With Friends Like These

Sometimes when we hear someone who has really suffered it's humbling. You may know the story of Richard Wurmbrand, who was born in Romania to a Jewish family but came to believe in Jesus as the Messiah during the rise of communism. He stood up to say that Christianity and communism were incompatible; he was arrested and he was imprisoned for eight years, three years in solitary confinement. Solitary confinement was four meters underground, essentially in a box. He was told every day, "Nobody loves you, God is dead." He was released for three years then in prison for another 25; he was tortured. He was imprisoned under an assumed name; his wife was told he was dead. Sometimes the really big problems of the world can make ours seem fairly insignificant. Have you ever noticed that some people seem to find it very easy to love God and other people seem to find it very difficult indeed? Have you ever wondered why suffering seems to push some people away from God and for others it pushes them towards God? It just makes the relationship stronger.

Job suffers terribly: he loses his health, he loses his family, he loses his reputation, he loses his possessions, and he really struggles all the way through. He swings massively in his connection with God; at times he's really battling, he's up and down. Sometimes he's great, other times he says things that he will live to regret. Sometimes he says things about God and to God that he has to apologize to God for in the end. Just like you and I, sometimes it is well with his soul and sometimes it's not well with his soul. I used to work with a man, a former colleague; he grew up in Zimbabwe and he would often greet me with the words, "How's it, how's it chaplain? Is it well with your soul?" I'd have to say, "Well sometimes it is and sometimes it's not."

Last week and this week we have been looking at this large section in the book of Job where Job's friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zofar, are really battering him with heartless logic. As I'm reading this, I'm thinking to myself, "What does this remind me of?" It reminds me a little bit of those kind of weird table tennis matches where there's one person playing at one end and then at the other end people are rotating around. He hits the ball, someone hits it back, then he hits it back, then the next person steps in, he hits it back, and the next person steps in, round and round and round. That's a little bit like what's happening here: it's Eliphaz and Job, and then it's Bildad and Job, and it's Zofar and Job, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards with this heartless logic. What he really needs are some friends who stand with him, but they don't. It's a long section; it's almost painful to read, and we could ask ourselves why is it here in the Bible? The creation of the universe gets a page; this gets page after page after page; it seems to go on forever. My short answer to the question as to why it's here is this: sometimes the finest jewels come from the darkest of places.

In the next few minutes, you might come to the conclusion that this is a pretty messy sermon, and maybe it is a pretty messy sermon, but it's a pretty messy passage, so I think it matches it fairly well. I have five points of varying length and in no particular order. Are you ready? I've called them five jewels.

Jewel number one: Friends behaving badly. As things go backwards and forwards, Job gets frustrated and bitter; he gets quite exasperated with God and he gets quite disappointed with his friends. Just a little survey of some of the things in chapter 12:2: he says to them, "You are the clever ones, wisdom will die with you." A chapter later he says, "You smear me with lies, worthless physicians all of you." "I've heard this many times," in chapter 16 he calls them miserable comforters: "You're miserable comforters all of you, come on all of you try again." "You bring me proverbs of ashes"—that's a good line—"I will not find a wise man among you." In chapter 26 he says this: "How you have helped the powerless, how you have saved the arm that is feeble! What advice you have offered to one without wisdom and what great insight you have displayed! Who has helped you utter these words and whose spirit spoke from your mouth?"

Friends behaving badly—what do we make of this? He calls them miserable comforters. It's really interesting that in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, the Apostle Paul talks about the comfort that we've received from God allows us to comfort others. You're all physicians; not worthless physicians. Develop a better bedside manner; that would be a good message for us to take on board, wouldn't it, to develop the ability to comfort in a better way than these comforters do. That's jewel one.

Jewel number two: I would like a referee. God, he says, is not a mere mortal like me that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court. If only there was someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together, someone to remove God's rod from me so that his terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak up without fear of him, but as it now stands with me I cannot. Oh that I might find somewhere to mediate between us; if only there was someone to arbitrate between us; if only I had a referee between myself and God. You know where this is heading don't you, because you know who the referee is. You know that we have the advocate, the bridge to God, Jesus Christ the righteous one. Now there is a jewel; we come out of the Old Testament into the new to know that one. Job says in chapter 16 verse 9, "Even now my witness is in heaven, my advocate is on high." See, he believes he has an advocate in heaven even though he doesn't really understand what he's talking about. When all is swept away there is someone who can connect us to God; it is the advocate, the Lord Jesus Christ. I would like a referee.

