Sermon Transcript
While he was yet speaking, there came another and said, your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house. And behold, a great wind came across the wilderness and struck the 4 corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead, and I alone have escaped to tell you. Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshipped. And he said, naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I I return? The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.
Many of you know the story, but for those who don’t In 1871, a great fire swept through the city of Chicago and it destroyed over 2,000 acres, 17,000 structures, killed over 300 people, and cost over $200 million in damages, which adjusted for today is about $4.7 billion. At the time, there was a successful lawyer in Chicago by the name of Horatio Spafford. And he was financially devastated by the fire because he had invested so heavily in real estate in the city of Chicago, which at the time real estate in Chicago seemed like a pretty sure bet because Chicago had been growing at a nearly unfathomable rate. In 1830, there were only, can you imagine this, 350 people in Chicago total. You could probably know all their names.
But by 1860, 30 years later, there were over 112,000 people. For those of you keeping track at home, that’s almost a 32,000% increase in population over a 30-year period. So, real estate should have been a slam dunk deal, should have been, had been for decades, and then the fire wiped out everything. So, a financially broken Spafford spent the next 2 years struggling to get back on his feet. And then in 1873, both he and his family were planning to travel to England, at least partially to accompany D.L.
Moody on one of his evangelistic campaigns. So, the whole family was set to set sail across the ocean. On a nice vacation, well deserved after their last 2 years of struggling to put it back together. But at the last minute before the ship set sail to England, Horatio decided to stay in Chicago for an important meeting. But his family, his wife and 4 daughters, went on ahead of him.
They boarded the ship and he was supposed to catch up with them later. But tragically, on the voyage across the Atlantic, the ship carrying his family was struck by another vessel vessel and it sank into the sea. Horatio’s wife Anna survived, but all 4 of his daughters, all 4 of them drowned.
How would you respond if you were Horatio and all 4 of your daughters had drowned? In the days that followed, Horatio Spafford wrote the hymn which many of you know, It Is Well with My soul. We sing it in here often, and you know the lyrics, many of you, but the lyrics are, when peace like a river attendeth my way, so when times are good, but also when sorrows like sea billows roll, so when times are tragic, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say it is well, it is well, it is well with my soul. I’m sure that wasn’t Horatio’s only reaction to tragedy, but it was a reaction. Reaction of his.
And once you know the story behind the hymn, it is stunning that he chose sea billows as an illustration for sorrows, because for him it wasn’t an illustration at all. It was quite literally sea billows that had destroyed his family, drowned his daughters. And now he is saying, when sorrows like sea billows roll, Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, it is well with my soul. Even those of us, and that’s many of us, who are well familiar with the origin of that song, we are still left pretty amazed that anyone could respond like that. But here’s the deal.
This is what we’re going to dive into today. Horatio is not alone. It’s not like he’s the only Christian to ever respond to tragedy by doubling down on Jesus Christians like Horatio are all over the place, all over the place. A couple contemporary examples, Laura Story, who’s a modern contemporary Christian artist, wrote the song Blessings after her husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor. So they get the doctor’s report, which was bad, and then she writes the lyrics, which you may have heard on the radio.
We pray for blessings, we pray for peace, comfort for family, protection while we sleep. We pray for healing, I’m sure her and her husband were praying for healing, for prosperity. We pray for your mighty hand to ease our suffering. And we say, of course, you’re right, Laura. That is exactly what we pray for all the time.
Blessings, prosperity, peace. Those are— that’s pretty much every single one of my prayers. But she continues, all the while, you hear each spoken need, yet love is way too much to give us lesser things. She’s saying, if you’re paying attention, the lesser things are peace, comfort, protection, healing, prosperity. She’s saying those are lesser.
We might be praying for something lesser, not as good as something else, and God loves us too much to give us lesser. Because she says, what if your blessings come through raindrops? What if your healing comes through tears? What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know you’re near? What if the trials of this life are your mercies in disguise.
She writes that when her husband has a brain tumor.
Or another example, in the days following September 11th, Matt and Beth Redmond wrote Blessed Be Your Name. The song was not specifically written as a response to that event. The Redmonds later said it was more of a response to the whole of life. They wanted the song to be how they like always orient themselves. But it was September 11th that triggered them to like reflect on life in general.
