When Trials Become Our Teacher| Job 2:1-13

Message Description:

Do you ever feel like Satan has been given special permission to torment you, and only you? That’s the backdrop to the story of Job. Dr. David Jeremiah reminds us that, ultimately, God is – and always will be – completely in control. It’s a lesson worth taking to heart.

God knows how to soften people’s hearts. He knows how to give you another chance. In His time, He will make all things beautiful. You may have relationships that you think are too far gone: too much water under the bridge, you messed up, they’re not going to have anything to do with you. No, another chance is coming. You wouldn’t be reading this if God wasn’t about to do something unusual, something out of the ordinary.

In the only mention of job in the New Testament. Almighty.
God gives us a clue as to God’s purpose for job’s suffering in James 5 11.
You read these words, indeed, we count them blessed to endure.
You have heard of the perseverance of job and seen the end intended by the Lord that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful.
This verse indicates that Satan’s purpose was to try to get job, to be impatient and to give up.
Joe became impatient with himself later on.
He becomes a little impatient with his critical friends, but he never lost faith in his God though he did not know what God was doing.
He did not know what he could do about what God was doing.
He did know that he could trust God in essence, especially to his wife.
Job mirrored the compassion and the mercy of His God.
How many of you know that when you’re going through tough times, one of the things you really need more than anything else is patience when you’re under pressure and you feel the weight of the pressure.
If you’re not careful, you’re flying off in every direction and you’re ending up acting in a way that you don’t normally act, by the way.
Did you know that the only way you can learn patience is through going through trials?
I didn’t make that up over in the book of James chapter one verses two and three.
It says it just as clearly as it can be said.
Listen to this, my brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.
So here’s some advice from your pastor. Don’t pray for patience because if you do, you will get tribulation.
That’s how God gives patience to his people.
Horatio Stafford was a very prosperous senior partner of a successful law practice, prosperous and successful.
That is until the great Chicago fire which destroyed much of his wealth along with most of the city of Chicago.
Horatio remained in Chicago after the fire to finish a case that was pending and his family set out for Paris.
He was to join them later on November the 21st 18 73 the luxury ocean liner taking Anna Stafford and their four daughters to Europe was rammed by another vessel and in less than 20 minutes, it sank an unconscious Anna Stafford was rescued from some floating debris, but all of the Children perished while on the way to be with her in Europe after he received her note that all the Children had been lost at sea.
Horatio asked the captain of the ship on which he was traveling to alert him to the place along the way where this tragedy had occurred.
And he went up and cried out to the Lord and went back to his cabin and wrote down on a piece of hotel stationary from Chicago, wrote down the words to the song.
It is well, with my soul almost familiar as his song are the words of Anna’s telegram to her husband.
When she was notifying him of what had happened, she sent simply these words saved alone.
What shall I do to a fellow survivor? She said, God gave me four daughters.
Now they have been taken from me someday. Maybe I will understand why.
When we last left job, he had lost his Children, not four daughters, but seven sons and three daughters.
They were swept away when the house in which they were having a party was struck by a tornado and the house collapsed on them, killing them all.
Instantly. The loss of job’s 10 Children was the final stroke in Satan’s first attack against him in round one job, lost all of his possessions and all of his family except for his wife.
Now, at this point in the story, at the end of chapter one and the beginning of chapter two, the central question of this book shifts, it shifts from the question.
Can a man lose everything he has and still bless God, can a man lose even what he is and still remain under God’s blessing.
So we began the second chapter with job accused by Satan.
And in verses one through three of chapter two, we read these words again.
There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord.
And the Lord said to Satan from where do you come?
So Satan answered the Lord and said from going to and fro on the earth and from walking back and forth on it, 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, one who fears God and shuns evil and still he holds fast to his integrity.
Though you incited me against him to destroy him without cause using the same words that we are familiar with.
From the first chapter, we are told that Satan returns and is in the presence of Almighty God along with God’s ministering angels.
As in the first meeting God initiates the conversation and he turns to Satan and he says to him, what do you think of my man job?
Now, I let you give him your best shot, but job hasn’t cursed me.
No, in fact, he hasn’t cursed me. He’s actually blessed me. Satan.
