Job No.1 The man who lost everything

Our reading is from the book of Job, the Old Testament book which just comes immediately before Psalms, if you have any problem finding it. We're going to read the beginning of this book, chapter one and part of chapter two, as the beginning of our series of studies in this book. Job, the man who lost everything.

In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright. He feared God and shunned evil.

He had seven sons and three daughters and he owned 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen and 500 donkeys and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East. His sons used to take turns holding feasts in their homes and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.

When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would send and have them purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. This was Job's regular custom.

One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came with them. The Lord said to Satan, where have you come from? Satan answered the Lord from roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it. Then the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him.

He is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. Does Job fear God for nothing? Satan replied, have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You've blessed the work of his hands so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has and he will surely curse you to your face.

The Lord said to Satan, very well then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger. Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. One day when Job's sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house, a messenger came to Job and said, the oxen were ploughing and the donkeys were grazing nearby and the Sabaeans attacked and carried them off.

They put the servants to the sword and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, the fire of God fell from the sky and burned up the sheep and the servants and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, the Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and carried them off.

They put the servants to the sword and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you.

At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.

May the name of the Lord be praised. In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing. On another day, the angels came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came with them to present himself before him and the Lord said to Satan, where have you come from? Satan answered the Lord from roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.

Then the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? There's no one on earth like him. He's blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil and he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason. Skin for skin, Satan replied, a man will give all he has for his own life but stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones and he will surely curse you to your face.

The Lord said to Satan, very well then, he's in your hands but you must spare his life. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.

His wife said to him, are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die. He replied, you're talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble? In all this Job did not sin in what he said.

So Job in chapter 1, and let me read again the first verse, in the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright. He feared God and shunned evil.

Well, this book from the Old Testament speaks of a man who was utterly overwhelmed by troubles. He was stripped of his wealth, even his health was taken from him. He becomes an embarrassment to those who try from the Scriptures to proclaim a so-called prosperity gospel.

That's a heresy. It doesn't fit into the Old Testament. It doesn't fit into the New Testament.

Here is a man who is bereft of everything, and yet in the final analysis he is still a rich man because he has God. There is never a time when you address a congregation, certainly one as large as this, when you are unaware that there are no Jobs present. So let me put that more simply.

This book always relates to some people within a congregation, for some are going through the experience that Job here illustrates. Within the opening chapter of the book and repeated in the second chapter, you get an insight into councils in heaven, and things that are happening in the spiritual realm of which Job has absolutely no cognizance, no knowledge of whatsoever. There is a controversy between heaven and hell, and the arena of difficulty is found on the earth.

Satan is in argument with God over a man, and the name of that man is Job. There will be a rerun of this some thousands of years later, and the controversy will be over another man by the name of Jesus Christ. Job goes through a series of calamities that leaves him in a very poor condition materially and also physically.

Drawing alongside Job are three men who are known as his comforters, the word sometimes used in a cynical sense. They are not men who have been to Waverly Hall and had a crash course in counseling. When they have done their best, another younger fellow, he comes along and he offers his distilled wisdom.

And after he's been at it for quite a while, God interrupts and blows the whistle and says, let me have my say. So, he addresses Job. And then at the end of the book, you find Job and God together.

Job fully understanding what the Lord has been about, and the climax of the whole book with Satan no longer in view whatsoever. And somebody has written, upon this simple plot, an unknown writer of superlative genius has erected a monumental work. It's a powerful theological treatment.

There's majesty and emotion unsurpassed in any literature, both ancient and modern. It's one of the most supreme offerings of the mind of man to the living God, and one of the best disclosures in terms of gifts of revelation of God to men. The Catholic Bible, the New Catholic Bible, the Jerusalem Bible, refers to this book as the finest example of wisdom literature.

That means of any of the Old Testament books that highlight wisdom, like the Song of Solomon or the Book of Proverbs. So, here's the question, as far as we're concerned in the tab, why are we dealing with it now? I've never touched this book, apart from an incidental reference from time to time, and maybe an occasional address, but I've never touched the book as a whole all the years I've been at the tab. And the reason probably is this, that it's only in more recent days that I felt I've even begun to understand what it's speaking about, what it's teaching.

You would probably have to travel a long way to find a pulpit that is actually taking the Book of Job as a series, for a series of addresses. It's one of the books that's passed over, along with a lot of the Old Testament, unfortunately. Maybe the best and the longest series of addresses actually came in the time of John Calvin, so we're going back some many centuries.

