I invite you to open your Bible this morning to the book of Job as we continue in our study in this troubling and yet profound and helpful God-glorifying book, the book of Job. This morning we will take on chapter 2. And the title of my message this morning is, Another Day, Another Disaster, and that's what we find here. In Job chapter 2, Job chapter 1, we were introduced to the man, a great godly man, a good man, who was blameless and upright, and yet the Lord allowed the devil to bring great loss into Job's life. And to prove the glory of God, Job did not sin, we're told at the end of chapter 1. Job did not sin or charge God with wrong, and then we come to chapter 2. Again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord. And Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. And the Lord said to Satan, From where have you come? Satan answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it. And the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason. Then Satan answered the Lord and said, skin for skin, all that a man has he will give for his life, but stretch out your hand and touch his bone and flesh, and he will curse you to your face. And the Lord said to Satan, behold, he is in your hand, only spare his life. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes. Then his wife said to him, do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die. But he said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil? In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. So far the reading in God's word. Let's ask for his blessing on it. Father, we come to deep truth and difficult truth today. We ask that you, by your Spirit, would teach us. We thank you, Lord Jesus, you promised to give us the Spirit, and I pray, Lord, that this morning we would hear the voice of our Master and our Savior as you speak to your people this morning. Lead us to deep faith, and maybe, Lord, for some of us, to a new faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord. In Jesus' name we ask it, amen. Tessa Thompson in her excellent recent book, Laughing at the Days to Come, recounts the story of the tragic sinking of a tour boat on a lake in Branson, Missouri, a year or so ago. I don't remember the exact date. I think you remember the story. The sudden thunderstorm came up and the boat overturned. Seventeen of 31 people on board drowned. One family of nine miraculously escaped with no loss of life. But it was dramatically different for another family, an extended family of 11, where all but two drowned. The woman of that family that survived, a woman and a young nephew, the woman who survived lost her husband and her three young children. I think their ages were 10, 7, and 1. She and her husband had planned to take a vacation to Florida, but the last moment they decided it was too far to drive, and so they went to Branson instead. They had planned to take the 6 p.m. cruise, but they had taken a wrong turn and ended up for the 6.30 cruise, the one that ended in this horrifying tragedy. The seeming randomness of the event is maybe the most frightening. They were just trying to have a family vacation. That's all they were looking to do. And how can we possibly then, how can you and I live at peace in a world where such astounding and seemingly random things, tragic things can happen, not just to other people but to us? Job 2 might well be the scariest chapter in the Bible. It leads to those of us who are in love with comfort and security. Let me explain what I mean. Job chapter 1 was a hard chapter all by itself. Here was this great good man, an upright man, a blameless man, a godly father, a man that loved the Lord and shunned evil, and then his life completely fell apart. God initiated a conversation with Satan, and out of that conversation, Satan was allowed to go and take everything that Job had, including his 10 children. Job's response, if you remember, was astonishing. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. The devil had said to God that Job would curse God if God took away all of his blessings, and yet Job did not curse God. Job worshipped God. And we're told that in all of this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. He did not curse God to his face. He didn't charge God with wrong at all, but bowed down and worshipped, blessed be the name of the Lord. That was chapter 1. And that would have been a magnificent end to that story. It's a great ending to the story. The problem is it's not the end of the story. In fact, the worst is yet to come. Most of us can take a shock to the system from time to time. Something dramatic and bad and hurtful happens. A car accident that puts us in the hospital for a while. An unexpected diagnosis that alters our lifestyle. A relationship that falls apart. A child that is wandering. We could go through, and all of us have experienced things like this. Some of us are going through them right now. And they are all hard things, individually. But God gives us the strength and we do move forward, wounded maybe, but standing. It's when the trials mount up. It's when one bad thing happens after