I’m telling you there is nobody like job on the face of the earth and you will never break him.
But how many of, you know, Satan doesn’t give up easily.
Can I get a witness if he would not give up on Jesus Christ?
Until after he had tempted him three times, he’s not gonna give up on job after one and he’s not gonna give up on us either.
And so we learn first of all about Satan’s persistence and then we learn about his persuasion in verses four and five.
we read these words and Satan answered the Lord and said skin for skin. Yes. All that a man has.
He will give for his life, but stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh and he will surely curse you to your face.
Satan says to God, God, I went as far as you let me go, I took away job’s possessions and I took away his family.
But that’s all you allowed me to do job still has his health. God.
And because of that, he can get another family and he can start another business.
But I’ll tell you what Lord, if you let me touch his health, he will curse you to your face.
He’s accusing job of sacrificing his Children, his animals and his servants in order to preserve his own hide.
Satan was convinced that job would give all he had for his own life.
In other words, Satan is saying that job only loves God because God protects him and keeps him healthy.
So He says, God, you let me take away job’s health, that’ll be it.
He’ll curse you then Lord, he’ll curse you to your face.
And so we move from Satan’s persistence and his persuasion to his permission notice verse six, and the Lord said to Satan behold, he’s in your hand, but spare his life.
God issued Satan a permission slip with virtually unfettered power to harm his body.
But God restricted Satan and would not let him kill job.
Now, it’s important to know before we go any further that God is always in control.
Satan could not do anything that God would not let him do and God is allowing job to be a test to be a, a testimony if you will to a man’s ability to trust in His God when all the props are taken away, but mark it down, Satan doesn’t have unrestricted power.
He can’t do what he wants to do. He has to get permission from God.
So we move from his persistence and his persuasion and his permission.
Now notice his persecution in verse seven.
So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and he struck job with painful boils from the soul of his foot to the crown of his head.
Satan afflicted job with a disease. We do not know for sure what that disease was.
It is identified primarily in the text in a very graphic form.
He had painful boils from the soul of his foot to the crown of his head.
He was covered with sores. The Hebrew word for the word Boyle means a burning sore.
The word is used for the boils with which the Egyptians were smitten in the plagues of Exodus chapter nine job was covered with these burning inflamed sores from his foot to his head.
The disease was likely the dreaded black leprosy of the near east, often referred to by the title Elephantiasis.
The name for elephantiasis comes from the fact that the limbs in this disease take on the dark color from heavy incrustation due to the sores and the extreme swelling which makes the limbs of the person of their limbs look like elephants legs.
And they say the suffering with this disease is absolutely indescribable.
If you read through the rest of the book of Job, you will run into some of the things job was feeling and the the symptoms of his disease.
I just made a list of a few of them and I, I won’t ask you to look them up.
But let me just tell you what they are.
We begin in the second chapter with boys in verse seven, severe itching.
Verse eight, degenerative changes in his facial skin. Verse 12 of chapter two.
In chapter three, we discover he’s lost his appetite and he’s full of depression. Verses 24 25.
In chapter nine, he has difficult breathing in the, in 19, he is foul breath in 19, he also has the loss of weight and continual pain and fever.
These are just a few of the things Joe was experiencing because Satan was allowed to touch his body apparently as we read the text.
And this is a little bit gross, but it’s right here. And I have to tell you about it.
Apparently, job found relief from the itching by scraping himself with a piece of broken pottery.
So now we see job outside of the city sitting on an ash heap.
The city garbage was deposited and burned there.
And all of the reject lived at the dump at the ash sheep dogs fight over something to eat and the city’s waste is brought and burned.
And the city’s leading citizen job is now sitting at the dump on an ash sheep outside of the city before we leave this section.
I want to take just a moment and share a couple of summary paragraphs about Satan because we run the risk right here of either giving him more credit than he deserves or not giving him enough.
I came across a couple of paragraphs by a Welsh preacher by the name of Peter Williams.
And he writes this, he says we are sometimes in danger of adopting one of two extremes where Satan’s power is concerned.
On the one hand, we overrate his power and treat him as if he were almost equal to God.
He is not for. He is a created being and he does not possess God’s attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.
