Limits and Loss

Last year, when COVID was really blowing up for the first time, many of us were walking around wondering, why do I feel so tired all the time?

I never even left the house today, and yet I just feel exhausted all the time.

Why am I having such a hard time focusing?

Why do I feel like I can't get anything done?

Did anybody feel this way?

Why do I feel this perpetual mental fog?

Why is it so hard even to make the smallest decisions?

I remember even the decision of what to wear in the morning or what to make for breakfast felt impossible.

And I read this great article by a local psychiatrist, a guy named Kurt Thompson.

And he basically says in the article, hey, you know that thing that we're all feeling, that fog, that inability to make decisions?

That's called grief.

And we need to recognize that we are all corporately grieving right now.

And he says, and I love this analogy, just like COVID was creating a kind of inflammatory response in our immune system, he said, grief is our emotional inflammatory response to loss.

And he says, this is what loss does to you.

It results in this inflammatory emotional response called grief.

We've been in this series over the past few weeks during the season of Lent talking about emotionally healthy spirituality.

And a huge piece of emotional maturity is knowing how to deal with grief and loss.

That's essential for emotional maturity.

And so we're going to be looking at probably the best place in the Bible to understand grief and loss, which is the book of Job.

And as I said, we're going to just very briefly summarize the book.

We're going to focus on the final chapter.

And this is going to show us three things.

It's going to show us first the inevitability of loss, something we have to come to terms with.

Number two, it's going to show us the necessity of grief, not something that can be avoided.

And then finally, we're going to meet the God of the storm.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

And we thank you that there are things in your word, there are parts of your word that are meant to speak into the deepest, darkest recesses of our hearts.

And Lord, I know that even as I've heard from people as we've been doing this series, this has been dredging up for some people old pain, old wounds, things that they haven't dealt with, things that they have maybe forgotten about that are coming to the surface.

And I pray that as you always do, that you would use your word in the power of your spirit to do your work, to do your surgery in your people,

to gradually, progressively set us free from the things that bind us, open our eyes and our hearts to the truth and the hope that can only be found in the gospel.

We pray this in your son's name, Lord.

Amen.

So let me just give you a summary of the book.

Very, very, very simplistic summary, I admit, but it's all we have time for.

Job basically starts out as an ancient Near Eastern equivalent of a Jeff Bezos.

And that is if Jeff Bezos were as righteous as he is rich, right?

Because Job is not only fabulously wealthy, but he's a paragon of righteousness and piety.

He is and has everything an ancient Near Eastern person could want.

And then, in one fell swoop, catastrophe strikes, and he loses everything in a day.

He loses his children.

Very tragically, he loses all of his wealth, and he even loses his health.

And in short order, we find Job having moved outside the city, outside the wall, living in the trash heap,

and covered in sores and boils.

And he's really in the midst of his grief.

He's trying to wrestle with this profound, catastrophic loss that he has suffered.

And so then his wife and his first three friends offer some pretty bad advice.

And then a fourth friend comes along named Elihu, and he offers much better advice.

And then finally, we see God.

Job meets God face to face.

Job, all through the book, says, I don't want to talk to you.

I want to talk to God.

I don't want to talk to you.

I want to talk to God.

Finally, God shows up.

And what this is really about as a book is it's a lot about loss and grief.

And it's about how loss and grief fundamentally change our relationship with God.

So I want to break this down into the three points that we're going to focus on as this relates to Job.

The first is this.

Job shows us that loss is inevitable if you're a human being.

You say, well, how can we get that from Job?

Job is this ancient, mysterious book written thousands of years ago.

It may or may not even be history.

It could just be some sort of parable.

How does that relate to me?

And Jonathan Edwards, in his well-known sermon on Job,

says that Job is actually the story of all human beings.

You know, he says Job loses everything in a day,

but all human beings will eventually lose all of these things over the course of a lifetime.

You know, no matter how many anti-aging products we buy or use,

we can't slow the passing of time.

We can't slow or stop the impact of time on our bodies.

We can't slow the breaking down inside that is occurring right now.

