Pray

Reading: Job 1:1-5.

Meditation

As little children learn to talk, there are a few common phrases and words that they typically say. Among the most well known are: “Mummy”; “Daddy”; “No”; “I want…”; and on it goes. If you have boys, “Truck” or “car” seem pretty typical, and they usually make a valiant attempt at saying “dinosaur” pretty early on (I’m not quite sure what little girls say – I grew up with three brothers and I have four sons!). There is one other popular phrase that comes along pretty early on as well: “It’s not fair.” It’s amazing how quickly children develop a sense of justice, and if one of their siblings takes something belonging to them or perhaps gets something they want, those words tend to come out pretty regularly: “It’s not fair!”

We can see this in children easily enough, but I wonder if we as adults are not also guilty of this kind of thing too. It might not look the same, we don’t generally whine and complain by saying: “It’s not fair.” It will probably look more sophisticated than that, but essentially that is what’s going on. We respond to difficult things we don’t like in a way that communicates: that’s not fair. Maybe we complain, or criticise, or get moody, or argue. Sometimes it’s just that something comes up in our day, and the inner thought crosses our mind: “Great! This is the last thing I need.”

The Book of Job has a message for us in such times as this. “Yes”, God says, “This is exactly what you need.” There are reasons why God is letting your difficulty happen, and the Book of Job is custom designed to help us come to terms with this reality. As we scan through this book, we quickly see that most of it consists of dialogue between Job and his friends. We’ll get to that later, because the first thing we need to do is focus on Chapter 1. This chapter is a kind of a key to the whole book, and it sets out the context for everything else.

The first lesson that the Book of Job brings to us is that we must come to terms with the reality of Christian suffering. Suffering, in one sense, is a common human experience. We live in a fallen world, and we all share in the painful consequences of sin. However, there are some unique dimensions to suffering when it comes to the experience of a Christian. In particular, faith fundamentally changes the dynamic when it comes to suffering.

Scripture says that without faith it’s impossible to please God. When a person believes in and trusts in God, it changes everything about their lives, including how they view and experience suffering. For the unbeliever, every suffering is a foretaste of the coming judgment of their sins. For the believer, they are no longer under judgment, and suffering may be seen by faith to be – not judgment – but loving discipline, correction, or instruction. There may be other divine purposes behind our suffering as well.

The narrative of verses 1-5 in chapter one begin by showing us that Job was a model Christian. Of course Job lived in the days of the Old Covenant, and so – strictly speaking – he wasn’t a “Christian”. He was, however, very clearly a man of God and a man of faith. Our text takes great pains to make that point. Job wasn’t just an ordinary Christian, he was exemplary. In his day, he was the greatest, most mature, most godly man on the face of the planet. Imagine if this was God’s testimony about you? “There is no one like him on the earth.” God actually said that about Job! This is an incredibly godly man.

Be ye doers of the word...

Consider the superiority of Job. God invites Satan and the heavenly host to do just this. Consider Job in comparison to yourself. It’s so easy to form an opinion and judgment about the actions of God’s people recorded in scripture. Our summary of Job might be: “Job? Job got arrogant against God, and God put him in his place!” But consider this: if you lost all your wealth and family members in a day, would you kneel down and worship at the end of that day? Job did. One of the reasons why God used Job as a key character in this story was to show us that not even the very best of saints is beyond suffering. If God is not willing to spare righteous, blameless Job from suffering, the best Christian on the face of the earth, do you really think God would spare us from suffering? Did he spare even Christ, the sinless Son of God, from suffering?

Job’s superiority and innocence is, in a sense, intended to show us that every believer will be subject to divinely ordained times of suffering. We must accept the reality of suffering. We are not better than Job, even though we have many new covenantal advantages over him. We ought not to think of ourselves as being above suffering, and we must arm our minds with this knowledge. Accept the reality of suffering, it will be a feature of your life. That’s part of our application in this first lesson, we need to make a mind-shift so that we are in a place where we accept the reality of suffering in our lives. Job confronts us with this reality on every page.

But where to from here? As we approach the text of Job itself, we also ought to arm ourselves with another tactical approach to our suffering, that being: we must imitate Job. When we read biblical narratives, one of the things we ought to do, according to 1 Corinthians 10, is to use the characters of scripture as reflections for ourselves. The Apostle James does this specifically with Job himself: “Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (James 5:11). As we read Job, therefore, we consider Job as a pattern of patience for ourselves.

We ought to look at Job, as in a mirror, and consider ourselves in light of his responses to suffering. Would God actually say of us: “Consider my servant (insert your name here), there is no one like him/her on the face of the earth?” Would God say such a thing of me? Would it be desirable that he should commend us in that way? Imitate and learn from Job. In our passage we see that he feared God, and that he turned from evil. Do we know what it means to fear God? (start by reading Bunyan’s short volume “The Fear of God”, it will help with this). Job turned from evil. Consider when you have are tempted to do evil, do you turn from temptation? Job continually prayed for his children… do you? Do you pray for the children of the church? Do you pray continually?

Finally, of course, Job’s sacrificial offerings are a gospel foreshadow. Job understood that his sins, and the sins of his children, would need to be covered and atoned for by sacrifice, much as Abel understood the same thing. The full gospel has now come to us, and we understand that this sacrifice is Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Job is a gospel man, he deals with his sins by confession, repentance, and seeking God’s mercy. That is exactly what we ought to do also – in times of suffering and in times when things are well. These are fruitful lines of thought, and as we continue on in this book, lesson by lesson, we will learn how to suffer wisely. We will be seeking to wisely discern which things in Job’s life are worthy of imitation – there are a good many of them. SDG.

Prayer of Confession & Consecration

Dear Lord God, thank you that – in your wisdom – you have ordained suffering for each one of your people. Thank you that you have good purposes in allowing us to suffer. Thank you that you are altogether wise and wonderful in all your works. Please help me to truly and meekly accept the reality of my suffering, trusting in you that all will be well. Please forgive me for the occasions on which I have responded sinfully to my suffering, and teach me to respond wisely to suffering. May you teach these lessons also to your people in my local church, that we may be a church that is humble, meek, and submissive to you in our suffering. In Jesus’ name I pray these things, Amen.

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