If It Weren’t For Bad Luck…

June 14 2020

Job 1-2:9

         When I was younger, all we had at home was a small black and white TV in a maple console with spindly little legs. We didn’t have cable but instead we had something called an antenna, kind of like a WI-FI receiver only far more primitive. Oh and it also had a remote, that was me because any time Dad said change the channel, I’d hop up and turn the channel. It didn’t really matter what was on because at our house we watched what Dad watched; end of story. One of the shows that we watched faithfully every Saturday night was this show called Hee-Haw. Anybody remember it? It starred Buck Owens and Roy Clark and it was a corny country comedy show. Now, almost every time it was on they would sing the song “Where O where are you tonight?”, a real classic and the other song I remember was “Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me”. The best line of the song was “If it weren’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all”. My Mom would often speak of people that we knew as being the kind of people who if it weren’t for bad luck, they would have no luck at all. Everything just always seemed to go south no matter what they did.

         Well, today we begin a new series on the book of Job and I believe that if my Mom knew Job she would say that he was definitely a if-it-weren’t-for-bad-luck-he’d-have-no-luck-at-all kind of person. I mean, to read these first couple of chapters is pretty painful. Here is Job, the best of the best, a God-fearing man who turned away evil. God had blessed Job with abundance and he had a beautiful wife and a house full of kids. Job’s kids had been brought up right and they too feared God and loved each other and even if they might have messed up, Job offered up a sacrifice just for any sin they may have forgotten. So, far in the first five verses of the story, Job does not appear to have bad luck; on the contrary, it seems that he is living on the sunny side of the street.

         Well, all good things must come to an end and Job’s good times were ending as the sons of God came before God and of course Satan came along. The name “Satan” means accuser or one who opposes.What Satan does then is asks questions about the flip side of what God desires. If you remember in the Garden of Eden, Satan tempted Adam and Eve by just simply asking the question, “Did God actually say,” You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?” That’s what Satan does, he questions the authority of God and that is when the trouble begins. Well, with Job, Satan is no different because again he is asking questions only this time he asks God, “Does Job fear God for nothing?” It is kind of like the time that the grandpa was over at his daughters house and she saw him give his grandchild some money. The grandpa was curious why she would give her kid money like that and she replied that the money was the kids allowance because he had been good. The grandpa couldn’t hardly believe it and he exclaimed, “Well, in my day we were just good for nothing.” In the same way, Satan wants to know, is Job good for nothing? If God were to reach out with his hand and take away all the blessings God had given him, would not Job curse God to his face? So, God allowed Satan to to do what he talked about taking away every blessing God had given to him.

         Now, at this part of the story, what I have to remind you is that this is just a story. It is a fictional made-up story whose author is unknown but the authors purpose is not. This story is about two different ways of understanding God and how the problems of a wrong understanding of God don’t really show up until everything goes wrong. When the world is all as it should be this is when our beliefs go untested.But when, say, in times such as these, when a minuscule virus has spawned world wide havoc wiping out over four hundred thousand lives world wide, when the dam of frustration has burst over the issue of justice and equality for all people resulting in protests all over our country and on top of that the divisions that are between people only seem to have widened, this is the time you had better know what you believe. It is exactly in times such as these that you and I are going to find out just which God we believe in. The writer of Job wanted his readers to read his work and consider the God that they believed in so that when the hurt and suffering of this world came home to roost, as it did with Job, that they were ready. 

I say all of this because if you give the discussion between God and Satan any great thought it kind of makes your stomach queasy. I mean, is God really like this? Is he a God who allows Satan to play out an experiment on your life just to see what your made of? I know, there are days it seems like this is the case yet that is not the God I believe in. This is the God Job believes in and you need to read the entire story to figure this out. You see, this is one of those false ideas people have about God that God every so often is going to test you, either himself or with Satan’s help just to see how true you are. I mean it sounds legit until you consider doing such a thing in any other relationship and then it’s a little weird. I mean, when we are in a relationship we should know that such a relationship is built on trust and trust does not need to be continually tested to know if it is there. And trust doesn’t need to tested to see just how strong the bond is between two people in order to have a friendship; to do so may do irreparable damage to the relationship. 

         What the issue is with this exchange between God and Satan is that Job needed answers as to what happened to him. The God he believed in made him to be a person more focused on the truth instead of transformation and because of this Job focused on the past and the present. Job wanted to know, how did this happen, why did I end up in this mess? If God is all powerful why did he not do something to change this? While we some times might reflect on our past, believers in the one true God are very blatantly focused on the future. This is why forgiveness and mercy play such a big part in our relationship with God. Forgiveness allows us to let go of our past in order that we can live in the present and future with God. It is a realization that the past is just that,  the past and there is nothing that can be done with it. The future on the other hand is wide open and full of possibilities. Understandably though, that future is hard to see through tear filled eyes that come from the pain we experience in life.

