We live in a sad and dying world. Though as Christians we are promised joy and peace that surpasses understanding, many, many moments in our lives will we experience trials in great severities. Many times will we cry out, “Why God? Why me? Why this? Why now?” And in many moments we are overcome with grief and depression, our hope and joy is lost.
But should it be so? Is not that which Scripture tells of God true, that He truly is a God of comfort (2 Cor 1:3)? Is it not true that God declares Himself to be entirely and totally sovereign and in His providence He is working together all things for our good (Rom 8:28)? Yet in our unbelief and sin we somehow perceive God to be one such as ourselves (Psalm 50:21), a being undeserving of trust, fallible, failing.
But God is worthy of trust. In His person we see and endless ocean of confidence in the infinite depths of the mercy of His great grace. Though darkness brood over us in the pitch black coldness of the night, we remember that it is a dark cloud that our Heavenly Father sends for His glory and for our good.
It is in this way that He weans us from earthly pleasures and lifts us up on endless ones. Making us and conforming us closer to the image of Christ ’till we can truly say, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”
Trusting No Matter What
What Jesus declared to His disciples about the blind man is clearly displayed in the Book of Job. Had the disciples mastered this Old Testament book, perhaps they would not have fallen into the either/or fallacy. Their mistake was the same mistake committed by Job’s friends.
Job protested the words of his friends. His reply is poignant:
I have heard many such things: Miserable comforters are you all! Shall words of wind have an end? Or what provokes you that you answer? I could also speak as you do, if your soul were in my soul’s place. I could heap up words against you, and shake my head at you; but I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the comfort of my lips would relieve your grief.
—Job 16:2-5
Consider the advice Job received from his wife:
And he took for himself a potsherd with which to scrape himself while he sat in the midst of the ashes. Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold to your integrity? Curse God and die!”
But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?”
In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
—Job 2:8-10
One of the most difficult experiences a person faces in the midst of suffering is to receive well-intentioned counsel to give up the struggle. This counsel usually comes from those who are closest to us and who love us the most. It was Jesus’ best friends who tried to talk Him out of going to Jerusalem as we have seen with Peter’s rebuke. It was Job’s own wife who told him, “Curse God and die!” It was his wife who encouraged him to compromise his integrity in order to alleviate his pain.
She meant well. She obviously had compassion on her husband. She encouraged him to take the easy way out. Her words only served to increase Job’s frustration. Job did not understand why God had called him to suffer but he did understand that God had called him to suffer. It was hard enough for him to be faithful to his vocation without his loved ones trying to talk him out of it.
I remember vividly my first visit to the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California. I was given a tour of the grounds by one of Robert Schuller’s associate ministers. Our tour took us to a statue hewn out of stone by a Scandinavian sculptor. It was a sculpture of the figure of Job. I was overcome by emotion as I stood before this majestic piece of art. It displayed the figure of Job, his body twisted and distorted in agony. The muscular detail was reminiscent of a work by Michelangelo.
As I stared at the figure I thought of a technique employed by artists that followed the aesthetic principle articulated by the philosopher Herder. It is the principle of the “fruitful moment.” Painters and sculptors, for example, do not ply their craft by the use of movie cameras or television recorders. Their objects are still, frozen in a single moment of time. The goal of the artist is to capture the crystallized essence of their subject by focusing on one fruitful or pregnant moment that tells the story. It was why Rembrandt sketched scores of scenes from the lives of biblical characters before he decided on a single frame to paint. It is Michelangelo’s David reaching for a stone. It is Rodin’s Thinker poised in deep reflection. It is the body of Christ cradled in the arms of His mother in the Pieta.
So the sculptor who fashioned the image of Job in the garden of the Crystal Cathedral, caught Job in the fruitful moment of the nadir of his agony. At the base of the sculpture, chiseled in the stone were these words: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” Job 13:15).
When I saw these words at the base of the statue I stood and wept in silence. No more heroic words were ever uttered by mortal man than these words of testimony from the lips of Job. “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”
God Himself as the Answer to “Why Am I Suffering?”
Job’s trust wavered, but it never died. He mourned. He cried. He protested. He questioned. He even cursed the day of his birth. But he clutched tightly to his only possible hope, his trust in God. At times Job was hanging on by his fingernails. But he hung on. He cursed himself. He rebuked his wife, but he never cursed God.
Job cried out for God to answer his questions. He desperately wanted to know why he was called upon to endure so much suffering. Finally God answered him out of the whirlwind. But the answer was not what Job expected. God refused to grant Job a detailed explanation of His reasons for the affliction. The secret counsel of God was not disclosed to Job.
Ultimately the only answer God gave to Job was a revelation of Himself. It was as if God said to him, Job, I am your answer.”
Job was not asked to trust a plan but a Person, a personal God who is sovereign, wise, and good.
It was as if God said to Job, “Learn who I am. When you know me, you know enough to handle anything.”
God was asking Job to exercise an implicit faith. An implicit faith is not blind faith. It is a faith with vision, a vision enlightened by a knowledge of the character of God.
If God never revealed anything about Himself to us and required that in this darkness we should trust Him, indeed the requirement would be for blind faith. We would be asked to make a blind leap of faith into the awful abyss of darkness.
But God never requires such foolish leaps. He never calls us to jump into the darkness. On the contrary, He calls us to forsake the darkness, and enter into the light. It is the light of His countenance. It is the radiant light of His Person, which has no shadow of turning in it. When we are bathed in the refulgent splendor of the glory of His person then trust is not blind.
When Job declared, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him,” he was revealing to us that though his knowledge of God was limited, it was still profound. He knew enough about the character of God to know that God is trustworthy. To be trustworthy simply means to be worthy of trust.
God deserves to be trusted. He merits our trust in Him. The more we understand of His perfections the more we understand how trustworthy He is. That is why the Christian pilgrimage is one that moves from faith to faith, from strength to strength, from grace to grace. It moves in a pattern of a rising crescendo. Ironically, it is through suffering and tribulation that the progress moves. That is why Paul could write these words:
We also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
—Romans 5:5
Here we are told that “hope does not disappoint.” Other translations speak of a hope for which we are not ashamed or embarrassed.
Blind hope, like blind faith, will indeed disappoint us. Blind hope gropes aimlessly in the darkness. It stumbles over unseen obstacles. To put all one’s hope into a single goal and to have that goal unfulfilled is to be disappointed.
Hope that is blind can be embarrassing. We stick our necks out only to be left in disgrace if our boldness does not pan out. The hope that rests in Christ will not be an embarrassment. The shame will be upon those who put their hope in something else. The hope that fails is the hope that has no power to overcome death.
If I hope in anything or anyone less than one who has power over death, I am doomed to final disappointment. Suffering will drive me to hopelessness. What character I have will disintegrate.
It is the hope of Christ that makes it possible for us to persevere in times of tribulation and distress. We have an anchor for our souls that rests in the One who has gone before us and conquered.
—R.C. Sproul, (1996, c1988). Surprised by Suffering. Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers.
Purchase the book “Surprised by Suffering” here, or read more here.
