Why Does God Allow Pain and Suffering?

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Today's reading is from the book of Job, chapter 1, verses 8 to 22.

Job 1:8–22

Then the Lord said to Satan,

Have you considered my servant Job?

There is no one on earth like him.

He is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.

Does Job fear God for nothing? Satan replied.

Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has?

You have blessed the work of his hands so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land.

But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.

The Lord said to Satan,

Very well then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.

Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.

One day when Job's sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house,

a messenger came to Job and said,

The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby,

and the Sabaeans attacked and made off with them.

They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you.

While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said,

The fire of God fell from the heavens and burned up the sheep and the servants,

and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you.

While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said,

The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and made off with them.

They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you.

While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said,

Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house,

when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house.

It collapsed on them, and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you.

At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head.

Then he fell to the ground in worship and said,

Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart.

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.

May the name of the Lord be praised.

In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Good morning, Christ Church.

It's good to be with you.

And again, if you're here for Explore God,

have come along with a friend or responded to an invitation,

we're super glad that you're here.

Last week, we looked at the purpose and the meaning of life,

and today we're thinking about the acid test of whatever your purpose or meaning of life is.

Have you found a purpose, have you found a meaning for your life that suffering cannot take away from you?

That's the question.

There's nothing more certain than that you're going to suffer,

and the people you love are going to suffer.

Suffering is everywhere.

It's unavoidable.

The scope of it is often overwhelming.

And as Shakespeare wrote in Macbeth,

What he's saying there is that really no one's immune from suffering.

No matter what precautions we take or how well we put together a good life

or how hard we work to be healthy or wealthy or comfortable with our friends and family

to be successful in our career,

at some point, those things will be ruined by the four Ds,

disease, disaster, disappointment, and death.

And I appreciate the scriptures because they're just incredibly realistic

about the fact that human life is fatally fragile

and subject to forces that are beyond our power to manage.

As I come to this subject, I've had a very privileged life,

but I do speak as a fellow sufferer,

someone who in my childhood struggled with chronic health issues.

I lost my mom when I was 19 years old,

spent my 20s in a dark night of the soul.

And I would say even the last four or five years of my life in ministry,

I would call a fiery furnace and a valley of shadows.

And so I don't speak to you about suffering in an attached,

like, theoretical manner today.

And I know that some of you are here with raw pain.

And so what you need probably more than this sermon is just a hug, you know,

a church family that can love you through that pain

and mourn with those who mourn.

But when we suffer, it's natural for us to ask the question, why?

Right?

Has anybody ever asked that question?

Why would God, why would a good and just and loving and powerful God

allow misery and depravity and anguish into my life?

And those questions that we have about God,

they actually increase the sense of pain in our hearts

and the doubts that we have in our minds.

And so I want to engage those questions that I think all of us have

through this book and this biography about Job.

There's no book in the Bible, no piece of world literature

that addresses these big questions of suffering

with such emotional realism and spiritual wisdom as this book.

It's a lyric, epic poem.

There's nothing like it in the Bible.

And it's like all good sermons.

It has three parts.

There's an opening dialogue between God and Satan.

There's this long middle dialogue between Job and his friends.

And then there's this final closing dialogue between God and Job.

And what this book tells us is that suffering is this common burden for all of humanity,

and yet it's a lonely burden for each one of us

in its own uniqueness and particularity.

And in this opening chapter, we find some pretty deep wisdom, I think,

about this question of why does God allow pain and suffering?

And more than that, how do we endure the inevitable burdens of human life?

Do you want to know the answer to these questions?

So we're going to talk about the question of suffering for a bit.

We're going to talk about living by grace without a full answer.

And then we're going to talk about looking ahead to the final answer.

So the question of suffering, living by grace without a full answer,

and looking ahead to the final answer.

Let's talk for a moment about the question of suffering.

If you look in verse 8, it says,

Then the Lord said to Satan,

Have you considered my servant Job?

There's no one on earth like him.

He is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.

And this immediately raises for us the question of where does suffering come from?

What is the cause of suffering?

And there are different cultures that have grown up over the millennia

that have explained events or given explanation of events

to give meaning to our experiences of suffering.

And so today, for a moment, I want to kind of compare and contrast

those different cultures of suffering with what we find here in the book of Job.

We all know whenever there's a mass shooting or some sort of act of violence,

there's a typical range of responses

that are derived from these different cultures of suffering

about the cause of pain and our response to pain

and the ultimate resolution of that pain.

And people seek to address these dark moments

by focusing on the cause.

