Is Our Suffering and Hardship the Result of Our Sin?

Firstly, our readings this morning come to us from the book of Job, the first chapter, and beginning at the first verse. 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. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, very many servants. So this man was the greatest of all the people of the East.

His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day. They would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, it may be that my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus, Job did continually.

Now 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. And the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil? Then Satan answered the Lord and said, does Job fear God for no reason?

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. But 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. The second reading comes from the second chapter of Job, verses 11 to 13. Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place. Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuite, and Zophar the Naamathite. And they made an appointment together to come to show sympathy and comfort him.

When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognise him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads towards heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great. This is the word of the Lord. That's quite a scripture reading.

When we look at the book of Job, it is about the wisdom of God. And this morning, we will be asking what wisdom really is. So looking into the wisdom literature of the Bible sometimes brings us to a reality that we may not have understood previously. So asking for wisdom is a struggle. This is what we've seen in the book of Job.

He was struggling in his relationship with God because of what Satan did, and he was finding himself in a position to say, what are the fundamentals of my relationship with God? He was looking at his hardship, and he didn't understand what was going on. So in this book, which is about the wisdom literature, we will be looking at different perspectives on how to view God and how to come to a better understanding of God. We see Job's three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, and they truly believed that God punishes people in a direct line for their sin. If people were sinful, God would punish them until they would sin no more.

That is the wisdom that they lived to. That was according to their faith, how God sees people and deals with people in their relationship with Him. But Job had a problem with his three friends, and we just read that his three friends didn't just come at him, they were sitting with him for seven days without speaking a word, because they knew that his suffering was so great. So when they did eventually speak, it was from their perspective of wisdom. So they didn't go into his relationship with God right from the get-go.

They were thinking about it, but they weren't changed in anything. So Job has this problem. His wisdom and his way of seeing God is that he was upright. He even prayed for the sins of his children, if there were any sin, so that he could be clear in his relationship with God. His reality of faith was that his hardship is not because of his sin.

So on the one hand, we had these three friends saying, you have to stop sinning, otherwise God will not stop punishing you. And he, on the other hand, was struggling with God, saying, Lord, but my friends can't be right, because there's nothing I'm doing against You. And he was struggling with this concept. He was struggling with their view of God, because his view of God was something different. Now, wisdom back in the day was treated as reality. And when we read into the book of Job, and if we want to understand the book of Job, we need to understand that faith formed a part of reality.

That's different to our society. Jordan just earlier prayed for the society and the life that we live in the place where we are, in the position where God placed us. But in the reality of our lives, faith is part of it. I would say today's society does not see faith as part of their reality, does not see a relationship with God as part of the reality of man. That is something that our whole society can get wrong, because we were created in God's image.

We see that what the Lord wants from us, how we should live before Him, is to actually be like Him. This is who we are. Faith is our reality, and a big part of our reality. Job struggled with the fact that he lived a life of faith, he was devoted to God, and he knew that his suffering was not because he was a sinful man, or doing something wrong, and he had to deal with this reality. He was asking God, please intervene, please play a part so that my friends and the world can see it is not because of my sin.

You see, in reality, and when you and I think about faith and a life of faith before God, it comes down to this. Do you believe and do I believe that our faith is dependent on the advantage we have? When we come before God and we pray, father, give me grace, is it only to have an advantage? Is it because it's our reality that faith and believing in our God in heaven is so that we can have some other advantage, so that God can bless us? Is our faith dependent on that?

Is our faith dependent, on the other hand, not only on the good fortune side, but also on the side of suffering? Is our faith dependent or not dependent on our suffering or our good fortune? You see, out there is the perception that when you live as a Christian, you will be blessed. This is not what Job experienced. When you look at faith, when you look at the wisdom that the book of Job brings us, it states it very clearly that our faith, our relationship, our life of faith in a relationship with our father in heaven through our Lord Jesus Christ is not dependent on our suffering or our hardship.

It is not dependent on our good fortune or our money or our possessions or our children or how many children we have. It is not. And this is what Satan challenged, and I want to read those few verses again. In chapter one verses 9 to 11, Satan challenges this view of the wisdom that was spoken by God to us. In chapter one verses 9 to 11, we read the following words.

