Audio Transcript
God makes use of Satan in our suffering. He allows it. In fact, God makes use of Satan in our suffering to sanctify us, to make us holier — which is a shocking fact that you, Pastor John, like to stress from 2 Corinthians 12:7. Satan’s role in our holiness is a theme we’ve covered over the years, as you’ll see in the Ask Pastor John book, pages 341–42. But even saying that God uses Satan doesn’t exactly settle all the questions that come up, as we see today in this email from a listener named Aaron:
“Pastor John, I’ve followed Desiring God for years and recently came across your 2013 article ‘Dubai: Amazing and Strategic City.’ In it, a question about Job’s suffering was answered by quoting Job 42:11: ‘They showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him.’ I was shocked that this was the go-to verse, as it seems to state that the Lord directly brought suffering upon Job. Why not refer back to chapters 1 and 2, which clearly show that Satan caused Job’s suffering? God allowed it, but he did not bring it upon Job. Many lessons can be drawn from Job’s trials, yet this response made it seem as though suffering comes directly from God rather than being something he sovereignly allows for a greater purpose. Could you clarify why Job 42:11 was chosen instead of highlighting the conversation between God and Satan in the opening chapters?”
God’s Shocking Sovereignty
I had just given a lecture on missions there in Dubai, and, during the Q&A afterward, a brother from Africa asked me if I thought God allowed or brought about the sufferings of Job. Now, I didn’t want to dodge the question by saying, “Well, in chapter 2 of Job, Satan causes Job’s sickness,” because that’s only half the truth. I wanted to cut to the chase and give the clearest biblical answer I could. So, I simply read Job 42:11: “Then came to [Job] all his brothers and sisters. . . . And they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him.”
Now, to this Aaron says, “I was shocked that this was the go-to verse, as it seems to state that the Lord directly brought suffering upon Job. Why not refer back to chapters 1 and 2, which clearly show that Satan caused Job’s suffering? God allowed it, but he did not bring it upon Job.”
Now, I think what Aaron is really shocked about is not that I would cite Job 42:11 but that Job 42:11 really does mean what it says. That’s the shocking thing for Aaron, I think — namely, that the Lord brought all this evil on Job. That’s what the verse says, and he’s shocked that I read it, and I think that shock is because he’s shocked that the Bible says it. It doesn’t say that God did it directly; it doesn’t say that he did it indirectly. It just says that he did it. God was the decisive cause of Job’s suffering.
“There would be no gospel without the sovereignty of God bringing about the suffering and death of the Son of God.”
And dozens of other verses in the Bible say the same thing. God sent Joseph into his thirteen years of misery, not just his mean-spirited brothers (Psalm 105:17). God sent the famine that caused that kind of action (Psalm 105:16). God sent the ten plagues that caused enormous suffering in Egypt. God judged Israel, causing the sack of Jerusalem with its horrible suffering (Lamentations 1:5). And God planned and brought about the murder of the Son of God so that we could be saved (Acts 4:27–28). There would be no gospel without the sovereignty of God designing and bringing about the suffering and death of the Son of God.
Job’s Simple Clarity
But there’s an even more important reason for citing Job 42:11, and I think this is the reason many preachers and scholars ignore the verse (and it is remarkable how often the verse is ignored in wrestling with suffering in Job).
Some teach that God only allows suffering but does not cause it. So, they don’t agree with this verse and, therefore, they try to avoid it because the verse says the Lord brought the evil on Job. Other scholars teach that, when Job said in Job 1:21 about his ten children who had just been killed by a wind collapsing their house, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away [the Lord has taken my children away]; blessed be the name of the Lord” — these scholars say that Job was wrong to say that. That’s what they teach. They say Job’s theology of God’s sovereignty at that point was wrong. In other words, the inspired author, who doesn’t make mistakes, was reporting Job’s bad theology in the same way that the author reported the bad theology of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar later on in the book.
That’s wrong. Those scholars are wrong — for two reasons at least. The first is that, when Job says, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away,” the inspired author adds immediately, “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” (Job 1:21–22). That’s his very signature to say Job’s theology is right. He didn’t leave us in any doubt. That’s the inspired author’s way of saying, “He got it right, reader.”
But it’s even more clear that these theologians are wrong because of Job 42:11. This is the inspired author writing. This is not quoting any actor in the drama. This is the inspired author writing when he says that Job’s family “comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him.” In other words, the author is going out of his way (in Job 1:21–22, Job 2:10, Job 42:11) to make plain that God is the decisive cause of Job’s suffering.
To be sure, in chapter 1, Satan gets God’s permission to attack Job’s property and then Job’s person. And there’s no doubt that Satan’s hand was in Job’s suffering, because it says explicitly in Job 2:7, “Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.” Satan struck him. And when Job’s wife tells him to curse God and die, Job responds with the very theology of Job 42:11. He says, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10). In other words, “God is sovereign over the good times in our lives. He’s sovereign over the painful times in our lives, including this horrible disease that Satan brought upon me. Satan’s on a leash. He can’t do anything that God doesn’t plan for him to do.” And the inspired author of the book adds in Job 2:10, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”
God’s Stunning Will
Let me give one more reason why I answered this brother and his question in Dubai with Job 42:11 and did not simply refer to Satan’s secondary causality and God’s permissive will. (And I close with this because it is very, very important. I hope everybody perks up their ears and keeps on their thinking cap.)
“The inspired author is going out of his way to make plain that God is the decisive cause of Job’s suffering.”
Whenever we speak of God permitting something that he knows will have a specific effect — and that’s all the time; he knows everything. He has perfect foreknowledge of all things. It’s exhaustive. He knows everything that will come to pass. How, then, does God decide whether to permit something or not? God does not have to permit anything. He can permit or not permit. He’s God. If he sees that something he permits will have a painful effect, he can choose not to permit it.
God chooses what to permit or not to permit on the basis of his wisdom. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! . . . Who has been his counselor? . . . For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:33–34, 36). When God’s infinite wisdom permits something and knows all of its effects, all ten thousand of them (that’s an understatement), then these are planned effects. God considers them, takes them into account, wills that they come to pass by what he permits.
So, in the end, infinitely wise, all-knowing permission is the same as bringing something about. And oh, how good it is to know that the permissive will of God and the more direct will of God are always wise and always pursuing the highest good for those who trust him.
