Message by Pastor John Culp : February 24, 2008
“Behold, I Tell You a Mystery – Part 4”
Text – Job 42:1-17
For a number of years my wife Jennifer’s sister and her family lived near Stone Mountain, Georgia. So we visited them there several times over the years. On at least one of those visits, we took a trip to the natural wonder for which the area is named. Maybe you’ve been to Stone Mountain yourself. Whether you have or not, I suspect that you have had an experience similar to mine when approaching most any mountain from the distance.
Stone Mountain is really quite a striking piece of rock. From a distance it looks almost as if the Creator had been playing on some primordial beach. He took a God-sized bucket full of packed wet sand, overturned it, and removed the bucket to leave it sitting in there in the middle of its flat surroundings. Geologists call Stone Mountain a granite dome monadnock. Anybody who’s ever been there would surely call it a wonder. Some say it’s the largest exposed piece of granite in the world.
Because it sits in the midst of relatively flat surroundings, you can see it from miles away in every direction. And as you approach Stone Mountain, you have a striking experience. When you first get close enough to see it well (from perhaps five miles away), it appears to be fairly small – you know, maybe so high (perhaps ten inches?). Now of course though you know perfectly well that it’s much bigger than that, such is the appearance.
But you know what happens: the closer you get, the bigger and bigger it looms before you. When you finally arrive at Stone Mountain, you realize: It’s enormous! It’s more than five miles in circumference at the base. Carved on one side is the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world, depicting three heroes of the Confederacy: Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. In fact the mountain rises 825 feet above the surrounding Georgia countryside.
There is a path leading up to the summit. My brother-in-law Bob and I thought we would run up to the top! But of course we ended up walking – huffing and puffing – the last half of the way or more.
Stone Mountain may appear fairly small from the distance. But as is the case with any real mountain, you don’t have any idea how big it is until you get close to it.
The point of my telling you all this is that God is a lot like that.
Throughout these weeks of Lent, we’re talking about the problem and the mystery of suffering. There is of course no question that suffering is a problem, in more ways than one. I call it a mystery because of what we Christians affirm about God. As you know, we insist that God is both all-good and all-powerful. The thorny question has always been this: If God is like that, why is there sin, why is there suffering in the world?
We’ve seen in the weeks so far that the Bible has a lot to say in response! In the first place, the doctrine of Original Sin means that we have no right to expect all good things from God. In light of the universal reality of human sin, the real question is not why bad things happen to all of us – and terrible things to some. Rather the real wonder is why God sends good into any of our lives – which of course He does, and in abundance!
We have seen also that there is just a lot God chooses not to tell us in this life.
This ancient tale of Job is a rich source of biblical truth on the whole mystery of pain.
to draw us closer to Himself.
Let’s reflect together on what that meant for Job, and what it means for us today.
Think first about what Job learns from all his suffering.
Most of the book (chapters 3-37) is taken up with theological debate. At the end of chapter 2, three of Job’s friends appear on the scene to comfort and console him. They do just that for a time. In fact, the three sit with Job in silence for seven whole days; they tear their clothes in the classic expression of grief and throw dust on their heads.
But then they begin to speak with Job, and a debate soon develops. In essence Job’s friends express the common wisdom of their age – a perspective still very much alive and well in the year 2008! They acknowledge Job’s general goodness. But in the face of their friend’s terrific suffering, they are absolutely convinced that he must have done something evil to directly deserve all that’s happened to him. And that’s only common sense, right? Any God who is all-good and all-powerful would not allow such a good man to suffer so unless he deserved it, would He?
In response, Job steadfastly insists on his ongoing innocence.
You may recall from last week that Satan in proposing this diabolical test to God was absolutely certain that if he were allowed to press Job hard enough, the allegedly ‘good’ man would surely curse God to His face (1:11; 2:5). Job does curse the day he was born (chapter 3). But he never curses God.
