THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Broadcast date: March 2, 2014                                  

Theme: "Job’s Absolute Trust in God" (#3713)

Radio pastor: Rev. Rodney Kleyn

Dear Radio Friends,

        Great treasures are not easily come by.  In fact, what makes them so precious is the pain and trouble that has gone into producing and accumulating them.  That’s true of Job’s confession here.  These words are a wonderful illustration of what Jesus says in Luke 6:45:  “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good...for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.”  Job’s words do not come from nowhere, out of the blue, but rather they show what Job prior to this had been storing up in his heart, and now, out of that treasure-house, his mouth speaks.  Job’s words reveal that he is a man of great faith.

        When Job says, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him,” he answers both the slander of Satan and the charge of his three friends.  Satan’s accusation was that Job feared God only for his wealth and prosperity and good physical health, that God with these good things had put a hedge of protection around Job, and that it was only because of this that Job feared God.  His claim was that, should Job lose all he had, God’s grace could never sustain and preserve him in his faith.  How ably Satan is answered in these words of Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”  Job is saying, “Yes, God has taken my wealth and health and family from me, yet I still trust Him.  And, should He go the next step and take away my life, I will still trust Him.”  In one sentence he silences the Devil.  And we see here the importance of truth in fighting Satan, of the Word of God as a sword against our spiritual enemies.

        In his famous hymn, “A Mighty Fortress,” Martin Luther wrote these words.

The Prince of Darkness grim,

We tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure,

For lo, his doom is sure;

One little word shall fell him.

        One little word from Job’s mouth, and Satan is silenced.  You see, this is how you defeat Satan, with the Word of God.

        This little word from Job also answers Job’s friends, who had insinuated that Job was a hypocrite, that all his trouble had come because he was hiding some great sin, which he needed to confess, and from which he needed to turn in repentance.  These words of Job are the best answer to their accusation, for no one but a sincere child of God would say this.  Would a hypocrite trust in God, when God slays him?  Will a deceiver cling to God when God is smiting him?  Of course not. Job’s faith and godliness shine through here, and it is only because of their own pride and arrogance that his friends do not see it.

        “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”

        Job’s confession here is in expression of his absolute trust and faith in God.  Job envisions the ultimate test of his faith, and says that even then, he will cling to God.  “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”

        To see that, we need to be careful to interpret these words of Job properly.  What does Job mean when he says, “Though he slay me”?

        Let us understand first, what Job is not saying.

        Job is not saying that this would be preferable, that he would prefer it if God slew him, that it would be easier for him to trust God, if God just took away his life.  He is not advocating mercy killing, or begging God to kill him.  Earlier in the book, in chapter 3, Job did this when, in bitterness of soul and deep dark depression, he said that he longed for death, and he asked, Why is life given to the man whose way is hid?

        But now, instead of thinking of those earlier words of Job, we should actually think of God’s earlier words to Satan, in chapter 2, “He is in thy hand, but save his life.”  God is saying to Satan, I will allow any agony in Job’s life, but not the last and bitter enemy of death.  I will keep Job from the worst.

        Job also does not mean by this, as some commentators have it, that should God send him to hell, he would still trust in Him.  That is impossible, because there is no one in hell who trusts in God.  All who trust in God are spared from hell.  The only one who suffered hell, and still trusted in God, was God’s own Son, Jesus, who, when He in our place suffered the bitterest pains and torments of hell on the cross, cried out, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?”  He expressed what hell is, to be forsaken of God, and yet, in that moment when He experienced such agony, He still said, “My God.”  No mere man could do that.  It was only because He was the eternal and all-powerful Son of God that Jesus could say that.  There is wonderful comfort here for all who trust in God.  God may slay you, but He will never send you to hell.  Jesus has paid the price, taken our place, and redeemed us from eternal death.

        Also, Job is not being reckless here with his words, in order to get one up on his friends who are spouting off.  Job is not boasting here, “Though he slay me....”  Someone who does not know what it is to be tested and tried might do that.  Maybe a Christian who has never been physically persecuted for his faith, or who has never experienced the pain of death, might boastingly say, “When that time comes, I will trust in God.”  No, Job is not boasting in good times.  Rather, he is already going through the most intense trial that any man could know.  He has lost his wealth, his children, his support, his friends, his sense of God’s love, and from the midst of that trial he expresses his absolute trust in God.

        And neither is Job talking flippantly about death here.  No, he knows the justice of God and he knows his own sin.  He knows that at death we must all stand before God the judge.  Later in the chapter he prays, “How many are my iniquities and sins?  Make me to know my transgression and my sin.”  Someone who prays that, does not flippantly say, Let God kill me.  Job is not acquiescing here to the advice of his wife, Curse God and die.

        No, still he acknowledges the sovereignty of God.  “Though he slay me.”  He is saying that God has the right to do that, God is the one who kills and makes alive (Deut. 32:39).  With the psalmist in Psalm 31 he says, “My times are in thy hand.”  The right to life belongs to God, God has the right to slay him and God might yet do that.  And he realizes that should God slay him, that would be the ultimate test of his faith.

        “Though he slay me” is an all-inclusive statement.  Job includes here every possible evil that God could send to him.  He includes in this statement all the trouble that God has already sent on him.  Though God has taken away flock and field, family and friends, health and happiness; though all God has left me with is a pile of ashes and broken pieces of pottery, yet will I trust in Him.

        Included in this statement of Job is also the physical and spiritual pain that he endures.  Job is smitten with the most excruciating pain from his toes to his head; so sore is he, that he cannot sleep, that he has no appetite, and that he scrapes away, hoping for the slightest relief.  In his soul, he does not experience the love of God, he does not have peace and joy, but only bitterness, and yet he says, “I will trust in Him.”

        This bold confession includes the loss of loved ones dear to him, his ten children.  Let us think about that a minute.  The Lord may suddenly take away from you the dearest person in your life—your husband or your wife.  Can you trust Him then?  He might take out of your home dear children.  You may have to sit and watch a spouse, a child, your closest companion, suffer and die.  Will you trust Him?

        Commenting on this Charles Spurgeon says,

You may be the last of the roses, left alone, scarcely blooming, but bowing your head amid the heavy showers of sorrow which drench you to the soul.  Now, believer, if you are in such a deplorable case as that, can you still say, “If the Lord should go even further than this, should his next arrows penetrate my own lacerated heart, even then, as I bleed in death, I will kiss his hand”?

        You see, this statement not only includes what Job has experienced thus far, but goes to the extreme possibility, to what Job has not yet experienced, to death.  Death is bitter.  Death is the last enemy.  Death is final.

        We read Job’s words, and we wonder, Could I say such a thing?  “Should God slay me, I will trust in Him.”  Can you say that?  Let us imagine that this week you find out you have terminal cancer that cannot be treated, and the doctor says you should count your remaining days not in years and months, but in weeks and days.  The clear will of God is that you are going to die.  Would you able to say, “God is slaying me, and I will trust in Him?”  Maybe you are a family man, with seven or eight mouths to feed, and a wife who needs your daily moral and spiritual support; or maybe you are a young person, just coming into the prime of your life with a large and bright future before you; or maybe you are a mother who is constantly needed in the home—so much and so many depend on you....  And God says, “Your time has come!”  You will die, not just by cancer or car accident or some other means, but God Himself says, “I am going to take away your life, I will slay you”—how, under such a trial, can the believer confess, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him”?

        This is what Job is saying.

        It is an amazing confession of absolute trust in God.

        Job’s faith here includes these four elements.

        Job depends on God completely.

        Job believes in God only.

        Job hopes in God entirely.

        Job waits on God patiently.

        This is his faith.

        First, he depends on God completely.  In faith, Job throws himself entirely on the Lord.  Here, as Job considers the possibility of his own death, he realizes that there is nowhere else to turn, there is no one else on whom he can depend.  Did you ever think about that?  In death, there is no one else that can save or deliver you or bring you comfort or hope.  In death, you lose all contact with the living and you are alone with God.  Should God slay you, will you trust Him or curse Him?  God is the only one who can bring any consolation and comfort in death.  That comfort comes through believing in God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who through His death conquered the curse of the grave.  You see, death is not just physical.  You do not go to the grave and that is the end of it.  No, there is also spiritual and eternal death, the torment of hell for sins unpaid.  And trusting in Jesus Christ, who died for sin, is the only way that we can face death with any confidence.  Job throws himself here on the Lord.  Later in the book he specifically confesses his trust in Jesus Christ, when he says, I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that even though this body will be eaten by worms, yet in my flesh shall I see God.  Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.  That is complete dependence.

        Second, in faith Job believes in God only.  His friends have said a lot of things to him.  His bitter circumstances seem to tell their own story.  But Job’s faith is in the supernatural, not the natural.  He is not an evidentialist or a scientist who believes only what he sees.  No, Job trusts in the revelation of God, in God’s promises, and in God’s greater unseen work of salvation.  He knows God as Sovereign and Good.  These are the treasures that Job has been storing up in his heart, and out of the abundance of that heart, he now speaks.  His faith in God is a faith in God’s revelation.  And that, dear friends, is true faith.  Faith is not a leap in the dark.  Faith is not a guessing game.  Faith does not come through observation.  But faith is a trust in what God has said about Himself, it is to believe for true all that He has revealed in His Word, the Bible.  How privileged we are to have the Scriptures in our hands.  Living in Abraham’s Day, Job did not have this.  There was at that time no written Word of God.  Instead, Job depended on an oral tradition of God’s promises and of history, and on occasional special revelations through an angel or a prophet.  What Job knew was just a sketch compared to what we have in the Bible.  And yet Job’s faith was this, that he believed in God alone.

        Third, in faith Job hoped in God entirely.  The word that is used in the passage here for trust, “yet will I trust in him,” is actually the Hebrew word for “hope.”  “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.”  Job’s situation looked hopeless.  He had lost everything, and contemplating the possibility that God would slay him on top of all this, things sure looked hopeless.  But Job, in hope, looks beyond his circumstances to God and to the eternal things that God has in store for him.  “Hope” describes the child of God’s life in this world.  As Christian’s we live in hope.  We do not live for the here and the now, but we live in hope of heaven.  And again, this was something Job had always done.  Even in his prosperity  Job didn’t set his heart on his wealth.  He was a spiritually minded man, who had his eye fixed on God and heaven and eternal realities.  He found out that health, wealth, and earthly relationships will disappoint, but he also knew that God would never disappoint, and so he hoped in Him.  When we speak of our hope as Christians, we are not simply describing a desire for something different.  Generally we use the word that way.  If we are sick, we say, “I hope I feel better soon”; or if it is raining, we say, “I hope the sun will come out.”  But we do not know whether what we hope for will actually happen.  Our Christian hope is different from that.  Yes, it is a desire for something different and better—that describes our longing—but our hope is also something sure, because the object for which we long is real and it has already been secured for us.  Heaven is real, and Jesus has opened the way for us to go there.  He is there preparing a place for us, so that he make take us to be with him.  Our hope will never make us ashamed (Rom. 5:5).  So Job’s hope goes beyond death, to heaven.  That is why he can say, though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.

        Then fourth, Job’s faith is a patient waiting on God.  In faith he rested in God, he believed God’s word, he hoped beyond the present, but also he waited.  That is a part of faith, waiting on God.  We do not always and immediately receive the thing for which we hope, and so we have to wait on God; we have to endure and persevere through difficult situations.  That is what Job did, and here, especially, he stands out as an example for us.  In James 5:11, we read, “Behold, we count them happy which endure.  Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.”  Trusting in God, Job endured under a very heavy burden and persevered through the trial.  No, Job did not do this perfectly, he did ask questions that he should not have, but there was one thing Job did, this, that he clung to God.  He did not let go.

        And that is because God was clinging to Job.  God did not let Job go.  In Psalm 51, David prays, “Take not thy Spirit from me.”  God never took His Spirit from Job.  Job’s faith in God was the result of an inseparable and permanent union between God and Job, by the Holy Spirit.  That explains Job’s confession too.  What Jesus said to Peter after his beautiful confession, applies here to Job, and to any believer who sits with Job and says, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”  Jesus said to Peter, “Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.”  Only by the powerful work of God’s Spirit can anyone look death in the face and say to God who brings it, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”

        Job’s faith is the remarkable and miraculous fruit of the work of God’s sovereign grace in his heart.  We remember it was God who challenged Satan with the words, “Hast thou considered my servant Job?”  God was confident that Job’s faith would not fail, because God Himself had chosen, saved, and changed Job.  And that is our confidence too as sometimes we contemplate difficult situations that we have not yet experienced and that we can hardly imagine having to go through. God’s grace will sustain, and through the trial itself, God will strengthen our trust in Him.

        The best place for Job to be, spiritually, was right here, on the ash heap, in pain and grief, because from here Job looked to God, and made this glorious confession, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”

        Oh may God so sustain and teach us in our trials.

        Let us pray,

        Father, we can hardly imagine having to go through what Job experienced, and yet, unless Christ comes soon, all of us at some time will have to face death.  Our times are in Thy hand.  Lord, sustain us so that we will be able then to say, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”  Give to us the faith of Job, so that we depend on Thee, believe Thy Word, hope in things unseen, and bear patiently through trial.  For Jesus’ sake we pray.  

