Episode Transcript
Good morning.
It's 10 o'clock and it's time to begin our Sunday school lesson.
I'm glad you all have joined us by way of the internet.
And we're thankful for this technology so the snow doesn't have to hinder you learning God's word.
Job chapter 1 and verse 21 will be our text this morning.
And it's where we left off last week.
Having studied about halfway through it, the horrible news has been delivered to Job by four messengers. and he has lost so much of what was precious to him, and in this order of importance he lost his children, his servants, all but four of them, and his livestock.
And whether through theft or death, that which was precious to him is no longer his.
And in keeping with the upright character that God attributed to him, Job worshipped He didn't just grieve in the earthly way men do, rending his mantle and shaving his head, and falling on the ground prostrate, though he did those things, but that wasn't the end of it.
And for most people, that kind of expression of sorrow and despair is only the beginning of a self-destructive response to their loss.
In the 1990s, there was a fad called day trading, and it happened uh among those who wanted to get rich quickly.
And it was being practiced by many in those days who wanted to buy stocks online and they didn't know anything about the company.
Represented by those stocks.
And so they would purchase the stocks and watch them online and try to time the market and sell them and then buy again and sell them again.
In a very short time period.
It wasn't an investment, it was gambling.
And for most of them, their impulsive trading led to great financial losses And I remember reading about some who even committed suicide because they lost their money.
Others have acted similarly when they've lost a job or been arrested for a crime or perhaps experienced the death of a loved one.
And their grieving began physically, and then it became their reason to take drugs, to drink alcohol, and to self-harm in other ways The difference between Job and the people I've just described is that Job had somewhere to go with his pain.
He had one who could help him with the burden of his sorrow and lighten it somewhat in the days ahead And the Lord who bore Job's burden of sin was able and willing to help him with his burden of sorrow, too.
And you notice the first words out of Job's mouth represented his own helplessness.
If you look in your text, it said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither.
And last week we learned what that meant, that he was born from his mother's womb naked, and he would return to not his mother's womb, but to the earth's. womb, naked, meaning that he would return there without the fruits of any of his earthly labors, without any of his possessions.
And having declared his own helplessness in what we know was an attack by Satan, let's look next at what he said in verse 21.
And if you're just joining us on the internet, we are in Job chapter 1, verse 21.
It says in that text, The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.
So Job first declared his own helplessness by talking about being naked being born and naked going back to his mother's womb. or the earth, as we learned through the exposition of that text last week.
And now, in these words, Job declares God's sovereignty He declares that it's God who gives and God who takes away First, he said, the Lord gave.
Now we learned about the word gave early in the Bible, as you might imagine, in Genesis And I'll read a passage from Genesis chapter 1.
It will be verse 17.
And it tells us what God did with the greater and lesser lights he created.
It says, and God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.
Now the word set and the word give in that verse are from the same Hebrew word as the word gave in our text.
What God made, He gave.
He gave the greater and lesser lights by setting them in their places And we also see that what God gave also gave.
The lesser light and the greater light, he set or gave, also gave light upon the earth.
So we may also conclude that God didn't just set these lights anywhere He set them in a certain place to give light to a certain place, specifically the earth.
And if you continue studying Genesis, You will see that God created all of these things for mankind.
If they were set in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth Then they were set in the firmament of the heaven for us.
And speaking of the glorified church, the Lord will receive unto himself The prophet Isaiah wrote this in Isaiah chapter 60, verses 19 through 20.
Isaiah 60 verses 19 through 20.
The sun shall be no more thy light by day, neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee But the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself, for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.
Notice in those two verses the possessive pronoun thy, T-H-Y.
When God created the greater light and the lesser light, the sun and the moon, to give light unto the earth in Genesis, He created those lights for us.
God didn't need a flashlight to see what was going on in earth, but we surely did.
Without the sun, we would freeze to death.
Our crops could not grow.
Our livestock would also freeze, as would the oceans and rivers and lakes.
Everything would turn to ice.
And the sun not only gives us light to see and heat for warmth, which we would appreciate today, but it also helps us to sleep.
When the sun goes down, we should be sleeping at some point, unless you're brain dead like me and work a night shift.
So when I sleep, I have to sleep in a darkened room with blackout curtains.
The light of the sun also helps us to be organized.
By the rising and the setting of the sun, as we say it, we're able to keep track of time.
So never take for granted the greater and lesser lights God gave us, but certainly do not worship them.
They're God's creations for us, and therefore they are God's gifts to us.
