Job 1:1-22

William F. Schnell

September 27, 2009

   A man in a dark suit had fallen between the rails in a subway station.  People were all crowding around vainly trying to get him out before the train ran him over.  Everyone was shouting, “Give me your hand!”  The man would not reach up.  Suddenly a wise old man elbowed his way through the crowd and leaned over the man.  “Friend,” he asked, “What is your profession?”  “I am an income tax collector,” gasped the man in the dark suit.  “Please sir, take my hand”, said the wise old man.  The fallen fellow immediately grasped the guru’s hand and was quickly pulled to safety.  The wise old man then turned to the amazed bystanders and said, “Never ask a tax man to ‘Give’ you anything.”

   Sometimes we are like that tax man who won’t give you his hand, but who will take your hand.  The title of our message is “The Give and Take of Faith.”  A part of us is drawn to the faith because of what we can take from it.  As seekers we naturally want to know “What’s in it for me?”  Is it a ticket to heaven?  Is it a positive answer to my prayers?  Is it God on my side to destroy my enemies and bring me the victory?  Is it winning the lottery or hitting it big so I never have to work again?  Otherwise if there is nothing in it for me, why should I have faith at all?

   And yet time and again God asks us to give—to give a Faith Promise during the stewardship campaign, to give our precious time in service to others, to give ourselves upon the cross with Jesus.  If, like the tax man, we are obsessed with the taking side of the equation, we are not going to be interested in the giving side.  But if we can begin to see the connection between “The Give and Take of Faith”—the connection between what we take from the faith and what we give to it—then, also like the tax man, we may dare to do what God calls us to do so that he can save us.

   Our message for today is the first in a series of four from the Old Testament book of Job.  Subsequent messages are going to explore “The Testing of Faith,” “The Mystery of Faith,” and “The Victory of Faith.”  But today we are going to begin at the beginning with “The Give and Take of Faith.”  Today we begin with Satan’s subtle suggestion that worship is basically selfish—that no one will serve the Lord if he or she enjoys no personal gain from it.  Of course the Lord takes issue with that contention and uses Job to make his point.

   In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job.  This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.  He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants.  He was the greatest man among all the people of the East (Verses 1-3).  Job was a God-fearing man who had done exceedingly well for himself. 

   Of course God is very pleased with Job, which means that Satan is very displeased.  Satan seeks to smear Job’s good name by suggesting that he is only in it for the money and the other good things in his life.  Take those things away and Job’s faith would be reduced to rubbish.  To prove Satan wrong God allows him to do with Job as he will, short of taking his life.  So Satan arranges for Job to lose, in one day, his entire net worth in livestock, most all of his servants and all of his children.  Job plummets from prosperity to pauperism and from joy to grief in one fell swoop.  In a short time he will also lose his health.

   Some of us may have felt like Job about a year ago when the market tumbled ushering in the “Great Recession.”  Some of us over exposed to risk may have lost 40 or more percent of our net worth before the carnage was over.  Job lost 100%, along with his family and his health.  He had to ask himself, “Why?”  Why me?  What did I do to deserve this?”  Of course he did nothing to deserve it because he was an upright, righteous and God-fearing man.

   Most of us do not deserve the terrible things that happen to us.  Like Job we are living life to the fullest one day and the next we don’t feel so well.  A doctor diagnoses us with a disease that has a brutal prognosis.  Or we lose a child.  Or we lose a livelihood we spent years of education and experience to acquire.  Or we go bust just before we were planning to retire because of circumstances completely beyond our control.  We ask “Why?  Why me?  What did I do to deserve this?”  We always ask those questions when life takes from us.  We never ask those questions when life gives to us.

   Arthur Ashe, a former US champion tennis player contracted the AIDS virus from a blood transfusion when he underwent a heart bypass surgery in 1983—before the Red Cross or anyone else knew to check blood for it.  When the story hit the news, Arthur admitted he was tempted to ask, “Why me.”  But he said, “If I were to say, ‘God, why me?’ about the bad things, then I should have said, ‘God, why me?’ about the good things in life… a great wife and family and friends and winning Wimbledon and the US Open and playing for and coaching the Davis Cup team and getting a free scholarship to UCLA.  …Why me?”

   Do we think to ask, “Why me” about life’s advantages?  Why was I born in America?  Why was I born male?  Why was I born White?  Most importantly, why was I born into a loving, stable, upper middle class family?  Why, why, why?  Why me?  What did I do to deserve such socially determined privileges?  The answer is: “nothing.”  I did absolutely nothing to deserve these head starts in life, and I hope I am never so blindly arrogant as to think I did anymore than I deserve some future diagnosis with a bad prognosis.

   Every life is a mixed bag of undeserved joys and sorrows; pains and pleasures.  It may be normal and natural for us to ask “Why me?” about the tough times in life, and Job will certainly do his share of soul searching before our series of sermons is through, but we do not want to get stuck asking irrelevant questions that have no edifying answers.  Otherwise we risk falling into one of Satan’s clever traps—pulling away from God at just the time we should be drawing near.

   At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head.  Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.  The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”  In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing (Verses 20-21).  Job fell to the ground in worship and he found a way to praise God even in the midst of his darkest hour.

   The reason we need to get past the “why” question is so that we can move on to the much more edifying question: “Given this tough situation I am in, what does it mean for me to make a faithful response to God?”  Given that I have just lost my job, does hitting the bottle or exhibiting some other self-destructive behavior represent a faithful response to God?  Or is God calling me to some new vocation and to some new developmental experiences to prepare me for it?  Many times I have learned from those who have gone through traumatic professional transitions only to find that losing their jobs was the best thing that could have happened to them.

  Many times has the worst thing that could happen turns out to be the best that could happen.  Breaking up is hard to do.  But maybe God is using that hard time to prepare us to recognize and appreciate the Mr. or Miss Right he has in store for us.  How would we know unless we drew close to him in our darkest hour?   Some people draw close to God in prison and regard their incarceration as the best thing that could have happened to them.  Some people draw close to God in the hospital and regard a heart attack as the best thing that could have happened to them because their lives desperately needed reorienting in meaningful and purposeful directions.

   I suspect most of us have gone through hard times which, in retrospect, turned out to serve a redeeming purpose in our lives because they forced us to recognize our dependence upon God.  From a pit so deep we could not see our way out, we cried for the hand of God to save us because we were powerless to save ourselves.  It didn’t matter whether God was giving us his hand or taking our hand, the end result was the same—our salvation.

   And so it is with “The Give and Take of Faith.”  Sometimes faith is going to shower abundant blessings upon us, and other times it is going to require great sacrifices from us.  But at all times it is working to save us—to save us from all that would diminish or destroy, and to save us for something new and better.  The story of Job will illustrate that amply as our series of sermons unfolds in the weeks ahead.  For now, we take note of his faithful response in the midst of suffering beginning with his worship and praise of God.

  Where are you suffering in your life right now?  Given that distressful situation, what does it mean for you to make a faithful response to God?  Can you find a way to praise God even in the midst of suffering?  Not because God needs our praising to support his fragile ego, but because we need what praising God can do for us.  Praising God helps us count our blessings and that can dramatically change our attitudes from despair to rejoicing.  Let us rise as we sing Count Your Blessings, Hymn 563.