Job 19 Getting a different perspective

Job 19 – Getting a different perspective

“Last week we heard about living with despair – this week we are going to try to get a bit of perspective. We will explore why things often look so dark, why God doesn’t seem to answer our prayer and he seems far away. We are also going to look at the real hope we have. What a difference we can see when we look at our situation and our world the way that God sees it.”

AMAZING FACTS

The earth tilted at 23 degrees produces our seasons. If it wasn’t at 23 degrees, vapours from the ocean would move both north and south piling up continents of ice.

If the moon were only 50000 miles away from the earth instead of 200,000 miles, the tides would be so enormous that all the continents would be submerged in water. Even the mountains would be eroded.

If the crust of the earth has been only ten feet thicker, there would be no oxygen, and without it all animal life would die.

The earth weighs 6 sextillion tons (6 with 21 zeros) 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons

Yet it is perfectly balanced and turns easily on its axis. It revolves at more than 1,000 miles an hour or 25,000 miles a day. No wonder we feel so tired!

Still the sun is only one minor star in the 100 billion orbs which comprise our milky way galaxy. If you hold out a one penny coin at arms length, you would block out 15 million stars from your view, if your eyes could see with that power.

Yet we refuse to believe in a loving God. Despite all the evidence crying out in how we has placed us in an almost perfect environment and cared for every need we have and some we are only just discovering.

How can we miss it?

Well just like Job sometimes we get a bit self-absorbed.

19:1 “How long will you torment me?” As we heard from John last week, sometimes it would be better for people to shut up rather than try to offer advice and help. Sometimes it is better just to be alongside people when they are suffering.

If you have friends like Bildad, Zophar and Eliphaz – who needs enemies?

We can often feel like we are in trouble or suffering, our friends are no use and God seems far away and not listening.

We want to scream but we think no one would hear – or they would just complain about the noise!

We don’t always feel sure if God is for us or against us.

Job has been asking the question WHY since chapter 3.

And we ask the same question?

Why did she die?
Why did my pension money get stolen?

Why did my husband leave me?

Why did he get Alzheimer’s?

Why did my parents split up?

Why did this happen to me?

The bible says that God loves me and that he cares about me but if I’m honest it doesn’t always feel like that

Sometimes it feels like God is against me. Is he?

Of course we all know the text book answer: Romans 8:31

^{ “}If God is for us, who can be against us?”

But Job is honest, that isn’t how he feels – easy answers are not Job’s way.

In verses 1-5 Job has a go at his friends who have been tormenting him.

“isn’t it enough to have god against me? You have to torture me as well?”

V4: If it is true that I have gone astray, my error remains my concern alone.

But Job knows he has nothing on his conscience. If we are in trouble, or suffering we need to get right with God too. – so our conscience is clear.

In v6-12 Job says it’s bad enough for God to be against me without my friends turning against me too.

Whatever Job has done is between Job and God. It is for him to repent before God not for others to rub Job’s nose in it.

I’m all alone!

Verse 12 is pretty sad: God is huge, his armies are massive and they are surrounding little old ME! I’m alone in my tent and I’m surrounded. It’s not fair!

Imagine going out one night for a camping trip and waking up to find the whole US army surrounding your tent. You would think it is all a bit too much.

V12: He is alone and surrounded

V13 : He is alienated and friendless

V14: He is forgotten

There’s no point in sending Job a Christmas card, he’s as good as dead!

V15-17: He is an alien. No one can bear to be near him.

Even his breath stinks.

V18-19: Children ridicule him and his friends have all turned against him

CD mirrors

Hold up the CD to your face – look deeply into the shiny side . What do you see? – You! You may like the sight or you may hate it. You may see it clearly or a bit fuzzily.

Now hold the CD to your eyes and look through the hole. What do you see? Can you see you anymore? No. You can see others and you can see the world.

Now take a look at the picture that Claire is holding up. What can you see? Is it a picture of the world? What do you remember about it?

Without looking – keep facing me! – What was written just beside Claire? Does anyone know? It says “I really love you.”

We don’t always see things because we are not focused on them.

