Things Too Wonderful

We are coming to the conclusion today. Today is the conclusion of our little four-week study in the book of Job. One of the challenges has been trying to deal with large chunks of the Bible, and I'm really thankful to Jocelyn and Isabelle for helping us to do that. As we are looking at this last section, we are roughly on page 507 and following of the red Bibles—if you can see one that might be handy for you—the red Bibles in the seats. We'll be going fairly quickly and covering a lot, but it might be handy to have that there. If not, I'll do my best to explain where we're going.

Now, there's the story you might have heard of the evangelist who's visiting a country town and he comes across a young boy. He says to the young boy, "Excuse me, can you explain—can you tell me the way to get to the post office?" And the boy says, "Yes sir, you just go down the main street and you turn right and you can't miss it." And the evangelist says, "Thank you, and if you come to the meeting tonight, I'll tell you how to get to heaven." And the boy says, "I think it's unlikely, given you can't find the post office.",

Now, when you ask questions, sometimes you don't get the answers you're really wanting. One of the questions that's been in the background as we've been thinking about this section of the Bible, the book of Job, over the last Sundays is the question of suffering: Why would not a good God want to stop it? Would not a powerful God be able to stop it? It's a good question and it's sometimes the question that people have on their minds.

David Hume, the philosopher (1711 to 1776), he put the problem classically like this. He said: "Either God is willing but not able, in which case He is impotent; or God is able but not willing, in which case He's malevolent." Oh, I struggle to get that word out, but I got it out. Well, God is able and willing; whence then the suffering?

See, what he's saying there is a thing called a theodicy, which is an intellectual attempt to justify the ways of God, and people have come up with those over time. The risk is that it just becomes a glib answer, and the trouble is that the question of suffering touches people quite personally, doesn't it? So we need to be careful of just academic answers to this question.,

However, I do want to say about four things right at the beginning—four things around this question before we actually get into the book of Job.

The first one is to say there are no neat answers. Now, my current favorite YouTube watching—the thing I watch seemingly most, the algorithm sends my way—is this little set of videos by a woman called Susanna who does math problems. And you think to yourself, "What a weird guy," but it's amazing because you'll get the math problem, and what I do is I pause it when I see it there and I think, "How would I do this?" before I work out how she does it. And often I'm quite flummoxed by how to approach it. I think I know this and I know that about it, but I just can't work this part out. And then I press play and she tells me how to do it, and then I know exactly what to do once she's told it to me.,

The trouble is, when it comes to the question of suffering, there are no neat and tidy solutions like there are often in maths. Suffering is more like a messy poem or a piece of music that's dissonant and doesn't quite resolve properly. It's musical, yes, but it's not very neat. The Bible's got a lot to say on this—an enormous amount, in fact—but there are a lot of loose ends, loose ends that just don't tie together in our own little minds. So that's the first thing: there are no neat answers.

Second thing to say is suffering is the result of the Fall. Jacques Ellul, philosopher and theologian, he called it "the rupture." He said the world is split apart from its creator. It's kind of like it's groaning in pain and it's waiting to be delivered, and that is part of the reason for the suffering we find in our world. Like Dorothy Mackellar's poem, we live in "a wide brown land" with her "beauty and terror." And it's true that the world has a lot of beauty and has a lot of terror as well.,

The world does not run the way it should. It's messy and it can get really messy at times. We seem to get shocked when things go badly, but we take it for granted when things go well. So we don't wake up this morning and say, "Wow, the sun rose, what a miracle." We are more likely to say, "Hey, someone squashed my Vegemite sandwich! Where is God when you need him?" The Bible is pretty realistic, too, about the absurdity of this world. The Bible is very realistic about the fact that good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people, and it just doesn't seem to make sense. And that's true of Job as well.

Thirdly, a lot of suffering is inflicted by people on people. Sometimes they do it deliberately, other times it's accidental, other times it's just ill-conceived with little thought for the consequences. So you could be a person—there are people in the world who trade complex derivatives and write shaky loan contracts, and that can work for a while until it doesn't. And when a global financial crisis comes along, it all looks pretty silly and irresponsible in retrospect.,

Fourthly, why do we care anyway? Why do we care about this? See, if we are just here as the result of blind, pitiless indifference with no reason for being and nowhere that we're going, why do we care? But we do care. To care, to feel distress, to have your heart go out to people who are suffering, to want to do something—anything—to make it better: that is a God quality. Where does that come from?

Now, in the book of Job, as I've said over the last couple of weeks, the book of Job is set out like a play. And so far in the play, we've heard from Job. He's puzzling at why this is all happening to him. We might call it the protest of puzzlement. He's protesting about what's happening to him. And then you have his comforters: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—the friends who just see it as like a moral equation: "You've done something wrong; therefore, this is why this is happening to you.",

Then there is a speech towards the end by a person called Elihu. I don't actually have time to mention him today. And God has been silent up until now. And there is a storm coming—it's a gathering storm—and in chapter 38 comes the Lord's reply. And it's a bit like a storm of questions. It's almost like God is saying, "Job, up until now you've had Me in court under cross-examination acting like I'm guilty, but you know what, Job? I've got some questions for you."