And Job's understanding of the things God gives is right on point Because he said, the Lord gave.
And because of what we read, those few words We learn that Job was confessing that the Lord had given him his children.
The Lord had given him his servants and his livestock and all that he had.
And from coming out of his mother's womb with no children, no servants, and no livestock God had given Job all that he had.
Now that's the comforting news to hear.
We love the positive, don't we?
And we should.
We should be thankful for what the Lord has given us.
The fourth Thursday of every November Was set aside as a day to thank God for his blessings upon us.
But now The news that doesn't seem so comforting is next.
Job also said, look back in your text, and the Lord hath taken away.
We don't like to have things taken away from us, do we?
My three-year-old granddaughter was allowed to play on her iPad for a few minutes.
And she was happy my daughter gave her the iPad.
And she was having fun playing one of her little cooking games on it.
And while playing this game, she was sitting in my daughter's lap, and she had the volume up too high on the iPad.
So my daughter turned down the volume, which triggered a mild protest that turned contentious rather quickly.
So my daughter took away the iPad and put it up.
And that action resulted in quite a tantrum which led to some disciplinary action If you see a little grin on my face, I can't help it.
I love watching this because I had to put up with it through all three of my daughters, and it's quite a pleasure to see them get to contend with these issues.
Job had something far more valuable than an iPad taken away, and he declared it was God who had taken those valuable people.
And animals away from him.
Now remember, Job did not know why these things were happening.
He didn't know God had given Satan permission to test him in this way.
And Job's response was not a tantrum like a three-year-old would throw, or like an immature 33-year-old would throw.
No, Job's response was to declare himself helpless, that is, naked, and to declare God sovereign God gave and he had taken away.
And don't miss this point.
Whether it be God who tests your faith Or Satan who tries to destroy you.
God is sovereign.
He's the Almighty.
He's fully in control.
And nothing happens without his command or his permission.
And whether it be God Himself, who is testing you, or Satan himself who is trying to destroy you.
Both are a test of your faith Now Job's next words are, look back in verse 21, Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Boy, how this world curses God when bad things happen.
But Job did not.
Blessed be the name of the Lord is the opposite expression of those who use the Lord's name as a curse word.
Taking his name in vain as an expression of anger.
I worked with a man who was a dear friend to me, But he had a bad habit of taking the Lord's name in vain.
And one time, after he had done so, I asked him why he was blaming God.
For whatever thing happened to him that he was describing to me.
And he looked at me quizzically and said, Well, no, it's not his fault.
And I asked him if he realized he had said those terrible words, and he said he did not.
He said it just came naturally to him.
And it does come natural to the flesh to curse God during fiery trials rather than to bless his name.
Now we read about the judgment of what Job said.
Verse 22 In all this, that is, in all you read before this verse, in all this, Job sinned not.
That is in the hearing of the bad news, Job's physical response to it His spiritual response to it, and the words he uttered.
In all of that, Job did not sin Now this does not mean that Job was a sinless person.
It means that in the things we read that he did and said He did not sin.
None of those were sinful.
His response was without reproach.
And that tells us, because this word is divinely inspired, it tells us that God truly understands our grief.
He knows our sorrow.
He put tears in our tear ducts so we could cry when we're sad.
He put words in our mouth so we could declare our helplessness before him, and yet also those words would praise his name.
And now it's definitely a sin to curse God.
There's no question about that.
Leviticus chapter 24, verses 15 through 16.
Leviticus 24, verses 15 through 16, And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sin, and he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death And all the congregation shall certainly stone him, as well the stranger, as he that is born in the land, when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall he be put to death.
Exodus 20, verse 7.
Exodus 20, verse 7.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
For the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
It's astonishing to me how someone who is an unbeliever Can blame the one true God for anything.
Oh, they have their own notion of God, and even may say they believe there is a God.
But they cannot believe in the God of the Bible while at the same time denying his son.
So they really don't believe in God.
You could find many examples of that if you were to look on the internet, but I want to read you something a little different A woman named Renee Good was recently killed by law enforcement officers because she tried to run over a federal agent with her car.
Timothy Macklin was the father of Renee Good's first husband who had died, and he's the grandfather of Renee Good's child.
And this is a man who is close to her in family relations and listen to what he said about the whole incident.
He said, I don't blame Ice.
I don't blame Rebecca.
I don't blame Renee.
I just wish that, you know, if we were walking in the Spirit of God, I don't think she would have been there.
That's the way I look at it.
It's just a hard situation for everybody.
You know, Becca is a great person as well.