The limits of His power may be seen in the fact that he can only do to job what God allows him to do.
But even greater is the danger of underestimating his power, which is also very extensive.
The first two of Satan’s attacks upon job are connected with his manipulation of men.
He uses the Sabian and the Chaldeans to do his work.
The second two temptations shows his control over the forces of nature, the fire and the wind.
And the last temptation uses sickness of his subjects body to get across his point for all of his sinister cunning and power.
Satan is a created being and therefore he is no match for the sovereign God who created him.
He is the enemy of our souls and he will use every means at his disposal to bring about our destruction.
But we must never forget that he is already a defeated enemy and all the vicious attacks upon the believer are but counter offensives that are doomed to failure.
Let me tell you something. Friends. Satan was sentenced at the cross of Jesus Christ.
The sentence hasn’t been fully carried out but one day it will in between the sentence and the judgment we’re living in that period of time.
And Satan is kind of on the loose and he’s a frantic desperate creature because he knows his days are numbered.
So don’t be taken aback by Satan.
Keep your guard up, but don’t let him make you believe that you have to do anything he tells you to do.
He reports to Almighty God and he can’t do anything that God won’t allow him.
And the Bible says there is no temptation taken us, but such is common to man.
And God is faithful who will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able but will with the temptation also make a way of escape.
We can be victorious over Satan and he does not have power over us to do anything that we don’t open the door of our lives to let him do.
Hallelujah, job accused by Satan.
But now we got to talk about the second part of the story and I’ve been looking forward to this with fear and trembling.
We’re going to talk about job’s wife.
We read first of all of her advice in verse nine.
Then Job’s wife said to him, job, do you still hold fast to your integrity?
Why don’t you just curse God and die?
I read a lot of books when I’m studying a series like this and I love to read Chuck Swindall books because he sits loose in the saddle and he always wants to make sure that while we deal with serious things, we don’t get too serious.
And right here in his book, he tells this story, he said there was a couple in bed one night and the husband got up in the middle of the night and he, and he went downstairs and after he’d been gone for a while, his wife realized that, that he shouldn’t come back and she gets worried and she goes downstairs, she walks in the kitchen and he’s sitting at the kitchen table drinking a cup of coffee staring out of the window.
She says, honey, what’s wrong? He said, oh, nothing.
He says, she says, no, no, you wanna get out of bed and come down here in the middle of the night and sit in the kitchen and drink coffee and stare out the window.
If it wasn’t something wrong, what’s wrong? He says, well, he said the words don’t come easy.
And as she walked over to see him, she saw he was crying.
He said, you remember 20 years ago when we had our first date, do you remember the night?
We were sitting out in front of the house and we were smooching and your dad’s sauce.
And he went back in the house and he came out with a pistol and he put the pistol in the window and he said, anybody who kisses my daughter like that will either marry her or spend 20 years in prison.
And he said, I just realized tomorrow was the day I would have gotten out.
Now I have to recover from that very quickly because I sort of noticed that the majority of the laughter sounds sort of masculine.
I don’t, I don’t see a lot of ladies laughing at that.
But I wanted to tell you that because the rest of this is interesting to say the least after Satan struck the first time against job, all job had left was his wife and his friends.
Now we read that even his wife has abandoned him.
You cannot imagine how painful that must have been to the patriarch Chris system, a church father who is not supposed to have any sense of humor about this at all wrote that the only reason Satan didn’t kill job’s wife when the rest of his family was killed was because he knew he was going to use her later on to do some more damage to job.
And the most difficult thing to accept about the seventh verse of this chapter is the fact if you look at it carefully, job’s wife asked job to do exactly what Satan wanted him to do.
Did you see that Satan wanted job to curse God and die?
And she said to him, why don’t you curse God and die?
One of the things we have to be careful about here is to recognize that even though people are close to us, sometimes they can give us wrong messages.
Adam listened to Eve Abraham listened to Sarah Job’s wife advised him to give up his faith and commit suicide.
But I want to tell you something there’s another side to the story that we need to be careful to mention before we throw job’s wife under the bus.
I’d like to try to put this whole scene in perspective.
Don Baker has written a book called Pain’s Hidden Purpose.
