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My God and My Neighbor is a “Bible talk show” that looks at religious issues, Christian living and world events in light of the Word of God to give hope. This podcast is a ministry of Tennessee Bible College. TBC offers a bachelor's in Bible studies, a master of theology, and a doctorate of theology in apologetics and Christian evidences. TBC also provides Christian books, audio recordings on the Bible, and free Bible courses in English and Spanish. Tune in to My God and My Neighbor to experience the educational content that TBC has been delivering for nearly five decades!
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Kerry Duke: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Kerry Duke, host of My God in My Neighbor podcast from Tennessee Bible College, where we see the Bible as not just another book, but the Book. Join us in a study of the inspired Word to strengthen your faith and to share what you've learned with others.
In the Book of Job, God and the devil have a disagreement. God said Job was a good man. The devil said Job was not. He said Job only acted religious because God was making him rich. Then almost unbelievably, the devil challenged God. He said if you take away everything you've given to Job, he will curse you to your face—not behind Your back, but to Your face.
Satan said Job was not sincere. He insinuated that Job was a hypocrite, that he was just pretending. But God accepted his challenge. The Lord told Satan everything he has is in your power. That's Job chapter one, verse 12. “The [00:01:00] Lord said to Satan, ‘Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand on his person.’”
So God allowed the devil to test Job, to have, as the Bible says, power over Job. Now that power was limited. He didn't have any power over Job's will. He couldn't force him, let's say, to hate God. The book of Job is one of the strongest cases for free will that you will find anywhere because the devil did everything he could to get Job to quit, to curse God, but Job refused.
And the limit that God put on Job here in Job chapter one is that he said don't lay a hand on Job's person, that is, on Job himself. Now, this is the beginning of the test. This is not the only test that the devil is going to give to Job. We read about another one, of course, in Job chapter two. We're going to get to that later, and that's where he actually did lay a hand [00:02:00] on Job, but he did have power. He had a power that God allowed him to exercise.
Now remember as you study through the Book of Job that no one knew that the devil was doing all this to Job. They don't even mention that as a possibility. I'm talking about Job, his three friends Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, and then the young man Elihu, and not even God himself said anything about this confrontation that we read here in Job Chapters one and two.
If you didn't have Job chapter one and Job chapter two in this book, if it just went right into the sufferings of Job and this argument between Job and his friends, this book would be a lot different, wouldn't it? But you see in the very beginning here, God pulls the curtains. He lets us see what's happening behind the scenes.
Now, this means that Satan has some power over the physical realm, but it's not miraculous. A miracle in the Bible is the power [00:03:00] of God which is displayed in a special way. In other words, people can know it. Now we're not talking about demon possession in Job chapter one, but Satan is allowed by God to affect the physical world.
How and when he does this today, we don't know. The only reason we know what happened in Job's case, that is, that the devil was working against him, is because God tells us in the Bible. He pulled the curtains to let us see what was happening behind the scenes. So what did the devil do to bring sorrow, pain, and loss in the life of a good man?
Let's read Job chapter one, beginning in verse 13. “Now there was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house, and a messenger came to Job and said, ‘The oxen were plowing and the donkeys feeding beside them, when the Sabeans raided them and took them away. Indeed, they have killed the servants [00:04:00] with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking, another also came and said, ‘The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them, and I alone have escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking, another also came and said, ‘The Chaldeans formed three bands, raided the camels, took them away, yes, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking, another also came and said, ‘Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house. And suddenly a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house. And it fell on the young people and they are dead, and I alone have escaped to tell you.’ Then Job arose, tore his robe and shaved his head, and [00:05:00] he fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong.”
Now, when Job's Day started, it started out well. He was happy. Everything was normal. His kids were fine. His workers and his livestock were okay. It seemed like just another day, and then unexpectedly out of the blue from nowhere all this trouble hits. Does that sound familiar? How many times have you had a phone call or someone told you something or some kind of tragic event struck very suddenly? That's just life. It's a good thing that we don't know the future. If we did know what was coming next, we'd be able to see all the bad things that we're going to have to endure, and life would [00:06:00] really be unbearable.
