Episode Transcript
It is 10 o'clock and it's time for us to begin Sunday school.
We're in Job chapter 2 in verse 6 today.
And I had to stop in the middle of our study about how God put limits on Satan when it came to how Satan afflicted Job.
And we're glad that he did.
And we were reminded of the limits that God put on Satan in the first chapter as well.
Where he told Satan, only upon himself, put not forth thine hand.
In other words, at that time, Satan could do only, he could do whatever he wanted to Job's possessions and to Job's people But he couldn't touch Job.
And I was burdened for Job Because I think he would rather have been afflicted personally than to have his people, his family, his servants killed.
And in fact, I believe most people would feel the same way.
If the choice were for me to be physically tormented Or to have my family killed, that would be a no-brainer.
That would be easy.
I would offer them up.
No, up I would take I would take whatever it was, and that sentence would be mine so that they could be spared.
Now after David numbered the children of Israel contrary to God's command, God Had a seer that's like a prophet named Gad, and he sent that seer to David.
And said, because you've numbered Israel, I'm going to give you three choices of things that And they were all terrible if you remember the study in 2 Samuel from years ago.
It's found in 2 Samuel 24 verses 12 through 13.
Where David was to choose one of three punishments for this great sin of numbering the children of Israel.
2 Samuel 24, 12 through 13 says, and this is what God told Gad, go and say unto David, Thus saith the Lord, I offer thee three things.
Choose thee one of them, that I may do it unto thee.
So Gad came to David and told him, and said unto him, Shall seven years famine come unto thee in thy land?
Or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies while they pursue thee?
Or that there be three days pestilence in thy land?
Now advise and see what answer I shall return to him that sent me.
So the choices were famine Pestilence or flight from the enemies.
In other words, Israel's enemies would chase the armies of David for three months.
And none of those are appealing.
And all of them involved harm to the children of Israel over whom God had made David the king Now skip down to verses 14 through 17 in that same chapter in 2 Samuel 24.
And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait.
Let us now, let us fall now into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great.
And let me not fall into the hand of man.
So the Lord sent a pestilence.
Now, just to stop right there, David didn't choose.
He didn't choose any of the three.
He tried to offer God a fourth option.
So the Lord sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning even to the time appointed.
And there died of the people from Dan even to Beersheba seventy thousand men.
And when the angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord repented him of the evil.
That means he was comforted.
It doesn't mean that he said, oh, I did wrong.
That's never the case with God.
He was comforted.
He was eased.
And said to the angel that destroyed the people, It is enough.
Stay now thine hand.
And the angel of the Lord was by the threshing place of Arana the Jebusite.
And David spake unto the Lord when he saw the angel that smote the people.
Now listen to what he said.
And he said, Lo, I have sinned, and I have done weakedly.
But these sheep, what have they done?
Let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me and against my father's house.
And because David did not choose one of those three options, God chose for him.
And even then God was merciful and he shortened that pestilence.
And listen again to David's last words in that passage.
He said, Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly.
But these sheep, what have they done?
Let thine hand I pray thee be against me and against my father's house Now had David been given this choice in the beginning, he would have immediately chosen it.
He said, that's easy.
Lord, spare the pestilence, the famine, the enemies chasing my armies.
Put it on me.
It's my fault.
I caused the people to be numbered.
Now, there were a lot of other people involved in this illegal census that David took.
He had to have a lot of help to count the people all over Israel.
It wasn't he didn't go out and knock on every door.
And so there were many people involved in this sin, and there were many who died.
But David would rather have been afflicted himself than to have his people suffer, and I believe Job would have done the same.
But Satan never gave him that choice.
And in fact, God took that choice away from Satan when he told him, but upon him put not forth thine hand.
Don't touch it.
But as we read in chapter 2, where we were last week, God again gave Satan permission to afflict Job.
And he put a limiter upon Joe.
And I gave you an example of the speed limiter being put upon one of my vehicles that I drove as a law enforcement officer.
That no matter how much I wanted that vehicle to go faster, and no matter how hard I pressed on the accelerator, I could not overcome the limitation that was imposed by the manufacturer of the vehicle. when that computer chip or governor was uh installed.
