Reverend Jonathan Waits
What to Do When the Wheels Fall Off (Job 1-2)
June 1, 2025
Several years ago, I saw a movie called The End of the Spear. The movie is about a group of missionaries who were martyred in the course of their efforts to advance the Gospel. Most famous among this group were two men named Jim Elliott and Nate Saint. In 1955, Jim, Nate, and three other missionaries were attempting to make contact with the Huaorani tribe deep in the jungles of Ecuador. The tribe was known to be very aggressive toward others, especially outsiders. After making several initial peace offerings by lowering various goodies for the tribe down in a bucket from their plane, the team finally decided that it was time to make personal contact with the tribe. On the morning of January 3, 1956, they landed and met some of the tribe members for the very first time. This was one of the first times the tribe had had any contacts with outsiders. They were received with excitement and hospitality. It was looking like things were going to go smoothly. This road for advancing the Gospel was appearing most promising. But just five days later, everything fell apart.
Five days later, the missionaries landed again on a little strip of beach along a river in the jungle they had used before. They were excited. Their talk—and much prayer—was focused on the incredible privilege of getting to present the Gospel to these people for the very first time ever. When the tribal warriors who had greeted them the day before came out of the jungle, though, they did not come for peace and friendship. They came to shut down this outsider intrusion into their private lives. Jim, Nate, and the three other men were murdered in cold blood, speared to death by the Huarorani warriors. They each left behind a wife and a total of 10 kids among them. These five men had committed their lives to serving Jesus and advancing the Gospel of His coming kingdom regardless of the costs. They were selflessly committed to this goal. And yet this was their end.
Surely we would think that men and women who were living their lives so fully in obedience to God would somehow be exempt from such an evil, violent end as these men received. If we did, though, we would be thinking wrong. There is a veritable mountain of evidence pointing emphatically in the opposite direction. Scholars estimate that more than 70 million Christians have been killed for their faith in the two millennia of the church. Of that number, a full 45.5 million met this fate in the 20th century alone. In other words, more Christians died for their faith between the years of 1900 and 2000 than did so in the previous 19 centuries combined. Since then, the number of Christians martyred each year has gone up with each subsequent year surpassing the previous in its bloody total. What do we do with this level of evil?
We don’t have to stop there. We can find gross examples of evil—both human-caused and natural—everywhere we look. We don’t even have to look as far back in history as 1956. We can focus our attention entirely more recently than that. There is the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine in which Russia’s list of war crimes grows longer by the day. There was the terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas on Israeli Jews. Just a couple of weeks ago two young Israelis working for the embassy in D.C. were gunned down in cold blood. The young man had recently bought a ring with intentions of proposing to the young woman. There were the fires in Los Angeles this past January. With just three letters—WNC—I can have you immediately calling to mind scenes of devastation from our own mountains caused by Hurricane Helene. The news just came out a couple of weeks ago that Planned Parenthood was responsible for the death of more than 400,000 babies, the most in the history of the organization. And that was only about a third of the total number of abortions in the country last year. Or how about we look inside the church. In the last decade journalists and concerned folks on the inside have uncovered sexual abuse scandals in multiple denominations including the Catholic Church and our own Southern Baptist Convention. In some cases, there are patterns of abuse going back decades. This is disgusting.
Evil is everywhere we look. It’s all around us. We can’t hide from it. It seeks us out. It’s there when we travel across the world. It’s there when we travel across the country. It’s there when we travel just across the street. We find it in the culture around us. We even find it in the church. If you haven’t dealt with a crisis in your family recently, just wait. Something’s coming. How do we deal with this? What are we to make of this in light of our claim to believe in a God who is sovereign, just, powerful, and good?
The challenge of evil in this world has long been one of its most vexing problems. The problem is troublesome enough that whole religious systems have been developed specifically to deal with it. One of these is Buddhism. Buddhism’s answer is that all of life is an illusion, and that in order to get rid of pain, we need to get our minds wrapped around the fact that we are all nothing. But, while we wait for everybody to get there, the illusion we live in each and every day operates on a basic cause-and-effect principle. What we do will come back on us at some point. If not in this life, then in a subsequent life until we finally escape the cycle of rebirth. That’s karma.