Beyond that, we're all going to have to let go of dreams.

We're all going to have to watch doors close and know that they will never reopen.

We will have to let go of childhood aspirations once and for all.

You know, this is what leads many people to have a kind of midlife crisis.

You reach this point, and some people in our church are at that point now

where you realize, I'm never going to do that thing.

That thing that I always thought I would do, I'm never going to do it.

And that can be really terrifying and unsettling.

And we lose some things very slowly, like our neuroplasticity or our vision.

You know, I just this past year was getting headaches and realized I needed to get glasses

because my eyes are starting to fade.

I can no longer read the text in front of me as well.

That's inevitable.

It's a kind of loss.

But then we're also going to all face catastrophic loss at some point in our lives, right?

Many people have lost loved ones to COVID this past year.

And that's been horrible and tragic.

Maybe your spouse has an affair.

Or maybe one of the doors that closes that never reopens is the possibility of getting married

or having kids.

Maybe you lose your job.

A lot of people lost their job this past year.

Maybe you get a cancer diagnosis.

But in one way or another, catastrophic loss is going to come.

And the point that we need to see in Job is that loss is an unavoidable part of life.

There's no way to avoid it.

It's a part of being alive.

And I think that this is, you know, it may sound like an obvious point to you,

but this is a point, particularly in the West, that needs to be made and that we need to hold on to.

Because in the West, I think that we have lost touch with this fact of life.

I think in the West, we have increasingly denied that loss is inevitable.

And you really see this trend ever since the Enlightenment.

There's been this increasing optimism and confidence and reliance on our technology

and our democracy and our prosperity,

just our ability as a society to generate unimaginable amounts of wealth.

It's very recent, historically speaking.

And there are many people who, because of all of these massive advancements,

truly believe that one day we're going to be able to transcend the limits of our humanness.

You know, and I'm not just talking about the transhumanist movement,

you know, people who want to take our consciousness and sort of upload it into a machine.

That's part of it.

But there's a broader kind of rejection of limits across the board.

And so many people in our culture say that limits are meant to be broken.

Right?

Don't let anything stand in the way of your dreams.

Don't even let your own body stand in the way of your dreams.

Limits are meant to be broken.

That meme will go far.

It will go viral.

I'll tell you a meme that won't go very far.

Embrace your limits.

You know, if you post that, you're not going to get probably as many likes.

Because people hear that and it's not quite as inspiring.

Embrace your limits.

No, I want to hear chase your dreams.

You know, limits are meant to be overcome.

You know, climb every mountain.

You can do anything.

That's what we want to hear.

But the Bible says that limits are what make us human.

In other words, they're the thing that reminds us that we're not God.

And if you look back at Genesis 3, that's kind of important to remember.

Because it's something that we tend to forget.

And the message, embrace your limits, may not be as popular.

But that is the beginning of true wisdom.

Biblically speaking.

That's where true wisdom, that's the acorn of wisdom.

Embrace your limits.

And the problem that we will see is the more we deny our limits,

and this is where it gets really practical,

the more unprepared we will be to face loss when it comes.

Which it will.

The more we deny our limits, the more unprepared we will be to deal with loss.

Here's why.

Much of what determines whether or not suffering is traumatic

has to do with our subjective experience of it.

You can have two people who go through the same horrible thing.

This person comes through relatively okay.

They're able to move on with their lives.

This person is left deeply traumatized.

What's the difference?

It's the subjective experience of the suffering.

Suffering is much more likely to traumatize you

if it is completely unexpected.

It's much more likely to traumatize you if it's completely unexpected.

If it completely overturns your sense of how the world works.

So if you're cruising along and it completely comes out of left field

and it overturns your entire sense of what's possible,

it's going to be much more traumatic.

So accepting our limits and accepting the fact that loss is inevitable

will actually prepare us to face loss much better.

So that's the first point.

Loss is inevitable.

Now what do we do with loss?

Well, in order to deal with loss, we have to know how to grieve.

As Dr. Thompson says, it is the emotional inflammatory response to loss.