So let's apply all of the things that we learned and that we refreshed on this morning. to our present verse, and that is verse 6.
So we're Job chapter 2 verse 6.
And look at it.
It says, and the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand, but save his life.
Now this is a little bit different than.
Chapter 1.
There he said, Behold, all that he hath is in thine hand, but upon him put forth not thine hand, so don't touch him.
Satan couldn't do anything directly to Job.
Well, this time God said, you can touch him.
Don't kill him.
He allowed Satan to afflict Job's body, but that limiter still kept him from killing Job.
That limiter, although it doesn't say it, but we know this through the nature of God's salvation.
And that limitry kept Satan from ever taking away Job's salvation.
That was never in question.
That was never on the table.
And it's one of the foundational truths of salvation.
John chapter 2, verse 9b.
It says salvation is of the Lord.
And that means if it's of the Lord, only the Lord could take it away.
But he's promised he would never do that.
In John 10, 27 through 29, John 10, 27 through 29.
He said, My sheep, now those are the ones who are saved, my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life.
Now, how long is eternal?
That's forever, isn't it?
It doesn't have an expiration date on it.
I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
My father which gave them me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my father's hand.
So the next time you hear some person of another religious persuasion, or perhaps your own religious persuasion, tell you, well, you've got to work to keep that salvation.
You could lose it.
You just claim that verse right there.
Read that to him.
Say, is there anywhere in that verse that says that God can lose us when he saves us?
Or that he gives us over, or that we can perish.
No, he says exactly the opposite.
So that was never on the table for Satan.
To have Job's eternal spirit in his hand.
When Jesus said, No man is able to pluck them out of my father's hand, That was to be understood as God putting a limiter on anyone who tried to take his sheep away from him.
And that limiter is their own inability to pluck the sheep from the father's hand.
That's the limiter.
That's the power of God.
Jesus said they simply cannot do it.
It's not that they shouldn't do it or ought not do it, though those things are true.
It's that they can't.
And speaking of those saints who died in Revelation chapter 12 verses 10 through 11, Revelation 12, verses 10 through 11 It says, and I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, now is come salvation and strength. and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ, for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death.
Now the accuser in that verse is Satan.
And he accuses the brethren.
He accuses all the Christians.
And Job was and is one of the brethren.
He's one of us.
If you're a Christian, you're in the same pool as Job.
And the power of Christ is the limiter that is put on Satan He's cast down.
He can put his foot on the accelerator all he wants.
He can press down the accusations as forcefully as he wants.
But he's limited.
By the power of Christ.
And the power, that power, the power of Christ, works in all who belong to Jesus through faith in his gospel.
And that's also why a Christian cannot be demon-possessed.
Cannot.
Demons may influence us, and they do.
The devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
But they cannot possess us.
They can and do possess those who are lost.
Because the lost have rejected Christ.
But we who believe in Christ Are his.
We belong to him.
We are, the Bible calls us a purchased possession.
He purchased us with his own blood.
And he's not going to sell us out or give us to somebody else.
And in that same power That keeps us.
Job was secure from Satan's desire to take his salvation But he could afflict only Job's body, and that with the limitation of saving his life.
Now, don't you know that got all over Satan?
That God would tell him, you can touch him, but don't save it, don't kill him.
Save his life.
Because Satan's not about saving anything or anyone.
He's a destroyer.
And even though he is under the complete authority of his creator, His mission is to destroy all of God's creation, to destroy you, me, everything God created.
And if you ever, and this is for us in here and people watching and people who may watch later, if you ever think that Satan came to bless you And to give you life, think again.
And using the analogy of the thief, Jesus described what Satan's intent is.
When it comes to the sheep.
John chapter 10, verse 10.
John chapter 10, verse 10.
The thief cometh not, but for to steal and to kill and to destroy.
Now that's Satan's motive right there.
So when he comes after you, He either wants to steal, he wants to kill, or he wants to destroy.
And Jesus said, I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
So Satan is a thief and a murderer and a destroyer.
