JOB

Introduction: Believed by many to be the oldest book in the Bible, the book of Job tells the story of the incredible suffering and divine restoration of the ancient man Job. Much to our chagrin, it does not answer the age-old question, “Why the righteous suffer?” Instead, it teaches us to trust God in our infirmities, no matter how unjust and unexplainable they may appear to be.

Job 1:1-3, 13-22 —The greatest of men blame God for nothing, but bless God in everything.

The heart is best beheld in bereavements rather than blessings, for a heart that belongs to God will blame Him for nothing and bless Him in everything.

Job 1:4-5 — We have failed as Christian parents if our children grow up to confess Christ with their lips, but live lives that prove they curse Him in their hearts.

Christian parents should continually pray that their children’s allegiance to Christ will be surely affirmed by their conduct, not simply by their church attendance.

Job 1:6-7 — Satan does not come before God because he gets to, but because he has to. God is not accessible to him, but he is accountable to God. (Job 2:1-2; 1 Peter 5:8)

Far from a formidable foe to God, who frustrates God’s plans and purposes, the devil is a mere pawn in the hands of God, who God uses to fulfill His plans and purposes.

Job 1:8-12 — God places His protective hedge around His people, so that Satan has no power over them, except what God permits for His own purposes.

There is nothing the devil can do to you that God doesn’t allow him to for your good and God’s glory.

Job 2:1-2 — Satan does not come before God because he gets to, but because he has to. God is not accessible to him, but he is accountable to God. (Job 1:6-7; 1 Peter 5:8)

Far from a formidable foe to God, who frustrates God’s plans and purposes, the devil is a mere pawn in the hands of God, who God uses to fulfill His plans and purposes.

Job 2:3-8 — As a last resort, the devil brings out his big guns—disease and death—against the stalwart saint, to coerce him or her into renouncing Christ and reneging on his or her Christian commitment.

Despite the devil’s desire to afflict and annihilate God’s chosen saints, especially the choicest among them, he will find them impregnable to him, immune to disease, and invulnerable to death, unless God lifts from them, for His plans and purposes, His protective hedge around them.

Job 2:9 — Many, like Job’s wife, speak without the slightest suspicion that it is Satan who has pulled their chain. (Job 1:11; 2:5)

Far more tongues in this fallen world are set afire by Hell than by Heaven. (James 3:6; Acts 2:1-4)

Job 2:10 — To be grateful when blessed and to gripe and grumble when burdened and bothered is to prove oneself both silly and sinful.

Contrary to popular opinion, great faith is not proved by everything going right, but by proving oneself faithful when everything goes wrong.

Job 2:11-13 — Sometimes profound suffering calls for prolonged silence.

Sometimes it’s more comforting to offer the suffering your company rather than your counsel, especially when you’re not sure of your counsel and it’s not charitable to the sufferer.

Job 3:1-12 — It's possible for the favored of Heaven to fall prey to deep despair upon earth, even to the depths of antinatalism, the protestation of procreation on the premise that the sorrows of life so outweigh the joys that it’s better to have never been born. (Job 1:8; 2:3)

Contrary to popular opinion, happiness is not the true measure of spirituality in this fallen sin-cursed world. Some times the most spiritual among us is the saddest of us all. Remember, Jesus wasn't a "seventh heavenist," but a man of sorrows.

Job 3:13-19 — Death is indiscriminate and the grave the great equalizer.

The grave is level ground; for within it there is no distinction between sovereigns and stillborns, monarchs and miscarriages, oppressors and the oppressed, or the tranquil and the troubled.

Job 3:20-26 — Although humanly perplexing, there is a divine purpose for every life, even the lives of those who pursue the grave like a buried treasure, because they are plagued with problems and have no prospects for the future.

The most meaningful lives are not necessarily the merriest, but might be the most melancholy.

Job 4:1-5 — We cannot encourage the discouraged if we become evidently dismayed over our own discouragements.

Those overcome by trials cannot encourage others to overcome trials.

Job 4:6-9 — We are neither protected from perils by our piety nor immunized from infirmities by our integrity.

Sorrow is not always reaped from the sowing of personal sin. Many a righteous Job may be found on an ash heap.