So we need to understand what grief is and why it's necessary.

Behind every loss, whether it's a minor loss,

like a loss of mobility due to a sprained ankle,

or a catastrophic loss, such as the loss of a loved one,

eventually, grief will come knocking at your door.

I remember in my high school psychology class,

I remember having to memorize the Kubler-Ross stages of grief.

And maybe some of you know what I'm talking about.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance.

And I remember looking at that and thinking, even as a high schooler,

wow, isn't that great that somebody has been able to map this out?

And look how linear this is.

This seems pretty doable, you know?

Well, of course, I had never really had to grieve at that point in my life.

And then that same year, I lost one of my dear friends

in a really tragic car accident.

And it was the first time I'd ever encountered anything like that.

And I remember thinking,

I think that the Kubler-Ross stages of grief diagram,

I think looking at that is kind of like looking at a diagram of a hurricane.

You know, it's technically accurate,

but it somehow doesn't quite capture the experience of it

when you're in the middle of it.

Because I remember feeling like my life had been turned upside down.

The way I thought the world worked was turned upside down.

You know, I know other people who know people who know people who die.

I don't know anybody who dies.

And I realized how privileged my life had been.

Some people know grief from their earliest memories.

And it really shook me.

Job's account of grief is much more realistic.

We have basically 35 chapters, you know, Job 42 chapters,

35 chapters full of Job weeping and raging

and even cursing the day of his own birth.

And even, dare we say,

there are times when Job hopes and prays

that God might just end his life

so that his suffering would end.

And this is something that people maybe not,

are not prone to tell you about grief.

There will be times that you want to die.

There will be times that you may lay in your bed

and say, God, just end it.

Now, that doesn't mean that you're suicidal.

It doesn't mean that you're having suicidal ideation

and need to go.

There's a way in which we can think that

even if we never really intend to do it.

Because the suffering is just that bad.

You know, most people don't kill themselves

because they want to die.

They kill themselves because they want to end the pain.

Now, if you're feeling those feelings

and you begin to develop specific ideas about it,

you begin to develop a specific sense

of how you would do it and when you would do it

and where you would do it and all of those things,

you need to recognize that

and you need to recognize that you're in trouble

and you need to reach out and you need to get help.

But there are a lot of times when people

who would never actually do it when you're grieving

think, wow, that would be nice

just to not feel this anymore.

And Job, we see that.

It's very honest in Job.

In fact, Job's not the only one in the Bible

in whom we see that kind of prayer.

And Scazzaro in the book,

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality,

does a pretty good job of describing

what grief looks like in Job.

He says, look at what Job is doing.

First of all, he's paying attention to his emotions.

He's not running from them or numbing them out.

He says he's willing to wait in the confusing in between.

There's a lot of times when you're in grief

when really nothing makes sense.

You don't have a sense of moving through the stages

of the Kupfer-Ross model.

You just feel like everything's upside down.

You see Job embracing his limits in a whole new way.

You see Job growing profoundly in humility.

His creatureliness is unavoidable.

And then finally, Scazzaro says that part of grief

is letting the old give birth to the new.

That out of the things that die,

out of the things that we grieve,

out of the loss, new things grow.

But the main thing I want us to see

for purposes of this message is this.

Job doesn't run from the pain.

Job faces it.

He doesn't avoid the grief.

He's willing to go through it.

You know, different cultures have different ways

of dealing with and processing grief.

It's a very, very culturally specific phenomenon.

I think in our culture, many people,

our kind of commonly understood way of dealing with grief

is to not deal with it.

It's to deny it.

It's to minimize it.

It's to avoid it through various forms of addiction.

Some more socially acceptable than others.

You know, I love the quote from the actor Russell Brand,

who has been very public about his battle

with various kinds of addiction.

And Russell Brand, he wrote a piece in The Guardian

a few years ago.

He's very honest about his struggle with drugs and alcohol.

And he says,

drugs and alcohol are not my problem.

Reality is my problem.

And I bet that rang true for a lot of people.

Drugs and alcohol, he says, are my solution.