So when the rest of us were dazed and wondering what might be next, do you remember September 12th to September 30th? You remember what you were thinking during those days? They wrote these lyrics: Blessed be your name in the land that is plentiful, where your streams of abundance flow, blessed be your name. So when times are good, just like Horatio wrote, but also blessed be your name when I’m found in the desert place, though I walk through the wilderness, blessed be your name. When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say blessed be your name.
Then they write, you give and take away, you give and you take away. Away. Either way, blessed be your name.
That is exactly what Job said. It’s exactly what Job said. Chapter 20— or verse 21 of chapter 1, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job lost his children.
He lost his house. He lost his herds and plowing animals. So he lost his means to create income. He nothing. He’d lost it all, and he says, blessed be the name of the Lord.
We might think when we read Job that Job is some kind of fanatical religious zealot, right? We may think there’s not really people who respond to tragedy like that. You know, surely Job is just only in Scripture as some kind of hyperbole. It’s beyond what any real person would do. Do.
That’s not the case. Job is not a fanatic. He’s not a metaphor. Other people, other real people have responded exactly like Job. In fact, Job’s reaction is semi-common among Christians.
I gave you the examples of Horatio Spafford, Matt and Beth Redmond, Laura Storey to show Christians do this from time to time. Tragedy strikes. Even extreme tragedy strikes, the type of tragedy where life has no possibility of ever being the same ever again, that kind of tragedy, and instead of running away from God, people run to God and worship. It happens. It’s not just Job.
It’s real people. And that leaves us curious, doesn’t it? We wonder, how did they react like that? What led to— what led Job to worship after all his children were killed and after he lost any hope of financial provision. Like, why did he worship then?
And maybe is there something we could learn from him and apply to our own lives so maybe we could respond similarly? Yes. So, as we study Job’s reaction this morning, we will see the connection between sovereignty and worship, the connection between sorrow and worship, And finally, we’ll see a shadow of Jesus. The connection between sovereignty and worship, the connection between sorrow and worship, and a shadow of Jesus. So, first, the connection between sovereignty and worship.
There is understandably a tendency to minimize God’s sovereignty in the face of tragedy. There’s an understandable tendency to say God’s hand wasn’t in this. Like Steve said last week, sometimes we feel we need to absolve God from any involvement in the tragedy. But there is no question in Job’s mind at any point in the entire book of Job who is ultimately in charge. Again, even from the very start of his suffering, Job declares, the Lord gave and the Lord took away.
So, if we asked Job, if we went up to him like, hey, Job, who took away your flocks, your herds, your children, your house? Houses. Who was it that took those away from you? Job would say without hesitation, the Lord. That’s his understanding.
He didn’t absolve God of anything before he worshiped. He thought God did it and he worships God. There is a connection there. It’s interesting he doesn’t blame other factors or other people involved. Now, like Steve said last week, he’s ignorant of Satan’s role in this, so he wouldn’t have mentioned him, but Job does know.
Certain groups of raiders and bandits have attacked and pillaged. He knows about that, and it’s telling he doesn’t blame it on them. He doesn’t say, it’s the Sabeans or the Chaldeans that took away my houses, my herds. He doesn’t say, it’s those raiders who destroyed my life, even though he knows it was them. Nor does he say, it was the lightning that came from the sky.
It was a tornado that killed my sons and daughters, even though he knows it was. He doesn’t say that. He doesn’t blame those causes. He goes straight to the ultimate orchestrator of all events and says, the Lord gave, the Lord took away. May the Lord be praised.
Job knows everything is in the Lord’s hands, everything. Later in the book of Job, Job actually doubles down on God’s sovereignty, meaning this wasn’t just a fleeting one-time thought for him. It was core to his processing of suffering. Job 13:15, Job says, though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him. Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him.
So, again, if we ask, who is it that is slaying you, Job? The Lord, he would say. And then we would be like, Job, just to make sure I heard you right, who is it that you are hoping in?
Again, he would say, the Lord, though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him. In Job’s mind, there is a connection between sovereignty and worship, and we should pay attention to that because we tend to want to say, God didn’t have a hand in this, and then, isn’t this true? True? Unlike Job, we have difficulty worshiping God in the middle of tragedy. So, Job hangs on to sovereignty and worships.