Jewel three: Good things happen to bad people. In chapter 20, Zofar the insensitive—he's a little bit like the cracked record, he just keeps repeating over and over and over again—he says to Job, "Job, you need to return to God." Really Einstein? That's an original thought, I haven't heard that before. All the way through Zofar says, "Bad things happen to bad people." "The reason bad things are happening to you, Job, is because you're a bad person." Job says in chapter 21, "No, no, no, the wicked live on; good things happen to bad people." He says in 21:7, "Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power?" They live long lives and the world grants them power and influence. Verse eight: they see their children established around them, their offspring before them. They have healthy families—just the right number of children, just the right blend, just the number of boys and girls. Verse nine: their homes are safe and free from fear, the rod of God is not on them. They own property with water use; they have a rental property and an Airbnb. Verse 10: their bulls never fail to breed, their cows calve and do not miscarry. They dominate the business world, they create successful startups, and when they list their IPOs they make large fortunes. Verse 11: they send forth their children as a flock, their little ones dance about. Their children go to the best schools and make the honor board; they get into medicine and law and win scholarships to Ivy League universities or to the Royal Ballet School in London. Verse 12: they sing to the music of timbrel and lyre, they make merry to the sound of the pipe. They get the best tickets to the concerts, they go out clubbing on the weekends. Verse 13: they spend their years in prosperity and go down to the grave in peace. Everything goes well for them; they die peacefully and on their own terms. Verse 14: yet they say to God, "Leave us alone, we have no desire to know your ways. Who is the Almighty that we should serve him? What would we gain by praying to him?"

Yet the people who take God seriously, like Job, can suffer terribly, and we might ask ourselves what is going on. Part of the answer is the time frame. You see, if we live for three score years and 10, or maybe four score years and 10, versus eternity—well, you can build your life on the sand for a while but when the storm of judgment comes, when eternity comes. Jesus told the parable of the rich man and Lazarus and he talked about a great separation, a great judgment to come. The rich man lived happily all his life; Lazarus the poor beggar, and then for eternity it's reversed. It's a salient point often derided. You often hear people say, "Well, things will be better in the next life." Well, that's called comfort because no amount of good in the next life can make up for the sufferings in this world; some people say that, but how can you know who's come back to say it's not that good? God's dealings are eternal and so God's people need to be patient. There's a jewel.

Jewel number four: The glimmer of the new dawn. Chapter 19, you'll know these words: "I know that my redeemer lives and that in the end he'll stand on the earth, and after my skin has been destroyed yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see him with my own eyes, I and no other. How my heart yearns within me!" What an amazing thing to say! What an amazing thing for Job to come up with. George Friedrich Handel thought the same didn't he? He wrote his oratorio the Messiah, part three scene one, "I know that my redeemer lives." I won't sing it to you; it's the soprano part anyway, I couldn't do that. From the deep recesses of the Old Testament comes this great realization of the New Testament and we know, don't we, that it comes to fruition in the resurrection of Jesus. In my flesh I'll stand before God—the resurrection body. The music from the Messiah comes up from the deepest of pits and it's a jewel.

And lastly, the very last one: Suffering and seeking God. In chapter 23, Job starts on the problem of God's invisibility. "If only I knew where to find him, if only I could go to his dwelling! But if I go to the east he's not there, and if I go to the west I do not find him. When he's at work in the north I do not see him, when he turns to the south I catch no glimpse of him." I can't find God. Is God hiding? No. But how many would have sought God in a time of crisis? How many people has it taken a crisis to cause them to seek God, and in the end it's been the best thing? You might know that quote by C.S. Lewis: "Pain is God's megaphone to wake a sleeping world." How many people have been awoken to God through some sadness? How many people have turned to God because their world has fallen apart? It can go the other way; sometimes it does go the other way—sometimes faced with suffering people turn away from God—but how many times do people turn to God in a time of suffering, in a time of difficulty or trouble? The great preacher C.H. Spurgeon said, "Bless God for the waves that wash you onto the rock of salvation." The point is trouble can be good.

Five jewels from the depths:

• Jewel one: Give comfort as we have received.

• Jewel two: You have an advocate in Jesus.

• Jewel three: You can build on sand for a while but only on the rock forever.

• Jewel four: Your redeemer lives so will you.

• Jewel five: God can win you through a tough time.

For those who keep him at arms length in the good days, he may win you over in the storm so that no faith becomes true faith and you're grateful for eternity.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we read through these great tracts of speeches backwards and forwards between Job and his friends, we are conscious that there is great mystery in the sufferings of the world. As Job wrestles with the answers and as his friends wrestle, we realize that there are no clean and neat answers. And yet we do understand that in these very deep waters people often find you, and we pray Father that that may be true. We pray Lord that the sufferings that come our way may cause our relationship with you to be stronger and more steadfast. We thank you for your faithful love, your faithfulness in loving us and holding us, and we pray that you might do that ever more. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

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