning and burn burnt offerings according to the number of them all for, Job said, it may be that my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts and thus Job did continually. Now what comes out there are two things about Job. One, a jealousy for the name of God. My kids cursed the name of God. I want to make that right as right as a dad can make it and the second thing is concern for his kids. If they've cursed God, oh God, would you receive this offering? Would you have mercy upon my children? This is what dads do. They get up in the morning and they pray for their kids. Right, dads? Right, dads? We get up in the morning and we lay hold on God and say, preserve those marriages, oh God. Keep their faith, oh God. Guard their orthodoxy, oh God. Protect their children. Guard their hearts. Fight for my kids, God. And you pray it a lot more when they're adults or maybe most when they're teenagers. Although now, I don't think that's true because I only have one teenager. She's 13 and all my boys are grown and I'm mainly concerned about them. Then the calamity came. I'm gonna skip over verses six to 12 and come back to it in a moment. Now, there was a day when his sons and daughters, this is verse 13, chapter one, verse 13. There was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house. So they're having one of those parties. And there came a messenger to Job and said, the oxen were plowing and the donkeys feeding beside them and the Sabaeans fell upon them and took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword and I alone have escaped to tell you, verse 16, while he was yet speaking, there came another and said, the fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them and I alone have escaped to tell you, verse 17, while he was yet speaking, there came another and said, the Chaldeans formed three groups and made a raid and the camels, they took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword and I alone have escaped to tell you, verse 18, and while he was yet speaking, there came another and said, your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house and behold, a great wind, maybe a tornado, came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house and it fell upon the young people and they're dead and I alone have escaped to tell you. Well, so much for Job's prosperity in one afternoon. All of his possessions are gone and all of his children are dead in one afternoon. The most upright, the most God-fearing man in the East. What happened? This makes no sense, right? This is absurd. This is unintelligible. We would ask, what on earth is going on? And the answer of the book is, earth will never give you the answer. Heaven will give you the answer. Not the whole answer that you want maybe, but it will give an answer. So let's back up now to heaven and see what happened. Verse six of chapter one. Now, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord. I think that means angels. And Satan also came among them. The Lord, that's Yahweh, absolute sovereign Lord, said to Satan, from where have you come? And Satan answered the Lord and said, from going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it. And the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job, that there's none like him on the earth? A blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil? That's weird. And a thief sneaks into the jewelry shop at night while the owner is in the back room looking to steal diamonds. He runs into the owner and the owner says, what are you doing here? He says, I'm looking around for diamonds to steal. And the owner says, have you seen the biggest one? It's up front, under glass. He has a key. This is strange. Now, I assume that God's not a bumbler. He's like, ooh, I didn't mean to say that. I didn't mean to draw attention to Job. I should have brought attention to some carnal Christian over here. Therefore, I do assume God is setting him up. Use whatever words you want. God is manifestly proud of Job. And I use the word carefully. I'm very hesitant to use that word of humans, feeling about humans, because pride means you have some stake, you've got some causality in what they are like. God had a huge stake in what Job was like. And therefore, I say he was hugely proud of Job. Feared God. Job's fear of God called so much attention to the worth and value and power and truth and justice and goodness and wisdom and grace of God that God beamed over Job in the front, in the presence of Satan. Well, Satan is not impressed. Verses nine to 11. Then Satan answered the Lord and said, does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land. But you stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, he will curse you to your face. You see what he's doing? This is the setup. This is what's at stake in the book. This is what the book is about. The book is about, will it become evident that Job values his possessions more than God, or will it become evident to the devil and all the hosts of heaven and all the people of us that Job values God more than he values his children and his sheep and oxen and camels and donkeys? That's the issue of the book. God could have said, I don't need to prove anything to you, Satan. I know the heart of my man. I see everything. I know Job better than Job knows Job or anybody else knows Job. He doesn't need to prove anything to you or me. Be gone. That's what he could have done, just like Jesus said, be gone to the demons. And they obeyed him. Satan always obeys God. He commands the unclean spirits and they obey him. Satan is in God's presence by massive sovereign permission. But God evidently has already set this up. He's not gonna change his mind. He knows where he's going. So when Satan says the only reason he worships you, the only reason he fears you, the only reason he treasures you is because you give him stuff. Verse 12, the Lord said to Satan, behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and somebody killed the servants and the kids. God is in the process here of demonstrating to the heavenly hosts and to any others who have eyes to see that he himself is paramount in the heart of Job. That's what he's aiming to do. That's the most important thing in the world to God. I didn't throw that sentence out quickly. His being paramount in the hearts of his people is the most important thing in the world to God. Everything else is a means to that end. His supremacy in the hearts of his people. All right, round one, Job, Victor. Let's read it, verse 20. Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, fell on the ground and say the word. Say it and be worshiped. And he said, naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I shall return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. So Job's answer to the question who killed the kids is God. That's what it says. The Lord took them away. And he took all my donkeys and all my camels. Now, you could argue hermeneutically, oh, this is like Ecclesiastes. 99% of the book is false. That won't work here. And there are numerous reasons why. The biggest one is in the next verse where the author foresees that objection and answers it. Verse 22, in all this, Job did not sin with his lips or charge God with wrong. He didn't sin. In other words, when he said the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, that wasn't wrong. That wasn't sin. He wasn't saying anything about God that would be sinful. That's why that verse is there, because it's so breathtaking. Job, you're saying, you've shaved your head, you've ripped your clothes, you're weeping your eyes out for weeks, and you're saying God did it and you're worshiping him? That's what it says. Scarcely could the victory be over, it seems. I don't know how much time elapses between chapter one and chapter two. It doesn't say. And so we're given the impression it wasn't long. He's covered with sores. Chapter two, verse seven, in the middle of the verse, loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes. Now, these were horrible sores. If you read the rest of the book, just looking for instances where they're described, there's one place where they get so grimy with dirt, and then they get worms in them. You've never experienced anything like these sores. And it was from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, and they were loathsome. They were horrible. Horrible to look at, horrible to touch. He wouldn't even touch them with his fingers. He took a piece of broken pottery just to scrape the pus out and try to get the worms and the dirt out. Just anything. This was horrible. And so we ask again, what is going on? He passed the test, and he was the best man to start with. He worshiped you when his kids were killed. What more do you want? What is going on? And the answer is given in verse three following. Again, the Lord said to Satan, who had come again, like he did before, looking around, have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil? And then he adds, he still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me, you, Satan, incited me against him to destroy him without reason. That's an amazing verse. God, now not Job, says, I did it. You incited me against my boy, and I did it without reason. Now, that's not a helpful translation. In the RSV, it has without cause, that's closer. The point is, if you take the man Job and look at his life, there's nothing there that explains why this came down on him, and that's right, there isn't. There's nothing there that explains the magnitude of this suffering coming down. But when you translate it without reason, it sounds like you might be saying there's no purpose. That, we're going to find out, is not the case. But it sure looks irrational and absurd. I mean, if you're going to ordain that boils, come on, a person, pick a bad person, which is exactly what Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are gonna hammer Job with very soon. Verse six. No, let's start at verse four. Then Satan, this is chapter two, verse four. Then Satan answered the Lord and said, skin for skin, all that a man has, he will give for his life. You made, in other words, you made me not touch his life. You put those limits on me, but you stretch out your hand, verse five, you stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, he'll curse you to your face. And the Lord said to Satan, behold, he's in your hand, only spare his life. You see God's sovereignty there? Thus far and no farther you may go. I draw the lines for Satan everywhere he goes. I pull him back, I let him out. He's never free from my sovereign rule. So Satan went out, verse seven, from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in ashes. Now what's the result? His wife can't take it anymore. I feel sorry for his wife. In the poem that I wrote, I created a conversion for her. I have a lot of sympathy with this woman. I think the author and Job do too because of the wording here. Look how it's words. Then his wife, I mean, she's just lost her kids, all right? 10 children. And she's watched her husband who valiantly worshiped God be struck with boils. This is not easy. You're gonna cut her a lot of slack, right? If words come out of her mouth, there's this beautiful verse in chapter six that talks about words for the wind. Will you judge a man for words that are wind? There's a lot of words for the wind in the midst of tragedy. Pastors need to discern what are words for the wind and he doesn't correct them. He just lets them go off into the wind. He knows they will say better tomorrow. I hope she does too, although we're never quite made clear. But here's what it says. You still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die. But he said to her, now here's what he did not say. You are one of the foolish women. He didn't say that. He said, you speak as one of the foolish women would speak. I just think that's intentional. Giving her a break. You're not one of them, honey. This isn't you. And he answers, let me just put in a little parenthesis there. This has almost nothing to do with anything. It's just here in my brain. I have a 13 year old daughter who often says things to her mother she shouldn't. I hear