The Providence of God

In the book of Job, we read that Satan wants to wreck Job's life.

You see, there's a fundamental issue here that the one in charge of this test, and it is a test, is not Satan, but God. It's about the sovereignty of God. It's about the omnipotence of God. It's about the holiness of God. It's about who He is. This book of Job is not really a book about Job.

It's a book about God. Job lost everything—his family, his wealth, everything except his life, and even that seemed to be hanging by a thread as he was struck by a dreadful disease. Perhaps you've not suffered to the degree that Job did, but I know that there are so many of you listening right now who have experienced painful loss.

Today on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. Derek Thomas reminds us of a great truth found in Job's story, and in fact throughout Scripture, a truth that is cause for holy reverence, awe, and peace as we acknowledge God's work in our lives. I was a young minister, barely months into ordination. A young couple in the church called and said, would I come and visit?

I went to see them. They're in their early 20s, their first pregnancy. And she says to me, I've learned the baby is anacatholic, which basically means it had little to no brain, and would survive maybe for two minutes and would die. A lot of pressure from a lot of pressure from the hospital to abort the fetus, which they refused to do. They asked me to be present at the birth. I was behind the screen, and when the baby was born, I stepped forward.

I'm in my mid-twenties. I've been a minister for a few months, and I watched this young girl die. Weeks later, when I went to visit them in their home, she said to me, I know you can't answer this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Why? And she says, it's okay. I know you haven't got an answer, because I didn't.

I had no answer. And it's Job. Amazing, isn't it? Possibly the first book of the Old Testament to be written. Job is in the same era as Abraham, long before Moses. And this is the book God gives us, a book about a man who is described in verse 1 of chapter 1, and I urge you to have your Bibles open to Job chapter 1.

We've got 42 chapters to get through. There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. And although in this instance, and this is going to be repeated three times in the first two chapters of Job, here it's put in a manner where the author is telling you of Job's godly character. But later, it'll be God himself who will say these same words, that he is blameless and upright and feared God and turned away from evil. This is a godly man. This is not, why do the wicked suffer?

That's easy. But why do the godly suffer? Why do those who are in a right relationship with God and walk in His ways and fear His name, why do they suffer?

It's the perennial issue of the problem of pain. And a part of the answer to that issue is here before us in verse 6, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, From where have you come? Satan answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it. He's a vagabond.

He has nowhere to call home. So, the question arises, why did Satan sin? Long before Adam and Eve sinned, there was sin in the universe. Satan had sinned, the fall of the angels. What could possibly have lured a sinless creature like Satan to eat the forbidden fruit?

Well, that's a tough question. Part of the issue here of the problem of pain for sure is Satan. We live in a world and we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world. John the Apostle tells us that the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. Verse 8, the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job? You know, I always think, well, why did God do this? Perhaps Satan was completely oblivious to Job. Have you considered my servant Job? There's none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. And Satan answered the Lord and said, Does Job fear God for no reason? And so the drama unfolds.

A test. The only reason Job is godly and fears God and walks in his ways and is upright in his character is because God has sheltered him, surrounded him with all the help necessary for him to walk that way. But take all of that away and you will see what Job is made of.

Made of. And so this devastating day arrives, an evil day. And Job, even though there are barriers, have you not put a hedge around him and his house, and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. Stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face. And the Lord said to Satan, Behold, all that he has is in your hand, only against him do not stretch out your hand. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.

You see, there's a fundamental issue here that the one in charge of this test, and it is a test, is not Satan, but God. It's about the sovereignty of God. It's about the omnipotence of God. It's about the will of God. It's about the holiness of God.

It's about who he is. This book of Job is not really a book about Job. It's a book about God. John Calvin, in 1554, in February, began a series of 159 sermons on the book of Job.

They would last until April of 1555. They were preached during the week. He went systematically from Job 1-1 to the last verse of Job 42.

And in the very opening sermon, in that cold February day of 1554, Calvin said, Calvin said, it is a great thing to be subject to the majesty of God. He set the agenda for what would be 159 studies in the book of Job, and it's about the majesty, omnipotence, and being of Almighty God. Yes, there's Satan, and we can rightly blame Satan. Satan did this, but there's an even greater issue here. God did this. He allowed this to happen.

