10 Profound Lessons to Learn from the Long Term Suffering of Job
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5. REMEMBER THAT GOD IS STILL ABSOLUTELY SOVEREIGN OVER ALL SUFFERING AND OVER ALL PROSPERITY
Job and his three friends never take the most popular solution of our day to suffering. In other words, the solution that limits God's sovereign control. In our day, the most popular theology is to limit God saying, "It was not appointed by God to let so and so to suffer from this horrible disease" or "God could not have appointed or chosen to let that child die" or to think that God is not in control of that explosion, or that tornado or that war. "He is limited in these areas", that is what some people think. This is again popular thinking in our day but was it part of Job's theology? Well, of course, the way to understanding the theology of Job is by reading the book of Job. We have read a great part of the book of Job up to this point and I think by now, you know the answer that there is not one word, not even one statement from Job or from Eliphaz or from Bildad or from Zophar or from even Job's wife even that would hint that God is not fully in control. There is not even one hint of this presupposition.
According to the book of Job, it is clearly asserted in the words of Job himself that God is absolutely sovereign in every detail of the Universe. In our day, we think the solution to suffering is to limit God. We live, and I took this originally from John Pipper and I will give him credit for it. In one of his writings, John Pipper says that we live in an incredibly man-centred age. We are so centred on man. We emphasize on man-centred solutions very much. Job and his friends never emphasized a man-centred solution or a Satan-centered solution. No, the solution is in God alone. Because God rules alone. And He alone is sovereign over all things.
I would like to read this part from Job 12:13-25 and if you have your Bibles, I encourage you to follow along. I am just going to read some of Job's theology of God.
Speaking in the midst of his long-term suffering, Job says,
5. REMEMBER THAT GOD IS STILL ABSOLUTELY SOVEREIGN OVER ALL SUFFERING AND OVER ALL PROSPERITY
Job and his three friends never take the most popular solution of our day to suffering. In other words, the solution that limits God's sovereign control. In our day, the most popular theology is to limit God saying, "It was not appointed by God to let so and so to suffer from this horrible disease" or "God could not have appointed or chosen to let that child die" or to think that God is not in control of that explosion, or that tornado or that war. "He is limited in these areas", that is what some people think. This is again popular thinking in our day but was it part of Job's theology? Well, of course, the way to understanding the theology of Job is by reading the book of Job. We have read a great part of the book of Job up to this point and I think by now, you know the answer that there is not one word, not even one statement from Job or from Eliphaz or from Bildad or from Zophar or from even Job's wife even that would hint that God is not fully in control. There is not even one hint of this presupposition.
According to the book of Job, it is clearly asserted in the words of Job himself that God is absolutely sovereign in every detail of the Universe. In our day, we think the solution to suffering is to limit God. We live, and I took this originally from John Pipper and I will give him credit for it. In one of his writings, John Pipper says that we live in an incredibly man-centred age. We are so centred on man. We emphasize on man-centred solutions very much. Job and his friends never emphasized a man-centred solution or a Satan-centered solution. No, the solution is in God alone. Because God rules alone. And He alone is sovereign over all things.
I would like to read this part from Job 12:13-25 and if you have your Bibles, I encourage you to follow along. I am just going to read some of Job's theology of God.
Speaking in the midst of his long-term suffering, Job says,
"With God are wisdom and might; he has counsel and understanding. 14 If he tears down, none can rebuild; if he shuts a man in, none can open. 15 If he withholds the waters, they dry up; if he sends them out, they overwhelm the land. 16 With him are strength and sound wisdom; the deceived and the deceiver are his. 17 He leads counsellors away stripped, and judges he makes fools. 18 He looses the bonds of kings and binds a waistcloth on their hips. 19 He leads priests away stripped and overthrows the mighty. 20 He deprives of speech those who are trusted and takes away the discernment of the elders. 21 He pours contempt on princes and loosens the belt of the strong. 22 He uncovers the deeps out of darkness and brings deep darkness to light. 23 He makes nations great, and he destroys them; he enlarges nations, and leads them away. 24 He takes away understanding from the chiefs of the people of the earth and makes them wander in a pathless waste. 25 They grope in the dark without light, and he makes them stagger like a drunken man." (Job 12:13-25)
Who is in charge of this world? God!
And so, Job and his friends take none of this man-centred approach that tends to limit the sovereignty of God. They did not say, "Let's keep God out of this mix." No Job puts God right in the centre of all things.
Now let me read just a little bit about John Bunyan, and I am reading this from the book entitled "The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd" that was written by John Piper. So John Pipper takes three men from history who experienced very great suffering. And he shows how they endured with the understanding of the sovereignty of God.
So let me read a little bit of what Pipper says about John Bunyan, I think this is very interesting.
John Bunyan wrote more on suffering and the fruitfulness of affliction than Cowper or Brainerd. He was even more explicit that there is divine purpose and design in suffering for the good of God’s children and for the glory of his name. The great Pilgrim’s Progress, as George Whitefield said, “smells of the prison.” It was born in suffering, and it portrays the Christian life as a life of affliction. But Bunyan saw his imprisonment as no more than what God had designed for him: “So being delivered up to the jailer’s hand, I was led home to prison, and there have lain now complete for twelve years, waiting to see what God would suffer those men to do with me.
Have you ever known anybody who has been in your country's prison for 12 years? If you know one, then you know somebody who has had some suffering. in the English Prison, at the end of the 17th Century, being in prison would have been a very bad place to be and it was for John Bunyan during this time.