On the other hand, he does cry out to God, seeking both vindication and an answer to the mystery of his profound pain.
In fact God does finally answer Job. But He gives not at all the answer Job expected. Job has presumed to cross-examine the almighty God! But now the Creator turns the tables on His servant. He confronts Job with the reality of their relationship to one another:
“Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said: ‘Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know!” (38:1-5 NKJV)
God goes on (through the succeeding four chapters) to drive home the point that Job cannot even control the mighty forces of nature – let alone understand them. And the clear implication is that of course the God who created them does both!
What pain alone could not do to Job, this ‘close encounter’ with the Lord accomplishes: Job falls (as it were) on his face before the Almighty and repents. He confesses not any previous sin that had caused his sufferings. (We the readers know there were none.) Instead Job confesses and repents of the audacity to question the Lord of the Universe. He admits the severe limits of his knowledge. He acknowledges that he had known God before from a distance; now he has seen his Lord with his own eyes.
And it is that very encounter with God that ends in Job’s repentance and his merciful restoration from God.
Now we need to step back and consider the broad truths the story teaches. In response to his close encounter with God, Job repents. That’s entirely consistent with a pattern see throughout Scripture. When Isaiah has his great vision of the holy God sitting on His throne in the heavenly temple, he cries out: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (Isaiah 6:5 NKJV).
Or there is the response of the man who would become one of Jesus’ closest disciples, on seeing what really seems to be one of the less impressive miracles of Jesus: “When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!’ ” (Luke 5:8 NKJV).
Job has a close encounter with the holy God, and that meeting leads him similarly to be newly aware of his own frailty and sin and need before the Lord. He comes to the simple but life-changing realization that God is God, and he’s not!
And it is critical for us to note that Job does not learn this (and likely never would have learned it!) until he suffers greatly.
Job’s pain is the very road to the mountain of God’s greatness.
What can we take away from this epic tale? We need to ask ourselves: What is the real purpose of life? People have long realized that we have much to learn from suffering.
The ancient Greeks had a proverb: He who suffers much will know much.
More than 500 years ago, Thomas À Kempis (ca. 1380-1471) wrote: “He who knows how to suffer will enjoy much peace. Such a one is a conqueror of himself and lord of the world, a friend of Christ and an heir of heaven.” (Edythe Draper, Draper’s Book of Quotations for the Christian World [Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1992]. Entries 10851-10852.)
Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892), the great British preacher of the 19th century, said: “I owe more to the fire and the hammer and the file than to anything else in my Lord’s workshop. I sometimes question whether I have ever learned anything except through the rod. When my schoolroom is darkened, I see [the] most. (Draper, ibid., entry 10855)
Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote: “It is by those who have suffered that the world has been advanced.” (Draper, ibid., entry 10858)
People even in our own culture recognize the truth of this. In a survey taken not too many years back, 87% of people when asked said that a painful event (such as death, illness, a breakup or divorce, etc.) caused them to find a more positive meaning in life. (Peter Ebersole and Joan Flores, “Brain/Mind Bulletin,” reported in Bottom Line Personal, 1/30/91. “To Verify,” Leadership.)
Don’t forget: The real purpose of this life is not to make things easy for us. It is to get us ready for eternity! We say often that “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy [H]im forever” (Book of Confessions, 7.001). If we you really believe that, we shouldn’t have too much trouble taking that long view of our lives, recognizing that adversity now may well prepare us for what comes after.
We note also that this glorifying of God goes hand in hand with enjoying Him forever.
The conclusion of Job’s story is helpful in that context. Job ends up with twice as much as he had before all his sufferings. Rich Madsen has reminded me that Job even has twice as many children, since his second ten will join the ten taken from him in heaven!
So it is with our salvation. Any sufferings we must endure now are nothing in comparison with the blessings of eternity (see Romans 8:18-25).
Still, just like Job, we want answers! But just like Job, we’re not going to get the answers we may want! If we listen carefully, we will learn the same truth Job did: “God is God, and I am are not!” That’s why, for example (as our youth reminded us earlier), we need to be very careful about using even God’s name lightly.
