Job series # 5

Following Jesus When You Suffer5:

CLIMBING OUT OF THE WELL

Job 13:15; 19:25-26; 23:10

19-year-old Mishi Dobos was working on the family summer cottage outside Dombovar, Hungary on October 31, 1991. He was going to surprise his mother by coming home unexpectedly from the school of wildlife management he attended, but stopped by the cottage to work on a few things before heading home. He loved the tumbledown house. It had taken all his mother's savings to buy it, but she, Mishi and his younger sister, Katalin, spent idyllic times there. Ever since his father left the family a few years earlier, Mishi had assumed the role of man of the house, doing much-needed repairs on the building. He decided to work on the old garden well that had gone dry. He looked down into the 74-foot shaft, as deep as a 6-story building. Seeking a better view, he climbed up on the edge of the brick siding, not noticing the frosty moss on the rim.

Suddenly Mishi slipped and was falling feet first down the brick-lined shaft, scraping his arms and back against the rough sides. With a jolt, he found himself at the bottom, ankle-deep in soft mud. He suffered bruises, bumps, cuts, a deep gash on his ankle and a broken big toe. No one was close enough to hear his call for help. So he tried to brace his back against the wall and his feet against the opposite side to climb out, but fell back after climbing 10 feet. The bottom of the muddy well was crawling with bugs, biting his open wounds. He spent the night there. It was Friday and he knew that his mother had not planned on going to the summer cottage that weekend. He spent the next day in the well, trying to drink the rain water that fell, and seeing visions of family and friends on the face of the brick walls.

On his fourth day in the well, exhausted and thirsty, he used a metal clamp to remove bricks from the wall as a foot hold to climb out. To quench his thirst, he strained muddy water at the bottom of the well through a piece of the fabric of his shirt. By day 6, he had made it more than half way up. As he took off his shoe, he noticed that his toes were black from frostbite and gangrene. Once again, he began to climb and claw bricks away to make foot holds. On November 7^th, 6 days and 23 hours after plunging into the well, Mishi Dobos was free.

I think Job would have appreciated that story. He must have also felt as if he were trapped in a well, and he was struggling to climb out.

Imagine one day while you’re sitting outside in the shade, sipping your ice tea when suddenly one of the neighbors runs up saying, “It’s your son! There’s been an accident!” You rush off down the street but in your hurry, you trip on the curb, fall on your face, break your nose and suffer a concussion. 6 months later, you wake up in the hospital, hurting all over.

The nurse explains, “Well, sir, I don’t know how to explain all this. Your son and daughter were killed in a car wreck. Your business burnt down and they discovered the insurance wasn’t paid. Then a gasoline truck ran off the street and barreled into your house and blew up. There’s nothing left. They expect there will be a long battle in the courts.”

You stare in disbelief at the nurse and murmur, “What about my wife?” She says, “Well, that’s another thing. She couldn’t bear the pressure and apparently has left. No one can find her.”

“Are my parents okay?” “I didn’t think you’d want to know all this so soon, but when they got the news, both immediately suffered strokes and now they’re confined to a nursing home.”

You slump further into your covers and ask, “Is there anything else?” She says, “I’m very sorry about this, but it is the rules. It is fortunate that you have awakened because your health insurance ran out today and we don’t know who will pay the bills. You’ll have to be removed from the hospital.” “Where will I go?” “Anywhere you want.”

As I survey Job to look for how Job clawed his way out of this well, I began to notice one overwhelming thing. Job never stopped praying. He kept pouring his heart out to God in prayer. Job 16:18-21

Friends may scoff, but Job has poured out tears to God. The Psalmist said that God keeps our tears in a bottle. The day will come when every tear that has been treasured up will sparkle as gems in the crown of the saints.

Job doesn’t give up. He bounces up and down from despair to hope. Job has gone from EXTREME PESSIMISM, saying, “I wish I had never been born”, to moments of SELF-PITY, to BLAMING GOD OF BEING UNFAIR. However, Job discovers that God alone can help.

You may feel like Mishi and Job today. You feel that you are in a deep well. You can’t seem to climb out. Every time you begin to climb out, you fall back. Financial setbacks, health concerns, family or relationship struggles have battered you. Don’t ever stop praying. Don’t ever stop talking to God. You may feel that most of the time, your prayers don’t get past the ceiling. Keep praying. Keep pouring your heart out to God. God sees and hears and will answer in His own way and His own time and in His own wisdom.

