Job 42.1-6

What is the most wonderful, awe inspiring thing that you have ever seen with your own eyes? Perhaps you have been to Egypt and seen the Pyramids, or to America and seen the Grand Canyon. Apart from things like this, wonderful things happen in our lives every day: Things like the birth of a child or treatment that has saved your life, or something simple in the world of nature which is beyond our ability, such as the colours of flowers. The point is this, sometime, somehow, somewhere, we have all known things which are so wonderful, so awe inspiring, they are difficult for us to adequately describe.

At the end of the Book of Job, God asks job some questions about the wonderful and awe inspiring things which are in our world. ‘Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep…Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail?’ job has no answer for these kinds of things and Job gives his answer to God’s questions in our reading today from the Book of Job chapter forty two, the last chapter of the Book of Job: ‘I had heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees Thee; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.’ Job is penitent, because, as he said, he sought to explain things that he did not completely understand. The Book of Job is memorable amongst the books of the Bible as the book which seeks to explain suffering in people’s lives.

Firstly, of course, The Book of Job seeks to answer those who believe that suffering visits people because of their sins. That is the argument of Job’s friends or comforters as they are called, Eliphaz Bildad and Zophar. Eliphaz says to Job, ‘Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off?’ Job answers by saying he has been living a blameless and upright life, fearing God and turning away from evil. It is a mistake for his friends to think that suffering has visited him for that reason. Good and evil come to all of us, as Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: ‘Your heavenly Father causes his sun to rise on the bad and the good, and gives rain to the righteous and the unrighteous.’

The sufferings of Job are so sad because he lost so much. Job was a very rich farmer, and the Book of Job says that he was the richest person in the East. If we were to seek to compare Job with someone today, we would be talking about one of the Saudi princes, or someone with his own Football Team, and who goes on holiday on his own yacht, arriving on the yacht by flying in his own helicopter. Job’s friends search for some kind of explanation for all of this.

Therefore, the Book of Job reflects something which is completely natural when suffering visits us. We need answers, and by that, I mean the fact that we look beyond the obvious answers. Let me give you an example: Years ago, I was a curate in a church which burnt down. What caused the church to burn down? The people who were working on the site next door lit a fire to get rid of rubbish, and the sparks reached the church. Perhaps people like Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar would say that the church burnt down because the whole of the congregation were evil people, and that God has burnt the church down as a punishment. However, as I said, people like Job’s comforters are wrong. Therefore, it is a little like the thing last Sunday: When things go wrong, we must look for the simple and obvious answers, and not for the hidden answers in our opinion, because, if we were to do that, we would be wrong, because there are no hidden answers. That is what the Book of Job seeks to tell us.

Secondly, even though Job lived a blameless life, he is penitent regardless. Job is penitent because in the face of everything that happened to him, he made a mistake. He was wrong in only one thing. He had given up, and having lost a great deal, we wanted to lose everything. Having lost so much that was good, he began to see everything as bad, and that was why wanting to lose everything was in his mind. Once again, the Book of Job reflects here something which is natural. More than likely, we do the same thing as him frequently.  It is like going past Liberty Stadium with people leaving the game before the game has come to an end. The only people who do that are the supporters of the losing team. The problem is, the game has not yet come to an end, and sometimes, they miss seeing their team win because they had given up as supporters too quickly and too soon.

The Book of Job begins with a test for Job. The opponents of Job believe that if he were to lose everything, then he would lose his faith also. He did not lose his faith in God, but he lost his faith in the future. That was Job’s mistake. There is a reason why people give up on things: When things go wrong, when bad things happen or however you want to describe these things, these things look greater than them. They cause us to feel that we are small in comparison to these things. Yes, in a way, these things are true. However, remember the things which I mentioned at the beginning: Even though they are awe inspiring as we think about the Pyramids, the nation which built them disappeared thousands of years ago, and even though the Grand Canyon looks wonderful, human life is not able to be sustained there.

Amongst all of these things, we should remember that God speaks to us despite our weakness, and Christ calls us to follow him despite our weakness. That is the message of our readings today, isn’t it? Job says in the reading: ‘Now my eyes see Thee.’ We have the opportunity to see God himself in Jesus Christ. Yes, there are many things in the world and in our daily lives which are awe inspiring, and appear greater than us. Yet we should remember that the only creatures who have received a calling to work as the servants of God are humanity. God calls us to work for his glory in the midst of the huge things which are in the world and in our daily lives also.