WWUTT 814 Job Did Not Sin?

There is not a book of the Bible older than the book of Job. And yet even in its first two chapters, we witness a man who recognizes the sovereignty of God over all things when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.

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Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the book of Job.

This week, chapter two, which has some similarities with chapter one. So at the start of this book, we were introduced to the main character,

Job, who was a very prosperous and wealthy man, had seven sons and three daughters.

He was someone who was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

In fact, he was such an upright man that God singled him out in a conversation with Satan.

But the devil said, does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge of protection around his house and all that he has on every side, which as I mentioned last week, doesn't mean shrubbery, but simply that God had put a wall around him, protecting him from anything or anyone who would seek to harm

Job. Have you not blessed the work of his hands, Satan said, 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.

But God is the one who searches mind and heart. And he knew that Job's faithfulness to God was not dependent upon the stuff that he had or the things that the

Lord had blessed him with, that even if these things were struck, Job would not curse

God. And that's precisely what happens in the first chapter. Satan is allowed to go and strike all that Job has, but he cannot afflict

Job's body. Now that's going to change in chapter two. So where we pick up when we get to this chapter is we don't need the introductory part.

We got all of that in chapter one. So we skip straight to the heavenly conference, that which is going on in a spiritual realm, which we cannot see, hidden behind that veil that we cannot pass until we die and our soul returns to be with God.

And so Satan and God are having a conversation there. And we read in chapter two, starting in verse one, again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the

Lord. And Satan also came in among them to present himself before the

Lord. And just like with chapter one, when Satan did this, Satan is not the one who initiates the conversation.

He doesn't come in and begin speaking. But it is the Lord who talks to him and says, from where have you come?

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

Now, like I said, with Satan's response in chapter one, which was just like that, this was basically

Satan saying, I've been around frustrating the affairs of men. That's kind of what

Satan's admission is. I've been doing my work among your creation.

Now Satan is only allowed to come into God's presence because God has permitted him to be there.

We get the indication that Satan is not supposed to be there in chapter one and in chapter two. He's clearly singled out from among the sons of God as being someone who's not regularly there in God's presence.

But God has allowed him to come because it is Satan that he is using as an instrument to test

Job. This is the way that God is providentially using the devil to perfect righteousness in his own chosen.

God has decreed from before the foundation of the world the things that are going to take place.

Isaiah 14, 27, for the Lord of hosts has purposed and who will annul it?

His hand is stretched out and who will turn it back? In Lamentations chapter three, verses 37 and 38, we read, who has spoken and it came to pass unless the

Lord has commanded it. Is it not from the mouth of the most high that good and bad come?

When somebody has questioned my teaching on the sovereignty of God, sometimes I've proposed this question, do you believe that God has commanded all things good and bad?

And if that person says no, then I will say, then you disagree with something explicitly stated in the

Bible, that God has spoken and it came to pass. He commanded both good and bad.

It has come from the mouth of the Lord most high. So even in this story, in these things that have occurred to Job, God decreed from before the foundation of the world that this was going to take place.

Now God has not directly by his own hand struck Job, but he is using

Satan as an instrument to do these things, to do a work that God means to do in the life of Job, perfecting his righteousness.

But God knows in that he knows the heart of this man, that he's not going to curse him to his face.

So it is, it is as if God is displaying to Satan that Satan is wrong and that Job will in fact remain faithful unto the

Lord. Now Job will indeed need some rebuke, which comes much later on in the story. That's part of this perfecting righteousness in the life of this faithful man of God.

So here we continue with this conversation between God and Satan. Verse three, 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 holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason.

Now that's a little bit different than the response that God gave in chapter one. But he's showing

Satan here that Job has been faithful to me all the while. 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.

So now Satan is challenging God to say, strike his very body. And then this faithfulness that you think that he has, well, he'll give up all of that to curse

God. And the Lord said to Satan, behold, he is in your hand, only spare his life.

