DO WE ACCEPT GOOD FROM GOD AND NOT TROUBLE?

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

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 throughout the earth, going back and forth on 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. 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 now 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 is 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 crown 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 maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”

He replied, “You are 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.

Job 2:1-10

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

When we met Job at the beginning of Chapter 1, all was good in his life. He had a rich abundance of everything including the full favor and compliment of God Himself.

By the time the Chapter ended, Job had lost nearly everything.

Life can be like this…right?

We awake on days and everything is great…but by the end of the day, things can change drastically. Maybe we suddenly lose a loved one. Or maybe we get laid off or fired from our job. Or maybe we or someone near to us falls ill and discovers in the diagnosis we’re terribly afflicted.

Yes…life can change in a moment’s notice…in the blink of an eye. It can change from bad to good…or it can change from good to bad as in Job’s case as he lost all his livestock and then all his children in a matter of moments. And yet, in the midst of mourning this great loss, we read these amazing words:

“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.” (Job 1:21)

Satan had expected Job to blame and curse God for what had occurred. It never happened.

And so as Chapter 2 opens, we find Satan back before God with the angels. We almost get a sense God is bursting at the seams with laughter over the fact that Satan had failed yet again to gain victory against Him. For as God asks Satan again to consider His upright and blameless servant Job, He throws a little jab in saying, “And he (Job) still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.”

You can tell immediately that this riles Satan as he angrily replies to God, “Skin for skin!...A man will give all he has for his own life. But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

Satan still felt that Job would break. Although he had lost his possessions, Job still had his health and surely if this was affected then Job would curse God.

And so, just as He had done before, the Lord allowed Satan to afflict Job up to but not including killing him.

With this, we read where Satan “went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.” How bad were the sores? Scriptures from the book give us clues:

- Job became disfigured, so much so that when his friends saw him, they nearly didn’t recognize him (2:12).

- In Chapter 7, verse 5, we learn the sores are scabbed and Job’s skin was broken and festering.

- In Chapter 30, we’re told the scabs would peel and become black.

- Job became extremely thin, nothing but skin and bones (17:7, 19:20) and he suffered from bad breath (19:17).

He consistently suffered from fever (30:30) and extreme pain (30:17)

And as if all this wasn’t enough, Job also experienced severe nightmares (7:14).

The sores had to be unimaginably itchy as scripture tells us Job “took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.”  

And you and I think we go through tough times.

Into this scene, we read where Job’s wife appears. It’s the first time we meet her in this book and instead of being an encouragement to her husband, she asks him a pointed question:

“Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”

Not exactly a spouse who is supporting her mate, is it?

We aren’t told for sure but I feel there is little doubt that Satan is working through Job’s wife to try and get Job to do what he would want him to do…and win his wager with God. Satan had to be thinking, I’ve got this in hand now. Surely Job will listen to his wife!

But Satan underestimated the power and strength of God when alive and well within a believer. For no one has the human strength to stand firm under the weight of the pain of loss and affliction. It’s only by the strength of the Lord that we can make it. It was true in the days of Job…and it remains true today. Paul, a servant apostle of the Lord said it like this while in prison: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)

It was in this strength that Job was able to see right through Satan’s deception and his wife’s words. What did he say to her? He said, “You are talking like a foolish woman.” Indeed, anyone who would encourage someone to curse God is a fool. It’s easy enough to see when we’re OK…maybe more difficult when we’ve hit rock bottom...but through it all God’s strength in will triumph when we submit all that we are to Him.

So why were his wife’s words so foolish? Job’s next words explained why as he proclaimed while covered in sores and sitting in the ashes, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

Later, the aforementioned apostle Paul would say it this way:

“We share in His (Jesus’) sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory and our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. (Romans 8:17b-18)

Job didn’t live in the time of Jesus but his words were prophetic. For as Christians, we can’t expect to just experience good in our lives when our Savior, the One we seek to be like also suffered. The full Christian experience will take us to the mountain tops but it will also walk us through the darker valleys of life...and all along the way, our Lord is with us, ever there to help us…ever there to encourage us…ever there to strengthen us and aid us in persevering through our hardships. Indeed, to share in His life is to experience what He experienced for us and for our sakes. And we must always remember that we have the accounts of how He managed with the goods and bads of life so we can know how to deal with them too. That’s good news for you and me.

The problem is that in our humanity, we don’t deal with trouble well. We praise God in the good and wonder where He is in the bad when the truth is, He is just in close to us in trouble as He is when we are not in want. It’s been said that we will walk through the valleys and on the mountain tops as we journey through life…and as we look back on our travels, we always see that the fruit always grows the best in the valleys.  In other words, the Lord is always doing His best work in and through us when we’re going through difficult times…when we’re vulnerable and more apt to be seeking God.

Friends, God expects us to understand that life will be full of good and will offer us trouble. He also expects us to remember that through it all, He is right there with us…molding, shaping and conforming us to the image of His only Son…our Savior…the One we are striving to be like every day as Christians, a people ever trying to be Christ-like.

Indeed, as Paul wrote, “We share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory…” That’s the good news to sustain us through everything. For one day soon, we will be free from the tribulations of this world.

Free from illness. Free from hardship. Free from sin.

Free from this world as we enter into His eternal light and life.

And that’s worth enduring a little trouble now, don’t you agree?

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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