Verse nine: then Satan answered the Lord and said, does Job fear God for no reason? 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. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face. So Satan challenges God on this fact.

This is the wisdom we get from the word of God. Satan is actually challenging God in saying, take everything away. Bring hardship and pain, and let us see if he keeps worshiping You, because he's only worshiping You because of the fact that he is blessed by You. So Job struggles in his relationship with God. He knows nothing about what is going on between Satan and God, but he starts realising that everything he had, all of his good fortunes, are taken away from him.

He is struggling with God, and in the book of Job, we even see that there are times that he revolts against God. He stands up against God, and he's asking for real answers to the questions of his life, which I think is a good thing in our lives. It means that our relationship with God means something. If we stand up and ask God in all honesty about our hardship and our pain, He will provide answers to us. We see in the book of Job that through all of that, he keeps on trusting in the Lord.

He still strives to understand and be wise in the presence of the Holy One. He is walking humbly before God. But we see in his life, when he was down and out, that his faith required some extreme measures. So sometimes, we as people in our relationship with God, will need extreme measures of faith to get through those times of hardship. In Job's case, and we're not going to read this, but you can later this week if you want, chapter eight: Bildad, now after those seven days of thinking about everything, and with his wisdom, tells Job to repent, so that he should stop sinning.

He still doesn't see anything else after thinking, and with the only wisdom to his mind, he's trying to save his friend by saying to him, repent before God. And Job knows this advice means nothing. We see in chapter 11, Zophar comes out and says to Job, you deserve far worse than what is happening to you. He's down and out, and his friends tell him, you deserve more than what you are going through. This is a friend.

In chapter 15, we see Eliphaz, and he says to Job, you do not fear God, you have to have a near look at your relationship with God. He's down and out, and this is what he's hearing. All people on earth will have suffering and hardship. It is a fact of life. How will we be able to be faithful?

How will we be able to understand our relationship with God? Where will we find wisdom on how to deal with our hardships and our real pain that we might be experiencing? We see it as a reality. We even see young people going through unpleasant experiences that result in pain, sometimes of the choices they've made, sometimes of the choices that their parents have made for them. There's hardship and tough times when you look at these young people doing what do they call it, couch surfing, and they don't have a house.

It is happening in Australia. Young people who are homeless, for whatever reason, for running away from home, for whatever reason that they have done, it resulted in their pain. It is part of our reality. So thinking and asking for the wisdom of God, we have to see the reality for what it is. So the bottom line question in the book of Job is this: is God in control of my life?

For Job, where he has lost everything when he was down and out, was God in control of his life in that moment? That is the question that we need to answer. On the one side, there's his friends giving him advice and he knows that is not the truth, so he can't find the answer there. So in his mind, it might be, is it just coincidence that bad things are happening to me because what my three friends are saying, that's not the truth. I'm going through a terrible time.

Is God in control, or is it just a coincidence? Is it just bad luck, everything that happened to me? Do you believe that God has a master plan for your life? Do you believe that God had a master plan for the life of Job? It will be the same because God is the same.

He never changes. So if you believe that God is in control, God was in control of Job's life, and God has a master plan for his life, He also has a master plan for your life and my life. But you see, Job had to learn the hard way in his hardship and in the tough times that you cannot predict what God will be doing. You cannot pray for and negotiate with God through your prayers. You cannot think, you cannot fix things on your own.

Suffering is not a coincidence. So we know the three friends of Job didn't get it right. He wasn't suffering because of his sin. We know that he wasn't suffering just by coincidence. So that leaves us with how does it work when God stays in control through my suffering and my hardship?

The first mistake Job's friends made was to think that they can understand the master plan, that they can understand God's plan for Job's life. No. That's not their place. It's not your place. It's not my place.

When we support someone, when we pray with someone, it is not for us to say we are praying for the plan of God to be revealed in our lives. Yes, we can be waiting patiently, walking humbly before God, and see how God provides for us, but we cannot go in a negotiation with God. In our first congregation, I said something like this, and afterwards, one of the businessmen came to me and said, thank you for this sermon. It changed my life. And I said, what did you hear?

What changed your life? What about what I said was something that you heard? And he said, I'm a businessman, and I'm a Christian, and for a lifetime, I've been praying and negotiating with God. I've been praying, saying, Lord, I will do this for you, but then I want that. Lord, I will give up this, but please then provide for me for that.