Suffering presses our faith in God to its outer limits and beyond. When we suffer totally and our current faith is inadequate, the only alternative is to grow in faith or lapse into a sense of futility and despair. Job’s sufferings put him in this position. It was all Job could do to hang on to the faith he had. He didn’t set out to grow in faith. But his persistent, stubborn faith put him on the road to a maturing faith.

As hard as it may seem for a suffering person, God still says, “Trust Me.” David McKenna says, “Each of us brings to suffering the faith that we already have.” When you have established an earlier trust relationship with God you will find it easier to trust Him then.

 Job teaches us that suffering forces us to locate the foundation that our faith is based on. Job’s friends faith was based on a formula: Sin equals suffering, righteousness equals prosperity. Job had to discover if that was the foundation of his faith or was his faith based on something deeper?

What will help us when we suffer to climb out of the well of despair is faith…trusting love that holds on when all the other supports for faith are taken away. How can we keep trusting God when the troubles seem to keep coming and keep staying around?

Body

I.                   TRUST GOD’S CHARACTER.

Turn to Job chapter 13.

13:14 Because death was close (or so Job thought), Job was willing to challenge God by defending the fact that he is innocent even though he suffers. “Why go out on a limb like this and take my life in my hands?” (The Message) The answer is that Job knew God’s character enough to have a trusting love.

In times of suffering, our faith needs more than intellectual assent to be assured that God is trustworthy. Our experience of love in a personal relationship is the support base which holds us up and causes us to hold on.

So, Job gives a beautiful expression of trust in 13:15. Mike Mason in The Gospel According to Job, says, “With these words, God has just won His wager with Satan. On earth, Job and his friends will continue to slug it out a while longer. But in heaven, everything is now settled, and it is settled on the basis of Job’s clear and stunning declaration of trust.”

Notice Job doesn’t merely say, “Even if I die, yet I will trust in Him.” No, the thought is much stronger than that. Even if this same God of love in whom he trusts should Himself be the agent who hounds, harries and hates him into the grave – even then, Job testifies, he will continue to cry out to this God in the faith that He must and will hear and must finally reverse His judgment and vindicate him. Here is the kind of trusting love that the Devil can say nothing against. Here is the faith of a man upon whom neither death nor Hell has any hold.

There are only 2 other places where this trusting love is so simply and intensely expressed: in the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac, and ultimately in the willing death of Jesus on a cross.

When all earthly appearances suggest that God Himself is against me, and is bent on blotting me out. When I feel most overwhelmed and defeated by the onslaught of the Devil, by the pressures of this world, by the weight of my own sin, and by the threat of death itself – I will cling the most to the God I know and love.

Job said, “If God chooses to kill me, I’ll still trust Him! No matter what happens to me in this life, God remains utterly trustworthy. I’d rather be in His hands than in any other.”

When it seems I have lost the protection of God, I will still trust Him. I will trust His character…when I cannot see His hand, I will trust His heart.

I saw an interview on the Today Show with that woman whose husband was shot on a lake between Texas and Mexico by the drug cartel of Mexico. She said, “I am trusting that God has a plan even though I don’t know or see what it is.”

Trust God’s character…that God is good even when everything you experience says otherwise.

When trouble comes, we can grit our teeth and hunker down to wait out the storm. We can also begin to trust God to bring something good out of a bad situation. Elisabeth Elliot says there is a difference between resignation and acceptance. Elisabeth and Jim Elliot had looked forward to a career as missionaries, but she waited by a shortwave radio listening for a message from her husband who had taken a flight into hostile Indian territory, trying to reach the Auca Indians with the gospel. A search party was sent out and the dreadful truth was discovered when the young missionaries were found lying face down in the river, killed by the poisoned lances of the Indians.

Elisabeth discovered she had a choice. She could resign herself to the situation and return home with her young daughter or she could ask the Lord how that He could use this mess in a redemptive way. Later she wrote these words:

“Only in acceptance lies peace, not in resignation or busyness. Resignation is surrender to fate. Acceptance is surrender to God. Resignation says, ‘I can’t.’ Acceptance says, ‘God can!’ Resignation says, ‘It’s all over for me.’ Acceptance asks, ‘Now that I am here, what’s next, Lord?’ Resignation says, ‘What a waste.’ Acceptance asks, ‘In what redemptive way will you use this mess, Lord?’”