And when he persuades people to seek earthly riches, over spiritual treasures.
And that's what most people do.
They seek earthly riches over spiritual treasures.
And when he convinces people to do that, the earthly-minded person thinks, well, I'm so lucky Or they think I'm self-made.
I made right choices in life, and that's why I'm in such good position.
Or that he's won life's lottery And then when bad things happen to those same people, they think, well, I'm just unlucky.
I had an unlucky day.
But as we're going to learn later in this chapter, Job didn't believe in luck.
In fact, let me say something here that re it bears repeating from time to time.
There's no such thing as luck.
So if that's a an expression you have, you might want to try to filter it out just like the cuss words that you used to say.
And it's just one of those things people say, well, uh I got lucky.
You know, fishermen sometimes say that.
But there's no such thing as luck.
If you believe God is sovereign And in charge of all things, directing some, permitting some things, like he desires, then you won't believe in luck.
When you roll one dive, you play Monopoly or something like that and you roll a die, there is a one in six mathematical probability that you're going to roll a six or any other number.
And that is If that die is evenly weighted, perfectly cubed, and thrown on a consistent level surface, because any and all of those can change that mathematical probability by changing the properties of the die.
But it has nothing to do with luck.
And I could go on for a while about this, but let's just understand Job was not unlucky because God was fully in control of everything that happened to him.
Now look in verse 7.
So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils, from the sole of his foot unto his crown.
Now that's quite an image right there, isn't it?
If you've ever had a boil, and I'm sure most people in here, maybe everybody has, it hurts.
It's uh it gets your attention.
And if you have a boil on your arm, you sure don't want to set your arm down on the table.
So you do what you can to protect it.
Now in this verse, you see the word crown, that means the top of the head or scalp, and it's translated that way in other places in the Old Testament.
So he's got boils from the crown, the top of his head, his scalp, to the sole of his feet.
Now with these limitations on him Satan went to work immediately making Job as miserable as he could with one intent, and that was that he'd curse God to his face.
Now let's think for a moment about the response of a carnal person to something like this.
Carnal persons out Tending to whatever business he has, and he suddenly breaks out in boils from the top of his head to the sole of his feet. without knowing why.
And he gets upset and maybe wonders, well, why me?
What have I done to deserve this?
And perhaps he blames God or his so-called bad luck.
Maybe he thinks, well.
Maybe I ate something bad.
Maybe it's bad soap that I use to cause an allergic reaction.
Well, when Satan smoked Job with these boils.
His hope was to make Job say something like that, like, how could God do this to me?
And to finally curse God to his face.
That's what Job did.
And Job could have chosen all kinds of things, but when he chose this, we're going to look at how I don't know that you could be more miserable than this.
If the boils are on the top of his head all the way to the sole of his feet and all over every side of his body.
Luke's going, man, that would be a lot of cleaning to do in the emergency room.
Never would get through, would you?
He couldn't comfortably lie down on a pillow.
They were up and down his back and sides and arms, so there's no way he could have gotten comfortable sitting or standing or leaning His clothes probably rubbed against him.
And every time he moved, it hurt They're on the soles of his feet, so he couldn't walk or stand without, no doubt, excruciating pain There's no good foot on which to limp.
And even crutches or a cane wouldn't help him.
A wheelchair would have worsened his misery. as he had to sit on those boils that were along his back.
And if anything would make a person cry out in anguish.
Maybe even anger.
It would be having boils from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet.
And these boils were sore boils.
And sore is normally translated as evil, but it's also translated as grievous.
These were not run-of-the-mill boils These were the worst kind.
Now I don't know what the worst kind are, but these that's what these were.
Was the worst kind And there's no doubt that they were inflamed and they probably wouldn't even rupture because you get some relief when that happens, don't you?
Verse 8.
And he took a potchard to scrape himself withal Now a potshard is a piece of earthen vessel.
So picture an earthen vase that you throw on the ground and break and pick up one of those pieces and that's a potsherd In Isaiah chapter thirty, verse fourteen, Isaiah thirty, verse fourteen.