And God says things like this—I'm going to summarize—He says to Job: "Where were you when I put the world in place? Were you there when I created everything, and who did put the sea in its place?" And He says to Job, "Do you organize the mornings? Have you been to the floor of the ocean?" We know you can't even see on the floor of the ocean; he would not have even known that. "Have you worked out where light begins? Can you lasso the stars and arrange for the planets and the constellations all to cooperate with each other? Can you arrange for rain to fall where you want it to, Job? Do you do hail? Do you do snow?",

He takes him through a little exercise in cosmology and then meteorology. What about some zoology? He says, "Can you look after the lion? Can you look after the raven? Can you help mountain goats give birth on the clifftops? Can you tame the wild ox? Can you create the ostrich with all its speed? Can you give strength to the horse?" (He seems to have in mind here the war horse.) "Or wings to the eagle? Job, can you do this?"

And Job realizes he's completely out of his depth. And he says in chapter 40, verses 4 to 5 (you can see that there on page 509), he says this: "Job answered the Lord: 'I'm unworthy. How can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer; twice, but I'll say no more.'"

And God's got more for him. We are introduced to these creatures called Behemoth and Leviathan. It's possible they could be mythical creatures, but perhaps—some of the commentators think we're talking about—Behemoth, we're talking about the hippopotamus, and Leviathan, maybe the crocodile. Certainly these big creatures that live in the water, and they are huge.,

I was reminded of that scene from the movie Jaws. Remember the scene from the movie Jaws (1975), when they finally sight the shark and one of them says, "I think we need a bigger boat"? Behemoth, verse 15: "Look at Behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength He has in His loins, what power in the muscles of His belly! His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of His thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, His limbs like rods of iron. He ranks first among the works of God, yet His maker can approach Him with His sword."

Or Leviathan, chapter 41: "Can you pull in the Leviathan with a fish hook or tie down His tongue with a rope? Can you put a cord through His nose or pierce His jaw with a hook? Will He keep begging you for mercy? Will He speak to you with gentle words? Will He make an agreement with you for you to take Him as your slave for life? Can you make a pet of Him like a bird or put Him on a leash for your girls?",

It's like God is saying, "You can't tame these creatures, Job, but I made them. Why do you think you can tame Me?" You know all the animals here, none of them are domesticated; they're all wild. And it's like God is saying He is the God, He's the king over all, and He's king over even the wildest of animals.

I was reminded of that line from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe where they are expecting to meet the lion, Aslan. And the Beaver says to Susan, "Aslan is a lion—the Lion, the great Lion." "Oh," said Susan, "I thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion." "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king, I tell you."

Now, why does God do this for Job? Why is He so tough on Job? Because Job needs to know that God works on a scale of love and power and wisdom beyond anything that Job could possibly imagine. Job asks questions of God, and there's nothing wrong with asking questions of God as long as you're not asking the same questions all the time, or asking the questions as if God answers to me—like He's got a duty to answer me—because He doesn't. He's God; we are creatures. He is the creator.,

And you might think to yourself, "It's just too much. This is too much to have to deal with." It's too much for Job to deal with. But maybe we're just too tiny to see all the issues that God sees. And God is not only good and powerful, but maybe God is also wise and he knows the best.

I don't know about you, but I kind of want God to tell Job what happened. I kind of want Him to sit down next to Job and maybe put His arm around him and say, "Listen, the reason this all happened—I'm really sorry it all happened—but this happened and that happened and it had to be done." But God doesn't do that. He's more like, "You know what? I'm God.",

And at the end of all of it, Job does not say, "You're right; you are better than me." He says, "You're wonderful. I've seen and heard things that are too wonderful for me." In the end, Job's a little bit like a son who realizes not just that his father's bigger than he is, but that his father loves him and that there's nowhere better to be than in his father's company.

So God doesn't satisfy Job with any answers; God satisfies Job with Himself. And at the end, Job is satisfied. Job is kind of like, "I have you; that's enough." See, the ultimate answer to these questions is not an equation; the ultimate answer is a person. God has a reason; nothing escapes His attention. He doesn't know why, but he knows God, and he knows God knows why.

And that's a good question for us to think about too, today, this morning, as we come to the end of this section of the Bible: Is God enough? If we were to strip it all away, would you say that God is enough for you?

Rebecca McLaughlin is a writer, and in her book Confronting Christianity—I think it's something like 12 Questions the Christian Church Needs to Address—towards the end she says this. She says: "My eight-year-old is an avid reader and aspiring writer. Her vocabulary is broad, her imagination is wild, but her stories are dull. Why? Because she strives for happiness throughout. Without suffering, her characters cannot develop. Without fellowship in suffering, they cannot truly bond.",

The Bible begins and ends with happiness, but the meat of the story is raw. Christians are promised that one day God will wipe away every tear; we are not promised that God will not allow us to cry in the first place. What could possibly be worth all this pain? Jesus says He is.

And when you think about it, no one knows suffering like God. See, He had it all, and then He became a man, and then He became a dead man. And in His death on the cross, the most terrible of events, God brings something wonderful: He brings us a way back to Him, He brings us forgiveness and a fresh start, a solution to the whole problem, and all at His expense.,

And maybe the reason God hasn't given us this neat answer is because He wants to stick around with us through the whole experience. Look forward, and He says it will one day be over. Look back, and you'll see God suffers with us. And at the end, Job realizes that he belongs to a very great God and he comes to the point where he can say to God, "I've come to see things that are too wonderful for me to grasp, too wonderful for me to get my head around."

And may we do the same. Let's pray, shall we?

Heavenly Father, we thank You for this story of Job. We thank You for what it teaches us. We thank You that we can, as it were, vicariously go through his experiences with him—not that they're our experiences—and gain great insight into some of the challenges of this world. Most of all, Heavenly Father, we thank You that through these words we can meet You and we can meet Your Son. And may that be enough for us, not just today but forever. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.,

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