I don't have any enemies.
I love everybody.
That's what the Bible tells us.
Love our neighbors as we love ourselves, he said.
But you know I think there's some bad choices.
And the word says, for the wrath of God will come upon the children of disobedience.
Isn't that something?
This man did not curse God because his daughter-in-law had been killed He recognized that her actions were wrong.
And he confessed that one who was walking in the Spirit of the Lord would not even be in a situation like that Now that is a spiritually strong man.
And not only did Job not sin in his words and actions.
Look back in verse 22.
It says, nor charged God foolishly.
Now we're going to spend some time on this one because it's rich and it's deep.
And let's first examine the word charged.
Which comes from the same Hebrew word as the word gave.
We looked at that in the previous verse where it said, the Lord gave And you remember how Genesis taught us that the Lord set or gave the greater and lesser lights in the firmament of the heaven?
He appointed them a place, and it was the rightful place.
In fact, on ten occasions in the Old Testament, The Hebrew word, normally translated as some form of give, is translated as the word appoint.
And applying this word, a point, to the word charged, because they're interchangeable here Doing that in this verse, we understand that Job, when he did not charge God foolishly, that means he did not appoint what happened to him to God foolishly.
He did not place the blame before God in the sense of looking for someone to blame for his misfortunes Now you might argue that by saying the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away You might argue that Job did appoint the blame to God.
But look at what the text says.
It says, Nor charged God foolishly.
It was not a sin, neither was it foolish, to name God as the one who gave and the one who took away But it would be foolish to blame God by saying that when he gave and when he took away, that he was unjust to Job.
And because so many in this world like to blame God or charge him foolishly, let's see why this is unjust.
We can first start off by reminding everyone that God created all things.
That includes all living creatures as well.
So as the creator, and this is a very basic biblical principle, as creator God has the absolute right to do whatever he wants with his creation.
And those who choose to sin Charge God foolishly for the way they are.
And they're usually unbelievers, although some may be really immature Christians.
Listen to the Apostle Paul's treatment of this subject in Romans chapter 9, verse 20 and 21.
Romans 9 verse 20 and 21.
And this would be for those who charge God foolishly.
He said, Nay, but O man, who art thou that repliest against God?
Shall the thing formed Say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
Hath not the potter power over the clay?
of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor.
Now let's look at that for a moment It's true that homosexuals who also try to seem religious Will justify their sinful lifestyle by saying, God made me that way, so it's not a sin for me to be that way.
And there are entire religious assemblies that are built upon the acceptance and justification of sexually perverted lifestyles.
Now you go back to the creation of man in Genesis, and I'll read some selected verses.
That remind us of what God said about it, because that's what's important here, not my opinion or yours.
But what did God say?
Starting in Genesis 1.
27.
So God created man in his own image.
In the image of God created he him.
Male and female created he them.
God created a man and a woman He did not create two women or two men.
Now that seems pretty obvious But it's not quickly applied by those who hold these illogical theories about how God made them.
In Genesis chapter 1, verse 28A.
Genesis 1 28, put the let little letter A, and that lets you know we're reading the first part of the verse, not the entire verse.
It said, and God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.
He gave the command to one woman he made, one man he made, to be fruitful and multiply.
And they had only each other.
And that combination was the only combination that could result in children being born.
God didn't give this command to a man and an ape, or to a woman and a whale.
He gave the command to be fruitful and multiply in this verse to a man and a woman.
Now let's suppose we were to ask a lesbian What would have happened if God created two women and gave them the command to multiply and replenish the earth?
Now some lesbians still want to have children, so they arrange for artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization.
They want to skip the man.
But they still want what the woman cannot provide.
But if God had made two women rather than a man and a woman, There was no man to provide his part of the equation for the conception process.
I'll tell you what the result would have been.
It would have been death.
The two lesbians would have died.
And mankind would have ceased to exist.
But you know this is such a ridiculous discussion because God is holy.
And he would never create anything unholy.
And he did not create anything unholy.
Leviticus chapter 20, verse 13 says.
If a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination They shall surely be put to death.
Their blood shall be upon them.
And 1 Corinthians 6, verse 9.
1 Corinthians 6 verse 9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?
Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind.
God is very clear that homosexuality, adultery, and other forms of sexual perversion are wicked And not only did he not create two women or two men, but he distinctly forbade them from any sexual act outside the bonds of marriage.
So these people today.
There's a missing link in their understanding of these people who charge God foolishly.
For their sexual perversion.