She chose to trust God. Later she and another missionary wife returned to that same tribe that killed their husbands and made their home among them. Many in the tribe turned to Christ and the other missionary’s daughter was baptized in the same river where her daddy had died.

I’m talking about a trust that is stubborn…a spiritual insistence that God can be trusted not only to be totally aware of our dilemma, but also to be in control and already taking eternal measures to work out His ultimate purpose.

II.                 TRUST GOD’S PROMISE.

Job 19 records the cry of a man who is breaking. Job feels misunderstood, abandoned and lonely.

In 19:7, Job says, “No one is listening.” God’s outward dealings are not always the criterion of God’s character or God’s heart. It seems that at times, God winks at the sins of His enemies and disregards the cry of His friends, but He will avenge in the end.

Job feels frustrated and hemmed in. His back is against the wall. He is still staggering under the grief and the heavy financial losses and His self-esteem is wounded.

Job is convinced God is angry with him. Job feels misunderstood, abandoned and lonely. Job wishes that his case could be written in a book. Then anyone who reads it would see that he suffered unjustly. (19:23-24)

But then his faith rises to say he has something better than a written record. He has a living redeemer. 19:25-27

What tremendous faith Job had, especially in light of the fact that he was unaware of the conference between God and Satan. Job thought that God had brought all these disasters upon him! Faced with death and decay, Job still expected to see God – and he expected to do so in his body. When the book of Job was written, Israel did not have a well-developed doctrine of the resurrection as we have.

Although Job struggled with the idea that God was presently against him, he firmly believed that in the end God would be on his side. This belief was so strong that Job became one of the first to talk about the resurrection of the body. His faith is based on the Word of God and the character of God that led to the promise of God.

Notice Job’s growing faith. In Job 9:33, he says, “There is no mediator to bring us together.” That is NO FAITH.

Then in Job 16:19, Job says, “My witness is in heaven.” That is LOW FAITH.

Here is GROWING FAITH.

Here is what you hold on to when you are suffering. GOD WILL MAKE EVERYTHING RIGHT – My Redeemer. Obviously, Job had a personal relationship with God, who is his Redeemer. “God is alive and ready to come to my aid. He lives to help me. He lives to defend me. That is my hope.” A Redeemer in the Old Testament refers to a person who assumed the responsibility to come to the aid of a family member in distress…an uncle, a brother, a cousin, a second cousin…it was your closest male relative who would come to your aid in times of unusual need.

A Redeemer could buy back a relative’s lost property that had passed into another’s hands. He would reclaim and restore lost property. If a wife’s husband died, she might lose the family farm to someone else in the community. She would be left without any financial provision. Legally, under the Mosaic Law, her closest male relative could come to her aid, buy back that family estate, and give it back to her. So a Redeemer was the defender of the oppressed.

A Redeemer was someone who could avenge a slain relative by killing his or her murderer. If your brother was murdered, under the Mosaic Law, you would have the right to pursue that murderer, put him to death, and see that justice was served. There were certain cities of refuge the murderer could flee to, but the Redeemer could insist the murderer be brought to a trial under the elders of the town and if they found him guilty, he would be put to death.

A Redeemer was someone who would buy a close relative out of slavery. If you got in debt in Job’s day, the only way to get out of debt would have been to sell yourself to your creditor, become that person’s slave, and try to work yourself out of debt. But once you got into that position, your creditor was allowed to set the terms and it could take years and years for you to get out of debt. A Redeemer could come to your rescue, and pay off your debt so you would be free from bondage to the debt-holder.

               

A Redeemer had the right to defend a close relative’s cause in a lawsuit. If someone were to press charges against me and I had to go to the courtroom and defend myself, my Redeemer, my closest male relative, could come, stand beside me and plead my case.

A Redeemer could marry a near relative’s childless widow. If the husband died and left a widow childless and without any means to take care of herself, the Redeemer would step in, marry her to provide for her and take care of her.

