Meet Your Enemy

Well, good afternoon. Let me add my greeting in the name of the Lord to you. If you would turn in your

Bibles to Job, re -reading Job 1 -6 -2 -10, you might remember a couple of weeks ago we met

Job for the first time, at least in this short series. Today we meet his enemy, who is

Satan, and we're going to get introduced to him. He was Job's enemy then. He was

Adam and Eve's enemy before that. He was King David's enemy after that.

He was Jesus' enemy, and he remains the enemy of God's people, of us, today.

In the final analysis, he's actually God's enemy, always trying to malign him, malign the

Lord's reputation, by corrupting his people, the people that Jesus Christ bought with his own blood.

So let us meet him in Job 1 -6 -2 -10.

If you would please stand for the reading of God's Word, Job 1, beginning at verse 6.

Now, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.

The Lord said to Satan, From where have you come? Satan answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.

And the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears

God and turns away from evil? Then Satan answered the Lord and said, Does Job fear

God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has on every side?

You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.

And the Lord said to Satan, Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.

So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. Now there was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house.

And there came a messenger to Job and said, The oxen were plowing, and the donkeys were feeding beside them.

And the Sabians fell on them and took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you.

And while he was yet speaking, there came another and said, The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them, and I alone have escaped to tell you.

And while he was yet speaking, there came another and said, The Chaldeans formed three groups and made a raid on the camels and took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you.

And while he was yet speaking, there came another and said, Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house.

And behold, a great wind came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead.

And I alone have escaped to tell you." Then Job arose and tore his robe, and shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshipped.

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. In all this, Job did not sin or charge

God with wrong. Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the

Lord, and Satan came among them to present himself before the Lord. And the Lord said to Satan, From where have you come?

Satan answered the Lord said, From going to and fro on the earth, from walking up and down on it.

And the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears

God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason.

Then Satan answered the Lord and said, Skin for skin, all that a man has he will give for his life.

But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and flesh, and he will curse you to your face. And the

Lord said to Satan, Behold, he is in your hand, only spare his life. So Satan went out from the presence of the

Lord, and struck Job with loathsome swords from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, and he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes.

Then his wife said to him, Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.

But he said to her, You speak as one of the foolish women who would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?

In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. God bless the reading. And now, if you will, the proclamation of his word, please be seated.

You know, if you think about it, for a figure in the Bible who has as much influence on the course of history as does our subject today, which is the devil,

Satan, our adversary, the accuser, for someone who has as much influence on the course of events, he really remains wrapped in mystery.

And if you think about him, we come up with more questions than answers. He's sort of a

Melchizedek figure, but a negative one, but a Melchizedek figure who just sort of appears.

He has no preamble. He has no background. If Job was written, as I believe, between the time of Abraham and Moses, though much closer to Abraham than Moses, then his appearance is one of the sons of God, the term which is ascribed to angels.

This appearance that we have here in Job is really only his second mention in all scripture. The first being, of course, in Genesis 3.

I speak of the devil. In Genesis 3, he is the serpent, he's the nechash, who beguiled

Eve, who tempted Adam, and he brought about the ruin of mankind, a fairly significant event,

I think we would all agree. Here in Job, he's called Satan, and it's the

Hebrew for the accuser, and the accuser is a title and a name for him.

Revelation 12 .10 tells us that this name, accuser, is really his activity day and night.

He accuses, and not just accuses anyone, but he accuses the brethren. We are his special target.

We are his special attention of these accusations that he constantly brings. He's the devil, from the

Greek for slanderer. In Zechariah 3, he appears, he stands before the Lord, casting aspersions on Joshua the high priest.

Peter frames him as a roaring lion who wants to tear apart any victim he can find, to devour them.

Paul informs us that he disguises himself as an angel of light, so he looks beautiful. He sounds attractive.

He brings us towards him. In Matthew 12, verse 24, the

Pharisees accused Jesus, Jesus of all people, they accused Jesus of being a disciple of Beelzebul.

Which means the Lord of filth, the Lord of flies, when in fact it was they, not Jesus, who were children of the devil.

But this is this character that I would have us be introduced to this morning or this afternoon. More questions than answers.

He was created with the rest of the angels, right? Yet he fell into sin with some number of angels that followed him into sin.

Does that mean then that angels are created with a sinful nature? That they're not impeccable, impeccable meaning they're unable to sin, but they're peccable like us, able to sin or not to sin, as with the case with legions and legions of angels who did not follow

Satan in his fall. How is it that God, who is of two pure eyes and to behold evil, allows this filthy thing, this

Lord of filth, if we use that term, this author of sheer evil malevolence into his very presence?

