Sometimes when Sara and Vanessa were just little girls, nights after supper could be an ordeal, and if their brother Chris was home from school, the situation could get even more trying. After the food was put away and everyone completed their jobs in clearing the table and loading the dishwasher, the kids would race to the TV room. It was more than eagerness to watch a show that spurred them on; it was a control thing. You see, they weren't racing to be the first one there, and they weren't racing to get the best seat in front of the television as much as they were racing to get their hands on the remote control. Each of them knew that whoever controlled the remote controlled the viewing. It was a control thing.
Are you a controlling person? Do you have to orchestrate things so that they turn out right by your standards? Are things a failure if they don't go the way you visualize them? Go on, you can admit it; there's a bit of a “control freak” in each of us, isn't there? We like to be in control of our lives. But what happens when you can't control things? What happens when things don't go as you planned? I know what happened to the children when they couldn't control the remote. It seemed like someone always ended up crying. It really upsets us when we aren't in control.
What do you do when life is out of control? Job was such a man whose life was completely out of control – at least out of his control. Do you remember his story?
I. Dear God, help me accept whatever you send me…
Job had once been “the greatest man among all the people of the East” (1:3). He had flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, camels, and donkeys that numbered in the hundreds and thousands. Everyone looked up to him for he was seen as “blameless and upright – a man who feared God and shunned evil.” Job had lots going for him. In a sense you could say that he seemed in control of his life.
Then one day the devil complained and challenged God to bring suffering into Job's life. “Sure, Job's a good guy,” the devil whined, “because you give him everything. But his faith is shallow. You watch; he'll buckle at the first sign of trouble. Give me a chance at him and I'll show you that he's not very strong at all.”
God consented to a point. And the testing began.
The devil hit him hard. Job lost everything. First his flocks and herds; next his servants; then his sons and daughters were killed; the devil inflicted his body with painful sores; and lastly his wife turned against him. His good life and happy existence went out the window as he lost control of everything. He hurt deeply.
So deep was his hurt that for the first time in his life he began to question God and the purpose of life. It came out in the words of our text when he asked, “Doesn't man have hard service on earth? Aren't his days like those of a hired man? Like a slave longing for the evening shadows, or a hired man waiting eagerly for his wages, so I have been allotted months of futility and nights of misery have been assigned to me.”
“Life stinks!” Job complained. “I'm like a soldier at war, battling an enemy I can't stop. I'm like a slave hounded by hard work who can't get any rest until darkness falls. I'm like a hard laborer struggling to make a go of it, frustrated at every turn of the way over heartaches and hardships I can't control. Life stinks!”
There are times that life can stink as Satan and sin work against you. When troubles strike, jobs are lost, sickness incapacitates, and loved ones die, life does get discouraging. What can you do to stop it? Very little because such things are the reality and result of sin in this world; its consequences lie outside our control.
Think of what God told Adam and Eve right after the fall. He said, “I will greatly increase your pains….Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you…by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food, until you return to the ground…for dust you are and unto dust you will return” (Gn.3:16f).
Ever since then life on earth has not turned out to be the proverbial rose garden for which people long. Things are not always soft and beautiful. Instead life sometimes stinks. That reality is hard to take and wears us out.
It's so hard to take that the next question that arises in the down times is usually “why”; “Why Lord?” A few verses after our text Job cried: “Why have you made me your target? Have I become a burden to you? Why do you not pardon my offenses and forgive my sins?” (v.20f)
Wow! Even the man whose patience was proverbial and whose upright and blameless nature was famous, even he had to carry his anguished question to the throne of heaven itself as he tried to comprehend the mysterious workings of God with His saints on earth. And you know what? The Lord didn't answer him. But at least Job knew where to go as he was struggling to find rhyme and reason to life when it was out of control.
When problems of suffering or pain, disappointment or loss wear you down, where do you go? Job went to God even though in the end Job never got an answer to all his questions. But when he didn't, he simply accepted what was his lot saying, “Shall we (only) accept good from God, and not trouble?” ( 2:10 ).
Dear friend, God never promised you a “rose garden” in life. The fact is life in a fallen world can't give it. Here there are always thorns among the roses. But like Job, we can go to the Lord in the time of our greatest anxiety and learn to accept what God sends, whether good or bad. Why? Because we know “that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him” (Ro.8:28) for nothing can separate us from the love of God which is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is why the Savior came. He came to proclaim this good news in the midst of our season of troubles.
So rest assured, dear friend, He will use your troubles to build Christian character within you and keep you in saving faith. Oh, it's hard when you're struggling; it's hard when you're not in control. But the fact is you're not in control; God is. Life may not be a rose garden, but it is a place where His promises, like the flowers of spring, will bloom even in troubled times . In the end God works it all out. That's Job's story.
To that end we pray, Dear God, When Life Is Out of Control, help us accept whatever you send...
II. …for we know You will remember us.
You will remember us , won't You? Job asked a similar thing. In turning to the Lord he cried, “Remember my life, O God.” It was a cry for help, for God's gracious intervention in Job's life.
“Remember me.” Years later another man used those same words. His life had gone bad, too, and it was his own fault because he went down a violent pathway in life. He became a robber and murderer. But it all came to an abrupt end when he was caught, tried, and sentenced to death.
On the day he died he was hanging on a cross with two others, one who was the Lord Jesus. As he hung there by Jesus' side, he heard the Savior's words of forgiving love, and they began to work a change within him. He began to see Jesus as the Messiah prophesied of old, the One who would redeem fallen man from the curse of sin and its uncontrollable consequences in life. He saw the One who would soon pass through death into a heavenly kingdom. He saw God. Turning in sorrowful repentance to Jesus he prayed like Job: “Remember me when You come into Your kingdom.”
Remember me . Just one thought, one merciful remembrance on the part of the Savior - that would be enough for time and eternity, just one thought and all would take care of itself. In such faith the man received more than he asked for the Savior responded, “I tell you the truth. Today you will be with me in Paradise .”
Think of that, dear friends. His life on earth in a sense didn't change. His hard times caused his death. Yet, of the few people whom the Scriptures specifically tell us are now in heaven, one was a criminal whose life was desperately out of control. It was a man who brought adversity down on his own shoulders and yet, in his dying moment, had come to trust the Savior. It was to that same Redeemer that Job cried, “Remember me.”
And He does remember those who call upon Him for the Bible assures, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!...And as a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you” (Is.49:15; 66:13).
Would you mothers turn away from your children? Could you possibly forget them? I don't think so. Even if there could be some that do, the Lord Jesus will never turn away from you who come to Him. He didn't turn away from the crowds of the sick and hurting that came to Him in our Gospel Lesson today (Mk.1:29f). Indeed, He even worked Himself ragged in order to reach out to them. And He will be that way to you, too.
Eventually, when the time was right and Job had learned what he needed to learn, He came to Job in mercy and might and Job's life was restored.
To know this Christ is to know the love of God, and to know the love of God is to be assured of eternal fellowship with Him forever. In light of that, no earthly burden can continue to depress.
To that end we pray, Dear God, when life is out of control, help us accept whatever you send for we know You will remember and help us. God grant it to us in faith for Jesus' sake. Amen.