GOD RESTORES

Job 1:1-3:26; 1 Corinthians 14:1-17; Psalm 37:12-29; Proverbs 21:25-26

“Then the Lord asked Satan, ‘Have you noticed my servant Job? He is the finest man in all the earth. He is blameless—a man of complete integrity. He fears God and stays away from evil. And he has maintained his integrity, even though you urged me to harm him without cause.’ Satan replied to the Lord, ‘Skin for skin! A man will give up everything he has to save his life. But reach out and take away his health, and he will surely curse you to your face!’ ‘All right, do with him as you please,’ the Lord said to Satan. ‘But spare his life.’ So Satan left the Lord’s presence, and he struck Job with terrible boils from head to foot. Job scraped his skin with a piece of broken pottery as he sat among the ashes. His wife said to him, ‘Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die.’ But Job replied, ‘You talk like a foolish woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?’ So in all this, Job said nothing wrong.”

“Let love be your highest goal....”

“For the strength of the wicked will be shattered, but the Lord takes care of the godly. Day by day the Lord takes care of the innocent, and they will receive an inheritance that lasts forever. They will not be disgraced in hard times; even in famine they will have more than enough…. For the Lord loves justice, and he will never abandon the godly. He will keep them safe forever, but the children of the wicked will die.”

“Despite their desires, the lazy will come to ruin, for their hands refuse to work.”

I’ve been avoiding issues with the Psalms to this point, but today’s Scriptures raise a contradiction that can no longer be avoided. Job and Psalms just cannot be reconciled. Even the briefest glance at today’s readings proves that. God clearly abandoned Job to Satan – twice! Psalm 37 is but one of many passages which appear to deny the obvious. The absolute truth, however, is and always has been that being “godly,” “righteousness” or even outright “saved” is not any guarantee of safety, security or well-being. In my personal experience, and according to John 16:33, being children of God actually guarantees us trouble. It may provide some solace that God eventually restored Job, plus some. But then again, done buns can’t be undone, no matter what good we – or God – may do later. Just look at how happy Job was to have been born! (See, e.g., Job 3:11-26.) It is likewise an insufficient response to hold that God still maintained a shred of sovereignty over Job’s life by forbidding Satan from taking Job all the way to death. What about His complete abandonment of Job’s children, farmhands and servants? Were they all uniformly “unrighteous” or just meaningless collateral damage which would detract from the main point if they were given more detailed Scriptural backstories? These are very tough questions, and they deserve better and more honest than most of us are willing to give them.

Once more, I confess a certain confusion and uncertainty in this area, but here’s what I think. In truth and fact, most of the “God preserves the righteous” Psalms are subject to the same pragmatic conflict: they just don’t ring true based on what we, like Job, actually know of life from having lived and seen it. God does not always take care of the godly or the innocent here on earth, nor is there any covenant they will survive through hard times. Worse, if Job is to be believed (and, being Scripture, it is), then even the idea that God will never abandon the godly seems subject to serious question, if not outright doubt. Of course, there is at least one answer: neither we nor the Psalmists have/had any real idea of just what it takes to be “godly” or “righteous.” “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” and “the wages of sin is death.” Even Christ Himself knows what that death feels like, although He only suffered it in our place. So, do the Psalms simply set before us a tantalizing possibility none of us have even a prayer of realizing in this lifetime? Well, that would certainly be their practical effect, except … for the empty tomb.

Whether or not God does or even has to abandon us at some point in this life is a strategic misdirection thought up by the Father of Lies to keep us away from any serious relationship with the Holy Spirit. We destroy ourselves and abandon God all by ourselves; we don’t require His or anyone else’s assistance in that regard. We actually deserve abandonment, regardless of God’s role in it, if any. That’s not the point. The point – the only one worth considering, if we want to be theologically accurate - is that God restores. We may never be able to make sense of our situation from a human perspective. Obviously, the writer of Job never clearly did. But the moral of the story is that God is always ready to restore us, if we will let Him have His way with us first, whatever that may mean in our given circumstances. It’s called letting Christ be Lord so we can truly call Him Savior. And sometimes, it is a very hard thing to do.

Most any of us can probably recall a situation where things happened to us or others that really were too much to bear. Committed Christians experience the overwhelming pain of divorce, the loss of a child or spouse and even suicide, too. It is unkind and intellectually dishonest for us to simply dismiss such occurrences by claiming, “They must not have been real Christians; God sees the heart.” Even Christians feel lost and abandoned at times. Again, though, restoration is God’s point and purpose.

Psalm 22 is one of the few Psalms that tells the whole story from abandonment to restoration (which may include, of course, resurrection).  It begins, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Let us be clear, then, even though it makes us squirm. God forsakes sin. At some point, He has no choice. Until the debt of sin was paid, God’s holy character could not deal with sin.

Nevertheless, God does restore. The price of sin was paid, once and for all. This does not guarantee our safety, but it does guarantee we are secured in heaven. I am aware some will say that the promise of heaven is poor recompense for injuries suffered here on earth. But those who know heaven is the only place to fully experience unconditional love know its rewards will eclipse any adversity we may face here on earth.  Sometimes, it feels like a heavenly answer has little practical significance on earth. For those who feel that resurrection is insufficient compensation for their earthly lives, I feel truly sorry. But they will never appreciate heavenly things until they develop an eternal perspective, anyway, so we’ll leave things where scripture seems to leave them… for now.