There have been a few times in my life where the sovereignty of God was a less than comforting doctrine for me. One particular time involved a church-league softball game and a former student. My former student was on the opposing team, playing third base. I hit a rocket towards him, as it hit a rock or dirt clod on the infield the ball took a horrendous hop and hit my former student right between the eyes. I felt bad that I had broken his nose. But those bad feelings turned much worse when we heard the news that he had been rushed to the hospital with a brain bleed.
I was at church camp when I heard the news of the severity of the injury. I gathered with other believers, and we prayed. We thanked God for His sovereign care, we acknowledge that He was in control and not us, and we pleaded that the Lord would provide healing. Someone prayed that God would be glorified in the situation. Normally these truths provide me comfort. On this occasion I was not as comforted, because I remembered Job. Yes, God is good. Yes, God is in control. Yes, God does things for His glory. But a good God can allow suffering while He is in control. God would have been good, and God could have been glorified if our former student had not survived or ended up physically disabled. But I’ll admit, I didn’t like that prospect.
“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away” is both a comforting and an unsettling truth in Scripture. How can we find stability in what appears to be a shaking truth?
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Biblical Context of 'The Lord Gives and the Lord Takes Away'
I’ve heard “the Lord gives and the Lord takes away” quite a few times in my years as a believer, and as a pastor. Seldom have I heard it quoted in a scenario similar to that of Job. I have heard it quoted as a man prayed next to his dying wife. I have also heard this when a wife and mother lost her husband to painful circumstances. But I’ve also heard it on far more trivial things. The original context for Job was far from trivial. In a single day, he lost his home, his livelihood, and most important his children. But the narrator wants us to know that Job also lost his standing in society as well as the relationship with his wife. Job lost everything on that one day.
How would Job respond to such a painful day? Would he curse God, as the Accuser said he would? Or would Job still be a man of resolute faith? Job 1:21 gives us our answer. Job continued to trust in God, even though he was in deep pain and confounded by what was occurring. Job understood that both his answers and his redemption would be found in God alone. I appreciate these words from Francis Andersen:
Job sees only the hand of God in these events. It never occurs to him to curse the desert brigands, to curse the frontier guards, to curse his own stupid servants, now lying dead for their watch-lessness. All secondary causes vanish. It was the Lord who gave; it was the Lord who removed; and in the Lord alone must the explanation of these strange happenings be sought.
It may seem as if it would be best for Christians to absolve God of any presence in these events of Job. But at the end of the day, this would be far worse. It would mean that such things can happen and God is powerless or uncaring to stop them. But Job still desires an answer from God. He trusts in God’s sovereignty but the book of Job is an unfolding of the “why”. Why did God give such wonderful things to Job and then in a single day have them taken away?
Why Does the Lord Give and Take Away?
In one sense our proper answer to this question is to admit that we do not know why. In another sense, we know that God does all things for His glory which is our greatest good. Once we attempt to find specific answers to these questions, we find ourselves on shaky ground. All throughout Job, his friends offer advice and answers to this pressing question. Some of his friends believed that the Lord “took away” because Job had been unrighteous. And if this is true, then the good that Job had would have been because of his good actions as well. Others believed that Job was wrong for even seeking an audience with God—that he should just accept what had happened and not grieve or ask any questions. Such a belief would have had God as a distant and uncaring sovereign. We know their answers are incomplete because of how the Lord rebukes them in Job 42:7.
To put it simply, the Lord gives because he is good. And the Lord takes away because he is good. We are familiar with the concept that good can come from an action that appears to be evil. If I told you a man grabbed a child’s arm and snapped his arm so hard that it broke his bone, you’d likely assume that man is evil. But when I explain that he is a doctor resetting an already injured wrist, you slowly realize that this break is actually for the good of the child. That concept is easy to grasp—but it’s much more difficult to apply when we start talking about the specifics of what Job suffered. Are we somehow to say that it was good that Job’s children died? Of course, not. Death is the enemy. But somehow God is working good in and through the situation. I do not understand the details—and that’s part of the point of Job. We are not God and so we as finite human beings cannot fully comprehend the ways of God. But someday we will.
