Preach the Word Radio

“Introduction to Job”

  Job 1:1                                                  

Pain is the universal experience of all human beings. Everyone experiences pain at some point in their lives, and during that season of suffering, they often ask the same question: “Why? Why God? Why now? What did I do to deserve this?” These are haunting questions that echo within our minds and find no real answer.

            Life is difficult. That blunt, three-word statement is an accurate appraisal of our existence on this planet. No one could argue the point that life is punctuated with hardship, heartaches, and headaches. Most of us have learned to face the reality that life is difficult. But unfair? Something kicks in, deep within most of us, making it almost intolerable for us to accept and cope with what’s unfair. Our drive for justice overrides our patience with pain. Consider this example:

            You’re a single parent living 1200 miles from a job offer that comes to you from Houston. So you give serious thought to moving you and your three children (who are all under the age of fifteen) down south so that you might get a much better job working for a lot more money in a company that is really moving ahead. You make the move as you begin working for Enron. You find yourself fulfilled and stretched. Things are really looking up. You’re doing so well you decide to invest in the company’s stock. They money is good, your future is bright, and the news is out that this is the blue-chip company to be a part of. They’re even naming the new stadium in Houston after the Enron Corporation. Then one day you overhear some troubling comments at the water fountain.

            The scuttlebutt around the office isn’t encouraging. You doubt it, you question it, and in fact you put it out of your mind because, after all, your entire retirement funds are there, your health benefits are there, and your financial security is there. Suddenly, almost before you can blink, you get a pink slip, and it’s all over. You lose everything. It’s not your fault-you were doing a good job. You moved for all the right reasons, and now there’s the threat of losing your house. Life is difficult as you ponder telling the kids.

            A couple of days later you’re showering and you notice a small lump under your left breast. Your stomach turns. You can’t believe it. Two days later the biopsy reveals that you have an aggressive malignancy. Oh, I failed to mention, three years ago your husband ran off with his much younger and attractive assistant and, by the way, they’re doing great. Both of them have new cars, secure, well-paying jobs, and no kids. And you? You’re going to move in with your aging parents, neither of whom is all that healthy, and their little home has only three bedrooms. One day the full load hits you: Life is not just difficult, it’s downright unfair. Welcome to Job’s world.

Eugene Peterson, in his paraphrase of The Old Testament, says this in his introduction of Job:

                        It is not only because Job suffered that he is important to us. It is because he suffered in the same ways that we suffer-in the vital areas of family, personal health, and material things. Job is also important to us because he searchingly questioned and boldly protested his suffering. Indeed, he went “to the top” with his questions. It is not the suffering that troubles us. It is undeserved suffering. Almost all of us in our years of growing up have the experience of disobeying our parents and getting punished for it. When that discipline was connected with wrongdoing, it had a certain sense of justice to it: When we do wrong, we get punished.

                        One of the surprises as we get older, however, is that we come to see that there is no real correlation between the amount of wrong we commit and the amount of pain  we experience. An even larger surprise is that very often there is something quite  the opposite: We do right and get knocked down. We do the best we are capable of  doing, and just as we are reaching out to receive our reward we are hit from the  blind side and sent reeling.                              – Eugene Peterson, The Message

Those words describe precisely what happened with Job. Life was not simply difficult, it became absolutely unfair.

            Job was a man of unparalleled and genuine piety. He was also a man of well-deserved prosperity. He was a godly gentleman, extremely wealthy, a fine husband, and a faithful father. In a quick and brutal sweep of back-to-back calamities, Job was reduced to a twisted mass of brokenness and grief. The extraordinary accumulation of disasters that hit him would have been enough to finish off any one of us living today.

            Job is left bankrupt, homeless, helpless, and childless. He’s left standing beside the ten fresh graves of his now-dead children on a windswept hill. His wife is heaving deep sobs of grief as she kneels beside him, having just heard him say, “Whether our God gives to us or takes everything from us, we will follow Him.” She leans over and secretly whispers, “Just curse God and die.” Pause and ponder their grief-and remember the man had done nothing to deserve such unbearable pain.

            Misery and mystery are added to the insult and injury of Job’s real-life disasters. As he sits there covered with skin ulcers that have begun erupting with pus, swelling his body with fever and giving him a maddening itch that will not cease, he looks up into the faces of three friends who arrive on the scene. They sit and stare at the man for seven days and nights without uttering a word. Just imagine. First, they don’t recognize him, which tells you something of the extent of his swelling and the sores that covered his body. The sight causes them to be at a loss for words for a full week. Unfortunately, they didn’t remain silent. When they finally did speak, they had nothing to say but blame, accusation, and insult. “You’re getting what you deserve.” Though they shaped their cutting remarks in much more philosophical terms, they proved unmerciful. His pain only intensified.

            His misery turns to mystery with God’s silence. If the words of his so-called friends are hard to hear, the silence of God becomes downright intolerable. Not until the thirty-eighth chapter of the book does God finally break the silence, however long that took. If it were just a few months, try to imagine. You’ve become the object of your alleged friends’ accusations, and the heavens are brass as you plead for answers from the Almighty, who remains mysteriously mute. Nothing comes to you by way of comfort. It’s all so unfair; you’ve done nothing to deserve such anguish.

