Job 10:1-22 - Does God Cause Our Suffering? (Session 15)

In this episode of Reasoning Through the Bible, Job 10 is examined verse by verse as Job speaks from the depths of his despair and asks God why He appears to be contending with him. This study explores whether it is true to say that God is oppressing people, whether suffering means God has turned against someone, and how pain can distort a believer’s view of the character of God. Job’s lament is honest and intense, but it also shows the danger of laying blame at God’s feet when the full story is hidden.

This Bible study is especially helpful for listeners searching for teaching on Job 10, 

• does God cause suffering, 
• why does God allow pain, 
• God and evil, 
• Christian suffering, 
• asking God why, and 
• trusting God in tragedy. 

Job 10 gives practical help for maintaining a right view of God even when suffering is deep and explanations do not come.

Transcript

Why Suffering Feels Random

SPEAKER_00 0:16

When we look around at the world, it seems to be spinning out of control. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to all of the problems that we see. We see evil prospering, we see good people that get into painful circumstances. We often ask why. The human condition is to scream out why. Well, today on reasoning through the Bible, we're going to meet a man who was also asking God why. And he even went as far as to say, God, why are you oppressing me? He laid the feet of the problems at God. So today on Reasoning Through the Bible, we're going to talk about is that a fair statement to make before God? Is it true that God is the one who is oppressing people? Is God causing all of the evil in the world? Some people think so. We'll reason through that as we go through the book of Job, chapter 10. My name's Glenn. I'm here with Steve. We have a ministry we call Reasoning Through the Bible. We provide resources to small groups and local churches for how to teach the Word of God. So we trust that you'll have a Bible and follow along with us. So, Steve, can you read the first seven verses of Job chapter 10?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

I am disgusted with my own life. I will express my complaint freely. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. I will say to God, Do not condemn me. Let me know why you contend with me. Is it right for you indeed to oppress, to reject the work of your hands, and to look favorably on the plan of the wicked? Do you have eyes of flesh, or do you see as mankind sees? Are your days like the days of a mortal, or your years like a man's year, that you should search for my guilt and carefully seek my sin? According to your knowledge, I am indeed not guilty, yet there is no one to save me from your hand.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

We find out Job's position and his attitude at this point. Steve, the very first line there, what does it say? And what can we tell about Job's attitude?

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Well, he saying in the very first verse there, he says, I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. He's he says, I'm disgusted with my own life. And what we should keep in mind is that in chapters nine and ten, Job is responding to Bildad's accusation of him in chapter eight and the other friends as well, which is basically saying, God punishes the wicked, you're being punished, you're being inflicted, Job, therefore you're wicked. Even in chapter eight, Bildad says, and if you'll just repent of what you've done, then God will turn around and bless you again. Job is responding to that in these two chapters. And here, as he starts out in chapter 10, he's saying, I'm disgusted with my own life, and I'll express my complaint freely. I'll speak in the bitterness of my soul. But then he goes on to continue to push back on some of the things that his friends are telling him. He is in the depth of his despair as he is trying to respond to his friends.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

He is indeed in the depths of despair. He says, I'm disgusted with my own life. It's very difficult to see the world from an accurate viewpoint if you're that far down in a hole. The last half of verse 2, Job asks a question to God. What is Job's question there?

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Well, he's saying, Don't condemn me and let me know why you contend with me. Why let me know why it is that you are doing this to me? In our last session and the latter parts of chapter nine, he was mentioning that if he could only get God in a courtroom, he could tell him face to face to remove the rod of judgment that's being put upon him.

Job Accuses God Of Oppression

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Exactly. He's saying there in that verse. Why? Why are you doing this to me? Why are you contending with me? This question, why, is the same question that all suffering people ask. Why, God, are you allowing this? Why is this happening to me? The entire book of Job tells us that God has reasons. He's in control, but he doesn't always tell us what his purposes are. Most of the time, when the human condition, we just scream out, it's just natural human for us to say, why, why, God? But why questions asked to God very often get no answer, usually gets no answer. God doesn't share with us his reasons. It's no doubt, once we understand it theologically, God is infinite. We are finite, therefore the finite's never going to understand the infinite. The small child is never going to understand what the grown-up wants them to do until they're grown up. And then they say, Oh yeah, now I see why my parents were treating me like this and getting me to do these things when I was a small child. But when you're very small, they don't understand. They scream out, why are you doing this to me? Therefore, the human condition is indeed to scream out why. And Job is at that point. But Job ends up taking a step further in the next verse, verse 3. What does Job accuse God of doing in verse 3?