As far as an answer goes to the problem of evil, this one is pretty bad. But we can easily see how it developed. I mean, we can wrap our minds around a simple cause and effect principle. People who do dumb things should expect dumb things to happen back to them. If you put your hand on the hot stove, it is going to get burned. Cause…effect. Easy. It seems very just. But there are many evil things that happen that don’t have any apparently good explanations like the deaths of Jim Elliot and his partners. And assertions that they are simply the result of the transgressions of our past lives is like a bad joke.
Other non-Christian worldviews offer similarly flawed assessments. Harold Kushner, who we mentioned a few weeks ago, argued that bad things happen to good people not because God is cruel, but essentially because He is impotent to stop them, and is as angry and heartbroken about it all as we are. While that’s nice in the abstract, it’s basically Fatalism 101—life happens; get over it—and that’s just not satisfying as far as answers go. When we experience a personal tragedy—or even when we witness one from afar—fatalism just doesn’t cut it.
Other answers fail equally. For a long time, people explained bad things by imagining that the gods were angry. If we would just do the things that keep the gods happy, everything would be okay. Well, as you can probably imagine, where this idea takes hold (even in the church), it tends to lead to people being taken advantage of to the benefit of someone who represents the gods in some capacity. After all, how are we supposed to know what pleases the gods without someone who speaks on their behalf telling us? Still others have proposed a simpler solution: retribution. Bad things just happen to bad people. If something bad has happened to you, it’s because you deserved it. Now, you may not know what exactly it is that you’ve done, but you still deserved whatever it is. The disciples thought like this. When they came upon a man who had been born blind, they asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he is like this?”
The good news for followers of Jesus who believe God spoke through some 40 individuals over the span of 1,500 years to tell a single, consistent story aimed at revealing Himself and His character to us, most notably in the person of His Son, Jesus, we are not left on our own to deal with this intractable issue. The writers of Scripture wrestled with the problem of evil and its occasional apparent attribution to God just as much as we do. They were honest about their struggles, and were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write them down for us. And while there are numerous places that deal with it in one fashion or another, there is one particularly ancient document in the collection that deals with it more head-on than any of the others. It isn’t everything the Biblical authors have to say on the subject, and you should most definitely read all the others because without that full picture we don’t have a chance at making positive sense out of the problem, but this document is a pretty comprehensive statement all the same, covering not only one reason bad things occasionally happen to apparently undeserving people, but also how to minister to those who find themselves in such a hard place, how those who are there should respond out of them, and a pretty strong reminder that we don’t know everything and the likelihood that there’s more going on than we realize is pretty high.
This incredible story centers on a man named Job, and for the next three weeks in a new teaching series called, Grace in Hard Times, we are going to explore his story together, seeking to understand the treasure trove of wisdom and perspective it has for us on the problem of evil. This morning, we are going to look at just the beginning of the story. Next week, we’ll look at how all the major characters responded to the awful things that happened to Job. Finally, in a couple of weeks, we’ll look at God’s response and how the story ends.
When the curtain opens on this drama things for Job are about as good as they could possibly be. If you have a copy of the Scriptures handy, join me in Job 1. Let’s take a look at this together: “There was a man in the country of Uz named Job. He was a man of complete integrity, who feared God and turned away from evil. He had seven sons and three daughters. His estate included seven thousand sheep and goats, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very large number of servants. Job was the greatest man among all the people of the east.”
Are you getting the picture here? Job was exceedingly rich. But he wasn’t just exceedingly rich, he had a great family too. And he didn’t just have a great family, he was an outstanding guy. And it wasn’t just that he was an outstanding guy, he was a godly man. And just because he had everything else going for him, he was probably good looking too. But even that wasn’t the whole of it. Not only was he rich and had a great family and was a great guy and a godly man and probably good looking too, he actively thought about other people first, especially his kids. He was a great parent. Keep reading in the text with me at v. 4: “His sons used to take turns having banquets at their homes. They would send an invitation to their three sisters to eat and drink with them. Whenever a round of banqueting was over, Job would send for his children and purify them, rising early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of them. For Job thought, ‘Perhaps my children have sinned, having cursed God in their hearts.’ This was Job’s regular practice.”
I mean, come on. Really?!? Was there actually a person like this, or was this just something made up to make a point? Well, there are several pointers toward this being a real story about a real person named Job who probably lived somewhere around the time of Abraham. Furthermore, when you read it, you are fairly well forced to make one of two conclusions. Either this all really happened (meaning somebody got some special insight from God because there are parts of the story that could only be known that way), or else someone was a moral and theological genius because no one could just make up everything that’s here. Our moral imaginations are too fractured by sin to allow for it.