the tone of voice from the living room. She's storming out of the kitchen on the way upstairs. And I stop her. Talitha, forgive me for telling this story. Because it's really a tribute to you. Stop her in the middle of the steps. I say, Talitha, wait a minute. Before you go up, that wasn't you, Talitha. That's your old nature, honey. You're a believer. You're a new woman in Christ. That's not the way the new woman talks. Let's go up and get right with your Lord and your Savior and come and talk to your mom. I just mention that to you because I think if you don't build into your kids an understanding of how they as Christians can sin, they will become class A legalists from the get-go. So, just make sure you have a way of doing the correction and doing the rebuking if the child has made a profession of faith. I'm assuming not every child is a believer, but if they have. So, close that parenthesis wherever that came from. I've totally lost my bearings here now. Thank you. Here's what he says. This is verse 10. But he said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God? And shall we not receive evil? In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. So, you have an exact parallel to verse 22 of chapter one. Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. Here, Job did not sin with his lips. When he said, shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord and not receive evil? Now, here's a catch. He said, I have received evil from the Lord, meaning I have received calamity. I've received my disease from the Lord. Look at verse seven again. Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores. It says Satan struck him with loathsome sores. Is one of those verses wrong? No. No. It's very right to give Satan his due here. Satan was evidently the immediate agent, however he does it. Like the woman that was bent over for 18 years, remember, and Jesus healed her and says, shall not a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bent over for 18 years, not be healed on the Sabbath? Satan does that kind of thing in your life and my life. But what Job knows, knows it because of all these things we're seeing, is that Satan's on a leash. He can't do anything without God's ordaining and permitting. And therefore he's just, he's looking right through the immediate cause up to the ultimate cause and says, shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord and not receive evil? Now, I personally have a vision of heaven at this moment. That moment in which Satan is kept on the leash. You're not going away. You're gonna watch this. And when those two times Job says, blessed be the name of the Lord, though he give and take, and I will not curse him, my wife, because doesn't he have a right to give good and evil? I see 10 million angels and 20 million hands go, blessed be the God of Job for his infinite worth and value in Job's heart. And I see Satan just, that's why we suffer. Those choruses ring out quietly here in hospital rooms among nurses. And they ring out with unbelievable power and the vindication of God's purposes in the heavenly places where all the demons cower and all the angels celebrate the triumph of the worth of God in the hearts of his people. Let me just draw out a few lessons here that are real obvious. Satan aims to destroy your joy in God and your treasuring of God. That's very clear here. Number two, God aims to magnify his worth. We've seen that very clearly. And the mirror that he chooses to show it in is the indestructible joy of his people in him even when they lose everything on the earth. Third, God grants to Satan limited power to cause pain. He's on a leash. Behold, all that he has is in your power, only upon himself. Do not put forth your hand. Chapter one, verse 12. Chapter two, verse six. Behold, he's in your power. Only spare his life. Number four, Satan's work is ultimately the work of God. That's why it says in two, three, you incited me against him. And that's why it says in chapter one, verse 21, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. And that's why it says in chapter two, verse 10, shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord and not receive evil? And just in case we missed it, you might want to flip over to chapter 42. It's the last chapter. Are we putting too much weight on this? Is this really the way the whole book is being conceived and structured by the author? I just want to direct your attention to one verse in chapter 42. Verse 11, then came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before and ate bread with him in his house. And they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him. So there it is. All the evil that the Lord had brought upon him. You know, we're going to turn to the three friends now. There was one thing about which the three friends and Job totally agreed. And it's the one thing that Christians today don't agree with, many. These four, and you could include Elihu here, and you could include Job's wife here. These four, when they grapple with how to solve the problem of suffering, never call God's sovereignty into question, never. That's the first thing we called into question. Amazing. They had other questions. Is he good? Is he righteous? Is he just? But is he in charge? Never. So let's meet these fellows who show up here. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Are coming. They're in chapter two, verses 11 following. Now, when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place. Eliphaz, the Temanite, Bildad, the Shuhite, Zophar, the Namathite. They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort. And then they sat with him for seven days without saying a word, because they were so stunned at his depth of suffering. And that was their golden moment, because they didn't say anything. And that's probably what you should do when you show up at the hospital for a season as well. Just sit quietly. Don't be afraid of the truth. One of the lessons we're going to learn in this next unit, which is a big unit, chapter three through 31, is true theology can hurt people really badly. You can use true statements very unwisely. So keep your eyes peeled for that. Now, I'm going to have to do some real big overviewing here, right? We're going to do chapter 31 in the next 15 minutes or so. What you have in these chapters is three cycles of speeches. What I mean by cycles is this. Eliphaz speaks, Job speaks. Bildad speaks, Job speaks. Zophar speaks, Job speaks. Then it repeats itself again. Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, with Job in between. When you get to the last cycle, it's Eliphaz, Job, Bildad, Job, and it's over. Now, the structure itself, Zophar dropping off the end of the three cycles and breaking the symmetry is not an accident. In fact, the speeches of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar get shorter and shorter and shorter. And Job becomes increasingly faith-filled and increasingly strong as you move through these chapters. Bildad's last speech is a mere six verses. And Zophar can't open his mouth anymore. Job silences his friends. So what we want to see here is what were they saying? What's the big picture of what they were saying? And why were they silenced by what Job was saying? Because neither of them is saying very good things because God really gets in Job's face. Who is this that darkens counsel against me? And he's talking to Job and Job had it better than the three friends. So that's what we want to do in these next few minutes. Now, these fellows break out of their silence because of Job's breaking out of his silence in a way that really makes them upset. Chapter three, verse one. After this, Job opened his mouth. So seven days they're sitting together just groaning in aching silence. Job opened his mouth and cursed the day he was born, the day of his birth. Job said, let that day perish on which I was born. Born. Verse 11. Why did I not die at birth and come out of the womb and expire? Why did the knees receive me or why the breasts that I should nurse? Verse 20, that I should nurse. Verse 20, why is light given to him who is in misery and life to the bitter in soul? Now, Job is questioning whom here? God, because the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. The Lord gives. I'm born by the design of God. Why did you do that to me? I don't like the idea that I was born. Far better not to have been born than to have these boils. That's what he's saying. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar don't like that. And so they begin their work. Chapter four, Eliphaz, verses seven and eight. Remember, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. That is the principle unpacked in the next 25 chapters. The wicked suffer. Now, they say it's soft at first. By the time they're done, they're gonna be brutal. Shows you where an inadequate theology will take you. They are going to be brutal. Chapter five, verse 17. Behold, blessed is the one whom God reproves. Therefore, despise not the discipline of the Almighty. Now, the reason I quote you that is to cut Eliphaz some slack here. Eliphaz is willing to hold out the possibility, this is discipline, and not punitive. That Job is good, and God is disciplining, not punishing. But that vanishes in a hurry. I just wanna show you the complexity of, this writer does not make it easy for us, the way he puts things together. Because things are nuanced, and you think somebody's all bad, and suddenly they're not all bad. Or you think somebody's all good, and then they're not all good. It's a very complex book. Eliphaz does not have a totally haywire theology. That would make it easy if he did, but it's not that easy. Chapter five, verse eight. As for me, I would seek God, and to God I would commit my cause, as though Job weren't. It's too simple, Eliphaz. Job protests, chapter six, verse 10. This would be my comfort. I would even exult in pain unsparing, for I have not denied the words of the Holy One. He's protesting his innocence here. Chapter six, verse 24. Teach me, and I'll be silent. Make me understand how I have gone astray. So you say this is owing to my sin? Show me my sin. He was an upright man, he was blameless, he feared God. He turned away from evil. His reputation throughout the land was, this is a good man, show me my sin. Bildad comes in now and responds in chapter eight, chapter eight, verses three and four. Does God pervert justice, or does the Almighty pervert the right? If your children have sinned against Him, He has delivered them into the hand of their transgression. And I put an exclamation point in my margin way a long time ago. I thought, can you talk like that to this man? God killed him because they sinned. Maybe. If you will seek God, verse five, and plead to the Almighty for mercy, et cetera. Job responds that this is the party line, and he's about tired of it. Chapter nine, verse 22. Chapter nine, verse 22. It's all one, therefore I say, He destroys both the blameless and the wicked. You say the blameless get rewarded, the wicked suffer. I'm telling you, they both suffer. When the disaster brings sudden death, He mocks at the calamity of the innocent. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of its judges. If it is not He, who then is it? In other words, what Job is bringing to bear against the artificial theology of his opponents is reality. It's reality. I can point to 1,000 good people who are suffering, he says, and I can point to 1,000 wicked people who are prospering. Give me your platitudes of the righteous prosper and the wicked suffer. That's a lot of crap. And so is the contemporary prosperity theology because that's what this book is about. Zophar, chapter 11, verse 14. Let Zophar have a word here. Chapter 11, verse 14. If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away and let the injustice dwell, let not injustice dwell in your tents. Surely then you will lift up your face without blemish. You will be secure and not fear. They only have one solution for Job's suffering. You've got hidden sin. That's it. And he's getting tired of hearing it because it is so out of sync with reality. Job knows it and they can't see it for the nose