In the book "The hidden smile of God", John Pipper goes ahead and says the following about suffering:
The richest source of teaching on suffering in the writings of Bunyan is a book that he wrote for his own congregation titled "Seasonable Counsel, or Advice to Sufferers." It appeared in 1684 just before the “Bloody Assizes.” The need for this “seasonable counsel” was not theoretical. Some of his parishioners had already been imprisoned with him. The threat was so real again that Bunyan deeded over all his possessions to his wife Elizabeth in the expectation that he might be imprisoned and made to pay fines that would take all his possessions. It was no exaggeration when Bunyan wrote, “Our days indeed have been days of trouble, especially since the discovery of the Popish Plot, for then we began to fear cutting of throats, of being burned in our beds, and of seeing our children dashed in pieces before our faces.”18
What, then, would he say to his people to prepare them for the probability of their suffering for Christ? Would he say, with the old-fashioned liberal, “I believe that pain and suffering are never the will of God for his children”? Would he say with the modern-day open theist, “Christians frequently speak about ‘the purpose of God’ in the midst of a tragedy caused by someone else. . . . But this I regard to simply be a piously confused way of thinking”? No, this would have been biblically and pastorally unthinkable for John Bunyan, whose blood was “bibline.”
What, then, would he say to his people to prepare them for the probability of their suffering for Christ? Would he say, with the old-fashioned liberal, “I believe that pain and suffering are never the will of God for his children”? Would he say with the modern-day open theist, “Christians frequently speak about ‘the purpose of God’ in the midst of a tragedy caused by someone else. . . . But this I regard to simply be a piously confused way of thinking”? No, this would have been biblically and pastorally unthinkable for John Bunyan, whose blood was “bibline.”
"Bibline" is a word the is used in reference to the fact that John Bunyan was so full of the word of God that it was remarked of him that if you pricked him, he would bleed Bible.
In his aforementioned book, John Pipper goes on to say the following about John Bunyan:
He takes his text from 1 Peter 4:19, “Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their soul to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator” (KJV). Then he explains the text with these observations: It is not what enemies will, nor what they are resolved upon, but what God will, and what God appoints, that shall be done. . . . And as no enemy can bring suffering upon a man when the will of God is otherwise, so no man can save himself out of their hands when God will deliver him up for his glory. . . . We shall or shall not suffer, even as it pleaseth him. . . . God has appointed who shall suffer. Suffering comes not by chance or by the will of man,
but by the will and appointment of God.20 He goes on to say that God has appointed not only who shall suffer but also when, where, in what way, for how long, and for what truth they shall suffer.21 “God’s Hook Is in Their Nose” Whether there have been serious and loving pastors in the history of the church who during times of great persecution have pointed their people to a God who has no control over and no purpose in their suffering, I do not know. But such counsel would have been viewed as untrue and unloving by Bunyan, Cowper, and Brainerd. They knew another God, and they lived with a different confidence. Bunyan summed up the involvement of God in the persecutions of his people like this:
All the ways of the persecutors are God’s. Daniel 5:23. Wherefore, as we should, so again we should not, be afraid of men: we should be afraid of them, because they will hurt us; but we should not be afraid of them, as if they were let loose to do to us, and with us, what they will. God’s bridle is upon them, God’s hook is in their nose: yea, and God has determined the bounds of their rage, and if he lets them drive his church into the sea of troubles, it shall be but up to the neck, and so far it may go, and not be drowned. 2 Kings 19:28; Isaiah 37:29; 8:7-8. I say the Lord has hold of them, and orders them; nor do they at any time come out against his people but by his license and compassion how far to go, and where to stop.
This robust view of God’s rule over his enemies is the foundation of Bunyan’s consolation as he ministers to his people: I have, in a few words, handled this . . . to show you that our sufferings are ordered and disposed by him, that you might always, when you come into trouble for this name, not stagger nor be at loss, but be stayed, composed, and settled in your minds, and say, ‘The will of the Lord be done.’ Acts 21:14 . . . How kindly, therefore, doth God deal with us, when he chooses to afflict us but for a little, that with everlasting kindness he may have mercy upon us. Isaiah 54:7-8.
but by the will and appointment of God.20 He goes on to say that God has appointed not only who shall suffer but also when, where, in what way, for how long, and for what truth they shall suffer.21 “God’s Hook Is in Their Nose” Whether there have been serious and loving pastors in the history of the church who during times of great persecution have pointed their people to a God who has no control over and no purpose in their suffering, I do not know. But such counsel would have been viewed as untrue and unloving by Bunyan, Cowper, and Brainerd. They knew another God, and they lived with a different confidence. Bunyan summed up the involvement of God in the persecutions of his people like this:
All the ways of the persecutors are God’s. Daniel 5:23. Wherefore, as we should, so again we should not, be afraid of men: we should be afraid of them, because they will hurt us; but we should not be afraid of them, as if they were let loose to do to us, and with us, what they will. God’s bridle is upon them, God’s hook is in their nose: yea, and God has determined the bounds of their rage, and if he lets them drive his church into the sea of troubles, it shall be but up to the neck, and so far it may go, and not be drowned. 2 Kings 19:28; Isaiah 37:29; 8:7-8. I say the Lord has hold of them, and orders them; nor do they at any time come out against his people but by his license and compassion how far to go, and where to stop.
This robust view of God’s rule over his enemies is the foundation of Bunyan’s consolation as he ministers to his people: I have, in a few words, handled this . . . to show you that our sufferings are ordered and disposed by him, that you might always, when you come into trouble for this name, not stagger nor be at loss, but be stayed, composed, and settled in your minds, and say, ‘The will of the Lord be done.’ Acts 21:14 . . . How kindly, therefore, doth God deal with us, when he chooses to afflict us but for a little, that with everlasting kindness he may have mercy upon us. Isaiah 54:7-8.
Wow, what a different view! But that's the view that will sustain you and your people in suffering.
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