Now, I think we may have a slide,

if we can pull that up,

and it'll kind of help make some sense of what I'm going to say here.

But the first culture, the moralistic culture,

says that present suffering pays for past sins,

some failure to live rightly in the past.

An example of this would be Hinduism and the doctrine of karma.

But secondly, there's this self-transcendent culture

that talks about the illusory nature of the material world

and our individual self and our unfulfilled desires.

And an example of that would be Buddhism.

And then you have these fatalistic cultures

that say our circumstances are fixed by the stars,

they're fixed by cosmic forces.

This is what the Greco-Roman Stoics said,

it's what the Northern European pagans said,

it's what the Islam in the Middle Ages said.

And then more recently, you have this secular,

or actually, you have this dualistic culture

that says the world is a battleground

between forces of pure light and pure darkness.

An ancient version of that was called Manichaeism.

A more modern version of that is various forms of Marxism.

And then you have more recently the secular culture

that says this world is all there is,

this world is all that we have,

and suffering is seen as an accident.

It's chance misfortune.

It's just a random interruption of life, liberty,

and the pursuit of happiness.

And the universe just looks on with pitiless indifference.

Now, when you kind of look at these different cultures of suffering,

you may notice that secular culture does a pretty bad job

of equipping people to suffer well.

All these older cultures taught that suffering

was to be an expected part of having a coherent life story,

and that through suffering,

suffering was actually a means by which you could grow

and live your life well.

But secular culture is one of the weakest and worst cultures

in human history at providing its members

with an explanation for suffering,

and it gives us very little guidance and resources

for how to deal with it.

And that means that our society is increasingly shocked

and undone and traumatized

by suffering way more than our ancestors were,

because when no explanation is given,

suffering is perceived as simply senseless

and a complete waste.

And then the victims of suffering develop deep

and undying anger and poisonous hate,

and that inevitably leads to serious social instability,

which I think we probably all can bear witness to.

We see that increasing quite a bit in our society.

So I want to ask the question,

as we think about these cultures of suffering

and we place Christianity alongside of them,

how does Christianity deal with this question of suffering

and the cause of suffering?

And I want to look at this opening dialogue

between God and Satan,

and I hope that you can see that the way that this avoids

the various problems and dead ends of this spectrum

from moralism to secularism.

Again, it says in verse 8,

Then the Lord said to Satan,

Have you considered my servant Job?

There's no one on earth like him.

He's blameless and upright,

a man who fears God and shuns evil.

Verse 9,

Does Job fear God for nothing?

Satan replied.

Have you not put a hedge around him

and his household and everything he has?

You have blessed the work of his hands

so that his flocks and herds

are spread throughout the land.

But now stretch out your hand

and strike everything he has,

and he will surely curse you to your face.

And the Lord said to Satan,

Very well, then everything he has is in your power,

but on the man himself do not lay a finger.

Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.

Satan says,

Do you think Job fears you

and is a good servant to you?

Well, if you hurt him

or if you let bad stuff be unleashed upon him,

you'll see that he's actually no good.

And so God says,

Okay, you can do this,

but you cannot do that.

And so Satan goes out

and he strips Job of his wealth and his kids,

as we just read about in chapter 1.

He strips Job of his health and his wife,

as you can read about in chapter 2.

He begins to strip Job of his closest friends,

as you can read about starting in chapter 4.

And we look onto this

and we're horrified

to think that God and Satan

are playing chess with this little pawn

named Job.

But I don't want you to miss the brilliance

and the profound teaching

of these couple verses

that are woven in here

because no other religion,

no other philosophy has this belief

that there's an asymmetrical relationship

between God and suffering.

Whose idea is it

that all this bad stuff

would be unleashed upon Job

and who does it?

It's Satan.

God is not actively,

directly generating suffering.

In fact, when God made the world,

there was no disease,

no disaster,

no disappointment,

no death.

All these forces of darkness

were unleashed at the fall of humanity

and when we turned away from God

and we rebelled against God

and so the fabric of creation

began to unravel,

we are responsible

for all those hard things

that came into the world.

And you can see in this text

that God is not deliberately,

intentionally,

actively desiring suffering

in Job's life.

Satan does.

But God is in absolute control

and he has all authority.

So this is not dualism.

It's not two equally powerful

opposing forces of pure light

and pure darkness

fighting against each other.

God is in charge.

God is sovereign and supreme.

Evil is already in the world

and so God permits it

and he says very well,

Job is in your power.

But God also limits it

and says you can do this

but you can't do that.

On Job himself,

do not lay a finger.

And why does God allow this?