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Broadcast Date: February 9, 2014 (#3710)
Theme: When Things Go from Bad to Worse
Radio pastor: Rev. Rodney Kleyn (Covenant of Grace PRC, Spokane WA)

Dear Radio Friends,

      When we are struck by pain and grief, often one of our first responses is anger.  How can God do this to me?  How can this be fair and loving?  We rage against God.  And even though in sympathy we might say that such a response is understandable, we have to see and say also that such a response is sinful, that it arises out of a lack of trust in God, and a weak view of God.

      This was the response of Job’s wife when they had lost everything, including their ten children.  She said to Job, “Dost thou still retain thine integrity?  Curse God and die.”  But Job, instead, made a wonderful confession concerning the sovereignty of God.  He said, “What?  Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?”  And the Holy Spirit notes that “in all this did not Job sin with his lips.”

      These words of Job and his wife are recorded for us in the book of Job, chapter 2 and in today’s message we are going to be looking at the first ten verses of this chapter.  For Job, things have gone from bad to worse, from very bad to extremely worse.  Back in chapter 1 Job, in one day, lost all his assets, all his servants but a few, and all ten of his children.  Standing among ten freshly dug graves, Job made this beautiful confession, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither:  the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away:  blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

      Behind Job’s suffering was Satan, attempting to get Job to curse God.  Satan’s contention had been that Job feared God only because of how good he had it in life.  Satan was saying that Job’s faith, and God’s sustaining grace, were not sufficient to preserve Job in his trust in God.  But Job’s confession proved otherwise, and, in round one of Job’s suffering, Satan is defeated.

      Chapter 2 begins with Satan appearing again with the other angels in God’s presence in heaven, a scene very similar to that in chapter 1, verses 6 through 12.  In these two scenes we get a glimpse into heaven, and the invisible war that is constantly going on between Satan and God.

      But why are these recorded in Scripture?  That is an important question.  The reason is not simply so that we know about the reality of Satan and his demons and their attacks on God’s people, but especially to show to us that God is absolutely sovereign over the works of the Devil.  Satan cannot move or lift a finger apart from God’s will.

      We see that in Job 2.  Already in verse 1, Satan presents himself before the Lord.  Does not that tell us who is the superior here?  This is not a contest of equals, but with all the other angels who are servants and messengers of God, Satan also comes.

      And then in the following verses we see that God issues a challenge to Satan.  Often we think of Satan as the one who is challenging God and challenging Job, but if we read the passage closely, we see that in actuality it’s the other way around.  God challenges Satan.  Verse 2, “The Lord said unto Satan, whence comest thou?”  You see, God takes the initiative here.  Satan has already been challenged once and has been defeated.  He is hardly ready to bring this up to God.  But it is God’s will that things get worse for Job, and God is going to use Satan as the instrument to bring that on Job.  He initiates the conversation with Satan by asking “From whence comest thou?”  God is not afraid of Satan or of what Satan has been doing.

      And then you have Satan’s very evasive answer. “From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.”

      You ask your children who are not making any noise, “What are you doing?” and the answer is, “Oh, nothing,” and you know that means they have been up to something.

      Satan’s answer is like that.  “Oh, I’ve just been wandering around, checking things out,” when in fact he has been going around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he might devour, and his latest attack has been on Job.

      In chapter 1, it was Satan, yes, by God’s permission, but it was Satan who had brought all Job’s misery on him in an attempt to get him to curse God.  He is the accuser of the brethren.  His name, Satan, means adversary.  And now, defeated after round 1, he says, “I’ve just been wandering around in the earth.”  He does not dare to bring up the name of Job.

      But God does, and continuing His challenge, He says to Satan in verse 3, “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil?  And still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.”

      What we should see here is the confidence of God in His challenge to Satan.  God is saying to Satan, “See, My grace is sufficient to sustain and to give strength to My people in the troubles of life.  See, Satan, My love is stronger than any trouble that comes.  See, Satan, My people have a confidence and a hope and faith that supersedes all the troubles of life.  See Job, Satan, you said he would curse Me, but he has not.  He still fears Me, he still hates what is evil, and he has retained his faith through immense trial.”

      Is this not a beautiful truth, the truth of God’s preserving grace?  In the New Testament, in Romans 8:35-39, it is stated in a very positive way, when Paul says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shalltribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.  Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.  For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,  nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  This is what God has demonstrated in Job’s life.

      Now, you would expect Satan to stop right here and to admit defeat, but no, he will never admit he is wrong or weak or defeated.  In defiance of God, he says, “Skin for skin, yea all that a man hath will he give for his life.  But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face.”

      Sometimes, after we lose our possessions maybe in a house fire or car accident, we will say, “Well, at least no one was hurt, and we still have each other.”  Or, maybe we lose everything, and then we say, at least I still have my health.  Satan’s contention is that this is how Job is thinking—he still has his health, so of course he is still faithful, but take away his health, and he will curse thee.

      And confidently again God says, “Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life.”

      With this, Satan has unrestrained power to harm Job himself, only he must not bring anything on him that will threaten his life.  And so Satan goes out from God’s presence to assail Job.  He wants to prove to God that Job will indeed curse him, and so he comes with a two-pronged attack.  All that Job has left is his health, his wife, and his life.  Satan cannot touch his life, but he will use his health and his wife now against him.

      Job 2:7-8, Satan “smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown.  And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself.”

      What exactly this disease was we do not know, but its symptoms were terrible.  The boils themselves covered Job’s entire body and produced a hot, searing, and penetrating pain.  They broke out into sores that scabbed over and became incredibly itchy, and Job, having no ointment or medicine to ease the pain, scraped at his body with a broken piece of a pot.  That was his only relief.  With this disease came insomnia, worms, nightmares, bad breath, weight loss, chills, diarrhea, and blackened skin (Job 7:4-5, 13-14; 19:17, 20; 21:6; 30:27).  So severely was Job smitten by this disease that he was forced, as an unclean man, to sit outside the city in a pile of ashes, and when his friends came to see him, they were so shocked at his appearance that they did not recognize him (Job 2:12).  Already reeling in grief and loss, Satan attacked him with this incurable disease with its insufferable pain.

      And now, understand, that Satan’s attack on Job is not only physical.  No, whenever we are sick or in pain, we are usually pretty cranky too.  And, not just cranky with people, but also with the sickness itself, and we start to feel sorry for ourselves.  Why me?  Why is God doing this to me?  There is a spiritual assault, an assault on our souls, a challenge to our faith, that comes with physical illness.  And Satan is bringing those things to Job too.  In these moments when he is physically weak, his faith is being challenged.  Satan wants Job to curse God to His face.  That is Job’s temptation here.  Those are the thoughts that Satan is putting into his mind.

      We know that from what Job’s wife says to him.  Here is the second prong of Satan’s attack.  Now, understand, that Mrs. Job had experienced the same loss as Job.  Her wealth and status were gone in a day.  Her mother’s heart was torn by grief in the loss of her children.  And understand, too, that she is not an evil woman, but rather the beloved wife of the godly Job, who with him had raised ten godly children, and who would be the mother of the children God would again later give to Job.  But now under her grief, she is broken, and she becomes an ally of Satan, to tempt Job to give up and to curse God.  We can feel the intensity of the moment, and can understand her anger and grief.  But we do not justify it.  It was sinful and wrong.

      There is a double caution here for us.  On the one hand, just because someone is a sincere Christian who cares about us does not mean we should always follow his advice when we are in trouble.  Good people, who love us, can give very bad advice.  Our counsel, ultimately, must be from the Word of God.  And then, on the other hand, we must be very careful not to tempt others by what we say, or by how we respond to a situation.  That is why the best response to a severe trial is to be silent, as Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God.”  Otherwise we respond out of pain and emotion, out of what we are feeling and experiencing, as did Job’s wife.

      How does Job respond?  Or we could say, What kind of response does God’s unfailing grace produce in His dear child, Job?

      We point to four things here in Job 2.

      First, Job acknowledges that he is a sinner who deserves nothing more than what God is giving to him here.  At the end of verse 8 we read that Job sat down among the ashes.  To sit in ashes, and to smear the ashes on one’s face and body, was a sign, not only of grief, but also of personal humility.  It was to say, I am black in my sin before God.  Later, in chapter 42:6, Job will say, “I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.”  In sitting in ashes, Job shows that his heart is still ruled by the confession he had made in chapter 1, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” He did not deserve anything more from God.

      Second, in answer to his wife, Job is amazingly tender.  When we are sick and tired we become impatient especially with those who are closest to us.  Here is Job, racked with pain, and the one who should have been his support and help turns against him.  What does Job do?  He rebukes her, yes, but he does not berate her or call her a fool, rather he says to her, “That’s not how a child of God speaks.  What you’ve said is what a fool, who denies God, would say.”  It shows us that Job himself is thinking of how he as a child of God should respond to what has happened in his life.

      Third, Job does not blame others for what has happened to him, but instead receives it from the Lord.  He could have.  He does not know of Satan’s conversation with God, but he does know how Satan works, and he could have said, good things come from God and this evil must come from Satan.  He could have said, it was the Sabeans and the Chaldeans that took all my stuff.  But he does not do this.  Instead he rests in the truth of God’s sovereignty, even when the evils come at the hands of others.  He realizes that God is in control.

      And so, fourth, he makes another beautiful confession concerning the sovereignty of God.  “What?  Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive evil?”  In his loss, and now in his sickness, he says, “This is all from God.  And I accept it as such.”  That is one of the strongest statements of faith ever uttered about God and suffering.  Stronger even than his confession at the end of chapter one.  There, he said, “God gave and God has taken away.”  Now he says that evil in his life, and by evil he means the bad things that happen in this life, evil is from the hand of God.

      Many today will not say this.  Instead they have a dualistic view, which says that all evil comes from Satan, and they would say that we blaspheme God to say that He sends evil.  But here, the Holy Spirit tells us that Job did not sin with his lips by saying that evil is from the hand of God.

      We ask, how can evil come from God?  The answer is that He is sovereign over even the devil, and He uses Satan to accomplish His purpose in our lives.  Satan does not see it that way.  He thinks that he can tempt and hurt and destroy God’s people.  But the truth is that whenever he brings evil and temptation into our lives, he is simply being used by God to test us and to build up our faith.  We see here the victory of God’s grace in us over the assaults of Satan.

      And so Job rests here in the truth of the sovereignty and goodness of his God.  Yes, as we go on in the book we will see that he is going to wrestle with his suffering, but never does he deny or curse God.  Job teaches us where to look in our pain and grief.

      But now, if all we had in the Bible was the story of Job, we would easily become discouraged, because, well, we just do not measure up to Job.  In the troubles that come in our lives, which are not nearly as severe as Job’s were, we are not always patient and God-honoring in our responses.

      Then we must learn to look away from Job, to perhaps the only one who ever suffered more than Job, that is to Jesus Christ.  He was blameless, there was never one like him in all the earth.  He feared God, He hated evil, He was sinless, and yet He subjected Himself to a level of temptation and suffering much greater than Job ever knew.  His adversary, like Job’s, was Satan.  His suffering, like Job’s, came with an increasing intensity throughout His life.  All through His life the shadow of the cross hung over Him.  And as He suffered, physically, mentally, spiritually He was being prepared for the final hour of His suffering, on the cross.  In the crucifixion He suffered intense physical pain, He suffered the reproach and rejection of men, and, on top of it all, in a way we can never understand, He suffered the agonies and torments of hell in our place.

      And because He has done this, we who believe on Him, we His people, are able to endure whatever evils God sends to us in this life.

      By His death, Jesus lifted God’s curse and God’s heavy hand of wrath from our lives, so that all things under God’s sovereign guidance work for our eternal good.

      And in His resurrection life, Jesus comes by His Holy Spirit to dwell in us, and to give us the strength we need for every trial.  I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

      And today, Jesus lives at God’s right hand as our ready helper—the one who has endured every trial, who was tempted in all points like as we are, and who is able to help us in time of need.

      Let us go to Him.  Yes, here you have Job.  You see in him a wonderful example of a child of God enduring suffering.  But looking to Jesus we see how that is possible.

      Let us pray,

      Father, we know and confess that Thou art sovereign, absolutely sovereign, over all our sufferings.  Even Satan is used to carry out Thy eternal purposes.  Father, we rest in Thy sovereign power and control.  Teach us, Lord, to accept everything that comes into our lives, the evil as well as the good, from Thy hand.  Give us grace to be like Thy servant Job, who, though he did not understand what was happening, trusted in and confessed thy goodness.  Lord, dwell in us by the power of Jesus Christ, who has overcome all evil, for our sakes.  In His name do we pray.  Amen.

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Broadcast date: April 27, 2014 (#3721)
Theme: The Lord Answers Job
Radio pastor: Rev. Rodney Kleyn

Dear Radio Friends,

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?  Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.  Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

        That question of God is followed by seventy-seven more questions that God puts to Job to show him His power and to show Job and man how puny they are.

        Before we get to God’s answer to Job here, we want to see that Job wanted God to answer him and that this desire for God to answer him grew throughout his experience in his suffering.

        In the beginning of the book (chapters 1 and 2), Job rests in the sovereignty of God and he makes an amazing confession there from his suffering and in his loss:  “The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.”  Sometimes we see this in believers when first suffering comes.  They make an amazing response of trust in God’s grace and sovereignty.  But, with the passing of time, the pain of Job’s experience sets in.  So, in chapter 3, Job begins to ask why.  “Why was I born, why do I still have life when I have to go through such suffering?”

