Who Will You Trust

Who Will You Trust? | Job 42:1–9

We have walked with Job through loss, grief, questions, arguments, and finally the voice of God. Last Sunday, after chapter after chapter of human voices, God finally answered.

But even after God speaks, Job does not get the clear explanation he wanted. That may be one of the most surprising things about the entire book. Job reaches the final chapter without ever learning what we learned in chapters 1 and 2. He never sees what was happening behind the scenes. He never discovers why his suffering began.

Instead, Job says something remarkable: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.”

Job does not receive the explanation he wanted. He receives a clearer vision of the God he needed.

As we conclude this study, we will look at Job’s response to God, what happens when God confronts the friends who thought they had all the answers, and what Job’s story teaches us about trusting God when we still cannot see what He sees.

Maybe you are carrying a “why” of your own. Maybe there are things you wish God would explain. Job reminds us that faith does not require us to see everything. It calls us to trust the God who sees what we cannot.

Series: Where Were You? The Book of Job

Transcript

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I hate spoilers. Anybody else? I hate it when somebody just tells you the end or they resolve the tension or they ruin it for you. At least I hate spoilers until I'm the one that's stuck in the middle of the story. And not a story that I'm reading about that I'm traveling along with or watching on a show, but a story that actually is my life. When it's my life, I want to know the end. I want to know the spoiler. I want to know what's going to happen. I want to know the outcome. If I'm watching a movie, don't tell me how it ends. Don't ask too many questions. Just watch the movie and figure it out. That's the joy of the movie. It's a challenge to watch a movie with kids that way. They tend to ask questions like, just watch the movie. If I'm reading a book, I don't want to know what happens in the end. I want to go through there. But life is different. When I'm stuck in the middle of something, and especially in the middle of something that is painful, or something that I would rather not deal with, I really want to know what's going to happen at the end. Just tell me how it ends. Tell me I'm going to be okay. Or tell me I'm not going to be okay. Just give me something definitive that I can work with. Tell me why this is happening. Tell me what God is doing in this moment, in this season. As this is week four, and we wrap up our study about the Old Testament character Job. I think Job feels that tension for us. As we've been going together over the last three weeks, we feel that tension in Job and in his life, in his circumstances with what happened to him, with what was accused of him by his friends around him, all the while, people trying to come up with an explanation for why everything was happening. For most of his story, as we read the book of Job, Job has wanted God to tell him what in the world is going on and what brought this hardship on him. Why did this happen? Why did I lose everything? Why does it seem like God is silent in the midst of my suffering? Why does it feel like God has turned against me and couldn't really care any less? Those are the answers that we always want resolved, and we want to know what's going on. But one of the things that we are able to see as we read through this story of the Bible together is that we have access to information that Job didn't have access to. And in reality, some of the things that God and his wisdom tells us about the story of Job, this side of heaven, Job never knew. And yet we have details about his story and about what happened that Job didn't have answers to. We know about the conversation in heaven. We know about Satan's accusation. We know about God's supreme confidence in Job's strong faith. We know that Job's suffering was not a punishment for some secret sin, but Job didn't have direct access, nor did his friends, to all of that information. Last week, after chapter and chapters of arguments and questions and finger pointing and defending of themselves, what we have is that God's speaking. Job chapter 38. And that is a long time. It's a long time reading from Job 3 to Job 38 when God is speaking. That's a lot to read. It takes a long time to read through those arguments. But can you imagine how long it felt living that? You know what? Most of us can't. We know what it feels like when we don't hear or see any interaction with God in our life. Now, notice what I said there. I didn't say that God is not interacting with our life. I noticed that there are times in life we don't see it, or we're unwilling to hear it, or to feel it. We want God just to step in and to explain everything, but as happens very often, and even in the case of this biblical character of this real man, about the story of Job, God didn't just jump in and grant every request. He didn't explain it in the great detail that Job would have preferred him to. God never says, Job, let me tell you exactly everything on what was happening behind the scenes so that you can understand. Instead, God asks his own question of Job. Where throughout this book, Job has been saying, God, where were you in Job 38? God turns that question back around on Job and he says things like this to Job. He says, Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? I don't care how sharp and witty you are, none of us have a comeback for that. Have you commanded the morning? Are you the one that causes the sun to rise and to go down? God walks Job through the earth, through the sea, the stars, all of the creation that God made, and he reminds Job of just how many things that God can see that a human can't. And Job reaches this final chapter of his story without the clear explanation that he was looking for. Now he did get an explanation, but it wasn't the one that he had been begging and