Introduction. Read Job2

I will look at the part played by all those who participated in poor Job's second test.

(2) God's satisfaction with Job.

God is pleased with Job even though the unfolding disasters suggest otherwise. God is delighted with Job's integrity and faith both of which remain although he is bereft of family, possessions and standing.

Job's faith in God survives even though he is unaware of the reason for his suffering. It would be easy for Job to think God was punishing him for being a bad man. He never draws that conclusion.

Hannah may have believed that her inability to get pregnant was a sign that God was displeased with her. This was far from the case. God wanted a special mother for his servant Samuel. When Hannah was brought to the point where she promised her first born son to the LORD she conceived. How carefully Hannah reared her son until it was time to present him to Eli with whom he completed his education. See exposition on Hannah's Prayer.

God is always pleased when men and women have faith in him. Abraham was not perfect but his faith was credited to him for righteousness. This was surely true of all the heroes of faith who adorn the Old Testament.

(3) The adversaries dissatisfaction.

The adversary unsurprisingly takes no pleasure in Job's integrity. He is a poor loser and like so many poor losers wants to shift the goal posts. He wants another try at undermining the faith of Job. "Skin for skin," he says - meaning probably: a man will give his skin to save his skin. Satan wants to ruin Job's health. He is sure by such means he can demonstrate the shallowness of Job's faith.

Some observations:

(a) Poor health is not usually caused by Satan! When I was a boy I suffered from chronic asthma brought on by the spores of mildew and rust growing on the ripening corn. The inhalers that I now use mean I no longer have asthma. If Satan caused my asthma I don't think a steroid inhaler would prove too much for him!! I doubt whether Satan causes much ill health at all.

(b) There is little doubt that Satan will use severe illnesses to test our faith. A person in constant pain, devastated by a stroke or suffering from one of the degenerative diseases like Parkinson's disease might well question God's providential care and concern. People with depression often have such little self-worth that they lose their assurance of God's love.

(c) I would be very uneasy if chronic illness was habitually inflicted to test faith. John Goldingay's commentary on Job, 'Job for Everyone,' is very helpful because it is written by a scholar whose wife had multiple sclerosis for 43 years. It ruined his wife's life and impaired their relationship. Goldingay does not like to think of Satan being allowed to toy with Job like a cat playing with a mouse. He writes: I wouldn't care to think considerations of the kind that surface in this story lay behind my first wife's forty-three years of living with multiple sclerosis or behind my living with it.

My father had Parkinson's disease for 18 years and I was his carer for the last four of them. My father was able to bear this disease. It did have some beneficial consequences. His church responded well to his decline showing respect and love to the end. It also took away my fear of dealing with frail and mentally disturbed people. Only yesterday I visited in hospital one of our elderly members. She was very poorly and quite agitated and confused but I was able, with God's help, to cheer her up. However, I cannot believe my father steadily deteriorated with this horrible disease for the benefits that accrued. It was TOO high a price for him to pay. His last four years were very distressing.

Something else to bear in mind is that some Christians do not seem to have their faith tested overmuch at all. Suffering is not shared out equally among believers. There must have been other individuals in the time of Job who believed in the one true God. Did they suffer as he suffered?

(d) We are often in the position of Job. We suffer without knowing the reason why. In Job's case there was a reason but he didn't know it. In our case there will be a reason. It may not be the same as Job's. I feel that in the majority of cases the explanation would be quite complex. My father might have got Parkinson's disease through being exposed to toxic chemicals on the farm where he worked part time. The farmer was not concerned with health and safety. My father worked on the farm because the church of which he was pastor did not pay him enough. Perhaps my father was partly to blame for not trying harder to change his circumstances.

(3) The nature of Job's illness.

The symptoms of Job's illness were: severe itching, sores from head to toe, scabs and peeling skin, insomnia, weight loss, fever, depression and nightmares.