But Job teaches us that the greatness of God tells us all we need to know for now about all of life – including the mystery of suffering.
God in His mercy has sent relatively little pain into my life over the years. I doubt that I could even claim to have ever really ‘suffered.’ But as I look back on the difficult times I have endured, I find this. I don’t know about you, but one of the main reasons I hate pain is that it makes me so inwardly focused! When I’m hurting (in body or in spirit), I’m even more self-centered than usual!
Job may well have been like that as well – at first. But in the midst of his great pain, somehow he has this close encounter with God. And that makes all the difference. It leads Job to lift his gaze from his own belly-button so that he can look into the face of the Almighty. And as he does, he discovers a great truth: It’s not about him! God is God, and Job isn’t. And the praise that he offers up to God does more for him than any logical ‘answer’ to the mystery ever could have.
The Apostle Paul in today’s New Testament lesson offers similar praise as he reflects on the wonders of salvation God has given in Christ:
“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out! ‘Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor?’ ‘Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?’ For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen.” (Romans 11:33-36 NIV)
Paul couldn’t understand the mystery of God’s amazing grace – any more than Job could the mystery of his own pain. But to respond to both with praise is to find the path to real life.
There is an old fable that says the gold objected to the heat of the furnace and asked how long it should be expected to endure such stress. The answer was, “Until the refiner’s purpose is accomplished.”
“And when will that be?” asked the gold.
The answer was, “When the refiner can see his own face in you.”
(Robert C. Shannon, 1000 Windows, [Cincinnati, Ohio: Standard Publishing Company, 1997.])
It took the heat of the furnace for Job to see the face of God. But once he did, he found the life-giving power of repentance. He even came to shine so the Lord could see His own face reflected back in His servant’s. It can be the same in suffering for you and for me.
How big is God? We can’t finally answer that, of course! But let’s try thinking in terms we can understand. Let’s think in terms of distance. Suppose that you started driving in a car. And suppose that you have a large bladder and a large gas tank, so you can drive a long way in a day. Let’s say you can press on to cover even 1,000 miles in a day.
How big is big? Well, the United States is pretty big country. At 1,000 miles per day, you could cover the country from one end to other in less than three days. But God is bigger than the United States!
Let’s keep traveling at 1,000 miles per day. At that rate it would take you about eight months to get to the moon. But God is bigger than the distance from the earth to the moon.
If kept on covering 1,000 miles in a day, how long do you suppose it would take you to get to our sun? About 255 years! But God is bigger than distance from the earth to the sun.
At the same speed, if you wanted to drive to the center of our Milky Way Galaxy (better make sure your tank is full before you start on this one), it would take you no less than 419 billion years! But God is bigger than the Milky Way Galaxy.
And the Milky Way is one of billions of galaxies in the universe. Yet God is far bigger even than the observable universe!
It was in the depths of his great pain that Job came to the mountain – the mountain where he gained some sense of how big God is. And that discovery made all the difference for Job.
B.M. Launderville has written:
“The vine clings to the oak during the fiercest of storms. Although the violence of nature may uproot the oak, twining tendrils still cling to it. If the vine is on the side opposite the wind, the great oak is its protection. If it is on the exposed side, the tempest only presses it closer to the trunk. In some of the storms of life, God intervenes and shelters us; while in others He allows us to be exposed, so that we will be pressed more closely to Him.” (Today in the Word, April 1989, p.17)
As Job was pressed close to God in pain, the Lord enabled him to see something of His own immensity – and that led to life-giving repentance for Job.
God wants to use the storms of your life to do no less!
Let us pray. Merciful Father, when the storms of life come to us and to those we love, please give us the wisdom of Your servants Job and Paul. Please help us to find meaning in mystery and life in death as we cry out: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out! ‘Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor?’ ‘Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?’ For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen.”