the next heartbreaking thing. And we can begin to recite a litany of loss and sorrow and disappointment. That's when our resources begin to break down and we can begin to question the character of God. You know what this feels like. Maybe you're a young mother and the kids are sick and doing things that sick kids do and the wash machine is broken and the dishwasher springs a leak and the car doesn't start and your husband calls and says he just lost his job. And if that happens in a day, you're gonna be questioning Where is God? Why is this happening? Well, that's where we find Job. What is God really like when unbelievable tragedy happens? How does God run His world? And can we trust Him? And how can we live at peace in a world like this and with a God like that? Those are the questions that we come to in Job chapter 2, and we start with a divine conversation. Once again, we're brought behind the scenes to listen to a conversation that God has with Satan. It's nearly identical to the conversation in chapter 1. Satan, again, appears in the council of heaven before the Lord. God, once again, initiates the conversation. God, once again, brings Satan's attention to Job. If I was Job, I would say, you could point someone else out. There's lots of other really admirable believers out there. But God raises Job again to Satan's attention. And there's something new here where God praises Job for his integrity in the context of great suffering. He points out, the Lord points out to Satan that Job still holds fast his integrity. And that word still is loaded. God is acknowledging the hurt and the pain and the loss, but that in the context of Job's loss, Job still holds fast his integrity. That's what makes his worship so commendable. That is how he magnifies God so wonderfully. He still worships the Lord. And God also acknowledges, or says, Job was destroyed without reason. He said, you incited me to destroy him without reason. Now, what does that mean? What does that mean? Does God actually do things with no reason? Is that the kind of world in which we live? Is He irrational and arbitrary as He flings blessings and disasters indiscriminately across the world? Is that the world that you and I inhabit? That's what it seems like to Job. That will be the questions he raises as we go into the book. The wicked seem to be doing just fine. There seems to be no benefit to being righteous at all. God just does what He does. Is that true? Well, we know that's not how God acts. We know that because God Himself says that. His Word is full of His purposes, and His purposes are always accomplished. every one of them. God works all things according to the counsel, the purpose of his will, Ephesians 1 chapter 11. That means there's not a random molecule in the universe. There's not a random raindrop. Every raindrop is purposed and accomplishes the purpose for which it was sent. And so there's nothing random, nothing accidental, nothing arbitrary. in God's creation. So why does he say that Job suffered without reason? And the answer is because in the context of the story, there's no reason in Job. That this is not for Job's sanctification. This is not discipline. There's no failure in Job that God is responding to. There's not a sin that God's trying to correct. It has nothing to do with Job in that sense. This suffering is for the glory of God. If you think about the story of Lazarus and his death in John chapter 11, he's sick and the sisters send word, Master, the one whom you love is sick. And Jesus, because he loved Lazarus, stayed where he was for three days. And finally they receive news that Lazarus has died. And Jesus explains to them that this happened so that the glory of God could be revealed. It's not about discipline for Lazarus or discipline for the sisters. This has a pure purpose to magnify the glory of God. Well, that's what we have here in Job. But Satan's not convinced that Job's response has fully accomplished that task. So Satan responds, skin for skin. All that a man has, he will give for his life. Stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to his face. You see, Satan understands something about mankind. He knows people, he knows men, he knows that they fear death. You can take away everything a man possesses, you can even, you can even, Take away his family, right? And he might not break. He might be able to stand, but touch his flesh, his life. And he'll start to break down. Now, remember Hezekiah. You might think this is not true, but think of Hezekiah, and he had sinned against the Lord, and he was forgiven, and yet God said, the punishment's gonna come to your family. And remember Hezekiah's rationale, his reasoning? He took comfort in that because he said, well, at least I'll be gone. The kids are gonna suffer, but I'll be outta here. It's not noble. It's very human. And so Satan says, start torturing his body. Inflict physical pain on him. Threaten imminent death, and you'll see Job curse you to your face. Now this is where, if I was writing the story, maybe if you were writing the story, we would write it differently, beginning here at verse