A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. As Jesus and his disciples were making their way along, somebody said to Jesus, I will be your follower wherever you go. In reply, Jesus said to him, the foxes have their lairs, the birds of the sky have their nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay even his head. To somebody else, Jesus said, come after me. But the man replied, first let me bury my father.
Jesus said to him, let the dead bury their dead. Come away and proclaim the kingdom of god. Yet another person said to Jesus, I will be your follower, lord. But first let me take leave of my people at home, my family. And Jesus answered him, whoever puts his hand to the plow but keeps looking back is unfit for the reign of God.
And this is the gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. We have an excerpt today from the book of Job, one of the most dramatic, spectacular, tantalizing books of the bible, old and new testament.
We don't know where it came from. Comes from the Far East. It's an old story. And just to bring home to you how contemporary the problem of the book of Job is, right now one of the bestsellers is by Doris Lessing. It's called The Only Problem.
That's the title of the book, just been published. The Only Problem, meaning the problem of the book of Job. And the novel is based upon the book of Job. Elliott did his best to dramatize it. But you don't have to dramatize it.
It's dramatized already in the Bible if we read it, of course. We don't read it. Today we read 10 or 15 lines, and tomorrow we'll read a few more lines taken from an entirely different chapter. And, if you want to if you want to destroy a book, this is the way to do it. But anyway, the great problem of the book of Job is the problem, what shall we say, of suffering, of pain, of evil.
Or as a more or less recent title of a book on the very same problem was, Why do bad things happen to good people? It was one of the bestsellers, you know. So this problem of the book of Job is with us and will be with us. Probably the most emotionally disturbing presentation of this is in Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, where the problem of suffering, the problem of evil, the problem of pain is concentrated on what happens to innocent little children. And believe me, it's a blood curdling episode.
Brothers Karamazov. If that pronunciation is good, just remember I speak modern Russian. But the problem is presented in Job. Presented. And you see the problem is this: Why do bad things happen to good people?
Now you see, the very fact you ask that question means you assume that good things ought to happen to good people in this life. And what's the basis of that assumption? Well, has a lot of bases. It has no question about it. And to find that in a world which is supposed to be the world of a benevolent, omnipotent deity, I don't care what you call it, but if you assume that this is the creation, the product, the effect, the consequence of some kind of a power that's supposed to be loving and kind and benevolent, and you look around you and you see what's in it, you say, It can't be.
Either one or two things you have to say, that the there that benevolent being isn't at all as benevolent, or there is no benevolent being. And in my experience, the great problem of people believing in God, notice I didn't say Christian, is this problem of evil. Or now when I use the word evil I mean any any form of a pain, suffering, tragedy, dying, death, illness, loss of money, all of these things. It's the problem of evil as the contrary of good. That's the problem.
I don't care what word you use. This is what you're dealing with. On the one hand, you have what we call the good, and opposed to that, it's contrary, evil. And it takes all kinds of guises, but the problem is the same. Now, the problem that the Jew has is he begins and still has notice I use present tense.
The problem is they had a firm, and many of them still have a firm conviction that God takes care of his own in this life. Therefore, if you do what's right, if you obey that law down to its slightest detail, God will reward you. And there's plenty to justify this in the old death, plenty to justify. Your barns will be overflowing with the harvest, your families will be you'll have many sons, and prob some probably some daughters too, but they wanted sons. You will your herds will be multiplied.
Your friends will be multiplied. Life will be gorgeous. Just just be God's good servant. And Job was God's good servant. Now this is this is probably the most dramatic book of the bible.
It's a dialogue between God and Satan. And, God God boasts that he's got a good man in the world. Satan says, Oh, heck you do. He said, Just let me touch him. And God says, Well, go ahead and touch him, don't hurt him in his person.
Alright. So, Job, one fellow loses his barns and he loses his wealth, he loses his herds, he loses his family, they all die, and lightning strikes, thunder bar, you know, it's a great cataclysm. So he loses everything, but he's not touched in his person. And he stands firm. He says, Job says, I don't understand why this is happening to me.
I have never been guilty of any grievous fall. But I will not reject God. I don't understand it, but I won't reject him. So then the devil says, Yeah, but let me touch him in his person. God said, Well, go ahead, but you can't kill him.
So then Job then, is attacked by some kind of a dread disease, he's thrown out on a dung heap, and some of his old time friends come to console him. And there's where we have the big dialogue. They tried to convince Job, look, be honest. Confess that you've done something wrong and God is punishing you. And Job says, the heck y'all will, I haven't done anything that's wrong and I'm not gonna say I've done it.
And I'm not gonna say God is bad or treating me badly either. And so this I'm not exactly it's very dramatic if you'll take the time to read it. And what's the conclusion? Zero. Zero.
Because there is no answer to this problem in the Old Testament. And believe me, the answer isn't in that book, why bad things happen to good people. Because you remember, this is a big subject folks, I'm telling you. But anyway, because you've got to admit that if you admit that God creates the world, you've got to admit that everything in the world depends in some way on God. And therefore, you can't eliminate God.
That's what the author of this, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. He says, don't blame God for evil, comes from men. You can't get God out of the peep out of the picture. That's the problem. If you could do that, you wouldn't have a problem.
The problem is that God is in the picture. And how do you keep him in the picture if evil is in the world of nobody's doing? And think of the poor, innocent, little children, a million and a half of them aborted, murdered in The United States alone in one year. So I say the answer to the problem is not in Job. Job does not Job does not retire or reject his confidence in God, and he does not admit for one minute that he was ever guilty of evil.
But the solution to the problem is not there. Why should Job be afflicted? Afflicted? Why should there be suffering in the world if there's a benevolent being? And you can't exclude him from the causality of it.
See, there's the basic metaphysical problem. The answer is in the cross of Jesus Christ. There is no other answer. And the answer isn't in this world. And the answer is beyond any one of us to grasp it, to comprehend it.
We cannot see the ways and the means of God running the show. And who what arrogance to think that we ever can. And our blessed Lord didn't promise to bring a solution to that problem in this world. Because if you want an in if you want to see an instance of innocence violated, of innocence destroyed, look at the cross, the Son of God, I presume was innocent. So don't let go to Dostoevsky about this karamazov.
We can just look at the cross if you want to see innocence defiled and tragically destroyed. So the answer is in the good news of Jesus Christ. You have not here a lasting city. You belong to the kingdom of god. Your destiny is not in this world.
It is in the next where the scales of justice will be balanced. In the name of the father, son, the holy spirit. Amen.