And he said, I now realise that you cannot negotiate with the sovereign God. You cannot come before Him even in prayer with good intentions, with all of the wisdom that you have, humanly wisdom, and be in the presence of the Holy One. He alone has the master plan. So if you believe that God is in control, it means that He is God. Therefore, He's in control, and I am not in control.

So Job then goes further, and he says, well, if God is not punishing me because of my sin, there must be a method. But he can't see the method. He can't understand why God doesn't stop the punishment. And he takes up the matter with God, and he realises the hard way, you cannot predict God's actions. So in our life of faith, if you and I live a life of faith in relationship with God, with godly wisdom, that's the first thing we need to understand.

He is in control. And in our struggle with Him, we need to understand that it is impossible to understand the ways of God. You have to be good with that. That is faith. I've lost my brother when he was 33 years old, one month before he turned 37.

He died in Argentina in a car crash, and I still love my brother to pieces. And I couldn't get any answers on why that guy, on that field trip, he was an entomologist and he had his insects that needed to be released in the wild, he was working in God's creation every day. Why would he drive into a breach and my brother would break his neck and die? Aunt Joaquin was alive. Why?

Why did it so happen that his colleague was sitting in the seat where he died and twenty minutes earlier, they swapped cars after refuelling? This atheist man, Martin, stood up at his funeral and said, it's the first time I've set foot in a church, but he gave up his seat for me. I don't understand any of this. I'm so sorry for your loss. That's all he could get out.

Why does things like that happen? Today, this happened in 2005. Today, I still don't have the answer. I cannot understand why that happened. I took two weeks out, and I sat on somebody's farm, a friend of mine just made it available, and I prayed.

And after two weeks, I walked away with Ephesians 1:11, and I won't go into that today, but God, in that verse, it talks about the predestination of God, of God being in control. And I walked off of that farm, and I said, Lord, here I am. I have to believe. Because if I now lose faith in You, I'm gone. I'm gone.

I will be gone forever because my pain was so big. There has to be a plan. God has a master plan for every person's life. The best example is the disciples of Jesus sitting with Him at the Lord's Supper for the last time, and they didn't understand what happened on the cross. They saw the Messiah die on the cross.

They could not understand God's plan in that moment. Jesus spoke it to them. Jesus prepared them for it, but they were distraught. They did not know what was going on because we simply can't understand God's ways. We don't see life.

We see life from our perspective, our perspective of who God is, but God sees much more than that. He sees from generation to generation. He has covenants with us, with us and our children, and forevermore. He gives us eternity. He gives us eternal life.

And through the eyes of God and His master plan, our life is just so quickly over. But the good thing about living a life of faith is to understand that in my relationship with God, no matter what happens, no matter all of the pain that I can go through, or people that I love can go through, He will be there. Because one of the biggest questions I had is where was God when my brother died? One of the human emotions was, God, I wish I could be on his side. I wish I could be on that seat when he died.

I wish I knew what he thought. I wish I could have a last chat with him. All of that, there's no answers there. The only answer is, and when I spoke to a mentor of mine, he said to me, all I can tell you is that Jesus was right there in that seat, and it's better that Jesus was next to him, and all I can tell you is when he died, Jesus was on the other side. You see, through Jesus' perspective, we see eternal life, we see a great God, we see a sovereign God who is in control and who can, despite all hardship and pain, still be there.

And we sang this morning about the greatness of God, about the sovereign God, and I want to just read to you God's reply to Job's struggle, and when he keeps persistently asking, God, where is the wisdom? How can I serve you? And when we look at the answer God gives in chapter 38, I'm just going to read a few verses, and you can read the rest of it, because God speaks only in terms of wisdom here. In chapter 38, the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and He said, who is it that darkens counsel by words without knowledge, dressed for action like a man? I will question you, and you make it known to me.

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have an understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely, you know. Or who stretched the line upon it?

Or what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut in the sea with doors when it bursts out from the womb, when I made clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed limits for it, and set bars and doors, and said, thus far you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed? Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place? And it goes on and on and on and on to sing the song of the glory of God, to tell us God is in control.

It was day, it was night, it is morning, there is rain, God is in control. The sea was created by Him. The land was created by Him. What we have was given to us through His grace only. And this is Job's answer.

