Reckoning with the Message of Job
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Today we have an incredibly thoughtful
00:00:06.840 | and detailed question from a concerned dad.
00:00:09.720 | It's anonymous.
00:00:11.480 | Pastor John, my 14 year old daughter
00:00:13.200 | read through the book of Job for the first time this year
00:00:15.900 | and is really struggling with how God
00:00:17.760 | is portrayed in that book.
00:00:19.320 | She has heard all of her life that God is loving and just
00:00:22.440 | and cannot understand why God would allow Job
00:00:24.720 | and his children, wife and servants
00:00:26.960 | to suffer such devastation.
00:00:29.360 | She's deeply disturbed by the fact that God pointed Job
00:00:32.080 | out to Satan intentionally,
00:00:34.600 | thus drawing his attention to this righteous man,
00:00:37.320 | allowing Satan to take away nearly everything Job had.
00:00:41.520 | And for what purpose?
00:00:42.900 | Merely to prove a point to Satan and to the host of heaven
00:00:46.600 | that Job's reverence for God was unshakable.
00:00:50.920 | How would you explain to a girl
00:00:52.580 | who understands the gospel intellectually,
00:00:54.440 | but who may not have had it applied to her heart yet?
00:00:58.120 | To her, it seems that God was arbitrary and almost cruel
00:01:01.120 | to allow Job and everyone around him to suffer,
00:01:04.020 | to prove a point or to perfect a man
00:01:06.600 | who was already more righteous than most of us.
00:01:09.720 | She wonders about the collateral damage to Job's wife,
00:01:12.920 | including her faith, who suffered the loss
00:01:15.120 | of everything Job did with the exception
00:01:16.680 | of her personal health.
00:01:18.320 | It does not bring her much comfort to think
00:01:20.040 | that following God can result in such devastation.
00:01:23.880 | I've talked with her about the fact that death
00:01:25.520 | and suffering is part of our human existence
00:01:27.680 | since the fall and is a direct and indirect result of sin.
00:01:31.040 | We've talked about the fact that it was Satan's cruelty
00:01:33.280 | that was the actual instrument of suffering,
00:01:35.600 | although within the sovereign will of God,
00:01:37.760 | and that this life and its suffering here on this earth
00:01:40.640 | is nothing compared to glory in eternity.
00:01:43.520 | We've also talked about how God himself has suffered
00:01:45.760 | on our behalf and bore our sins on the cross,
00:01:49.200 | and that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked,
00:01:52.200 | although our sins grieve him.
00:01:54.800 | Pastor John, what else would you say?
00:01:58.320 | Well, I certainly want to commend this dad
00:02:01.800 | for the kinds of things he has patiently shown his daughter.
00:02:06.800 | That's an amazing list of insights
00:02:11.560 | that he has shared with her.
00:02:14.480 | If he hadn't asked me, "What else would you say?"
00:02:19.040 | I would have said what he said.
00:02:22.280 | Those are all solid biblical truths
00:02:25.720 | that he highlighted there at the end of his question.
00:02:28.680 | So what else?
00:02:30.960 | That's what he's asking.
00:02:31.840 | What else would I say?
00:02:34.920 | And keep in mind that if I knew her,
00:02:38.800 | I would try to take into account how to say them,
00:02:42.440 | but I don't, and so I'll do the best I can.
00:02:46.440 | First, I would try to help her see
00:02:49.960 | what only a divine miracle can make her see,
00:02:54.840 | namely, that the value of God and his glory
00:02:59.840 | is infinitely greater than the value of all human beings
00:03:06.240 | who have or ever will exist.
00:03:10.760 | Until a person believes this and feels this,
00:03:14.600 | the superior value of God himself,
00:03:18.080 | much of the Bible will make no sense, including Job.
00:03:22.200 | I'm thinking, for example,
00:03:24.000 | when I say this principle of the ultimate value of God,
00:03:27.800 | I'm thinking of words like Isaiah 40, 15 to 17.
00:03:32.800 | "Behold," God says,
00:03:36.760 | "the nations are like a drop from a bucket
00:03:40.400 | "and are counted as the dust on the scales.
00:03:44.240 | "All the nations are as nothing before him.
00:03:48.240 | "They are accounted by him as less than emptiness."
00:03:53.240 | Now, stressing this infinite difference
00:03:56.160 | between the worth of God and the worth of all other reality
00:04:00.440 | is not contrary to the love of God.
00:04:04.680 | It is what makes the love of God amazing.
00:04:08.480 | If you try to enhance the love of God
00:04:11.520 | by reducing the distance between his value and ours,
00:04:16.380 | you wind up replacing reality with imagination
00:04:19.840 | and destroying grace.
00:04:22.460 | Second, this means that when we make judgments
00:04:26.800 | in this world about good and bad, right and wrong,
00:04:30.640 | beautiful and ugly, just and unjust,
00:04:33.280 | we should never, this is what I would try to help her see,
00:04:37.880 | we should never start with our own sense of the good
00:04:42.000 | and right and beautiful and just
00:04:44.120 | and then use them to judge the acts of God.
00:04:48.080 | Rather, we should start with the acts of God
00:04:52.560 | revealed in the Bible and think our way out from there
00:04:57.560 | to what is truly good and right and beautiful and just.
00:05:03.440 | I remember the years 1979 and 1980,
00:05:08.280 | I wrestled for months with the logic
00:05:12.480 | of Romans 9, 14 and 15, which goes like this.
00:05:16.600 | What should we say then?
00:05:18.440 | Is there injustice on God's part?
00:05:21.280 | By no means, for he says to Moses,
00:05:26.820 | "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy
00:05:29.960 | and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."
00:05:33.400 | And I just sat staring at that for months saying,
00:05:35.440 | "How does that work?
00:05:37.040 | How does that logic work?"
00:05:39.120 | I wrestled month after month with biblical logic saying,
00:05:43.220 | "I gotta get my head fixed.
00:05:45.000 | I'm not gonna fix this text.
00:05:46.520 | This text is God's word.
00:05:48.120 | My head is the problem, not this text."
00:05:51.240 | And the second book I ever wrote
00:05:54.080 | called "The Justification of God"
00:05:56.400 | was my answer to that one question.
00:05:59.120 | 200 pages to answer that question.
00:06:01.480 | And it was driven home to me.
00:06:03.560 | You will never grasp the truth of God.
00:06:07.580 | You will never understand the Bible, John Piper,
00:06:10.820 | if you start with yourself and judge God
00:06:14.960 | instead of starting with God and judge yourself.
00:06:18.040 | Third, hand in hand with this biblical God-centered approach
00:06:24.080 | to reality goes the heartfelt conviction
00:06:27.640 | that human sinfulness, my sinfulness in particular,
00:06:32.120 | makes us all liable to God's just judgment.
00:06:37.120 | Or as Paul says, makes us all, quote,
00:06:40.200 | "Children of wrath," Ephesians 2.3.
00:06:43.680 | In other words, every breath
00:06:45.980 | that every human takes is undeserved.
00:06:50.460 | It is another moment, another gift of grace
00:06:54.840 | and no suffering that any human receives from God
00:06:59.840 | in this life is more than what we deserve ever.
00:07:05.800 | Therefore, no injustice from God
00:07:12.200 | is ever done to any human.
00:07:16.140 | On the earth, everyone is treated by God
00:07:21.100 | better than we deserve, everyone.
00:07:24.960 | On the horizontal plane, in relations between humans,
00:07:30.920 | there are horrific injustices,
00:07:35.240 | which God hates because God hates sin.
00:07:38.820 | But we have not yet fathomed the greatness
00:07:42.240 | of our offense against God if we think
00:07:45.860 | that any suffering from his hand, from his hand,
00:07:50.820 | is undeserved.
00:07:52.240 | This is why God was perfectly right and just
00:07:57.800 | to drown every single human being on the planet,
00:08:02.800 | old and young, except for eight people
00:08:06.820 | in the flood of Genesis 6.
00:08:09.280 | He did no one any wrong.
00:08:11.900 | He was perfectly just in that judgment.
00:08:15.760 | Until we feel the depth and horror
00:08:20.000 | of sin like this, much of the Bible
00:08:23.680 | will simply make no sense to us at all.