Why does God even allow him and his minions to continue to exist? You know,

Satan's fall is recorded in Isaiah chapter 14, verse 12 and following. We're not going to read that right now, but that speaks of the king of Babylon where he stands there as a type of this adversary and he hears his doom prophesied.

He's also mentioned in Ezekiel 28, again, a human king being a type of this adversary.

Some commentators, including John Calvin, would say that those are only about human kings and it's a mistake to attribute them to Satan, though I do so carefully,

I would and I think with Pastor Connolly, disagree with Calvin on this and know this speaks about those human kings and their doom, but also they are typological of Satan.

If you're interested, Wade Grudem, in his systematic theology, he shows that the language in those passages, how you are fallen from heaven,

O day star, son of David, and you are the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

You are in Eden, the garden of God, and every precious stone was your covering. Those two are kind of mixed from Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 and he shows that this language exceeds anything that could be applied only to a human king, even one so lofty in his time as Nebuchadnezzar.

Another theologian named Merrill Unger would agree and he would make the connection between government and institutions and Satan's activities and we know that Babylon in Old Testament and New Testament alike stands for human institutions that stand against God, especially in the book of Revelation.

Now, he had to exist early because he was there to tempt Adam and Eve. I believe, and this may be just me, but I believe that when the sons of God shouted for joy when they saw the

Lord's creation, this comes later in the book of Job actually, but when they shouted for joy, when they saw what

God had done, that this devil cringed with jealousy and said, you know, that praise is due to me.

In today's gender -confused world, just barely pulling back to some linguistic sanity, we might even ask, why do we call this being a him?

I mean, did anyone check to see if that's the way he wants to be identified? We know almost nothing about this creature other than his activities.

A little more background, in the Old Testament, except in one case, it's the title that we have, the

Satan, the accuser. The word the is always before that title, and that's what dominates in the

Old Testament. It's a title. The way district attorney is not a name, but a function, a title.

You remember in Gladiator, when Maximus is demanded of the emperor after that wonderful battle he had in the arena, he said, tell us your name.

He finally turns, I can't do it like Russell Crowe, but he turns and says, my name is Gladiator. Well, it wasn't his name, that was his function.

He was a slave, he was a gladiator. It's like that, Satan is a title, the accuser, we take it as a name also.

But in the Old Testament, here's my point, there was no concept of a personal malevolent evil being responsible for all the ills of the world.

Now don't get me wrong, he is all that, but that awaits New Testament revelation, particularly from the mouth of our

Lord Jesus Christ. The slanderous accusation against Job is a direct example of what we have when we say on earth as it is in heaven.

Now how so? Throughout the book of Job, everything that is going to happen in the book of Job is decreed from heaven and is playing out the way it was decreed in heaven.

The slander is first and foremost against God, not Job. Job is indeed being slandered, but the reality is heavenward.

It's God whose name is at stake. What is Satan saying? He's saying that God is not good enough, is not powerful enough for Job to stay true to him.

That the things Job has are taken from him, if his prestige, if his goods, if his family, all those things that have given him this idyllic life that we see in the first few verses of the first chapter, if those are removed from him, he will stop, not only stop worshiping

God, but will curse him to his face. It's something like, well, of course he worships you.

Who wouldn't worship you in Job's situation? You've made him the greatest man in the east,

God himself says, the greatest on earth, and you've personally guarded everything that made him great.

Of course he worships you. Who wouldn't? As if to say, you stack the deck.

Now let's play fair and see how it comes out. As Meredith Klein puts it, he says, the primary purpose of Job's suffering, unknown to him, was that he should stand before men and angels as a trophy of the saving might of God, an exhibit that divine wisdom, which is the archetype, the source, and the foundation of human wisdom.

Job's suffering, though he didn't know it, and it's never really explained to him, has a purpose, that he's going to stand before men and angels as a trophy of his endurance, as a trophy of his piety, as a trophy of his consistent religion, no, as a trophy of God's grace,

God's saving grace, the powerful saving might of God, an exhibit of that divine wisdom, which is the archetype, the source, and foundation of true human wisdom.

Now Job, as we read, he lost everything faster than the crash of 1929.

The whole inventory listed in verse 2 of chapter 1, the camels, the sheep, the ox, and the donkeys, gone.