The Redeemer was the cavalry riding to your rescue. Job sees God on his side. He sees that God will stand beside him and with him no matter who opposes him. He sees that God will make right every wrong that he has suffered in his life. God will do the same for you and me. At the last, at the end of time, God is going to stand on the earth and make it right.

Job says, “I can go through this trial and suffering, because I know that God is my Avenger and Advocate. At the end of the age, God will have the final say about my life. He will stand on the earth and defend me against all the false accusations that have been made against me.

This is the turning point in Job. He sees that God is on his side. He sees that God will stand beside him and with him. No matter who opposes him, God will make right every wrong that he has suffered in his life. God will do the same for you and me. God will right every wrong that we unjustly suffer.

Who knows how much you have suffered unjustly? You may have suffered sexual abuse as a child…unjust suffering. God is going to make that right, one day. You may have gone through a divorce…forsaken by your spouse. You’ve suffered unjustly. At the end of the age, when Jesus comes back, He’s going to make it all right. You may have been singled out at work for being a Christian, or for whatever reason, and promotion has escaped you. God is going to make it right at the end of the age.

I SHALL SEE GOD! 19:26 Job expects to die. Literally, the phrase means to peel off one layer at a time. Picture what Job is going through. Yet he says, “Even after I die, yet from my flesh, I shall see God.” That was a bold statement of faith. Job did not yet have the Bible as we do. It hadn’t been written yet. Yet his faith was strong!

It is a reference to the final resurrection of the body from the grave. “God is not talking to me now. I don’t hear God. I’m calling out. I’m hanging on to the end of my rope and God’s not saying a thing. But at the end when God sets His feet on the earth, I’m going to see God face to face.”

GOD WILL REWARD ME FOR ENDURANCE. 19:27 Job is overwhelmed at the thought. He is emotionally exhausted. He is consumed and spent by this great thought – that his Redeemer will reward him one day. “In my lifetime, I may never escape

suffering. But that’s okay. Because at the end of time, I will see God and He will reward me.”

Whatever your trial may be today, whatever suffering you’re going through, and it may only be a foreshadow of what you’ll yet have to endure, there will be an end to it. On that final day, God will reward us for enduring and hanging tough during suffering. Philip Yancy in his book, Disappointment with God, makes this statement. “Not until history has run its course will we understand how ‘all things work together for good.’ Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.”

I love the story about the great missionary Henry Morrison who with his wife served on the mission field in Africa for over 40 years. They toiled and served back before there were fax machines and e-mail and even good mail service as we have today. When you went to Africa to serve the Lord back then, you went and stayed there for 40 years.

At the end of his stay, it came time to come back to the States. Henry and his wife were on a steamer coming back to America. They were wondering, “Would anyone even remember us? Would anyone still recall us?” They had totally supported themselves overseas.

Unknown to Henry Morrison and his wife, on board this steamer was the President of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt. He had gone to Africa for a big-game hunting safari. He was returning to the states.

As the steamer pulled into New York harbor, he was amazed at what he saw. Thousands of people had turned out. The Marine Band was there playing. There were signs and banners. Henry’s heart just leaped out of his chest. He said, “Sweetheart, they’ve remembered us!”

As the ship pulled in, Henry prepared to deboard. He looked back and there came the presidential entourage escorting Teddy Roosevelt off the ship. That was when he noticed all the hoopla was for the President of the United States.

President Roosevelt got off the ship and a ticker-tape parade followed him. Henry and his wife were left standing in the confetti and debris. No one was there to greet them. They went to their hotel room and Henry was disappointed. He said, “Sweetheart, it just doesn’t seem right. We’ve served the Lord so faithfully for these 40 years. We’ve served in total obscurity, but we’ve been faithful to the Lord. And Teddy Roosevelt goes to Africa for 2 weeks and shoots some elephants that they have set up to run in front of him and the whole world comes out to applaud him. You know, it just doesn’t seem right that we come home and not have the kind of reward and applause that we really deserve.”

Henry’s wife looked at him and said, “Henry, you know you’re not home yet. You’re not home yet. Because when you do come home, that’s when the reward and the applause will be given from Heaven.”

Trust God’s character. Trust God’s promise.

III.              TRUST GOD’S CONTROL.

In Job 23, Job complains that it seems as if the Lord has deserted him. Of course, the Lord is still there, but he can’t feel him. When you can’t feel the Lord with your feelings, you feel him with your faith and the feelings of faith are feelings of knowledge. God doesn’t trust our feelings for Him, but our faith in Him.