six. Because my version of the story would read something like this. When the Lord heard Satan's words, he rebuked him and said, that's enough. Job has already suffered the loss of all that he has, although he has done no wrong, but he has magnified my name and he's manifested the integrity of his faith beyond all shadow of a doubt. You leave him alone. That would be my version. That's how I want it to read. That's how I want my loving Heavenly Father to respond to The devil's intent here. It's not what God does. And the Lord said to Satan, behold, he is in your hand. Only spare his life. Christopher Ashe writes that the Lord disagrees with us, must teach us something very deep. The glory of God really is more important than your or my comfort. I mean, we need to see God here weighing two things, the comfort of Job and the magnifying of the glory of God. And God rightly, in that moment, determines to exalt the glory of His name, though it is going to cost the comfort of His precious servant. Ash again says, in the end it is necessary and right that this man should suffer personal and intimate attack upon himself so that we see absolutely and without doubt that God is worthy of worship. This is a deep truth. We talked about it last week as well, but it's a necessary one. That God really is worthy of our pain. Well, the pain comes, verse 7, the devastation begins. Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes. Job was completely physically overrun with pain and putrefaction. He's literally rotting away as he's scraping the pus and the rotting flesh off his body. There's a great deal of pain. In chapter 30, Job speaks of this experience. Verse 17, he says, the night racks my bones and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest. Some of you know constant, unremitting pain. That's what Job is experiencing. Verse 27, my inward parts are in turmoil, never still. Verse 30, my skin turns black and falls from me and my bones burn with heat. His disease makes him disfigured and grotesque so that in chapter two, verse 12, we're told that when his friends came to visit him from a distance, they did not even recognize him. Someone says, is that Job? And his buddy said, well, that's not Job. I think it's not, that's not Job. Look at him. It was Job. He was completely disfigured by this disease. Now again, this physical decimation would be a trial all by itself, but when it follows on the heels of all that he's already lost, it is mentally and physically, emotionally, spiritually overwhelming. Why is this happening? And we're going to see through the book of Job that Job does not know why. We're told, right? We have the insight. Job does not. He's not told what we're told. And so this seems truly senseless. to Job, it seems cruel. Why would God do this? One of the most poignant statements in the book, I believe, is chapter 30, verse 26, where Job says, when I had hoped for good, evil came, and when I waited for light, darkness came. You can imagine Job, after everything's been taken away, and he says, the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And there in that place of worship, Job hopes for good. that God will somehow respond to his suffering with kindness and mercy and grace, and he waits for light. But he didn't get good, and he didn't receive light. When I hoped for good, evil came, and when I hoped for light, darkness came. That's the experience of great sorrow. Lamentations 3 have the same expression. Verse 18, 3 verse 18, all my splendor is gone and all that I had hoped for from the Lord. Maybe you've been there, you prayed for something and you expected God to answer the prayer and to show goodness and kindness, but that's not what he did. C.S. Lewis speaks of this in his powerful little book, A Grief Observed, just his reflections as he's going through the process of grieving the loss of his precious wife, Joy. And this is what he writes as he's just working through that grief. devastating experience and grief. He says, what chokes every prayer and every hope is the memory of all the prayers H and I offered. If you know, her name is Joy, but he just uses the letter H in this book. The memory of all the prayers that H and I offered and all the false hopes we had. Hopes encouraged by false diagnoses, by x-ray photographs, by strange remissions, by one temporary recovery that might have ranked as a miracle. Step by step, we were led up the garden path. Time after time, when he seemed most gracious, he was really preparing the next torture. Now again, C.S. Lewis, over time, came to realize that wasn't true, but that's exactly what it felt like, that God had just played with them, toyed with them, given them false hope only to crush that false hope. Job had hoped for good, but evil came. That's what makes his response so astounding where we see his humble consecration. His wife said to him, verse 9, do you still hold fast your integrity? You're still going to worship God? After what he's done to you, after what he's allowed in your life, curse God and die. Now, we mustn't be too hard on her. Remember, she's lost everything just as Job has, including 10 children. And she loves her husband, and she's watching him suffer this incredible grief and loss, and it seems to her that God has abandoned this godly man. And out of her pain, out of her grief, out of her frustration, she unwittingly takes the side of the devil, doesn't she? She encourages Job to do exactly what the devil wants him to do, exactly what the devil said he would do. She becomes the devil's ally and encourages him to do the one thing that he cannot and will not do. And so this godly man responds in a very tender way. He said, you speak as one of the foolish women would speak. He doesn't call her a foolish woman, but says that that's what that speech sounds like. That's how the foolish people speak. Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil? Now that is a question that if you ask your typical American Christian, They will say, no, we shall not receive evil. That's not what God is for. That's not what faith does. But Job's faith is a faith where he is willing to surrender himself. to the sovereignty of God. This is the essence of consecration, where Job lays down his life, his possessions, his health, his future, before the will and the authority of God. You see, it shows that Job's faith is in God, not in his ability to understand him. And that's a critical distinction. And it's usually revealed, the nature of our faith is usually revealed in times of trial. It's easy to say I believe in God and even that I believe that God is sovereign, but when God in His sovereignty wounds us and disappoints us and causes us maybe great even despair and loss, Then we have to ask the question, do we trust actually in the character of God, or has our faith been in our ability to make sense of what he's doing? You see, when God brings great heartache, when God does things that don't make sense, what's the question we ask? The question we ask is why. And to human wisdom, It's right, it's reasonable to ask why. Think of the childless couple who want nothing more than to have a child and they pray that God would open the womb. And then they look around and they see women who are pregnant, who do not want to be pregnant, in fact, who are just going to have the baby aborted. And one abortion after another abortion after another abortion. And if you're the childless couple, wouldn't you ask why? Why does God give bareness to us when we would love and care for that child and God gives children to those who care nothing for them, in fact, willfully destroy them? How does that make sense if Jesus loves the little children? Why devastate the lives of devoted saints with heartbreaking sorrow? The loss of a child or children. The tragic death of a young father. Why does Brent Wilson, 23 years old, his wife is nine months pregnant, why does Brent, this beautiful young Christian who could have done so much for the Lord, why does he have an accident at work and dies there on the shop floor? Why does a Sally get taken away when her family needed her so much? See why? Why does God bring such heavy, heartbreaking things into the lives of His children whom He loves? Those are the questions that we ask. But the question we need to ask is this, will we put our trust in God or in our ability to discern His ways? Rick Thomas in his book Suffering Well says, when God does not act like you think He should, it just means He's working in ways you do not yet understand. Your faith is supposed to be in the Lord, not in knowing all the answers. That's true. God hasn't asked us to have faith in our ability to understand, but to have faith in His right and ability to rule this world and our lives for His glory and for our good. And Job's initial response here then is a stunning confession that it is right and good for God to act as He has, that He is sovereign and His choices and purposes are right even when they make no sense to us. William Cooper wrote in the famous hymn, Judge not the Lord by human sense, but trust Him for His grace. Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face. And that's the thing we must know if we're going to worship, as Job does, if we're going to worship God in the midst of trial, we have to believe and know that there's a smiling face, that God is good, that kindness is the air that we breathe, as we sang earlier. You see, we easily talk about the sovereignty of God. We easily confess that God ordains all things. But the fact that God ordains all things means then that He also ordains hard things, like tour boats capsizing on a lake in Branson. And we easily say that sovereignty of God comforts us. Well, how does the sovereignty of God comfort you, you see, if it allows tragedy into your life. Tessa Thompson raises that question. She says, why should I not be fearful of his sovereignty if at any moment he could ordain death, disease, or disobedient kids? Why should I not be anxious about the things he brings in the future? It's a great question. Job believed in the sovereignty of God. Everyone that, every deep godly believer you know who suffered greatly has believed in the sovereignty of God, and yet the loss still came. And Tess' answer