I look to drugs and booze to fill up a hole in me.

Another guy whose quote I have to include,

the comedian Louis C.K., despite his recent infamy,

his words still ring true.

He talks about how everyone is constantly on their devices,

texting and Snapchat and Instagram and TikTok all the time.

And he says, he's like, why do we do,

why are we all on our devices all the time?

He says, the reason that we do it, you know,

the reason that we fill up every available minute

with distraction is because, and here's the quote,

underneath everything in your life,

there is that thing, that forever empty, he calls it.

The forever empty.

And he essentially says that the reason

that we're constantly doing all of this

is to keep ourselves constantly distracted

because we're trying to outrun the sadness.

And he talks about this one experience

where he didn't outrun it.

He just pulled the car over to the side of the road,

set his phone down and allow it to hit him.

And he says, he just cried.

He's just sitting in his car for no reason in particular

and just breaks down into tears.

And then he says, and you know what?

I cried and then I felt better.

He stopped running.

I think a lot of that sense that we have

where we're trying to avoid something,

I think a lot of that is what you might think of

as deferred grief.

There is pain that we've tried to put off

that we've tried to escape.

So I think a lot of us,

I think a lot of Christians in particular,

because in a lot of churches you hear the message

that Christians should be happy.

We should be at peace.

If you have true faith,

then you should have lots of hope.

And there are a lot of Christian communities

where negative emotions are really not that welcome.

Christians aren't supposed to act that way.

And so I think there's a lot of unresolved grief.

And what you've got to understand is

unresolved grief will show up in different ways.

It has symptoms, right?

So people who are very irritable or angry

with no real reason,

sometimes that could be caused by unresolved grief.

If you just feel a general sense of apathy

or a low-grade depression,

that could be unresolved grief.

Feeling stuck or feeling fixated on some loss in your life,

a job that you lost or a person that you lost,

and it's been years and years and years and years

and years and you're still stuck,

it could be that there's a way

that you haven't grieved yet.

You've never really faced the pain, right?

Hypervigilance.

In other words, an overblown fear of loss.

Sometimes when people lose something

and they don't grieve it,

that can create a kind of magnified fear

of losing anything else in their current or future life.

And so they become hypervigilant about loss.

Of course, addictive behavior,

self-harming behavior.

You know, cutting isn't the only kind of self-harm.

For some people, going to the gym

two, three, four times a day

can be a form of self-harm.

You know, you look healthy,

it's more socially acceptable,

but it's actually self-harm.

So there are a lot of more subtle ways

that this can show up.

And so it's very important that we recognize

when we need to grieve,

both collectively and individually.

And this isn't just true for you as an individual

or me as an individual.

This is also true for the church.

The church needs to learn how to grieve better.

Many of the prayers,

many of the psalms are psalms of lament,

corporate lament.

That's corporate grief.

You know, this week,

I think that we as the church

need to grieve the deaths in Atlanta.

You know, we need to grieve

the eight people who were shot,

six of whom were Asian women.

We need to grieve the horror of that,

the atrocity of that.

Whatever twisted motives Robert Aaron Long had,

eight people died.

And we have our Asian American

Pacific Islander community

filled with fear

that this is representative

of deeper layers of hostility

waiting to be expressed

in this way or even worse way.

Right?

And a lot of that

in the wake of COVID

and the impact that COVID has had

on people's attitude

toward Asian Americans

and the ways that that

has been expressed,

right,

a lot of that fear

feels very justified.

And we as the church,

whatever role we have played in this

and whatever way that the church

has been complicit in this,

that's something that we need to grieve

and we need to repent.

There also may be some ways

that you need to grieve individually

that may never have occurred to you.

Let me just ask you this

before we move on.

Maybe you need to grieve

the childhood that you wish

you had had

so that you can accept

the childhood that God gave you.

You know, there are a lot of people

stuck wishing, lamenting,

resenting the childhood

that they had,

the parent who wasn't there

or the parent who was there,

who shouldn't have been.

The circumstances of their childhood,

where they grew up,

where they went to school.