So Satan is now allowed to afflict his body, but cannot take his life from him. And we have indication here that God will give

Satan permission to do that. For in chapter one, did he not take the lives of Job's children, seven sons and three daughters killed by the hand of the devil?

Now, we shouldn't get this idea, though, that every time somebody dies, well, that was the work of Satan. God has poured out his wrath as well, multiple times throughout the scriptures.

When Israel was bickering and arguing, when they challenged the authority of Moses and Aaron, God caused the ground to open up right underneath them.

Or he sent serpents into the camp to bite the people who were complaining so that they were poisoned and died.

There are multiple instances of God's wrath being poured out upon the evil doer.

So it's not just Satan who kills people. But in this particular instance, God has given

Satan permission to do that. And so this has fallen upon Job's children in this way.

Here God is giving Satan permission to strike Job's health, his body, take his health away from him.

But he cannot take his life. Satan is also not the only one who afflicts a person with sickness.

God has done that also. In Numbers chapter 12, when Aaron and Miriam opposed

Moses, God struck Miriam with leprosy. In 2

Chronicles chapter 26, when Uzziah disobeyed God in the temple, God afflicted him with leprosy as well.

And it's in John chapter 9 where we read about the disciples and Jesus coming across a man who was blind from birth.

And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Because it was believed that if a person was afflicted with something serious like that, like blindness, then they had to have sinned.

They had to have done something seriously wrong to receive such an affliction.

But this guy was blind from birth. So did he sin? You know, how could he have sinned if he wasn't even born yet?

Or was it that his parents sinned and then their child suffers when their child is born and he's born blind?

But Jesus answered them, it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work.

As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with saliva.

And then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, go and wash in the pool of Siloam, which means sent.

So he went and washed and came back seeing. So Jesus was saying it was the will of God that this man would be born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

And that was Jesus healing him to show that Jesus was sent from God, that he himself was

God, that he was able to do these divine, miraculous things. And so God has a purpose for even afflicting a person with illness so that he would be glorified, his mighty power would be made known, and that the person who is afflicted with such a thing through a period of testing would become more righteous and praise

God even when they are not experiencing comfort. Even though they have no comfort yet, they would continue to rejoice in the

Lord. In second Corinthians chapter 12, which in my church, we're going through second Corinthians right now, and I'm coming up on this chapter,

I think next month. But in second Corinthians 12, Paul talks about being afflicted by a messenger of Satan who came to torment me, a thorn in my flesh is the way that he describes it.

Three times I pleaded with God to take it away from me, but God answered me and said, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.

And then Job, see, I'm about to put Job in Paul's place here, but it's really the same.

Paul learned from Job's example of God's power being made perfect in weakness, his righteousness, faithfulness, steadfastness unto the

Lord. So Paul goes on to say, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.

For when I am weak, then I am strong. God is working all these things out for his glory, perfecting us, shaping us more into the image of Christ.

And Paul says in the book of Romans that our present sufferings do not even compare to the glory that awaits us in Christ if we endure to the end.

So put your faith and trust in God, not your comfort, but trust

God that he is working something out for some great and ultimate purpose. You may not see and understand right now, but a day is coming when our faith shall be sight.

So here God is allowing Satan to afflict Job. And Satan went from the presence of the

Lord, verse 7, and struck Job with loathsome sores 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.

We don't know exactly what it was that Job was afflicted with, what kind of skin disease, but skin diseases were common throughout the

Old Testament, particularly the disease of leprosy, which may not have been exactly one kind of disease.

It may have just been a word to describe most physical or skin afflictions, dermatological afflictions.

There you go. I'll try to even throw in some medical terminology there for you. So we know that Job was very, very itchy with whatever it was that was affecting his body, that he took a piece of pottery to scrape himself.

And I won't get more colorful than that, but you get the idea. Verse 9, then his wife said to him, this is a very famous passage of scripture here.

His wife said, do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.

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

In all of this, Job did not sin with his lips. Compare these two responses that Job gave in chapter one.

