Chris Sheeter and I were students at BJU and friends in 1981. Chris was tall, handsome, musical, with a great personality. He was a good preacher. Chris was studying to pastor. We attended the same church, Southside Baptist Church, and worked as waiters at the same Seafood restaurant, Old Mill Stream Inn. I graduated one semester before he did and started pastoring in N.C. I drove back to Greenville, S.C. just to fellowship with Chris. During his last semester, he was a lifeguard at a local hotel. At the end of a shift, he dove into the pool just to swim across and go home. As he was swimming across the bottom, his friends noticed he stopped about halfway. Chris drowned.
Chris studied for seven years, spent nearly $100,000 to prepare to pastor, and never pastored one day. I remember asking myself why God led him through the rigors of four years of undergraduate work and the even tougher studies of three years of seminary and then allow this tragedy to happen.
William Safire, in a New York Times editorial (click to open), wrote after the 2004 India tsunami in which over 200,000 people were killed from 14 countries, “Where was God? Why does a good and all-powerful deity permit such evil and grief to fall on innocent people? What did these people do to deserve such suffering?”
David Hume, the Scottish eighteenth-century philosopher, connected the problem of evil and the existence of God. David Hume quoted Epicurus: “Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent? Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent? Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?” (David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, edited by Martin Bell (London: Penguin, 1991), 108–09.
Jewish rabbi, Harold Kushner in his book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, answered, at least to his satisfaction, Hume’s dilemma. The death of his son drove Kushner “to question his traditional Jewish faith. Though a rabbi, Kushner came to believe that God could not have prevented his son’s death. He is frank: ‘I can worship a God who hates suffering but cannot eliminate it, more easily than I can worship a God who chooses to make children suffer and die’” (D. A. Carson. Reflections on Suffering & Evil: How Long O Lord? Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1990, 29). Kushner’s solution to the problem of evil is not to reject the existence of God but to deny God’s omnipotence” (Harold S. Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People (New York: Schocken Books, 1981).
Though the innocent Job suffers in the book that bears his name, the question this book asks and answers is not, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” But “Why do suffering believers continue to serve the Lord?”
That is the question Satan posed to God about godly Job in 1:9. "Does Job serve God for nothing?" was an attack against God's worth to be served. Satan was saying that God had to bribe Job to serve Him with his wealth. Satan also was attacking the motives of Job in serving God.
It is true Biblically that there are no innocent people. All suffering is the result of the Fall of Adam, including suffering from moral evil and natural evil [tsunamis, etc.]. Each of us is born a sinner and in time willfully sins against God which is made clear in the New Testament in Romans 3:23 and the observation of any individual.
D. A. Carson is right when he observes that “on the whole, the biblical writers are surprised, not by punishment, but by the Lord’s patience and forbearance. God does not punish the Amorites until their sin has reached full measure (Gen. 15:16) [four hundred years later]. Again and again, we are told that the Lord is longsuffering, slow to anger, and very merciful …. From this perspective, it would have made more sense to write a book full of wonder under the title When Good Things Happen to Bad People.” (Carson, 48-49).
Yet, Job 1:1 makes it very clear that Job was not suffering retribution for some lifestyle of sin. God notes the godliness of Job in 1:8 and 2:3. The book of Job forces us to examine our motives, “Do we serve God for nothing?” The book of Job answers Satan’s question in 1:9. The answer is inductively provided. Suffering believers do not serve the Lord for this reason, nor this reason, but for this reason.
The author of Job answers Satan's question in the three major sections and genres of Job. The three genres in Job are Narrative (1-2), Hebrew poetry (3-42:6), and Narrative (42:7-17.
1. Suffering believers do not serve God for material and physical possessions (1-2)
A. Job was godly.
The word “perfect” in 1:1 was used to describe an animal sacrifice that was blemishless and ready for sacrifice (Lev 22:21). The blamelessness of Job is well established in the narrative section of Job. This point will be very important when Job's friends begin to accuse Job of suffering because of sin in the second section.
B. Job was blessed by God.
Job’s wealth is inventoried in 1:2-3. J. Vernon McGee said donkeys were OT pickup trucks, oxen were OT tractors, and camels were OT delivery trucks. Job was in the trucking business.
C. Job was attacked by Satan in 1:6-19.
God permitted Satan to test Job. Satan contended that Job would “curse” (1:11) i.e., denounce his faith in God to his face if all of his possessions were removed.
1. Job lost his wealth when God permitted Satan to attack Job on all fronts in 1:13-17.
a. From the south by the Sabeans b. From the west by a thunderstorm c. From the north by Chaldeans d. From the east by a storm. Job’s business going belly up proves the motive for Job’s service to the Lord was not material possession.
2. Job lost his children in 1:17
Job attended a funeral with ten coffins. Job, also, lost the support of his wife (2:9-10). J. Vernon McGee said the reason Satan did not take her when he took the ten children was that she was more useful to Satan alive. The motive for Job’s service to the Lord was not family.
3. Job lost his health (2:1-8).
There are 16 medical updates throughout the book. Job suffered from
a. Painful boils (2:7) b. Severe itching (2:7-8). Job is on the ash heap (2:8). c. Great grief (2:13) d. Loss of appetite (3:24) e. Insomnia (7:4) f. Worm and dust-infested flesh (7:5) g. Continual oozing of boils (7:5) h. Hallucinations (7:14) i. Decaying skin (13:28) j. Wrinkles from loss of weight (16:8) k. Severe halitosis (19:17) l. Teeth falling out (19:20) m. relentless pain (30:17) n. Skin turning black (30:30) o. Raging fever (30:30) p. Dramatic weight loss (33:21).
Word of Faith Rod Parsley is the pastor of World Harvest Church in Cleveland, Ohio. He said, “Forget Paul’s Thorn! We know God has the power to heal …. It is His absolute and perfect will to heal you. We do not have to sift through Paul’s thorn, Job’s boils, or Timothy’s sick stomach to try to understand the perfect will of God. You must realize Paul’s infirmity was not in his flesh; it was his soulish man-his mind, his will, and emotions. We know this because he told us the thorn was a messenger of Satan sent to buffet him …. It is time preachers stop trying to make excuses for their lack of faith and understanding of the Word of God” (Repairers of the Breach, page 267, 268).
Paul’s thorn in the flesh was in the flesh or his body. Was Job’s boils in his mind? Was Timothy’s stomach problem all in his mind? If you have a physical affliction it is not necessarily because you have rebelled against God or you lack faith in God.
Job still served the Lord when his health was gone. So far Job is proving Satan wrong. Job did not serve and worship God because of material and physical possessions. But Job’s greatest suffering is next when he falls into the hands of his Christian critics.