God has shielded us. God protects you by not letting you know what's going to happen tomorrow. That's why you don't need to worry about it. That's why you don't need to get over into tomorrow and hold on to the things of the past in the other direction. You need to just live one day at a time as the Bible says. So the things that you need to do today in Matthew 6 34: the Bible says do not worry about tomorrow because tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient unto the day is its own trouble or its own evil. That's Matthew six, verse 34.
So what did the devil do here to cause havoc in this home? And I say that he did cause havoc. He does that today. The Bible says that they were enjoying their lives. Everything was going well. Job's sons and his daughters were eating and drinking together.
They were enjoying a good meal like they oftentimes did. They got along with each other. There was peace and harmony and safety in this household. [00:07:00] So what did the devil do to Job first? Well, the Bible tells us in verses 14 and 15. It says that the oxen were plowing. Everything was going well in that way.
The donkeys were feeding beside them. Everything was fine. And then the Sabeans raided them. The Bible says that as long as we're in this life, as long as we're in this world, there will always be the threat of thieves. Jesus said in heaven there will be no thieves to break through and steal, but while you're on the earth, there will always be that kind of danger.
These Sabeans raided them and took them away. That is, they took the livestock. So what happened to the servants that were with them? They killed them. They murdered them with the edge of the sword, and there was only one of them that escaped, and that's the man that was the messenger that came to Job.
These servants did nothing to these Sabeans that we know of. They didn't provoke them. These Sabeans just wanted this property. They were thieves. Now [00:08:00] the Bible says that the devil is a murderer. In John chapter eight, verse 44, Jesus said that he was a murderer from the beginning. So it is in the nature of Satan to want people murdered, to want people killed, to want innocent people to perish.
That's his desire, and that's what he instigates. That's what he wants people to do. So somehow, some way, in a way that you and I cannot comprehend, the devil tempted, the devil was able to persuade, the devil, without appearing to these people and saying, “I'm Satan himself—listen to me”, the devil somehow influenced by temptation these Sabeans to do what they did.
Now that shouldn't seem like some kind of miracle. It doesn't mean that the devil took over their will. The devil is working behind the scenes here, but he is only beginning his dirty work. He is by no means finished. The Bible says in verse 16, “While he was still speaking…” Now that refers to the first messenger [00:09:00] who had the first bit of bad news.
This second messenger comes in while the first one is still speaking. The first man is not even done telling the bad news yet, and the Bible says he came also and said this: the fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them; I alone have escaped to tell you. This man says that the fire of God did this, and by the fire of God he's evidently talking about lightning because God created nature and that means that He created lightning.
It's interesting that when God addresses Job in the last part of this book, lightning is one of the many things He talks about in His creation. In Second Kings chapter one, the Bible says that Elijah called down fire from heaven to consume 50 men, and the Bible refers to that at least one time as the fire of God.
Now, you'll find that also in Luke chapter nine, verse 54, where the disciples said do you want us to call down fire from heaven and [00:10:00] consume these men just like Elijah did? This man in Job chapter one said it was the fire of God that burned up the sheep and the servants who were taking care of them.
Now, that brings up a question. If the Bible here in Job chapter one, verse 16 says this was the fire of God, then how could the devil have been behind that? Now we know that the devil is behind it because God has given him leeway. God has given him some latitude, so to speak, with His physical creation so that the devil can inflict harm on job.
And we know that because God said all that he has is in your power. Well, we have to remember when we read Job chapter one that the man who saw this did not know that the devil was behind it when he said the fire of God fell down from heaven. He didn't know anything about the devil's part in this. This man, like Job and the others in this book, tended to attribute everything that happened to God, right or wrong.
That's the way [00:11:00] that they looked at things. So in Job chapter one, verse 16, we find a very important insight here, and that is that God allowed the devil to use natural forces to afflict job. He allowed him to have some kind of power, some kind of latitude, over His creation in this instance in order to afflict Job his servant.
So that shows that the devil does have some power in that area. Now, again, this is a unique case here because God is pulling the curtains and letting us see what happens behind the scenes. As to how and when and why and where the devil does this at other times in the Bible, much less today, God doesn't explain that to us.
This is a unique situation that we're reading here in Job chapter one, but it does show that God sometimes allows the devil to do this. Here in Job chapter one, where lightning came down from the sky and burned up these sheep and these [00:12:00] servants, we might look at it and say, “Well, that was a natural disaster.” But actually behind the scenes there was a supernatural element involved in what we call a natural disaster.