Just to give you an idea of what this is, God was describing how he would deal with the trust that the children of Israel had put in Egypt.
And he said, and he shall break it as the breaking of the potter's vessel that is broken in pieces.
He shall not spare, so that there shall not be found in the bursting of it a shured S-H-E-R-D to take fire from the hearth or to take water withal out of the pit.
So the word can mean the the pot or the shards that come from the broken pot as part of it.
And it's the same as the word potsured, and we might say shard, S-H-A-R-D, shards of glass or shards of of something else.
And although this had to be quite painful. to use a piece of broken pottery to scrape those boils that would eventually relieve the pressure and begin the healing process.
I hope none of you have ever had to be in a burn unit, whether you were working in one or in one as a patient or simply visiting somebody.
That's one of the most pitiful sights you've ever seen when they give a person a bath.
It sounds pretty innocent, doesn't it?
But they're having to scrape that that skin away and it's it's just torturous.
But it's to help the the burn victim.
And so Maybe this is the kind of misery Job was going through as he scraped those boils with the potshirt.
And it said, he scraped himself with his potchard in a particular location, and one we might not guess.
Look back down in your text, it said, and he sat down among the ashes.
That's where he sat.
And there are at least two truths that we can learn.
From the ashes that he chose.
First of all, ashes are soft.
They're very soft.
And they're fine as dust.
And if every shred of wood from a log is burned, I mean all the way down to its smallest part.
Then you have a little pile of ashes and if you after it's cooled down if you put your hand on there it doesn't get much softer.
So it's like sitting on a pile of powder.
And it was probably the best cushion Job could find.
Now, we don't read specifically that Job put those ashes on his boils.
But it would make a lot of sense if he did.
Because ashes have a high mineral content.
Their pH balance is alkaline.
And so they're not a very good host for bacteria and funguses and viruses and so forth.
But there's a secondary truth here about Job sitting in the ashes.
And you have to take into account what all has happened to him up to this point.
It's found in Jeremiah chapter 6 and verse 26.
Jeremiah 6, verse 26 Where God says to the children of Israel, O daughter of my people, gird thee with sackcloth and wallow thyself in ashes.
Make thee mourning as for an only son, most bitter lamentation, for the spoilers shall suddenly come upon us.
Now the use of ashes for mourning, M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G, the grieving, was common in the Bible You may have read several times that certain person repented in sackcloth and ashes.
And so that's where that comes from.
And we would agree here, I believe, that Job was mourning deeply. for his dead children and his servants who had died.
And he was in great emotional pain, not just physical pain caused by these boils The boils weren't his only problem.
They just made everything worse.
And so when he placed himself in these ashes, he literally Placed his body in the place of mourning.
He sat in the place of mourning on these ashes.
Now, there are some other things you could learn about ashes.
In fact, we could spend quite a bit of time talking about ashes in the Bible.
But these two that I mentioned were, I thought, immediately relevant to our study.
Now look in verse 9.
Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity?
Curse God and die.
Well, she was quite a blessing, wasn't she?
It already makes you feel better about yourself if you're a wife, doesn't it?
So I wouldn't ever tell my husband to do that.
What an unthinkable thing to say.
Now, remember, she being his wife was also grieving.
She'd lost all of her children, her servants, the possessions they had.
So we can't overlook that part.
But what it doesn't do is give her a valid excuse to say what she said.
Not at all.
So let's look at the various parts of that verse to understand just how terrible those words were.
First, it says his wife.
And we're going to look at why God made a wife in the first place for man.
Why he made the first wife.
In Genesis chapter 2 verse 17.
And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone I will make him an help meet for him or fitting for him.
So it wasn't good that Adam should be alone.
God could have worked it that way.
He could have said, I I'm good with Adam.
We'll just fellowship for all eternity in this wonderful paradise.
But he said it's not good that he shouldn't have a helpmeet.
So he made him a woman.
That's why he made her is to help Adam, not to strike out on her own and say, I don't need me a man.
I'm going to go off and do great things.
And when Job's wife said what she said, very simplistically stated, she wasn't being a help.
That wasn't helping.