That's all his money. His servants, gone. That's all his ability to work the land.

His children are gone. There's only one part of his family that remains other than himself, that's his wife, who interestingly is left off that list of all the things that Job had up in verse 2 of chapter 1.

The soon coming discourses of Job and his friends are going to search out the cause for Job's punishment, but you and I know what none of them understood.

You and I know it. We know it because we were there in the reading of scripture. We heard it when all this was decreed by the

Lord. You and I know that Job is not being specifically punished for a specific sin.

And this is going to be a great part of the discourses that follow if we ever get to them, as they search out what Job did specifically that led to this specific punishment that had to be from the hand of an angry

God. We know he's not being punished, he's being tempted, he's being tested.

Tempted to blaspheme God's name. Satan's gambit is that is

Job's true nature, that his love for God is not for the person of God, but for what

God provides materially. See what Job is saying, you know, his nature is materialistic.

You, Lord, are a sideshow to this man who you say is the greatest in the earth, and we know he's at least the greatest in the east.

I think for all of us, if that indeed is what Satan is saying, and I'm very convinced that it is, that's what he really means, we need to understand that in our true nature, in our natural state, what is important to us?

Well, there's a lot of things, I might not make the whole list for you, but in general would we not say that what we have really stands pretty high?

Our status because of our work positions, the money we make, the things we bought with those things, that stands pretty high for us.

What Satan misses here, and we alluded to this much a couple of weeks ago when we opened this book up, is the power of God, the transforming power of God.

The pastor read this morning from Ezekiel 28 with the new heart that God gives us, and what

Satan is badly underestimating is the power of that heart, the perfection of that heart, that heart that is now bent to God, by nature children of wrath, but God, because of the great love with which he loved us, has redeemed us, has changed us, the spirit has come upon us, and given us a whole new set of priorities, and today priorities are even too small, he's given us

Christ, and faith to believe in him, and therefore the things of this world are put in their proper perspective, thank

God, yes, but not just for what he's done, for the person he is.

This is what Satan misses here, and we have to understand that when the devil turns his attention towards God's people, when he puts them under test like this, and we'll talk as we go through this, not this time, but as we go through this book more and more, if we get the chance, how much range of motion he really has, but the temptations are ultimately not you and me, but we have to face the temptation, we'll talk about that, but ultimately it's

God, not he being tempted, but God's power in you, in me, that's being tested, and being disbelieved by that influence in this world, the ruler, the principalities, the ruler of the air, which is of course the subject today, it's

God really ultimately who's being challenged when you and I face the hard times, when you and I face those things that might draw us from God, when you and I face those things that might make us think, you know,

I don't have to go to church anymore, I need to be at home, I need to ponder this, I need to think about that, I need to find my way out of this, it's not you really who's being tested, you must stand up under the test, as must

I, it's God and his saving might that is under review.

Job's test was kind of a sequel to Adam and Eve's. Will Job pass the same test that the first couple failed so miserably?

The first couple, Adam and Eve, tempted to mistrust God, and what did they do? They mistrusted

God. They believed the mangled word over the true word. They trusted the deceiver in the form of a snake, a serpent, they trusted the deceiver over him who is true.

They took the word of the father of lies over the word of him for whom lies are impossible.

Very similar test for Job. And I'd argue this is only really the second test, the second time that the accuser comes in such a personal way to people.

Job's trial came in two parts, his wealth, second his health. When he lost the first, his answer was, the

Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. And the author writes, in all this

Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. There's a little bit of nuance to the language there behind charge

God with wrong. It sounds like he's saying he just didn't say

God did something bad or wrong or incorrect, which of course that means. But the word behind that could mean folly.

He didn't charge God with being capricious or just horsing him around as we might say.

He didn't charge God with doing anything wrong with any folly, with doing something that had no purpose. The Lord has given, the

Lord gave, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. He acknowledges

God's hand in the good that he had enjoyed and the trial he now is enduring. In whatever circumstance,

God is to be blessed. The question we need to ask ourselves when we run into these trials, not run into them, when these trials come to us,

I should say. But the question we need to ask ourselves is, what is God teaching me in this?

Is it purposeless? Does bad things just kind of happen? They just kind of fall from the sky and all of a sudden

I was unlucky enough to step in that puddle? Or sometimes if somebody had a canine before them and they didn't have those little baggies, it's just my bad day and now my shoes are a mess?

Do bad things just kind of happen? No. You and I believe in a sovereign

God, a good and sovereign God. And so when these things happen to us, when we're put into these trials, we need to look and say, okay, what is being put at risk here?