         So, back to where we were in the story, Satan stretches out his hand and the mass of Job’s wealth was suddenly gone. Job’s oxen and sheep were stolen. His sheep and his servants, burnt up with a fire from heaven.  The Chaldeans came and stole all of Job’s camels and killed his servants. The story does not even let us catch our breath in this tragic series of misfortunes until it hits us with the hardest blow of all when it tells us that a great wind came upon the house where Job’s children were making merry and in one foul swoop  the house fell and crushed them all. Job was understandably distraught and unconsolable. He tore his robe, he fell on the ground and in his moment of grief, our scripture tells us that Job worshipped. Even in with Job’s wrong understanding of God he still knew that in his moment of loss he needed God. Job cries out, “Naked I came out of my mother’s womb and naked shall I return. “ These are the two opposing poles of his life, his birth and his death and Job knows that he brought nothing with him when he came and he will take nothing with him when he goes. As a pastor friend once told me, he never saw a U-Haul trailer behind a hearse. This is what Job is acknowledging, the stark reality of his life. Then Job goes on to say “The Lord gave and the Lord took away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”Job acknowledges that everything from the day of his birth to the day of his final breath all of it the whole span of his life has been a gift from God. All the Lord had given Job was his to enjoy for as long as God saw fit. No matter what, the name of the Lord, the Lord’s character, his essence is the source of all blessing even in the moments of greatest loss because the presence of God is the one thing that can never be lost unless we will it so. Yet even so, in this moment when Job cried out “blessed be the name of the Lord” we have to wonder just what was name that Job knew the Lord as being because the different names of the Lord stressed different qualities of God. We discover this when Moses sees the burning bush and as he goes to check it out he has an encounter with God. God as we recall, tells Moses that he is to go to Egypt to seek the freedom of God’s people, the Israelites. As Moses speaks with God he asks God how he was to respond when he tells the people that the God of your father’s has sent me and they in turn they ask Moses“What is his name?” So God tells Moses that his name is “I AM WHO I AM”. God further told Moses, that he was to also tell the people of Israel, “I AM has sent you to me”. Then God also told Moses “Tell the people of Israel, “The Lord” the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob has sent me to you.” So, here in this story God himself says that he is known by two different names, “I AM WHO I AM” and “The Lord”.  The name “I AM WHO I AM” , is a name that refers to a God who is beyond time. He is not the God who was or the God who will be but rather he is the God who is always present unaffected by time because he is a God outside of time and therefore a God who is separated, unaffected by his creation. As such, this name reveals God’s desire to be known as the Creator because only as God is our creator can we know ourselves as God’s creation. It is out of this Creator- creation relationship that we are to know God. The name “Lord” on the other hand, often seen in the Bible as “EL” simply means power. To Abraham, Issac, and Jacob God was simply one power among many powers yet understandably the greatest power.

         So, when Job cries out, “Blessed be the name of the Lord” we are left to wonder just which name of God is on his lips. Both names point to God but just in a very different relationship. As we will see as we go to the story, how a person knows God, whether as their Creator or simply their source of power for life makes a huge difference in the way they experience God.

         Well, because Job blessed the Lord instead of cursing him Satan asked God to try again only this time Satan asked God if he could afflict Job’s health. As Satan  stated “Stretch out your hand and touch his bone and flesh and Job will curse you God to your face.” So, the Lord struck Job with loathsome sores covering him from head to foot. This time his wife seeing him in such misery and pain told Job to just go ahead and curse God and get it over with. Job replied to her “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God and not evil?” In all this, our scriptures tell us, Job did not sin with his lips. It is slightly ambiguous as we will never know just what was going on in his heart. But again, these conversations of Job are disturbing because the God Job blessed, the God Job had been given everything was surprisingly a God who not only gave his people the good in life he was also a God who also gave people evil when he felt like it. Here we begin to see that knowing God merely as the greatest power among many means that God’s power can be used for either good or evil. Just as the people of Israel thought that people had two inclinations in them a good inclination and a bad inclination so when God is power he too is understood to have a good side and an evil side. If he can bless with the good then watch out because he can also hand out a little evil if he feels like it. It is right here that we see the serious flaws in this belief of Job and we are thankful that we have been given Jesus. I can’t help but think of a teaching of Jesus from the seventh chapter of Matthew where Jesus tells us this “” Not everyone who calls me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name and do mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them , I never knew you; depart from me you workers of lawlessness.” You see, the people trying to get in to the kingdom of heaven understood God as a God of power, I mean after all what a display of power. There were people prophesying, there were demons being cast out, more power and so many other mighty works happening everywhere, isn’t this what God is all about, displays of power? Jesus took a good long hard look at their face and said, “Nope, doesn’t ring a bell. Sorry there’s no getting in here for you.” To them so focused on power meant that they didn’t really know who God is, that he is a God of love, righteousness and justice and equal treatment for all which is what living by the law is all about. Being a person who loves, does righteous, seeks justice and treats everyone equally is the way of Jesus because it is the way of the cross. There on the cross Jesus put his faith in the God who can bring the dead to life, the God who can call into existence that which does not exist. This God raised Jesus from the grave and vindicated his faith as being the faith which leads to life.

The God Jesus placed his faith in is the God of love and the God of all creation as well. The reason we are sure that this is so is that we are God’s masterpiece, the ones God calls very good. Unlike Job, who only knew God as a God of power, the God who who might give out good as well as evil, the God we know through Jesus is radically different. When we know God as our creator then we also know that our God is a good, good God in whom there is no shadow of turning with him. We never have to expect that our God will ever give us any evil because we know he gave his only Son to condemn evil upon the cross. 

The story of Job as we are finding out is a story that causes us to think long and hard about what we believe and which God is it that we believe in. I hope you take some time to take a long hard look to see how your beliefs, your God and if the way you live your life all align together. I hope that if upon your inspection you find that any one of these needs changing that God, the God who created you and who loves, that he will give you the courage to become more like Jesus, each and every day. To his glory! Amen.