The devil's bet [Wednesday in Lent 1]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Job 1:6-12

• James 5:7-11

• St. Matthew 21:12-17

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 1)

 

Who speaks to you this evening, from His Book of Job heard, saying:

“But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face”

 

The devil is a gambler. He is a gambler because he cannot see all things, as God can. So he must make a gamble on the future as we do. And in the book of Job, he gambles that man is so weak, that anyone of us will curse God to His face, the minute things don’t go our way. And he’s right.

 

This, the blessed Dr. Luther teaches, is at the core of Original Sin: we wish to be God. Indeed, this is the hook that finally catches Eve at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, “you will be like God” (Gen 3:5). From Noah, to King Saul, to King Solomon, even to St. Peter, who “took [the Lord] aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘Far be it from you, Lord [to die]! This shall never happen to you” (Mt 16:22).

 

The devil bets, and because of sin, it seems a sure win, even within Jesus’s inner circle. The bet is that faith is just a business transaction, for God and man. That God needs worship from man, and we only worship Him for the “stuff”. So what happens to Job who has a whole lotta stuff?

 

At this point, the devil is elated. God is not only giving him a free hand, but He’s letting him stack the deck. Not only does he get to take Job’s stuff, but he also gets to take his health, in chapter 2. Not only does he get his health, but his wife turns against Job, advising him to “curse God and die” (2:9). 

 

Now all Job is left with is a life of suffering and that is the excuse and argument used by many today who advocate abortion and euthanasia. “Quality of life” is their god. Thus, that kingdom of God has let Job down and let us down. We expect the best, but find only discomfort. We expect easy street, but find hard luck alley. In light of this, we make our bellies our gods, instead, and wonder why life is so hard. Comfort breeds sloth.

 

We want a god that makes sense. We can understand hunger and eating, but we can’t understand the uncertainty of the next meal. We can understand order and compliance, but we can’t understand why anyone would be against it. Instead of God making sense, He hides Himself. At these difficult points, the devil inserts his own theology: the Theology of Glory.

 

You have already heard the word we use to describe this struggle, during Advent: anfechtung. Struggle. The spiritual discipline that makes a true theologian. And where this struggle originates is the hidden God. When God decides to hide Himself behind the cross. That is anfechtung: having to deal with all of life, with only the cross from God as His answer.

 

So the devil is sent to those who have put their trust in Christ. And when he arrives, he calls the question: can faith survive in the flesh? This is key because God has given us our body and soul, eyes, ears, and all our members; our reason and all our senses and still take care of them, He promises.

 

He also gives clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land animals and all that I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life. All that goodness, only then to take it away, as Job already said, “the Lord giveth and He taketh away” (1:21)

 

When God feels like your enemy, that’s exactly when He is pinning you down to save you from yourself. Not even Jesus escaped this. “My God my God why have you forsaken me”, shouted from the cross. Sounds like a Job shout, no? All the anfechtung is being piled onto Jesus in a whirlwind of violence. And in that whirlwind, the greatest work of the Lord is accomplished: redemption.

 

Thus, Job also must be turned to the whirlwind of the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. He and the devil trust in faith as a work: how faithful I am, how loving I am, how generous I am, how successful I am. Glory is the goal and work is the currency. 

 

In the devil’s work, however, he is not allowed to take Job’s life, for two reasons. Two, Job’s life is connected to God’s Word. Job is a living breathing sermon of God. If the devil were allowed to murder, it would be a sermon that God would never preach. And the first reason is, Job is not going to be the one to triumph in martyrdom. Only Jesus can do that.

 

Job is left with the Word Alone and the Word is everlasting to everlasting. He has made His dwelling with man and not even the gates of hell will overcome that Church. The Word has become incarnate, suffered, died, and was raised on the 3rd Day for Job. Such that Job will see Him face to face, after he dies.

 

It is for the Good of all, that Jesus suffer and die. And it for the good of Job that he suffer and be made like his Savior. Job is being saved from himself, by thinking that his revelation from God is superior. He is as elated as the devil in his prosperity. He thinks he has won the eternal lottery. Until he is shown his God on a cross. Anfechtung.

 

However, even in this anfechtung, the devil does not have the last word. Look. The best the devil can do is drive us to the Word. The worst the devil can do is take our lives, but the Word Made Flesh has promised eternal life. You can begin to sense the devil’s eternal struggle. Even the evil he wants to do, is made into good, by God.

