The Book of Job: Spiritual Applications (Part 1)
Here are five sermonic tidbits lifted from the series When Life Hurts: The Story of Job:
1. The Purpose of Suffering and Our Thirst for God Alone
So what am I suggesting about the nature of suffering and the book of Job? It’s this:
The purpose of suffering is to awaken our Spirit-implanted thirst for God alone. Suffering’s main purpose is to give you a deeper thirst for first things. To bring us to a place of deep detachment to second things, to the place where the passions of the heart have nowhere else to go.[1]
The purpose of suffering is to awaken my thirst for first things and detach me from second things.
Don’t you see that worked out in the life of Job?
He went straight away to God in the dark night of the soul. His thirst to see God, to meet with God, to dialogue with, and yes, even to accuse God is passionate, powerful, and prolonged.
It’s this cultivation of a deeper thirst for God in our suffering that we take away from Job’s faith.
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” ~ C.S. Lewis.
Friends, what sustains you in your pursuit of God? It’s not the blessings of God! It’s not even (as many Christians think in today’s world) a felt experience of the presence of God. More than the blessings of God and more than the felt experiences of God, what sustains me in my pursuit of God is a thirst for God and God alone.
This is what God longs to do in suffering.
2. Fearing God “For Naught” & The Habit of Worship
“God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.” ~ Abraham Heschel
The first bit of evidence that Job fears God for naught (Job 1:9) is that Job worships even when he experiences God as an earthquake.
Job worships. Yet: it’s not any old worship! It is clear to us that Job had formed a habit of worship.
Deep ruts had been formed in the heart & soul of Job that connected him with God. And those deep ruts were ruts of worship! Those deep ruts were the language of worship:
Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshipped (Job 1:20).
Worship was Job’s initial response. His spontaneous response – surprisingly enough – to deep suffering & painful trails. How does that happen?
That only happens because Job had first cultivated what the Latins called a habitus (a habit) of worship.
“For we know that under such desperate circumstances worship does not come to a person naturally or spontaneously, but rather it is a practiced response, a fruit of long faith and discipline. Job could never have reacted as he did unless he had been practicing for this moment all of his life.” ~ Mike Mason
Job had cultivated a habit of worship. Worship became second nature to him. Worship became his heart language. The way he expressed his deepest longings. The way he delighted to express his heart. So when faced with incredible trials, the rut of worship to God had already been carved out in his heart and in his soul.
Are you developing this habitus of worship in your daily life?
3. You have no earthly rights.
Job recognized this: Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I shall return (Job 1:21).
We love to maintain the mirage & illusion of control over our lives. We love the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley. You know the poem because it ends: “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
The Book of Job tells you a different story. The book of Job tells you that some of the most impactful things that happen in your life are totally and completely out of your control.
The cancer that surprises you.
The unexpected death that strikes suddenly.
The loss of a job or a relationship – that you would have kept.
All these teach us the same lesson that Job had already learned: The believer has no earthly rights.
Remember the question God asked a sulking Jonah: “Have you any right to be angry?” (Jonah 4:4)
One writer puts it like this: “We Christians are people who know in our bones that we never had any right to be created in the first place, let alone redeemed.” [Our creation was a gift of God, not a right! And our redemption was a gift of God, not our right!] “We know we have no more inherent title to life and its goodness than a dead man has.” “When Adam discovered he was naked, he hid from the Lord. But when Job was faced with his nakedness, he worshipped, and this is what sets the fallen man apart from the redeemed man.” ~ Mike Mason
Job feared God for naught because he had already renounced all his earthly rights.
4. Praying with a Limp: Job’s Lament and Cursing the Day of his Birth
In Job 3 we find one of the most famous laments in all of scripture.
For seven days and seven nights, Job has been enveloped in a cacoon of silence. His friends didn’t speak to him because they saw that his suffering was very great (Job 2:13).
How do you pray with a limp?
In God’s graciousness to suffers, God has already given sufferers like Job a gift – a way to pray with a limp. In the Hebrew tradition, it’s called the prayer of lament.
During times of suffering and trials, normal modes of speech will not do.
During times of suffering and trials, normal prayers won’t do.
So God graciously gives to his people the prayer of lament. A biblically sanctioned way to express your deepest hurts, your deepest disappointments, and your deepest sorrows before the Lord.
Dorothee Soelle writes, “The first step towards overcoming suffering…is to find a language that leads out of the uncomprehended suffering that makes one mute.”
The first step out of suffering is to find a language, and God has already graciously given you the language of lament.
The prayer of lament is the first act of grace from God to sufferers who undergo trials and pain.
5. First Things and Second Things
Maybe the challenge of the whole Christian life is to keep first things first and second things second. Do you understand this truth? That God is so committed to me putting first things first and second things second, that He’s willing to take away some of the second things in my life until I get it.
Remember what Jesus said: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things [all these second things] will be added onto you” (Matt 6:33). The Book of Job tells us that even when they aren’t added or taken away for a time or perhaps even permanently: the expectation that God has – the very deep longing in the heart of God – is for us to keep first things first and second things second.
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[1] An assist from Larry Crabb here.