So his sheep, which were a main source of his income, are gone. They are burned up. All that wool that they would produce is now gone, and the servants who took care of them are gone. So the first calamity, the first loss to Job in verse 15 was at the hands of human beings, the Sabeans. The second loss is in verse 16, and that came from nature itself by lightning. The third loss is also at the hands of men. Verse 17 says, “While he was still speaking…” Now that man who's still speaking is the second messenger in verse 16 who had also come in while the first messenger was still speaking the bit of bad news that he was delivering. [00:13:00]
So you had one man in verse 15 who came in with bad news. You had a second messenger who came in with the second bit of bad news in verse 16 while he was still speaking. A third man comes in and he has more bad news. So what's happened here in one day all at the same time? Basically, Job finds out that his 500 yoke of oxen and his 500 female donkeys have been stolen.
No sooner does he learn that than he discovers that the 7,000 sheep he had have been burned up and now he finds out that the 3000 camels he owns have been stolen. So here are three tragedies that happened to Job in the same day. Here are three pieces of very bad news that are delivered to him all at once.
Isn't that the way that it oftentimes happens? If we only had one trial to happen once in a while and then we had a break for, let's say five or six weeks, or even one week, [00:14:00] sometimes before the next trial comes along, so that we are able to recover, so that we're able to get back up on our feet, then the calamities and the hardships of life wouldn't be so hard to handle.
But when you have two or three things that happen all at once—you might have something that happens in the family, you might have a death that occurs, you might have a health problem, you might have an accident, you might have some kind of financial issue, or you might have some kind of conflict that arises—and oftentimes they come in threes. I've heard people say for years, “When it rains, it pours.” And that's oftentimes true. I've also heard people say that death comes in three’s oftentimes, and they don't mean that as a superstition. They don't mean that as a law of nature where it always has to happen that way. They just mean that oftentimes you will find that when one person you know dies, there will be two others in the close timeframe related to that, that pass away as well.
Well, what we find here in the case of job. Is that it's [00:15:00] not just raining. It's pouring. This man is getting all kinds of bad news all at once. His life has completely changed in one day. All of his assets and all of his sources of income have been wiped out, and when we think about everything he's lost, we have to wonder how much more can this man take.
You may be thinking about some other men in the Bible we talked about in the first lesson. One of those men was Moses in numbers chapter 11. Virtually the whole nation of the Hebrews were upset with him. Now, that was when Moses cried out to God. He basically said that he couldn't take anymore and he told God if you're going to treat me like this, go ahead and take my life.
The other man was the great prophet Elijah. In First Kings chapter 19, when the vicious queen Jezebel vowed to kill him, Elijah ran for his life. He sat down under a juniper tree and he prayed that God would take his life and end it all, but it wasn't over for [00:16:00] either one of these men. God still had work for them to do, but at their lowest point, when they felt that they couldn't carry any more weight on their shoulders, they thought that they couldn't endure anything else.
We feel like that sometimes, don't we? We can carry a heavy load for a while, but when more and more burdens are laid on us, we get tired. We ask for relief, we pray to God, and then we get discouraged, and finally we get mad and upset. That's when we say, “I don't know how much more this I can take.”
And what do we mean by that anyway? That if we have much more pain, we'll lose our mind? That we'll have a heart attack and die that will collapse? Or if we have any more problems, we might lose our faith? You see, that's what the devil was hoping for in Job's case. He wasn't trying to cause Job to have a heart attack or lose his mind. God wouldn't let him do that to job anyway.
The devil wanted to push Job [00:17:00] to the point where he would curse God. He's doing everything he can to antagonize and provoke him. If he can get Job to curse God, maybe God will take his life and the devil will be the winner.
And the devil does antagonize. In Luke chapter 22, verse 31, Jesus told Peter that the devil wanted to sift him like wheat. In Bible times when people had to have wheat flour to bake bread, they had to separate the wheat kernels from the husks. Now, they had several ways of doing this. Sometimes they would use large fans to remove the husks. Sometimes they would use a sifter. Sometimes they would pull a weighted palate behind an ox to crush the grain.
Now, that is the striking image Jesus used. The devil shakes us. He tries to crush our spirits. He antagonizes. He agitates, and he grinds our hearts without mercy. That's what he's doing to Job, [00:18:00] and the bad part is he's just getting started. If you've already read the Book of Job, you know what's going to happen next.