Instead of holding on to that

and trying to change something

that you can't change,

maybe that's something

that you need to grieve.

Grieve the childhood

that you wish you had had

so that you can accept

the childhood that God gave you.

You know, this is what

Skizero is talking about.

Let the old give birth to the new.

Grieve what has died

so that you can embrace

what has come to life

in its place.

Maybe you need to grieve

the loss of the person

that you want your spouse to be

so that you can accept

the spouse that God gave you.

There are a lot of people

who can go through

20, 30 years of marriage

in love with the spouse they want,

resenting the fact

that their actual spouse

isn't that person.

Maybe you need to grieve

the death of the person

that never existed.

You know, there's this

really fascinating movie,

I'm blanking on the name now,

where a couple goes

on this kind of strange

couple's retreat

and there's this building

where when you go in

by yourself,

you actually meet

an idealized version

of your spouse.

Almost like your actual spouse,

but your idealized version.

And it's a really fascinating movie.

I'm sorry,

I'm blanking on the name.

I wish I could remember the name.

But it's out there,

you'll find it,

it's really great.

And, you know,

one final kind of unresolved grief,

maybe we need to grieve

the loss of other lives

we might have lived

so that you can accept

the life that God has given you.

If you're always dreaming,

always fantasizing

about the life

that you wish you had,

maybe that's something

that you need to grieve.

You know, in other words,

when I say something

that you need to grieve,

maybe there is a kind of pain

in there that you're not facing.

And maybe you actually need

to stop and face that pain

rather than trying to mitigate it

through fantasy and daydreaming.

So there's all kinds of grief

that we may need to go through

that we have probably deferred

for one reason or another,

mostly out of fear.

And the hard truth in Job is this,

the only way to deal with grief

is to go through it.

The only way to deal with it

is to go through it.

That's the only way.

You've got to go

to the darkest place

where there's the least light,

where it seems like

there's the least hope,

where there's the most fear.

That's where you need to go.

It's the only way

to get through it.

But as terrifying

as that might be,

the book of Job shows us

that that is often

where you will find God.

Third point,

the God of the storm.

As I said at the beginning,

Job gets a lot of bad advice

through the course of the book.

First bad advice

comes from Job's wife.

I do think it's interesting

that God says,

let's make Job suffer,

you know,

says that to Satan, right?

You can make Job suffer

and Satan kills the kids,

takes the health away,

takes the wealth away,

but leaves his wife alive.

I don't know

what's going on there,

but I don't think

they had the best marriage.

And Job's wife

is the first to give advice

and her advice

is simply this,

just curse God and die.

Now, not everybody's gifted

to be a counselor.

And that's okay.

But that's clearly bad advice.

Then we have roughly

29 chapters

where three of Job's friends

try to counsel him.

And you say,

well, why would 29 chapters

of this book

be taken up

with bad advice?

Clearly,

the author wanted that

to be front and center,

right?

Wanted us to wrestle

with the bad advice

of his friends?

Well, I think this gives us

a clue into why

the book of Job

was written in the first place.

Job was likely written

sometime in the second millennium BCE.

It's possibly, as I said,

the oldest book in the Bible.

And there are other ancient texts

from that time period,

from other cultures

and religions,

that also deal

with the same question

of evil and suffering.

And I think that's fascinating.

Job is what you might think of

as a theodicy.

It tries to resolve

the issue of suffering in God.

But it's not the only theodicy

from the ancient world.

We have other,

for instance,

Mesopotamian theodicies

about somebody who suffers

and has to make sense of that

in light of the reality of God.

But what's even more fascinating

than that is

when you compare

the book of Job

to these other theodicies,

the advice of Job's friends

reflects the wisdom

in all of these other theodicies

from the ancient world.

And so one very plausible explanation

for the book of Job is

the book of Job is meant

to counter the teaching

that you would find

in these other Mesopotamian theodicies.

So the advice of Job's friends

perfectly reflects

what you would find

in these other texts.

And it's almost as though

the text is trying to dialogue

with these other texts.

And so all three friends

basically make the same argument.

