The Beginning of Faith

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, May 15, 2016.  The Bible verses used are Job 1:1, 8-19.

            Today we start a new sermon series on the book of Job.  Job is one of those books that a lot of know a little bit about, but that most of us have not actually read.  We’re not going to read all of it in this sermon series—after all, it goes on for forty-two chapters—but we are going to hit some of the high points.  And we’re going to start with the very first chapter.

            I want to deal with one thing quickly, before we get into the story itself.  You’ll hear people discuss whether the story of Job is something that actually happened, whether Job was a real person who had to deal with all the things we’re going to talk about, or whether this is simply a story designed to teach us about God.  My opinion is—it does not matter.  Think what you want to about that.  Whether Job was a real person or not is not the issue.  As I’ve said before, when we read things in the Bible, the question we need to ask is:  why was this included in the Bible?  What I am supposed to learn from this?

            As we look at the story of Job, that’s what we’re going to focus on.  What are we supposed to learn from Job’s story?

            In this first chapter, we meet Job.  Job is a righteous man.  He’s described as blameless and upright.  We’re told that he feared God and shunned evil.  Then we learn about a conversation between God and Satan concerning Job.

            We’ll come back to that conversation.  Right now, I want to focus on the story from Job’s perspective.  Here’s Job, this righteous, blameless, upright man.  A man who appears to be as good as it’s possible for a human being to be.  And God has blessed him with great wealth.  He has a large number of sheep, camels, oxen, and donkeys.  He has lots of servants.  He also has a large family—seven sons and three daughters.  But Job did not let that wealth go to his head.  Again, he continued to fear God and shun evil.

            So Job’s sitting at home one day, and a messenger comes up to him and tells him that all of his oxen and donkeys have been stolen.  And no sooner does he hear that than another messenger comes up and tells him that all his sheep and all his servants are dead.  And no sooner does he hear that than another messenger comes up and tells him that all his camels have been stolen, too.  And no sooner does he hear that than yet another messenger comes up and tells him that all of his children have been killed in an accident.

            Now, maybe you think you’ve had some bad days.  Think about this.  In a way it almost sounds comical to hear it described that way, but think about it.  Think about if you were Job.  You had been on top of the world.  And now, suddenly, you’ve lost everything.  All of your wealth is gone.  All of your children are gone.  I know some of you have lost children, and you know what a terrible, painful thing that is.  Job lost all ten of them at once.

            We’ll talk about how Job responded to this next week.  For today, I want you to think about how you would respond.  How would you feel?  I mean, you’d feel awful, obviously, but what would you feel about God?   How would you react to God if everything you had, including all of your children, was taken from you in one fell swoop?

            There are all kinds of ways we might react.  We might react with anger.  We might react with questions.  We might react with acceptance.  We might do all those things and more at various times.

But one thing we would probably do is ask the question:  why?  Why did all this happen?  That’s the question almost all of us ask whenever something like this happens, right?  Whenever there’s an accident, whenever something bad happens that was out of our control, and sometimes when bad things happen that are in our control, we look to God and ask:  why?  Why, God?  Why did this happen?  Even if we don’t blame God for it, even if we don’t think God caused it to happen, we know, because God is all-powerful, that God could have kept it from happening if God had chosen to.  But, for whatever reason, God did not choose to keep it from happening.  God allowed it to happen.  And we want to know, why?

            Eventually Job wanted to know why, too, and again, we’ll talk about that in the future.  But in this case, we, as readers, know why.  In the context of Job’s story, we’re told this was the work of Satan.

            Satan, in this story, basically gives God a challenge.  God tells Satan what a wonderful person Job is and what a wonderful servant of God Job is, and Satan says, well, sure he is.  Look at what you’ve done for him.  You’ve made his life easy.  You’ve given him everything he could possibly want.  Take all that stuff away from him and he’ll turn on you in no time.

