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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 am Kerry Duke, host of My God and 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.
Job was a good man. He was also a very wealthy man, and in Job chapter one, we read about the devil taking away what Job had. The devil took away his livestock, which was his income and also his wealth to a large extent, and the devil also took away his ten children in one day. But that didn't shake job. The Bible tells us that he held on to his faith.
You see, the devil had told God that if he took away everything that Job had, Job would curse him to his face. But he was wrong because in Job chapter one, verse 21, the last words that we read in this story in Job chapter one [00:01:00] are that Job said this: “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
But the devil does not give up easily. He keeps trying. He is absolutely relentless. I heard a preacher say years ago in a sermon that he entitled “Good Things about the Devil,” [and you have to put that in quotation marks, of course] that one of the marks about the devil is that he does not give up. He is very persistent.
In the Bible, as an illustration, you read about Delilah who kept trying until she found Samson's weakness, and then she used that against him. Well, the devil attacks you. He attacks us, and he keeps doing that until he can find a weakness and until he can hopefully, on his part, destroy us.
First Peter, chapter five, verse eight. The Bible says, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about seeking whom he may devour.” A lion keeps stalking. A lion does not give up [00:02:00] until he gets his prey. That's what the devil does. So in Job chapter two, the devil comes back and he comes back with a vengeance.
He is not done yet. He has not given up on Job. He's going to try to get Job to curse God to his face. So in Job chapter two, verses one and two, we find a familiar scene and we also find some familiar 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?’ Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘From going to and fro on the earth and from walking back and forth on it.’” Now that is exactly what you read the first time in Job chapter one, verses six and seven. It says, “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. God said to Satan, “From where do you come?” And then Satan said [00:03:00] the same thing that he says here in Job chapter two. So this is a second time. This is a second situation. The Bible says in verse three. Then the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant job that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil.
Now again, that is exactly what he said to the devil in chapter one, verse eight. But here he says something else here in Job chapter two verse three, notice that he adds and still. He that is job holds fast to his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without calls. This is interesting.
Here's what the devil is best at doing. He tried his best to turn God against job. So notice this, God said to the devil, job is holding fast to his integrity. He has not given up. He didn't curse me to [00:04:00] my face even though you, that is the devil. You incited me against him. The King James version says, you moved me against him.
You tried to do that. You tried to turn me against Job to destroy him without a cause. So in this book of job, what is the devil doing? He is doing the same thing that he has always done and the same thing that he is doing today. And that is he is trying to turn everybody against each other. He's trying to turn man against God, God against man.
He's trying to cause havoc and chaos. Now that's Satan. He uses people's tongues to gossip, to back bite, to criticize, to cause division, to separate family and friends and brethren. The Bible says in Proverbs chapter six, verse 19, he hates those who sow discord among brethren. In Proverbs 16, verse 28, the Bible says that A [00:05:00] whisperer separates the best of friends, and the devil tried to move.
He tried to incite God to destroy Job, to ruin job, to not only take what he had, but to crush his spirit and to take his life. Now Satan is out to destroy you, your family, your reputation, and especially your soul, and take away your salvation today. That's what he does. And notice, God says, you tried to move me against him to destroy him without cause.
There was no reason for that. He didn't deserve to die. He didn't deserve to be destroyed. And yet you tried to get me to do that. So wouldn't we talk about unfairness? When we talk about the problem of evil, we need to look to the devil. He's the one who's the author of that you try to get me to destroy him without cause.
You see, the devil doesn't have to have a valid reason or a cause. He just [00:06:00] causes trouble. He doesn't care if there's a reason for it or a just cause or adjust calls or not. In Matthew chapter five, verse 22, Jesus warned about being angry with your brother without a cause. In John chapter 15, verse 25, Jesus said that the Jews hated him without a cause.
There was no cause. There was no just reason. Job didn't deserve this. It was not fair. And yet the argument in this book is why? What caused all this to happen? If it wasn't fair, if you didn't deserve it, then what is this book about? And that's why we're studying it now. You find a typical response from the devil in verses four and five.
So 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 remember, he's talking to God, stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will surely curse you to your [00:07:00] face. So now the devil tries something else.
This is exactly what he does today. If he uses one temptation to try to take you down and that doesn't work, he'll try something else or he'll try the same thing. 10 or 20 times. And if that doesn't work, he'll try it 30 or 40 times until we finally give in. This is the persistence of the devil. Don't underestimate him.