What is the controversy? What is the thing that is coming into play here in my life? Is it my stuff?

Is it my relationships? Is it my job? Is it my pride? Whatever it is, we need to stop.

We need to think this through, through prayer, through scripture, through counsel from your pastor, from your brothers and sisters in the

Lord. We need to think, what is it that's being put at risk? And what is God teaching me through this?

Not will I ever get it back or is it going to be taken away finally? No, those are not the questions.

What is God teaching me? No temptation has come upon you, but what is common to man?

And in the temptation, God will make a way of escape so that you may be able to endure it. Do we believe that, brothers and sisters?

Do we believe that? Because to believe that, we need to look at this temptation we have.

Whatever the circumstance is, we need to say, what's this tempting me to do? Is this tempting me to fall back on my pride, on my self -sufficiency?

Is this tempting me to become bitter? What is God teaching me?

Why is this particular providence upon me? And what aspect of my life is being highlighted by this?

And where do I need to repent? Where do I need to look? And trusting God, what is the way of escape?

I would say normally it's confession and repentance, not to make it sound simple, but the

Lord is showing us something in whatever he brings. We need to be aware of that. As Job, as we go through the discourses, becomes more and more aware.

People have been asking me, how long would it take to preach through Job? My estimate is 36 weeks, so we're not going to get to all that this afternoon.

But do you believe that the trials that you go through are for your good? James and Peter tell us that they are meant for our good.

They tell us this very clearly, and that's by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What do these trials do? They refine our faith.

They make us stronger. They filter out the dross. What does Job say?

The Lord has given. The Lord gave me good things. I think he had a good wife.

I think his family was idyllic. He was the greatest, the wealthiest man. He had a fine reputation.

The Lord gave him all that, and that's what he's acknowledging there. The Lord has given. And so in the utmost trials that we go through, what do we learn here?

In our trials, while the tears are still flowing, before the shock has even really set in, much less worn off, even then, you must be able, like Job, who was a sinner like you and a sinner like me, to give glory to God.

Why would you give glory to God in trials? Though most of us were never going to see anything like Job did.

Job was a real figure. It hurt him like you can imagine it would. It's to trust him.

It's to know from your heart, from that heart that God gave you, and to trust in faith that this came upon you for your good and for God's glory.

Both. You see, it's not chaos. It's not blind chance.

Job doesn't know why these things have happened to him yet, and he's never really going to find out explicitly.

But it's not chaos. It's not blind chance. And Job, I think, acknowledges this at what level he can, because it's the

Lord who gave and the Lord who took away. So it's not just capricious things that happen.

It's not just random. Our good, sovereign

God, according to Romans 8, verses 28 to 30, works all things for your good, no matter how hard it is.

He works all things for our good. And what's his ultimate and good purpose? To conform us, to conform you to the image of his

Son, Jesus Christ. And that's good for you. That's good for me. I mean, the more we're like him, the better off we are.

Are we not? And the best part of that, the best part is it works to God's glory.

And the more we become like him, the better off we are, because we're becoming more like him, the more glory God gets for changing a numbskull like me to be anything like his

Son, Jesus Christ. And that's why we need to think of this trial that Job is going through, and the trials that we ourselves go through.

You notice in verse 115, Satan used ordinary means to bring about the first disaster against Job.

He employed the Sabian raiders to take the donkeys and the oxen and the donkeys.

And then supernatural means, fire falls from heaven, and there go the sheep. Then back to natural means, the

Chaldean marauders take the camels, and finally back to the supernatural with this mighty wind that knocks over the house and kills everyone inside.

Now, I know we went very quickly through all those trials, and we're not going to stop and go back and go through them in any detail.

We've covered them, except for a few comments about the boils that were given to him.

We're not told how Job was struck with these boils, how the devil did that to him, only that somehow he did.

And as we go through this, we'll talk about the range of motion that the adversary has. Let me just say, because I'm not going to go into detail about it this afternoon or this evening, don't be afraid of him.

Didn't we just sing, the mighty fortress is our God, and that Jesus Christ in you is more powerful than him who is in the world, which is

Satan, your adversary. Don't be afraid of him. We'll talk about him some more as we go through this, but don't let him scare you, because Jesus Christ is in you, and Jesus Christ is your protector, and Jesus Christ is a jealous

God, and will not give you up to him. So even if I don't go through all the detail of Satan and his range of motion, how much power he has, and how he did these things here, we can leave it on the side.

