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Please be seated. Our next scripture comes from The Book of Job 42, verses 1-6.
Then Job answered the Lord and said, “I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know. Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me. I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
Our second reading comes from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 53.
“Who has believed what he has heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away, and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with the rich man in his death, although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief. When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide with him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors.”
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, you have given us your word as the only rule for our faith and our practice, teaching us what we are to believe concerning you, teaching us what we are to believe concerning your promises and the great salvation you have brought for us. Let us hear your word and find comfort in what you have to tell us. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Our whole human condition seems to be typified by suffering, beginning from the first light we see and the first breath we take until the moment when our soul is separated from this our mortal shell. However, as Christians, we believe and we know that this is not how God created us to be. To suffer is not what we were created for, and yet each and every one of us, in varying degrees and ways, no matter our socioeconomic or political status, we all suffer.
Nobody is exempt, and oftentimes many of those who appear to suffer the least are the ones who are actually suffering the most where it matters. Scripture tells us about a man named Job. Job was considered righteous before both God and man. He was prosperous and wealthy; he was by every definition extraordinarily blessed. However, the Lord permitted all manners of trials and tribulations, calamities, and calumnies to befall him at Satan’s behest.
God did not cause Job’s sufferings, and contrary to the opinion of his friends, his sufferings were not directly related to nor proportional to either his righteousness or his sinfulness. So much so that we might risk accusing God of being unjust towards Job. But as bad as they were, his sufferings remained less than he or any of us deserve for our many sins.
The sufferings of Job cannot be explained or rationalized from a human perspective because they require the heavenly view. Yet, even knowing that we cannot and will not know or understand precisely why the Lord allowed everything to happen to him—or to any of us—we must simply trust, hope, and rest in our faith that somehow, somehow it is for the good of those who love the Lord.
Still, through it all, Job never lost his faith in God. He never stopped trusting the Lord or his goodness, even while he was demanding to know why. And although Job got mad at God, he still trusted the Lord in his good providence.
At the conclusion of his story, which we read, after he had demanded that the Lord—the only living God, the absolute sovereign of the universe—explain to him a mere human creation why, God plainly and simply told him no. This prompted Job to reply, “I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
Then finally, after everything, God restored Job and increased him from all that he had lost because it pleased him to do so by his grace and in his mercy and his love for Job. Job was restored to wholeness fully in this life, and while we cannot expect that we all shall receive likewise, we still hope and pray for that.
Even still, we hold tight to God’s promises in Christ Jesus that we shall be ultimately restored and made whole when we are raised in glory, glorified with his Son. Then James, the brother of Jesus, idealized and exemplified Job, holding him up on account of his steadfastness, as the ESV says, or his patience, as the King James says.
His patience and steadfastness with the Lord he commends Job to us as an example for hope, realizing, writing, “Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You’ve heard of the steadfastness of Job and you’ve seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful”—expressions of God’s love that he showed to Job.
So James teaches us that sometimes the best or the only purpose to our sufferings that we can know, the only purpose that we can know, is that somehow we are being given an opportunity to exercise patience and steadfastness in faith. We are given an opportunity to pray and trust in the Lord and to prepare us for recognizing, receiving, and better appreciating God’s compassion and mercy.
Our times of suffering should draw us closer to God; they should not drive us away from him. Through our times of suffering, we are also given the opportunity to allow the application of our faith, our patience, and our steadfastness to become examples for the encouragement of other younger, newer, or even struggling believers.
And although we do not have a good or humanly satisfactory answer for the question of why we suffer, Scripture and our faith provide us with enough comfort to know that there is some good purpose and valuable use for our sufferings.
But beyond Job, whose suffering is unjust as he would want to proclaim it, there is one who knows far more about unjust suffering than every other human person: the suffering servant of the Lord, Jesus Christ. The prophet Isaiah wrote, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.”
Most obviously and immediately, when we hear that, we remember Jesus’s many physical sufferings on his way to the cross. But just as important were all the many sufferings of his life before the climax. He was born, pushed out, and expelled from his mother’s womb. He surely got sick and skinned his knees as a child while playing. He knew the pangs of hunger and thirst; he knew what it meant to be too hot and too cold.
He experienced betrayal, abandonment, and rejection. He suffered verbal abuse and was almost certainly discriminated against for any number of reasons. He knew the pain of loss whenever members of his family or friends died. Jesus experienced and suffered as much in life, and on the cross even more than any and every other human person can or ever will while we live.
Understanding this is why we take comfort, knowing that we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
See, Jesus knows and understands everything that you have gone through, are going through, or will ever go through. And although we like to think that we are helping and empathizing with others when we compare our past circumstances and feelings to their present troubles, Jesus, on the other hand, he alone actually does know and he alone has suffered far worse because he suffered hell and the full wrath of God as he died on the cross.
He suffered the fullness, the entirety of it, so that we would not have to. Jesus knows and Jesus understands, so thank the Lord, because that is why we can trust him and his promises.
Because that is why he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds, we are healed. Jesus suffered the fullness of what we deserve so that we will receive mercy instead of justice.
This means that the many unfortunate sufferings which we still do experience are less than what we deserve, as with Job, and may somehow be turned and used for our good. Jesus lived and suffered so that he and we could better relate together, empathize, and sympathize with us. As a man, Jesus suffered and died for our healing.
Jesus died and rose from the dead; he was glorified so that we may live eternally with him. Jesus rose so that we can now live lives transformed, sanctified, glorified, and be glorified and perfected with him in his eternal Kingdom so that we may be free from all of our present worries, cares, troubles, pains, sorrows, and sufferings someday.
The Apostle Paul writes, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
And when the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Therefore we know, know and believe that we have been chosen, called, and adopted by the Lord because of Christ’s great love for us. Knowing and believing that since Jesus was born, lived, died, and rose again for us, we are also joined together with him in his victory over death and sin and Satan.
Knowing and believing this is what gives every Christian comfort and hope for our eternal future. Knowing and believing this is what gives us the strength and courage to persevere through our sufferings, to continue remaining steadfast in our faith, and to wait patiently upon the Lord through everything that comes our way.
And it’s only by looking ahead to our hope through our faith in Christ that we can endure and persevere through our sufferings. Because through our hope, we are joined together with our savior, because as the suffering servant, he endured his sufferings while also trusting in hopeful anticipation.
He understood that while it was the will of the Lord to crush him, he has put him to grief. “When his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand, and out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied.”
So although I cannot offer us any happy answers to the question of why do we suffer, I can and will point us to the example of Bob Barnett as a man who suffered more than anyone would have wished. Despite his suffering, he also lived and loved well for God’s glory.
Although he did not receive a completely miraculous healing or a full physical restoration in this life, I believe and am confident in hope that he is presently right now enjoying the healing and wholeness that every Christian expects to receive upon our passing and our translation to be with our Lord.
Jesus, right now, he is seeing our Lord with his own eyes, and he is receiving what has been promised to all who believe in and trust Christ.
Therefore, I would and will and do commend to you the steadfast faith of Bob Barnett, who has now joined that great cloud of witnesses to the glory of Christ.
Finally, when you trust in Jesus and you experience suffering in this life, please know and remember that you are following a very well-worn path drawn first by your Savior. Know and believe that at the end of this road, your comforter and intercessor is awaiting you, even as he has also been walking with you, because he alone knows what you’re going through and can fully empathize with you.
He awaits to deliver you, to heal you, and to give you his peace forever. Amen.