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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.
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