Daily Devotional By Desiringgod Ministry – John Piper Ministry  31 OCTOBER 2024 | Topic: How Not to Respond to Suffering  

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How Not to Respond to Suffering

Happy Reformation Day everyone. I hope you joined our Here We Stand series this month and are enjoying it. It’s a remarkable gift to have the Bible in our own language so that we can read it for ourselves — and to read the book of Job for ourselves, which we begin tomorrow in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan.

Here’s a question about the early chapters of Job, from Lisa, a listener to the podcast. “Pastor John, hello and thank you for APJ. We often focus on how Job responded to suffering. ‘The steadfastness of Job,’ as James says in James 5:11. But we often don’t focus on Job’s wife’s response in Job 2:9–10. Can you expound on her response and tell us what lessons we can take about how not to respond to personal suffering?”

Both in the Old and the New Testament, amazingly, God uses Satan to serve his own purifying, strengthening, preserving purposes in the lives of his precious children. In other words, God baffles Satan by making him the instrument of the very thing he hates — namely, trust in God and holiness in life. I mention this just to make sure that none of us thinks that Satan’s involvement with Job’s suffering is somehow exceptional in the Bible and can be marginalized, as though it weren’t going to happen to us.

“God uses Satan to serve his own purifying, strengthening, preserving purposes in the lives of his precious children.”

Remember how Paul describes his own thorn in the flesh and why it was given to him in 2 Corinthians 12:7: “To keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.” Now, Satan’s purpose in our lives is not to keep us from becoming conceited. His purpose is to make us conceited, make us proud and arrogant and self-sufficient. But this thorn was given to keep Paul humble, keep him trusting God. It was sent from God, but the messenger that God used to send it was Satan.

If we see Satan’s hand in our suffering, it doesn’t mean that the suffering has no good design from our loving Father.

Two Responses to Suffering

So, we’re not surprised when we read in Job 1:11–12 that God makes Satan the instrument of the terrible suffering that he used to test his servant Job. Satan says to God, “‘Stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.’ And the Lord said to Satan, ‘Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.’” Satan goes out and, with God’s permission, takes all of his oxen, all of his camels, all of his donkeys, and then kills all ten of his children.

Job’s astonishing response that magnifies the worth and trustworthiness of God is this: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.” He didn’t say Satan has taken away. “The Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). He pays no attention to Satan whatsoever. For all we know, he doesn’t even know what happened in the heavenlies with regard to Satan, but he goes straight to the ultimate source of his pain and blesses God, trusts God, casts himself utterly on God.

Satan makes one more challenge against Job and against God, and says, “Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh” (Job 2:4–5). When I read that, I couldn’t help but think about Eve: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). Could this also include his wife — his bone and his flesh? “And he will curse you to your face” (Job 2:5). God is willing to take this test one step further and takes Satan at his word and says, “Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life” (Job 2:6). So, he goes out and, under God’s sovereignty, he strikes Job with terrible sores. Job 2:7: “So Satan . . . struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.”

Then comes Job’s encounter with his wife. Job 2:9–10: “His wife said to him, ‘Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.’” Now, that’s exactly what Satan wanted Job to say. “I curse you, God, and I’m done with life.” So, Job’s wife had lined up with Satan and becomes part of his temptation — bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh becoming part of what Satan wants him to do.

What Job’s Wife Teaches Us

What’s the author’s purpose in telling us about Job’s wife’s apparent despair? I think it has a double purpose. One is to show that, in our suffering, our most precious friend or loved one may turn against us (at least, it may seem so). Our flesh and bone, part of our very self, may become part of Satan’s test.

“If we see Satan’s hand in suffering, it doesn’t mean that the suffering has no good design from our loving Father.”

The other purpose, I think, is that we not let tests embitter us — to show that Job didn’t let the test embitter him — but rather bring out of us a responsive hope to the very loved one who has become part of the satanic temptation, and that we bring clarity to that loved one about God. And I think that’s what Job models here. He says, “‘You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?’ In all this Job did not sin with his lips” (Job 2:10).

So, he says two things. One, let’s be clear about God. He has the right to bring comfort and calamity into our lives. He owes us nothing. We don’t deserve anything from him. We can’t negotiate with him. He has done us no wrong, wife. His ways are high. We will understand by-and-by, even if we don’t now. And the other response is hope — hope that his wife is not settled in her opposition, but only weakened for a moment.

Four Pointers to Hope

Now, I think that the author of this book wants us to see this. People don’t always catch this, but I think the author tips us off in several ways. I see at least four pointers to the hopefulness of her situation that Job sees first.

1. Up to this point in the story, even though all ten of her children had died, there’s no mention of her despair or bitterness when Job says, “The Lord took away” (see Job 1:21).

2. At the end of the book, when Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are rebuked, she’s not among those who get rebuked (Job 42:7).

3. When Job explains to her that God has a right to bring good and evil, comfort and calamity, there’s no pushback.

4. Most importantly, Job does not say, “You are a foolish woman.” He says, “You speak as one of the foolish women” (Job 2:10). In other words, he’s not yet willing to put her in that category. “I don’t see you yet, dear wife, as one of the foolish women, but as temporarily giving way under the horrible losses you have endured.”

So, I think the reason Job’s wife is introduced in this story is not mainly to condemn her but to highlight again the triumph of Job’s faith and hope and love.

Trust God and Live

You may remember, Tony, and maybe a few of our listeners do — I doubt it, but maybe — that I wrote a cycle of four long poems about Job. I tried in the second one to capture this hope. It was all about the encounter with Job’s wife. I thought it might be good to end this APJ by crawling inside Job’s head in an imaginary conversation with his wife to see how they might have resolved this together. So, here we go — just a few lines from this poem:

He pulled himself up from his place,
And by some power of grace, he stood
Beside his wife and said, “I would,
No doubt, in your place feel the same.
But, wife, I cannot curse the name
That never treated me unfair,
And just this day has answered prayer.”
“What prayer? What did you bid him do?”

“That I should bear this pain, not you.
O Dinah, do not speak like those
Who cannot see, because they close
Their eyes, and say there is no God,
Or fault him when he plies the rod.
It is no sin to say, my love,
That bliss and pain come from above.
And if we do not understand
Some dreadful stroke from his left hand,
Then we must wait and trust and see.
O Dinah, would you wait with me?”
“I’ll try,” she said, “I didn’t mean
That you should die. I’m more unclean
Than you with all your sores.” She knelt,
And found, between a boil and welt,
A place to put her kiss. “Is there
Some evidence that God could care
For such as me?” Job touched her hair:

“You are another answered prayer.”

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