He preached 146 addresses. Tim and I are not going to compete. I just happen to believe that through this book, God is speaking to people in this church.

The message is relevant, and the time is right, so we're going to have a look at it. There's almost a doubling up of structure in the first chapter and the second chapter. You are confronted with Job, and then you are confronted with Satan and the disasters that befall Job and Job's reaction.

So, in the second chapter, you're confronted again with Satan and with the afflictions that hit Job, and then Job's reactions to those afflictions. But what I'm going to try to do is to speak on three headings, not because there'll be any possibility of expounding the whole of these two chapters, but there'll be convenient pegs on which to put the thoughts that are found in these verses. I want to talk in terms of the sovereignty of God and the potentiality of man and the strategy of Satan.

First of all, the sovereignty of God. Who really is in charge? Now, that's a relevant question, not to ask just the author of this book yesteryear, but it's a relevant question for today. Who is in charge of this world? There are those who believe that God's relationship to the world is almost the relationship of the watchmaker to the watch, makes the watch and sets it going, and then bobbies off.

There are those who feel that you can only understand this world in terms of an evil God and a good God, a sort of dualism. But there are those who say that you can't really understand this world until you appreciate that man is a sort of genetic fluke, that God created more than he could handle. Man has got out of control, the world is spinning out of control, and God is somewhere lost in the heavens not knowing what to do about it.

That's not fanciful conjecture in terms of some people's viewpoint that I'm just making up from the pulpit. There's a Jewish philosopher who's arguing that to this very day, provoked to do so by the fact that he has a young son who has an aging disease. He cannot understand why God should allow that sort of thing to happen to his boy, and one can appreciate and sympathize with the Jewish scholar.

But the Bible will tell you, wherever you look at it, that actually as far as this world is concerned, God is in control. When it speaks of the end time, it says that our Lord Jesus will deliver up the kingdom to His Father and God shall be all and in all. The first book of the Bible, in the beginning, God.

The last book of the Bible is repeating the same thing, and throughout the whole of the biblical revelation, this gigantic claim is repeatedly made that behind everything is the person of God. And so when you come to this particular opening chapter in the sixth verse, you're given this dramatic presentation of angels coming before the person of God and making a report, giving an account of themselves, and alongside them is the fallen angel Satan. There's no indication at all that his presence there is an intrusion.

Satan is the one who brings evil into our world. He's the one who endeavors to get his evil inclinations embedded into the mind of men and women. And the Bible, more than any other world religion, will ask and answer the question, what is the origin of evil? And it will tell you that the capacity for evil was created by God Himself and that there is a vagabond angel, one who at the beginning was with God, who countered equality with God, a thing to be grasped at, and is expelled from heaven and makes his theatre of activity the earth.

And it's this Satan who enters into the presence of God and the Lord says to him, where have you come from? And his response is, in terms of what Campbell Morgan calls a sob of weird unrest from roaming through the earth and going to and fro in it. The devil, says the apostle Peter, is as a roaring lion who moves around our world seeking to devour men and women, seeking to implant into them the rebellious nature that he has. Heaven, I say by way of repetition, is in argument with hell, and the argument spins over man and his ultimate destiny and who he acknowledges as being Lord.

You see, my friend, as we are given this picture of angelic beings and even evil forces presenting themselves before God, hear me if you understand nothing else and write this upon your memory, the day will come when you too will stand before God. Every created intelligent being will one day be in the presence of the Lord, and this God in his power, in his sovereignty, has all angelic, all demonic, and all human forces under his control. They are ultimately answerable to him.

That's why, if you have understood to this point, it is necessary for the likes of you and me when we are confronted by those things which God allows to fall across our pathway, which we do not understand, to put our hands upon our mouth and not to react instinctively, but to believe that this God operates at a level of which we have little understanding ourselves, and ultimately he will justify everything that happens to us in our lives. Now that's the basic message of Job. If you're looking for an answer to the problem, why suffering, you'll not get an answer in detail.

But what you will be told time and time again is, in this world, in the heavenlies, on the earth, under the earth, is the power of our God, and ultimately he will prove that he has all authority and he's working everything out according to his predestined plan. The book of Job speaks to the sovereignty of God. It will also tell you, secondly, about the potentiality of man.