        Then Job’s three friends begin to speak.  They bring him no comfort, but they only put questions in the mind of Job.  With their faulty theology, they say to Job that “anyone who suffers like you do must have done something extremely wicked.”  And they called Job to repentance. 

        Job responds to his friends remarkably well.  First, he affirms his trust in God.  We have looked at some of these confessions of Job.  “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”  And:  “He knows the way that I take, and when I have been tried, I will come forth as gold.”  Also, Job insists to his three friends on his innocence, that his suffering was not the direct result of some sin in his life.  And he was right.  

        But, as he talks, Job becomes confused.  If that is true, that he did not bring this suffering on himself, then why, why is God treating me as He would treat an enemy?  So Job begins to question the justice and the love of God.  And he demands that God speak to him and explain Himself.  We see this increasingly throughout the book.  In chapter 10:15 Job says, “I am full of confusion.”  In chapter 13:22, 24 he says:  “Let me speak, and answer thou me….  Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and holdest me for thine enemy?”  And then in chapter 23:3-5, Job makes this request:  “Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat!  I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with arguments.  I would know the words which he would answer me, and understand what he would say unto me.”  And then at the conclusion of his very last speech, in chapter 31:35, Job says this:  “Oh that one would hear me! behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me.”

        After Job and his three friends have argued and spoken, Elihu, a younger friend of Job who has been listening, speaks.  And Elihu’s speech fits this way.  He prepares Job for the answer of God.  He does the job very fairly.  He deals with what Job has said, not false assumptions about what Job has maybe done.  And he says to Job, “You are not right in what you say when you accuse God of not being fair, when you question His justice and love.”  He reminds Job, “God is greater than man, and so God need not explain Himself to you.”  And as Elihu concludes his speech at the end of chapter 37, he speaks of the power of God in the weather, the winds, the clouds, the rain, and the storm.  And, while he is speaking, a storm brews from the north and God comes and speaks from a whirlwind in answer to Job’s request.

        But God’s answer is not really what Job expected.  Job wanted to lay it all out.  He had not done anything to deserve this.  “God, please explain yourself to me.”  Instead, God comes with an awesome display of His power and majesty.  And that is enough to answer Job’s suffering. 

        We see this power and majesty, first, in the manner of God’s answer to Job:  a whirlwind, or a tornado.  God reveals Himself and His power other times in Scripture this way.  We think of Mount Sinai, or when God came and first spoke to Elijah in a storm.  This shows the power of God.  Perhaps you have experienced a hurricane or a tornado or a typhoon or at least seen the destruction that they can bring. 

        Out of the storm God spoke.  And He showed His greatness to Job.  We can be sure that Job and his friends trembled at the whirlwind.  In His first words to Job, God rebukes him (chapter 38:2, 3).  “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?”  The counsel here is God’s counsel, God’s eternal and all-wise decree and plan for all things.  We read about it in Isaiah 46:9, 10: “I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.” 

        When Job spoke, he challenged, he darkened God’s counsel.  He did that by speaking ignorantly, by entering into things that he did not know, the secret things of the counsel of God.  When did he do that?  He did that when he said that God treated the wicked and the righteous in the same way.  He did that when he accused God, his loving Father, of being his enemy.  He did that when he said that God was not fair.  He did this when he questioned the love of God and when he wanted to put God before his questions.  He darkens counsel without knowledge.

        We see here how seriously God takes our words.  Job had done nothing to sin.  It was simply his words.  And Job is called into account because of his words.  Jesus says we must give an answer for every idle word that we speak.  We also see here how careful we must be in our judgments, that we not enter into the secret things of God.  Sometimes when we complain about God’s providences in our life that is exactly what we are doing.  So God rebukes Job:  “Who is this that darkens counsel without knowledge?” 

        In verse 3 God continues His rebuke.  He says to Job, “Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.”  Here God puts Job in his proper place.  In those days they wore the long robes with a girdle or belt around their waist and they would draw up the robes and tuck them under the belt so that they could be more agile in order to run or to wrestle.  We remember Jacob wrestling with God.  This is what God is saying now to Job.  “Job, you want to fight?  Gird up your loins.”  You see, Job had it wrong.  He thought that God should answer him and God is saying to Job, “No, Job, I don’t answer to you.  You must answer to me.  And so I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.  Job, since you seem to know so much, then answer these questions that I will put to you.”  And then, with the words of verse 4, God asks the beginning of 77 questions that He puts to Job.  This one, in verse 4:  “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” 

        Now, about these questions, we want to notice a few things.

        The first is this, that God in these questions never gives to Job an explanation for his suffering.  We have an explanation for it.  We, and the angels in the presence of God, know that God had a discussion with Satan at the beginning of the book.  But God never told Job about this contest.  Yet, what God says to Job here in these questions is enough to answer Job’s sufferings.  By revealing His own greatness and power, He tells Job all that he needs to know.  We do not always need an explanation.  But we do need to know the greatness of God. 

        The second thing with these questions is that we see God arguing here from the lesser to the greater as He puts to Job questions concerning the creation.  He says to Job, “If you cannot understand My lesser ways in the physical realm, how do you expect to answer my greater dealings with men and My eternal purposes with regard to the salvation of souls?”

        Also about these questions, we notice that they are intended to humble us.  If we cannot answer these questions, which are easy for God to answer, then does not that show us how puny we are, and how silly then to have a high opinion of ourselves and to think that God owes us something, that God owes us an explanation? 

        Then we should also notice about these questions that they show us that the God of power is a God who is trustworthy.  He is saying to Job, “If I can take care of all these things in the created realm, then cannot I be trusted to take care of you?  Do not challenge Me, Job.  But rather submit to My ways.  Trust Me.”  There is wonderful comfort there for us.  The God whom we trust is the creator of the universe who has every creature in His care, and who perfectly designed everything with a purpose.  What is that purpose?  It is the salvation of His people in Jesus Christ.  In Colossians 1 we read that all things were made by Him and for Him.  At the center of creation, at the center of God’s care of the creation and providence and of all the purposes of God, is Jesus Christ.  And God created the universe as the stage on which He would reveal Himself in Jesus Christ as Savior and Redeemer.  And in that counsel and purpose are included all of God’s people because, as Ephesians 1:4 tells us, we are chosen in Him, that is in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world. 

        And God is saying to Job here, “There are ordinary things in the creation, daily occurrences, that you cannot explain.  But I know what I am doing here, and if I can take care of the creation from day to day, then trust My counsel and purposes for you as well.  Job, all you need to know is that I am God.”  And that is the answer to the suffering in the life of Job and to suffering in our lives as believers, too. 

        In the end, God is God.  God can be trusted.  So we submit to Him.  And when we do not seem to have an answer when our way is very dark and difficult, the best thing that we can do is meditate on the greatness of God and worship Him. 

        God brings Job back here to his first response in which he confessed (ch. 1), “The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.”  God says to Job in verse 4 (of chapter 38), “Were you there when I laid the foundations of the earth?” 

        That first question that God put to Job contains three outstanding attributes of God, which we must think of especially in our sufferings.  The first is God’s eternity.  “Job, were you there when I laid the foundation of the world?  I was there in the beginning, Job.  I was there before all time began.  Where were you then, Job?  You were just a name in my mind and counsel.  I loved you then, I had you in mind then when I created the world.  I knew your time and place and circumstances in history.  But as for you, Job, you knew nothing of this, then.”  In Psalm 139 we sing these words:  “Ere into being I was brought, Thy eye did see, and in my thought, my life in all its perfect plan was ordered ere my days began.”  God is eternal.  And we are finite creatures of time.  Over against the eternity of God, our life is like the flash of a falling star in the night sky.  It is like a blade of grass that withers in the sun, like a shadow that is gone in a moment, like a dream that is forgotten, like a vapor that vanishes.  And yet the eternal God knows our life and our times. 

        Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the earth?  In that question we see, second, God’s wisdom.  “Job, were you there when I laid the foundations of the earth?”  In this picture or question, and in the following verses, God uses the illustration of a building contractor with a plan.  He is saying to Job, “I laid the foundations of the earth.  I measured the earth.  I marked it out.  I used a line to measure it and to make sure it was in place.  This world did not come into being by a chaotic big bang that brought everything into existence.”  But God had a perfect plan.  He had measurements.  He knew the weight and the breadth and the position of the earth.  He put it all in its place.  He holds it in its exact position in relation to the sun.  All the intricate details of the creation that make life possible for us are according to God’s wise plan.  And when we look at the wisdom and the knowledge of God we see how little we know and how impossible it is for us to understand the ways of God.  “Were you there when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

        And then, third, in that question we see the attribute of God’s power.  And, really, the rest of God’s speech, the next 76 questions, focus on this attribute:  God’s power in the work of creation and His care of the creation.  First, He takes Job to all the inanimate creation.  God asks Job, “Can you do these things, can you command the waves, can you stop them, can you call the sun forth in the beginning of the day?  Can you call clouds to bring rain? Can you make ice?  Do you understand a snowflake?  Can you produce star-clusters?  Do you know the number of the stars?  Did you position them to form constellations?”  And then He brings Job to the world of animals.  “Do you feed the ravens or the lion?  Can you make animals reproduce?  Did you create the large variety of animals with all their distinct characteristics—the forgetful ostrich that can run faster than a horse, the grasshopper that fearfully jumps away, the horse that stands strong in battle, the eagle that soars high as a bird of prey and gently cares for her young?  Do you know the power of behemoth, a great beast of the sea, or of leviathan, a great animal on the land?  Can you stand against them?”  And the point God is making to Job is this:  “I am the eternal, wise, almighty God who does all things and man cannot begin to understand even My works in the creation.  How much less My ways and My purposes that are eternal?” 

        And so here is the answer to Job’s suffering, to our suffering:  Know God and trust in Him as He has revealed Himself in His Word.

        Now, perhaps you think that there is a lack of mercy and sympathy in that kind of an answer, that God’s answer to Job only produces terror and awe.  So I want to finish by pointing to the grace of God in this revelation to Job. 

        God does not come to Job to terrify him, but to put His hand on Job’s shoulder and say to him, “Job, look around you.  Look around you at My work.  Remember who you are and remember where you fit in My work and trust Me, Job.  Trust Me.”  The very fact that God answers Job is an act of mercy.  That comes out in the name that the Holy Spirit uses for God here:  It is the name Lord, in all capital letters, the name Jehovah, the covenant name of God, the name that shows His faithfulness and His mercy, God’s personal name.  Yes, God comes in majesty and power, but He also comes in love to Job. 

        And that is how God speaks to us today, too, through His Son Jesus Christ and in the Scriptures.  In Hebrews 1:1, 2, we read this:  “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.”  How thankful we should be for this.  God does not speak from a whirlwind, but He has spoken by His Son who came down and lived and walked among men, who suffered in our place.  And all the beauty and glory of God is revealed in Jesus Christ.  He speaks to us by Him as the One who has atoned for our sins and adopted us to be His children.  He speaks to us today in His Word, not to terrify us, but He stooped down in the gospel to call us to Himself. 

        Yes, He is a God of justice and power, a God who, as the writer to the Hebrews reminds us, is a jealous God and a consuming fire and who will reveal Himself at the end of time as Judge, from whom the ungodly will hide in terror.  But as believers, we need not be terrified.  Yes, we must come before Him with reverence and awe, a silence and trust.  But also a confidence and assurance, trusting His love in Jesus Christ.  God in mercy speaks to us.

        Let us pray.

        Our Father who art in heaven, we adore Thee as God over all.  We trust Thy power, Thy wisdom, and Thy love.  And we thank Thee that Thou hast spoken by Thy Son and that we can be assured that because of His sacrifice nothing can ever separate us from Thy love.  Help us, Lord, to trust.  We pray it for Jesus’ sake, Amen.

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Broadcast date: February 2, 2014 (#3709)        
Theme: Why Do the Righteous Suffer?
Radio pastor: Rev. Rodney Kleyn (Covenant of Grace PRC, Spokane, WA)

Dear Radio Friends,

      We do not know who wrote this book or when exactly it was written.  It is considered to be the oldest written book in the Bible, and is believed to have occurred during the time of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The land of Uz, where Job was from, was located to the East of Canaan.

      The book of Job deals with the age-old question of human suffering, but does this from a believer’s perspective.  The question is not general, Why is there evil in this world? but rather, Why do the righteous suffer?  Why do God’s people suffer?  Ultimately, this a question about God:  Why does God bring suffering into the lives of His people?

      In answer to this question, the book of Job presents an astounding doctrine of God as the absolute sovereign, who is just and good in all that He brings into the lives of His people.  In this proper biblical view of God we find the answer to the suffering of God’s people.  The answer cannot be found without reference to God, and must not come from an emotional response to the pain of human experience.

      In many ways, Job chapter one gives us the thesis or summary of the entire book.  It introduces us to Job, a just man; it tells us of the intense suffering that came on Job; and it gives us the keys to understanding suffering so that we respond to it in a godly way.

      In this chapter we see, first of all, the man Job.