They say,

Job, you must have done

something horrible.

There must be some egregious sin

in your life.

Look at the amount

that you're suffering.

Nobody suffers like this

unless they deserve it.

Surely you've done something

that you haven't told us about,

you haven't told God about.

Just confess.

That's what they keep saying.

And it gets harsher and harsher.

There are several cycles

of dialogue between Job

and his friends

and each time

they get a little less nice,

a little less refined

and the gloves finally come off

and they're like,

Job, obviously you're a horrible sinner.

Just admit it

and be done with it.

And that's essentially

what all of the other

Mesopotamian cultures believed.

It's what most religions

believe today.

That ultimately,

if you're blessed,

you must have done something good.

God must be on your side.

God, if you're suffering,

if you're cursed,

if you're having to grieve loss,

then you must have really screwed up

and God must be frustrated with you.

And that's what we think.

You know,

you get a cancer diagnosis

and a lot of people,

your first thought is,

God, what did I do to deserve this?

Or you look at somebody else

and you're like,

why are they having all the success

and not me?

What did they do to deserve that?

But Job counters this in two ways.

First, he says,

look, when you look around the world,

what do you see?

You don't see righteous people flourishing

and unrighteous people being punished.

He's like,

you see the opposite.

You see unrighteous people flourishing

and you see righteous people suffering.

He's like,

this doesn't make sense

according to your logic.

And then secondly,

Job insists,

I really and truly

haven't done anything

to deserve this.

And he's telling the truth.

In this story,

Job is innocent.

So by chapter 31,

Job has proven his friends wrong.

That retribution principle

that they're operating out of,

that's not true.

But he has not solved

the problem of suffering.

Because what we are left with

in chapter 31,

if Job just had 31 chapters,

what we're left with

is a God who is capricious

and arbitrary.

And I think a lot of Christians

secretly believe

that that's how we understand suffering.

Ultimately,

God is capricious

and arbitrary.

The only way to explain it

is that God just

randomly dispenses

blessing and suffering.

And that's not enough.

That's not enough.

And Job's not going to leave us there.

Chapter 32,

we meet Elihu.

And Elihu says,

you're all wrong.

The friends are wrong

and Job's wrong.

He says,

suffering is neither

proof of God's wickedness

nor is it proof of God's,

or I'm sorry,

neither is suffering

proof of Job's wickedness

nor is it proof

of God's arbitrariness.

And then he says

something pretty radical.

Sometimes suffering

is proof of God's love.

In chapter 33,

verses 14 to 19,

he says,

God speaks to humans

in two ways.

Through His word

and through suffering.

C.S. Lewis

lost his mother

at an early age.

He was emotionally

abandoned by his dad.

He suffered from

a respiratory illness

as a teenager.

He fought

and was wounded

in World War I.

and then he had to bury

his beloved wife.

And out of all that pain,

he wrote a book

called The Problem of Pain.

And in there,

he says this,

pain insists

upon being attended to.

God whispers to us

in our pleasures,

speaks in our conscience,

but shouts in our pain.

It is His megaphone

to rouse a deaf world.

So God is not capricious

or arbitrary.

arbitrary.

Elihu says,

there's a purpose

behind everything

that God does,

including the suffering

that He allows

into our lives.

He only allows

exactly as much

as He needs to allow

in order to accomplish

the purposes

that He has

in the lives

of the people He loves.

And this takes us

beyond a capricious God,

but the final word

in Job

has to come

from God Himself.

All the while,

Job keeps saying,

I don't want

to talk to you,

I want to talk to God.

And God finally shows up.

And Job gets a little more

than he bargained for.

God shows up

as a massive hurricane.

Very fitting.

And He speaks

starting in chapter 38.

And here's what He says,

just to paraphrase

a few of the verses.

Job,

He says,

prepare yourself.

I've got a few questions

for you.

And He says,

where were you

when I laid

the foundations

of the earth?

I was there.

I don't remember

seeing you there.

Where were you

when the morning stars

sang together

and all the sons of God

shouted for joy?

