At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship 21 and said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart.[c]
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
may the name of the Lord be praised.”
22 In all
this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.
Job 1:20-22
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the
devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
1 Peter 5:8
I’ve quoted the closing verses of Job 1, that strange Old
Testament book that both puzzles and intrigues us. These three verses contain
what is, for my money at any rate, one of the most magnificent declarations of
faith in God anywhere in the Old Testament. I picture him, this old man upon
whom catastrophe after catastrophe has fallen (read the whole chapter for full
details), shaking his fist in furious defiance not at God but at the unknown
enemy who has caused these things to happen. Truly awesome.
Who was this man Job? Nobody really knows. The opening
verses of the chapter tell us he was from “the land of Uz”. But where was Uz?
The experts tell us it may well have been in Edom, east of the River Jordan, in
which case he may not have been a member of the people of Israel. But he
certainly knew the God of Israel as “the Lord”. He was “blameless and upright”, a man who “feared
God and shunned evil”.
He was also phenomenally wealthy, indeed “the greatest man
among all the people of the East”. His wife and grown children could sometimes
be a cause of difficulty to him. But beyond such clues we know very little. Not
that it matters much, because the book as a whole comes across more as a kind
of legendary folk-tale than as a factual piece of history – rather as we might
think of, say, Robin Hood. Our business is to receive the Job story as it stands
and, as they say, to run with it. What can we learn from it?
First, God’s people have an enemy.
We read (verse 6) that the angels of God “came to present
themselves before the Lord” – presumably in heaven – and then, rather
strangely, that “Satan also came with them”. To us, probably, Satan is simply
another name for the devil, so what he was doing in heaven seems puzzling, to
say the least. But at this point in Israel’s history the word “satan” simply meant
“adversary” or “enemy”. Jesus’ ministry on earth began with a victorious battle
with the devil (Matthew 4:1-11), and one of its features was the “casting out
of demons”, a ministry that was by no means simple and which on occasions
drained him of energy. This makes the identity of Satan far more concrete.
Well, however we understand it, the key question is: do we
take seriously the reality of an enemy in our lives? I heard a preacher once
say that as Christians we tend to divide into two distinct camps. There are
those who see the devil in just about every misfortune and difficulty we have
to undergo, even just the normal ups and downs of life; and there are those
who, in practice, don’t believe in him at all, rendering them all the more
susceptible to him.
I suspect that preacher was right, though I’m not sure
which of those two errors is the more serious. I knew a Christian who made it
her practice every morning to “put on the whole armour of God” (Ephesians 6:11)
through imaginative prayer – to get dressed spiritually, so to speak, to start
the day. I couldn’t help but admire her for her seriousness, but the message,
surely, is simple: Christian, take the devil seriously, yes of course – but
don’t get fixated!
Second, our enemy’s power is real – but it
is limited.
According to Job 1, Job’s sufferings happened only because
God allowed them. Satan challenges God with the taunt that Job lives a
righteous life purely because God has given him his protection, but “now
stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse
you to your face” (verse11). To which God, perhaps rather surprisingly,
replies, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man
himself do not lay a finger”.
From a human perspective it’s not only as if God was
testing Job but almost playing a cruel game with him. Certainly, it’s an
integral part of Christian experience that God puts us to the test. Isn’t that
precisely what the Garden of Eden story is about (remember, Satan was there too
in the form of the serpent?). It seems that what God wills is one thing;
what he permits is another, and we are not given a clear understanding
of why.
But the key thing about the Job story is that Satan, even
if he is like a ferocious animal (as the apostle Peter puts it, “like a roaring
lion”) he is never off God’s leash: “on the man himself do not lay a
finger”, says God. If Satan is indeed our enemy, he is also God’s – and
ultimately there is only one winner in that combat! This basic truth may have
seemed pretty cold comfort to Job in the light of unfolding events – but he was
ultimately vindicated. And so will we be.
Third, the fact that we are Christians doesn’t mean we need
feel bad about venting our sorrows.
This is what makes these two verses so striking and
challenging: Job didn’t only tolerate his sufferings. No; he looked them
fair and square in the face. Certainly, in “tearing his clothes and shaving his
head” he was yielding to the conventional gestures of grief at his time. But
the fact that they were conventional doesn’t mean he didn’t mean them. As the
book unfolds we see that he was a genuinely emotional man; in his time of
trouble there was no “stiff upper lip”.
Sometimes Christians have imagined that because we believe
in the victory of the resurrection we shouldn’t display grief or sorrow, anger
or confusion, in hard times. God has made us as emotional creatures, and there are
times when it is not only permissible to give vent to those emotions, but it is
in fact a healthy thing to do; bottling them up may only make things worse.
Every time I read about the stoning of Stephen I feel
grateful for the little detail that “godly men buried Stephen and mourned
deeply for him” (Acts 8:2). Those men would have been in no doubt that
Stephen had gone to be with the Lord, but that didn’t stop them weeping over him.
And, of course, we must never forget that “Jesus wept”…
What are we to make of the words Job spoke during that
terrible time? I’ve run out of space, but they are too important to be skimmed
over. Please join me next time…
Father, your word often speaks of sorrow and
tears. Thank you for the example of
those men who wept over Stephen, and of your servant Job in his time of trouble.
Please fortify our faith and help us to know that through Jesus there is
unending joy to come, and that you will wipe every tear from our eyes. Amen.
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