            And God takes the challenge.  He tells Satan, okay, take it all away from him.  Do anything you want.  You cannot harm him physically, but you can do anything else to Job you want to do.  And we’ll see what Job does.

            In all of the forty-two chapters of the book of Job, it apparently never occurs to Job, or to any of his friends, that this might be the reason why all these things happened.  It never occurs to him that this stuff happened because God and Satan were testing him.  He cannot figure out why it did happen, and he and his friends come up with all kinds of ideas, but never did Job or any of his friends consider that maybe this was some kind of test that God and Satan were doing to prove something.

Now, maybe you think it was pretty hard on Job, and his family for that matter, to be used in this way.  It does kind of seem like that.  But again, the question is, what are we supposed to learn from this?

            We all have had times when bad things have happened, either to us or to people close to us.  And sometimes, those things happen to us through no fault of our own, just as Job was not at fault for all the things that happened to him.  And we don’t understand what’s going on.

            But here’s the thing.  Through all this stuff that happened, God did not abandon Job.  It may have felt to Job like God had abandoned him, but God did not.  God was aware of everything that was happening to Job.  And yes, God did allow it to happen.  But here’s what Job did not realize:  God had a reason for allowing it to happen.

            God was not punishing Job by allowing this stuff to happen.  God was planning to use it for God’s glory.  And, ultimately, for Job’s glory, too.  Job had no clue about that at the time, but God was planning to use all these things that happened to Job for Job’s glory as well as for God’s.  God did not make them happen—God did not require Satan to do what Satan did—but God knew that no matter what Satan did, God would be able to use it for God’s glory and Job’s.

            So what can we learn from this?  We can learn that sometimes, no matter how good or upright or blameless a life we lead, bad things are going to happen.  God never promised to keep bad things from happening to us.  We can learn that, when those bad things happen to us, it is not God punishing us, and it is not God abandoning us.  God sees what has happened.  God knows what has happened.  And yes, God has allowed it to happen.

            But God has a reason for allowing those bad things to happen.  We may not realize it.  We may have no idea what the reason is.  No matter how hard we try to look for a reason, the real reason may never occur to us, any more than it did to Job.  But there still is a reason.  God never does anything for no reason, and God never allows anything for no reason.

            Sometimes, the stuff that happens to us seems like it’s pretty hard on us.  But God is going to us it.  God is going to use it for God’s glory.  And, ultimately, God is going to use it for our glory, too.  We may have no clue about that at the time, but God is going to use the bad stuff that happens to us for our glory as well as for God’s glory.

            I’m also confident that, as I’ve been saying all this stuff about bad things happening, that some of you have a specific thing in your mind, something that happened to you or to someone close to you.  I can think of some specific things, too.  And some of you are thinking, “What reason could God possibly have for allowing that to happen?  How could God possibly use that for God’s glory?  And how in the world could God possibly use it for my glory?”

            I don’t have the answer for you.  You may never know the answer.  I may never know the answer, either.  Job did not find out the answer until the forty-second chapter of the book, and even then he did not find out the whole answer.  He never knew anything about the challenge between God and Satan.  He did not understand how this had been used for God’s glory as well as his own.  He just knew that it had been.

            And that’s all I can tell you.  Whatever the thing is you have in mind, I don’t think God caused it, any more than God forced Satan to treat Job the way he did.  But God allowed it to happen.  And somehow, in some way, God is going to use it for God’s glory and for your glory. 

If you don’t believe that right now, that’s okay.  Come back next week, when we talk about Job’s response to everything that happened.  For now, at least hold open that possibility.  Whatever that bad thing is that you’re thinking about, at least consider that God might be using it for God’s glory and for yours.  Even if you cannot see how, just give God the benefit of the doubt, at least for now.

Because when we do that, when we give God that benefit of the doubt, we are at the beginning of faith.  And that’s the time, when we’re at the beginning of faith, that God often chooses to show us some incredible things.