You know it's going to get worse for job much worse. But Job did not know what you and I know. He didn't know how bad it would get. He couldn't see what was coming, which was again a good thing for him. But the good part is that God knows our limits. He knows how much pressure we're able to stand. We don't.
But if we listen to experience as we get older, we'll trust in God more. We'll put our faith in Him that He won't put on us more than we're able to bear. God told the Jews in Isaiah 57, verse 16, “For I will not contend forever, nor will I always be angry, for the spirit would fail before me, and the souls which I have made.”
Now this verse in Isaiah is a different situation than the Book of Job. God punished the [00:19:00] Jews in Isaiah for their sins, but God was not punishing Job for his sins. But at the same time, Isaiah 57, verse 16 does say that there are limits as to how much punishment, how much suffering God will give men in this lifetime.
He said He would not punish them to the point that their spirits failed. The Lord broke their stubborn will when He punished these people in Babylonian captivity in the book of Isaiah, but He did not crush their spirits because God loved them and He loves us. It can be hard to do this, but when Christians suffer great anguish and pain, they must not think that God doesn't love them.
Paul said in Second Corinthians chapter four, verse eight, “We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed. We are perplexed, but not in despair.” The word perplexed comes from a Greek word which means not to know which way to turn, [00:20:00] not to know how to decide or what to do.” Doesn't that describe your life at times?
That's how the Apostle Paul felt. The same apostle who preached, debated, and worked miracles. And yet Paul said that even when he was at his wits’ end, he said we are not in despair. There's always hope in God. There's always a future ahead, and as we say, and as we sing sometimes, God holds the future in his hands.
We think the future is in our hands or on our shoulders as it were. But it is in His hands. There's a case of God showing mercy to Paul in Philippians chapter two when he already had a lot of troubles in his life. Paul had already been arrested for preaching the gospel. He was a prisoner in Rome, and a man named Epaphroditus was a dear brother to Paul.
He was a valuable worker. Now that man became very sick and almost died. [00:21:00] Paul said he was sick almost unto death, but God had mercy on him, and not only on him, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow” [Philippians two verse 17].
Sometimes in life we feel that that's the way that our lives are going. It's just one sorrow right after another, or one grief on top of another. Paul said that he was spared. If this dear brother Epaphroditus had died, it would've been a heavy burden of grief on top of everything else Paul was carrying, but God spared him. Paul doesn't say that he would've died or lost his faith if his dear brother had died, but he was very, very thankful that his trouble in his own life wasn't worse. Now that should teach us how to look at our trials. Instead of us saying, “I can't take it anymore,” we should say, “I'm glad it's not worse.” So the answer to the question “How much more can Job take?” [00:22:00] is actually a lot more. much more than we might think. And though we don't want to think about this and admit it, the same is true with us.
When life seems to be crushing us and the weight is so heavy it's hard to breathe, we cry out, “How much more can I stand; Lord, help me.” And there's nothing wrong with praying for the Lord's help. But when we ask “How much more can I stand?” the answer is the same. More, maybe even much more, and maybe even a lot more than you think.
Now, in Job's case, the answer is a lot more. Now, if you've never read this book of Job, you might ask, “But how much worse can it get?” What can possibly happen next? We see the answer in verses 18 and 19. This is the fourth piece of bad news. On top of everything else, he's been told that he lost everything.
Now, if we were to lose all of our money and all of our income and all [00:23:00] of our possessions, that would be devastating to say the least. That would be a trial; that would be a test of your faith. But even then, you could be able to say, if you have children, “At least I still have my children.” But poor Job couldn't even take solace in that.
This fourth messenger delivers the worst news of all. That is, your sons and your daughters are dead. A terrible windstorm collapsed the house where they were eating and drinking. The messenger's awful words must have pierced Job's heart deeper than anything he had ever felt before in his life. They are dead.
Who or what was responsible for this tragedy? Again, the answer in this case was the devil. Now, that doesn't mean that every time the wind blows, the devil is in control of it. We only know his involvement in this case because God tells us in this chapter. Otherwise we wouldn’t know this. So the devil was given [00:24:00] some leeway from God Himself to use the forces of nature to cause grief and pain and sorrow and death.