This is God's wisdom. This is where God speaks into his life, and this is where he comes to a better understanding, not of his suffering, but of who God really is. So in our relationship with the wisdom of God this morning, in our suffering and in our pain, we have to hold on to who God is. We should not try and understand our sufferings. This is what God spoke into the life of Job: look at Me and see that I'm the sovereign God.

I am in control, despite all your hardship and all of your pain. I am a loving God. I love you with mercy. And then it rained on Job again. In chapter 42 verses 10, and then I'm just going to read 12 and 13 as well.

We just read this, and the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends, and the Lord gave Job twice as much as what he had before. And I'll leave it there because it gives you the numbers, and you can look at the numbers that was read to us in the beginning of this book, and you can rate the numbers at the end of this book, and you will see that God has blessed him in a double measure, after all of this. So I want to conclude this morning by saying, God is in control. He has a master plan for me and you. We hold on to the fact that He sent His son, Jesus Christ, so that no matter our hardship or pain we had, there is a way out.

He died for us. He died for our sins on the cross. And when we come in the name of Jesus Christ, we are cleared from our sins, and God did not punish me because of my sin. No, Jesus Christ took my sin upon Him, and He died for my sins. And that put me and restores me in my relationship with God.

And in my struggle and in my pain, I am now no longer going to try and wrestle with God to understand my suffering. I'm going to go and say, Lord, help me understand You better. Let me put my hand in Your hand. Let me have faith. No matter whether I'm struggling or having hardships or whether I'm not understanding, I put my hand in Your hand.

You are the sovereign God, and You are in control. God has predestined all of our lives, even before we were born. For me, it feels like my two children have been with me forever. Not before they were born, but after they were born, I cannot have an idea that God didn't plan that and that they weren't planned to be part of our lives forever. We lost our first child too after three months, and the two of us believed that one day, that child will be in heaven with us, and we will understand and know why he was not born.

You see, when we struggle with human things, we miss the God factor. That's what Job's friends missed. They thought they could predict and understand God, we cannot. So we have to bow down, we have to love mercy, we have to walk humbly, and we have to do justice in our relationship with Him, so that all the honour and all the glory can go to Him. So God's wisdom for us this morning is saying, Lord, my hand is in Your hand.

No matter whether I'm prosperous, no matter if You are blessing me out of my socks today, or if I'm going through hardship and I'm having a tough time and I'm struggling to understand what's going with me, my hand is in Your hand. I believe in You and You alone, and You have a master plan for the whole world, and You have predestined each and every one of our lives according to Your good will. And therefore, we walk humbly before the God that we know is the God of love. Amen. Let's pray together.

Father God, thank you so much that this morning when we come in Your holy presence, we can be reminded of the fact that You are a sovereign God, that it is not just to be taken for granted to be in a relationship with You. Lord, we want to come before You, and we want to thank you that You have forgiven us of all of our sinful natures and things and even thoughts about who we think You are. And we want to pray that You will not only just forgive us, but that You will put us on this road of wisdom where we get to know You better, where we come closer to You, where You can comfort us, where when we pray, Your Holy Spirit can intercede for us, where our prayers fall short. And please help us not to see our relationship with You as a negotiation tool. Please help us not to pray that if we do this, then we expect You to do that.

We know that You can intervene at any time. We know that You can do anything, but we also know that You will do it only according to Your plan. But we hold on to the fact that You told us in Your word that all of our suffering, all of our pain will all work together to the day when our Lord Jesus Christ comes again to save us, to collect us to be with You, our Lord Jesus, in heaven with our heavenly Father. Help us to love people with kindness. Help us to understand Your grace and give mercy to the people around us, and help us to walk humbly before You and grow closer to You.

And give us faith, an extreme faith until the end of our days when things will become clear, when Your plan for our lives and the lives of our loved ones will be revealed. We know that it works through our Lord Jesus Christ only. We know that we are saved through You, our Lord only. Help us to be worthy of the name Christian, to be worthy of carrying Your name into the world where we live, when we reach out to others who are also going through pain and hardship. We pray this not because we deserve it at all, but because of Your grace and Your eternal love for each and every one of us, and because we ask it in the wonderful name of our Lord, Jesus Christ alone. Amen.