In one sense, the book of Job is a very curious book. There's no indication of its date. Was it early? Was it late? I think it was probably early rather than late, but there's no reference even to Abraham or Moses, any of the patriarchs, any of the kings.

There's no reference to the installation of the monarchy. There's no reference even to Palestine. There's no reference to many of the things that you find in the first five books of the Old Testament.

There's no reference to historic events, the parting of the Red Sea, the granting of the commandments at Sinai, and so forth. And you're asking yourself the question, who is this man Job? When did he live? And in one sense, I'm glad that the information is scant, because it seems to me that we can say that Job is every man. Job is a real man.

The historicity of Job, of that I have absolutely no doubt, but in a sense I'm glad that we don't have too much historical detail. It's sufficient for us to know and stimulating to realize that here is a man who is very much at the beginning of human history, and he goes through problems which speak to the problems that you and I face today. And he doesn't have the revelation that you and I have in our Lord Jesus Christ to help him through his difficulties.

Someone has said, I like this, that the book of Job is a little encyclopedia of life from the Middle East. He's a blameless man, an upright man. Straight translation, he's complete.

He's true. He's positive inasmuch as he fears God. His righteousness is also active negatively.

He shuns evil. And just in case you think that there could be an exaggeration in the description of the first verse, it's repeated in the eighth verse, there is no one on earth like him. He's blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.

And this is the estimate of God Himself. It doesn't mean that the depravity of man is somehow excluded in terms of the experience of Job. Job knows what it is to sin.

He's talking about sacrifices when he's referring to his own family, as I'll show you in a moment or two. He recognizes that there is evil in the world, but he's as good as any man could ever be. And in this sense, he is unique in the world at that time.

Indeed, Job will only be outclassed in terms of his blamelessness when the Son of God comes into the world with his utter purity and integrity. In one life only is the person of Job excelled for innocence and consistency, and that is the life of our blessed Lord Jesus. The family, well, it seems to be the perfect family, doesn't it? Verse 2, seven sons and three daughters.

Now that's perfection. Some of you may not feel that it is perfection. You think that two or three has been about all that you could cope with.

Seven's a perfect number, a quiver full of arrows. You couldn't have a more blessed Hebrew family than seven sons and three daughters. Well, if I mix my metaphor, there's the icing on the cake.

It's a family that has prosperity. The numbers in verse 3, I think you can interpret in a poetic fashion. Here is the description of a man who has really made it in terms of material things.

He is the greatest man among all the people of the East. Not only is he a man who has been blessed materially, he's a man who's a good father. What do you as parents want for your children more than anything else? Well, for them to go on with the Lord, not so? I would hope that that is your great aim and live your life to encourage that.

The holiness and concern of Job is such that he has a responsibility he feels towards his children who from time to time, indeed on a regular basis, are having parties. There's no indication that there's anything wrong with this, verse 4, but if you get down to verse 5, you'll find the anxiety of Job surfacing. Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts, therefore what will I do? Well, early in the morning I'll get up once a week and I'll offer burnt offering for each of my children.

Incidentally, those of you who've had a sneak look into the first and second chapters earlier on, perhaps this past week, isn't it interesting that the very thing that the devil wants Job to do, he's concerned to prevent his children from doing. Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts, so I'll offer sacrifice for them. Incidentally, smuggled away, and if I'm right in thinking that this is one of the first books in the Bible, is the idea of mediation.

I will act as a priest, because a father is a priest for his children, I will act as a priest on their behalf and offer this, this sacrifice. And later on, Job, in the darkness of the night that covers him, will be asking for a mediator. As instinctively he knows that God will not leave him in the difficulties that he finds himself in, but he will send someone to act on his behalf.

There's almost, I tell you, an instinct in the psyche of men and women. One, that they are created by God, two, that they are in a mess, and three, that this God has such compassion, he will come to their aid. If I had time, I could almost work this out for you anthropologically, in terms of the primitive thinking of religious people, even before the Christian message ever reached them.

Well, we've looked briefly at the sovereignty of God and the potentiality of man. This is an blameless man. He's an upright man.

He's a man who fears God and shuns evil. Now thirdly, and this will be a little longer, so don't feel too comfortable that I've got through so quickly. Here's the strategy of Satan.

Here is the strategy of Satan. In Genesis, in the opening chapters, Satan sneers about God to men, does he not? Hath not God said? There's a sneer about this grey God to Adam and Eve. This is always the strategy of the devil, to sneer about God before men.