SPEAKER_01 5:46

He's accusing God of looking favorably on the plan of the wicked. He says, Is it right for you to indeed oppress the innocent people and reject the work of your hands? In other words, what the people that you've created, and to look favorably on the evil things that are going on in the world?

SPEAKER_00 6:05

This is a great step in the wrong direction. He's accusing God of causing all of the evil, pain, and suffering, rejecting him, and then God going as far as to give favor to wicked people. So Job is in a spot where he his pain and suffering has skewed his view of God. This is why we need to have a very accurate view of God before we get into painful circumstances, because the circumstances will skew our understanding. The next verse, verse four, Job is saying to God, Don't you see what I'm seeing? He says to God, Do you have eyes of flesh? Or do you see like mankind sees? He's saying, God, I'm I'm seeing all this pain and suffering. Are you there, God? Hello? He feels like God is not there or God is asleep. Moving on through the passage, verse 7, Job is still maintaining his innocence before God. He says, Quote, I am indeed not guilty, yet there's no one to save me from your hand. He is again accusing God of being against him. We know that God is not against Job. He's actually for Job, but Job's viewpoint is limited. Job can't see past his suffering. Even though Job points a finger at God, he never curses God. Job's message is God is against me and given me no chance. So my situation is hopeless, but he's not cursing God. He goes as far as to lay his problems at God's feet, and this is incorrect. Job needs to go back to Bible class, go back to theology class, because again, if his theology was better before he started, then once he gets into the midst of suffering, then he would have a more accurate view of God.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

So I have a question for you, Glenn. There in verse 7, he says, Yet there is no one to save me from your hand. The question is this is it God's hand that is bringing the judgment on Job and causing all of this infliction?

Is God Or Satan Causing This

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Well, that is a half-truth. The short answer is no. It is Satan that is causing all of this. So that's incorrect to say that God is the one who's causing this, and we need to be saved from God's hand, at least in this specific situation. Now, it changes once we get over into our eternal state. The New Testament tells us that lost people, that sinful people that do not accept God's forgiveness, are indeed children of wrath. And God does have a destiny of punishment for those that commit crimes of sin against a good God and do not repent and do not take forgiveness. Those that do not love God are indeed children of God's wrath. And who is there to save us from God's wrath? The Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only one that can save us from God's wrath. But the immediate circumstances here, Job is incorrect. It is not God's hand that is causing Job's pain. It is Satan that's causing God's pain. And God has a grander purpose for what he's doing here. Let's go ahead and move on to the next section. Starting at verse 8, we have even more of this very descriptive Hebrew poetry. Again, Job is technically responding to Bildad, but he's addressing his response directly to God. Your hands fashioned and made me altogether, yet would you destroy me? Remember that you have made me as clay, yet would you turn me into dust again? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese, clothe me with skin and flesh, and intertwine me with bones and tendons? You have granted me life and goodness, and your care has guarded my spirit. Yet you have concealed these things in your heart. I know that this is within you. If I have sinned, you will take note of me and will not acquit me of my own guilt. If I am wicked, woe to me, but if I am righteous, I dare not lift up my head. I am full of shame and conscious of my misery. Steve, what do you think of when you hear those words?

