Job: Finding Peace On An Unpredictable Path | Where is Jesus in Our Pain?

Has it ever seemed God isn’t listening or answering your prayers? Things aren’t going your way, and you’re reaching out, but you’re starting to wonder if God is there? Where is God in your pain? Well… look at the cross. That is where God dealt with the real source of our pain. Jesus isn’t on that cross anymore. He rose and He lives. And because He lives, we will live too! That was Job’s strength, and it is also our strength. Because Jesus lives, we have something that gives us hope no matter what we suffer. Our loved ones we have lost will be with us again! Our real life is with our risen and living Lord in heaven! No matter what we go through here, we always have that hope!

Transcript

If I were to pick the most frustrating book I’ve ever read, it’s The Trial by Franz Kafka. It’s a dystopian novel about a bank clerk named Josef K. who is arrested and never told the charges against him. As you read the book, you expect eventually you’ll find out what crime he’s accused of but neither Josef nor the reader ever discovers the reason for his arrest. Tell me who this opening line of the book reminds you of, “Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.” A little Job-like, right? And as he tries to defend himself, he confronts aloneness head-on. “No one else stood by him; there was nothing in the world that would stand by him.” He wanted to clear his shame, restore his integrity, to not be alone in his fight for innocence, but as he looked around no one was there. Isn’t that really the story of one of our deepest unspoken fears? To face life alone leaving behind a legacy of shame. It’s why when we feel boxed in by our circumstances, feeling suffocated and claustrophobic in our suffering, the cry explodes, “Where are you, God?”

Job thought he had the answer to that, and it’s not what you would expect. He felt hemmed in, but like in a “Psalm 139:5” comforting sort of way, rejoicing that the LORD had placed him in such a life, but he was angry that the LORD wouldn’t let him be free from his box of misery. Notice what he says, “Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? He has alienated my family from me; my acquaintances are completely estranged from me. My relatives have gone away; my closest friends have forgotten me.” Job wanted to prove his innocence, he wanted his legacy of integrity, and yet he looks at God as the one who is holding back, who’s leaving him alone. He needed someone to defend him but God seemed like his enemy, and Job never felt more at a loss.

Have you ever felt like God was your enemy? Maybe you wouldn’t say it that way, but the thought is there. You know the LORD is everywhere, you know he has set the boundaries of your life from who you were born to, the circumstances you can’t control, his guiding hands are always there. And when you find yourself hedged in, unable to break free from unpredictable suffering, trying to see where God could be in all of it, do you find yourself making your case before God? “God, what did I do to deserve this?” “God, if you really wanted to tell me you’re with me and you love me, you wouldn’t keep me in my difficulties!” “God, show me you have my back.” Because when we ask “Where are you, God?” It’s not that we don’t know God is there, but we wonder how he is there. How could his presence be loving when he seems to be boxing us in with no clear way out?

That’s the struggle Job had. Job was convinced at this point that his only way out would be by God ending his life. His cry was that it would be better not to live than to live at all. This idea is made all the more heartbreaking in our modern time when the suicide rate has been increasing across the country. When anxiety and depression are becoming the norm. When you feel like no one has your back, and when Satan tempts you to believe even God isn’t on your side, the hope for an advocate is so real, isn’t it? It's a scary place to be like facing a judge in the courtroom by yourself. Job knew in the end he would face the ultimate judge, God, but he felt like he would be going into it alone, and with his legacy in shambles.

You and I can find the same fear in our hearts. Our conscience tells us that we will face judgment, an evaluation that will affect how we are spoken of forever. People are legacy-obsessed from how we talk about NFL quarterbacks, to when we think about how people will remember us. We fear more not being forgotten but being remembered for our worst moments. Like Job, we need someone to speak on our behalf, but not just anyone, but a true intercessor. An intercessor like Job was longing for, “Even now my witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high. My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man he pleads with God as one pleads for a friend.” Who could be that for Job? None of his friends could. His wife? Nada. What about you? Who can truthfully be there for you all the time, who can speak for you, and not only that but who can right your wrongs, vindicate you, give you a legacy that goes beyond the grave, one you could never achieve, one never to be taken from you? There’s only one Intercessor, one Friend, who gives you such a life of forgiveness, joy, and meaning.