      Verse 1 describes Job’s character by saying that he was “perfect and upright.”  This does not mean that Job was sinless, for the Bible tells us clearly that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.  It does mean, however, that Job was spiritually mature, and that he was a man of unparalleled piety.  Here was a man of integrity who was meticulous in his walk with God.

      The foundation for Job’s piety is explained in the next words in verse one, “He feared God and eschewed (or hated) evil.”  To fear God is to respect who He is, to honor what He says, and to embrace what He does.  It is not the cringing fear of one who is terrified, but the loving reverence of a child before his father, a respect that leads to obedience.  Fearing God, Job hated evil, because all that is evil is against God.  Job realized that one cannot live a double life, and so he was constantly on the watch for sin, living a life of repentance, and putting away sin.

      The godliness of Job comes out in this chapter in two ways.

      First, Job was a man who took seriously his family responsibilities.  How a man behaves in his private and family life is the real measure of his godliness.  Publicly he may put on a good front, but how does he live at home, and how seriously does he take his covenant responsibilities?

      Job is the father of ten grown children, seven sons and three daughters.  Even though these children were grown and had families of their own, they were obviously a close-knit family, who loved each other’s company, and so in turn they had a family gathering in each of their homes.  This in itself speaks well of the way Job had raised them.  Whenever his children had these gatherings, verse five tells us, Job would spend the day making sacrifices for each of his children, and praying for them, for, said Job, “It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.”  Two things are notable in those words of Job.  1) Job knew that his children were sinners who were susceptible to temptation, and 2) he prayed for them even though they had not committed any open sin—his concern was that even in their hearts they may have sinned against God.

      Secondly, Job proved his godliness in the way he handled his earthly possessions.  Job was an extremely wealthy man.  In those days, a man’s wealth was measured by his property and possessions and the number of servants he employed.  In verse three we learn that Job had 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 1,000 oxen, 500 donkeys, and more servants than anyone else in the area.  He was renowned for his wealth.  Wealth always presents the temptation of being drawn away from God.  Psalm 62:10 warns us, “If riches increase, set not your heart upon them.”  But this did not happen with Job.  He acknowledged that all he had was given to him by God (verse 21—the Lord gave) and he used it generously to care for the needy (Job 4:1-4 and 29:12-17).  There was no sin in Job’s being rich, and Job did not sin in the possession or use of his riches.  How different from so many who are wealthy today.  Because he feared God, and hated evil, he was very careful in the possession of his wealth.

      Job’s godliness also received the approval of God.  When God from heaven looked down on man, and saw Job, He was pleased.  In verse 8, speaking to Satan, God himself says, “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?”  Is that what God would say of you?

      Looking at all that is said of the man Job, we see his impeccable godliness.  The Bible describes Job to us this way, not just as an example for us to follow, but to teach us that God’s people, godly people, do and will suffer in this world, to teach us that suffering is a reality for every one of God’s people.  Becoming a Christian and believing in Jesus Christ do not give you an exemption from suffering.  One of the popular heresies of our day, the Health, Wealth, and Prosperity gospel as it is known, is completely wrong here, and gives Christians a false hope.  God’s blessings to the saved do not come in the form of earthly prosperity.  Salvation does not mean we are freed from the pains of human life.  Job was an upright man, who feared God, and yet he experienced unparalleled suffering in his life.

      The initial bout of suffering that came on Job was sudden and enormous.  In one day, Job was stripped of his wealth and bereaved of his ten children.  In Job 1 we have a blow by blow account of Job’s suffering, as one messenger after another comes to tell Job that he has lost everything.

      This dramatic description is set against the backdrop of verse 13, which tells us that on this day Job’s children were gathered in the home of their oldest brother eating and drinking wine.  While they are eating together and having a good time, as we would expect, Job is on his knees in prayer for them.  If we would look out Job’s window, we would see his servants busily working with the oxen turning over the soil, we would see the donkeys grazing quietly in the fields, we would see the flocks of white sheep on the hillsides, and we would hear the servants bustling around the camels as they load another export to be carried across the mountains.  Everything on Job’s estate is running smoothly.  It is a normal day.

      Suddenly, Job receives a knock on his door that will forever change his life.  In rapid-fire succession, Job receives bad news.  One messenger tells him of an attack on the servants working in the fields; the donkeys and oxen were all stolen, and all the servants killed.  The next messenger tells of lightning from heaven that burned up the flocks of sheep and their shepherds.  The third of an attack from the Chaldeans in which all the camels were stolen, and the servants murdered.  And, as Job is trying to come to grips with all this, the fourth servant bursts in with news of the sudden and catastrophic death of all his children in a fierce tornado that exploded the house of his oldest son where they were feasting.

      We have to pause here and picture the scene.  Just imagine!  No, you say, “I can’t imagine.”  The Bible carefully gives us the details so that we may have a sense of the enormity and suddenness of these calamities.  All his hard earned labor is gone in a flash and his heart is emptied in the loss of his entire family of children.  All in one day.  What a devastating blow!  We picture Job reeling as he receives the news, sitting numbed in disbelief, sobbing with his face in his pillow.  Job, like us, was a real person.  A man of like passions to us.  He was not superhuman.  Verse 20 describes for us the overwhelming grief of Job; we read, “Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground.”  Here is a shattered man.  Here is a man pierced through with pain.

      He arose—that implies that he had fallen down to the ground at the news.  Now he peels himself off the ground.

      He rent his mantle.  The mantle is the outer garment, the clean warm covering of the body, your presentation to others—your best suit.  The tearing of the mantle is the action of a man in anguish, an announcement of utter grief and devastation.

      He shaved his head.  Hair in the Bible is always presented as a man’s glory.  Shaving the head, therefore, is a symbol of the loss of all personal glory.

      And he fell down upon the ground again.

      Maybe some of us know some of Job’s pain, but I doubt that any have experienced such loss in one day.  The Bible is teaching us here a very important lesson.  God’s people do suffer, and sometimes their suffering is intense and extreme.  As Job says later, in Job 14:1-2:  “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble.  He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down:  he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not.”  Grief and pain are a part of our life in this world and in themselves are not wrong.  Verse 22, “In all this Job sinned not.”  Troubles will come to us in life that will tear us apart and render us weak and helpless.  This is the truth of God’s Word here.

      But why?  If you have your Bibles open to Job 1, you will notice that I skipped over verses 6-12.  I did that on purpose, because I wanted you to see Job’s suffering first from his earthly perspective.  In those intervening verses, we get a glimpse into heaven and a conversation between God and Satan, but Job did not see that, and so from Job’s perspective there is no answer to the question, why?

      And that is the first and most important thing that we must understand when we go through the trials and sufferings of life.  From our perspective, there is not always an answer.  God does not always tell us the reason for our suffering.  Yes, there are reasons, we are going to see what some of those are in a minute, but specific to our situation, and from our earthly perspective, we cannot and do not always know God’s reasons and purposes.  There is a part of it that is always hidden from us, shrouded in the mystery of the will of God.

      In the end, this is the main lesson in the book of Job.  When Job’s friends come to him and tell him that there must be some sin in his life that is the cause of his suffering, Job begins to probe more deeply into the reason for his suffering and puts the question to God, and God finally answers him with a rebuke.  In Job chapters 38-41 God interrogates Job and helps him to understand his place as a mere man before God.  God asks, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” and continues with question after question in the same manner, hammering away at the inferiority of man, emphasizing to Job that there are so many things that man does not know and that man cannot do, that God does know and can do.

      Finally, in chapter 40:2, God says to Job, “Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him?”  And a humbled Job stops demanding answers from God for His misery, and says, “Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee?  I will lay my hand upon my mouth.  Once have I spoken, but I will not answer; Yea twice, but I will proceed no further.”  And then again, for two more chapters God continues to contrast His own almighty power with the impotence of Job, till finally Job confesses that God’s ways are too wonderful for him to comprehend.  He says, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear:  but now mine eye seeth thee.  Wherefore, I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:4-5).

      What is striking, in the entire book of Job, is that God nowhere directly answers Job’s questions.  He does not say, “Job, here is the reason that you have suffered.”  Rather, in Job’s suffering, He answers Job with Himself.  He gives Job a robust and exalted theology.  And this is wisdom for the believer in his suffering—not the answer to why I have to suffer in a particular way, but who is God?

      And now, going back to chapter one, we see a second reason for our suffering:  the sovereignty of God.  Why did Job suffer?  Because God sovereignly willed it.  We see this, especially, in the conversation of Satan with God, in which God takes the initiative, asking Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job?  It was God, and not Satan, who initiated Job’s suffering.  And Satan himself acknowledges God’s sovereignty when he says to God, “But put forth thine hand now and touch all that he hath.”  Satan could not so much as lift a finger to touch Job, apart from the sovereing will of God.  That is clear also in God’s control of the specifics of Job’s trials.  First God says to Satan, “You may put forth your hand against all Job has, but you may not touch him,” and then later, “Behold, he is in thy hand; but save his life.”  Satan was given permission to be the agent of Job’s suffering, but God set the bounds on what he could and could not do to Job.  And what this tells us is that God is intimately involved in the details of our suffering.  It may be that someone you know devises evil against you, it may be that you fall sick with a disease, but both the people who hurt you and the sickness that racks your body with pain are limited by the sovereign control of God.  God does not suffer us to be tempted or tried above that we are able.

      Another reason for our suffering is the testing of our faith.  Satan certainly wants to test us.  His accusation is that Job feared God only because of the good things that God had given him.  Satan says to God, “Doth Job fear God for nought?  Hast not thou made a hedge about him?  Thou hast blessed the work of his hands.  But put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.”  The substance of Satan’s accusation is that faith is not real, that people believe and trust in and worship God only because God has given them good things.  That the faith God has given us by the work of His Holy Spirit is not strong enough to endure the trials of life.  But in the trials of His people God proves otherwise.  He puts us through trials to increase our faith, to make it stronger through troubles.  One of my favorite verses in the book of Job is found in chapter 23 verse 10, where Job says, “But he knoweth the way that I take, when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”  The trials are sent by God to strengthen us, to mature us, to refine us, to increase our faith in Him.  Whenever a believer goes through a trial he will always find that God by His grace supplies the necessary strength.  As God said to Paul, who asked to be delivered from his trial, “My grace is sufficient.”  A believer will come out stronger on the other side.  Satan will try to shake us and tempt us to forsake God, but God will not leave us, and through the trial will draw us closer to Himself.

      And that points us to another reason for our suffering—the goodness of God.  In His sovereignty, God is always good and merciful to His people. Jesus teaches us that not a hair can fall from our head without the will of our heavenly Father.  The trials we experience come from our father.  Sometimes they are sent to chasten us, other times they are sent to strengthen us, but always they are sent from the loving hand of God.  We must never suppose that God intends evil against us, and whenever we do, that is a sinful reaction to the trials God sends.  In Psalm 77 the psalmist questions the goodness of God, asking, “Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will he be favourable no more?  Is his mercy clean gone for ever? doth his promise fail for evermore?  Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? (Ps. 77:7-9).  And then he says, No, those questions arose from my infirmity, from my sinful human nature.  God’s promise is that “All things work together for good to them that love him” (Rom. 8:28).  These are things we must believe, by faith, and they will come only when we have a proper view of the sovereignty of God.

      So, what are the reasons that the righteous suffer?  Well, we do not always know the exact reasons, but we do know that God is Sovereign, that God is good and loving, and that He will use them for our spiritual profit and growth in grace.

      And knowing and believing these things, we will learn to respond as Job did at the end of this chapter, in verse 21.  Job says, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither.  The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

      In these words Job acknowledges the sovereignty, the justice, and the goodness of God.  His response is a response of worship, in which he falls down before God, fixes his eyes on eternity, and acknowledges that everything he once had was a gift to him, not something he deserved.  He came into this world naked and empty, and he will leave it the same way, and in between the Lord gives and takes, according to His sovereign goodness.  And because of this, Job worships!

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Broadcast date: March 30, 2014
Theme: Job Maintains That He Is Innocent (No. 3717)
Radio pastor: Rev. Rodney Kleyn

Dear radio friends,

Today in our studies in the life of Job we turn to Job chapter 27, and we’ll consider the first seven verses.  This section is Job’s final speech, after a lengthy discussion and debate with his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar.

        In this speech, and particularly in the section that we look at today, Job vigorously asserts his own innocence over against the opinion of his three friends that his suffering is judgment from God against him for sins he had committed.

        What Job says here is a part of his patient response to his suffering and it is written as an example for us.  At the beginning of the book, after Job had received blow upon blow of suffering, Job’s wife asked him, “Dost thou still retain thine integrity?”  Now, towards the end of the book, we see the same thing, Job retains his integrity under severe trial.  What an example!  Job not only clings to God, but he also guards his mouth, and resolves to continue living in a way that glorifies God.

        Sometimes when we go through suffering we can become quite weak and fragile, and then we think we have an excuse for sinful behavior—we can get snappy at our family members, or we indulge in some forbidden pleasure, or some will turn to a substance to drown their sorrows.  But Job does not do any of those things, instead he retains his integrity, and that is what we see here in this passage.

        In verse 2, Job begins by taking a vow before God.  With the words, “As God liveth...,” Job calls God to be a witness to what he is about to say.  This is not a rash vow.  Job realizes that God is alive, that God is real, that God is aware of all he does, and so he takes a vow of resolve and determination to live before God.