We tend to let go of sovereignty and find it difficult to worship during suffering. There is a connection. If we let go of sovereignty, we, to some extent, let go of worship. I’ll tell you why I think that is in a minute, but first, I want to say I relate to that impulse. It is not easy to remind yourself that God is really in charge when tragedy hits.
It is not easy, and we might even want to tiptoe through some really complicated biblical interpretations to try to get God off the hook. This may not mean anything to you, but part of my responsibility is to educate you on on false teachings that exist in the world. And there is a vein of Christianity called open theism, uh, that teaches God intentionally limits himself from knowing what is going to happen in the future. He intentionally limits himself, and therefore, since he doesn’t know what’s going to happen, he’s not involved in making it happen. So God didn’t have anything to do with your tragedy because he didn’t even know it was going to happen?
Open theism. And if you hold to that, you just have to skim over verses like Psalm 139, all the days of my life were ordained before one of them came to be, right? Just skim over those, act like those aren’t there. If you’re an open theist, I’m sorry. I know I’m not giving you a fair shake right now, so I’ll admit that.
I know I’m oversimplifying. Open theism is way more detailed than that, but the details don’t make it true. It’s false, even though the impulse behind a theology like that is understandable because theologians, just like us, I mean, they’re people, they want to make God more palatable during suffering, right, as if God were somehow on trial and it’s our responsibility to defend Him. I get that. Of course, I have that impulse sometimes.
It is way more comfortable to say it was the Sabeans, it was the tornadoes, Nietzsche, it wasn’t the Lord. We especially have that impulse if we meet someone who is turned off by the idea of a sovereign God, because of course we want to help them warm up to God, right? So, we want to— we try to make Him more consumable so they won’t reject Him. And then we paint God like open theism does as someone who sits on the sidelines, someone who wants our best, someone who tries to be involved, He tries to stop evil and will somehow bring it all together at the end, but most importantly, was someone that had absolutely nothing to do with any of the pain that has ever been in our lives. And we think if we paint God like that, people won’t reject Him.
Maybe that’s true. Maybe they won’t reject Him. Maybe they’ll be kind of okay with a God like that. Maybe they’d even be willing to read a book about a God like that. Maybe they’d be willing to sing a song about a God like that, but they won’t worship him.
You don’t worship someone you are kind of okay with. You don’t worship someone who in the middle of your life falling apart, when everything you’ve ever known is being taken away from you, and you turn to God in desperation and cry out, what’s happening? Am I going to make it through this?
Through this? What’s going to become of me? You don’t worship a God who responds, I don’t know. That’s a toughie. I am kind of waiting to find out myself.
I’m not at the helm of the ship right now. There’s nobody up there steering the boat. I don’t know where we’re going, but I love you, and I didn’t cause this. You don’t worship a God like that. You may not hate a God like that, but you don’t worship a God like that.
There is a connection between sovereignty and worship, and if you let go of sovereignty, you lose something on worship. And I don’t think you are going to find much comfort comfort there either, because you find worship and comfort when you see God as God, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the all-consuming fire, the unquestioned ruler of all. That’s when we fall on our knees and we say, you’re bigger than me, your ways are not my ways, but I’m still with you. It’s why we started this series with sovereignty last week. It’s why we’re bringing it up again this week.
So, let me push you a little here. If your instinct is to say God didn’t bring the suffering to Job, Satan did, or the Sabeans did, or the Chaldeans did, it wasn’t God, it was this other party, if that’s how you want to frame this, first, you have a point and it’s important. God did not generate the evil. God does not do that. He is not the author of evil.
Satan generated it, the Sabaeans, the Chaldeans, they have their own will and they did it. You are right, but you need to think a little deeper. Could God have stopped them? Could God have prevented what they did? Yes.
Yes, He could have, no doubt. And if you are someone who thinks God wouldn’t have stopped them because He doesn’t want to interfere with free will, will, that logic falls apart because there are an endless number of possibilities of how God could have stopped them without messing with free will. The raiding party all could have come down with malaria on their way to attack Job’s estate, so they could have been protected, right? And yet, in that scenario, raiding party doesn’t lose any of their free will. If you are about to get shot, the gun could be jammed, and you would say, praise God, and you should because He intervened.