Job was human like the rest of us, and he was angry with God at times for allowing these tragic events to occur in his life. But his trust in God never wavered. The ability to trust God in the midst of suffering is a difficult task, yet one of the things that helps me is to remember God’s faithfulness to me in the past. Today I can look back at times of suffering in my own life that happened years ago and see God’s faithfulness throughout. I couldn’t see it as clearly at the time, but today I have a much better understanding of it all. This ability to see God’s faithfulness in the past has helped me wait patiently on God in present difficulties, knowing that He is faithful. I know He’s working in the midst of this current crisis just like He has in the past, and I need to trust Him. I like how Brennan Manning addresses this issue of trust:

                        Unwavering trust is a rare and precious thing because it often demands a degree of courage that borders on the heroic. When the shadow of Jesus’ cross falls across our lives in the form of failure, rejection, abandonment, betrayal, unemployment, loneliness, depression, the loss of a loved one; when we are deaf to everything but the shriek of our own pain; when the world around us suddenly seems a hostile, menacing place-at those times we may cry out in anguish, “How could a loving God permit this to happen?” At such moments the seeds of distrust are sown. It requires heroic courage to trust in the love of God no matter what happens to us.                                                                                                 -Ruthless Trust

            Times of intense pain and suffering remove all the shallow, superficial cliché’s of “Sure, I trust God.” To still love God and remain fully devoted to Him in the midst of suffering, to love Him even when you think He is unfair and callous is true love, true devotion, pure trust.

Hebrews 12:1-13 (NKJV)
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, ² looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. ³ For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. ⁴ You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin. ⁵ And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: “My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him;
⁶ For whom the Lord loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives.”  ⁷ If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? ⁸ But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. ⁹ Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? ¹⁰ For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. ¹¹ Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. ¹² Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, ¹³ and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.

Yes, God allows terrible things to happen in our lives, but during these times we must remember that we are not alone. Many have traveled the road of suffering before us like Job, like Jesus, and have been able to patiently endure.

One final thought. I believe that God allows seasons of suffering to occur in the life of every believer to test not only the reality of their faith but also the extent of their love for Him. You can’t fake your love while in pain. What I really believe in my heart and how I really feel about God and whether or not I really trust Him all become evident through season of suffering.  The ultimate proof of my love for God is demonstrated by absolute trust and surrender. These can only be proved true in the crucible of suffering. When you can say “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him”(Job 13:15 (NKJV), you know that your love for God is real.

Questions:

1. How does God describe Job? Did the Lord consider Job to be a godly man or an ungodly man?

2. What 2 aspects of Job’s character and action does God highlight in verse 1?

3. What does it mean to be “blameless / perfect”?

Psalms 37:37 (NKJV)
³⁷ Mark the blameless man, and observe the upright; For the future of that man is peace.

“Blameless does not mean perfect; it means he did not compromise with moral evil. He was a man whose business dealings were handled with integrity. He kept his word. He dealt fairly with others. As a result, he was respected by those around him, whether within or outside the family. He was upright. He was man of character”                                                                             – Chuck Swindoll

4. What does it mean to be “upright”?

Psalms 7:10 (NKJV)
¹⁰ My defense is of God, Who saves the upright in heart.

Psalms 11:2 (NKJV)
² For look! The wicked bend their bow, They make ready their arrow on the string, That they may shoot secretly at the upright in heart.

5. What does it mean to “Fear the Lord”?

Job 28:28 (NKJV)
‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, And to depart from evil is understanding.’ ”

“To ‘Fear the Lord’ means to ‘respect who He is, what He says, and what He does. It is not the cringing fear of a slave before a master but the loving reverence of a child before a father, a respect that leads to obedience.” Wiersbe

“The remarkable thing about fearing God, is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else.”               – Oswald Chambers

“The Bible often speaks of the value of fearing God, especially in Proverbs and Psalms; and it is always in the sense of reverential respect. Fear in the sense of respect considers God a friend. Fear in the sense of dread considers God an enemy. Christens, as followers of Christ, should fear God as a friend, knowing that we should reverence Him.”                                        -David Jeremiah

6. What does it mean to “Shun evil”? Is that always easy?

Areas we are turn away from:

‘False gods’

Genesis 35:1-2  Then God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there; and make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau your brother.” ² And Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you, purify yourselves, and change your garments.

‘Wine’

1 Samuel 1:12-14    And it happened, as she continued praying before the Lord, that Eli watched her mouth. ¹³ Now Hannah spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli thought she was drunk. ¹⁴ So Eli said to her, “How long will you be drunk? Put your wine away from you!”

‘False Ways’

Psalms 119:29  Remove from me the way of lying, And grant me Your law graciously.

‘All Types of Evil’

Isaiah 1:16  “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil

‘False Worship’

Amos 5:21-23   “I hate, I despise your feast days, And I do not savor your sacred assemblies. ²² Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings. ²³ Take away from Me the noise of your songs, For I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments.

Matthew 15:7-9   Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying: ⁸ ‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth, And honor Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me. ⁹ And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ “

7. Why does God begin the book of Job by describing Job’s character?

Conclusion:

From the very first verse it is established that Job was a man of faith-he was a man of proven integrity who feared God and pushed evil away.