And I just tell you this again, don't be afraid of him. Be wary. He's more powerful.

Mostly theologians say he's smarter than us, but not to be feared, okay?

Job had boils. Boils were an unclean disease. In Leviticus, the priests had to examine boils very carefully to make sure they weren't leprosy.

Boils are what Egypt was struck with in the sixth plague, and that's one of the ones that the magicians couldn't duplicate, though I don't know why they'd even try.

A boil threatened to take King Hezekiah's life. In Revelation 16, men are scorched with fierce heat, which sounds about as painful as a boil.

Even with loathsome sores, even with these terrible heat -induced sores on them, suffering as they were.

In Revelation, I'm talking about Revelation 16 now, even knowing and confessing that they're from God, even hearing at that time from heaven itself that the suffering is meant to drive them to repent, even hearing such a word of healing, what would they rather do?

What does Revelation 16 say? They would rather gnaw their tongues in pain than repent.

They'd rather gnaw their tongues in pain like a wolf chewing off its own paw to get free of a trap.

They'd rather that than repent. Can you even picture just from that, thinking of boils and going through that quick biblical theology of boils and those kinds of sores, you think for a moment what a gift repentance is?

If men struck with that kind of sores would curse God, knowing that they should repent and fall down and worship

God, he might even heal them. They'd rather curse God while they're gnawing off their own tongues.

And you, brothers and sisters, you're given the gift of repentance.

Well, faith comes before repentance, but you're given the gift of faith so that you might repent. Can you picture what a gift it is?

Can you picture how far it is that Jesus brings you up when his Spirit comes upon you and brings you to himself?

I ask you, does the Lord have the primacy in your heart, in your life? Do you value

Jesus above all else more than your comfortable health? Is the answer yes? Do you value him more than your well -paying job, than your nice home, your cars, your family?

Is the answer yes? Praise God for his marvelous gifts. Praise God for his incredible power.

What does it say in Ephesians 119? What's the power that works towards you? The power that raised

Jesus Christ from the dead is the power working towards you. That's the faith you have, because by faith, you and I would sooner gnaw off our own tongue than curse the

Lord. The opposite of what I pictured in Revelation 16, where they'd rather chew off their own tongue than confess

Jesus. I'd rather lose my tongue than un -confess him. Because I'm great?

Because you're great? No, of course not. Because of that transformed power. It's because of the power and the durability of that true faith that Jesus gives us.

What did Job choose? Job chose to worship. Job chose that which no man, which you or I, by virtue of our natural cells would ever do in his situation.

In pain and sorrow and loss, he worshiped God. He blessed God. He said something like, thank you,

Lord, that you gave me these things, if only for a time. For the blessings I once knew,

I praise your name. About a year ago, when

I lost my wife, that's where I was. I had to say, blessed be the name of the

Lord. And I meant it. And praise God for the times I had. Job passed the test.

Job passed the test. And remember, he's a sinner like you and like me. Nothing extraordinary about Job.

He was blessed by God, but as a man, qualitatively, no different than the rest. God himself, though, says he still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason.

See, Job passed where Adam and Eve failed. And he holds fast his integrity.

Let me just a little bit of the nuance behind that. He holds fast his integrity. It's in a firm in the

Hebrew called hyphil. And that just means it's causative. He was caused to hold fast to his integrity.

It could even mean that God himself caused it. But the idea, again, is that there was purpose in his suffering and that God worked something through it.

And God caused him to be strengthened through the suffering that he endured. I read from 1

Corinthians 10 about the temptation that you may be able to endure it. Why can you endure it?

Because by faith we know that God gives a way of escape. But we can endure it because we know that the

Holy Spirit in us will persevere in us. And we will persevere because God perseveres.

And I will get through the hard times and the sadnesses and the sorrows because it's

God in me. And the same for all of you. We're no different. These trials are for our good.

Peter and James would both affirm this very explicitly. Count it all joy, my brothers, says

James, when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

God means to do something with it. There's a goal. It's not just something that happens. He didn't just say, well,

I'm just going to give Joe Doe here a bad time this week because I'm bored. And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Peter then says, I can't put my finger on it.

I didn't make a mark. He says the same thing. These trials are for our good. These trials are meant to refine us.

There's few instances of such personal attention from our adversary in all

Scripture. The accuser. Adam and Eve were first, of course. Adam representing us all.