 

For Job also. Once God reveals Himself to be in the whirlwind, that is, in the Crucifixion of Jesus as God and man, then Job repents. Then Job can finally be free to live by grace alone. Free from the guilt and condemnation of his tribulation and his prosperity. His faith is taken out of his body and blood and placed in the Body and Blood of His Lord, offered to him as a sacrifice.

 

“For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom 8:3-4).

 

If Job was weak in the flesh, unable to fulfill the law, His Savior became weakest in the flesh to fulfill the law for him. The devil made the losing bet. He bet faith was a simple transaction, while the whole time Faith was from the God-man, Jesus Christ. Without faith, the devil was unable to see the life that was actually keeping Job alive. 

 

Job’s life, though he had forgotten, was a life lived by faith in his Messiah. As St. Paul reminds him in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

 

St. John Chrysostom quotes Isaiah 14:9 and puts it this way, “Hell was embittered, when it encountered Thee in the lower regions.” It was embittered, for it took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen. The devil loses, because he does not believe the Almighty would unite Himself to man in such a sacramental way.

 

That Job’s life be tied to God’s life and that Job’s faith be tied to God’s faith and that Job’s suffering be tied to God’s suffering. Far from a sterile transaction, God has put His own Body and Blood on the line to keep His promise to Job. Job may doubt and waiver, but the Lord He is trustworthy. He keeps His promises. In this case, the promise to redeem Job from the ash heap and set him with the Son, forever.

 

In his sin, Job is the unwilling servant of God. Unwilling to suffer, unwilling to lose, unwilling to sit in the ashes. Yet, the Word drives Job on to let God be God and work out His own salvation on our behalf, also.

 

{Retro-post} The end of your resume [Ash Wednesday]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Joel 2:12-19

• 2 Peter 1:2-11

• St. Matthew 6:16-21
  
  

May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. (2 Pet 1)

 

Jesus speaks to you on this day from His Gospel heard, saying:

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

 

There is a lot going on this Ash Wednesday. Our Lord has placed our minds on fasting and what that is, in our Gospel reading. The Church today commemorates the death of the blessed Dr. Martin Luther, in 1546. And finally, we will begin our Lenten intensive for seven Wednesdays focusing on the Book of Job.

 

We’re going to explore Job for a couple reasons. Yes, he is one who suffers and so reading and studying his life during Lent makes sense, but more so because his book is usually difficult to understand. It is a hard and harsh suffering God allowed to happen and so, as always, we want to know why.

 

And first of all, the reason we study any book of Holy Scripture is to find Jesus, for as He says in John 5:39, you all have the Holy Scriptures and these speak of me. Thus, even though we hear about Job, we are hearing of Jesus, even if we don’t see it. And what brings all of this together is dust and ashes, for Job says in chapter 42:6, “therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

 

This means that there is common ground between us and the Old Testament. Not just because we are all created from the dust of the ground, but that there is a ceremony that Job follows to place himself in dust and ashes when the Lord’s hand is heavy upon him.

 

From Chapter 1:20-21, 2:8, “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’…as he sat in the ashes”

 

Job’s friends, “when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great” (2:12-13)

 

“Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the Lord until the evening, he and the elders of Israel. And they put dust on their heads” in Joshua 7:6.

 

“The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence; they have thrown dust on their heads” in Lamentations 2:10, in shame in front of the Lord. Mordecai and all the Jews put on sackcloth and ashes, in Esther 4. And even the “king of Nineveh”, from Jonah 3:6, “arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.”

 

Its like finding yourself in a flash mob or a disney musical. Why does everyone know all the words?? 

 

Yes, there is ceremony, there is purpose, there is confession to be made in front of God as to Who He is, who we are in front of Him, and what we are to do about it. And we continue to hold ceremony in the Lord’s Church, which is a call for full retreat. We are to retreat from our sins and temptations and we are to retreat from our works, good or bad.

 

Deny yourself and retreat. That is God’s purpose in the book of Job and that is God’s purpose for you. For we find Job a righteous man. So righteous, that God brags about him in heaven. Job’s resume, likely better than any other patriarch of the Bible, is golden and reaches to God’s own throne. 

 

And yet, the devil is allowed to harass and harangue. We like to think we have a deal with God. "I do my part, He does His." In the ash heap, however, the contract is torn up. Job’s silence for seven days is the only honest response to the Law of God which always accuses us. You aren't here to "improve" this Lent; you’re here to die and be raised, in Christ. 