He set the agenda. He issued all of the parameters in which Job will now lose all ten of his children in one fell swoop to lose all ten of your children, to lose your 401k. There's a second test in chapter 2, and this time God permits Satan to touch Job, and he loses his health. And by midway through the book of Job, he is described as skin and bones. People say, if you have your health, you have everything. Some of you struggle with ill health.

Some of you struggle with it in your own personal lives, and you struggle with it in the lives of your children or your wife or husband or parents. And here is Job, and what does he say at the end of chapter 1? Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. You want to be able to say that, don't you? When the floor, the ground opens up beneath you, and you lose everything, all your hopes, all your dreams, all your aspirations, and they are gone, a day that you never could have imagined.

And here you are, and you want to be able to say what Job is saying here. Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. In the second account in chapter 2, when he loses all of his health, his wife says to her in verse 9, Do you still hold fast your integrity, curse God, and die? Calvin called her diabolus matrix.

You don't need to know any Latin, and you don't have to study Latin like Dr. Ferguson to know that that's not a compliment. You know, maybe we can give her the benefit of the doubt. She doesn't want to see her husband suffering, and maybe she's saying, Curse God, and it'll be over quickly. And he says to her, You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. The fool in Psalm 14 says, There is no God. You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?

That's a bold, bold statement, isn't it? How can God dispense evil? How can he decree it? That's our belief, isn't it? But nothing happens without God willing it to happen, and without God willing it to happen before it happens, and without God willing it to happen in the way that it happens. All things work together for the good of those that love him. All things.

The good, the bad, and the ugly. And yet, Reformed theologians have wanted to introduce at least some barriers to protect God from being the author of evil. And so, things happen and occur by second causes.

Yes, God did it in the sense that he decreed it, but Satan did it in the sense that he is the one morally responsible for it, and our minds are now beginning to come apart. Three friends come. Eliphaz and Bildad and Eliphaz and Eliphaz and Zophar. And the best thing they ever did in chapter 3 was to say absolutely nothing.

For a week, it was the best thing that they did. Chapter 3 of Job is like a lifeline. He curses the day that he was born. He sinks down and down and down and down and down. You ever experience that? When you're in despair, you can't sense God's presence. There's no sense of his love.

The arms that once you knew were wrapped around you seem not to be there. Your prayers are filled with despair and anger, frustration. Where is God in all of this? As he sits on the ash heap, as he scrapes this ash all over him, a sign of his imminent death. You know, these words are quoted almost verbatim in Jeremiah 19 and 20 by Jeremiah after he'd been put in the stocks and ridiculed, and all kinds of things had been thrown at him. And then the next day, he goes back, I think, to his home and he quotes from memory the words of Job. I'm glad these words are here.

I've been close to this at one point in my life, but not quite to the despairing level of Job chapter 3. But it's like when you're flying and the announcement will be made that somewhere under your seat, and it depends where you're sitting, if you're sitting in the back, it's here. If you're sitting in the middle, it's somewhere else. And if you're sitting in first class, it's somewhere else.

And you think, I need to know. I need to know exactly where this thing is. This life vest and the whistle is going to be vitally important.

This plane is going down at 500 miles an hour into the ocean. I need to know where that whistle is. And the little light that's going to light up in contact with water, that's going to be absolutely vital. I've never once got down on my knees and searched exactly where it was. I mean, am I sitting in the one chair that they forgot to put it in? Job chapter 3 is like a life vest. I may need it one day. And what a God we have that He would put this in the Bible for a day when despair overtakes you.

And to be able to say, you know, you're not alone. Job was here. Jeremiah was here. Jesus was here. My God, my God, not my Father, but my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As though the consciousness of His native sonship had abandoned Him altogether. So, then we come to chapter 4, and they begin to speak. And in chapter 4, we have Eliphaz.

He's probably the oldest of the three. And in verses 5 and 6 and 7, you have the gist of what they say. But now it has come to you, and you are impatient.

It touches you, and you are dismayed. Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope? Remember, who that was innocent to ever perished?

Or where were the upright cut off? That's Counseling 101 right there. The reason why you're suffering is because it's your fault. Now, let's think about that for a minute. Instant retribution.

I believe it. If you're sleeping around and behaving like a dog, and you get an STD, you can come up to me and say, life isn't fair. Why should I suffer this way?

Dude, it's your fault. There is such a thing as instant retribution. Yes, Paul says so in Galatians chapter 6.

But that's not the case here. It's not the case here because God says so. Because he was an upright man. He was a godly man.

