So  you think you’re doing it tough?  Consider this: you’re a healthy and wealthy farmer with lots of livestock and many employees.  You’re a dad with a large family.  Humanly speaking you’ve got it made.  But then disaster strikes.  In a very short time your sheep are all burned alive in the kind of fires we’ve seen so often this last summer.  Your cattle have all been rustled and your farming equipment destroyed and all your other animals are gone.  Then a tornado strikes the house where your ten kids are having a party.  No one survives.  On top of that you end up with a terrible skin disease that makes you loathe your own body.

Does that story sound vaguely familiar?  It should, it’s in the Bible — a story from the time of the patriarchs.  The man in question is Job and his story is told in a book by the same name.  Anyone who has ever struggled with the question of suffering should read the book of Job.  Not that there’s any easy answers in Job, mind you.  There’s only the same answer that we find in the rest of the Bible: we live by faith and we suffer by faith.

Maybe you remember the story-line.  One day Satan, that fallen angel, the Accuser, stands before God and accuses Job of serving God only for what he can get out of it.  So God gives the Enemy permission to do his worst.  And he does.  And the outcome…?  Well, there’s a number of outcomes.  Let me mention three.

The first outcome of the tragedy in Job’s life is that we have, arguably, the most profound book on human suffering that has ever been written.  There are thirty five chapters of discussion as Job and his friends debate the reasons for Job’s tragic circumstances.  Arguments are put forward and then demolished.  Accusations are made and then contradicted.  And when they’ve all run out of words to say God steps in and asks Job a few questions and Job decides on the basis of those questions that he had better keep his mouth shut.  So the most profound answer of the book of Job is that when things go wrong God is still in charge.

In these days of the corona virus there is a lot of debate about causes and meaning.  And especially we in Oz who have already lived through years of drought and the worst fires in living memory are looking for some answers.  The trouble is that we’re not finding too many of those answers.  The only answer, that given in the book of Job, is an answer that many people in our society reject when things go wrong.  But the fact is that God is still in charge.  The corona virus was not an ‘oops’ on His radar.

The second outcome of the tragedy of Job’s life is that we are told that Job never lost his integrity.  In other words, right throughout all the terrible disasters he continued to walk with God by faith.  And that’s really the heart of the issue of the book of Job.  Satan claimed that Job’s faith was only because God spoilt him rotten, so to speak.  God allowed Satan to test Job—but it was in order to prove that faith can withstand the most trying ordeals that the devil can dish up to us.

And that makes me wonder.  Allow me to use a little sanctified imagination.  Satan recently turned up before God’s throne and said to Him, see all these Christians in Western society?  They really only worship you because you bless their socks off.  But send them the corona virus and we’ll see what becomes of their faith.  And God said, “Go for it!”  Hey, I don’t want to be blasphemous, or act as if I can see what is happening behind the scenes in the spiritual realm.  Job couldn’t see that at the time and neither can I.  But I want to make a point.  There is always a battle raging at a level that we are not always conscious of: the battle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan.  That battle was happening behind the scenes in the story of Job and it’s raging behind the scenes in today’s story of the corona virus.  That battle is a test of our faith just as much as it was a test of Job’s faith.  Will you stand strong in your faith as this present battle rages?

A third outcome of the tragedy of Job’s life is that it became obvious in Job’s dialogues that Jesus was the reason for Job’s steadfastness.  “Whoa!”  I can hear you say, “Jesus doesn’t appear in the Bible until nearly 2000 years later.”  True.  But isn’t the whole Bible really about Him?  When you look for Him you find Him in the most amazing places in the Old Testament.  So where is He in the book of Job?

Well, He’s there in the high point of Job’s confession of faith.  Although, to be honest, there are a number of high points in the book of Job.  It is a resolute faith that can say, “Even if He kills me yet will I trust in Him!” (13:15).  That’s a high point for me in the book of Job.  But there is another high point in Job’s arguments with his friends.  It’s when, by faith, he sees Jesus.  In 19:25 he states, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand upon the earth.”

What Job is essentially saying is that one day there will be someone who will make right again what is wrong… and that someone is God’s promised Messiah and He is the ultimate answer for our fallen and broken world.  Job goes on to say that his heart longs for the day of His appearing.

I shouldn’t be too hard on Mrs Job – after all she too lost everything, including her ten children.  Nevertheless it saddens me to hear her give Job the advice, “Curse God and die.” (1:9).  Job didn’t do that.  And if we ask why he remained so resolute in his faith then the answer is that Job had his eyes on Jesus, God’s promised deliverer.  Today we know this Jesus so much better than Job did.  In these trying times may our faith then be even more resolute than Job’s faith.

John Westendorp