You Made Me Yet Destroy Me

SPEAKER_01 10:28

What I think of here as he goes through these verses is that he is saying, God, you have created me, but yet now you are turning around and destroying me. And he's basically asking the why a question in a different way. Why is it that you want to destroy something that you have made? And he is putting at God's feet everything that is happening to him. And again, we know that that is not the case, that this is not being brought on him by God. Back in chapter two, in this situation, God says, okay, Job is in your hand, Satan, but you cannot take his life. So everything that is happening to Job in regards to his physical maladies that he's having, of the boils and the suffering that he's having physically, that is being caused by Satan. And yet, this perspective that we're seeing Job go through here in chapters nine and 10, he's addressing God directly. You have done this, you have done this. Why is it that you have done this? So I think that we need to take learnings from this, in that everything that happens to us as far as suffering is not coming from God. There might be some things that might come as a disciplinary measure from God in our lifetime, but there is a great majority of other things that come to us because of consequences of decisions that we have made in our life, and we are then dealing with the consequences that come from those decisions. Or it's because, as I've mentioned before, we are living in a fallen world in a body that is not meant to last. We get sick, we have diseases, we get cancer, and our bodies break down. Ultimately, we are going to die so aptly as you put it, Glenn. Everyone dies of the last disease that they have. So it's a learning for us that while Job is going through this, he's laying this at the feet of God. Why have you done this? You've created me, but yet now you're turning around and you're destroying me. It's a false view, a false premise. We need to take that learning back to us whenever we get in these situations of suffering and not lay it automatically at the feet of God. That doesn't mean that we can't go and petition him, but Job's petition to God is you have done it. Why are you doing it? When are you going to remove the judgment on me? And really, he should be saying is, Lord, I trust you. You have blessed me so much in the past. I'm going to continue to honor and worship you. I don't know what's going on, but I do know that you are a good God and that you are merciful towards me. And Lord, I do ask for you to take this off of me. But I know, Lord, that it's not you that is putting this infliction on me because as he says there in verse 7, I am indeed not guilty. Job knows that he's not guilty.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

One thing we can always be sure of is that all of us will at some point suffer. We'll either suffer, people around us will suffer, and we will struggle with these same questions that Job is struggling with. Therefore, we need to have a great understanding of the character of God before we get into these suffering circumstances so that our view of how God acts and what he does is not skewed by our pain. So that's a great lesson of the book of Job. Verse 10 says there, this great descriptive language. Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? Job just feels like he's being tossed around like milk and cheese in the hands of this all-powerful God. Job feels like there's nothing I can do. This is again great descriptive literature. He continues in the next section. Steve, can you start at 16 and read down through verse 22?

SPEAKER_01 14:35

And should my head be high, you would hunt me like a lion, and you would show your power against me again. You renew your witnesses against me and increase your anger towards me. Hardship after hardship is with me. Why then did you bring me out of the womb if only I had died and no eye had seen me? I should have been as though I had not been, brought from womb to tomb. Would he not leave my few days alone? Withdraw from me so that I may have a little cheerfulness before I go, and I shall not return to the land of darkness and deep shadow, the land of utter gloom, like darkness itself, of deep shadow without order, and it shines like darkness.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Job is in a very dark place and even mentions that there towards the end. At the first of that section, verse 16, Job thinks God is out to get him. He says, If I lift up my head, you will hunt me like a lion. He sees God as somebody that's out to try to hunt down Job. And as soon as he tries to get his breath or something, try to heal up, then God causes something else that's painful. Verse 17, Job thinks God has a witness against me is the phrase he uses. There he accuses God of being angry at him. He's bumping up against an accusation here against God that he really doesn't want to do, but his pain, again, is biasing his view of God. Verses 20 and 21, Job tells God, Why don't you just leave me alone and let me die? That's a paraphrase of what he's saying. Each of us complains when we suffer, but have we truly suffered as much as Job has? And I submit most of us have not. When we do suffer, we need to take the lesson from the book of Job. We do not lay our blame at the feet of God. God is not out hunting us, trying to cause pain. He's not sitting up in the sky with a silver hammer looking who he's gonna bop on the head next. That's a false view, a very bad view of God. God is indeed loving and he has grand purposes. Job can't see that here, but the book of Job was helping people throughout many, many centuries. He'll help people forever because now he's in the very word of God. So he had a great purpose in God's plan. It's just Job can't see past his pain. In verse 18, he again cries out why. And so, Steve, what happens when we cry out why? It's a natural cry, but we've said it all along. But he does it again. What happens when we ask God why?

Job Wants Death And Darkness

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Sometimes we might receive an answer, sometimes we might not receive an answer. Sometimes the answer is just wait. Job here is really getting that answer, if anything, is going to be wait. And at the end of this, we're gonna see that things are restored back to Job. I don't want to say that his relationship with God is restored. His relationship with God has remained the same. Job, as he mentioned before, I am not guilty. Well, if you know that you're not guilty, Job, then your responses should not be the ones that you're saying here of despair to the point of saying, why was I even born? Why did you even bring me forth? If you were going to do this to me, why did you even have me be born? Now again, I think one of the reasons that Job is going through this is because we have the account of the book of Job for us to take the learnings from it and the millions of people through the eons, hundreds of years that have taken learnings from this book of Job as to what's going on between them and God and how they should respond to God. That is something that is, I don't want to say it was a purpose from this, but it is something that is a learning from this as to our relationship with God and God's relationship to us. So again, as we go through here, keep that in mind. It's a learning from us as to how we should think of God, how we should respond to God, and even the questions that we should ask God. In all of these sections here of nine and 10, once again, Job is laying blame at God's feet and it's misdirected altogether. None of this stuff is being inflicted on him by God. It's being inflicted on him by, in this case, Satan, but it's not God that is inflicting it on him. So asking the question why, whenever you have a false premise, is begging whether or not you're actually going to get an answer back from that.