Job 8:6-7 — The God-condemned preaching of Bildad, like the heretical preaching of present-day prosperity preachers, proclaimed riches to be proof of righteousness and worldly prosperity proof of purity of heart. (Job 42:7-9)

Instead of signifying shoo-ins for Heaven, who are made enviable by God, riches can be a stumbling block to Heaven, to those who are estranged from God. (Mark 10:23)

Job 12:7-25 — Either the hand of God is in all things or there is no hand of God at all.

If God is not real, life is without reason.

Job 12:23 — Don’t be deceived, it's God alone who makes nations great or destroys them. America's fate is not in the hands of American voters, but in the hands of the Almighty.

It’s not MAGA Americans, but only God Almighty who can make America great again. Therefore, our Christian prayer closets are far more important than our country’s polling places.

Job 14:5 - If God has numbered our days, is He constantly recalculating them, subtracting or adding days depending upon how many Cheetos we eat or vitamins we take?

Our personal longevity is preordained by the Lord, so we’ll not live one day past Providence’s predetermined limit.

Job 15:31 — To be led astray by trusting in worthless things is to squander one's life accumulating worthless treasures.

Made up gods guarantee misspent lives.

Job 22:21 — There is no peace with God without submission to God, for our enmity with God will never end unless we surrender to Him.

Only by coming to God in complete surrender can we continue on with God into spiritual prosperity.

Job 23:8-10 — In the flames of feeling God-forsaken our faith in God is strengthened by being sorely tested and surely refined into finest gold.

God sends trials not to reduce nor ruin us, but to raise and refine us.

Job 25:4 — Only the wisdom of divine omniscience could devise a plan of salvation that would solve the insoluble problem of justifying and purifying unjust and imperfect men without compromising in anyway the perfect justice of a just and perfect God. (Romans 3:21-26)

Thanks to the blood of Jesus, no sin is swept under the rug of divine justice by a just God's justification of a believing and unjust sinner.

Job 26:14 — As fallen men we behold God’s ways from the fringes and hear His Word but faintly; consequently, our understanding of Him is at best fragmental.

"It is completely incomprehensible to us how God can reveal himself and to some extent make himself known in created beings: eternity in time, immensity in space, infinity in finite, immutability in change, being in becoming, the all, as it were, in that which is nothing. This mystery cannot be comprehended; it can only be gratefully acknowledged." (Herman Bavinck)

Job 28:1-28 — Wisdom cannot be prospected like a gem nor purchased with gold, it can only be procured from God.

Wisdom is found in the fear of the Lord and sound reason in repentance from sin. (Job 28:28)

Job 29:3 — We need the lamp of the Lord to shine over us and the light of the Lord to show us the way through our every dark day.

If we surrender our lives to God, He will shine His light on us.

Job 30:1 — The old and affirmed are often derided by the descendants of those they would not have elected as dog catcher.

Retirement is the realm of nobodies who were somebodies, but are now overlooked by almost everybody.

Job 31:5-6 — The integrity of all who walk in falsehood and rush to deceit is weighed in the scales by God and found wanting.

How much weight does your word carry with God?

Job 31:12-15 — If I slight my accountability to others, how can I stand and give account of myself to God.

“Mankind was my business.” (The words of Jacob Marley to Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol)

Job 31:16-23 — If God condemns those who refuse to share their few crumbs with the hungry or their fleece with the cold, how much more will He condemn the opulent who refuse to share their wealth with those oppressed and in want?

Paupers should be as eager to share their extra morsels with the needy as the prosperous should be to share their extra millions.

Job 31:24-25 — To make gold your god or to be puffed up over your possessions is to forever impoverish your soul.

The pockets of all corpses are equally empty.

Job 31:33-34 — To conceal our sins rather than confess them, because we fear the crowd more than we do Christ, is a fatal mistake.

Many a man has unfortunately forfeited his soul in order to save face.

Job 31:40 — Job was sorely mistaken when he thought he had the final word, for, as all men learn, God always has the last word.

"We are silent at the beginning of the day, because God should have the first word, and we are silent before going to sleep, because the last word also belongs to God." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Job 32:1-5 — It is time to be angry when men justify themselves rather than God and accuse each other of unproven accusations.

Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar were condemned by God for contending that Job suffered because he sinned, but Elihu, who contended that Job sinned because he suffered, was not condemned by God.

Job 32:6-9 — It is not human seniority, but the Holy Spirit that gives man understanding; therefore, wisdom is not the exclusive monopoly of the elderly.