Ah, but Satan is not your friend. He's not the friend of man. Remember the conflict in heaven, with hell, about people on the earth.

So now you find the devil in a different guise. He is sneering before God about men. Consider, says God, my servant Job.

And the devil goes to sneer before God about Job. But just stay with that expression for a moment. Consider my servant Job.

There is no one on earth like him. He's blameless and upright. Dare I be so bold as to suggest that God has an Achilles heel? All right, maybe that's going a little too far.

Let me say this. There is a holy sensitivity in God. There is a feeling that He has, that He wants to be satisfied.

As far as men and women and their lives on this earth, are concerned, you say, what do I mean? God wants to glory in man. If you think that I've gone too far, then you try Isaiah when he talks about, behold my servant, speaking on behalf of God. Behold my servant in whom I am well pleased.

And you know that that finds a fulfillment in our Lord Jesus Christ. The waters of baptism, the mount of transfiguration. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

This is my beloved Son. Hear Him. But here is God in His pride.

Satan comes into the council room of heaven. And God says, where have you come from? Well, from my restlessness on the earth. Did you, in your meandering, see my servant Job? A blameless, an upright man.

I tell you that God takes delight in the blamelessness and the integrity of His children. You may find yourself or feel yourself to be the most anonymous of people. Never will the spotlight of the world's press be focused upon you.

Count yourself blessed, if that is the case, actually. But if the eye of God is upon you, and if He could say to you one day in the presence of Satan, consider my servant Peter. Consider my servant John.

How blameless they are. How great is their integrity. God delights as far as the lifestyle of His children is concerned.

And so Satan takes God on. And he's got two things to say, and I'll summarize them in one conclusion. Is God so good that He can be loved for Himself and not just for His gifts? That's what Satan is saying, isn't it? As far as God goes, as far as his response to God and Job is concerned.

Is God so good that He can be loved for Himself and not just for His gifts? Have you not, verse 10, put a hedge around Him and His household and everything He has? Well, number two, will a man hold on to God when no benefits are attached? Here's my summary. You're in it for what you can get out of it. That's what the devil was saying of Job in his relationship to God.

And that's what the devil whispers in our ears. And that's what a lot of people say about the church. You church people, you're in it for what you can get out of it.

Alright, so if God allows you to be stripped of your material prosperity, if He allows things even more horrific to come into your life, will you still please this God with your prayers and with your failure to suggest that in any sense God has acted unjustly and unfairly with you? You see, that's the theater of the whole drama of Job. And Job of yesteryear speaks to us today because, you see, we need to test ourselves on this basis. If God does strip us of everything that we count precious and valuable, all the externals have gone, and even our bodies sometimes start to be affected and illness and disease comes in, will we then still praise the Lord, praise Him still through good or ill whoever lives? This is my hostility, the reason for my hostility to the prosperity gospel.

You see, there is no guarantee whatsoever in the Old Testament or in the New Testament that everything will go well with you. The guarantee is that through all the changing scenes of life, in trouble and in praise, you should be able to bless your God, praise Him still through good or ill whoever lives. So, the devil is given the permission to strip Job of everything in terms of his material possessions.

In one horrific day, the same day in which Job has probably offered sacrifice for his children, he hears the news that his farm animals, verse 13, his fox, verse 16, his camels, verse 17, and his children have gone. And he doesn't know that God's involved in this. He doesn't even know that Satan is involved because at the natural level, well, this is what men in the Middle East were always fighting, the problem of the unpredictability of the wind and the earthquake and the savagery of the brigands that lived in those days in that particular area.

So, Job, as a result of circumstances beyond his control, finds that this avalanche of bad news breaks across his shore, wave upon wave. What does he do as a result? Well, verse 20 will tell you, Job got up, tore his robe, an action typical of Old Testament times, shaved his head. Then, I love this, he fell to the ground in worship.

He fell to the ground in worship. And he acknowledges the philosophy of two nakednesses. Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall depart.

When your philosophy brings you to that conclusion, you can take your seat amongst the wise men in our world. You came with nothing, you will go out with nothing, and the externals are really incidental. The important thing is you and your relationship to this God and your integrity and your desires for blamelessness.

The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. May the name of our Lord be praised. No, Satan, he's not in it for what he can get out of it.

Take what he's got out of it away from him and he's still in it. Now, there is a sense of deja vu. We've been here before.