pleading for the entire time. As we read through his story, something has changed in Job. As God addresses Job and to paraphrase the way that I said it last week a couple different times, God says to Job, it's time to put on your big boy pants. We're gonna have an adult conversation. I need you to focus and I need you to hear what I'm saying. I like to imagine that God said, Job, I need you to repeat back to me in different words what I am telling you, because I need to make sure that you heard this. And what we see is Job's response shifts. His demeanor and his demands before God take a turn. And his first response is, I'm just gonna keep my mouth shut. You know what, my friend, sometimes that's a fantastic lesson that I struggle with. And then God even turns back and continues talking to Job and puts Job in his place, and then we have this final response in Job chapter 42. I'm gonna read these nine verses, this first half of this last chapter of this magnificent book. Then Job answered the Lord and said, I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand. Things too wonderful for me which I did not know. Hear and I will speak, I will question you, and you will make it known to me. I had heard of you by the hearing of ear, but now my eyes see you. Therefore I despise myself, and I repent in dust, in ashes. Verse 7 continues, and after the Lord had spoken these things to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz, the Timanite, My anger burns against you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. Now therefore, take seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job shall pray for you, and I will accept his prayer, not to deal with you according to your folly, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. So Eliphaz the Timanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Namathite, went and did what the Lord had told them. And the Lord accepted Job's prayer. Our lives would be a whole lot simpler if our stories wrapped up the way that the end of verse 9 did. Where God gives some orders, and in the response it says, And then Joel Ayn of Woodstock, Georgia, went and did what the Lord had told him. Just go do what God has told you to do. And it's interesting, in some ways, it almost sounds like God is telling Job's friends to go to Job and to offer a burnt sacrifice to Job. I want to make sure we're not misreading that and hearing that a different way. They're offering that sacrifice, that burnt offering to God. And did you hear the only reason that God accepts it? Because their friend Job that they had been accusing of wrongdoing was the righteous one. And he was the one who would pray on their behalf for their shortcoming. And it is because of Job's prayer for his friends that God is willing to accept that sacrifice. Job begins back in the beginning of 42. He says, I know God that you can do all things and none of your plans can be stopped. That sounds very different from the things that Job had said throughout this book, and surely what his friends had said. And it's not because Job now has clearly articulated all of the answers that he demanded or thought that he deserved. But Job does see God differently now. Because of his willingness to listen, because of his exposure to God and God talking to him. Things that I didn't know. How many times do we find ourselves making definitive statements about things that are over our head? Beyond our limited understanding. We see in this story that biblical faith has room for lament, it has room for crying out and asking questions and letting God know what is really going on in our lives because he already knows. And there's great power when we bring those to him and trust him with that. But somewhere along the way, Job's questions turned into conclusions about what God was or wasn't doing. And that's ultimately what God took issue with because in his pain, Job began drawing conclusions about God's actions, about God's justice, about God's character, even started to maybe think, is God not even for me? Is God against me? Is God my adversary? Now we have Job admitting he said, I spoke of things. I did not understand. And we were reminded that God's voice humbles the things that we are certain of. And this is what happened to Job. Job wanted God to explain himself. Instead, God showed Job how much there was that Job couldn't comprehend. And that he didn't have the ability to see. Job wanted to understand why, and I understand that. Many of us in this room, if not all of us in this room, are walking through things in life and carrying this big, heavy burden of why. We never really outgrow being a toddler, do we? We want to know why. We want to know why. We want to know why. We want everything explained for us, even when those things become much more complicated and complex. Why did I get sick? Why did this happen to somebody that I love? Why did that they certainly didn't deserve that? That's the most righteous, God-loving family that I know. Why did this travesty happen to them? Why didn't God answer the prayer the way that so many people pray? Why? We want to know because somewhere inside us, we believe that knowing why might make that hard thing easier to carry. And sometimes. It helps. When somebody passes away and we don't know, we're like, is there gonna be an autopsy? The answer is sometimes. Sometimes it is helpful to know, and other times it really doesn't matter. It doesn't change anything. Okay. I'm gonna ask you a really hard question. It's not a setup for something funny this time. I know I'm guilty of that. It's a really hard question. If God told you why, would it make the pain hurt any less? If God answered the why, would it make it hurt any less? Maybe an explanation explains some things. But would knowing undo what happened? Would it bring the person back? Would it erase the diagnosis? Would it bring back what was lost? Job has spent his this entire book asking God for an explanation that on Job's terms, and from Job's perspective, the way that he asked, God didn't give him