It is possible that Job's disease was a severe form of psoriasis. The symptoms of psoriasis are similar to those Job experienced. It is a beastly disease and the incessant itching is a daily torture. Job probably scraped away the dead skin associated with psoriasis to relieve the itching. He may have sat on an ash heap because the wood ash was thought to have therapeutic properties. Experiments have been done that show application of wood ash enhances the healing of lesions. He could have remained in his house. Job and his wife were not destitute. They must have had some treasure stashed away. Another explanation is that Job sat on the village rubbish dump because he felt he was virtually no better than a piece of rubbish.

Another reason I think Job may have suffered from psoriasis is because it may in some cases be triggered by stress. Job had been stressed! Indeed, his terrible losses must have traumatised him.

Today Christians are not spared truly hideous diseases. One of the lay preachers that serve our church has been bedevilled by psoriasis for the last several years. It has made his life a misery.

I expect many of the illnesses from which we suffer are ultimately a consequence of leaving the safe and healthy environment of Eden. If Job's psoriasis was caused by stress it is linked back to his losses - losses down to the wickedness or marauding raiders and a lack of preparedness for vagaries of the weather.

The troubling question remains: in the light of all Job's troubles, to what extent does God protect his own?

(4) The reaction of Job's wife.

(a) Job's wife suffered too. The adversary was not particularly interested in her but none the less she shared in her husband's misery. Her status plummeted, her standard of living dropped and her children died. Job, her husband, was a wreck. Who wants a husband who spends his time sitting on an ash heap and scratching? He was worse than useless to her. Great was her discontent.

(b) Job's wife offered her husband no comfort. Ray Stedman has a few wise words for wives in his excellent commentary on Job: If you are a wife, you may not fully understand how much your husband depends upon you for his emotional, mental and spiritual well being. Husbands typically draw much more emotional and spiritual strength from their wives than either they or their wives realise. Whenever you are tempted to say something that might wound your husband or make him feel abandoned or rejected, remember Job and his wife.

Christian wives should try and avoid the sort of incident recounted by Edward Ardizzone the artist and illustrator in his autobiographical fragment. As a boy he witnessed a very bitter quarrel between his parents. This is what he wrote of his mother: Even to my childish mind much of what she said was unforgivable, and I was made aware for the first time of the appalling power of an angry woman's tongue. To this day it makes me unhappy to think of it.

(c) Job's wife ended up the mouthpiece of Satan. He wanted Job to curse God and die; to give up on God and to give up on life.

This was neither the first nor the last time that the adversary tempted a man through his wife. It began in the Garden of Eden and has gone on ever since.

(5) The distress of Job's friends.

I realise that toward the end of Job's story God expresses a considerable degree of disapproval of the great man's friends. God did not consider they had spoken right of him. However, I think the behaviour of these three friends has quite a lot to commend it!

(a) The motive of Job's friends was good - they came to sympathise and comfort him.

(b) They visited together. When I visit sick folk in hospital I always do so alone. But I must say it is much easier to do so with a friend. When I went with Arthur Rutterford to visit the godly Mr David Cackett in Addenbrookes hospital we were joined by another and then the four of us had a little prayer meeting.

(c) Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar were very distressed by the change in Job. Even from a distance they could see he was much changed. I expect in his pomp Job had been a fine figure of a man - upstanding, dignified and well dressed. He had been reduced to sitting almost naked on a heap of ashes - shrunken, unkempt and diminished.

It is always a terrible shock to see the deterioration in someone ravaged by a serious illness. I hadn't seen a near neighbour for some while. Indeed the last time I had seen him he was riding his bicycle. When I saw him next he was being pushed in a wheelchair - haggard and wild-eyed. He died of mad cow disease.

It makes us feel bad to see someone horribly changed by illness. That is why a lot of Christians never visit the terminally ill in hospital. Their excuse - and that is what it is - "I want to remember him as he was."

