Michael Olmsted
Job praises God even while facing trials
Formations – June 28, 2015
Job 1:6-21; 2:7-10
When I first discovered Job, two words expressed my thinking — enigma and discomfort. Enigma carries the concept of a riddle or baffling idea. Discomfort signals something that does not fit our thinking or preferences. Job does not provide neat answers and messes with our ideas of righteousness, sin, reward and punishment.
We don’t know who wrote this book or when or who this man Job was. Although it discredits the idea that righteous living guarantees prosperity and protection against suffering, still, generations have found strength and hope in Job’s story.
This book challenges readers as the writer describes a meeting of the “heavenly council” and conversation between God and his Adversary. Some translate “Adversary” as “Satan,” but the word means a prosecutor bringing charges against a defendant. This character also appears in Zechariah 3:1-2 and 1 Chronicles 21:1. The composition of both the prologue (1:1-2:13) and the epilogue (42:7-17) suggest this book is a parable based on a real, truly godly person.
Job is presented as a man of impeccable character whom God describes as “my servant Job; surely there is no one like him on earth, a man who is honest, who is of absolute integrity, who reveres God and avoids evil” (1:8, Common English Bible).
But the Adversary immediately shatters the stereotypes and scatters our neat theology of deserved rewards with the cutting words: “Does Job serve God for nothing?” (1:9) The challenge is on as the Adversary claimed Job would show his true heart if God took away comforts and prosperity.
Notice how the challenger uses our typical human thinking that God must cause everything that happens, even that God, the God of Abraham and Isaac, is little different from the flawed gods of human imagination.
This epic struggle involving good, evil and human choices is crafted to punch holes in our comfortable imaginings about God and opens before us the Eternal God who longs for us to know him and live within his grace. Now I’ve given away the ending!
The Adversary, having already made up his mind that no human can truly love and serve God without the assurances of prosperity and protection from tragedy, challenges God through Job and the realities of this world. But God knows the possibilities of the human heart when God is our companion and life. God places one striking limit on the Adversary’s abilities — he could not “stretch out (his) hand against Job personally” (1:12).
Job’s world is torn apart by horrific tragedy in three waves. His sons and daughters were at a party when foreign enemies slipped in to steal all the livestock and kill all the field hands, with only one servant surviving to report the tragedy (1:13-15). Before that first tragedy was fully told, a second messenger arrived to report that “a raging fire fell from the sky,” destroying Job’s sheep and the shepherds (1:16).
The second messenger was interrupted by a third servant reporting all Job’s sons and daughters were killed at the older brother’s house by a violent wind (1:18-19). In one day’s time everything Job loved and valued was torn from his life, everything that marked a person’s value in that world was gone.
Job’s reaction is astounding. First, he speaks out of grief as the darkness fills his heart and mind. He tears his clothes and shaves his head. He mourns. Pay attention to the text: He “fell to the ground…and worshiped” (1:20). Job voices his faith: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb; naked I will return there. The Lord has given; the Lord has taken; bless the Lord’s name” (1:21).
Anger and blame are not in Job’s words. This is God’s creation, so we must live with the good and the bad. Scholars and philosophers talk about the differences between God’s permissive and specific will. We usually weep and rage!
Then in the heavenly council, God and the Adversary renew their debate. The Adversary is still confident, arguing that if Job faces personal harm, he will renounce his faith. God accepts the challenge but refuses the Adversary the power to kill Job (2:7-8).
Job’s wife adds to his misery: “Are you still clinging to your integrity? Curse God and die” (2:9). Understand that his wife has lost as much as Job and she carries the additional pain of not being able to resolve his grief and loss. We rarely suffer alone.
Job rejects her bitterness, reminding her that life encompasses both good and bad. “Job didn’t sin with his lips” (2:10). Is Job a fatalist or truly a person of faith?
Perhaps you have suffered devastating loss. There may always be a residue of that pain. Are you sustained by God’s grace and the knowledge that life encompasses both joy and heartache? James 1:17 reminds us that “every good gift and every perfect gift” comes from God.
Follow Job through his journey of suffering and discover hope as he experiences God more deeply than he knew possible.
Retired after 45 years in pastoral ministry, Michael K. Olmsted enjoys family, supply preaching and interim work, literature, history, the arts and antiques.