one. But instead, Job says this in verse 5. He says, I'd heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see you. As we were getting ready for communion, David explained that so well for us that Job knew of God. But he didn't really know God to the depth at which he should. He said, I knew the things that other people had said, and certainly Job had a faith, and he was a righteous man, but he even as he has grown in his view of God through this encounter, he says, but now, now I can see. Now I understand you in ways that I never could have before. Job didn't receive the explanation he wanted, but he did get a clearer picture of God. Job knew God in chapter 1. Job was called blameless and upright. God said, There is no one else like him, but Job knows differently now. When everything else was taken away and God is all that he had left. Sometimes truth moves us from something that we have heard to something that we can actually understand. We will walk through difficulty. There's a difference between hearing that God is faithful and saying that God is faithful and feeling that through a deep, dark season. We've heard that God is near to the brokenhearted, but then our heart breaks. We may have heard that God can be trusted. But then when we're left with the only option of trusting him, it's hard to do. Job says, I had heard of you, but now I can clearly see. And of the many lessons that we learn by walking through this story of Job, we have this reminder as we're wrapping up this story that we trust the God who sees what we cannot. We trust the God who sees what we cannot. In verse 6, as Job responds here, he says, Therefore I despise myself and I repent in dust and ashes. Job, what Job is not doing is that he is not admitting that his friends were right all along. He doesn't say, Alright, I'm finally going to come clean and I'm going to confess the sin that I've been holding on to, and that's what brought all of this on me. In fact, Job is about to confront Job's friends for that wrong accusation that they made towards Job. What Job is doing in his repentance here in chapter 42, verse 6, is that is that he is repenting of his presumption of speaking beyond what he understood, of talking about the things that he cannot see. In his pain, Job had drawn conclusions about God from a perspective that he could never see, from a perspective that he didn't have. Job had started to view God not as his Lord, but as his adversary or enemy. But now he's encountered God and discovered that God was never his enemy, and God was never against him. And that matters for us because what suffering and pain does in our lives is it impacts and impairs our ability to see clearly, to hear clearly, to think in a way that makes sense. Pain demands our attention and it alters our senses. And it becomes really hard to hear when something else is demanding and yelling at us. When we cannot see what God is doing, we assume that maybe he is doing nothing. When he doesn't answer the way that we expected, we assume that he doesn't care. When life feels out of control, we begin wondering if God has maybe lost control too. Job still can't see everything, even as he comes to the conclusion of this story, but he can see the one who does see everything. A God who's limited, and knowledge and understanding is not limited, but it goes on. And that is why we trust the God who sees the things that we cannot see. And if something happens for us, and I talked about a little bit, I don't want us to rush past that Job and his friends in verse 7, for chapter after chapter, they confidently explain this is what's happening to Job. Job, this is why your life is in shambles. But remember what we talked about last week. We can be very confident and very wrong at the same time. We talked about the little kid who wears this Superman thing and jumps off the back of the couch. They're confident they can fly. And they're 100% wrong. You listen, buddy? Alright. We can be very confident about something in life and be absolutely wrong. And it becomes very challenging, if not seemingly impossible for us when we have boldly declared what we know to be true. And then we have to eat those words because we couldn't have been farther from the truth. God gives his verdict. He says to Job, You have not spoken of me what is right. But my servant Job has talking to his friend. They spent all those chapters speaking for God, and God is now saying, You thought you understood me, but you were off. And God uses Job, as I said right after I read the text, to be the one to offer this prayer that makes their sacrifice worthy of being received by God. The friends kept speaking for God when God had not given them an answer. And there's a warning there for us, especially when we sit beside somebody who is suffering. We do not always need to explain. We do not always need to tell someone why this happened. We could probably take that word always out of both of those sentences. We do not need to explain. We probably don't have a great answer. As smart as we think that we are. Sometimes the most faithful words that we can say are simply I don't know, but I'm very sorry. But just because we don't know, that doesn't mean that God doesn't know. It means that I know the difference between God and between me and my perspective. God has Job pray for his friends, and Job does that. Job no longer has to win the argument with his friends. He can pray for the people who had been accusing him. And this is what this encounter with God and Job listening. What God had to say, how it shifts his perspective. It brings us to a guess or what? A real practical application for us. One of the things that we have available here at Post Road to help people through and in and after difficult situations. Is through our Stephen ministry. It is a bigger organization that we have trained members of our congregations that have gone through hours and hours of training to provide one-on-one Christ-centered care for people who are going through grief, illness, family struggles, major transitions