Right? And jamming the gun doesn’t interfere with the free will of the attacker. The attacker still made a real decision, but God prevented the evil. He could do that always, but He doesn’t. Sometimes He does.
Usually He doesn’t. He doesn’t always give the Sabaeans or the Chaldeans malaria to prevent them from raiding villages. He could. Sometimes He Usually he doesn’t. So don’t try to use free will as an excuse for why God allows evil.
He could stop evil and not interfere with free will. He could. He could do it every single time. And if you don’t believe that, I don’t know what you think heaven is going to be like. You haven’t thought that through.
Because will there be evil in heaven? No, of course not. There will not be evil in heaven. But will we have free will there?
Yes. So there’s the perfect example. Tragedy doesn’t exist and there will be no evil, and yet we will all still have free will. So why don’t we just do that now? Why don’t we just have heaven right now?
It could be that way right now. God could do that now. He has the power to stop evil always, and one day, hallelujah, he will, and he will judge it, and everyone who ever did evil, including us, will be held responsible. All of that will happen, and evil really will stop someday. But for now, he often allows it even though he hates it, even though it hurts us, even though it grieves him.
He allows it. It. He could stop it every time, but He doesn’t. Every evil that has ever happened could have been prevented, every single one, even the big ones, even the global ones. A pinched artery in the right dictator, global catastrophe over, right?
He could do that. Sometimes He does, but usually God allows the tragedy to happen on purpose.
I don’t think anyone is kind of okay with a God like that. He forces us to one position or the other just by who he is. You either hate a God like that or you worship a God like that. You cry to the sky, how dare you call yourself good while you allow evil? You must answer for your crimes, and you hate God.
Or you fall to your knees in surrender and you say, though you slay me, yet will I hope in you. You say, I know you’re in charge. I believe you’re good. I don’t have any idea what you’re doing. This really hurts.
This is really hard, but I’m still yours. I’m still going to trust you anyway. God, I mean, I’d rather you be at the helm of the ship than someone else. I’d rather you be at the helm of the ship than us just being adrift and who knows what’s going to happen next. It’s better that you accost calling the shots, like, I’m, I’m still yours.
It’s one of those reactions or the other. And you should know, as a pastor, I am not interested in you being kind of okay with God. I’m not interested in that. I, I don’t wake up hoping you are just agreeable enough with God that you are willing to come to church sometimes. That’s, that’s not what I’m aiming for, for you.
That’s not what I’m aiming for with my kids. I want you to give God the keys of your life. That’s what I want for you. I want you to follow him wherever he takes you. I want you to trust him even if he takes you on purpose through the valley of the shadow of death, and he will, he will do that.
And if you can trust him with your biggest tragedy, then you really trust Him. And that is where you will find a comfort that can’t be shaken. That’s what I want for you. I don’t want anything short of that. And I don’t think you’ll get there without sovereignty.
I don’t think you will.
Okay, next, the connection between sorrow and worship, the connection between sorrow and worship. Both in this passage and throughout the book of Job, Job displays immense sorrow. He questions, he screams, he weeps, and I contend all of that is worship. There is no problem with questioning, with screaming at the sky, why have you forsaken me? Wondering what’s going on.
Those are all natural reactions and good reactions, and they can be part of worship. So, when we talk about Job’s reaction of worshiping the God who he believes has destroyed his life, I do not want you to hear, I do not want you to think worship only means that we stay quiet, that we restrain ourselves from asking questions or we aren’t mad because we can be mad. We can ask questions. We’ll talk more about questions next week. We can pound the table and simultaneously we can worship.
Unfortunately, we’ve gotten the idea that worship must look composed, poised, reverent, quiet. You know, we think worship has to mean saying, it is well with my soul, and if it isn’t well with my soul, then I’m not worshiping. And that’s not true. I mean, of course, worship can look very put together, but it can also look like you are emotionally in pieces. In our verses here, Job is so upset that he tears his clothes and shaves his head, which is a way more common way to mourn back then than it is today, and we need to recapture that.
We’re going to spend a whole week on lament in our Job series because we’ve somehow divorced like a raw emotional tantrum from worship. We think we need to get ourselves collected before we worship. Worship, but that is not in Scripture. The God of the Bible is like, bring me your tantrum. Verse 20, Job rips his shirt like, and he shaves his head like, and worships.