on their face. And so he begins to use sarcasm, Job does in his responses. In chapter 12, verse 31, he talks about these moral commonplaces. In chapter 13, verse 12, your proverbs of ashes. In chapter 13, verse 4, worthless physicians are you all. Chapter 13, verse 3, I would speak to the Almighty. I would desire to argue my case with God, not you. I might get something right from Him. That was the end of cycle one. And the other two cycles don't have anything new. They don't have anything new. They just keep coming back to it again and again, only they get brutal. Consider in cycle two, these words, I'll just read them quickly instead of having you go there. Chapter 15, verse 20, it is the wicked man that rise in pain. Bildad, chapter 18, verse 5, it is the light of the wicked that is put out. Zophar, verse 5 of chapter 20, the joy of the wicked is short. Chip, chip, chip. All they do is talk the old thing. Then here comes cycle three, they're almost done. It gets shorter and shorter. And this time they become as brutal as they can get. It might be good to look at this one. Chapter 22, verse 5. Now this is Eliphaz. He started pretty well and he's ending horribly. Verse 5, chapter 22, is not your evil abundant? There's no end of your iniquities. You have exacted pledges of your brothers for nothing and stripped the naked of their clothing. You have given no water to the weary to drink. And you have withheld bread from the hungry. The man with power possessed in the land and the favored man lived in it. You have sent widows away empty and the arms of the fatherless you have crushed. That is not true. And everybody knows it's not true. They're driven to lies by their theology. A theology that says a sovereign God cannot bring suffering on the righteous. That theology drives a person to lies, which is why it is so pastorally unhelpful. Well, Bildad tries for six verses and Zophar shuts his mouth, concluding lessons here. Number one, true theological statements can be used to harm people and become faults in their divine purpose. I mean, when you read these men, I know you're gonna stumble because they're gonna sound like certain psalms. You read Eliphaz, you read Bildad, you read Zophar, and it sounds just like some psalms. And the psalms are good. They're true. They're divinely inspired. You wanna say, oh, wait a minute. I thought these guys were bad. They are bad. But they're using a lot of good theology with which to do bad stuff. They're so unkind. They're so impatient. They're so brittle. They make so few distinctions. They don't have the capacity to handle the complexity of life with their little simple boxes of you're bad, you get bad. You're good, you get good. That won't work. Job has driven the point and silenced them. And we need to know that if we go to that theology, it won't work. Number two, second lesson. Suffering and prosperity are not distributed in the world in proportion to the evil or the good that a person does. Suffering or prosperity are not dispersed in the world in proportion to the evil or the good that people do. Job is right in chapter 21, verse 30, when he says, the wicked are spared in the day of calamity. Job is right in chapter 12, verse four. The just and blameless man is a laughingstock. And therefore, brothers and sisters, let us be slow to judge each other's hearts by whether we lost a job, or marriage begins to falter, or a child leaves home, or a disease comes, or reputation is sullied. Let us be slow. We know now what that heart is because this and this and this happened. You don't know. You don't know. That's the point. Number three, lesson number three. Nevertheless, even though suffering does not fall and prosperity does not fall according to how much good and evil people have done, nevertheless, God still reigns over the affairs of man from the greatest to the smallest. God is sovereign. That's clear in everything that's said. Let me read you chapter 12, verses 13 following. This is Job. Job the complainer. Chapter 12, verse 13. With God, our wisdom and might, He has counsel and understanding. If He tears down, none can rebuild. If He shuts a man in, none can open. If He withholds the waters, they dry up. If He sends them out, they overwhelm the land. With Him, our strength and sound wisdom, He deceived, the deceived and the deceiver are His. Now that's Job in the midst of his suffering and in the midst of his complaining, saying God is still sovereign. And lastly, there is wisdom behind the apparent arbitrariness of this world, but it is a hidden wisdom. By and large. Not totally, as we'll see when we turn to the speeches of Elihu next. But let me close by reading something from chapter 28. Chapter 28, verses 12 and 13 and verse 23. 28, 12. This is Job. Near the end. Where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Man does not know its worth, and it's not found in the land of the living. It's not in man. Verse 23. God understands the way to it, and He knows its place. Job, and I'll show you more of this, especially from chapter 19 as we make the transition to the speeches of Elihu. Another young man appears on the scene, and he doesn't like what Job has said, and he doesn't like what Eliphaz built out, and so far has said, who is this man? Is what he says better, or is it more of the same? So we're going to build a bridge to Elihu by going back to chapter 19 where Job says, I know that my Redeemer lives, and from my flesh, I will see God. Let's pray. Father in Heaven, I tremble at the experience of Job. I do not predict what my emotions would be if You struck me with such boils. I pray that every person in this room would be made ready for the day of their calamity and the day of their prosperity. For Satan destroys us with prosperity as often as he destroys us with calamity. Indeed, in America, I believe, more often, faith is destroyed by prosperity than by calamity. So help us to be ready. And I pray that You would strengthen our faith and cause Yourself to be cherished, treasured, revered, above life and breath and everything. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.