Why Questions And God’s Sufficiency

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Exactly. He asked why, but it's really, as you said, begging this question. It's also even if God were to give an answer, Job wouldn't accept it or wouldn't understand it. Therefore, he basically gets a similar response to what God told the apostle Paul, my grace is sufficient in 2 Corinthians 12, 9. So we have there a great teaching that we can all take away from, which is asking why questions of God is really futile. He also says the world would have been better if I had not been born, if God had done it a different way. So the question I would ask is can we as human beings truly say that the world would be better if God had done things a different way? We seem to know better than God. And of course, the answer is no, we don't know more than God. And we can't sit here and say, God, you should have done otherwise. You shouldn't have let me born or let me be born at a different time. We cannot second guess God. People today experience true suffering just like Job. Job is saying that it would have been better if God would have allowed him to die. He gets to that point towards the end of this chapter. One idea that Job repeats through the book is that he wishes he could die. Remember, Elijah and Jonah were both depressed and wished that they were no longer alive as well. So some modern cultures have taken and said, well, we're going to fix that. We know more than God. So we're going to allow assisted suicide to take away people's suffering, which I understand the motivation, but it's a motivation to try to reduce suffering. However, Steve, can we really say to God that we know more than Him and that we should die?

Assisted Suicide And Knowing Better

Eternal Hope And A Hospice Story

SPEAKER_01 21:29

No. And what we should be thinking of, what's on the other side? What are the promises that are given to us? We're promised eternal life. We're promised a glorified body that is not going to be corrupted or be subject to diseases, any of the things that this mortal body that we're in today is subject to. That's what we should be thinking of. When we get into these situations, think of where we're going. Think of what we're going to have. Think of the promises that have been given. Given to us, and that's where we should be focused on. Now, look, I know that that's an easy statement to make. Somebody could say, Well, you're not going through what I'm going through. And that's easy for you to say, Well, I have had some suffering in my life. I have seen other people that have suffered extensively. It's not something that is pleasant to be around. But at the same time, our understanding of where they were going helped them be able to make that journey of the suffering that they went through and to transition to the other life, the afterlife. Now, the way to do that is to be able to have faith and trust in Jesus Christ and to be able to know where you're going and where you're headed. One of the situations that I was a part of of a person that was in a hospice situation and only had a few hours left to live, I was conversing with the hospice nurse. And the hospice nurse conveyed to me, he said, the believers that I come across that are in hospice, they have a tendency from the ones that he had seen to transition to the other life peacefully. He said, the ones that are non-believers, he said, they generally fight it and they struggle with it and they struggle to stay alive. And that struck me at the time that there's these two types of people. Therefore, they go peacefully to welcome the next world, and the ones who are not believers, and that they struggle and try and hang on to this world that they are a part of now, even though they know that they are in their last days and hours of life here on earth. The question to you who are watching and listening are you a believer? Are you ready to transition to the next world? Are you ready to go peacefully or are you going to struggle to stay attached to this world? You can be a believer today and trust in Jesus Christ and what he has done through his death, burial, and resurrection. And you have the promise of eternal life and a glorified body that we've talked about here today.

Next Time And Final Blessing

SPEAKER_00 24:17

As we're recording this, my father-in-law is on his deathbed. He will not live very much longer. How long, we don't know. It's in God's hands. But one thing we do know is that we as humans do not have the right to take our own life or that of another innocent person. We do not have that authority or that right. God will take them when it is his time. The whole movement of assisted suicide or euthanasia, I understand the motivation, believe me, but I also understand the consequences of getting it wrong. And we see some of that very negative things that are happening around the world today. God knows best. He'll take us when it's his time, and we do not have the right nor the authority to take an innocent life. We'll stop there for today. Next time we're going to see the third of Job's friends who will come in and give his response, and it's going to be a quite cold slap in the face. He's going to be quite blunt, and we trust that you'll be here next time for us to reason through that. Thank you so much for watching and listening.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

May God bless you.