In any event, Job’s life is about as idyllic as you could imagine. Actually, it was even better than that. He was the guy everybody simultaneously hated because he made them feel so inferior by virtue of his wild success in everything, and yet who they all wanted to be. But then something happened. Something no one could have expected and in fact couldn’t have even known about. There was a gathering before the throne of God. The text says in v. 6 that “one day the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord…” Now, we don’t know what this looked like. There are other references in the Scriptures to the holy counsel meeting in the divine throne room like this, but it’s hard to make easy sense out of them. We don’t know the purpose of this particular gathering. We could guess, and some scholars have made some awfully intelligent guesses, but ultimately, we don’t know. The point is that sometime, somehow, there was a gathering before God’s throne. The text presents this as something that happened regularly and on at least this occasion, there was who is for us an unexpected guest: “…and Satan [more literally the Accurser or the Adversary] also came with them.” Why he was there, again, we don’t know. There are conversations about this we can have another time, but right now it won’t help us to guess. I have a great book that explores this idea to recommend to you if you are interested. Right now, we need to focus on what we can know.
And what we can know is that in v. 7, the Lord speaks to Satan. “Where have you come from?” Given the stage, Satan responds: “From roaming through the earth…and walking around on it.” Now, we don’t know what exactly he means by this or what exactly he was doing in his travels, but from the context and what we know about Satan, he was probably looking for some way he could mess with God’s people and interfere with God’s plans. God responds with what is as high a praise as I can imagine. He holds out Job as an example of His best and brightest. Look at v. 8 now: “Then the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil.’” Now Satan doesn’t know it—and at this point in the story, neither do we—but God is setting up a trap for him. God knows that Satan is prideful and always overplays his hand, and so He holds out Job to Satan and says, “Have you seen how great he is?” Satan takes the bait, and the wheels of the trap start spinning, though it will be some time before it closes on him. Verse 9: “Satan answered the Lord, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Haven’t you placed a hedge around him, his household, and everything he owns? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he owns, and he will surely curse you to your face.’”
What’s going on here? Satan is basically asking permission to go after Job. That he has to ask for permission is worth noting. He plans to show God that the only reason Job—or anyone else for that matter—is faithful to Him is because of the blessings He has given him. And God (probably with a wry smile on his face) essentially says, “Okay, let’s find out.” Verse 12: “‘Very well,’ the Lord told Satan, ‘everything he owns is in your power. However, do not lay a hand on Job himself.’ So Satan left the Lord’s presence.”
What comes next is awful. Satan wastes no time in getting to work. In a single, tragic day, Job learns of the loss of all his livestock which was essentially the extent of his wealth, the death of nearly all his servants, and the death of all ten of his children. This would be enough to break anybody, to lead them to curse God—just as Satan planned. And yet Job doesn’t. He drops to his knees in utter grief and desperation and cries out to God in worship. “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will leave this life. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And in case the point isn’t clear, the narrator makes it explicit in v. 22: “Throughout all this Job did not sin or blame God for anything.” Satan expected one thing, but Job gave him another. Unfortunately for Job, though, there was more to come.
Move forward with me into chapter 2. The scene from before repeats itself, but with an important change: “One day the sons of God came again to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them to present himself before the Lord. The Lord asked Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’ ‘From roaming through the earth,’ Satan answered him, ‘and walking around on it.’ Then the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil. He still retains his integrity, even though you incited me against him, to destroy him for no good reason.’ ‘Skin for skin!’ Satan answered the Lord. ‘A man will give up everything he owns in exchange for his life. But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face.’ ‘Very well,’ the Lord told Satan, ‘he is in your power; only spare his life.’”
So, Satan again comes before the Lord, and the Lord again holds Job out as exemplary still in spite of the damage Satan was allowed to do to him before. Again, Satan complains that the Lord has been too generous with Job and that is the reason Job is as faithful as he is. What is it that people say when things go wrong around us? “Well, at least I still have my health.’ Satan wanted to take that from Job. When a person can’t even claim health as a lingering blessing, surely they will then curse God and turn from Him. Again, the Lord allows Satan to wreak havoc, this time in Job’s own body. And he does. Verse 7: “So Satan left the Lord’s presence and inflicted Job with terrible boils from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.”
