Sligo22: “Yet I will praise You…”

 Ali Calvin leads Christ Church, Kilkeel.  She has a heart for seeing people come alive in their faith and relationship with Jesus through the power of the Word and the Spirit.  She is passionate about teaching people to hear God for themselves.  Ali is leading our Bible Teaching at #Sligo22. Here’s a summary of her second session (NB: notes taken during Week A).

In the crushing, in the pressing, God is making new wine. Who enjoys the crushing?  Who enjoys the pressing? But in and through it, if God is making new wine, won’t it be worth it?

This morning we are going to look at the book of Job.  One of the values of New Wine that we hold dear is the ministry of healing. We know that God does heal and that He wants to heal. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever and we see that Jesus is always healing and ministering grace.

But what do we do and how do we handle our theology when it doesn’t seem to work?

About four years ago, I had the immense joy of praying with a young man. He had had a difficult life. He had lost his father when he was very young. I had been speaking to him for years about his need to give his life to Jesus but he resisted. As we drilled down into the core of his need, he was angry with God for taking his father away when he was so young.  But on that Tuesday night, I had the opportunity to talk with him and pray with him and confirm his decision to give his life to Jesus.

On a Tuesday night just two weeks later, he was diagnosed with incurable, inoperable cancer.  As a church community, we were determined to pray and worship. We did everything that we could see in scripture that we knew how to do. He had three young children and a young wife, and everything within us wanted and believed that he could be healed.

But ten months later I had to pray the hardest prayer – when everything in me was still saying God heal him – I prayed “Go forth upon your way…” After he had died and everybody had left, I’m not ashamed to say that I prayed that God would raise him from the dead even then but that was not what happened. What do you do with that?  How do you work with that in a community where you’ve been talking about God’s power to heal?

Why am I saying that? Because it will be your story at some point in your life and ministry.

Job was blameless and upright.  Does that mean he was without sin? No. But he was upright and God was well please with him.  But Job doesn’t see what is going on in the heavenly realms.  Satan was going throughout the earth seeking “whom he may devour.”   

Satan’s aim is to get Job to curse God, to walk away from God, to hate God.  Revelation 12 says that Satan was thrown down from the heavenly realm and he knows his time is short.  He knows that he is defeated and Jesus has won the victory on the cross.  In his limited time, his goal is to get people to turn against God.  While he cannot defeat Jesus, he wants to take as many people with him as possible. Watch his methods.

God says, “Okay, he is in your hands but do not lay a finger on the man himself.”

Then we get the litany of disasters that fall upon Job’s family.  He loses absolutely everything.  To lose your ten children in one day, I don’t know if any of us can imagine that? What does Job do?

“He tore his robe and fell to the ground and worshipping. Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away, may the name of the Lord be blessed.”

When I was 21, I fell ill with a debilitating illness even though I was trying to serve God in France. At one time, I was home for Christmas.  I remember I was wearing a black polo neck jumper.  A lady came to see me and she said, “We are going to praise God before we pray.” I was angry at that– how can I do that?  In the midst of the pain, and disappointment, how can we praise?  But I learnt a vital lesson.

Some of you are going through so much right now. When you choose to stand and praise God anyway, that is a real sacrifice and offering of praise.

Satan gets permission to add physical suffering to Job’s emotional pain and even Job’s wife turns away from him and says, “Curse God”

I remember in my illness, I was in a very bad place.  I recall very clearly that I heard these words - “Don’t curse God and don’t ask why.” 

Into Job’s situation come three friends. They sit down and for seven days they say nothing. Sometimes that’s the best thing we can do.  But then they begin to talk.  The arguments they keep repeating reflect the worldview and the mindset of the day.  They said, if you follow God and walk in His ways then you’ll be blessed.  You are suffering so therefore there must be sin in your life. 

I turned myself inside out for years looking for the secret sin that must have caused my illness.  And yet God had said that Job was blameless and upright.  Job says, “If I knew what was wrong I’d put it right.”  They say, “Job you have got it wrong… you would not be suffering if you were truly following Him.  Job you haven’t got enough faith.”  This goes on and on.  His friends had good theology but the theology did not fit the circumstances Job found himself in.  Another name for the devil is the accuser and Job was experiencing that.

See chapter 9:15 – “Though I were innocent, I could not answer him; I could only plead with my Judge for mercy.”  Job longs for someone who will plead his case in heaven.  He holds on to the hope that there is an advocate, “Even now my witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high.” 16:9  “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him…” 13:15

Even if you are going through really difficult things in the church, don’t walk away from Jesus.  In the middle of everything, Job says, “I know that my redeemer lives.” 

Everything around him points to a God who doesn’t care. But he clings to the knowledge that his redeemer lives.  Job says, “I will see God with my own eyes!  How my heart yearns within me.”  Job somehow has a glimpse of a redeemer even though he lived such a long time before Jesus.  He says this in the middle of his suffering.

In the Best Marigold Hotel, people go to the manager to complain.

He says,  “Everything will be alright in the end. If it is not alright yet it because it’s not the end yet.”

The friends had nothing more to say and Job has nothing more to say.  Now the young man Elihu speaks up.  He had waited while his elders were talking and was fearful to speak but now the Spirit rises up within him and he is “full of words”. 

The theology is not working but let me bring the Spirit of God into the situation. He doesn’t say anything radical.  He tells Job - you are saying God is not fair.  God is a God of justice even though it doesn’t look like that. You are saying God is silent but God does speak even though it doesn’t sound like that..

God says, “My ways are not your ways.”  Job you are thinking on a natural plain, I’m thinking on a spiritual plain.  Lift your eyes up to God. Elihu doesn’t get to finish because the Lord starts speaking.

He is the God of all creation.  He tells Job, “Remember who I am.  Do you think you know better than me?”  Job is lifted up into the realm of God. He sees afresh who God is.  And so he says, “I’m unworthy.”  Job had a sense of entitlement.  “I deserve God’s best because I’ve sought to be blameless – God owes me.”

Now he has been humbled and he understands that anything he has is a gift from God. He is brought back to the place of faith.  Even if nothing is changing in his circumstances, his faith is restored.

For me this is the climax of the story, “Lord my ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.”

We can have a theology about God but now Job has encountered God.  He has remember how good, powerful and loving God is. 

As the tears of agony are as yet undried on the face of our brave sufferer, the light of God shines and every tear becomes a rainbow of hope. - H Wheeler-Robinson

What we see is restoration. It didn’t come when he wanted it to come. But God always restores.  He always makes good to those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose.  Job sees that now. What is more important. That Job’s situation changes or that He has encountered God?  I look back on some of the suffering and while I would never want to go through it again, I say thank God for how it brings us deeper into a place of trust and reliance on God.

Heavenly Father, come in these moments. We have grappled with this difficult questions. Why do bad things happen to good people? We don’t always have answers. We don’t always understand what you are doing. Sometimes we have said, ‘this is not fair’. Thank you that you are big enough to take our questions. Thank you that Satan didn’t win in Job’s life. Give us strength and grace to hold fast and say, ‘I know my God. He is good. He is able. And even if He doesn’t deliver me, I will still praise Him.’