Well, the answer is not moralism.

This whole book is dedicated

to showing that Job

does not suffer

as a direct cause

of some particular sin

or some specific failure

to live rightly on his part.

If only he'd gone to church more,

if only he'd prayed more,

if only he'd read his Bible more,

if only he'd had more faith,

if only he'd been more diligent.

No, this book is written

to disabuse us

of that kind of religious moralism.

So why did God allow this?

Well, the answer, of course,

is also not secularism,

that Job's suffering

is not an accident.

It's not a chance misfortune.

It's not a random interruption

with the universe

looking on

in pitiless indifference.

Why does God allow this?

He allows it

in order for Satan

to accomplish the opposite

of what he wanted to accomplish.

What is,

what's the result

that Satan wants

by bringing evil

and suffering

into Job's life?

He wants to discredit Job.

He wants to show

and reveal Job's true colors.

He wants to expose him

as a hypocrite

and as a fraud

and show that God,

Job is actually

quite an awful

covenant partner to you.

He serves you

not out of pure,

disinterested godliness,

but out of self-interest.

He's in this relationship

with you,

not for you yourself,

but he's in it

for the gifts

that you can give to him.

He's related to you

not out of conscience

and conviction,

but out of comfort

and convenience.

And when you take

that comfort

and convenience away,

we all know

what's going to happen.

So did,

was Satan right?

Did he accomplish

his scheme?

Well,

here we are

in Berkeley

thousands of years later

talking about Job

as one of the most

courageous,

honest,

resilient people,

human beings

that's ever lived,

living by grace

and faith

in God.

And the point

of this story

is that God

hates evil.

God is against evil.

He doesn't create

a world

in which evil existed,

but He permits Satan

to bring evil

into Job's life

and into your life

in a limited way

and a bounded amount

such that it

completely defeats

Satan's real intention.

God's sovereignty

is such that even

the rebellious

unintentionally serve

his purposes.

And Satan

is only allowed

by God

to defeat himself

and achieve

the opposite

of what he

intended.

The death

of my mom,

the death

of your child,

disease,

disasters,

disappointments

that are in our present

are coming to us

in our future.

God hates

these things.

God weeps

over our suffering.

But,

Job tells us,

God is in control

and He's permitting

and allowing

these things

to come into your life

so that He can defeat

Satan's purpose

for you.

And so that,

like Job,

He can make you

into a righteous

and a wise

human being.

Have I answered

all of your questions

about suffering?

Probably not.

But I think

this is an important

beginning

to talking about

the question

of suffering.

But I want to move

from the question

of suffering

to living by grace

without a full answer.

Living by grace

without a full answer.

When suffering

comes into your life,

it will not leave you

the way that you were

before you suffered.

Right?

When suffering comes,

you're either going

to become better

or worse,

more tender

or more hard,

more,

you're going to have

deeper roots

or you're going to

become more shallow,

you're going to become

more wise,

or you're going to

become more foolish.

And what happened

to Job?

Well, it says in verse 20

that at this,

Job got up

and he tore his robe

and shaved his head

and then he fell

to the ground

in worship.

And this is neither

the self-transcendent

culture that says

the world

and yourself

and your pain

is an illusion,

nor is it

the fatalistic culture

that says

grin and bear it.

No, Job says

pain is real

and he's grieving

with overwhelming grief

and yet

he falls on the ground

in worship

and what does he say

in verse 21?

Naked I came

from my mother's womb

and naked I will depart.

The Lord gave

and the Lord

has taken away.

May the name

of the Lord

be praised.

And in all this,

Job did not sin

by charging God

with wrongdoing.

This is astonishing,

really.

He's just lost

all of his money.

He's lost

seven sons.

He's lost

three daughters.

He's in immense pain

and yet somehow

in the middle

of that pain

he's holding on

to a theology

of grace.

Right?

He does not say,

God,

how dare you

take away

my wealth

and my kids.

All of that

was mine

and I sacrificed

much to get it.

No,

what does he say?

He says,

I came into the world

vulnerable

and helpless

and I'm going

to leave the world

that way

and all that I have

has come on loan

from God.

God gave it all

to me.

They're gifts

of his grace.

He's the owner

and I'm the steward

and he has a sovereign

right just as he gave it

to withdraw it

as he sees fit.

That's a very different

way to live.

What this tells us

is that if you build

your foundation

on the stuff

of this world

and if you say

the purpose

and the meaning

of my life

is built on

life and liberty

and the pursuit

of happiness

and what gives me

my identity,

what defines me,

what makes me

who I am

is my work

and my money

and my position

and my name

and my spouse

and my kids

and my family.