He said after after losing everything that he had after his children had died, 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. And now after his own health has been taken from him, he says to his wife.

Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil?

And in both of these instances, Job did not sin with his lips. He did not charge

God with wrong here in the first two chapters of the oldest book of the

Bible, the book that even predates Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

And we have Job, a man who fears God, recognizing his sovereignty.

How difficult is this to teach in the church today to get a person to understand the sovereignty of God?

And yet Job in his affliction recognized God's sovereignty. You can argue as much as you want that.

Well, Satan was the one that took his children from him. Satan was the one that afflicted him with painful sores. But Job knows that all of this has happened by the command of God, that God had decreed it from the very beginning.

And so it is transpired because the Lord has caused it to transpire.

Again, providentially, he will use other means to accomplish his will.

But even Job recognizes the sovereignty of God here. And it is one of the issues that I think has led to the most theological conflicts that I've ever been in as a pastor and has driven people away from my church because they absolutely do not want to submit to the idea of the absolute sovereignty of God.

They want to cling to free will that I had something to do with it. And God did not take my free will away from me.

I did this. Everything happens by the guiding hand of God.

Job even recognized this in his suffering. And I pray it doesn't take extreme suffering for you to recognize that God is in control.

Verse 11. Now, when Job's three friends heard all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place,

Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuahite, and Zophar the Neamathite.

They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him.

And when they saw him from a distance, well, before going on talking about where each of these men have come from, some of these locations are not really we're not really certain where they were.

But the ones that archaeologists do know those particular locations, they were not in the

Holy Land. Again, Job, who was from Ur, was from an area that was to the east of the

Holy Land. So whatever his connection was with Abraham and the children of Israel, we're not real sure.

But none of these things take place in the region that would eventually become the Promised Land. So these men come from different locations, and they make an agreement that they're going to go and see their friend.

And as I had pointed out at the very beginning of the study, I drew passages from other places in Job to show that Job was a man of much influence.

He was a man that served kings. He was a man that was that was present among armies, possibly a general of some kind.

And the way that he spoke, people wrote down his words. He was such a wise man that they would write down what he said so that they would be able to refer back to Proverbs that Job had uttered from his lips.

And even in the book of Proverbs, we've got statements there that look very similar to things that Job had said.

It's possible that it was wisdom and knowledge that was passed down through the Israelites that may have even come from Job himself.

So these friends who come from these different areas love this man.

They love this man. They have endeared themselves to him that they would have a congress with one another and say, hey, we need to go fellowship with our friend.

So they went to go show him comfort. And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him so covered with sores and boils.

And his his face was downcast. His posture was so drooped from the sorrow that he was experiencing.

And they raised their voices and wept and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven.

And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights. And no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

These are good friends. These really are good friends so far. Eventually, they're going to open their mouths and then they're not such good friends anymore.

As a matter of fact, at the end of the story, God says to them, let Job offer up a sacrifice on your behalf because you're sinful and awful and you need someone to to sacrifice something for the forgiveness of your sins.

So it goes back at the end of the story to what Job did at the beginning of the story. He had offered sacrifices for his children.

And God says to these three miserable friends who really said nothing helpful or beneficial to him at all, that they needed their sins forgiven by the righteous offerings of this man.

And so that's where we're going to pause for now. And then we get to hear Job speak in chapter three.

And from chapter three on to the last chapter of Job, we're in nothing but poetry from here on out.

Let's conclude with prayer. Our sovereign God and great savior, I pray that we would recognize that you are on your throne and you as sovereign means that there is nothing that happens outside of your control.

I pray that we would recognize this so that we may worship you rightly. We would not cling to our own autonomy, but we would surrender all that we need to surrender to praise your great name because you are mighty and you have called us out of our sin and into your righteousness.

So may we live in such a righteous way that we would be pleasing unto

God, our savior in the name of Jesus. We pray. Amen. Let your friends know about our ministry.