He was the godliest man on the face of the planet. The reason for Job's suffering does not lie in his own sinfulness. Calvin says in his opening sermon in 1554, in February, that these friends, they only have one song, and they sing it to death. So, chapter after chapter, lots of what they say is perfectly orthodox.

They have an orthodox doctrine of God. Joseph Carroll, the Puritan in London, in a congregation that John Owen would later minister in, preached on the book of Job for 23 years. You know, you're 18, 19, you're going along to church, and he announces a series of sermons on Job. You get married, have children, you go away somewhere, and then 20 years later you come back, and he's still in the book of Job.

You have to admire that. They're published. You can purchase 12 volumes of all of these sermons on the book of Job. Much of what they say about God is perfectly orthodox. But they are dead wrong in their analysis of why it is that Job suffered. Now, every now and then in the book of Job, Job cries out in chapter 9 and chapter 16, and then famously in chapter 19, the passage that says, I know that my Redeemer lives. And he has this longing, you know, in the passage, I know that my Redeemer lives, and you probably think now of Handel's Messiah and the wonderful oratorio that he wrote in a moment of semi-inspiration, for sure. But you need to understand that when Job says, I know that my Redeemer lives, he's not saying, I know that Jesus exists, and he died for my sins, and I'm justified by faith, and I need not fear the wrath of God. No, that's not what he's saying at all. Job is protesting his innocence.

He wants an answer to the question, why? There was a young woman in the congregation that I was in in Belfast, wonderful, wonderful woman. She gave birth to a daughter who had some serious medical issues, tumors on her brain. Doctors said she wouldn't last very long.

They were aware of it before the baby was born. The moment she was born, the husband walked out and never returned, never paid a dime in alimony. It was the sweetness of this mother who was completely devoted 24-7 to raising this child, and she lived until she was over 40. I would visit her and her mother. Her mother lived with her daughter and her granddaughter, and I would visit once every couple of months.

I would go along. She'd knock on the door. She would say, oh, come in, come in, and typical sort of Irish hospitality, and there'd be cups of tea and biscuits with cookies. And every time she would ask this question, she'd say, I know you don't know the answer to this, but I just have to ask, and when I've asked it, I'm going to be fine. But she would say to me, why?

And I would smile, and I would say to her, you know what I'm going to say, don't you? Yes, she said, you're going to say you don't know. And I said, yeah, I still don't know. Why does pain happen to me?

Why am I wrenched out of my place of comfort into a place of horrible abandonment, where I feel as though God has completely left me? Why? I deserve to know.

No, you don't. It's not important that you understand. It's only important that He understands and that you trust Him, even in the dark. Even in silence. The book of Job is about the genuineness of our faith, when the ground is taken away from us. Do we trust Him? Even in the most horrible of pain and the most horrible situation imaginable, do we trust Him? That He has this.

That He has the whole world in His hands, and that He has you in His hands. I love the book of Job. I'm a Celt.

The glass is half empty. I'm an Eeyore by temperament. But I love the book of Job because it's a book about God. What did Calvin say in that first sermon in February of 1554? It is a great thing to be subject to the majesty of God. What an encouraging message from Ligonier teaching fellow, Dr. Derek Thomas. All week, we have been featuring selected messages from our 2021 Ligonier National Conference. Our theme this year was, Right Now Counts Forever. And today we learn that right now is firmly in God's control and therefore truly does count forever. Dr. Thomas wrote an article for this month's Table Talk magazine and in it he says this, To a mother who loses her first child, a sister who learns of a malignant tumor, a college graduate who fails his first job interview, and to people in a thousand other scenarios, God's providence serves as a reminder that while we may not have all the answers, God does. The August edition of Table Talk has many helpful articles, all on the theme Right Now Counts Forever, and we'd like to send you this edition. And when you contact us today with a donation of any amount, we will put it in the mail right away and we will continue a subscription to Table Talk for the coming year.

You can find us online to make your request at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343. Well, when we think about the fact that Right Now Counts Forever, there are so many aspects of the Christian life that come to mind. We've considered some of them this week, our work, for example, the church, and tomorrow our focus is on the Great Commission. Isn't it surprising that when Jesus says, Go make disciples, he sums up disciple making in two very brief points. If somebody said, What would it take to make a disciple of Jesus Christ? How long would you go on for? How many points would you have? Jesus only has two. Dr. Robert Godfrey will examine both points for us in a message titled, Go Therefore. That's tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind.