Today we begin a five-part series through the book
of Job. It is an epic tale of one man’s
unimaginable suffering and a God who is BIG ENOUGH to carry him (and us)
through all of it. In such a chaotic
world as the one in which we live, the truths we will learn from the book of
Job are immediately relevant. As we
journey through Job, I pray that we will come to trust the God who is big
enough to carry us through our own trials and remember in those trials that
test our faith that His worth is being put on display.
Our story begins in Job 1:1-2:10, where the genuineness of Job’s faith is tested and
proven in order to display the sovereign power and worth of God. These first two chapters also set the stage
for the drama that follows in the book of Job.
What we want to ponder today is how the testing of our faith
demonstrates the sovereign power and worth of God and why should we never
relinquish our hope and trust in God when we suffer. Our greatest need anytime our faith is being
tested is simply to trust God as Job did.
I.
WALKING THROUGH:
Since we will be covering a lot of material in Job
every week, I want begin every week by starting with a basic overview of the
text (with key information highlighted) and then move into a time of
application. Job 1:1-5 contains the introduction
to the book of Job. Here we first
learn that Job is a godly man (1:1;4-5).
He is “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (1:1). This makes Job an ideal wise man in the wisdom literature because over and over again
in the wisdom literature we learn that “the
fear of the LORD” is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge (Job 28:28; Proverbs 1:7; 9:10; 14:16). It
is also important to see that this statement about Job is made three times in the first two chapters
(twice by God Himself) because this is information that only the reader is
privy to throughout Job’s debate with his friends. Job is also seen to be an ideal father who loves his children and is
greatly concerned for their spiritual well being. The text says that he “continually” rises early, offering sacrifices and interceding for
his children before God.
We also see that Job is a blessed man in this introduction (1:2-3). Verse 3 says that Job was the “greatest of all the people of the east,” having ten children and very abundant
possessions. The image we get of this
family’s life is one of family harmony and innocent festivity (1:4). The reason I call Job blessed here is because
the text is explicit in pointing out that that all that Job had came from God’s
gracious hand (1:10, 21). This blessed
picture we get in the introduction, however, is about to drastically change.
Job
1:6-2:10 contains two incredible
tests of Job’s faith as the text moves twice in four scenes from heaven to
earth. The first test (1:6-22) begins with a heavenly assembly in which the “sons
of God” (angelic beings) and “the
Satan,” or “adversary,” come to “present themselves” before Yahweh. Notice right away Satan’s accountability before Yahweh (1:7; 2:1:
he is not God’s equal but is on a leash and is accountable to God) and Satan’s activity in the world (1:7; 2:2: he’s a
roamer, see 1 Peter 5:8, and an
accuser, see Revelation 12:10). Notice also that Yahweh, not Satan, brings up
Job (1:8; 2:2)! This leads a challenge
that Satan issues God. He says that Job
does not genuinely love and fear God for who He is but for what He gives
Job. This is a knock to both Job and Yahweh. It is a knock to the genuineness of Job’s faith (it implies that Job is not for real)
and it is a knock to the worth of
Yahweh’s person (it implies that Yahweh ALONE is not worthy of worship when all else stripped away, that He is not
enough). Satan wants Job destroyed and God defamed. So because God’s reputation is now at
stake and because God knows that Job is “for real,” God permits Satan to go after Job.
We see the earthly
fallout of this challenge in (1:13-22).
On a day where Job’s family was probably celebrating their oldest son’s
birthday, Job loses everything. Four
sole surviving servants consecutively bring four devastating reports of both
natural disasters and terrorist raids that climax with the news that all of Job’s children have died in a single
disaster (1:13-19). Job, however, responds
to this devastating news, not by cursing God,
but by blessing and worshiping Him: [20] Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell
on the ground and worshiped. [21] And he said, “Naked I came from my
mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken
away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” [22] In all this Job did not sin
or charge God with wrong. (Job
1:20-22 ESV)
The
second test (2:1-10) takes us
back for another heavenly assembly
(2:1-6), which is very similar to the first one. Here again, Yahweh brings up Job and also
points out that Satan was wrong about Job.
So Satan again challenges Yahweh’s worth and Job’s genuineness, stating
that a man will give all that he has “for
his life” (2:4). This is again a
knock to both Job and Yahweh. Satan is
questioning whether or not what David said in Psalm 63:3 is true, that God’s steadfast love is better than life. So again, Yahweh permits Satan to go after
Job.
This time in the earthly fallout (2:7-10), we get the impression that Satan’s attack
is immediate. He strikes Job with “loathsome sores from the sole of his foot
to the crown of his head” (2:7).
We’re not exactly sure what Job’s condition would be called today, but
we can gather from what we see in the book of Job that it was a grueling,
miserable condition (2:13; 7:5; 16:8;
19:17; 30:17, 30; 33:21) that Job thought he was going to die from (in a
day with no medication). To amplify things, Satan then uses Job’s wife
to tempt him to “curse God and die” (2:9). Again, Job does not respond by cursing God but by worshipping Him: “But he said
to her, ‘You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive
good from God, and shall we not receive evil?’ In all this Job did not sin with
his lips.” (Job 2:10 ESV)
II.
STEPPING BACK
There is so much we could say about these first
two chapters in Job! I want to give you
three reasons from these chapters today why we must never let go of God in our suffering. Brothers and sisters, our faith will be tested. It’s
not worth much if it can’t be. Honestly,
what good is your faith if it cannot be tested?
The only way to truly prove the genuineness of our faith is by its being
tested. As one commentator said, “metal has no strength that has not been
tempered in the fire.”[1] How do you know if a man with a bunch of
things loves his God or his things? The
only way to know is to remove his things.
Likewise, how do you know if a man without anything really loves God or
just considers God his only option? The
only way to know is to give him a bunch of things and see if he still loves his
God more. Our faith must be tested at
times to prove, not only the genuineness of it, but also the worth of our God.
So why should we never let go of God in our
suffering? The first reason is because God Knows More About Our Suffering Than We
Ever Will. There are a number of
characters in the book of Job, and they don’t all have access to the same
information. For example, none of the
human characters in the book of Job know what the reader knows at this
point. Job and his friends are
completely ignorant of these conversations between Satan and Yahweh. Something else that is interesting is that
Satan doesn’t even know how Job will respond to these tests. Only God does. He alone is omniscient, or all knowing.
This reminds us that our suffering may often be a mystery to us like it was to Job. Job is a good, godly man who suffered for no
foreseeable reason, at least from his perspective. Job teaches us that bad things happen to good
people for no foreseeable reason at times, and it is in those times that we
must trust the God who does know all
the reasons for our suffering. That’s
what faith IS: trusting God’s
character and promises to know what He is doing even when we don’t. If you’re someone who has to have answers in
order to trust God, then you will never please Him, because Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it
is impossible to please God. So will you
trust Him?
A second reason that we must never let go of God
in our suffering is because God is
Sovereign Over Our Suffering in Ways We May Never Understand. The sovereignty of God is powerfully displayed
in these two chapters. God is said to be
sovereign over Job’s prosperity and
also Job’s calamity. As we said earlier, God, not Satan, brings up
Job, twice (1:8, 2:3)! God permits Satan to go after Job (1:12, 2:6).
Satan is just a tool on a leash; his
power limited by God’s sovereign
prerogative. God’s sovereignty is also
seen over terrorist attacks and natural disasters (1:14-19). Job recognizes God’s sovereign right to give
and take away (1:21) and makes a the profound statement that we, as God’s
creatures, should be willing to receive both “good” and “evil” from
God (2:10). That doesn’t mean that God is
evil, but it does mean that He “green lights” evil into our lives at times for
our good. This is what we see in the
story of Joseph (Genesis 50:20) and
Jeremiah also echoes this truth in Lamentations
3:38: “Is it not from the mouth of
the Most High that good and bad come?”
Admittedly, it is hard to get our minds around a
God this big, but the book of Job explicitly states that Job was right in what
he said and that he was did not charge God with wrong (1:22; 2:10; 42:7-8). The Bible does not present us with a small
God, but with a God bigger than we could ever fathom, one who is absolutely
sovereign over angels, demons, nature, peoples, terrorist attacks, disease, and
every second of our suffering. Not even
a sparrow falls to the ground without His approval and concern. His sovereignty is reason to trust Him in our
suffering.
Finally, a third reason that we must never let go
of God when we suffer is because God
Cares More About His Glory Than We Ever Will. One of the most important points that we could
make about this story is that God gets glory
over Satan. Imagine the eruption of praise in heaven when Job
blesses God instead of cursing Him! If
we learned nothing else from the book of Job, if it ended in chapter 2, verse
10, and he died a week later, then we could still say that God got glory when a
man held onto God in the midst of unimaginable, undeserved suffering and the
fact that God was glorified would be a sufficient
reason Job’s suffering (and Job would be rewarded forever for his faithfulness
in heaven).
Never forget nothing is more important or more
valuable than the glory of God. It is
the most important thing in the universe.
Our comfort is not. Our
understanding of what we are going through is not. Jesus said that the blind man He healed in was born blind, not because he had
sinned, but so that “the works of God
might be displayed in him” (John
9:3). The reason this is so
important to remember is because when we suffer, regardless of what we may not
know, what we can know is that whatever God is doing, He is doing it for His
glory, and that should be a reason to never let go of Him in our
suffering.
There is another point we could make, but it
wouldn’t come from Job yet; it would come from the New Testament (see Romans 8:28). The point is
that God also cares more about our good
than we ever will and that He knows better than we do how to bring it about. When we suffer, we have the promise that God
is with us and for us and that He is bringing about our good and His glory. The question for us today is, will we submit
to God’s sovereignty and wisdom as Job does?
Will we trust Him when our faith is severely tested? And will we consider Him our everything when
we lose everything?
The story of Job should also remind us of the greater suffering of a Greater Servant. Our Savior, Jesus Christ,
did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, and unlike Job, who lost everything, Jesus emptied Himself voluntarily
of everything for us (Philippians 2:6).
Jesus surpassed Job in both His innocence and His suffering. Jesus was not merely blameless; He was
sinless. He was not merely the greatest
man in the east; He was the greatest man in the universe and in all of
history. His suffering was not
unexpected, but voluntary, and when He suffered, He experienced the full wrath of God poured out for all
eternity upon our sins in a matter of hours.
But like Job, Jesus passed His test and won salvation for all of us here
today who would turn to Him with all our hearts. Will you do so today? He is a God who is enough for any trial you
will ever face and who is better than any blessing you will ever enjoy in this
life. As one commentator put it, because
God is the greatest treasure in the universe, “A man may stand before God stripped of everything that life has given
him, and still lack nothing.”[2] Truly God is everything, even when we lose
everything.
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