Job 38:1-18, "Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?"

Job chapter 38 will be reading from verses 1 to 21 Hear the word of the

Lord Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said

Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge just for action like a man?

I will question you and you make it known to me Where were you when

I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me if you understand Who determined his measurements surely, you know or Who stretched the line upon it on?

What word its basis sunk or who laid its cornerstone? When the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy

Are who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb? when

I made clouds its garment and thick darkness is swaddling band and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors and said thus far should you come and no farther and Here show you your proud waves be stayed

Have you commanded the morning since your days began and caused the dawn to know its place?

That it might take hold of the skirts of the earth and the wicked be shaken out of it

It is changed like the clay under the seal and its features stand out like a garment

From the wicked their light is withheld and their uplifted arm is broken Have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?

Have the gates of death been revealed to you or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?

Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth declare it if you know all this Where is the way to the dwelling of light and where is the place of darkness that you may take it into my?

Into it may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths of its home

You know for you were born then and the number of your days is great If the

Lord had his blessings to the reading of his Holy Word That's really just a sampling of how the

Lord begins to question him. Well, why do bad things happen to good people? That's considered one of the most weighty most philosophically difficult questions of all time especially for those who believe in God in the spring of 1986 my when

I was a junior in college My father was sent to the Mayo Clinic for treatment for non Hodgkin's lymphoma and was told there bluntly that he had three months to live

That proved accurate He made his living on the business side of health care as a hospital administrator

But even he thought it was jarring to be told so coldly that that's all the time he had left

He had a old college friend who had become a pastor in the Rochester, Minnesota area And so visited him while he was in the

Mayo Clinic now part of what he said To my father was about this problem. Why do bad things happen to good people?

Why do some of the best people get cancer at the age of 47 and die? He related to my father.

This is the the problem of evil. There is evil of the world and it strikes Good people why?

Can God not stop it? Or does he not care? God by definition is supposed to be all -powerful

Omnipotent and loving God is love but then there is evil bad things happen to good people.

So how can that be? Either God isn't all -powerful That is he wants to stop bad things to good people, but he can't

Something is more powerful than him preventing him from stopping the evil or maybe it's our free will

It's what a lot of modern theology says our free will it prevents him from doing what he wants to do

But since there is evil in the world that God hasn't stopped it then either logically he can't or he won't

Is he either not able? Or is he not good? What's the answer to that?

The old friend now a pastor Told my father that it was a mystery We just have to trust

God. It's a mystery and apparently his demeanor was comforting Because he left a good impression on my father.

He was not a miserable comforter That's the problem of evil and it goes back at least as far as the

Greek philosopher Epicurus who lived in the 4th century BC Epicurus reasoned that if God cares about our suffering all loving and can stop our suffering all

Powerful then logically there shouldn't be any suffering. So since there is still suffering either

God is not all -powerful Or he's not good This argument is used by atheists to say see there cannot be a

God It is often answered by Christians like that pastor by saying it's a mystery

So why do bad things happen to good people? I? saw a prominent Christian professor of Philosophy musing about this on Facebook at once and I responded simply said back.

Is it that what the book of Job is about? His response was even more simple No Well, I thought well, why not?

It's about God's about suffering So surely it's relevant to why bad things happen to good people But he wanted to rely on some kind of a free will argument that is

God has left us up to our free will and so We get bad things because of our free will and that just of course that kind of argument doesn't find any place in the book

Of Job except perhaps in the way the three friends assume that Job is suffering due to his

Free will supposedly choosing to sin but the book of Job doesn't make that argument look very good

So oddly enough our situation today Is that we have a lot of people who want to debate the problem of evil?

But they don't often like to turn to the book of Job for the answer Why do bad things happen to good people?

Let's turn to the book of Job. Does it answer the question? What we see in three parts first the doubts

Second the unanswered question and last the problem First there's the doubts.

Why do bad things happen to good people last week? We saw one of the answers Partial answer to that question when a lie who says in chapter 36 verse 15

Remember that God delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity

What CS Lewis described as suffering being God's megaphone to rouse and a deaf world

But what is God delivering the afflicted from by their affliction? Well from there not knowing

God But the scoffer will respond to that with an incredulous question, you know, you're telling me That God is allowing suffering.