His situation was so awful, his reversal of fortunes so great, that even those around him were losing their faith and calling him to the same. Verse 9: “His wife said to him, ‘Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!’” Now, I don’t think she wanted him dead so much as she didn’t want to watch him suffer anymore. And we can understand this. Haven’t you ever been in a place while watching a loved one slowly and painfully waste away from some disease that you wished for them to just die so they wouldn’t have to suffer anymore? She wanted the same thing, and the thought then was that if you cursed God, He would actively strike you down. Job might have died without his integrity and faithfulness then (giving Satan the win he was seeking), but at least He wouldn’t be suffering anymore. In the mind of Job’s wife, this was the better of the bad options available to them. We get that.
Job had now been through way more than what any person should have to endure. Perhaps you haven’t experienced pain at quite the level Job was facing, or at least not in quite the same rapid-fire fashion, but maybe you have. At the very least you have faced pain and hard times in your life. We all have. You have faced hard times that seemed totally inexplicable; times when the wheels fell off the wagon for no apparent reason and no amount of effort on your part seemed to be able to explain it or make any difference in it. What do we do in these times?
We do what Job did; what the writer here is pointing us to do. To get a sense of what this is, look at Job’s response to his wife’s call to curse God and die in v. 10: “‘You speak as a foolish woman speaks,’ he told her. ‘Should we accept only good from God and not adversity?’” Some translations use the word “evil” there instead of adversity because that’s a more literal translation of the Hebrew, but Job isn’t talking about moral evil, but hard circumstances more generally. Adversity is the better word for us. More to the point, though, and as we will see in more detail, Job never once doubted God’s character. He was absolutely convinced about the nature of the character of the God he served. He knew God was just, loving, faithful, and good. He knew that God would only act in ways consistent with His character. And because of that, he knew God would only allow such terrible circumstances to befall him if He had a good reason for it. And, once again, the narrator makes clear that Job’s integrity and righteousness were not compromised throughout this experience. “Throughout all this Job did not sin in what he said.”
Skeptics will sometimes challenge believers on the character and even existence of God using the problem of evil as their vehicle. They will allege that evil exists in the world of a supposedly all-good and all-powerful God because He is either not all-good or not all-powerful. They will try to force us to choose one or the other. Our response needs to be that they are not seeing the full picture. God is all-good and all-powerful, but He is also all-wise. He has a particular plan for His creation that will be for its highest good and His highest glory. He will allow only those things to happen which will hasten it all down the road to this point. In other words, God only allows bad things to happen because He has a morally sufficient reason to do so. Our challenge is that we can’t often or even ever see what this is. Our place is to trust in God’s character as Job did, and to keep following Him, knowing that He will lead us through all the hard times to wholeness and rest on the other side. To put all of that a bit more succinctly, when hard times hit, don’t lose sight of the big picture.
What Job recognized and what we need to recognize in our own lives is that there’s more to the story than we can see from our vantage point. Job couldn’t have known what was going on behind the scenes of his situation. He was part of a much larger drama. God showed off His masterpiece to His biggest critic, and the critic exclaimed, “You painted it too perfectly! Wash out a few strokes and the whole thing will run off the canvas.” God let him spill some black ink on the picture, and then went on to incorporate the ink such that what came after was even more glorious than what was before. When hard times hit, don’t lose sight of the big picture.
There is a bigger picture of which we are all merely a part. We’re not the artist. We’re merely a pixel. Pixels may at times wonder what’s going on around them. They may feel isolated and alone. They may feel like the whole bucket of paint is getting dumped on them from time to time when it’s really just a brush stroke. But when they understand that they are part of a larger painting in which they are an essential part, all those other things become much easier to bear. Remember the awful, evil thing that happened to those missionaries in Ecuador? Remember the moral evil their families had to bear with? Eventually, they learned that there was indeed more to the picture God was painting. You’ll have to come back to hear the rest of that story. It’s a pretty powerful one, so you won’t want to miss it. Our story isn’t over yet. For now, though, hold on to this: When hard times hit, don’t lose sight of the big picture.
Such a posture won’t make the hard times themselves any easier, and it won’t mean you won’t still wrestle mightily with them as we will see next week—you’ve got to come back!—but it will give you the grace you need to keep moving forward toward the beautiful end God has in store for you. When hard times hit, don’t lose sight of the big picture.