        In verse 2, Job gives a description of God that is also a description of his own bitter experience.  He says, “As God liveth, who hath taken away my judgment, and the Almighty, who hath vexed my soul.”

        Here, Job is again confessing that all the trouble and bitterness that has come to him in his life is from the hand of God.  It is not wrong for Job to confess this.  He says that God has “taken away his judgment.”  He means that God has denied him an explanation for his suffering.  Throughout the book, Job has asked for a hearing with God, not only so that he can have an explanation for his suffering, but also to silence the accusations of his friends.  But God has taken away his judgment.  As we will see in the next message, here is where Job sinned in response to his suffering.  He wants God to explain himself, but God is greater than man, and is under no obligation to explain Himself to man.  But you see, this is exactly what makes Job’s suffering so severe.  His friends are accusing, his wife is forsaking, his children are dead, he is destitute and sick, and God seems to have withdrawn himself.  So Job says that the Almighty has vexed his soul.  His suffering is not just external and physical, but it troubles his soul and brings bitterness into his experience.  And, Job says, the Almighty has done this.  God, who is all powerful and sovereign, has brought this on me.

        So this is Job’s bitter experience.  God has brought all this suffering into his life, and God is giving no explanation for it, and meanwhile he is being accused by his friends of hypocrisy.

        How is Job going to respond?  How will we respond to the bitter providences of God that come into our lives.

        In these verses there are two things that Job expresses in his response.  Frst, his godly determination, and then second, his clear conscience, and by this, Job silences both his accusing friends and the devil.

        Sometimes Satan will plague us in our troubles, with doubts and accusations.  He will try, like Job’s friends, to tell us that we are suffering because we are really bad sinners, and that our suffering proves that God does not love us or care about us.  How do we drive away the devil and the accusations of conscience?  By responding as Job does here.

        First, you have his godly determination in verses 3 through 5.  Job has taken a vow before God:  “As God liveth.”  And now he gives the content of that vow.  “All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God in my nostrils, my lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit.  God forbid that I should justify you:  till I die I will not remove my integrity from me.”   So, God lives, and I am alive, and so long as I live, so long as I have breath, till the day I die, Job vows, I am resolved to serve God.

        Job will do that because he realizes that this is why God has given him life.  In verse three, when he says, so long as “the spirit of God is in my nostrils,” he is alluding to the way man was created in Genesis 2.  God formed him from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.  By creating man that way, God showed that man was different than all the animals and other creatures.  Man became a living soul.  He was made in the image of God.  He was made to love and to serve God consciously.  That is what Job is saying:  “So long as I live, I have this purpose, from God, to serve Him.”  Despite his circumstances, even though trouble has come into his life, still he will serve the God who has brought this on him.  That is his resolve and determination.

        In Psalm 146:2 we read, “While I live will I praise the Lord:  I will sing praises unto my God while I have any being.”  This is why I was made, this is why I am here on the earth, this is why God still gives me breath.  So that I might praise and glorify Him.

        Do you think about that?  Today you are listening to this message.  That means you are alive, you are breathing.  Do you say, “While my breath is in me, I will serve the Lord” ?  You see, we are not here in this world for ourselves, for our gain, fame, happiness, or pleasure.  No, we are here for God.  We are not here for the general well-being of humanity.  No, we are here to serve God.  This is man’s chief purpose, to glorify God.

        That is so important for us to remember, especially as we are going through troubles and difficulties.  It helps us not to become self-focused or overwhelmed.  Our response is always a response to God.  Every trial is an opportunity to bring glory to God in a new way.  And the way that we respond to God in our trials is a testimony to others of our faith.

        That is Job’s resolve and determination of heart.  But you will notice it does not just stay in his heart.  It is a resolve to control his entire life, and especially his tongue.  In verse 4 he says, “I will not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit.”  He means that he is going to be careful, in response to his trials, to watch his tongue.  In Psalm 39:9, the psalmist responds to a severe trial by saying, “I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because thou Lord didst it.”  There his concern is that the name of God be glorified in the presence of the wicked.  That has been Job’s motivation too.  In chapter 1, when he makes the beautiful confession, “The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away,” we read that Job sinned not nor charged God foolishly.  In chapter 2, when his wife says, “Curse God,” after Job’s response in which he tells his wife that we should expect both good and evil from the hand of the Lord, the Bible says, “In all this did not Job sin with his lips.”

        So Job is a man who is concerned that he never use his tongue to dishonor the name of God.  And that includes, for him, that he tell the truth, that he be honest.  In response to his trials and the accusations of his friends, he is not going to pad his record by boasting and lying.

        How refreshing it is to know someone whose word you can trust, who deals with facts, and not fantasy.  You can trust his words, because you know he is not trying to manipulate you, because what he says is what he means.  Job was this kind of a man, and that is part of why his friends and Satan fall silent.  His friends give long speeches on how just God is, and on what sinners can expect from God, but it is quite indirect.  Job does not deal with people that way.  He is forthright.  In verse 5 he says, “God forbid that I should justify you.”  He means, I am not just going to agree with you because you are my friends, or just to keep peace between us.  He is a man of his word.

        This determination of Job to control his tongue is a determination with regard to his entire life.  In the New Testament, James says that a man who has control of his tongue has control of the whole body.  Job’s resolve here is not just about his words, but it includes his entire life, it is a resolve to live a life of obedience to God.  Later, in chapter 31:1, he says, “I made a covenant with mine eyes; why then should I think upon a maid?”  He is resolved to control his eyes and his sinful desires.  Then in the verses following he says, “Doth not he see my ways, and count all my steps?  If I have walked with vanity, or if my foot hath hasted to deceit; Let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine integrity” (Job 31:4-6).  Job is resolved to a life of obedience to God, with all that he is, because he loves God with all that he is.  Though God smites me, hides His way from me, and makes my way bitter, yet I will love Him, and I will show my love and commitment by continuing in His way.  In the gospel of John, Jesus says, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”  Love for God is not just a feeling, it is not just words, but it is actions of obedience to God’s Word, and a resolve to persist in that way.

        Where does Job’s resolve and obedience come from?  It comes from his heart, it comes from within.  Outward words and conduct always reveal what is in the heart.  That is what Job means at the end of verse 5 and into verse 6.  “Till I die, I will not remove mine integrity from me.”  What is integrity?  It has to do with character.  Job has a heart that has been worked on by the grace of God, and by that inward power of grace.  That work of God will continue.  You see, by nature Job was born, just like every other person, dead in sins, and with a heart that was not willing to be subject to the law of God.  But God in grace had changed him, so that God Himself gave this testimony concerning Job to Satan, “He is a perfect and upright man, one who fears God and eschews evil.”  The grace that God had worked produced this love in Job for his God, and out of that love comes the commitment.

        Job’s friends accused him of hypocrisy.  Hypocrisy is external conduct that does not come from a sincere heart.  Speaking of the hypocrite in verse 10, Job says, “Will he delight himself in the Almighty? will he always call upon God?”  Of course not; trials will expose his hypocrisy and he will curse God.  But you see, because Job’s heart is sincere, he calls on God and determines to love God, even when God has afflicted him.  Sometimes in our trials God seems far off, and we are tempted to doubt His love or our salvation, but the very fact that in trial we look to Him is an evidence of His grace in us.  That should be an encouragement to us that we are His, that we are not the hypocrite or wicked person that Job describes later in this chapter.

        So you have here Job’s godly determination, which arises from a sincere heart of love for God.

        Then in verse 6 we have Job’s declaration that his conscience is clear.  Job says this, “My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go:  my heart shall not reproach me so long as I live.”

        To understand these words, we should see first that Job is not justifying himself before God, nor is he saying that he is righteous by his own works.  No, last week we looked at Job chapter 9 verse 2, and there Job says that no man can stand before God and be righteous in himself.  We need Jesus Christ the Mediator.  But here, Job is not talking about his legal and eternal standing before God.  He is not talking about heaven or hell, and his acceptance with God.  Rather, these words are spoken in reference to his earthly life, and are his answer to the accusation of his friends.  He uses the word “righteous” in reference to his living; his life is righteous.  His conduct is in line with God’s law.  Yes, he is a sinner, but the general way and direction of his life is one that agrees with God’s word.  He is not a flagrant rebel.  He has not committed some great sin, for which he is now being punished.  And so, when he says, “My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go,” Job is insisting on his innocence.  He is saying to his friends, “You throw all these accusations at me, but none of you is able to point to a specific sin.  Your words are just generalizations, and they don’t stick, because there’s nothing for them to stick to.  I’m going to insist on it, that I am an upright man, and that God is not sending these troubles in my life as punishment for my sin.”  Back in verse 5 he says, “God forbid that I should justify you,” and that fits here.  “For me to say that God is punishing me, when I know that He is not, would be to agree with your wrong theology of God, and I’m not going to do it.  God is sovereign over all that has happened in my life, God has the right to bring these things, but God is also a God of mercy, who doesn’t operate according to your strict view of justice.  You have judged by what you see, by providence, but that doesn’t always tell us what God’s heart is.  I hold fast to my innocence, because I know that in love and faithfulness God has afflicted me.”

        Really, what Job is saying is this, “My conscience is clear before God.”  Notice the end of verse 6, “My heart shall not reproach me, so long as I live.”  The word heart there refers to the conscience.

        Everyone has a conscience.  The conscience is the inner part of us that knows about God, and knows what is right and wrong.  The Bible tells us that the conscience of the natural unregenerate man will either accuse him or excuse him.  That is, it will tell him that he is not right before God, it will accuse him, and then he will either make an excuse so that his conscience is cleared, or he will suppress that witness of the conscience in unbelief, he will do what he can to drown it out with pleasure, or philosophy, or something else.

        And so the Bible talks about having a conscience seared with a hot iron.  That is the same as saying that a person has a heart that is hardened to God’s Word and the gospel.  They simply do not hear it anymore, or, when they do hear it, it does not go beyond their ears.  Having ears, they hear not; having eyes, they see not; nor do they understand.  And, you see, that is the natural and depraved state of everyone apart from the work of grace.

        But where grace comes, that is where God comes by His Holy Spirit into the mind and heart of a person.  Then, when the conscience accuses, there is repentance instead of excuses.  And the child of God learns to live before God, not just in conduct, but with a heart of love and sincerity before Him.  The heart of the child of God is not simply a voice that must be silenced, but it is subject to God’s judgment, and it is directed by the Word of God.  The unregenerate man wants to silence and escape from the witness of his conscience, but the child of God, because he loves God, realizes that in his conscience God is speaking, and he stands before God the judge, and his conscience is directed, not by his own desires and ideas, but by the Word of God.  As he lives before God, his life begins to conform to the law of God, and then he can have a clear conscience before God, so that he can say with Job, “My heart shall not reproach me, so long as I live.”

        It reminds us of the famous words of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, "Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God.  I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe.  God help me.  Amen."

        And that, in essence, is what Job is saying to his friends.  God is my judge, and I have a clear conscience before Him.

        We must be warned here not to use this kind of language too quickly or too flippantly.  Too many today talk this way in order to excuse their sin:  “You leave me alone, God is my judge.”  But at the same time, their conscience is not directed by God’s Word, and rather than standing before God in their conscience, they are excusing it and suppressing its testimony.  That is fearful, because that is how the mind of the reprobate unbeliever operates.  So, though others cannot judge our conscience, our conscience is clear only when our life conforms to God’s Word.  Otherwise, it should smite us and bring us to repentance.

        But at the same time, every believer should be able to say what Job says here, or what Luther said at Worms.  I think of the way David prays, many times over in the Psalms.

        In Psalm 17:3:  “Thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night; thou hast tried me, and shalt find nothing; I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress.”

        Or again, in Psalm 26:1:  “Judge me, O Lord; for I have walked in mine integrity.”

        Then also in Psalm 139:23-24:  “Search me, O God, and know my heart:  try me, and know my thoughts:  And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

        Yes, there are times when we fall into sin and must repent; and there are daily sins in our lives that also need repentance, but the child of God, as he lives a godly life with the determination and resolve that Job had, can live with a clear conscience before God and not have to live before the accusations of Satan and the world.

        Is that because we are righteous in ourselves?  No, but in our love for God and our commitment and resolve to serve Him, we do see the work of His grace.  And though repentance is always necessary, we know the pardon of sin from this same gracious and loving God.  Then, when troubles come, we know that they also come out of God’s love for us.

        Then Satan has nothing to say, he is silenced.  That is the effect of the words of Job here.  Job’s accusers are silenced.  Satan had said, Job is a fair-weather Christian, who fears God only for what he has.  Take it all away, he said to God, and he will curse thee to thy face.  But it did not happen.  Still Job clings to God, still he loves Him, still he confesses God’s sovereign love and mercy, and still he lives with a clear conscience as he serves God.

        And so Job says, in verse 7, “Let mine enemy be as the wicked, and he that riseth up against me as the unrighteous.”  Who is Job’s enemy?  We could say it was his so-called friends, but Job speaks in the singular, one enemy.  That is Satan.  Let him be as the wicked, that is, let him be judged and cast out and silenced and come under the wrath of God, just as the wicked will.  Job is clear before God, but Satan will be judged and vanquished for his hand in the troubles that came in Job’s life.

        We see here that there is nothing in all this world that can separate us from the love of God.  We are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.