At funerals, I usually turn to Romans 8 and attempt to let our grief turn to glory. In those dark moments, we see that the Lord has given (precious years, memories, eternity, ultimate healing, etc.) and he has taken (a spouse, a parent, a sibling, etc.,). As I walk the congregation through Romans 8:31-39 I point out that death cannot separate us from the love of God. We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. To conquer something is to defeat it. Death has certainly been defeated in Christ. But the text does not say that we are conquerors. It says that we are more than conquerors. What does this mean? Perhaps a clue is given when Paul speaks of “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor 4:17).
Is it possible that the pain we feel when sorrow overcomes is meant to propel our minds to that great day when every tear will be wiped away? How precious must Jesus be that we could look back upon the very real pain of death and suffering and call it a “light and momentary affliction”?
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How Can We Find Stability When the Lord Gives and the Lord Takes Away?
I remember seeing a video several years ago of a half-time marching band forming a giant football player and kicking a field goal. It was an absolutely beautiful thing to behold if you had the correct angle. (I believe it was the University of Hawaii if you want to look it up). From the grandstands it makes perfect sense—all those moving pieces work together to form something beautiful. But can you imagine what it looks like if you’re on the field? It might appear chaotic and senseless. How can you find stability in God when it seems as if his world is filled with chaos and pointless suffering? If God seems to be giving and taking on a whim, how can we have any stability? The answer is to have a few from the grandstands (This illustration is adapted from one I read from Randy Alcorn in The Goodness of God.).
It’s understandable that Job’s friends (and maybe even Job at times) had the view of the world that they did. Good things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people. Our fairy tales are written this way as well. The good princess gets the prince and the ugly and wicked step-sisters are banished. It feels more stable. If I do good things then God will bless me. If I do bad things then God will punish me with bad things. But that’s not gospel, that’s karma. The good news of the gospel is that rebels to the kingdom (bad people) inherit the kingdom because the Good King died in their place.
And it is in this death of the Good King where we find our stability. God did not give Job the answer he was looking for, but he gave Job the answer he needed. God is God, Job is not. That is stabilizing. He is good. He is in control. It may not make any sense now but someday it will.
We can find stability when our hope is fixed upon Christ and the inheritance which he has purchased for us. If our hope is tied to the things of this world—they can be given or taken at any point. But God is giving to us that which cannot be taken; eternal life in Christ. Perhaps that is some of what God is doing as he gives and takes. He is changing our appetites for that which will last forever. God is a good God and he will do whatever is necessary to redeem us fully—even if at times it means we must endure suffering. Our stability is in the immovable God.
Conclusion
I’ve always found John Newton to be helpful in gaining perspective. Newton shared a helpful illustration at one point in his ministry:
Suppose a man was going to New York to take possession of a large estate, and his [carriage] should break down a mile before he got to the city, which obliged him to walk the rest of the way; what a fool we should think him, if we saw him ringing his hands, and blubbering out all the remaining mile, “My [carriage] is broken! My [carriage] is broken!
That which the Lord has taken will always pale in comparison to what the Lord gives. That’s not meant to diminish the real pain of real loss. But it is meant to astonish us at how glorious and wonderful that God must be in order for that statement to be true. He will restore that which is broken. He will give back the years the locusts have eaten. It is here, in the eternal God, that we find the only true stability which exists.
Oh, and my former student was fine. It was actually a life-saving thing that happened. He was able to discover a soft spot that had been there from childhood. God did give in this situation. He answered our prayers. But even if he had not answered them as we hoped, he would have still been good and would have been doing us good.
Sources:
Andersen, F. I. (1976). Job: An Introduction and Commentary (Vol. 14, p. 93). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
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