Its one thing to know God is with you in suffering, but…

         

         Nothing is more inevitable in life than suffering and grief.  In the Bible, Job was a devout believer in God, a pillar in his community, and suddenly everything was taken away from him.  He lost his wealth, health, family, and he himself was plunged into existential darkness. 

          In the mid chapters Job probes the depths of his grief, expressing confusion and anger.  But there’s one place where Job reaches a high point of remarkable insight as he comes to grips with resources to help him face his terrible suffering and anguish.

            Job 13:20, 24 “Only grant these two things to me, God, so that I will not have to hide from Your presence… Why do You hide Your face and consider me Your enemy?”

          Job doesn’t want to have to hide from God, and he doesn’t want God to hide from him.  So what is that for which Job is looking?

          Verse 22, “Then call, and I will answer.”

          Job wants to be brought in to God’s presence.  If Job has sinned against God, then he wants it dealt with, because he doesn’t want God to be his enemy.  He wants to know that God is with him in this suffering.  He wants to know that God has not abandoned him and left him to die alone in his grief.

          In the earlier chapters, Job was asking for an explanation for why he was suffering, but here it’s not primarily answers he seeks.  He wants the personal presence of God.  He wants to know that God is walking with him in this darkness. 

          When my friend lost his wife and daughter in a tragic accident, his grief was not an intellectual puzzle.  It was a journey.  Last year, a few women ran across the Sahara Desert to raise awareness for human potential.  The Sahara is the world in its extreme.  There is no place on earth as dry and hot and hostile.  When making such a difficult journey, one spends very little time thinking about the map.  Rather one thinks about the stamina necessary to make such a journey, and whether he or she possesses such strength.   

          Job no longer spent all his time looking for an explanation for his pain.  He was no longer asking the why question of suffering.  But rather the how question.  How can he find the strength to endure this journey and get to wherever it leads? 

          When people think about what you have done for them during the course of their lives, most of the time it won’t be the information you tried to give them that they will remember.  Instead they will recall how you sat with them in the ER waiting room when their child was in an accident.  Or they will remember how you came to the jail and sat with them when their son had been arrested. 

          During those times they didn’t need a map of information, theological or otherwise.  What they needed was somebody who was with them in it and walking with them thru it.  They needed the presence of someone who loved them

          Job realizes that even if he had the answers, he could still die crossing that desert.  But what he needed was the strength of knowing that God loved him and was with him.  Because he knows if he has that, he can handle everything else.    

          Only Christianity says that God didn’t respond to suffering with a philosophical discourse or theological lecture.  But rather God came Himself.  Only Christianity has the audacity to say that God in Jesus Christ came down and entered into this world of suffering.  He has been lonely, betrayed, tortured and killed.  In other words, God didn’t merely give us information, but rather He came down to the ER.  He came down the county jail.

          Job 14:7, “There is hope for a tree: If it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its shoots will not die.”
          Job introduces and important biblical concept related to suffering.  College botany taught me that vitality and productivity requires pruning and stress.  If you take a fruit tree and you just let have a happy stress-free life, it won’t be very fruitful.  But instead you have hack at it and cut off its beauty and all its leaves and flowers.  It will look like its being destroyed.  But only if it is cut and stressed by the process of pruning will it become thicker and stronger and fuller with more fruit and greater beauty.  In the same way, suffering produces greater glory. 

          Paul wrote in, 2 Corinthians 4:16-17, “Therefore we do not give up; even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.”

          When those who have endured suffering in this life get around people who haven’t suffered, often they recognize an emotional and spiritual shallowness.  They don’t have glory, and when the troubles come like a flood, they are swept away, giving in to bitterness and defensiveness and coldness, resenting the happiness and success of others, convinced that they deserve better.

          This is the challenge of glory.  When suffering and grief comes to you, God has his hands in the clay, forming you into someone with staying power.  You will be more beautiful, bearing more fruit. 

          Now you may be hoping for something more than this knowledge of God’s pruning activity to give you strength when you are hurting.  Job seems to be hoping for something more as well. 

          Verses 10-12, “But a man dies and fades away; he breathes his last—where is he?  As water disappears from the sea and a river becomes parched and dry, so man lies down never to rise again. They will not wake up until the heavens are no more; they will not stir from their sleep.”

          In other words, there may be hope for a tree that is pruned, but Job feels like he is beyond pruning.  Job feels he is being destroyed and will eventually die.  He doesn’t see any hope. 

          Verses 13-15, “If only You would hide me in Sheol [the grave] and conceal me until Your anger passes, that You would appoint a time for me and then remember me.  When a man dies, will he come back to life?  If so, I would wait all the days of my struggle until my relief comes.  You would call, and I would answer You.”

          The word for struggle is used to describe prison labor.  Job believes that he will go into the grave and pay his debt.  And afterward, he hopes that God will remember him and bring him relief from the grave.  But dead men don’t get relieved from the grave.  So why would Job have any hope of being resurrected from the dead?

          Verse 15, “You would call, and I would answer You. You would long for the work of Your hands.”

          Job has come to believe that God loves him.  He believes God’s love to be so unstoppable that He wouldn’t let Job stay dead.  Job knows that if God is as great as he knows He is, and therefore His love is as great as he knows it to be, then someday God will call and Job will be restored.

          Centuries later, Jesus Christ stood at the tomb of his friend Lazarus.  Jesus wept, longing for His friend.  Jesus knew the religious leaders were watching.  He knew that if He did what he wanted to do, the religious leaders would see no choice but to kill him. 

          In other words, Jesus knew the only way He could get Lazarus out of the grave was to put Himself into it.  Jesus did the prison labor in the grave of Sheol, translated as Hades in the New Testament.  Jesus was immersed into death, receiving all the ultimate suffering and grieving we deserve.  He did this so you would trust that he loves you.  Then he rose from the dead so you would know that the price for your sin and rebellion against God has been paid in full. 

          I believe that is what Jesus meant when he said in Matthew 16:18, “…and on this rock I will build My church, and the forces of Hades will not overpower it.”

          When Jesus calls, those who trusted in him will come forth, for death will not overpower us.  Why is this so powerful a resource when we are suffering?  Because it’s one thing to know that God is with you, but it’s another thing to know that He is with you forever.

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