He's loosing viruses that cause millions of deaths Tsunamis that wash people away

Cancer that takes people in the prime of life freak accidents vicious criminals murderous invaders all kinds of evil and it's all just so We'll seek

God seek God seek to know him They'll say that that God is a megalomaniac.

He's a narcissist He's a sadist to afflict people just to get their attention. He should exist

They say he should exist to make me happy so people now insist with no sense of irony

He's self -centered because he's not centered on me the more the affliction

The more we should be angry and bitter at him modern coddled people think and The hit

Broadway played the Book of Mormon One of the key songs the title of which is so obscene.

I can't repeat it Assumes that the poor afflicted ravages Ravaged African people that these

Mormon missionaries are going to they simply because they have such a hard life The assumption is they simply must be so angry at God that they regularly curse him

Well like Job's wife the advice of modern culture to believers is curse God and die

We should doubt a God like that they say But in reality It is often that destitute desperate places like Ethiopia Have the most reverence for God It's as if a lie who was right through adversity

God opens our ears Well the smug who think that you know, they're God's best buds who think that they have no doubts

Think that they know God well enough already. They don't need affliction To know God they think

But that kind of knowledge of God is something that will have to wait until we see him face -to -face

Paul told the Corinthians in that magnificent chapter on love that for now we see in a mirror dimly a glass darkly but then face to face

Now I know in part Then I shall know I shall fully even as I have been fully known

Well, the book of Job tells us how to live while we're seeing through a glass darkly

What we need now peering through a murky window our doubts

Not doubt about God But we do need doubts Affliction comes to make us doubt the things that we should be doubting to trust him less

So you think you think money will solve all your problems? Steve Jobs the founder of Apple had seven billion dollars and it did him no good against pancreatic cancer

His riches couldn't buy him a cure that medicine didn't have he died in my age

You think his family that's the answer to everything But what if you're like Job and the only member of your family left is scorning you a lot of people

Like Job throughout this book are not doubting the right things

The key sentence for unlocking the whole book of Job I think is that incredibly subversive question that God first asked

Job Where were you? When I laid the earth's foundation That question is really the climax of this whole drama.

It settles everything It doesn't answer the questions But it settles them

Job's friends thought they knew God well enough and they knew enough about God to predict how he will always behave

Job thought he was important enough to demand that God answer his his protests neither doubted themselves

People off people who ask why do bad things happen to good people always assume that they are one of those good people and God's question to us all is

Where were you? When I laid the earth's foundations Nowhere And what does that tell us about ourselves before God?

Yeah, I guess I'm the creature God is the creator That's a big difference, isn't it?

Yes a very big difference Both Job in it and his friends forgot that That subversive question is meant to cause us doubts

Job like a lot of good people who suffer bad things wrestles with doubts about God not that he exists But whether he's good or not some scholars even thought

I even think that that great statement of faith in Job chapter 13 verse 15 Often so often quoted, you know, though he slay me yet Well, I hope in him that he should be read as a sarcastic question though.

He slay me you expect me to open him Probably not that's probably not right But Job says immediately after that I will argue my ways to his face

He's confident. Notice what Job is not doubting at that moment He's confident that if he could argue directly with God that he

Job can win that argument He can convince God himself that God was wrong to allow these bad things to happen to such a good person

He doesn't doubt his capacity to question God But he does doubt

God's goodness Like Epicurus God is all -powerful, but does it stop suffering? He must not be good

He complains in chapter 19 verse 11. He has kindled his wrath Against me and counts me as his adversary after chapters of that kind of confidence

Then come comes God's some subversive question Where were you?

when I laid the earth's foundation It's meant to reverberate through our souls until we finally get it

God is God and We're not God then asked question after question each one designed to put the doubter in his place

Did you notice the sarcasm in chapter 38 verse 21 that the last verse where we stopped, you know

God says, you know, surely you can answer all these questions for you were born then when the earth was founded weren't you and The number of your days is so great