(d) Job's friends were not embarrassed at expressing their sorrow. They were not in the stiff upper lip tradition. Eliphaz and his companions wept, tore their robes in anguish and sprinkled dust upon their heads. There are times when it is entirely inappropriate to look on the bright side! There may be no bright side - only tokens of shared sorrow will do.

(e) The three visitors sat with Job for seven days without saying anything. This is surely a rebuke to those who won't even pay a 20 minute hospital visit particularly if there is anything catching about! Job's friends shared his pain and humiliation. There are those who far from sharing your pain don't even want to hear about it.

Several years ago now when I was having problems getting my father undressed and to bed my fellow elder offered to come in and help. I knew he would not be able to help - but I invited him in anyway. My father fought and struggled and Edward found it very distressing. He said to me afterwards: "I wish I hadn't experienced that." I never asked him in again - but it helped me to know that there was one person who understood the difficulties I faced.

(6) Job's response to his affliction.

(a) John Goldingay thinks Satan may have made a mistake in following one disaster with another. It would have been more devastating for everything to come at once. Perhaps it would be truer to say that God staggered Job's afflictions.

Goldingay found he was able to continually adjust as his wife became progressively disabled by multiple sclerosis. He became stronger and stronger as the challenge grew greater and greater. This was also my experience when caring for my father. I eventually gave up work to care for him - not at once after my mother died - but after a couple of years when I was ready to do so.

It is true that people living in poverty in Africa and India are able to put up with suffering a lot better than folk in the West who have had few setbacks in their lives. I was talking to a lady only last Sunday about a man who used to attend our chapel but has been prevented from doing so by poor health. The lady said, "You know, Jim is 80 and he has never been ill before in his life. He can't take it - he's gone to pieces."

So there is a sense in which just as exercise increases one's stamina so suffering can produce endurance.

(b) Job rejected his wife's advice. He called her foolish. The situation would not improve if he cursed God and hoped to die.

When I taught at Debenham one of the pupils suffered from terminal cancer. I can recall Katie, his friend, saying to me, "Where is God in all this." I had very little to say to her but I said what I could: "It is better to suffer with God than to suffer without him."

David wrote: Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil if Thou art with me.

(c) Job adopts a fatalistic attitude to affliction shared today by many Hindus and Muslims. Whatever happens, whether good or ill, is in the will of God and must be accepted. So: "Shall we not accept good from God, and not trouble?" v10.

There are two problems with this attitude:

• Fatalism stifles initiative. If illness, poverty and atrocities are sent from God who are we to do anything about them? If God is the author of psoriasis why should we try and cure it? Are all the researchers into the illnesses that afflict mankind out of step with the will of God?

• If God allows us to suffer extremes of good and ill to what extent can we rely upon him for protection and blessing? If God is capricious how can we depend upon him? There is no doubt that on the whole the Old Testament teaches that those who live righteously prosper. In Deuteronomy Moses details blessings for obedience to God's Law and curses for disobedience. For example Moses tells the Israelites that if they follow God's commandments: The Lord will grant you abundant prosperity - in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground - in the land he swore to your forefathers to give you. Dt28v11. Psalm 1 continues in the same vein and says of the man who delights in the law of the Lord - Whatever he does prospers. Ps1v3.

  Jesus teaches something very different from the Old Testament. He considered that wealth was a hindrance to entering the kingdom of God. This amazed the disciples because they along with the Pharisees thought the Scriptures taught prosperity was a sign of God's good pleasure.

  Job is the one Old Testament book that bucks the trend. Job actually suffered because he was righteous - so did Jesus, Paul and many, many ever since.

  In view of this it is difficult to know where we stand as Christians regarding God's protection and provision. There are no easy answers. The one comforting aspect of the story of Job so far is that God remained in control. He was aware of the developing situation. Eventually he would decide Job had suffered enough and end his torment.

I take heart from the Lord's Prayer. I do not believe Jesus would have taught us to say: "Give us this day our daily bread. ...... And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." unless God intended to answer such petitions.