She was being rebellious.
And she should have been as the same mind or of the same mind as Job worshiping the Lord Not standing there criticizing God and her husband because she did both when she made that statement.
Notice first, she asked Job, dost thou still retain thine integrity?
Now the Hebrew word for integrity is normally translated as the word strength.
So you have an idea what integrity looks like.
Integrity is strong.
Integrity is whole.
To retain your integrity is to retain your strength of character So to lose one's integrity is not a sign of strength, it's a sign of weakness Now you can be a physically strong man who can lift hundreds of pounds off the ground and over your head, but you're weak if you've lost your integrity.
And applying these truths to what Job's wife said, then we I think we can conclude that she knew if Job Would curse God, it would be because he's weak.
He would have to lose his integrity in order to curse Job or to curse God.
Now that says a lot about Job, that even his wife, who was of a rebellious nature here, recognized that he was a man of great integrity, and that for him to curse God he'd have to lose his integrity.
That's exactly right.
God had already said that Job was perfect and upright, and that he eschewed evil.
And when evil came Job's way, his integrity or his strength caused him to remove the evil from him or to remove himself. from the evil.
So when Satan comes up next to Job and whether he whispers in his ear or he just puts it in his spirit to curse God, say, hey, this would be a good time to let loose on him after all he's caused to happen.
Job's integrity said, no way.
Didn't even cross his mind, I don't think, but whether it did or didn't, he didn't curse God.
In fact, his integrity Allowed him to worship God.
Now I remember the governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, a physically very strong man at one time was a Navy SEAL.
He was a weak man.
He's the one who said, and probably others like him, but I know he said that Christians are we're weak.
We're weak.
We use our religion as a crutch.
Well, I'll tell you what, I am weak in the flesh.
I'm weak in every way, but I'm strong in Jesus Christ, stronger than that man is.
And I wouldn't trade his old strength, which by the way has disappeared because he's an elderly man now.
He doesn't have what he used to have.
But I still have what I had whenever I was saved.
I've still got it.
And it's just as strong in Christ.
And so Job's integrity would uh allowed him to worship even when his own wife demanded that he curse God.
But at least we know this about her.
She admitted he was a man of integrity.
So how then Could a godly wife ever want to see her husband's godly character weakened?
Well, the answer is a godly wife would never want to see her husband's character weakened.
Weakened.
She would never say what Job's wife said to him.
She would never say, Well, let's just drop the religious act for a while and get real.
Did you notice?
That Satan never told God that he would do something to Job's wife to make her curse God He didn't have to.
All Satan had to do was afflict Job.
And of course, in doing so, he afflicted the servants and all the other.
But right here, we're talking about Job specifically.
All Satan had to do was afflict Job, and Job's wife would be ready for Job to curse God.
She was ready to curse God.
And maybe she already had.
I don't know.
It doesn't say.
Or maybe she was afraid to curse God herself, but she thought, well, I'll get Job to do it.
He can curse God in the name of the family here.
But in either case.
She was the worst wife a man could have in this situation.
And as I said before, I'm sure she was grieving the loss of her children, her livestock, and her servants and so forth, but she responded wrongly.
In the course of my law enforcement career, I've been to many homes where people have died.
And I perform CPR on people who'd been dead for some time.
And by the way, I'm O for two, so don't Let somebody else do it.
Thank God for the AEDs that we have here at the church.
But I've I've performed CPR on people who've been dead for some time.
Not to bring them back because we couldn't, but it was for the family.
We just do whatever we can for the family.
And there was no bringing them back, but we did it for the family's sake.
The same reason the ambulance would go ahead and take the person to the hospital and uh try to do some kind of life-saving measures that were futile.
But to keep the family from saying, if only you would have done this or only would have done that.
And I've watched the responses of these surviving family members after their loved one passes away.
Now, one widow in particular, I remember, was greeted by her family and friends as her husband's body lay in the other room.
And when her friends got there, they sat on the couch and they began reading the Bible together.
And it blessed my heart.
I was eavesdropping.
I wanted to hear what they were reading.