It’s all the same verse. It’s not divorced. Those aren’t separate actions. Like, his tantrum is part of his worship.
Has anything ever gone so wrong that you just want to break something? Like chop down a tree, run as fast as you can until you pass out? Have you had so much raw emotion that you needed to express it? Did you think that could be worship?
Were you like, wait, isn’t that losing your temper? Isn’t that wrong to respond that way? Well, it depends. Verse 22, Job did not sin in any of this because he brought it to God. He tantrumed with God, not at God, with God.
And he didn’t direct his rage at another person either, not even at the criminals who stole from him. He doesn’t have any vengeance in his heart. Now, he did destroy a little bit of property. He ripped his shirt, but it was his shirt. Right?
He’s not damaging something that belongs to somebody else, and it was worship.
Job teaches us that God is honored when we bring our tantrum to Him. Think about it like this. Think about your kids. Maybe think about a friend. If they come to you all upset and snotty and you can barely understand what the words they’re saying because they’re losing it, they’re like flailing their arms, But they came to you.
They want to process this with you.
That honors you. You say, you’re having a moment like this and you wanted to reach out to me? Like, of course I’m here for you. Like, what’s up? Walk me through what happened.
And if you just want to sit here and cry for a while, that’s okay too. You would never be mad at someone if they came to you when they were freaking out. That’s okay. We want them to do that. Like, our heart melts for them in that moment.
Usually, our relationship with a person like that deepens in those kind of moments.
And that’s what God wants with us. So, don’t have the tantrum and then go to God later. Go to God with the tantrum. It’s part of worship. You might not be able to sing and we’re gonna sing this in a minute, but you may not be able to sing the lyrics, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well with my soul.
You might not be able to sing that because it may not be well with your soul, and that’s okay, right? If today you are ripping your shirt and shaving your head, just change the lyrics, right? Maybe you say, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, I can yell, I can yell, I can yell from my soul, and that’s okay. If that’s your song today, sing that, and that’s part of your worship.
Now, finally, a shadow of Jesus. If you are not convinced that it’s an act of worship to have a tantrum with God, not at God, again, with God, if you’re not convinced, Look at Jesus. Jesus was more righteous than Job. He was facing more intense suffering than Job faced. Jesus would be abandoned by friends, rejected by all, crucified in our place, and Jesus goes to his Father crying out, sweating blood, desperate.
A more feverish emotional reaction has probably never happened from any human in the history of the world. Jesus wasn’t calm. Jesus wasn’t collected. He was bursting at the seams, literally blood coming out of his pores, but he was uncalm. He was uncollected with God.
He went to God with his turmoil, just like Job. And again, just like Job, Jesus had a firm grasp on God’s sovereignty. Jesus says to God, your will be done, as He’s going to the cross, as He is betrayed, as He is tortured. He says, your will be done. Jesus says, though He slay Me, yet will I hope in Him, right?
He’s saying, your will being done, as He’s being slayed. Listen, if God isn’t in charge of suffering, open theists, if God isn’t in charge of suffering, then God wasn’t in charge of Jesus’ suffering. And Jesus’ death was just some terrible, unfortunate tragedy that we should mourn. But Christians, we know different, don’t we? We know God planned and fulfilled Jesus’ substitutionary death on our behalf as a sacrifice for our sins so we could be reconciled to God.
It was on purpose. And if God had a plan, if God had that glorious of a plan, for Jesus’ suffering. He has a plan for your suffering as well, and you can trust him. He is at the helm of the ship in the midst of your storm. He is guiding you exactly to where you need to be.
He is not waiting to see what happens. He did not abrogate his throne. He did not step down from his sovereignty. He is leading all events, including your suffering, to His glorious purposes.
The only question is, will we fall and worship Him or will we reject Him?
Let’s pray.
Father, thank You for giving us space to yell and scream and tantrum.
And thank You, Lord, for always being in charge. That someone as good as You is in charge. Whatever questions we have, I pray that we would bring them to You, but I pray even with our questions that we would fall at our knees in worship. Thank You for hanging on to us and staying at the helm of the ship in the midst of every storm that we have ever faced. You are good and we trust You, Lord.
Bring us to even greater trust in You today. We pray these things things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