He failed. And then there was Joe. And as wonderful as his success was, because the glory is all

God's, any success he had, being able to say, blessed be the name of the Lord, despite all these things he took from me,

I can bless him because he gave them to me in the first place. As wonderful as his success was, because the glory all goes to God, there is this one deficiency.

There's a major lacuna, a missing piece. Job passed for himself.

Job and Job alone received the benefits. Now, if Adam was first, then

Job was second in these one -on -one confrontations. Then the third one -on -one confrontation with the devil was none other than Jesus Christ himself.

Adam was tempted to be given what he didn't have, or so he was convinced that God had held back from him.

Job was tempted by losing what he did have. So Adam, God's holding back and not giving you what you deserve.

Job, God took from him what he had. Jesus' temptation, which we can read of in Matthew 4, were more like the first.

He succeeds where Adam and Eve failed, but it was more like that. Satan offered to give Jesus what he didn't have, at least didn't have yet, which was the kingdoms of the world.

Did he not say, all these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me? Unlike Job, Jesus knew full well where the test came from.

He knew full well that the tempter could actually confer all that to him. Remember, Jesus doesn't say, no, you can't give that to me.

Unlike the first couple, though, Jesus said, be gone, Satan, for it is written you shall worship the

Lord your God and him only shall you serve. So if we think in terms of biblical theology, tracing the route of redemptive history,

Job is in the center of these three great tests. And he did succeed where Adam failed, but the limited value of his success was because it was only for himself.

Not that he was selfish about it, as if he had an option to suffer for others, he didn't.

Yet only he gained the benefits of having not sinned by charging God with folly or by cursing him with their lips.

So Job, in the middle of these three great and personal tests from the adversary, then at the summit on the highest peak is, of course,

Jesus Christ. His testing was exponentially more than Job's or Adam's and Eve's before him.

And the reason why is because the Lord's success would have infinitely further reach.

Whereas in Adam, we all sinned and we all die, for the wages of sin is death. In Christ, by faith, we have life.

Whereas Job will find himself restored at the end of the coming discourses and after God speaks, Jesus, our perfect Savior, the faultless

Lamb of God who takes the sin of the world, the sinless one who had done no violence, neither was deceit found in his mouth, the one who bore our iniquities when they nailed him to the cross to that tree, he needed no restoration with God.

Job does get restored. Jesus never did need to be restored. His communion with the

Father through all time has been, always was, always will be perfect and unbroken.

Now, see, the Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience, by his perfect victory over Satan's wiles, restored not just himself.

He restored us. He didn't need to be restored. It's we who needed the benefits, and it's we who were placed in Christ by God's predestined mercies.

That's Ephesians chapter 1 verse 4, blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ who chose us in him before the foundation of the world.

Jesus didn't succeed in order to better his relationship with God. He always had that relationship with God.

There was never a point in all time when he was not the unique son of God. No, Jesus' success is attributed to us because God chose us to be in him, so we gain the benefit of his suffering and his cross.

Now, the Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience, by his perfect victory over Satan's wiles, restored not himself but us to God, not just one like Job, but all who were appointed to believe.

Well, this is how I'd have us see Job's sufferings and the discourses that are going to come.

Job speaks first in chapter 3, and God willing, we will someday get to that. But I want us to see the suffering that we go through, the trials that we endure.

I want us to remember that God does them, not just giving us a way of escape so that by faith we might glorify him by coming out of them more refined, but knowing that God does them for a purpose, for a reason.

He's showing you something in yourself when he brings you these trials. There's a particular thing that he would have you recognize as being overemphasized or underemphasized in your life, and for you to confess that and repent of it, and in repentance and knowing the forgiveness of God, grow ever more into Christ's image, grow more like him, and bring more glory to God.

Satan, the accuser, accuses Job of being a lover of God only because he loves the things that God gave him.

May it never be so for us. Satan, the accuser, standing before God for so long until finally

Jesus comes and says he saw him falling from heaven like a bolt of lightning, no longer there.

The accuser defeated, no longer able to stand before God and accuse us because who stands between us and God is none other than Jesus Christ this moment right now, even now, interceding for us.

Be not afraid of him even as we sang in hymn number 81 in My Dear Fortress. Don't dwell on him too much, and brothers and sisters, if we do get to go on in this book more and more, guess what?

He doesn't come up again. We're done, and God receive all the glory as we fearlessly face the trials that we have and come out of them like Job, saying blessed be the name of the

Lord, having grown by the trial, more like God's Son, our Savior Jesus Christ.