Job Ouch Sarcasm is meant to humiliate and here

God is Humiliating the one who doubts the wrong thing Job doubted

God's goodness worse than that though were the friends. They didn't doubt God's goodness

Because they didn't doubt themselves They had too much faith in themselves and too little real knowledge of God God deals with them at the end

By making Job their intercessor says he tells them you want to be right with me

You go to Job and make him let get him to intercede for you. What all these people have in common is

That they don't doubt themselves Job doesn't doubt his ability to prove himself right before God Job's friends doubt

Job Because they don't doubt their mastery of God what they all need

What God's four chapters of unrelenting questions are meant to create our doubts

GK Chesterton said that the best approach to doubters is to be like God in the book of Job Keep asking them questions

To destroy their faith in themselves Quote in dealing with the arrogant assertor of doubt.

It is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting It's rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting to doubt a little more

To doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe until it lasts by some strange enlightenment.

He may begin to doubt himself The problem with the modern doubter of God is not that he has doubts but that he doubts the wrong thing

He would be much better off To doubt himself rather than God That's what

God God's question. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation is meant to create doubts about ourselves

There's a crisis right now in them in the charismatic movement because many of the so -called Prophets last year and sum up even until early this year and into January claim that God had told them that President Trump would be reelected

They claimed it was certainty They said that God told them that Trump would continue as president and his into a second term

Now he was a good enough for them to say that that was the result of the election that they they wanted that was their Preference or that they they felt he would win

That they prophesy in part and Here's what they think maybe seeing the future through a dark glass hearing

God's voice imperfectly Now that sounds that sounds too weak. They spoke for God and Said Trump will definitely continue in office what they needed

Was a healthy dose of doubt not doubt of God but doubt of themselves Let that question

Sink in where were you when I laid the earth's foundation that it's sink in and shape your character

The modern approach like that professor I encountered over Facebook is to say instead up say up front don't doubt

God but don't doubt him because He's not really responsible.

He didn't do it For whatever reason usually because they say he's he's bound himself to honor our free will

God can't stop the bad things happening to good people now Ultimately, I think that creates doubts about God because people think well, that's the case.

What good is he? He can't protect me from the bad things But that way they can kind of theoretically say

That God is all -powerful and good But still these bad things happen

First for some reason that doesn't allow him to use his power to stop them The problem with that is that throughout the book of Job?

God says that he is responsible in the prologue in chapter 2. The Lord said said to Satan you

Satan Incited me That's God speaking you incited me against him.

It's Job to ruin him He's saying clearly

God's saying that he did it and the epilogue in chapter 42 verse 11 Joe's brothers and sisters come to comfort him and the writer says the inspired writer says

For all they're comforting him for all the evil all the bad things that the

Lord Had brought upon him According to the inspired author and so the

Holy Spirit The Lord is responsible for the bad things that happen to Joe the law was given to show us our

Sin to show us how sinful we are. We have this law to see therein that we are not free from sin

It's to make us doubt our self -righteousness in the same way. The book of Job is supposed to inspire in us doubt doubt of ourselves and leave us content with that doubt

Trusting God instead of ourselves Why do bad things happen to good people?

Answer the question we demand an answer It's just that attitude that the book of Job was inspired by God to crush to make us content with an unanswered question

Some say the book of Job tells us why Job suffered that the first two chapters answer the question that's not really true

The first two chapters don't really tell us why Job suffered only that God was in control of it all

But why did God do it? We don't really know do we? It's the unanswered question.

It's driving job almost crazy through the whole book and in chapter 6 verse 1 Oh that my vexation were weighed and all my calamity laid in the balances a

Lie who chides him in chapter 33 verse 10? Why do you contend against him against God saying he will answer none of man's words

Job demands that God answers his questions in those long chapters of his angry sullen debate and then

God speaks out of the storm and Instead of answering Job, you know why?

Instead He questions Job So finally Job Crushed by all those questions admits in chapter 42.

I Know that you can do all things all powerful Omnipotent and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

He's free Our free will doesn't stop his plan

Who is this? That hides counsel without knowledge recalling God's question to him when

God began to question him Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand things too wonderful for me, which

I did not know Here and I will speak I will question you and you will make it known to me what

God had said to him earlier. I heard you of The heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes sees you

Now no longer at least not as much through a glass darkly therefore

I despise myself and Repent in dust and ashes That's the conclusion of a righteous of a righteous man whom the

Lord singled out of the whole earth is no one like him That's the conclusion from him then how much more not to be our conclusion content with an unanswered question

So the answer to the question of why bad things to happen to good people is frankly, it's none of your business

Our business is to trust him The immediate of the immediate objection to that is well, that's not a satisfactory answer and that's just the point

Who do we think we are to demand answers to our satisfaction from God?

We're supposed to trust him with unanswered questions Well something the answer well is for our character and sometimes that may be true as we saw in first Peter whether we suffer

Afflicted for our For our character for our building up for our discipline, but if we think all suffering in the world is just for our self -improvement

Our character is awfully self -centered. I Have an aunt and uncle who lived in on a farm in eastern

Arkansas They were in their mid -30s with two boys my cousins and my uncle was a good family man I remember him once when

I was a kid taking us to a playground and spinning us around on a merry -go -round One day he was working on his car in the barn by himself and the car was on a jack and he forgot to put

A block underneath it and he went under the car and the car fell on him He died there crushed to death by the car

It was a terrible tragedy for my aunt and my two cousins one. I don't think they ever really fully recovered from But as a result of that tragedy my aunt sought

God became a sincere Christian and that's a good thing But I remember her saying that perhaps her husband died to bring her to God We are to sympathize with that, but I think saying that kind of thing is a mistake

We should never think that we are so important that we are so much in the center of the universe

That God is going to kill other people Just to teach us lessons It's a subtle form of arrogance to accept bad things from the hand of God Just because we think that God must have done it to make me better The whole universe exists for my self -improvement.

We're desperate for an answer. Of course when things like that happen To know why did this horrible thing happen?

Why was my husband crushed to death in a barn? It must mean something and we assume because of the kind of people we are that it means something about us

Now, yes, God works all things for good He brings good out of all things even the bad even out of bad things for those who love him

But that doesn't mean that all things revolve around us Sometimes the good he may work out of bad things is to show us like Job Who we are before God?

To teach us to stop demanding an answer to every question To stop screaming there must be something we can find now to explain this to my satisfaction about me

He might be working Being good out of bad things to cure us of Our assumption that all our questions must be answered now that assumption

Still hasn't been humbled by that disturbing question Where were you when

I laid the earth's foundation We haven't been shaken out of our self -centeredness by it made content to live for now

While we're looking at God through a dark glass with unanswered questions

Why do bad things happen to good people? That's the conventional question the problem of evil all the way back to Epicurus still stumping theologians today that problem of evil assumes

That if we are good moral people, we have a right to be protected from suffering It sees morality like paying a premium on an insurance policy

If you pay your premiums, you have a right to get the coverage of the policy Our morality is like coins in a divide vending machine.

They should earn us the the thing we want But of course we have a problem the so -called problem the of evil we admit that we're not always getting what we want

So we're asking why? Why is this God machine malfunctioning? Oh We're free.

We're told these days. We're free to choose to live as God orders if we want our Jews not to But once we do once we make our choice

God then is not free To give us other than what we have paid for Our life we're told now

Obligates God So we think the problem then must be if we paid the we pay the premiums We put the coins of the divine vending machine the problem then if we have evil the problem must be with God But it's fundamental in the book of Job that God is

Absolutely free remember Job's conclusion. No plan of yours can be thwarted He can do whatever he wants to do

He's not a tame lion Good. Yes But not tame

Why do bad things happen to good people That's supposed to be a profound philosophical question confounding the greatest minds for centuries

But a good philosophical argument is supposed to be free of unexamined Assumptions every claim is proved

But there's a glaring assumption in that question. Why do bad things happen to? good people

Epicurus and thousands of philosophers and theologians since have stumped themselves over that conundrum of how if God is good

Then he can allow good people to suffer The problem of evil that that pastor of the

Mayo Clinic discussed with my father after you've just been told That he only has three months to live But the glaring assumption is obvious Why do you think there are good people

Where do these good people come from that you're talking about? The Bible says none is righteous No Not one that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God even from the book of Job just the book of Job Itself we've seen that the best of men can easily fall into sin and have to confess

I despise myself and repent to dust and ashes Sure job is called blameless and righteous at the first but that doesn't mean sinless

It means that God doesn't blame him for his sins that the blame has been taken away.

He's blamed less Righteous means to be right with God the sin that would have alienated him from God has been forgiven

So even job is not sinless So the question is so the question why do bad things happen to good people is false in his premise

There are no Good people, but still why do bad things happen to a man who is blameless?

Okay, we can say like a lie who is to open the ears of the afflicted But it gets more complicated if we think it was simply to purify

Job to expose a particular sin The kind of judgment that you know has begun at the house of God We heard about from first Peter to discipline to train us if that's all that we think it's about Well, we missed the point of the book of Job It's like the disciples asking

Jesus in John chapter 9 about the man who was who was blind from birth Rabbi master who sinned

This is man here. He's a beggar. He's blind. He was born blind this man or his parents That he was born blind who said he's responsible for this

Somebody had to commit some sin they assumed To deserve the blindness they thought

Which means behind that is the assumption the rest of us who aren't blind Didn't commit that sin and we're good people the disciples in John chapter 9 like Job's friends thought the bad things happened to people as punishment for specific sins and That basically they deserve it and we don't get it.

That means we don't deserve it because we're better They had a problem when a baby was born afflicted. That's a big problem for their system

I you know, how could a baby have sinned so they guess maybe it's punishment for a sin the parents committed

And Jesus said no It wasn't for a specific sin It's because of all of your sinfulness or depravity

When Pontius Pilate mastered some Galileans offering sacrifices people thought that the Galileans must have committed a

Particular sin that deserved it they got what they deserved and Jesus said in Luke chapter 13 No, they weren't any more sinful than you in other words, you would deserve the same thing a

Tower in Jerusalem collapsed to crush 18 people to death and Jesus asked do you think that they were worse offenders?

Than all the others who lived in Jerusalem Is that by bad things happen to them?

Is there worse because they're bad people worse than you Jesus said no, I tell you but unless you repent you will all

Likewise in the same way perish. In other words, you're as bad as they are You aren't

Good people the premise to the question is totally wrong

Bad things don't happen to good people because there aren't good people

They are sinners who deserve all the bad things that happen to them But this is different now from Job's friends or even the disciples who thought people were being punished for Specific acts and the rest of us that don't get that punishment must be not committing them

Jesus said is saying you're all sinful and you all deserve the bad things

That means then That the really puzzling Brain -wracking question for the

Christian for us Really one should be should be Stumping us. The question is not why the bad things happen to good people.

It's not the so -called problem of evil the problem the really brain -wracking

Confounding problem is the problem of good Why does so many good things happen?

to us bad people The problem for us is not the problem of evil Only self -centered people so sinful that we're just totally out of touch with how self -absorbed we are

How arrogant we are how depraved we are only we would just assume

That we're good That the Almighty owes owes us a comfortable life

The question is the problem of good Why he's been so good to us

That's why the book of Job ends with this exorbitant display of God's goodness to Job healed restored wealthy again all to amaze us with the problem of Good, I should correct something.

I said earlier that it's not quite accurate. I Said that there are no good people In fact, there was one good person

Only one truly good man and something bad did happen to that one

Truly good person. Why did bad things happen to him to Jesus the good person?

So that God could bring good things to the rest of us bad people

So the book of Job leads us to God but giving us both a glimpse of how

Majestic and all -powerful our God is and how small we are in his shadow a

God so great That he makes us doubt ourselves and amazes us at his goodness even when we suffer bad things

We ought to be grateful that such a majestic God Has taken any notice of us at all that he has done good things for us despite ourselves once we've seen how big and good

God is and how small and Depraved we are we can live content with unanswered questions and then

Then finally we are ready for a better glimpse a clearer look of him

Through that dark glass and we know That whatever we find when we see him face to face