“Have you Considered my Servant Job?”
The book of Job almost starts out as a fairy tale would: “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.” We find out immediately that Job is a good man, is wealthy, and has a large family that enjoys spending time with each other – a seemingly perfect life. Then the villain enters in verse 6 – Satan, or the Adversary. He presents himself before the Lord during an assembly of the sons of God and states he has been roaming on the earth. This conversation with the Lord then takes an interesting turn – the Lord asks Satan “Have you considered my servant Job?” and basically boasts of Job’s traits stating that he is upright and blameless. Satan’s response is to ask God if Job serves Him for no reason and points out Job’s seemingly perfect life and that God has not only blessed Job but provided protection for him and his family as well.
Most of us know the rest of the story – God allows Satan to take anything outside of actually harming Job himself. Through a series of crushing disasters, Satan immediately takes Job’s wealth and most devastatingly his children. Job remains steadfast to God and bows down stating, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I will return.” Chapter 2 opens with another assembly before God, and when a similar conversation starts between Satan and God, God again asks Satan – “Have you considered my servant Job?” Satan now says Job’s righteousness is because Job himself was not harmed and this would cause him to curse God, so God allows Satan to harm Job so long as he spares Job’s life. Satan struck Job with boils, and even Job’s wife pushes Job to curse God and die. Job rebukes his wife stating, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” Eventually Job’s friends come on the scene to show him sympathy and comfort, and this morphs into a back and forth between Job and his friends on the reasons for suffering in our lives.
So – here is the real question I would like to ponder – why does God not only allow this suffering and pain, but more importantly, why does He offer Job to Satan – almost taunting Satan with Job? Before you get too excited, I am positive I will not be able to adequately answer that question, but I do want to offer one thought. I mentioned the idea of a fairy tale before. G.K. Chesterton wrote in his book Orthodoxy:
“In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.”
His point is that the power of the fairy tale is to tell us the important truths of life. That first line is so incredibly powerful: “Incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition.” To Satan both the condition and the happiness are absolutely incomprehensible. I believe God wants to make sure that Job can comprehend properly the condition so that the happiness can be made complete. Although Job never does turn his back on God, he definitely questions God and goes so far as to beg an audience with God so that he can state his case. This ultimately turns to God reversing the tables and questioning Job instead. Job never really gets the answers to his question, but he gets the answer to THE question – the question of life. Who is in charge? The answer to that is God. That is the incomprehensible condition – we are to submit, in whatever circumstance, to God. And this condition in turn will lead to incomprehensible happiness.
It is fascinating that the opening of this book begins in a very similar fashion to Hebrew stories – “There was a man…” We have a lesson to learn from Job’s life as one would learn a lesson from a story or fable. I am absolutely incapable of understanding the mind of God, so I will never fully comprehend why God offers Job to Satan, but I do believe one potential reason is for Job to change his thoughts on suffering. He admits to his friends that he would have felt the same way they feel about suffering – that he has to be at fault for this pain – if he was not currently living through this process. He also is able to understand by the end that, although he believed he had done nothing worthy of what he was living through (and he hadn’t), he was also not the creator of the universe. Even though he had heard of God before, now he had seen and understood from God’s own voice that he had uttered things he didn’t understand.
So, how does this apply to us? We all experience suffering of some sort – every single one of us. Sometimes it may be, in fact, caused by our sin (Rom. 5:15). Sometimes it may be because we live in a fallen world (John 16:33). Sometimes it may be to bring glory to God (Rom. 8:17-18). At times it may be very clear to us what the root of the suffering we are experiencing is and other times we may never understand the reason this side of heaven. However, what we can know is that God is in control, and He has promised to be with us as long as WE choose never to leave His side. We must respond as Job did and understand that the condition is incomprehensible to us, but that the happiness will also be incomprehensible. May we strive to be called a servant of God just as Job was.