        Let us pray,

        Father, give us the determination and resolve of Job, and give us a clear conscience, by searching our hearts and our way, and purging, and leading us in the way everlasting.  For Jesus’ sake, Amen.

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Broadcast date: March 16, 2014                                     
Theme: Affliction Is for My Profit (#3715)
Radio pastor: Rev. Rodney Kleyn

Dear radio friends,

        At some point in life, every believer is going to ask those two questions.  Where is God?  And, What is He doing?

        It may be from a pit of deep depression that we ask, where is God?  Maybe we are suddenly stricken with grief or disease and we ask, What is God doing?  Maybe we see a wave of affliction come on a friend and he is overwhelmed, and we want to comfort him, but we hardly know what to say, because we do not know where God is in this or what He is doing.  Or maybe we witness immense human suffering, in war, or after a tsunami or earthquake or tornado, and we wonder, Where is God, and what is He doing?

        These are the two questions that Job under the heavy burden of affliction wrestles with in Job chapter 23.

        By now, if you have been following this series on the life of Job, you are familiar with Job’s suffering.  Perhaps no human, apart from Christ on the cross, has ever experienced such grief, pain, and rejection.  In one day, Job’s ten dear children were all killed.  On that same day, Job lost all his wealth.  Soon after, Job was smitten with a miserable disease that disfigured his body, and caused immense physical and mental pain.  Then, also, Job received no love and support from his closest friends.  His wife derided him for his trust in God, and his friends accused him of hypocrisy and said God was judging him.  All alone, in poverty, grief, pain, and rejection, Job has only one thing to cling to, his God.  He believes and confesses that God is sovereign over his circumstances, he trusts that God brings these things on him out of love, and he has hope beyond this life in the glorious resurrection of the body and eternal life in the presence of God.

        But, even though he has this faith and hope, still Job wrestles with these two questions:  Where is God, and what is He doing?

        We see this here in Job chapter 23.  In verse 3 Job says, “Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat!”

        Note that, in his affliction, Job is not looking for happiness, peace, or relief, but rather he is looking for God Himself.  Him!  He is not looking for blessing, but the blesser.  He is not searching for comfort, but the comforter.  Job is saying, “If I knew where He is, I would go to Him.”

        In verses 8 and 9, he says, “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him:  On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him:  he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him:”

        By this he means that in prayer he searches God out in every direction, but God does not seem to answer his prayers.

        So Job wrestles with the question, Where is God?

        And then, too, he wrestles with the other question, What is God doing?

        We see that in verses 3 through 7.  Why does Job want to find God?  He says, “That I might come even to his seat!  I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with arguments.  I would know the words which he would answer me, and understand what he would say unto me.  Will he plead against me with his great power?  No; but he would put strength in me.  There the righteous might dispute with him; so should I be delivered for ever from my judge.”

        Job is asking for a hearing with God.  He wants to lay out all the evidence and get an explanation.  His so-called friends are saying that God is punishing him, but Job is not convinced.  So he wants to ask God, What are you doing?  He wants an explanation.  Why this suffering?

        So this is Job’s struggle, these two questions, “Where is God, and what is God doing?”

        It is important for us to see that every believer will struggle with those questions.  You must not think that you are not a child of God if you wrestle with these questions.

        Yes, sometimes the unbeliever will ask similar questions.  For example, in Psalm 42:10 David complains, “As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?”  There’s the unbeliever asking, Where is God?  But it is not asked because he is looking for God, but rather as a taunt against David in his affliction.  When the unbeliever says, “Where is God?” he is attacking the truths of the sovereignty and mercy of God.

        Or another example, in Psalm 73:11, where the ungodly say, “How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the most High?”  This is Job’s other question, “Does God know what He’s doing?” But whenever the unbeliever asks this, he does it as an observer of someone else’s trouble.  When he goes through trouble himself, he does not look to God, but he runs from God, he hides himself, because he is terrified of the wrath of God.

        As Job wrestles with these questions, we see the glow of the ember of his faith.  When he asks, where is God, he expresses his deepest agony as well as his greatest longing.  More painful than his grief, poverty, physical pain, and rejection is this, that he cannot find God.  This is his darkest hour.  Where is God?  He longs for God, and that desire is born out of faith.

        In Psalm 13, David expresses it this way, “How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?  How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?”

        We see Job’s faith also in his other question, Why is God doing this?  Now, I think we have to be very careful here.  It is not always right to question God’s purposes.  God Himself rebukes Job for this, later in the book.  God is under no obligation to give a full explanation to us for what He does.  His ways are always higher than ours.

        But there is a right way to ask this question, and it is this, to confess that though I do not know where God is and what He is doing, God does know these things.  That is what Job comes to in verse 10, and notice the first word here, “But, he knoweth....”  Job is saying, “I don’t know.  I don’t know where God is.  I don’t know what God is doing.  But, God knows.”  My knowledge is finite, I cannot understand, but God knows!  That is the important, comforting truth here, that we need to cling to in our suffering and when we wrestle with the same questions as Job.

        Where is God, and what is He doing?  Here is the answer, in verse 10:  “He knows the way that I take, and when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”  He knows where I am, and He knows what He is doing.

        The “way that I take” refers to the God-ordained path that we must walk through this life to glory.  It includes both the events of our life, and the conduct of our life.

        God knows every detail of our lives because in love He has planned and laid them out.  In Psalm 1:6:  “The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous.”  In Psalm 139:3:  Thou “art acquainted with all my ways.”  For God’s people, that is a very comforting thought.  God has an intimate and personal knowledge of my way.  It may seem to us sometimes that God is far off, but that is only our experience, it is not the reality.  The reality is that God is always with us, guiding us and holding us by the hand.  In Psalm 73:  “Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.”  God has mapped out every step that we must walk, He holds us by the hand, and He guides us step by step on the path that inevitably leads to glory.

        He knows the way that I take.  The word “know” in the Bible includes the idea of love.  In His eternal love, God planned out the unique way for every one of His children, through life, to glory.

        But, also, Job means, He knows the conduct of my life.  In verses 11 and 12, “My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined.  Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.”  Job is saying that, by God’s grace, he is going to continue in the path of righteousness.  He is going to hold his steps.  He is not going to leave the way of obedience, even if that leads him through difficult and fiery trials.

        You see two things here.  In part, this is Job’s answer to his so-called friends.  “God knows, you don’t.  My heart and my walk is right with God.  He’s not punishing me.”

        But also this, we see here in Job a resolve, despite difficulties, to persist in godliness.  I am going to be faithful in my responsibilities and in obedience.  I am not going to use my troubles as an excuse to become slack in my walk with the Lord.  I may have difficulties, but I am going to keep going to church, I am going to keep on reading the Bible, I am going to persist in prayer, I am going to pursue fellowship with God’s people.  That is very important for us to hear too.  Too often we use our troubles as an excuse for spiritual laziness, and then things only get worse, we spiral into despair.  Job realizes that he needs, now, more than ever, to be walking close to the Lord.  He knows he is vulnerable, he knows that Satan is at hand, and so he resolves to walk in the way of the Lord.  He knows the way that I take.

        And not only does He know my way, but He has a purpose.  God knows what He is doing.  Job describes that in the last part of the verse, “When he has tried me....”

        The afflictions and troubles of life are God-sent trials.

        What is the purpose of our trials?

        Well, God does not send trials to His people to see whether they have faith.  Nor does God send these trials to test whether our faith is strong enough.  The story of Job makes this plain.  God is confident that Job’s faith will remain.  In the beginning of the book Satan is proud and bold, and he says to God, “If you just take everything from him, he’ll curse thee to thy face.”  And Satan starts leaning on Job, bending Job, testing him, to see whether he’ll break.  But as the book progresses, Satan becomes silent, and disappears from the scene.  But God remains on the foreground, and through Job’s trials He proves the power of His grace.  So, first, God sends trials to demonstrate in the lives of His people the power of His preserving grace.  And Job is given to us in Scripture as a great example of this.

        But also, God sends them for our own profit.  Job says, “When he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”  The trials are God’s way of refining us.  The comparison here is to a refiner of metal.  After a rock has been found in which there is gold, the refiner makes a fire and liquefies the rock in order to separate the impurities from the gold.  We are like that rock.  After God, through the work of regeneration, makes us new creatures in Christ, there are still remnants of sin.  And fiery trials are sent to burn away the dross.  God is always teaching us something about ourselves, our own weakness, our own selfishness, our own self-sufficiency, our pride, and much more through our trials.  And as those things are exposed, we improve as believers, we become stronger in our faith, we are purified through suffering.

        Maybe you can think of situations in your own life like this.  Everything was going well, and you thought that you were very strong as a believer, and then through sickness or poverty or grief God brought you to your knees, and you learned some things about yourself, you saw some areas in your life where you needed to grow, and realizing these things you did grow as a believer.  You were sorry about your sins and you put them away.

        The trials of life are opportunities for spiritual growth.  That means that when we go through a trial we should ask ourselves, “What is God teaching me here about myself?”  Maybe we get into a bitter dispute with someone and it gets very messy and painful.  Let us say it is an argument with a close family member.  Those are the most painful disputes.  Then you should ask, what is God teaching me about myself?  About my pride, about my lack of love and understanding, about my unwillingness to be wrong, about myself?  And then, when you learn those things, you need to acknowledge them and repent and seek forgiveness.  This is the burning off of sin, the refining process.  That is what God is doing in our trials.

        And when we learn to see that as believers, we will see God’s love in the trials that come our way too and we will learn as well to be thankful for the troubles that God sends our way.  In Romans 5:3-4, “We glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope.”

        Job put it this way, “I shall come forth as gold.”  And he means purified, shining gold.  This is God’s purpose:  He’s making gold.  He’s burning and pressing on Job to turn him into a precious, beautiful, shining example of faith amidst trial.  One of the greatest testimonies that a believer can give is the testimony that he gives when he is suffering.  It is a shining example of faith in the sovereign care of God.

        This chapter calls us to submit to the sovereign purposes of God.  I do not always know why, I cannot always see God’s purposes, but I believe that God knows, and I will bow under my trials and worship him, and wait.

        As you struggle with the trials of life, say this of God:  “He knoweth the way that I take, and when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”

        Let us pray,

        O God, Thou hast proved us; Thou hast tried us, as silver is tried.  And, Father, though Thy way is hidden from us, we are sure of Thy love, we know that Thou art acquainted with all our ways, and we are sure of Thy grace that will sustain, and that in love all things work for our eternal profit.  Help us in this we pray.  For Jesus’ sake, Amen.

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Broadcast date: February 23, 2014 (#3712)
Theme: Job’s Miserable Comforters
Radio pastor: Rev. Rodney Kleyn (Covenant of Grace PRC, Spokane WA)

Dear Radio Friends,

      In response to Job’s words, his three friends, whose names are Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, begin a lengthy discussion with Job that goes on for 29 chapters.  In these chapters there is a cycle of speeches.  Each of the friends speaks in turn, and after each of their speeches Job responds.  This happens three times over, except that in the last cycle, Zophar no longer speaks, but is replaced by another man, Elihu.  Today we are going to look at the content of what these friends said to Job, but because it is impossible in one message to consider everything they say, I want to do this:  first, summarize their words; second, evaluate their words; and then third, make some applications for ourselves.

      All of us can think of friends that we have who, like Job, are hurting.  One has physical/health problems, another has psychological problems and is depressed, another does not have steady employment, another has marriage problems, another has wayward children.  How are we going to help these hurting friends?  Or even this, how can we avoid hurting them more?

      There’s a lot for us to learn from the friends of Job.  Friendship is a wonderful thing.  Having friends in time of trouble is very important.  Having Christian friends who can counsel us from God’s Word and help us to maintain a proper perspective on life is priceless.  But friendships also bring familiarity, and the possibility of hurt, and here Job’s friends fail.  The modern saying, “Who needs enemies when I’ve got you for friends?” could well have been used by Job to refer to his friends.

      In Job 16:2 Job declares, “Miserable comforters are ye all.”  He tells them, there’s nothing new in your words, I could get this advice anywhere, and he asks them, When are your long-winded speeches going to end?

      What did they say to make Job evaluate their friendship and their advice this way?

      Let us go over a sampling of their words.

      Eliphaz speaks first.  He is probably the oldest of Job’s friends, and he appeals to his experience as an older man.  Over and over he says, “I have seen.”  In chapter 4:8 he says, “Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity and sow wickedness, reap the same.  By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils are they consumed.”

      In my experience, he is saying, “God always brings judgment on wicked men.”  At first these words are an abstract observation, but later they become a specific accusation without any grounds, when he says to Job in chapter 22:6-9, “thou hast stripped the naked of their clothing, thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, thou hast withholden bread from the hungry, thou hast sent widows away empty.”

      Bildad, Job’s second friend, joins the chorus.  He again argues from human experience, not his own, but he makes an appeal to history and to the wisdom of forefathers.  His assertion is that God is just, “Doth the Almighty pervert judgment?  Or doth the Almighty pervert justice....  Behold, God will not cast away a perfect man, neither will he help the evil doers” (Job 8:3, 20).  His accusation is that Job, and especially Job’s children, had sinned.  He says, “thy children have sinned against him, and he hath cast them away for their transgressions” (Job 8:4).