And in that book, he has written these words, he says, many have speculated as to just what job’s wife may have meant when she looked at that emaciated and blackened body and suggested that job end his suffering.
Some see, job’s wife, he wrote at this point as hardened and bitter unconcerned for his relationship with God.
I see her wrote Don Baker as a sensitive caring, concerned woman who loved job and honored his commitment.
No family could have enjoyed the oneness that job’s family shared if their mother had been calloused or cruel.
But she was stretched. At this point, weeks of suffering had passed without relief every morning.
She woke up to the same pain only to find it intensified every night.
She’d pray for her husband’s healing, but it never came. And there was no medication.
No Tylenol three, no Percodan, no Demerol, no morphine to ease the pain.
No Valium, not even an aspirin to help him go to sleep. His suffering was so intense.
His looks so hideous, his conditions so infectious that he was forced to move out of the house and relocate at the city dump and she couldn’t stand it any longer in a moment of deep and frustrated anguish.
She suggested job. Why don’t you curse God and die? Tell God you’ve had enough.
He’s not gonna heal you. He’s gone back on his promise. He’s not even aware of your problem.
I’d rather see you dead than like this. Maybe we could die together.
End of quote, it’s hard to blame this woman, isn’t it when you realize what she was experiencing?
But to his credit, Jo didn’t listen to his wife’s advice. He gave a solid answer.
In verse 10. He said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women.
Shall we indeed accept good from God and shall we not accept adversity in all this job did not sin with his lips.
Job’s response here was profoundly simple. It was filled with deep insight as you read the language.
Here’s basically what he said to her. He said, woman, don’t talk like a foolish person.
You’re talking like an unbeliever, don’t do that. Shall we accept good from God?
He said, and not accept his adversity. And he rejected her suggestion.
Job was slowly methodically being stripped to the very nakedness of his spiritual being.
All the things that cloth, the spirit of man were being ripped apart.
All that man leans upon for help and strength was taken from him until we now see this man left alone a soul that was forced to stand naked in the universe of God.
All the props removed.
I wanna stop for just a moment and put a little counsel in here if I might, I want to take just a moment and remind all of us now that we’ve done away with all of the ups and downs of job’s wife and just say to the wives here, don’t ever, ever underestimate your importance to your husband.
Don’t ever think your words of affirmation are less important than others.
I promise you, your husband cares more about what you say than what anybody else on the earth says.
And especially when you’re going through times that are stressful and difficult, he needs you and without you, he probably won’t make it.
Sometimes when difficulty comes, couples have a tendency to pull apart.
But if you read the scripture and follow God’s way, you will know that when difficulty comes Godly couples come together and they face the trauma and difficulties of life as a team and they go through and come out victorious.
I remember reading about a time when Martin Luther was going through a very difficult time in his life, he was being criticized by everybody and, and he was overwhelmed and like sometimes happens, he got really depressed.
His wife realized how serious things had become for Martin and she decided that she would do something to help him come out of his depression.
So she put on a black dress and began to express herself as if she was in mourning.
She went about her duties in the house with a terrible look of sorrow on her face.
And Luther was startled by her appearance and he said to her, who died, she said, oh God, did God died?
What in the world do you mean woman?
She said, well, the way you’ve been acting, God must be dead.
And all of a sudden, Luther got the point and he came out of his depression.
Now, I don’t know how creative you ladies are, but that’s certainly one you can’t use because I’ve told everybody about it.
But uh there’s all kinds of ways to encourage your husband and to help him see things as he should.
So we’ve come through the first two sections of the second chapter.
Job accused by Satan and abandoned by his wife. And now we come 30 to job assaulted by his friends.
And we read in the second chapter of Job.
Now, when job’s three friends heard of all this adversity that had come upon him, each one came from his own place, the Mon Bill, dad, the shoe.
He so far the namo for they had made an appointment together to come and mourn with him and to comfort him.
And when they raised their eyes from afar, they did not recognize him and lifted their voices and wept.
And each one tore his robe and sprinkled dust on his head toward heaven.
And they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, no one spoke a word to him for, they saw that his grief was very great.
