Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
With our consideration on Ash Wednesday of God’s calling His people to repent through the prophet Joel, we began our eight-part midweek sermon series that I have titled “Snapshots of Repentance”, Old Testament examples of both repentance and forgiveness of sins, which are not only instructive but also comforting for us today. For tonight’s “Snapshot”, that of Job, both of his repentance and of his subsequent intercession for his friends, the Reading sort of came in at the end of the account that bears Job’s name. That account is said to have been written well after the events themselves took place, which was perhaps in the time of the patriarchs or the time of the judges. The events are Satan’s intruding into the relationship between God and His people; God’s permitting Satan to afflict Job in order to “try” Job’s faith; Job’s trying to make sense of his afflictions with his friends’ help; God’s eventually answering Job’s questions (part of which we heard tonight); Job’s repenting in dust and ashes (as we did last week); Job’s successfully interceding for his friends; and ultimately God’s essentially restoring to Job what God had permitted Satan to take away. Overall, the events of this episode in Job’s life anticipate God’s salvation in Jesus Christ and provide insights into otherwise hidden aspects of our lives under the cross, although insofar as we are considering it a “Snapshot” of repentance, we are especially interested in God’s calling Job and us to repent and His forgiving Job and us when we do.
God’s answer to Job that we heard in the Reading is itself full of rhetorical questions posed to Job, but, at the same time, it speaks to the matters of Divine justice and of Job’s self‑justification, both of which Job had discussed with his self-righteous friends. They had misrepresented God and mislead Job into questioning God’s justice. God challenged Job to dress and act like a god, in order for Job to admit that Job could not save himself. In two poems, God spoke of powerful animals God created that essentially only He can overpower. While the descriptive language is poetic and seems to be intentionally exaggerated, the animals are nevertheless parts of God’s creation, not strictly mythical beings, although their being mentioned is likely intended to also bring to mind Satan, the most-monstrous evil opposed to the Lord Himself. The point is not only that God is powerful but also that, if human beings cannot overpower these animals, then human beings cannot contend on their own with God.
Of course, what God said to Job is also directed to us, for we are little different from him. We also have difficulty interpreting the prosperity and the suffering that we experience. Whether or not we are misled by self-righteous friends, we also can question God’s justice sinfully. We also can ask God other sinful questions, and we can ask them in sinful ways. We speak of what we do not understand, things too wonderful for us, which we do not know. We can attempt to justify ourselves before him, as if we are not deserving of the things that He permits us to suffer, if not also the present and eternal death that, apart from repentance, our sins deserve. As the serpent in the Garden of Eden craftily led the woman to doubt God’s Word and tempted her with the possibility of being like God (Genesis 3:1-7), so the devil, the world, and our own sinful natures deceive and mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice. From all of these things, God calls us to humble ourselves in repentance, whether or not we do so in dust and ashes. In the words of our Opening Hymn, God Himself inspires our repentance for our sin and frees us from our past (Lutheran Service Book 418).
Quite notably, despite his afflictions, Job throughout his talks with is friends confessed faith in God’s promised Mediator, Advocate, Atoner, and Redeemer. By grace through such faith in the One Who was to come, God forgave and so saved repentant Job, and, by grace through faith in the One Who has come, God forgives and so saves those of us who repent. As Job interceded for His friends, and as they sacrificed an offering for forgiveness, so that One, the God-man Jesus Christ, intercedes for us and offers up Himself on the cross for our forgiveness. As our litany-like Office Hymn and the Litany itself remind us, every aspect of Jesus’s life is beneficial to us (LSB 419; confer Pollack, #166, 130; Precht, #93, 100), but especially in His death on the cross He defeats sin, death, and the power of the devil, as God long promised (Genesis 3:15; Isaiah 27:1). On the cross is the sacrifice for our sin, which brings about our forgiveness, in God’s system of Divine justice, which is unlike any human justice we might know or imagine.
In the ways that God showed Himself to Job, Job saw God’s might and mercy. We may not see and interact with God as Job did, but we do so in other ways that Job did not. We not only hear God’s Word read and preached and thereby take hold of His Son by faith, but God also touches us in the water of Holy Baptism, speaks to us through the pastor with the living voice of His Son in the words of individual Holy Absolution, and, with bread and wine, feeds with His Son’s own Body and Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. Especially in Holy Baptism we believe, teach, and confess that God rescues us from death and the devil. And, as Job after his restoration feasted with all of his brothers and sisters who had known him before, so we partake of this Holy Communion and are in fellowship not only with Jesus Himself but also in Him with our brothers and sisters in Him, with all believers of all times and places. And, in tonight’s Closing Hymn, we ask Him to direct those He has purchased with His Blood in all good (LSB 882:5).
Admittedly, at times God’s might and mercy seem hidden to us, but they are always there, even as they were for Job. We know that Job suffered at least partly because of Satan’s challenging God and God’s sure and certain knowledge that Job would not fall, but Job did not know that at the time. Similarly, as part of His plan for our redemption, God permits us to suffer, perhaps for reasons that we cannot and so do not know now, but certainly also for reasons that we can and should know, such as to draw us closer to Him and thereby to strengthen our faith, to conform us to the image of His Son (Romans 8:28-29), and ultimately to lead to His praise and glory. God so disciplines those He loves! The world is not irrational, but at times it is beyond our reason. As they did for Job, the people that we hang out with can hinder or help us when we try to make sense of our suffering—we do best to surround ourselves with brothers and sisters in Christ who join us in repentance and so regularly receive God’s forgiveness and extend that and their own forgiveness to us and to others.
Job’s is a good “Snapshot of Repentance”, and more! Holy Scripture accords Job a place of honor alongside Noah and Daniel as men righteous by grace through faith (Ezekiel 14:14, 20), and Scripture commends Job’s faithfulness in regards to the Lord’s purpose of being compassionate and merciful (James 5:11). Not everyone will come out of their afflictions in this life and be restored and blessed as Job was in this life; for many of us, the restoration and greatest blessings after afflictions will come only in the next life (Matthew 19:27-30; Mark 10:28-31; Luke 18:28‑30), of that we can be sure. With not the promise but the fulfillment of our Lord’s Resurrection and the sure and certain promise of our own resurrections, we can say with Job: I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God! (Job 19:25-26; confer LSB 461:1).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +