(I am focusing on the book of Job.)
My friend is fond of saying, “There are no accidents in God’s program,” because our calamities are actually God’s carefully crafted plan. However, that assures us only momentarily: “What a relief that God is in control … [pause] … But if God is in control, why did he allow this painful thing to happen?” There are at least five reasons God brings calamity into the lives of his people. One of those takes center stage in the book of Job, so let’s consider it first.
Is This God’s Judgment?
The first reason God causes calamity is to discipline someone for specific sin. But be careful! It was their misapplication of this principle that led Job’s friends off track. Many make the same mistake today; therefore, let’s carefully consider this point.
At first, Job didn’t demand answers from God when God brought disaster on him (1:22; 2:10). However, over time Job’s trust in God was devoured by a locust swarm of demanding “Why?” questions.
Why did I not die at birth? Come forth from the womb and expire?
(3:11)
Why is light given to him who suffers?
(3:20a)
Why then have You brought me out of the womb? … [Why will] He not let my few days alone? Withdraw from me that I may have a little cheer.
(10:18, 20)
Have I sinned? What have I done to You, O watcher of men? Why have you set me as Your target?
(7:20)
When Job asked, “Why has this happened?” the theologians in Job’s world were, as we shall see presently, happy to supply him with what they believed was the right answer: “God is disciplining you for your sin.”
Does God discipline people with calamity for specific sins they have committed? Yes … sometimes. King David destroyed his life in exchange for a few minutes of pleasure with Bathsheba. But his life wasn’t the only one that David destroyed. God brought calamity—the death of their infant son—on David and Bathsheba as judgment for their adultery (2 Samuel 12:15, 18). King Uzziah of Judah was struck with leprosy when he violated God’s law by trying to offer a sacrifice in the temple, something only priests from the tribe of Levi were allowed to do (2 Chronicles 26:16–19). And it wasn’t only royalty that incurred this kind of judgment. Gehazi was just a servant, but he was also struck by God with leprosy when he lied to Elisha about taking money from Naaman (2 Kings 5:20–27).
Sometimes God does cause calamity in order to discipline people for specific sins. Tragically, Job’s friends misapplied that principle to Job, with devastating effect—as we shall now see.
The Visit
When word of Job’s catastrophes spread, there was great concern among Job’s acquaintances. Three of them, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—wisdom experts like Job himself—determined that they would visit Job in an attempt to comfort him. When they arrived at Job’s house, they were shocked by what they found.
When they lifted up their eyes at a distance and did not recognize him, they raised their voices and wept. And each of them tore his robe and they threw dust over their heads toward the sky. Then they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights with no one speaking a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great.
(2:12–13)
Enthroned on ashes and covered with maggots, filth, scabs, and oozing sores, Job was unrecognizable to his friends. His complaint, “So am I allotted months of vanity” (7:3), suggests that he had been in this pitiful state for several months before they arrived. In 7:14 Job spoke of hallucinations, a common result of significant sleep loss. He had no hope and would have given anything for a restful night’s sleep.
When I lie down I say, “When shall I arise?” But the night continues, and I am continually tossing until dawn. My flesh is clothed with worms and a crust of dirt, my skin hardens and runs … My days … come to an end without hope.
(7:4–6)
Observing Job’s misery, his friends broke their silence. Unanimously accepting that God was in control, they took it upon themselves to explain why God had ruined Job.
As we consider this, you must grasp a significant point: Job’s friends were both right and wrong at the same time. They were correct in saying that God does use calamity to discipline specific sin. Their mistake, however, was assuming that that is the only reason God brings calamity, and therefore, that it must be true in Job’s case.
Eliphaz was the first to speak. His opening salvo is a summary of everything he and his companions would say in the next twenty chapters.
Remember now, who ever perished being innocent? Or where were the upright destroyed? According to what I have seen, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble harvest it. By the breath of God they perish and by the blast of His anger they come to an end.