As Job reaches the point of total loneliness, he cries out for his deepest hope, “Oh, that my words were recorded, that they were written on a scroll, that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead, or engraved in rock forever! I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” He wanted to be vindicated in stone. He wanted his story to be told, and it most certainly has. How could he be so confident that his vindication would be true? You know. Because of the true Advocate, the true Redeemer, the One who says “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will never die.” Through this Redeemer you never have to wonder if you’ll be remembered, you never have to be concerned about your legacy, or how you will be judged. It’s putting your faith in the only One who is always with you. The One who hems you in, and stands in the hedge with you. He can only be Jesus. Who sees our broken, reeling hearts, conscious of our sin and the effects of evil all around, who gives us the status of being called a child of God and that is who you are. You stand justified, set free, forgiven.

Such vindication and hope did not come easily for Jesus, nor pain-free, but because he hedged himself into the most intense suffering of all time. He could’ve broken out of it. He could’ve distanced himself from us. He had every right to do so. But what did he do? He did the unthinkable, becoming a human being, the God of all containing himself in mere human skin. He was a man of sorrows who identified with the most shame-filled of society, the prostitute, the tax collector, the outcast, the sinner. People no one wanted to associate with but he gave them his presence, not to condemn them, but to welcome them, to rescue them.

Don’t you see yourself in that story? Those Martha moments as we heard in our Gospel reading, when you face the separation of death from your loved one? Those Job moments when you face shame and have no one to speak on your behalf? Do you find yourself thinking about how you’ll be remembered, if you’ll be remembered? There is only one place for you to go. The cross. To see the answer to “Where is Jesus in my pain?” you’ll find that answer on hands stretched out, showing how much Jesus loves you, just as you’ll find every tear, every bit of pain, every loss you’ve ever experienced written on the face of your Jesus that not even death could end his love for you. But he doesn’t leave you there. But by faith and through the Bible, he takes you by the hand to a tomb cut out of rock, showing you your real legacy, one found in a book called Life, where he shows you your name engraved there in the permanent ink of his blood, he closes the book, and shows those nail marks still on his hands, puts your hands on them and says, “That’s your name written there. You will always belong to me.” He then wraps his arms around you through his Word, through his Sacraments, and tells you “It’s me who’s hemmed you into the life you have, and it’s me who will always speak for you, defend you, and love you.” The One who speaks for you died and rose for you, and he saved you not just from Satan, sin, and death, but for his mission of redemption. What do I mean?

By faith, you start looking for God where he promises to be found. He never says he’ll show his presence for you by taking away your pain instantaneously, or giving you your every request even though he knows what’s best for you. He loves you too much to do that. You stop asking the question, “Why God,” and ask “Through “this,” lead me closer to you God!” and he guides us not through shows of power, but in his Word, in baptism, in communion. He tells you exactly where he is, at your side. Do you realize how unique that hope is? That because Jesus our Redeemer lives, we know death isn’t the end. We know we won’t face death alone. Professor Mark Paustian puts it like this, “In that moment when all others must stand back, and death approaches with its cold reality, only One will remain. The One who passed through death before us, the One who went through the grave and came out alive—Jesus. His presence is the guarantee that even in death, we are never alone.” And when you live that “never-alone” life God gives you, you not only stop asking the question, “Where is God?” you also stop worrying about how you will be remembered. Look at what your God says in Isaiah, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget you, I will not forget you!” The LORD frees you to live in the boundaries of life that he has drawn around you, no longer letting the opinion of others dictate you, only how God sees you matters. 

And when you live knowing you aren’t alone and your legacy is secure with Jesus, his grace leads you to give time to people some may call undesirable, not worth your attention. You seek to identify with the defenseless and the broken, for one simple purpose: That they too can know the hope Job speaks of, that even if every part of you is destroyed we know whose eyes will see one day. He lives our Jesus still the same. And the more you think much of God, the more you think much of the life he’s given you. He’s given you a life of giving others his presence, in a world growing lonelier, you have a gift to give, one that gives identity, legacy, and hope. The gift of Jesus. 

He is a gift that spans the globe, and I got a glimpse of that last weekend. I got to preach at a mission church on the island of Grenada. Worshipping with Christians who know what it’s like to have a hurricane wipe everything away, a large portion of Grenada is still rebuilding after Hurricane Beryl came through. I stood before them with a sermon to preach on Job just like I am with you, thinking to myself how unqualified I was to talk about suffering with Christian brothers and sisters like them. After worship, an older female member of the church came up to me, and said, “Pastor, your suffering and mine are the same.” I asked, “What do you mean?” She said, “Because Jesus is the answer to them both.” Where is God in our pain? Where he’s always been. At your side. Hear once more his words for you, “I go before you and will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” Amen.