or other difficult things in life. They're not trained to the level that professional counselors are trained, and there's a point in a time where you need to get to a professional counselor. But we do have other believers who love Jesus, who want to help others, who've walked through difficult times. That doesn't mean they fully understand everything that you're going through, but it means that they want to be there to listen and to help. Our Stephen ministry is a fantastic way for you to receive care from other people who will hold on to your difficulty with confidentiality, who will be willing to sit there with you and go, I'm really sorry. Maybe that appeals to you in a couple different ways. Maybe you're thinking I would be a good recipient of walking through Stephen ministry. And maybe you're going, hey, I would love to volunteer and to know more about that training and what it looks like. If you want to know more about a Stephen ministry, come find me or anybody else on staff. We'll point to the people that run that, that are the key volunteers there. Sometimes hurting people, they don't need another explanation. They need people to just to be there with them, to listen and to pray. We often can't see what God sees, but we can walk beside others. Even when we don't have answers. Ultimately, our trust is not rooted in our ability to understand our circumstances. It is rooted in the character of God. Job couldn't see what was going on in heaven, and we can't see everything either. Yet in this story, we've been given things that Job didn't see. We can see more clearly about what God is doing and how he is acting and how he is responding to Job in this story. When we wonder whether about God cares about suffering, we look at his son who suffered the most because of our sin. When we wonder whether God has abandoned us, we look to the cross of where Jesus took on the weight of the world. When we wonder whether suffering and death gets the final word, we look at the empty tomb that Jesus has defeated, the power that death ultimately has over us. And while God has not ever answered every question that we will ever ask, he has shown us enough of himself and has demonstrated that he is faithful. And that he is one to be trusted. I told you in the beginning that I hate spoilers until I'm the one that's stuck in the middle of the story, and I want to know what happened. And we've almost reached the very end of the book of Job, but I stopped at verse 9, and guess what? I'm not reading the rest of it for you. There's not an awful lot left. And maybe you already know what happened. But I would encourage you this week, whether you have no idea or you've read it before, you already think you're saying, well, Joel, you should have said this, and you know what? You might be right. This week, Job chapter 42, finish the story. See what happened. Job never got the explanation that he wanted. But what Job got was something deeper. He now has the ability to see God more clearly and know him more deeply than he ever did before. One biblical commentator puts it this way, and he wrote his conclusion on the book of Job. He said, God always writes the last chapter. God's greatest desire is to write that last chapter of our lives, and centuries later, James looks back on Job, the biblical writer, James, this half-brother of Jesus, and he tells us what we're supposed to see in the story. James 5.11 says this you have heard of the steadfastness of Job. And you have seen the purpose of the Lord and how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. There's eight verses left in the story. Read them in your car before you go to lunch. Read them while you're waiting on your table. Read them before you leave the room here. Maybe Tuesday night when you want an excuse to get out of something. Just sometime open up this text and read the end of the story. And a great thing to do before you encounter God's word is to go to God and say, God, help me to see and hear from you. Help me to hear what you have said and to understand what you were doing. And then spend time reading God's word. Don't miss what Job learned before he ever knew how his story would end. He could not see everything that God could see. He can't know everything that God would know. He would not get every answer as he asked them. But he is able to follow after a God who has the answer. In this life, we're still going to have questions. We're still going to want to know why. There will be things that we wish God had explained to us better. Job reminds us that faith is not pretending that we can see everything. Faith is knowing who can. Faith is knowing that we trust the God who sees what we cannot. Would you pray with that? Father, I thank you for how you've taught us in your word, the Holy Scriptures, God, in the Bible. Thank you for providing that for us and for giving us stories of Job. And the other biblical encounters, God, where we can see and hear from you, where we can see your hand at work in someone else's life. And God, I pray that that gives us the faith and the eyes to see how your hand is at work in our lives. God, you do care for us. You're not just some creator who spoke us into existence that steps out of the world. But God, you want to be involved in our lives to write that next story and to write that next chapter. And God, you call and give everyone the opportunity to turn to you. Father, help us to trust, even when we've been hurt. Father, help us to hear what you have to say and to know you better because of the pain. God, because of sin, this world is not the way that you intended for it to be. There are consequences to sin in the world. But God, maybe be encouraged that you have overcome the world through Jesus. God, I thank you for your faithful servant Job. God, he wasn't perfect. But he continued to pursue you. Father, may we continue to pursue you and ask you the questions that we need to ask, but help us to listen to the answer that you will give us. And it's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.