(4:7–9)
Eliphaz had a simple theology of calamity. If you live rightly, God blesses you. If you live badly, God drops a bomb on you. Job had obviously taken a direct hit from the biggest bomb in God’s arsenal; therefore, he must have been living badly.
Convinced that they were right, Eliphaz and his friends tightened their philosophical fingers around Job’s throat with clear references to his agonizing physical condition.
• Eliphaz: “Affliction does not come from the dust … The wicked man writhes in pain all his days” (5:6; 15:20).
• Bildad: “Indeed, the light of the wicked goes out … His skin is devoured by disease” (18:5, 13).
• Zophar: “If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away … then, indeed, you could lift up your face without moral defect” (11:14–15).
The relentless accusations of Job’s friends had the same effect on Job that accusations of a lack of faith or hidden sin have on sick or hurting Christians today. They frustrated and dispirited him.
You smear with lies; you are all worthless physicians. O that you would be completely silent, and that it would become your wisdom!
(13:4–5)
My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished, the grave is ready for me. Surely mockers are with me, and my eye gazes on their provocation.
(17:1–2)
Job’s calamities were devastating enough without his friends heaping insult on agony. Instead of untrue accusations, Job longed for comfort from them:
For the despairing man there should be kindness from his friend; so that he does not forsake the fear of the Almighty.
(6:14)
Job’s resistance to their accusations infuriated his friends; therefore, Eliphaz eventually stripped off the gloves and let Job have it right on the chin.
Is it because of your reverence that He reproves you, that He enters into judgment against you? Is not your wickedness great?
(22:4–5a)
“Job, do you think God has done all this to you because you are such a great guy? Because you are so godly? That’s ridiculous, Job!” Actually, it wasn’t ridiculous at all. How had God described Job in chapters 1 and 2? “There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil” (1:8; 2:3). Derek Kidner has rightly said of Job, “It was his very innocence that exposed him to the ordeal.” 1
Unfortunately, the reductionistic view of calamity held by Job’s friends is still with us. You know the scenario. A Christian is in the hospital with a devastating illness such as cancer, and some well-meaning acquaintances show up and say, “If you had enough faith, you would be healed” or “You must have secret sin in your life. That’s why this is happening to you.”
To face calamity, you must embrace this lesson from the book of Job: a catastrophe in health, finances, or family doesn’t necessarily mean that God is angry at you. Occasionally God does use calamity to discipline a specific sin; however, Job’s terrible losses and ravaged body had nothing to do with a lack of faith or hidden iniquity. In fact, at the end of Job’s book God was righteously angry at Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar for insisting that Job’s calamities must have been the result of his secret sin (42:7).
Our Lord Jesus Christ was also no friend of Eliphaz’s criminally simplistic, “You must have been bad” view of calamity, something his disciples learned in John 9.
As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?”
(John 9:1–2)
The disciples had exactly the same theology of sickness as Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Jesus was quick to correct it:
It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.
(9:3)
Many Christians today fall into the trap of Job’s three friends, assuming that calamity comes for only one reason. As a result, they often unjustly accuse suffering people, stealing their hope that, in the midst of their tragedy, God still loves them. To steal that hope is a theft more cruel than any other. God’s fury with Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar in Job 42:7 serves as a warning against it.
If there is no obvious cause-and-effect relationship between your calamity and a specific sin, you don’t have to torture yourself trying to divine what the sin is for which God is disciplining you. Of course, if you are harboring sin you need to repent from, by all means do so! But don’t fall into the trap of Job’s friends, accusing others (or yourself) of being out of God’s favor because they or you have experienced a tragedy. Cancer, crime, or car accidents aren’t proof that God is angry at you.
“But,” you ask, “if God isn’t disciplining me for a specific sin, why did he allow this to happen?” Let’s step aside from the book of Job for a moment to answer that question from the rest of Scripture.
PART 2 COMING SOON.
THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF A VERY DEEP STUDY; I HOPE YOU ENJOY IT. AND RECEIVE FROM IT.
Everlastingsalvationchurchofgod.com
PayPal.me/donatetochurch
PASTOR ANDRA HIGGINBOTHAM