      Zophar is the harshest of Job’s friends.  He does not bother to argue from experience or history, but simply makes assumptions.  His main assumption is that Job has sinned and therefore must repent, and that when he does, things will improve in his life.  Zophar says, “Oh that God would speak and open his lips against thee.  Know that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth” (Job 11:5-6).  He then calls Job to put away his iniquity, and tells him that this is the only way he can possibly have peace.

      So these are Job’s friends.  What miserable comforters.  What they say is not fair and is not true.  We already know from the earlier chapters that God Himself viewed Job as an upright man, and that He had not brought any of this suffering on Job as punishment for particular sins.  These friends are totally wrong.

      But it raises an important question.  Why, when Job is already going through such severe trials, seemingly without cause, why does God, instead of sending friends to comfort him, send friends who taunt him?  In chapter 16, Job will say that they tear and gnash at him with their words.  He will confess, “God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over to the hands of the wicked” (Job 16:9-10).

      Why does God do this?

      We remember the conversation between Satan and God.  Satan is behind these friends, to persecute Job now with cruel words, and to press home even closer the temptation to curse God.  If Job will believe what his friends say about God, he will become exasperated with God.

      But God Himself is again sovereign here.  Sometimes He will send people into our lives who are constant critics, who become a thorn in the flesh, whose words are never encouraging, to teach us some important lessons in patience, to keep us on our toes, and to help us see that we should not depend on the praise of men.

      But now let us evaluate the words of Job’s three friends.  We must do that, because God Himself passes judgment on them.  At the end of their lengthy interaction with Job, God tells Job to pray for them and make sacrifices for them, because they need forgiveness.  What they did and said was sinful.

      So what is wrong with their comfort and advice?  We can answer that question on two levels, first by addressing their behavior, and then second, looking at the underlying issues.

      In one word, their behavior was cruel.

      Apparently they had good intentions.  Chapter 2:11 tells us that when they heard of Job’s situation, they “made an appointment together to come to mourn with Job and to comfort him.”  That is a good thing. 

      To comfort others is to come along side them when they are weak and down, and to ease their grief and give them strength and hope.  It is to console them and to cheer them up.  We do that by bringing the promises of God’s Word, and helping fellow believers to look beyond their troubles, to the sovereign love of God for them.

      But Job’s friends didn’t bring him an ounce of comfort.  Instead of directing Job beyond his troubles, they focused on his troubles.  Instead of bringing him the promises of God’s love, they said God was judging him.

      In order to bring comfort, you must first sympathize.  To be sympathetic means, literally, to feel with another person what they are feeling; it is to enter into their situation and to look at their world and their experiences through their eyes.  To try to understand what they are going through.

      Job’s friends had no sympathy.  Instead of seeking to understand Job’s experience, they jump to conclusions.  They bring accusations, but no compassion.  Instead of showing pity, Job’s friends were brutal.

      But bigger than the problem of their behavior was their wrong theology.  They thought they knew God, when in fact they did not understand Him at all.  God is angry with them, not simply because they have mistreated Job, but, He says in chapter 42:7, “My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends, for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right.”

      So what was wrong with their theology?

      First, they had a very lopsided view of God.  They understood the greatness, the exaltedness, and the transcendence of God; they affirmed very strongly the justice of God; but they did not see the love and tenderness of God.

      Now, in some ways, what they say is a breath of fresh air.  Today we hear the opposite, that God is a God of love and mercy, and the truth of God’s justice is overlooked.  People believe that in love God simply overlooks sin, and that in the end there is no hell and eternal damnation.  But, in fact, God is a God of justice, and even today the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men (Rom. 1:18).  The Bible teaches that “God is angry with the wicked every day.  If he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready” (Ps. 7:11-12).  So, yes, God is a God of justice, and He will and does punish all sin.

      But Job’s friends incorrectly apply this truth to Job, and they do not see the whole picture of who God is and of the satisfaction of His justice in Jesus Christ.  They do not understand the mercy of God for all who put their trust in Jesus Christ for salvation.  They do not see that those whom God has chosen in eternity past, and on whom He has set His love, and who by a work of His grace have come to faith, are always the objects of God’s love.  That there is nothing that can separate them from the love of God.

      Now maybe you say, how were they supposed to see this, so early on in history?  This was around the time of Abraham, and how could they even know of the promise of Jesus Christ, and that Jesus would come as the lamb to bear the sins of His people?  How could they know this?

      Well, I don’t know exactly how they could or would know this, but I do know that Job had a knowledge of these things.  He understood the justice of God, but he also understood the mercy of God through the sacrifice of a Redeemer, and because of this he knew God closely, as his friend, and not just as a distant, austere, angry Deity.

      You see this throughout the book of Job.  When his children feasted, Job made sacrifices for them, to atone for their sins.  At the end of the book, Job makes similar sacrifices for the sins of his three friends, and God forgives them.  In chapter 19:25, he speaks of his Redeemer.  All of this demonstrates that Job believed that Jesus would come to pay the price for sin; satisfy the justice of God in the place of His people; and redeem them from the power and guilt of sin.  Job’s view of God was balanced and complete and mature.

      And because of this, Job had a very close relationship with God.  One of the most interesting things in this book is the use of names of God.  Job refers to God by the name Jehovah, in the English KJV, Lord.  In Job 1:21:  “The Lord/Jehovah gave, and the Lord/Jehovah hath taken away.”  See the same in chapter 2 and in chapter 12.  This is the personal and covenant name of God, the name that speaks of God’s mercy and relationship to His people.  Job knew God intimately, as his friend, and that was because Job came to Him through faith in the promised Messiah.

      But the view that his three friends had of God was quite different.  Over and over, they refer to God by the name El-Shaddai, God of Hosts, or in the English KJV, the Almighty.  They viewed God only as austere, distant, and dreadful.  Not once do they reference Him as Jehovah.  Not once do they speak of sacrifice and satisfaction.  These were men who had a lopsided view of God.

      And because of this, they did not understand the grace of God, and how the grace of God works.  They equated grace with material prosperity and health, and they equated the wrath of God with calamities and affliction.  Their reasoning went like this.  God sends calamities on wicked men.  God has sent calamities on Job.  Therefore Job must be a wicked man.  They argued from their experience, from what they saw.  We might say, they made their theology on the street corner, without reference to Divine revelation.

      Many today do the same thing.  They say that God sends good things, rain and sunshine, on both the just and the unjust, and that therefore God must be gracious towards all men.  This is the teaching of common grace, which says that we determine who are the objects of God’s grace based on what He gives to a man.  It goes against the whole teaching of Scripture, and here particularly against the story of Job.

      Yes, God was gracious to Job when He prospered him, but God did not remove His grace when He took all that away from him.  Job’s prosperity itself was not a sign of God’s grace, and Job’s calamity was not a sign of God’s wrath.  No, always God was gracious to Job, and especially God sustained Job by His grace when Satan came against him.  The grace of God is not tied to material things, but is the saving attitude that God has towards His chosen people in Jesus Christ.

      Sometimes the wicked will prosper and God’s people will be troubled.  That does not mean God is being gracious to the wicked and is judging His people.  No, the prosperity of the wicked is a part of God’s judgment on them.  As Psalm 73 says, He puts them on slippery places that lead to destruction.  And, at the same time, all the afflictions He brings on His people are a part of His grace toward them and are sovereignly sent for their eternal profit.

      So these friends had a wrong view of God and a wrong view of grace, and these things led to an inflated and self-righteous view of themselves and a lack of mercy towards Job.  Implied in their theology was this, God is not judging us, so we must be the righteous ones.  That showed in their lack of humility and sympathy.  Proper theology of God will always lead to humility, sympathy, and mercy.  If you are lacking in mercy, it is usually because you have a lopsided view of God, and an inflated view of yourself.  You do not show mercy because you do not understand your own sin and the great mercy of God towards you.

      Job, as I said, understood this.  He says to his friends in chapter 16:4-5, “I also could speak as ye do:  if your soul were in my soul's stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you.  But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should assuage your grief.”  He genuinely means that.  Job understood and experienced grace, he understood the mercy of God toward him.  He looked in faith on Jesus Christ to come, and out of that mercy he was a man of mercy.

      That is the application for us.  We should and do see ourselves in Job’s friends.  We are a lot like them, and we have a lot to learn about mercy and sympathy.  We have a lot to learn about being comforters to others who are afflicted.  So, let me close with these points.

1.   Do be a comforter to others.  Job’s friends were right to come.  If you see a brother or sister in trouble, do not be standoffish, and think, well, I might mess it up, so I’m going to do nothing.  No, sometimes we will get it wrong, but let us learn to be more compassionate, encouraging, and comforting to others.  A simple word of encouragement or thanks.  A thoughtful text, e-mail, or card.  There needs to be more Christian fellowship between believers, and more spiritual conversation.  We are put together as believers in order to help one another and to bear one another’s burdens.

2.   Then, if someone is going through a hard time, do not jump to conclusions and come with solutions.  That is our instinct, but it is sinful.  We do not have the wisdom or the power to solve everyone else’s problems.  We should not assume that we can see things as God sees them.  No, there is always a mystery to the suffering of God’s people.  Encouragement and comfort comes through pointing others to the unfailing love of God, the mercy and redemption that is ours in Jesus Christ, and the eternal hidden purposes of God.  Too often we stand at a distance and pass judgments and have solutions, and it all sounds so good and looks so easy, when we really have no idea.

3.   Pray that you may understand the grace and mercy of God yourself, that your view of God may be mature and balanced.  You and I are sinners who have been redeemed and forgiven and are loved, and we do not deserve it.  Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving, even as God in Christ has been kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving toward you.  Good doctrine, which is experienced, will always lead to humility before God, gratitude for salvation, and mercy toward others.  May God help us with this.

4.   Do not equate grace with things or circumstances.  Job’s friends were not the only ones who did this; Job did it too.  He asked, what have I done to deserve this?  Why is God angry with me?  We do that very quickly too.  We should not.  When difficult times come, it does not mean that God is judging you, or that you have done something wrong to deserve it.  No, if you are a child of God, He is dealing with you in love, and so pray for grace to persevere and to experience his unfailing love.  He will never forsake His own.

      Job was forsaken here, of his friends.  They turned on him, they gaped on him.  It reminds us of Jesus’ suffering on the cross.  He was forsaken of all, and compassed by enemies who taunted him.  Even God came against him in wrath, till He cried out, “Why hast thou forsaken me?”  And all of it, so that we may have the confidence, even in difficult circumstances, that God will never forsake us, or withdraw His grace from us.  That is our confidence.

      Let us pray,

      Father, we pray for softened hearts that understand and experience grace and mercy, so that we may be those who are tenderhearted and merciful to others, and not just to those who are brothers and sisters in the Lord, but also that we may have a mercy and love that displays itself to those outside who are not saved.  It is of grace, totally undeserved, that we are redeemed, and we are thankful.  For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR

Broadcast date: February 16, 2014 (#3711)
Theme: Mournful Words from a Miserable Man
Radio Pastor: Rev. Rodney Kleyn (Covenant of Grace PRC, Spokane, WA)

Dear radio friends,

      In the first two chapters we were introduced to Job, a very wealthy man, and at the same time an upright man who feared God and hated evil.  We also learned of Satan, who said that Job feared only God because of all his wealth.  We also saw Job’s intense suffering, first in the loss of all his wealth, then his ten children, then his health, and finally he lost the support of his wife.  Then we also learned of the wonderful truth of God’s sovereignty, both from God’s conversation with Satan, and also from the beautiful confessions that Job made in response to his suffering.

      Chapter 3 continues the story of Job with his next words.  For seven days Job sat silent in his grief with his three friends looking on.  Now, he opens his mouth and speaks, not just to his friends, but primarily to God.

      This is a very difficult chapter to treat.  Job’s words are very dark and negative.  I think we can understand quite easily what Job is saying, but we do not always know what to do with it, and we are tempted to pass it over and get to Job’s other confessions of faith later in the book.  But this is God’s inspired Word, and so it is profitable for us to study.

      The main thing we learn from this chapter is that even the strongest believers do become discouraged and depressed, that there is no such thing as a super-Christian.  That is right on the surface here in this chapter—it is very obvious.

      We see this first in what Job says.  What does Job say?

      Job begins his words by cursing the day he was born.  He says, in summary,

      “Let that day perish.  Let it be covered in darkness so that even God doesn’t regard it.  Let it be cursed.  Let it be obliterated from the annals of history.  I wish it had never dawned.  It was a failure, for rather than preventing my birth, it gave me life.”

      Then Job goes on to say that it would have been better had he died as a child.  Again, in summary, these are his words, 

      “Why died I not from the womb?  Why was I received alive on my mother’s lap, why did she nurse me as a child?  Why wasn’t I miscarried before anyone knew about my existence, or buried as a stillborn baby who never lived to see the light of day?”

      Then Job tells us why he says these things.  Death, he says, has more appeal than life.  He idealizes death, viewing it as a place of rest, the great equalizer, and deliverance.  Job says,

      “Now I should have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept.  Then I had been at rest with kings and counselors of the earth.  The small and great are there together.  There the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.  There the prisoners rest together and hear not any more the voice of the oppressor.  There the servant is free from his master.”