So Job sums up how he feels in v21-22

“Have pity on me, my friends, have pity, for the hand of God has struck me.

 Why do you pursue me as God does? Will you never get enough of my flesh?

Job thinks God is against him. He is a bully and is picking on Job.

Beware the dodgy thinking!

Is this true? Job says in v21 “for the hand of God has struck me”

Look back at 1:11-12, Satan says:

^11 “but stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.” ^12 The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”

In fact God is protecting Job, not striking him. The hands that hit Job’s possessions and his family and wrecked his health are Satan’s.

Admittedly Satan is acting with the permission of God but with strict constraints.

Satan has been hitting at Job and his family and possessions constrained by the strict limits imposed by God.

Job cannot see who is hitting him – just as if he is blindfolded. Both Job and his friends assume it is God.

There is no place in their theology for Satan.

Theirs is a simple world – cause and effect.

If you are good, God will bless you

If you are bad, God will curse you

Wealth and health and happiness are God’s gift for the good people

Poverty and illness and despair are God’s punishment for the bad people

THIS IS NOT TRUE

Satan wants to harm us

Satan is real and he is loose in the world.

He hates us and wants to destroy the relationship we have with God

Satan says: ^11 “but stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

Satan wants to break our faith in God, our relationship with Jesus. He will do whatever it takes – money or lack of money, good health or illness, long life or early death, happiness or despair. He is the enemy and he is out to get us.

Cause and effect

Job’s friends describe a world where everything that happens is the direct result of what Job has done. It is not true for Job and it is not true for us.

Sometimes we face the consequences of our sin. An illegitimate child, a criminal record, broken relationships. Other times no one but God knows. There is no direct link.

The poor in Africa are not poor because each one of them is bad. Some leaders have been bad but probably not a lot worse than other leaders whose people have not suffered half as much.

No, the poor are suffering because of the greed of people throughout the world – encouraged at every step by Satan.

The sick are not ill because they are bad. Sometimes they have caused their illness by smoking or something similar but many smokers die happily in their bed after a long life. Sometimes sickness is the only way to get people to think seriously about their lives. But we are fallen people. After Genesis 2 we are thrown out of the garden where we were under God’s protection. We are out in the open – we wanted our own way. Now we have our own way and we feel frightened and alone!

So Job want to set the record straight

Look at v22, Job is pretty certain he is going to die, and when he is dead everyone will say

“Job died and he never admitted what he had done wrong – and so he paid the penalty. He died because he wouldn’t confess his sins”

Job really wants his innocence to be written down permanently so it can’t be erased – well he got his wish: a major book of the Bible with 48 chapters – about 18,000 words!

But it’s here, at the point of despair, at rock bottom, that Job’s faith really take off.

Job wants to record before he dies, just how he feels so that when he is gone others will hear his side of the story – some of the best words in the Bible:

^25 I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. ^26 And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; ^27 I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!

What brilliant words… but who is the redeemer?

But what does Job know about the Redeemer? Job lived a long time before Jesus. Quite a lot actually - Job understands the concept of the kinsman redeemer. Just like Boaz in the book of Ruth, the Kinsman redeemer is the person who comes to preserve the family rights, or rights a wrong. In the case of Ruth it was marrying a widow and giving her deceased husband an heir.

Job turns his back on his friends. He knows they are wrong.

Job ignores his feelings. He knows that they are leading him astray.

Job trusts in God. He knows deep down that God is going to rescue him – even if it is after death.

God has not abandoned him – God is going to rescue him

God has not abandoned him – God is going to rescue him

God is Job’s, (and our) kinsman redeemer – The book of Ruth is there to remind us.

Even if Job’s flesh is destroyed – he will stand before God – face to face.

So when we suffer or someone we care for is suffering, we often ask “WHY?”

Sometimes we ask “is God for me or against me?”

Is God trying to make my life a misery?

Like Job we can respond with faith.

We can bring our pain to Jesus – even when we are dying or are worn out.

We can be certain that God loves us.

We can be certain that Jesus will hear us even when we are not very focussed on him because of our circumstances.

And we can echo the words of Job:

^25 I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. ^26 And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God;

^27 I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!