They misunderstand themselves.
They misunderstand God.
They misunderstand what sin is God created a perfect man without sin in the world.
Perfect man fell into sin, becoming imperfect And transmitted that imperfect seed down to every generation from Adam all the way to you and me.
Romans chapter 5, verse 12.
Romans 5, verse 12.
Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world.
Do you see who brought sin into the world?
Man.
Sin entered into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.
So when you hear someone say God made me that way to excuse their sin.
Remember the things we went over today.
God created Adam, formed Eve from Adam's rib.
And through procreation as sinners, Adam and Eve had children like us.
Our sin is our choice.
The consequences of our sin are God's choice.
Be like Job and never charge God foolishly.
Never appoint the blame to God for your sinful choices Now look with me in chapter two and verse one 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 so we have the same words we read in verse 6 of the last chapter.
And we discussed that verse in great detail So I'm going to refer you to your notes or the recordings of the lessons where we taught that verse, if you've forgotten what we learned.
And so, just to recap that very briefly, this is a scene in a spiritual realm.
Where the angelic beings presented themselves before God.
They are the sons of God.
And so did Satan He came back, didn't he?
And he does that.
And in fact, he will do that until he and his angels are cast into the lake of fire forever.
Verse 2 And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence comest thou?
And Satan answered the Lord and said, from going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
We also saw those words in verse 7 of the last chapter, and we studied them at that time.
And I will add one thing here that I didn't say when we looked at chapter 1, verse 7.
Notice that Satan was not walking to and fro in heaven.
He wasn't snooping around the throne of God in heaven.
It says he was walking to and fro on the earth.
Isaiah 14 in verse 12.
Isaiah 14 and verse 12.
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning?
How art thou cut down to the ground, which did weaken the nations?
And then in Luke chapter ten, verse eighteen.
Luke 10, verse 18, where Jesus told his disciples, and he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.
Now look in verse 3 in our text here in Job chapter 1.
And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man?
One that feareth God and escheweth evil.
Now this is amazing to me.
God just watched Job go through some terrible things He saw him grieving, rending his mantle, and shaving his head, and falling down on the ground, and returning worship to the Lord, rather than charging God foolishly.
And yet God offered him up again to Satan.
He didn't offer some other saint.
He didn't say, you know what, Satan?
You really did a number on Job.
Let's give him a break.
I'll bring someone else up.
He went with Job again.
Now think about this.
Some may say, well, that's cruel.
No.
If you say that, you're charging God foolishly.
Because God has a much bigger plan than the one you can imagine with your feeble mind or see with your blinded eyes He can see, not only see in the future, he knows the future, he has foreknowledge, he ordains those things which are going to happen, and nothing takes him by surprise.
And to give Job a rest from Satan's attack would be to admit Satan was too much for God and for Job.
And that could never be the case.
Notice that God's description of Job is the same as it was the first time Satan presented himself before the Lord there in chapter 1.
Only this time, Job had gone through terrible afflictions, and he responded without sin.
In fact, the first part of this verse is proof that Job, or it's further proof that Job sinned not, neither charged God foolishly So if you look at Job's actions from the time he first received the first bit of news from the first messenger, until he heard all the news and then grieved as he did and then praised God, declaring his own helplessness and declaring God's sovereignty.
And God still says, Hast thou considered my servant Job?
There's none like him in the earth.
He's perfect, he's upright, he fears God, he eschews evil, removes himself from it.
Job's character hadn't changed one bit And God also said to Satan there in verse 3 about Job, look back in your text as we begin to close.
And still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movest me against him, to destroy him without cause He holdeth fast his integrity.
Now let's look at that statement for just a moment.
This is God telling Satan That after all this, Job's integrity is still intact.
And those two words holdeth fast were translated from a Hebrew word That's also translated as the words strong and the word harden.
H-A-R-D-E-N.
And there are other similar English words used, but I want us to look at the word harden, thinking back to all the evil Satan brought upon Job.
It would have been very easy for Job to soften his integrity or to have shown cracks in his armor.
But a time of testing is when those cracks show up.
It's when the gaps appear.
But not so with Job And next week we'll continue studying this man who was like none other and whose integrity was still intact.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your word.
We thank you for the technology you've offered us.
To be able to broadcast your word even during inclement weather and to feed the saints.
And we pray now for our pastor As he brings that message in just a few moments that you've given him, and as he seeks to evangelize sinners and to build up the saints in the faith, And Lord, we pray you'd just be glorified in all of this today.
In Jesus' name, amen