 

If we’re going to talk about Job, we have to stop trying to "fix" him. We’re so busy trying to justify God or explain away the pain that we miss the whole point, the whole point of Scripture and even the whole point of the Reformation. 

 

The book of Job isn't a puzzle to be solved; it’s a death sentence. A death sentence that ends in a resurrection. Job chapters 1 and 2 isn't a test of Job’s resolve. It’s the beginning of God’s war on Job’s "goodness" so that he might live by grace alone.

 

The Always-Good Law of God must do its crushing work on our sins and on all our works, in order that the Gospel can actually be good news. If we have defeated our sins, or racked up enough good works, or felt sorry enough, then we are the main star: see, I did it on my own.

 

In the example of Job, We are moved from the "God of my imagination"—the one who rewards the "good" boys and girls—to the God who shows up in the whirlwind and the wounds of Christ.

The God Who crushes and the God Who heals. Job isn’t a story about a man’s patience or perserverance; it’s a story about God’s "alien work" of killing the old Adam to make room for the new.

 

This was blessed Dr. Luther’s point and the point that all the Reformers were trying to make. There is no silver lining to kissing the pope’s ring, you will still be a dirty sinner in the morning. There is no silver lining to trusting in prayers to the saints or buying indulgences. Don’t try to sugar coat what God is doing. Just sit in the dust.

 

Thus when we return to our ceremony which unites us to Job and Luther, our Ash Wednesday liturgy, we don’t just "do" repentance; we are un-done by it. God’s Law doesn't just give us "information" about our sin that we can analyze and execute; it executes us. Right at the cross of Christ.

 

Throughout the book of Job, he is on full retreat. He is forced to start over, having lost family and earthly goods to marauders and he is forced to endlessly defend his righteousness, which comes from God, and yet try to understand why this happened, when he has done everything right. 

 

It's great. On the Eighth Day, Job finally opens his mouth and the first thing he says is, “I wish I was never born”. If this is how God treats those who love Him, I can’t imagine what His enemies feel. And if I’m going to feel like an enemy, what’s the point to even being here?

 

We are driven in that same way. Christ mounts His cross and demands, “Let see you explain this one away, boys!” Because the message of the cross is forgiveness. But if its’ forgiveness, then there must be something to be forgiven. If we don’t need forgiveness, then we better find a different religion. If we do need forgiveness, then we better get in the dust and ashes.

 

Because it is only in the dust and ashes that Jesus can do something with you. If you insist on being the potter and molding yourself, then you’ll have to go to the scrap pile. If you are emptied, confessed a poor miserable sinner, without any merit or worthiness in you, then there is hope. For Christ fills all in all, and that includes you.

 

And the cross is God in the ash heap. You think you sit alone? Job had his friends at first, but God was there listening, acting. “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes”, says Psalm 113:7-8. And when He finally responds at the end of Job’s book, He shows He was there the whole time.

 

From Hebrews 9:13-14, “For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”

 

It is the will of God to forgive your dust and ashes, remove you from them, and place a crown on your head, giving you His Kingdom. In Christ, dust and ashes become princes. In Christ, Job’s suffering cleanses and purifies like a refiner’s fire, revealing the true gold and silver of faith in Christ. 

 

So we move ourselves through our ceremony, not because we need a reminder of death, but a reminder of who we are and what Christ has done for us.

"Remember, man, that you are dust, and to dust you will return." But also know, man, that God loved you and gave you the Savior. To you and to everyone: Christ who died for us on the cross, where our death was conquered by His death. Christ, who took upon himself the punishment that we must bear.

 

We deserved it, but He was made responsible for us. His death became our life, and the instrument of execution, the cross, became a sign of salvation. That is why the ashes on our foreheads take the salvific shape of the cross.

 

For if, being enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. (Rom. 5:10)

Who is Job without Christ? Who are we without Christ? Only dust. But by partaking of Christ, we are saved by His life (Rom. 5:10). Because the Lord said, "the one who eats Me, he will live by Me" (John 6:57). In the Eucharist, His life flows into us, becomes our life.

 

So run to church. This is where your salvation is worked out (from Phil. 2:12). God is waiting for you here during this time of Great Lent and always. Leave the vanity and thoughts about the earthly, and come to commune of the heavenly Bread. And although life on earth will still be deadly and hard, the One who died for you will be with you and in you to give you eternal life.