He Walked the Lonesome Valley

Scripture Lessons: Job 1: 1-5 and Job 42: 1-6 and 10-17 Sermon Title: He Walked the Lonesome Valley Preached on October 24, 2021 Something embarrassing happened to me last Tuesday morning. Something embarrassing happens to me most days, but last Tuesday is noteworthy because of why I was embarrassed. Last Tuesday morning I noticed two ladies I didn’t recognize outside the church. I guessed correctly that they were representatives from the organization helping us put together clean birthing kits for mothers who don’t have access to hospitals. These kits help mothers create a sanitary environment to deliver their newborn whether they’re in a thatch hut in Tanzania or an emergency tent in the wake of a hurricane. I proudly greeted these two ladies, led them to Holland Hall, where I remembered they would be setting up. I was impressed with myself for remembering. Then, with authoritative hospitality, I turned the lights on in Holland Hall, and noticed the panicked look on their faces. They had set up the day before in the Great Hall, and I had no idea what I was talking about. Have you ever done something like this? Have you ever tried to help someone who didn’t need your help? Have you ever done for someone what they had done or could have done for themselves? Obviously, I have, and so has Job, or so he thinks. We just read the beginning and the end of the book of Job. You’ve heard sermons based in the book of Job for three Sundays in a row, today is the fourth, and in reading from the beginning and the end, what’s possible to see is how Job has changed. He’s walked that lonesome valley and it’s changed him. From chapter 1 we just read that: His sons used to go and hold feasts in one another’s houses in turn; and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the feast days had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” This is what Job always did. What we see here is that Job was in the habit of doing for his children. Every day he tried to save them, only he couldn’t. You know what happens next: One day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the eldest brother’s house, a messenger came to Job and said, “While your sons and daughters were eating and drinking, a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; I alone have escaped to tell you.” Anyone with a heart would ask why something so horrible would happen to anyone, much less someone so good as Job. Unfortunately, “why bad things happen” or “why bad things happen to good people,” isn’t the question that the book of Job answers. What the book of Job does is well illustrates how Job changes. The book of Job shows us what the lonesome valley of suffering does to this man who, even amid tragedy searches out the face of God. Now that’s maybe not the answer that we all want. We all want to know why there are hurricanes, tragedies, viral pandemics, and genocide. Why are there car accidents and depression. Why do children suffer? Why does racism still exist? Why must the Braves take so long to clinch the pennant? We want an answer to these questions, yet we won’t get it on this side of heaven. However, just as important are these questions: “What do we learn from suffering? How is God at work in suffering?” We look to Job and how he changed because we all must walk the lonesome valley in one sense or another, even Jesus did. [Even] Jesus walked this lonesome valley. He had to walk it by himself. Oh, nobody else could walk it for him. He had to walk it by himself. The question I ask this morning is: how does it change Job? What did the lonesome valley do to him? If you compare how he was at the beginning of the book, so worried over his children sinning that he made offerings on their behalf, how did he change in the end? We just read: The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Karen-happuch. In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. Did you hear that? A problem any women ought to have with the Bible is how few women are named. In fact, so few women are named in the Bible that when the Bible names one it really sticks out. It makes you slow down to listen, and in this instance at the end of the book of Job the daughters are named but not the sons. Now that never happens. What’s the Bible trying to tell us here? That after all that suffering, Job stopped trying to do everything for his sons and daughters and gave them a means to do for themselves. While in the beginning Job did everything for them. When they were hungry, Job fed them. If they were bored, he encouraged them to have a big feast. Had they sinned, even unknowingly, Job made a sacrifice so that he could take care of them; even their mistakes he took responsibility for. What changed in Job after he walked the lonesome valley? How was he different if we look at how he was before and how he was after? By the end of the book, it’s as though Job’s accepting how: We must walk this lonesome valley. We have to walk it by ourselves. Oh, nobody else can walk it for us. We have to walk it by ourselves. Isn’t that the truth? Now, I don’t like to suffer. I never have. But having suffered a little bit here and there, I can tell you it changed me, and while the miniscule suffering I’ve experienced is nothing compared with that of Job, walking the lonesome valley changed me in a similar way. In 2008 I was an Associate Pastor at Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church. You might remember that in 2008, the Great Recession hit. The church was hit so hard by the recession that members stopped contributing, they stopped giving, and the Session met and projected a 40% budget deficit. What happened next? Well, the Senior Pastor just left, which was good for the budget but bad for the Associate Pastor. I was suddenly left holding the bag on a sinking ship. I went to the Presbytery office, unannounced, no appointment. I was ushered into the office of the Executive Presbyter. This is the person who oversees all the churches in a given area. I told him that things weren’t so good at Good Sharped Presbyterian Church. In fact, it might close, and I was the only pastor they had, but I didn’t know what I was doing. “How can I save this church,” I asked. Well, the Executive Presbyter said to me, “Joe, do you know anything about finances?” “No sir,” I said, “In fact, I can’t even balance my own check book.” This was back in the days when people still had checks, you see. And struck by my response, the Executive Presbyter said to me, “If you can’t balance a check book, what makes you think you’re the one to save this church?” This was one of the most important questions anyone has ever asked me: “What makes you think you’re the one to save this church?” Had it been Job, it’s as though suffering had forced him to ask, “What makes you think you’re the one to save your kids?” He couldn’t save them, could he? What could he do then? He could get out of the way, [For] you must go and stand your trial. You have to stand it by yourself. Oh, nobody else can stand it for you. You have to stand it by yourself. Why? Because that’s the way we grow in faith or anything else. The Executive Presbyter told me that since I can’t balance a check book I ought to get a group a church members who are business owners, accountants, and other financial experts and ask them for help. I did that. Guess what happened once I stopped trying to save the church myself and empowered the members of the church: We ended the year with a $40,000 surplus. Can you imagine what happened to Job’s daughters once he stopped trying to save them and gave them an inheritance? It’s like what happens when children are allowed to fail. They learn from their mistakes. It’s like what happens when teachers, mentors, or bosses, encourage people to grow. Coaches encourage their players to think. Generals allow their troops to make their own decisions. It’s like what happens a person takes a pledge card and fills it out on their own instead of hoping someone else will fund the ministries of the church for them. We’re here amid the Stewardship Season again, and this year the big push is for those who have never pledged before to pledge for the first time. Why? Because nobody else can do this for you, you’ve got to do it for yourself. The world is a place full of trial and hardship. Life is challenge after challenge. Suffering is not the exception but the rule. So, every night I stand over our daughter’s beds and pray for them. You know what’s better than that? Teaching them to pray for themselves. For the best gift is not the gift that edifies the one who gives but liberates the one who receives. With this lesson we conclude our sermon series on the book of Job, a book about suffering. And while I still find it very hard to believe that the God who knows the number of hairs on my head, who stitched me together in my mother’s womb, who died on the cross that I would be saved, would ever cause me to suffer, I believe that when we suffer our eyes are open to see his face on our own and we are changed forever. Something my grandfather told me some years ago, when I called to ask him for advice, “one of the joys of my old age will be watching you advance in your career.” It always meant so much how he believed in me. He didn’t do for me. No. He just always believed that I could. In two weeks, I’ll be preaching his funeral, and what will I say? I’ll be quoting Job 19: For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth, because having walked the valley, the faith of my mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, has become my own. Thanks be to God. Amen.