When you get to the second chapter, because there's a rerun. Satan is alarmed, he comes back from his restless meandering up and down this world, this listlessness, this inability to have any peace, which is part of the psyche of the devil. He presents himself before the Lord.

The Lord says, verse two, where have you come from, from roaming through the earth and going to and fro from it? Ah, says the Lord, have you considered my servant Job? There's no one on earth like him. He's blameless, you've heard this before as well, and upright and so on. Skin for skin, says Satan.

You've hedged him in twice. One skin has been peeled away, but there's another peel. If you allow me to attack his body, then I will demonstrate to you that far from walking in integrity, he's still in it for what he can get out of it.

But stretch out your hand, verse five, and strike his flesh and bones and he will surely curse you to your face. And the Lord amazingly grants Satan permission to test Job at this second level. And so he does so.

And you get this pathetic picture of Job, painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. I'll give you more of a description of that next week. May put you off your dinner this week.

So fast next Sunday. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes. And you discover that as a result of the affliction that he's in, even his own wife, whom Calvin believed to be a spokesman of the devil, but there I would suggest with respect Calvin is wrong.

His own wife, perhaps more out of love than stimulated by sinfulness or evil, says to him, not wanting him to see him any longer in this terrible condition, call it a day, Job. Curse God. Get out of it and die.

Job reproves her and says, you're talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble? Job copes with the problems of this particular experience in a most remarkable fashion. Shows his willingness to receive not only good, but evil, not just happiness, but affliction and sorrow.

The devil leaves the scene. You never come across him again in the whole of this book. What you are left with is God and Job and his friends together sorting out or trying to come to grips with the problems of this world.

The book ranges widely over the complexities of existence, seeking a place for animals as well as men in God's world. It plums the depths of human despair, the anger of moral outrage, the anguish of desertion by God. From one's man's agony, it reaches out to the mystery of God and ultimately it's God who brings joy back into the heart, into the life of Job.

Shall we accept good from God and not trouble? In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. Look, I conclude with these words. Some of us leave God when our preconceived ideas don't marry with what seems to be his plan for our lives.

As the disciples, some of the disciples, not the twelve, melted away from our Lord Jesus when his teaching became so severe. Job will teach you that when ideas that prosperity are a natural consequence of a blameless life, when they are tested and proved to be wrong, Job will still remain faithful and challenge you to remain faithful when things happen in your life which are unacceptable. Things that have no immediate explanation.

Well, Job was not aware of what was going on in the heavenlies. You are. And the possibility is that what happens in your life is as a result of some other counsel that God knows of that you know nothing about and he allows things to happen to you and believes that you will continue to trust him nonetheless.

What God wants from you more than anything else is your integrity, is your response to the various problems of life in such a fashion that he could say to any evil being in his personality, in his presence, have you seen such and such? The way they have retained their consistency in their walk with me down the years of their lives. The book of Job will tell you this, that ultimately God will give a final explanation for all that he has done in terms of what he's allowed to break across the shore of your life. He'll answer finally in our Lord Jesus, in his revelation during his earthly ministry and at his second coming.

God's order ultimately is that there shall not be a Satan, there shall be no sickness, there will be no poverty, there will be no injustice. God is bringing his sons to glory. The ultimate has not yet occurred, that is yet to be.

Job is aware of this, he believes that the worms destroy his body yet in his flesh he will see God. When he does see God, the questions no longer exist in the presence of God and that will be the case for you and me. We know enough about this God to continue.

We know more than Job that he loved us and sent the Lord Jesus to die for us. Whatever untoward circumstances happens in our lives, this God can be trusted and he asks that we show our trust in the same fashion as Job showed his trust so that he will not be affected by his three friends or even by his wife and Satan will not have the victory over Job. He is able to say as you and I are asked to say, though he slay me yet will I trust him.

The Lord gave, the Lord took away. May the name of the Lord be blessed. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble? In all this Job did not sin in what he said as it was for Job, may it be for us.

393. Father to thee we look in all our sorrow, thou art the fountain whence our healing flows. Knowledgeable that when all was said and done and Job stood in your presence to some degree the mystery still remained and yet in your presence he found peace, joy and an ability to go on and on.

Lord enable us to discover even the same, not just tomorrow, no next week, no next year, no next decade, but now. Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, the friendship and fellowship of the Holy Spirit be our experience always and around this table remind us afresh, O God, of your great love and of a man who went through more agony and bewilderment than Job and ultimately came through victorious. In his name, Amen.