is, this is where the gospel comes in. You see, the book of Job challenges us with the question, what is God actually like? And the answer is that He is actually infinitely good and abounding in love. And you can say, well, what evidence do we have for that? Job points us in his person, in his example. He points us toward the answer. You see, Job, as we said before, is not every man. He is a great man, unlike us. He's unique and distinct, and he suffers in a unique and distinct way. He is a type pointing us to another man, a greater man, a man who was more innocent, who suffered a greater loss and deeper sorrow. A man who willingly left and set aside the glory and the riches of heaven, willingly put it aside to become a man. A man who willingly took on himself our griefs and our sorrows and bore our chastisements, who took our guilt on himself and submitted himself to the punishment and desolation that we deserve, who willingly put himself in the place of condemnation. Why? You see, Job makes us then look to him and say, why? And the answer is that he did all this as a demonstration of the glory of God in his commitment to shower grace and mercy on sinners. Jesus willingly did these things to magnify, to manifest the glory of the love of God for sinners. Romans 5, 8, God shows his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 1 John 3, 16, by this we know love that he laid down his life for us. 1 John 4, verse 9, in this the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. Paul will then say, the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. To believe in the sovereignty of God does not comfort us because it helps us understand why God does what he does. We don't understand. There's mystery in suffering. But if we believe in the sovereignty of God in light of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we can have the confidence that kindness really is the air that we breathe. That God's disposition towards us is a fatherly, loving disposition in Jesus Christ. And that whatever he takes, there is not an infinite loss in what he takes away. C.S. Lewis says, he wrote this, he says, when we experience pain, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, and a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all. And friends, we do live in a world where tragedies happen, and some of you have experienced them, and some of you will. All of us will experience heartache and loss. But we have the evidence of the love of God. This morning in the table of the Lord, much more than a tincture of the love of God, we have the full expression of the love of God. And that's, friends, where we must live our life and see our future. Our future is not in the hands of a random, arbitrary God. Whatever loss God brings, he shall repay. Jesus promises us, whoever loses houses and fathers and mothers and lands, for my sake, will receive a hundredfold. It's not lost in Christ. The question we come to is, is God glorious enough that we're willing that He use our life as He chooses, are we willing to worship? And do we have sufficient evidence that whatever God does is not only right, but it is good, and that there's love, that it's saturated with His love, even though it hurts? And this morning in the Lord's table, God would say, yes, we have sufficient reasons. that Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, died for us so that whatever pain we experience is not arbitrary, it's not meaningless, it's meant for the glory of God, and it will redound to our eternal good. God promises us that in the table. And so as you come this morning confessing your sin, as you come receiving this crucified Jesus Christ, who is now at the right hand of God. Come and receive all that God has for you in Christ. Come believing that your future is in the hands of this Lord and Savior who loved you and loves you and gave his life for you. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we are fearful people. Each of us, Lord, has a deep, maybe secret fear of what if this or that would happen. But Lord, I thank You that You invite us this morning through Your Word and sacrament to trust Your love for us, that we are not victims in a hapless, arbitrary world. But Lord, we are the children of a heavenly father who gave his own son to manifest his love for us and that we can receive every gift of God today of children and homes and families and friends and health and sunshine. We can receive these gifts as gifts from our heavenly father and we can, Lord, believe that you mean them for our joy and our happiness, but that our life is Jesus and we receive the gift of Jesus this morning. in the table, in the sacrament, as he offers himself to us for our faith, for the encouragement of our soul, that if we have Jesus, then we have the love of God, a love that will never let us go, a love that will be with us to the end, a love that will ensure that everything that comes our way, the blessings and the sorrows. We're down to your glory and our good. And though we do not understand how, oh God in heaven, help us to see Jesus and to trust him. In his name we pray, amen.