Things Fall Apart: Patience
Patience is Enduring Evil
Job 1:1, 2:1-10
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. October 3rd, 2021
One day I was in Sault Ste. Marie up in the Upper Peninsula with a friend and we were walking around downtown. As we were crossing through a parking lot I noticed a familiar red car. It was a 1990 Buick LeSabre. Usually I’m not good at recognizing cars by their make and year but I could recognize this one because I used to have it, and with a quick inspection I could tell it was certainly mine. On the right front tire you could see damage from the time my tire exploded on the freeway.
The summer I first got that car I grew very sick. I would bloat, I would get nauseous, and I barely ate. By the time Labor Day rolled around and I had to be to school for my senior year, I couldn’t eat a thing. The morning I had packed up to go, I was abjectly miserable. Rather than taking a trip to the hospital and delaying my semester, I bullheadedly got in the car with a bottle of pepto bismol in my cup holder.
The whole drive down I could feel the vibration in my steering wheel, but I did not think much of it because I was so focused on how sick I was. It wasn’t until I got pass Milwaukee that the wheel blew. Right there, on the free way. In a car full of books and clothing and furniture. All of it covering the spare tire and jack. And I was barely functional as is.
That was the beginning of one of the worst years of my life, as I did not fully recover that whole senior year. I would spent a month in starvation mode. I would grow so weak I couldn’t walk across campus. I would have to defend my senior thesis while sick. When I saw my old car in the parking lot in Sault Ste. Marie these memories came flooding back. And while I was glad the car was still in use, I was glad I wasn’t the one using it.
I don’t think there’s anyone in this life who does not hit a season where everything seems to be falling apart. Perhaps you’re stuck with a grave illness. My illness was not deadly, but it was certainly all encompassing and painful. And when you’re sick like that it colors everything. Perhaps you’ve lost a loved one, or many in a short span of time. Perhaps you are handling family strife, strife at work, or financial difficulties. And no matter how much you try to pick yourself up it seems like there’s something else waiting to throw you back down. And you may wonder, “why?” “Why is this happening to me?” Or maybe even, “why is God doing this?”
The Book of Job is about a man who seeks an answer to the question “why?” And more so, seeks his vindication before God. We will be covering the Book of Job through the month of October. Job is an intensely difficult book, many well-meaning interpreters of scripture run aground on its shoals, so I will do my best to do justice to the book and how it helps us make sense of our own lives. But more than that, I want to make sense of how it points beyond itself to Jesus Christ. It goes without saying that I feel a great burden discussing Job, as the book deals with weighty matters. So I hope by God’s grace what I say might make sense, and would align with what the book says. Today I am going to talk about the patience of Job.
The Book of Job is written as a fable. Its introduction, “There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job“ calls to mind an ancient time before history. It is rather like opening a story by saying “once upon a time...” The book paints Job as one of the wise sages of half forgotten times. Job, we are told, was righteous and upright. He feared the Lord, which meant he was wise, and turned away from all evil. We did not hear this this morning, but we are also told that he gave sacrifices regularly for his children just in case they may have accidentally sinned. Such was his piety and love.
Not only are we told that Job is righteous, but God thinks so as well and tells the Satan as much. The Satan in Job is not what we might imagine, the diabolical fallen angel who corrupts and dominates this age. Satan comes from a Hebrew word meaning Adversary, as in a prosecuting attorney in a court of law. That is who the Satan is here, an angel who is not fallen, who acts as a prosecutor in God’s court. When God brings up Job’s righteousness the Satan suggests that the only reason he’s so righteous is because he has it so good. Job isn’t righteous out of love for God, but for the things God gives him! But if God were to remove the hedge he has placed around him, if God were to take his cattle and his children and his whole household, he would curse God to his face. God takes up the bet, and allows Satan to take everything away from Job but not to touch his flesh. Well, Job loses his children, his animals, his slaves, everything in a succession of disasters that could only come from God. Job mourns, but concedes “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed is the name of the Lord.”
So the Satan returns to God and God gloats over the patience of Job. But Satan insists that Job is only patient because he himself has not been harmed. But skin for skin! If the Satan could attack his flesh he would surely curse God. So God relents and allows the Satan to give Job painful sores and ulcers. Job scrapes himself with broken pottery to remove the pus. His own wife tells him that he should give up his integrity and just curse God and die.
“You are talking like a foolish woman.” Job replies, “shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
The book grows more complicated from here on out, as Job begins to launch his accusations against God. But for now I want to stop and meditate on the awesome patience of Job. Job has lost everything. He has lost his family, his property, his health. He has seemingly lost his wife. All he has left is his integrity, his dignity, his knowledge that he is an upright and righteous man who has done no evil. And it is this integrity that gives him patience.
Patience is a wonderful quality. It’s the quality that allows us to endure evils. Oftentimes we think of patience in the sense of keeping from anger. Or, in other words, not losing our cool. But patience is also about keeping ourselves from despair. Patience is a quality that also requires grit and determination. Patience is the ability to see through the present evil because as Paul tells us we know that it is nothing compared to the glory that is waiting for us. This morning we see Job exhibiting his patience. And, I believe, he exhibits this patience more or less throughout the book.
From where comes Job’s superhuman patience? What keeps him from cursing God? What keeps him in hope that he may be vindicated even though he believes God is against him? It doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s not some innate quality that Job had that we cannot. Job had patience because he prepared his whole life for this moment. I’m not saying that Job expected that God would take away everything he had, or that Job expected to come down with ulcers that covered his whole body from head to feet. Job had patience in that he was a righteous man, who did what was right by all, who had integrity, and a love for God. His patience was born out of his character.
Patience comes from character. And the most powerful patience comes from a life of holiness and happiness. Sure we can practice patience in times when we are angry, learning to count to ten or stepping away. Those are all good things and I need to do that from time to time. But the patience that Job exhibits is of a different order, it comes from a life of integrity and love. If we want the patience of Job, that will not crumble in any circumstance, we need to lead a whole life of righteousness. And that is a life that we cannot construct on our own, but it is a life that God is willing to offer by his grace. So that in all times and in all circumstances we might say with Job “the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord!”