Well,

when all of that

is taken away

from you,

where does that

leave you?

Who are you

and what are you

without those things?

But you see,

if you,

like Job,

if you build

your life on God,

it says in verse 8

that Job fears God.

He has an awe

in God

as his maker.

He has a sense

of wonder

before God

as his judge.

If you build

your life on God,

then your ultimate love

is not your loved ones,

but it's the love

of God.

And your ultimate wealth

is not your money,

but it's knowing God.

And your ultimate status

is not in your position

and your health.

It's in your relationship

with God.

So that when all

of these things

are stripped away

from you,

the people that you love,

your wealth,

your health,

your position,

your work,

you can still be you

because you still have God.

And you have an identity,

you have a meaning

that suffering

can never take away

from you.

When you read

the rest of this book,

you'll see that

life for Job

does not get any easier

after chapter 1.

It actually gets

much, much harder.

He loses his health,

he loses his wife,

then he starts to argue

and wrestle with his friends

who are, you know,

well-meaning

but miserable comforters

who try to talk to him

about God.

And Job's like,

what do you know

about God?

And at the end

of this book,

Job has his own

encounter and dialogue

with God.

And what does God say?

It says in Job 38,

Job 38:1

verse 1,

then the Lord spoke

to Job out of the whirlwind,

out of the storm,

and he said,

who is this

that darkens counsel

by words without knowledge?

Brace yourself

like a man.

I will question you

and you shall answer me.

And in that moment,

God does not say,

hey, listen Job,

I realize that all this

has been really hard on you

and Satan,

what's been happening

is Satan's been trying

to destroy you

because he believes

you don't really love me

but you love all the gifts

that you get from me,

your wealth and your health

and all those things.

And he thinks

that the moment

that you lose those gifts,

you're gonna walk away from me

so I'm allowing him

to unleash these things

in your life

because I know

that you fear me

and I'm letting this

fiery furnace of suffering

come in

so that you can become

one of the greatest people

who's ever lived

and changed countless lives

for eternity.

Is that what God says to Job?

Does God ever reveal to Job

why he's suffering?

No, Job has to learn

to suffer

even though he does not know

God's infinitely wise

and knowledgeable reasons

why he's suffering.

Because if Job

knew all the reasons,

he'd be serving God

not for God

but for the benefits

he's getting out

of his suffering.

And the only way

to be sure

that you can know

that you're serving God

for who he is

and not what you're getting

out of him

or out of the relationship

is if you're in a position

where serving God

is actually giving you

nothing.

In fact,

serving God

may be making your life worse

and you're getting

nothing out of it

at all.

And that's what happens

with Job.

For 37 agonizing chapters,

Job does not find God

even though he's seeking God

relentlessly.

And he has to learn

to struggle with God

who's in control

and whom he cannot control

and who is silent

for a very, very long time.

And Job must learn

to just simply trust in God

out of sheer faith

even when experience

and appearances

seem to contradict

his faith.

And friends,

we too have to embrace

the mystery that

we're not going to know

all the reasons

why our all-knowing

and infinitely wise God

allows our suffering.

But this is precisely

how we become true

and full

and deep

human beings.

You see,

Job fights his way

through to God

so that the deeper

his darkness,

the more his grip

tightens on God.

And I'll just give you

two high points

from Job.

He says these two things

in the midst

of the brute facts

of his unmerited suffering,

in the midst

of his friends

who are reproaching him

and assigning wrongdoing

to him,

in the midst

of the world's intolerable wrongs.

Job says this

in Job 23.

He says,

if I go to the east,

God is not there.

If I go to the west,

I do not find him.

When he is at work

in the north,

I do not see him.

When he turns to the south,

I catch no glimpse of him.

But he knows the way

that I take.

And when he has tested me,

I will come forth as gold.

My feet have closely

followed his steps.

I have kept to his way

without turning aside.

I have not departed

from the commands

of his lips.

I have treasured

the words of his mouth

more than my daily bread.

That's a man

who's suffering

by grace

without a full answer.

And then his most famous

saying of all

in Job 19,

he says,

for I know

that my Redeemer lives,

and at the last

he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin

has been thus destroyed,

yet in my flesh

I shall see God.

You see,

if you build your life

on things,

then suffering's gonna drive you

away from your source of joy.

But if you build your life

on God,

then suffering's gonna drive you

deeper into him,

deeper and deeper

into your very source

of joy.

I wanna close.

We talked about

the question of suffering

and living by grace

without a full answer,

but I also wanna

talk about looking ahead

to the final answer.

This long, painful season

in Job's life

is not gonna be

the last time

that Satan assaults

a human being

and particularly

God's chosen

and beloved

partner.

And centuries later,

we see a cross

outside of the city gate

of Jerusalem,

and there on that cross

is God in the flesh

dying,

naked,

and he's crying out,

my God,

my God,

why have you forsaken me?

And when that question

is launched

from Jesus' lips,

the Father does not give

his son an answer

to that question,

at least not right away.

And you see,

when Job suffered,

he was relatively innocent,

but Jesus here

in this moment

is the absolutely

holy,

innocent sufferer.

Job felt abandoned

by God,

but here's Jesus,

the man of sorrows,

truly abandoned

by God,

even though he's

the only one,

the only human being

who ever truly served

God for nothing

because there was

nothing in it for him.

And so when you are suffering

and you don't know why

and your heart is crying out

in pain,

I want to encourage you

to look at Jesus,

this innocent sufferer,

because the Scripture's

startling message

is that the deepest

revelation

of the character of God

is actually in the weakness

and suffering

and death of Jesus

on the cross.

It's the exact opposite

of where humanity

expects to find God,

right?

Christianity is alone

among the world religions

that claims that God

himself knows firsthand

despair,

rejection,

loneliness,

poverty,

bereavement,

torture,

imprisonment,

rejection,

rejection,

and death.

And here in Jesus Christ,

God is experiencing

the greatest depths of pain

far beyond what any of us

can ever imagine

or will ever go through

because here on the cross,

Jesus Christ

is losing the infinite love

of the Father

that he's had

from all eternity.

He's experiencing

the endless exclusion

from God

as a penalty

for our sin.

And you see,

in death,

Jesus Christ,

God in the flesh

is suffering

in love

for us.

He comes to identify

with those

who are abandoned

and God forsaken

by being himself

abandoned

and God forsaken.

And yet,

Jesus did not die

renouncing God

like so many victims

of suffering.

Even in his fiery furnace

of agony

and affliction,

he did not surrender

his faith in God

but he expressed it

in this anguished cry

which is actually

a cry of affirmation,

my God,

my God,

he says.

So in death,

God

is suffering

alongside of us.

God is suffering

for us.

Why does God allow

pain and suffering?

Well,

when we look at

the cross of Jesus Christ,

God is certainly

not indifferent

or detached

from our condition.

He takes our misery

so seriously

that he's willing

to take it on himself.

And when God

raises up the body

of Jesus

from his tomb,

he's assuring us

that our sins

have been paid for

so that someday

God can indeed

end evil

and suffering

without bringing

an end to us.

That we,

like Jesus,

will live on

with him forever.

And this gives us

an incredibly deep

consolation

and deep strength

to face the harsh

realities

of life

as people of hope.

This, I think,

is what distinguishes

Christians

from the people

around us

is that we are

people of hope.

Secular culture

says that in the future,

there is no coming

restoration after death

or after history.

That's it.

It's done.

Ancient cultures

say that one day

we're going to lose

our individuality

when we return

into the all soul

or that we're going

to have some sort

of ethereal,

disembodied bliss

and consolation

with our ancestors

somewhere.

But Christianity

is completely different.

Christianity says

that we're looking

for the resurrection

of the body

and the restoration

of our lives

and the reversal

of all of our experiences.

That our Christian hope

is a material restoration

of the body

and the life

that you never had

but that you always wanted.

And that one day

every horrible thing

that's ever happened

will not only be undone

and repaired by God,

but God will in some way

use it

to make your eventual glory

and joy

even greater

than it could have been

without evil

and suffering

in your life.

I'll close with this quote

from Dostoevsky,

this great novel,

The Brothers Karamazov,

and I think it's a beautiful

expression of this Christian hope.

He says,

I believe like a child

that suffering

will be healed

and made up for

and that all the humiliating

absurdity

of human contradictions

will vanish

like a pitiful mirage,

like the despicable fabrication

of the impotent

and infinitely small

Euclidean mind of man

that in the world's finale

at the moment

of eternal harmony

something so precious

will come to pass

that it will suffice

for all hearts,

for the comforting

of all resentments,

for the atonement

of all the crimes

of humanity,

for all the blood

that they've shed

that it will make it

not only possible

to forgive

but to justify

all that has happened.

This is our great hope.

Let's come now

to this table

that's set for us

with the broken body

and the shed blood

of our God,

Jesus Christ.

In the name of the Father,

Son, and Holy Spirit,

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.