And then in another situation, there was a deceased woman, and she had cancer, and she was in her last stages of life.
And her children, they were adults, but her children gathered outside in the yard in a prayer circle As the ambulance was or the the uh medics were carrying her mother's dead body away.
But then on another occasion, after my partner and I had attempted CPR on a woman who was already dead, her husband was standing there in the bathroom with us, cursing God.
It was horrible to hear.
He was cursing God for his wife's death.
It was sad.
You know, the wages of sin is death.
We're all going to die.
We live in sinful bodies, and it's we're going to go different ways at different times.
But the gift of God is eternal life.
And in the sadness that we feel at the death of a loved one, we have to also remember to celebrate the eternal life.
That God's given us through his son Jesus.
And we know that the deceased family member or friend who's in Christ has gone to be with the Lord.
So it's not the time to get angry with God.
Yes, we're going to be sad and grieve and have some hard days ahead of us.
But the fact is, there's never an acceptable time to be angry with God I know of a dear woman who suffered the loss of a child and she went to a therapist and this therapist told her it's okay to be angry with God.
Now that was bad counsel.
It's not, and I've got Bible for that, by the way.
Romans chapter 9 verse 14.
Both of these are in uh well two of them are in Romans.
Romans 9, 14 Paul asked the church this question, what shall we say then?
Is there unrighteousness with God?
God forbid.
In other words, if if God takes somebody or allows something to happen to somebody, even death, is he unrighteous because of that?
Paul said, God forbid.
No, he's not.
Skipping down to verse 20 in that same chapter, Romans 9.
20.
Nay, but O man, who art thou that repliest against God?
Shall the thing formed, that's us, say to him that formed it, that's God, why hast thou made me thus?
When the people of Nineveh repented, Jonah the prophet became angry.
Listen to the exchange between Jonah and God in Jonah chapter 4, verses 1 through 4.
Jonah chapter 4, verses 1 through 4.
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.
And he prayed unto the Lord and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country?
Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish, for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. and repentest thee of the evil.
Therefore now, O Lord, take I beseech thee my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.
Now that was his response to Nineveh, the people of Nineveh being saved.
He didn't want him to be saved.
Jonah was a a knucklehead, wasn't he?
But the rest of that verse, verse 4 says, Then said the Lord, Doest thou well to be angry?
In other words, is this a good thing, Jonah, for you to be angry?
And of course the answer is no.
So for anyone who tells you that grieving and sorrow Are causes for you to be angry with God, don't fall for that.
And I'm gonna be, I'm gonna use this as a teaching moment.
Although this lesson may already be plain enough for you, and this is for wives or for women who will one day become wives There's never a right time for you to turn your husband's heart away from God.
Never.
You ought to spend your time praying for your husband, especially when he's suffering, because men suffer too.
Men suffer in ways that women don't understand, women suffer in ways that men don't understand.
Because God made us different.
And your husband needs your help.
You are his helpmate.
He doesn't need your criticism, and he certainly doesn't need you to tell him to curse God and die.
And I'll close with this.
In our church's history, at least the 13 plus years my wife and I have been here.
I can think of at least four women who have led their husbands away from this church.
Now, there may have been more than that, and there probably were, but I can think of four just as clearly as if it happened yesterday.
And it says just as much about the men, by the way, as it does their wives, that the men would allow this to happen.
But there's nothing more beautiful than a godly man who is supported by a godly wife.
That's the perfect marriage.
That's the best marriage a man and a woman could hope for.
And that doesn't mean that the marriage is perfect in every way.
Although you have two Christians who are married, you've got two bodies in Adam who have sinful tendencies and are tempted in the flesh.
But had Job had a godly wife, a true helpmeet, she would have helped him scrape those boils from his body and doctored them and sat in the ash heap with him.
And she would have never thought of cursing God or telling her husband to do so.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you so much for the lessons you've taught us today in your word, and thank you for the precious people.
Who are interested in your word and who love to hear truth, and I pray you'd bless them for their faithfulness.
And help us to keep in memory the things you've taught us today, that they may truly affect our lives in a way that brings you glory.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