The first time he used lightning, and this time he uses a windstorm—10 children in one day. Those of you that have lost a child know how painful this is. It's something that you never fully get over. You can learn to function and move forward, gradually and painfully move forward, but it's always there.
That is why we need to draw close to God and not push Him away in times of tragedy. But imagine the heartache of losing all of your 10 children in one day. If anything seems unbearable, that does. Alexander Campbell lost 10 of his 14 children and his first wife by the time that he was 61 years old, but they died over the course of several years.
In the case of job, he lost all of his 10 children in one day. Now, I know that [00:25:00] some of you who are listening have been through some very painful experiences in life. I know that some of you are going through some severe circumstances in your life right now. Those situations may be financial problems, maybe even financial disaster, or you've lost loved ones just like Job did.
But try to imagine losing everything that Job did in one day. It's impossible for us to fully empathize with this man and his loss, and it's even more impossible for us to answer the question “What would I do if I was in Job's shoes?” What would I do if I lost everything that Job lost here in Job chapter one?”
We can only read Job chapter one, 20 and 22, and hope that we would have even a fraction of the faith that he had. So let's read verse 20 through 22. Now this is the description of job's response to everything that he's been through and all the bad news that he's received. The Bible says, “Then Job arose, [00:26:00] tore his robe and shaved his head. He fell down to the ground” the Bible says “and worshiped, and he said, Naked I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong.”
How did Job respond? How did he react? Well, he wasn't angry, at least at this point. He certainly wasn't filled with rebellion or self-pity. He didn't turn to suicide. He certainly didn't turn to the bottle for some kind of relief, and he didn't become an atheist. The first thing that he did was not to clench his fist and shake it toward heaven, but he fell down on the ground and he worshiped God.
He tore his mantle. He shaved his head. Now, these were old ways of expressing shock and grief and heartache. He got down on his hands and knees and face. This was also common in Bible times. You find Abraham doing that in Moses and Joshua and Daniel and many other great men in the Bible.[00:27:00]
And he worshiped God. He didn't turn away from God. He turned toward God and he worshiped God after all this that had happened. Now that came naturally to him because he had always worshiped God continually and conscientiously. He had honored God and asked for God's mercy in good times. So it was natural for him to acknowledge God in these hard times.
What did he say about losing all this? He said I came from my mother's womb naked and naked shall I return there. That's exactly what we read in Ecclesiastes five, verse 15. He said the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. The Bible says in First Timothy six, verse seven, we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out, and having food and clothing let us be therewith content.”
Job said the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Now there's something interesting and I believe something very [00:28:00] important to point out here about the problem of evil. The Bible says that Job said these words: The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Now, think about the context here. Think about what we've just read in Job chapter one. Who took these things away from Job: God or the devil? It was the devil. God didn't do this, but Job thought that God did this. Now, this was a mistake in his opinion at the very beginning of this book, and there are several lessons in that, but one of them is that a mistaken opinion is not necessarily a sin.
This man Job has the wrong opinion here. The devil has done all these things. The devil has taken away these things from Job, but Job thinks that God has done that. And the Bible says in verse 22 “in all this job did not sin.” So the mistaken opinion in verse 21 is not a sin according to verse 22.
And another example of that would be [00:29:00] Abraham. The Bible tells us in Hebrews 11, 17 through 19, that Abraham thought that God was going to raise Isaac from the dead after he had offered him. In other words, after he had offered him as a sacrifice. And yet that didn't happen. But the fact that he had a wrong opinion about that did not affect his faith because he is commended for his faith in Hebrews 11 and James 2.
But in spite of having a wrong opinion, which you and I sometimes do as well, the Bible says that Job blessed the name of the Lord. He did not curse God to his face like the devil said he would do. He blessed the name of the Lord and the Bible says in verse 22 in all this, in all of these problems that we've read about, Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong.
So the next time that you feel like you have more than you can bear in life, go back and read Job chapter one. And better than that, read this entire book because this is the book to read on the problem of evil.
Thank [00:30:00] you for listening to My God and My Neighbor. Stay connected with our podcast on our website and on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. Tennessee Bible College, providing Christian education since 1975 in Cookeville, Tennessee, offers undergraduate and graduate programs. Study at your level. Aim higher and get in touch with us today.