Hoary hair is not proof of one’s wisdom, nor youth of one’s foolishness. While our world has no shortage of old fools, it has some who are wise and mature beyond their years.

Job 34:24 — God does not need an impeachment investigation to remove leaders from office and to replace them with others.

You couldn’t uncover enough evidence to convict most American politicians of their Christian confession if you had a Watergate Committee and a magnifying glass.

Job 34:29 — We have no call to complain when God is silent and no chance to see when God is concealed.

In God-given tranquility, being troubled is an impossibility, but in God’s elusiveness, uneasiness is an inevitability.

Job 34:30 — The people are ensnared by the insincerity of their political leaders. By putting up with their hypocrisy we make ourselves prey to their profligacy.

Honest people will end up reeling whenever hypocritical politicians end up reigning.

Job 35:10 — Since nightfall is only Heaven's orchestral overture for a divine overnight opus, no child of God should ever fear the dark!

Nothing puts Satan to flight like a saint singing in the night!

Job 36:26 — A God no bigger than my reason is unworthy of my reverence!

A god I can figure out with my finite mind is too infinitesimal to put my faith in!

Job 37:21 — We don’t see the bright light from Heaven atop the clouds of our troubles and trials, because we look up from earth at their foreboding dark underbellies rather than down from Heaven on the splendor of their divine purpose!

We must learn to see things from the perspective of God’s throne rather than through the prism of our trials.

Job 38:1-3 — Man up for a whirlwind encounter with omnipotence if you dare in your ignorant arrogance to arraign the Almighty over imagined injustices.

Human wind bags end up answering to a divine whirlwind, for God does not answer to any of us, but all of us answer to God.

Job 38:4-7 — It was God who determined the earth’s dimensions and stretched the survey line around this celestial sphere, as the heavenly host sang together and shouted for joy.

Angels, which are symbolized and referred to as stars in Scripture (Revelation 1:20), are not “sons of God” by birth, like Christ, or by adoption, like Christians, but by creation, like Adam (Luke 3:38).

Job 38:8-11 — It is God who confines the sea behind bars and bellows out to its mighty breakers, “Stop here!”

Only Christ can corral the swelling sea!

Job 38:12-15 — It is God who commands the dawn and commences the day, in order to cease the dastardly deeds done in the darkness of night.

It is heavenly “Sonlight” that dispels the dark deeds of an earthly midnight.

Job 38:16-18 — The extent of God’s sovereignty encompasses the depths of the sea, the gates of death, and the ends of the earth.

There is no reality not under God’s radiating regality!

Job 38:19-21 — It is God alone who points out the path to light and prohibits darkness from overstepping its parameters.

Thinking yourself a know-it-all because of your longevity, just proves your stupidity.

Job 38:22-23 — It is God who storehouses the snow and hail until the divinely appointed times for them to providentially pelt the earth.

Snowstorms and hailstorms are providential, not coincidental.

Job 38:24 — God disperses the light where He wants it and demands the wind to blow where He will.

Both the glaring sun and the gusting wind are under the control of Christ.

Job 38:25-30 — It is God who determines if the land is to be made fruitful by rain and dew or flooded and frozen by cloudbursts and frost.

The hardworking farmer is dependent on the Heavenly Father for a fruitful harvest.

Job 38:31-33 — It is God who commands the stars, binding them with cords into clusters and coordinating the constellations of heaven with the seasons of the earth.

Christians should plan their lives by the Word of the Almighty, who reigns over the stars, not by the words of astrologers, who claim to read the stars.

Job 38:34-35 — It is God who commands the clouds to rain and the lightning to strike.

Contrary to popular opinion, there is someone who really can; in fact, who really does, control the weather.

Job 38:36 — It is God who gives intelligence to man’s mind and insight to man’s heart. It is up to man, however, whether or not he implements it and is instructed by it.

When we’re through learning, we’re through.

Job 38:37-38 — God tallies the clouds and tilts them to pour water upon a parched earth.

Although people see many things looking at clouds, the one thing we should all see is God.

Job 38:39-41 — It is God who provides prey for the lion and rations for the raven.

Both the prowling lion and the scavenging raven are provided for by Divine Providence.

Job 39:1-4 — It is God who watches over the expectant doe and the birth and growth of her fawn.