Now, today, whenever you say the phrase jobs, comforters, what you mean is you’re talking about somebody whose counsel only makes you feel worse than you did before.
They came. Most of the commentary about job’s friends is negative.
But let’s take a moment and think about the good things that they did.
First of all, they came to job when he was in trouble.
You know, it’s easy to be a friend from a far off.
But these three guys got together and they went to where job was and there was some kind of commitment on their part.
They made an appointment, it says together to go and see job. And they also had hearts of compassion.
When they saw him from afar, they were taken back by his appearance and they began to weep.
The intensity of their morning was the kind usually reserved for death or total disaster.
The Bible says they tore their robes and they wailed and they threw dust into the air and then the wisest thing they did, they kept quiet for seven days.
They didn’t say a word.
Joseph Bailey is a man who suffered a lot and I have a number of his books.
He’s got a book about death and, and how you, you face it with other people.
And, and he wrote this little paragraph.
He said, I, I was sitting torn by grief, someone came and talked to me of God’s dealings of why it happened.
Hope beyond the grave. He talked constantly. He said things I knew were true.
I was uh moved except to wish he’d go away. He finally did.
Another came and sat beside me. He just sat beside me for an hour or more.
Listened to what I was saying and answered briefly, prayed for me and left. I was moved. I was comforted.
I hated to see him go.
Many of us have observed that job’s friends made up for their silence later and they sure did.
And as you read the rest of this book, you discover that the dialogue between Job and his friends was basically negative.
They saw Job in the midst of his anguish.
They saw the horrific picture of a reeking dump and heaps of ashes and smoldering fires and stench and buzzing flies and scampering rats and all the other ruins of civilization.
Even before job opened his mouth, his friends had already formed a clear opinion as to what his problem was.
Was it not clear to all the world that a man whose body was rotting away?
Like this must be a terrible sinner.
And in the chapters that are ahead, they’re going to accuse job of that.
They were totally wrong, but that’s what they decided was the problem.
Now, as we review these chapters that we have studied these two chapters, I wanna take just a moment at the end of this sermon and ask, what do we learn from watching this man go through this incredible time of anguish.
There are three principles I wanna leave with you, put them in your notes.
Most of all put them in your heart. They are found in the first two chapters of job.
But they’re also all located in one verse in the 10th verse of the second chapter.
So let me share with you what they are. First of all trials, teach us patience.
Job, turned to his wife.
And he said to his wife, you speak as a foolish woman speaks, patience is the passive side of endurance in job’s answer to his wife.
He demonstrates his patience. He doesn’t scold her, he doesn’t rebuke her.
He does not try to put her down or respond to her in a negative way.
He reasons with her and he tries to help her see God through his eyes.
In the only mention of job in the New Testament Almighty.
God gives us a clue as to God’s purpose for job’s suffering in James 5 11.
You read these words, indeed, we count them blessed to endure.
You have heard of the perseverance of job and seen the end intended by the Lord that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful.
This verse indicates that Satan’s purpose was to try to get job, to be impatient and to give up.
Joe became impatient with himself.
Later on, he becomes a little impatient with his critical friends, but he never lost faith in His God though.
He did not know what God was doing.
He did not know what he could do about what God was doing.
He did know that he could trust God in essence, especially to his wife.
Job, mirrored the compassion and the mercy of His God.
How many of you know that when you’re going through tough times, one of the things you really need more than anything else is patience.
When you’re under pressure and you feel the weight of the pressure.
If you’re not careful, you’re flying off in every direction and you’re ending up acting in a way that you don’t normally act.
By the way, did you know that the only way you can learn patience is through, going through trials?
I didn’t make that up over in the book of James chapter one verses two and three.
It says it just as clearly as it can be said.
Listen to this, my brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.
So here’s some advice from your pastor, don’t pray for patience because if you do, you will get tribulation.
That’s how God gives patience to his people.
Secondly, trials not only teach us to be patient, but they teach us perspective.
In Job chapter two and verse 10, we read job says to his wife, shall we indeed accept good from God and shall we not accept adversity.
Job’s perspective on God is clearly evidenced by this statement when it comes to trials and to life itself.
Perspective is everything. Perspective is how you see something from your perspective.
