Job 1:6-12
6 One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. 7 The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”
Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”
8 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”
9 “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. 10 “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. 11 But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
12 The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”
Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.
Does Suffering Mean that God Doesn’t Love You?
Whose fault was it? We’ve only read 1 of 42 chapters in the book of Job, but that’s the question that dominates about 80% of the conversation. Whose fault was it?
Did Job bring this tragedy on himself? We’re going to talk about this more in a couple weeks, but that’s what his friends would say. “Job, you must have done something horribly wrong to be treated this way.” But that doesn’t fit the description we see here, does it?
In very first verse of the entire book, Job is described as “blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.” And that’s not just the author’s own editorializing. That’s what God thought too!
When Satan came with the angels to present himself before the Lord, the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”
God used those exact same characteristics to describe Job, i.e. blameless, upright, fears God, shuns evil. It’s as if that is what defines Job as a human being. Those are the words you’d expect to see on his tombstone: “Here lies Job, blameless and upright, a man who feared God and shunned evil.”
More than that, though, God piles on the praise. He calls Job his servant. Job is not just a nominal believer. He didn’t casually consider himself a Christian and occasionally act on his faith. He was constantly serving God. In fact, the first action we see Job do is offer a sacrifice to God for his children. Job was a faithful, i.e. faith-filled, believer. In God’s own words, “There [was] no one on earth like him.”
So, no. This tragedy did not happen to Job because he was a bad person. He was a good person and a bad thing happened to him. So, whose fault was it?
That just leaves us with two options. Was it God’s fault, or was it the devil’s?
I think we’d all be more comfortable laying the blame at Satan’s feet. When we first meet Satan, God asks him, “Where have you come from?” To which the devil replies, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.” Forget for a moment that Satan is being cheeky to God (like when a parent asks their teenage daughter, “Where have you been?” and all she says is, “Out.”) – forget Satan’s sass, we know what he was doing. Peter tells us: Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. That’s what the devil does. That’s his goal, i.e. to make your life miserable, to devour you and destroy you. So, it would make sense, right, to lay the blame at Satan’s feet?
But then you come to the troubling reality that it was God who brought Job up in their conversation. It was God who put everything Job had in Satan’s hands, who basically sicced Satan on Job. It was God who served “his servant” up to Satan on a silver platter. If a lion got out of his cage and mauled a little boy at the zoo, who would you blame more – the lion or the zookeeper who let it out?
You can see the trouble, can’t you? Job was a good person. The devil is just a dog on a leash. He may be rabid, but he can be contained. Is pain and suffering God’s fault, then? Do bad things happen to good people so that God can win a bet with the devil? Are our lives just a slot machine in God’s cosmic casino? “Let’s see what happens to Pete when we pull the lever!”
Many people have come to that conclusion. They see the presence of pain in this world and think that either God doesn’t have the power to stop it – that the devil and God are evenly matched and that sometimes God wins, but sometimes the devil does – or, and this is infinitely more terrifying, they think that the presence of pain means that God doesn’t care.
When we read Job Chapter 1, though, we know that neither of those thoughts are true. For one, God and the devil are not equally matched. The devil was part of the parade of performance reviews that were forced to present themselves before God. God is clearly the authority; the devil is the subordinate. The devil answers to God, and God holds him accountable, asking questions like, “Where have you come from?”
On top of that, the devil can’t do anything without God’s permission. He couldn’t have caused so much as a sprained ankle in one of Job’s three thousand camels had God not given everything Job had over into Satan’s hands. No, God and the devil are not equally matched.
Which leaves the more terrifying option. Does God not care? Does God treat our lives flippantly as his form of personal entertainment? Well, that’s not true either.
God cared about Job’s life. It’s almost unthinkable for God to allow such tragedy to happen, but remember, God set a limit. He said to Satan, “But on the man himself do not lay a finger.”
It’s like what Paul wrote to the Corinthians: God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
God didn’t set Satan on Job for sport. There was a purpose and a point, and – as hard as it may be to believe or accept – it was for Job’s benefit.
The scary thing for me to accept is that even “the greatest man among all the people of the East” and a man about whom God said, “there is no one on earth like him,” – even Job needed refinement and repentance. And if Job needed that, what does that mean for me?
As scary as it is to go down the rabbit hole of asking, “Why do bad things happen to good people,” I think there are even more haunting questions to consider: Are you a good person? Would “blameless, upright, someone who fears God and shuns evil” – would those be the words engraved on your tombstone? Or, to borrow Satan’s question, do you fear God for nothing?
Are you a Christian only because you’re afraid of hell? Do you love God for God or because of what he can do for you? If you were in Job’s sandals and you literally lost everything in a single day, would you praise God like Job did? Or would you complain, “That’s not fair!” Would you question the goodness of God? Would you lose hope altogether and give up your will to live?
I hope you never find out. I pray that you never have to experience that degree of tragedy. But I would encourage you to ask yourself the questions: “Am I blameless, upright, someone who fears God and shuns evil?” and, “Do I fear God for nothing?”
I think if you’re honest with yourself you’ll find the answer to both is “no.” There’s plenty of blame that could be laid at my feet every day of the week and twice on Sundays. I do expect certain treatment from God and while I don’t preach a prosperity gospel – that you can all expect an extra $500 in your bank accounts if you pray hard enough this week – I can tell I have expectations when I’m stunned and in shock when something doesn’t happen the way I want it to.
I’m not blameless. I don’t fear God for nothing. But the miracle is that I’m not the devil’s plaything. God has not given up on me. He has still given me – what we in the Lutheran church like to call – my “time of grace.” While there is breath in these lungs, I am still living in God’s love. He still protects me, still preserves me, still provides me with a reason to live and opportunity for my faith to survive. My God still loves me – and that’s the real question, isn’t it?
It’s an interesting intellectual exercise to ask, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” But it’s not exactly honest, is it? Who of us is truly good? And who can say whether an event is good or bad until we see God’s plan for it?
No, the better question to ask is, “Does God love me?” And all you have to do to find the answer to that question is look at God’s suffering servant, and I don’t mean Job.
Job may have been blameless and upright among the people of the East, but he was still a sinner who needed to make sacrifices to purify himself and his family. God’s suffering servant was perfect and sinless in every way. Job may have lost all his wealth, but it was taken from him. God’s suffering servant gave up his power and position in heaven freely and willingly. Job may have been left childless, but that wasn’t his decision. God sacrificed his one and only Son on purpose, for you.
Jesus is the real suffering servant, and Jesus is the reason you can know that God loves you. Jesus is the proof that God loves you for nothing. You are not blameless or upright. You fail to love God and shun evil. But God loved you enough to suffer the loss of Jesus on a cross, so that your sins could be forgiven, so that you could be purified by the sacrifice of his Son.
Does God love you? Of course he does! And Jesus is all the proof we will ever need. Jesus is the way we see God’s love shining down on us every day as we live in his grace.
So, if God does love us, then what are to make of the troubles we face in life? If God does care for us, then why doesn’t he help us?
Well, this may come as a shock to you, but I’m not God, and, just like in Job’s life, there are all kinds of adversities that we face that will go unexplained. But this section of Scripture still gives us some answers. The lesson of Job teaches us that the Lord has put the devil on a leash like a dog. God will not let anything happen to you that is outside of his control. Even when you are tested, God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
Why do bad things happen to good people? I don’t know. But I do know this: God does love you. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. May the name of the Lord be praised. Amen.