      These words of Job reveal his depression.  These words of Job are not randomly and thoughtlessly expressed.  They are not the words of someone who is simply feeling down for a day or so.  But Job has been sitting in misery and pain and thinking through his situation now for a week, and in this chapter he carefully puts his thoughts together in a lengthy poetic speech, and this is what he comes up with.  Who says, “I wish I were never born,” or, “death right now would be better than life,” but a depressed person?  There is something wrong with Job.  This is not the way a believer generally speaks.

      We see Job’s depression also in what he desires.  Job has an intense desire to die.  This he expresses in verses 21 and 22.  It is the longing of a hungry man for food or of a thirsty man for water.  He says that he longs for death, but it does not come.  That he searches for it like a man who is digging for hidden treasure.  He would rejoice to find the grave, it would make him glad, but he cannot find it.

      Again, this desire of Job reveals the depths of his depression.  He finds no joy in life and sees death as an escape.  When God created us, He created us with a natural desire to live, to protect our own life.  We have an aversion to death.  Ephesians 5:29 says, “No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it.”  That is describing how a person normally views life and cares for himself.  But Job, now, is so depressed that he longs to die.

      Is it always wrong to want to die?  No, there are in the Bible at least two appropriate reasons to want deliverance from this life.

      One reason is to be delivered from, not the pains and afflictions of this life, but the spiritual struggles with sin.  In Romans 7, after Paul has described his own daily struggle with sin, he says, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death.”  He desires to die in order to be delivered from the ongoing and exhausting struggle with sin.

      The other reason that a believer might want to die is that he desires richer and closer communion with Christ.  This is what Paul is talking about in Philippians 1 when he says that he has a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better, and when he describes death as gain for the child of God.  The gain of death is this, to be with the Lord, to see him face to face, and to know Him as He is.

      But behind Job’s desire for death here we do not see either of these reasons.  He is simply sick of life, because of its troubles, and he does not speak of the gain of death here in terms of eternal life.  He is actually mistaken and wrong about death.  It is not rest for all.  It is not the great equalizer.  It is not deliverance from bondage for all.  And later in the book of Job, his perspective changes, but here, he has this very dark and wrong desire for death.  And what it shows is his severe depression.

      Then also we see Job’s depression in what he asks, in his questioning, which is directed not to his friends, but primarily to God.  You see his questions in verses 20 and 23.  Job asks in verse 20, “Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter of soul?”  And then in verse 23, “Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?”  Job is asking, “If God could simply end it all for me now, then why doesn’t He?  Why does He drag it out?  Why must I go on in my misery?  If God is sovereign, why does He allow this pain?”

      In asking these questions Job expresses the chief part of his torment and suffering.  What Job says and desires and asks are simply an expression of a deeper experience, the experience of overwhelming sadness and pain in soul.  In verse 20 he tells us that he is “bitter of soul” (v. 20).  The soul of man is the spiritual aspect of his being, the part of us that makes us different from animals, the part that makes it possible for us to live in a relationship to God.  When Job says his soul is bitter, he means that he has no experience of God’s love to him.  This he describes in verse 23 when he says that his way is hid and that God has hedged him in.  This is what makes his suffering so severe.  In verse 25 he says, “The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me.”  That fear was not just the loss of all his possessions and family and earthly relationships, but the loss of communion with God.  When he goes to God with his questions, God is a wall.  He feels that he is trapped in a deep dark pit with no way out—God, he says, has hedged me in, I’m trapped.  He could take the loss of his children and the loss of his health, but now when he turns to his God, there is an awful blackness and a silence.  God has removed His gracious presence, and Job has fallen into a deep and dark spiritual well.

      When a believer goes through severe depression, that is exactly his experience.  There is no joy in life, one feels trapped by his circumstances, and God seems to be ignoring him.

      Even though, as we will see, these things are not true, this is exactly how a depressed person sees it.

      We should realize and understand that many believers will and do experience this in life.  We understand that Job is a believer here.

      This is the same man of whom God said, “there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?”  This is the man who confessed after he had lost everything, “the Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away, Blessed be the name of the Lord.”  This is the man who said to his wife, who told him to curse God and die, “What?  Shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil?”

      Even here in this chapter we see evidences of the faith of Job.  Though he curses the day of his birth, he does not curse God.  Though he longs for death, he never takes that into his own hands.  And, even though he speaks unadvisedly, he still directs his thoughts and questions toward God.  That in itself is a kind of prayer and an expression of his faith.

      As a believer, he goes through this dark valley of depression.

      What are the reasons for it?  We need to answer that question so that we ourselves can find answers in depression.  Looking at Job, we see that the reasons are multiple.  Job suffers on every level here all at once.

      He suffered physically, so traumatized by his pain that he could not eat or sleep.  His pain was so severe that he found no satisfaction in even the simple pleasures of life.  In verse 24 he says, “my sighing cometh before I eat,” that is, instead of food, there is just wailing from pain.

      Along with this, Job suffered emotionally, dealing with grief in the loss of his children, and loneliness in the opposition he experiences from his wife.  In verse 26 he says that he has no rest and no quietness.  In verse 24 he compares his roaring to a continual fountain.

      He suffered mentally, that is, in his mind he is confused, his mind is flooded with unanswered questions.

      From these things we see that sometimes some of the causes for depression are outside of ourselves, and outside of our control.  We should not think that depression is always caused by a particular sin that a person has committed.  There are circumstances and trials of life that bring us very low, and make us weak and susceptible to periods of doubt.  And then sometimes we need help, professional help, to deal with these things, especially when we get as low as Job did, and think that death itself would be better than life.

      But we also see here that there is a spiritual dimension to depression that can be answered only from God’s Word.  Depression gets down into the soul of a child of God, and causes doubt about one’s standing before God.  Satan comes attempting to draw us away from God, wanting to make us doubt that we are truly saved.  That is what we see Satan doing here.  His whole aim in Job’s trials is to get Job to curse God, and to achieve that end he seeks to undermine Job’s trust in God.  Job’s faith here is very faint and weak.  And though he does not curse God here, he does sin with his lips, in his desires, and with his questions.

      It is wrong for the believer to want to die simply for release from the troubles of life, especially when it is clear to him, as it was to Job, that God’s will was for him to live.  It is wrong to question the purposes of God in the way Job does.  Later in this book, God will reprimand Job for this, and Job will repent of it and admit that he needs to be silent before God in his suffering.  So, we see, there is a spiritual dimension to Job’s depression.  Though he did not sin to bring this suffering on himself, still, because he is a sinner, his response is not as it should be before God.

      Well, what is the remedy to Job’s depression?

      The first thing to note from the book of Job, and this is very important for us from a practical point of view, the first thing we should say is that one does not remedy severe depression by coming at the one who is suffering with specific accusations of sin.

      Yes, we acknowledge that as we live in this sin-cursed world, and as we all wrestle with sin, there are sinful inclinations and thoughts that we have to deal with as believers and that these are going to be a part of what we have to deal with as we counsel for and recover from depression.  We also acknowledge that there can be cases of depression that are brought by a person’s sinful lifestyle.  A man who is an adulterer, and who is weighed down because of his sin, may well become depressed, and his sin must be addressed if he is to recover from his depression.

      But the remedy, when a person is in the throes of depression, is not to come with guns blazing and fingers pointing.  This was exactly the problem with Job’s three friends, as we will see in our next message.  All they heard were Job’s words, and they had no understanding or sympathy for the depths of suffering in his soul, and so they concluded, “Job, you must have sinned, and God is correcting you.”  And for more than 20 chapters they go on and on in this way, trying to help Job, but it is no help at all, except to demonstrate that Job’s faith is more mature than theirs.

      You see, Job’s depression couldn’t be answered with man’s wisdom.  It was only when God finally spoke in chapter 38 that Job’s life was changed.  The sum of what God said was this:  “Job, I am God alone, I made you, I know everything about you, in fact I know you better than you know yourself, and you’re not going to find the answer to your situation and your depression by asking WHY, but rather by asking WHO, that is, Who sent them?”  “Job,” God says, “look to me.”  It is because Job has taken his eyes off God that he becomes self-absorbed and obsessed with his problems.  At the root of his depression, from a spiritual point of view, is selfishness, and Job needs to redirect his focus from himself and to God.  He has lost his perspective, because he has taken his eye off God.

      So the remedy is to look to God in faith, and as I say that I do not mean to sound overly simplistic.  No, the road out of depression is long and hard, but the believer who goes through it needs, as an essential part of his recovery, to be directed towards God and His promises, and to trust in Him.  All our hope and happiness, in the end, can be found only in the Lord.

      Let me conclude by reminding you of several great truths concerning God that are an important part of the message of the book of Job.

      Number one, we must remember, in the bleakest of times, that God is absolutely sovereign, that there is nothing that can or will happen outside of His sovereign control.  That has already been Job’s confession.  He knows that God has given and taken away, he receives the evil in his life from the hand of God, and he knows that God has brought him to this point, into this deep pit.  And as he holds on to that truth, he will begin to receive light and hope in his darkness.

      Number two, God is just, that is, there is no creature who has ever received what he truly deserves from God.  It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed.  We see in our suffering the enormity of sin, not only in general, but our own sin.  We realize that there would not be death or disease if sin had not entered this world.  Our suffering is a testimony of God’s hatred for sin and a reminder of the torment of hell.  So any suffering that we must endure in this life is minimal, is nothing, compared to what we deserve for sin.  Too often we get the idea that God owes us better, when in fact we have much more than we deserve.

      Number three, we see through our suffering the love of God for us in Jesus Christ.  There is no better place for us to see and understand the cross than from the midst of our suffering.  God brought suffering on His son, so that we would be spared what we truly and actually deserve.  And all our suffering in the present is wrapped in love, the eternal love of God for us in Jesus Christ.  What Job experienced and expressed, and what we must sometimes endure when God seems far off and silent reminds us of the suffering of Christ on the cross when He cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”  And we rest in those words of Christ.  Because He was forsaken, we will never be forsaken.  He carried the curse of our sin for us, to turn away the wrath of God, so that nothing could ever separate us from God’s love.  And though Job does not see and experience God’s love for him, that does not mean that God has forsaken.  No, God’s love, because it is eternal, is also unfailing.  Jesus tells us that none of those whom the Father has given Him will ever perish.

      Then, number four, God always has a sanctifying purpose for our suffering.  He decrees pain and suffering for our good.  Though we do not always see it, He is working through our pain to bring us to greater maturity, and to keep us dependent on Him.  He is a loving Father, who does not afflict needlessly, but who with restraint inflicts pain, for our profit.  A parent who loves his children will do the same.

      And, so, the positive encouragement here for you, if you find yourself in the dark throes of depression, is to look away from yourself and your troubles to God, and to trust in Him and His unfailing faithfulness and love displayed in Jesus Christ.

      This is how Jesus handled His suffering.  We have a great example of it in Psalm 22, which is a Messianic Psalm, a prophetic Psalm concerning the suffering Savior.  As Jesus endures the suffering of the cross, and as God turns His back on His Son, the Son moves His attention away from Himself and His suffering and He looks to God and His faithfulness.

      I will just read the first few verses, but it is pattern in this Psalm.  Psalm 22:1, 2. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?  O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent.”

      Then, turning from His suffering, He says (vv. 3-5),   “But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.  Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them.  They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded.”

      And in verses 9 and 10, ^“But thou art he that took me out of the womb:  thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts.  I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother's belly.”

      And so He encourages us, in verses 23, 24, “Ye that fear the Lord, praise him; all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him; and fear him, all ye the seed of Israel.  For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.”

      Let us pray,

      Father, we do not always know the reason for our suffering, and sometimes it seems that we are all alone, and that even Thy hand is withdrawn.  But, Father, we know that Thy love in Christ is unfailing, and so we ask Lord that Thou wilt encourage us by this truth, never to give up on Thee, but to continue in trust and hope, till the day of Christ.  For Jesus’ sake, Amen.

FALL LECTURE sponsored by Kalamazoo PRC: Do things happen by chance? Does everything have a reason? What comfort is there in the calamities of life? You are invited to hear Rev. Ronald Van Overloop, pastor of Grace PRC (Standale, MI) speak on: "Calamities: The Mighty God, Our Father, Has The Answers!" this Friday, November 8, 2013 at 7:30p.m. at Covenant United Reformed Church, 3724 Lovers Lane, Kalamazoo, MI.Refreshments will be served afterward. Come and enjoy an edifying lecture and godly fellowship!

The March 2014 radio messages of the Reformed Witness Hour are now available in print form. The five messages were delivered by Rev.R.Kleyn, pastor of Covenant of Grace PRC in Spokane, WA and continues a series on the OT book of Job. The entire booklet in pdf form is attached here. But you may also find these five messages separately on the website at the links below:

March 2, 2014 - Job's Absolute Trust in God (Job 13:15, #5)

March 9, 2014 - Job's Resurrection Hope (Job 19:23-27, #6)

March 16, 2014 - Affliction Is for My Profit (Job 23:8-10, #7)

March 23, 2014 - How Can I Be Right With God? (Job 9:1-4, #8)

March 30, 2014 - Job Maintains That He is Innocent (Job 27:6, #9)

 If you would like to be added to the mailing list to receive these messages in print each month, visit the RWH website and send an email to the address found there. Or send a note to Judi Doezema at the Seminary: doezema@prca.org.