I read a story about a man who was scheduled to sing at a youth group meeting for high school students at his church before he left to go to the meeting.
His four year old little girl tugged at his sleeve and said, daddy, where are you going?
He said, well, I’m gonna go sing for some kids at church, honey.
She said, can I come to? Sure? He said, you can come.
So the man took his daughter to the youth group meeting and they arrived and the little girl looked around at the high school kids and then she tugged at her father’s sleeve and she said, daddy, you said there are gonna be kids here.
Where are they? Her father looked around and pointed to the 30 or 40 high school students in the room.
Just look. He said there are kids all around you.
The little girl put her hands on her hips and scowled.
And she said, daddy, those aren’t kids, those are babysitters.
Perspective, isn’t it? Is how you look at something.
When you’re a little kid, teenagers are babysitters. That’s what they are.
Job had perspective on his trials and I loved it.
I love this section of job’s comments.
He realized that he had been the recipient of many undeserved blessings from God.
My friend Irwin Lutz, right after 9 11, wrote a little book called Where was God.
And in this book, he tries to answer some of the arguments and the questions that were leveled at God about that terrible tragedy.
If you’re looking for a little perspective, listen to what he said.
He said before we ask why so many people die in natural disasters?
We should ask a different question. Why are so many people ourselves included still living?
We’ve learned that sunshine and crops are a sign of God’s mercy. Yet, how many people give him?
Thanks for beautiful weather and the numerous benefits that nature regularly bestows upon this planet.
And so the sun shines to warm us and the rain falls to bless us and the stars shine to remind us that God is not only in heaven but also on earth to give us mercies, we do not deserve.
We should be grateful for the times when the earth is firm, when the tornadoes do not blow, when the floods do not come.
The book of Lamentations describes the grief of Jeremiah and then says, through the Lord’s mercies, we are not consumed because his compassion fail not.
They are new every morning. Great. Is your faithfulness?
Luzar goes on to say that life is a gift and God has the right to give it and to take it, we cannot approach this question with an attitude of entitlement, believing that we have the right to life, liberty and happiness, we can pursue these things.
But God is not obligated to give us the blessings. He graciously chooses to send our way. Often.
He said the same people who asked where God was following a disaster, thanklessly refused to worship and honor him for the years of peace and calmness in their life.
They disregard God in good times and yet they think he’s obligated to provide help.
When bad times come, they believe the God they dishonor when they are well, should heal them when they are sick.
The God they ignore when they are wealthy, should rescue them from impending poverty.
And the God, they refuse to worship when the earth is still should rescue them.
When it begins to shake, we must admit that God owes us. Nothing said Luzar.
Before we charge God with not caring, we must thank him for those times.
When his care was very evident to us, we are ever surrounded by undeserved blessings, even in his silence.
God blesses us. And that’s what job said to his wife. He said, honey.
Yeah, these are tough times, but we’ve had a lot of good times and shall we not accept good and bad equally.
Do we get a pass on all the difficult things?
No, no job teaches us patience and he teaches us perspective.
The book of job teaches us that when things are good.
We can praise God when things are tough, we can praise Him because God is good.
He never changes and He is worthy of our trust no matter what is happening.
Finally, trials teach us persistence.
The Bible says in all this job did not sin with his lips job proves that it is possible to worship God in difficult times.
Even if God chooses not to explain to us what’s going on.
Calvin Miller says, having answers is not essential to living.
What is essential is the sense of God’s presence during dark seasons of our questioning.
Our need for specific answers is dissolved in the greater issue of the lordship of Christ over all the universe, those that have answers and those that don’t, Anna and Stafford returned home to Chicago after the terrible tragedy in the Mid Atlantic.
And they had a second family, first, a daughter, finally a son and then one more daughter.
But sorrow was no stranger to their home as a scarlet fever epidemic claimed their youngest son.
So in 18 81 the Stafford left America to begin a new life in Jerusalem, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire.
They rented a house in the old city section of Jerusalem, determined to live there as the early Christian church did centuries before them.
Within a year of their arrival in Jerusalem, the family had become widely known for their love and their service to the needy in Jerusalem.
And for their firm belief in the teachings of the Bible today, more than a century later, the Stafford children’s.