00:08:27.820 | Fourth, Job is in the Bible, like all other descriptions
00:08:32.820 | of suffering of the righteous, to help us be ready
00:08:37.880 | for our own suffering with confidence
00:08:40.480 | that it is not ultimately owing to caprice
00:08:44.080 | or to nature or to sinful man or to Satan,
00:08:47.840 | but it is in the hands of our all-wise,
00:08:50.520 | all-powerful, all-good Father.
00:08:53.340 | This dad says of his daughter, quote,
00:08:57.720 | "It does not bring her much comfort to think
00:09:03.020 | "that following God could result in such devastation."
00:09:07.020 | And my response to that sentence is this.
00:09:11.700 | God doesn't expect us to be comforted
00:09:16.000 | by the suffering that following him will bring.
00:09:20.240 | He expects us to be comforted that all the suffering
00:09:24.640 | he appoints for us will be for our ultimate good,
00:09:29.640 | for the advancement of his wise purposes,
00:09:32.940 | and that he will keep us for himself through them all.
00:09:38.140 | But it sounds like this young lady has not made peace
00:09:43.720 | with the promise that if Jesus suffered,
00:09:47.920 | his followers are going to suffer.
00:09:49.800 | That's a promise.
00:09:51.400 | I've been struck with this again recently
00:09:53.440 | as I'm working my way through 2 Thessalonians
00:09:56.720 | for a look at the book.
00:09:58.200 | Paul says in chapter one in verse five
00:10:01.180 | that the very affliction that the new Christians,
00:10:05.940 | baby Christians, like several weeks old as Christians,
00:10:10.660 | are enduring afflictions, and he says this,
00:10:14.680 | "This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God
00:10:19.600 | "that you may be considered worthy of his kingdom
00:10:23.500 | "for which you are suffering."
00:10:26.280 | Wow.
00:10:28.680 | Paul had said to these brand new Christians
00:10:31.020 | in 1 Thessalonians chapter three, verse three,
00:10:33.640 | "Don't be moved by your affliction,
00:10:35.480 | "for you know that we are destined for this."
00:10:39.660 | And now it has happened, and he calls it
00:10:43.360 | the righteous judgment of God to fit us for heaven.
00:10:47.180 | Oh, how pastors and youth leaders
00:10:50.340 | need to teach the biblical doctrine
00:10:52.920 | of the necessity of Christian suffering
00:10:56.080 | in obedience to Jesus.
00:10:58.040 | They need to say to young people
00:10:59.940 | that Christ is not calling them to an easy life,
00:11:04.440 | but to a life of serious joy, not silly joy,
00:11:08.740 | and that most of the things young people live for
00:11:11.160 | will vanish like mist in the face of real life,
00:11:14.920 | especially life in the service of a crucified Messiah.
00:11:18.740 | So the last thing I would ask of our young friend
00:11:22.920 | is that she would pray with me and with her father
00:11:27.320 | the prayer that we all need to pray every day,
00:11:31.040 | namely that the Lord would enlighten the eyes of our heart
00:11:36.280 | to see God and to see the world
00:11:40.180 | and the way God does things in the world
00:11:44.780 | in order that we might make wise judgments the way he does.
00:11:49.680 | - Yes, amen.
00:11:52.220 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:53.060 | And to the father out there who sent us this question,
00:11:55.500 | thank you.
00:11:56.340 | We commend you for your parenting
00:11:57.980 | and pray that this episode will be useful to you
00:12:00.500 | and your daughter, and that it helps
00:12:02.460 | many other listeners out there
00:12:03.660 | who are struggling with the same questions.
00:12:06.280 | Wow.
00:12:07.160 | Well, thank you all for joining us today.
00:12:08.880 | You can ask a question of your own,
00:12:10.160 | search our growing archive,
00:12:11.000 | or subscribe to the podcast all at
00:12:12.720 | desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:12:16.040 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:12:18.440 | We will see you back here on Wednesday.
00:12:20.040 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast
00:12:22.680 | with longtime author and pastor John Piper.
00:12:25.400 | We'll see you next time.
00:12:26.600 | (upbeat music)
00:12:29.180 | (upbeat music)
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