What God wants Job to say is, “I know You are there – even though, at this time, my feelings deny Your existence.” So once again, Job holds on to trusting love.

Job 23:10 “He knows the way that I take.” A better translation is, “He knows His way with me”, and implied is “I do not.” Proverbs 20:24 says, “A man’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand his own way?” Job admits that he doesn’t understand. All he can do is continue to call out to God and wait on God.

In chapter 19, Job says, “I know Him.” Here in chapter 23, Job says, “He knows me.” “I may not always know where He is, but He always knows where I am.” He is acquainted with me. He is aware of me. He is in touch with me. He knows who I am, what I am, what I need, and the way that I take. He not only knows but He cares. He not only cares but He is able. He is not only able but willing.

Job is coming to the point where he is satisfied if God never explains the reason. Affliction is gold in the making for the child of God and God is the One who holds the timepiece. It is there in the fire that the child of God finds character is shaped, hammered, tempered and matured. Fire separates the impurity and leaves only the pure metal.

The important thing is not to win an argument with God, but to become more like God. For that to happen, you often need the furnace of affliction to separate the dross from the pure gold so it can leave you a better person. You can’t control the temperature of the furnace or the duration of the testing time. That’s God’s business! However, you can obey Him and feed on His word. Trust God’s control.

God sets a limit on evil and suffering in your life. In Job’s life, Satan could do only so much for so long. God determined the limits. If you are God’s child, then your suffering cannot outlast your lifetime. And since life continues after death, your suffering can last only the tiniest fraction of your true eternal lifetime. Rest in this knowledge. He offers you comfort before death and one day rescue by death or His return, whichever comes first.

Trust God’s character…that He is truly good and loving no matter how painful the circumstances. Trust God’s promise that He will one day make it right. Trust God’s control…that He knows what He is doing and what I go through now is for my eternal good and God’s eternal glory.

When we go through suffering, we can relate to Job’s words. We just want to know what God is doing and why He has let our lives take this turn. And so often, the only One who knows the answer never speaks. A paper from heaven with a detailed plan for our lives never shows up in the mailbox. All we hear is silence, leaving us to grope in the dark for answers. We keep asking because we can’t do much besides ask.

What God asks of us is to keep trusting. Has it ever occurred to you that is about all God asks of us? He doesn’t say, “Go and convert thousands and then I’ll accept you.” He doesn’t command, “Make a million dollars and donate it all to My church. Then I’ll think highly of you.” He never chides us saying,

“You didn’t have a quiet time on January 13, 1964. So, I’m throwing you out of heaven!”

No. He says, “Only believe. Just keep trusting Me, for without faith, it is impossible to please Me.”

Dr. Erwin Lutzer tells of a conversation with the pilot of a small plane. The pilot told him, “Many people think these huge jets are built more safely than smaller planes because there are more crashes with smaller planes. But that is not true. The reason many lighter planes crash is not because of bad equipment. It’s because of inexperienced pilots flying the little planes.” Dr. Lutzer encouraged him to tell him more.

“The error of inexperienced pilots is that they refuse to believe their instruments. In a storm they trust their instincts rather than their navigation instruments. For example, they are convinced that the altitude of the plane is increasing when it’s not. They disbelieve the instruments and adjust the plane according to their senses. They think the plane is turning or banking when it’s not. When the pilot ignores his readings and adjusts the plane according to his intuition, it is sure to crash.”

The point is that in life’s storms, many a Christian has trusted his or her feelings rather than the truth of God’s Word. When that occurs, we are sure to crash. If we keep our eyes on Jesus and stay grounded in His Word, then we will make it safely through the storm.

Don’t listen to your feelings. Feelings are fickle. They will fail us. But God’s Word is always correct. God has a purpose in leading you into the storm. He can preserve you through the storm. And He will eventually lead you out of the storm. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Trust His Word. Trust Him!

Gary Harner sermon, “Endurance: Utilizing Suffering”

Mike Mason in The Gospel According to Job

Randy Alcorn, If God is Good…

Steven Lawson, When All Hell Breaks Loose

David McKenna, The Whisper of His Grace

Mark Tabb, Out of the Whirlwind