I’ve been thinking about Job quite a bit recently, and been struck by how Job’s grievous suffering pushes him to come very close indeed to accusing God of wrongdoing. Satan in the prologue had hoped Job would implode and curse God to his face. Job never did quite do that, in spite of his wife’s encouragement (Job 2:9), but in his insistence on his innocence in the face of his suffering, he seems to pretty much accuse God of wrongdoing. God doesn’t seem overly impressed in any case (Job 40:8).

I’ve just heard a 20 minute overview of the book of Lamentations, where we see terrible suffering, but a very different response.

It was probably written by Jeremiah the prophet, as he lived through the horrors of the siege and fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. He experienced at first hand the horror, and personally suffered, as his words in 3:1-3 make clear:-
I am the man who has seen affliction
    under the rod of his wrath;
2 he has driven and brought me
    into darkness without any light;
3 surely against me he turns his hand
    again and again the whole day long.

If you read 3:1-20 it sounds similar to Job’s lament in Job 3. But look at the prophet’s response to his own suffering, in Lam 3:37-38:-
37 Who has spoken and it came to pass,
    unless the Lord has commanded it?
38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
    that good and bad come?

He acknowledges, as Job did, that God is the ultimate source of everything, good and evil. Of course satan may have a hand in it, but ultimately the buck stops with God (Job 1:11-12).

But then look at Jeremiah’s response to his own suffering in 3:39-40:-
39 Why should a living man complain,
    a man, about the punishment of his sins?
40 Let us test and examine our ways,
    and return to the Lord!

Why should any living man complain about the punishment of his sins? Jeremiah’s response, knowing his own sinfulness, is to repent, not grumble. As Greg Prior pointed out in his sermon today, point 2 “All the bad that happens to us is less than we deserve”. And point 3. “All the good that happens to us is more than we deserve”.

Surely Jeremiah’s is the gospel response. The gospel says that we deserve only wrath from God for our sins, but that because of Jesus’s wrath-bearing as our substitute we can know acceptance with God. Do you really believe the gospel? If you do, you will never accuse God of wrongdoing in the face of suffering, even your own, however intense. For you will rightly believe you deserve worse. And you will recognise with gratitude that every good thing that comes into your life is equally undeserved. You won’t be a God-condemner like Job, but a self-condemner like Jeremiah.

Our 21st century self-indulgent materialistic culture, so apparently shielded from death and suffering, has as its creedal statement “Because I’m worth it”.

If we believe that, we will implode into bitterness when suffering comes our way. Let’s get real – we are living in an anomaly. For most of world history, and even in most of the world today, suffering was and is not the exception but the rule. Its so important, then, for us to hold on to the biblical truth that enables a right response to suffering.

Rather than saying “Because I’m worth it”, let’s say “Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins?”.