Where were you

when I laid

the clouds over the sea

like a blanket

over a newborn child?

He says,

I was there.

Where were you?

And He goes on

and on

and on

and on.

And the point

is clear.

He says,

there's a purpose

behind suffering.

And it flows

out of God's wisdom.

But that purpose

is so much greater,

it is so much higher

than anything

that we could ever

hope to understand.

It would be like you

trying to explain

your laptop

to an ant.

In the storm,

Job comes face to face

with his finitude,

with his creature

creatureliness,

with his humanness.

And then,

and only then,

does he see God

clearly,

maybe for the first

time in his life.

He says,

I had heard of you

by the hearing

of the ear,

but now my eyes

see you.

You know,

I had this abstract

concept of you,

but the problem was

I was so big

in my own eyes

and you were so small

that I was actually

not able to see you

because you were

cast in my shadow.

I was so big

that I was looking

at you,

but you were shrouded

by the shadow

that I cast.

And now that I've

gotten smaller

and you've gotten

bigger,

now I can see you.

Now you're not just

an abstract concept

in my mind,

now I can actually

see you.

And he says,

I'm going to shut up

and I'm going to

repent in dust

and ashes.

That's all I can do.

And this is what

grief ultimately

does in us.

It brings us

face to face

with the truth

of our own limits

and then

it brings us

face to face

with the truth

of who God

actually is.

And this is the

core of all true

wisdom,

by the way,

the realization

that there is a God

and I am not Him.

If you want to be wise,

start there.

Now I'm almost done

but there's one more

little thing we have

to say.

Some people might

object to this

and say,

so I'm just supposed

to accept that God

has reasons for suffering

even if we can't

understand it.

How do I know

I can trust that

kind of God?

I'm just supposed

to leave it entirely

in His hands?

And the reason

that we can trust God

with the suffering

in our lives

is not really found

in this story.

It's found in the story

to which the story

points.

It's found in the

greater story

of the Bible.

In this story,

Job is supposedly

innocent and yet

as an innocent man

he suffers more

than any of his

friends.

Through all of his

suffering he remains

faithful to God

and in the end

God tells the

unfaithful friends

offer sacrifices

and ask Job

to pray for you

and if Job

prays on your behalf

I won't deal with you

according to your

folly.

And what we need

to understand is

this story

points to an even

greater story

and an even

greater Job.

There's only one

human being

who ever lived

who was really

and truly innocent

and his name

was Jesus Christ.

And yet Jesus

was willing

it was his delight

to go to the cross

to suffer more

than any other

human being

in history

and he was willing

to do that

to offer himself

as a sacrifice.

And the gospel

says that because

Jesus did that

he offered himself

as a sacrifice

and because

Jesus prays

to the Father

on our behalf

if we come

to Jesus

and ask for him

to intercede

for us

it says that

because of the

prayers and the

sacrifice of Jesus

God won't deal

with us according

to our folly.

He won't deal

with us according

to our sin.

He won't deal

with us according

to all of the ways

that we have questioned

and even abandoned

God.

And so this is

what we see

as God's final

answer to suffering

in the world.

Not an explanation

but a solution.

So we may never

understand why God

allowed suffering

to enter the world

but we do know

this

that God

was willing

to suffer

more than

any one of us

to bring an end

to suffering

once and for all.

Let's pray.

Lord again

I

we

I know

that there are people

who are genuinely

really truly suffering

who might be hearing this

and we know that

words alone

aren't enough

and so what we pray

now is that

you would take

whatever of this

is of you

from you

and that you

would make it true

make it flesh

through the power

of your Holy Spirit.

Deliver your word

as medicine

to those parts

of us that most

need to be healed

and we pray

that this would

kindle in us

a hope

that enables us

to face

the inevitability

of loss

and grief

and to do it

faithfully Lord

we pray this

in your son's

holy name

Amen

Amen

Amen

Amen

Amen

Amen

Amen

Amen

Amen

Amen

Amen

Amen

Love

Amen

Amen

Amen

Amen

Amen

Amen

Amen

Amen