So God said to the devil in verse three, you were wrong. You tried to get me to destroy him, and it didn't work. You were wrong about me and you were wrong about job, but the devil won't back down. He's argumentative. He's rebellious. He knows people. What he says here in verse four is generally true of mankind.
He says, skin for skin. You say, what does that mean? It means that generally speaking, a man will give anything to save his own skin. As we would say to save his own hide, to save his life. A man will give everything he has [00:08:00] if it means that he's going to live instead of dying. If a man pulls a gun on you and he wants your car or your wallet, and if you don't give it to him, then you're going to die, then you'll give it to him.
Whatever it takes, you will give it in order to live. If a man has cancer, he will spend everything that he has oftentimes to live a little longer. That's generally speaking what happens. Why? Because we want to live. So Satan told God, sure, job gave up everything, but a man will do that just to save his own hide.
He's still trying to save. That job is not sincere. He's saying he's never really been tested. And I'll tell you a real test of his character. The devil says, job thought, if he cursed you, he'd die. And the only reason he didn't is because he wanted to live. He wanted to save his own neck. He's hiding his real feelings.
He. So in verse five, the devil said, here's what will show his true colors. You touch, that is you [00:09:00] afflict his body, you put him in enough pain, and you'll see what his religion was. You'll see that he was a fake. The devil is saying it's one thing for a man to lose his property and even his children. But it's another thing for him to suffer, really suffer a lot of pain, excruciating pain, especially in his body, in his flesh, and in his bones.
God made our bodies to feel pleasure and pain, and the devil knows this. He tempts us with both of these. Both of these feelings bring out what is in our hearts so the devil can torment us or he can tempt us with the feelings in our body. He can use pleasure because it will either bring out gratitude in our lives.
We can either thank God for that, or it will bring out the selfish, greedy side of mankind, and that's what the devil wants. And the devil knows that pain has an effect on us. It will either cause us to be submissive and humble before God, or it can lead us to be prideful. Turn to anger and be [00:10:00] rebellious.
Satan said, if you put job in enough pain, he'll curse you to your face, not behind your back, and not just in his heart or in his mind, but he will curse you to your face. So God accepted the challenge, and here's what we read in Job chapter two, verse six through eight. And the Lord said to Satan, behold he is in your hand, but spare his life.
So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, and he took for himself a pot shirt that is a broken piece of pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the midst of the ashes. The Lord permitted Satan to have some power over Job again here in verse six.
Now, the first time was back in chapter one and in chapter one, verse 12, God said, okay, you can have what he owns. You can do what you want to with his possessions, even his children, but don't [00:11:00] touch job himself. Now, this time, verse five says, his flesh and his bones, but the limit is this. You can't kill him.
Now, job later wanted to die, but God had already decided that he was not going to die at the hands of Satan Job didn't know that. We have to remember, again, we have to constantly remind ourselves as we read the Book of Job. That job did not have job chapter one and job chapter two to read before or while he was going through all this.
If he had, then it would've been a lot different, but he does not have this kind of information you and I do, but he didn't. Now Satan has power to hurt job. So how's he going to do this? God said that he is in your hand and you can do what you want to to his body, but don't kill him. So what is Satan going to do?
He has all this influence over job. And what is he going to do to torment him? Is he going to put him in an accident that would leave him crippled? Well, if he did that, then job would [00:12:00] just adjust to that. Is he going to cause an attack that would leave him in a coma? Well, if he did that, then Job wouldn't know about it.
He wouldn't be aware of it. So is the devil going to deprive him of food so that he stars to death? Well, that would kill him. And God said, you can't do that. I. Is the devil going to send a lion or a poisonous snake to attack job, or is he going to send some kind of natural disaster like the wind that he used in chapter one or the lightning that he used in chapter one?
Well, the Bible says again that God told him you can't kill him. So the devil is going to bring some kind of suffering upon job. He's going to strike him with some kind of pain. Now we can take pain, even severe pain if it only lasts a few seconds or a few minutes, or maybe even a few hours. But chronic pain that never stops and goes on for days and weeks and months without us knowing if it will end.
And if it does end, then when Now that is a trial. [00:13:00] And what did Satan choose? Out of all the forms of suffering, you think about all the kinds of pain that we can endure in this lifetime, and sometimes we get curious and we search on the internet for what the most intense or severe kinds of pain there are that a human being can experience.
What are the worst kinds of pain? Well, the devil had a lot of options open to him. He could have caused job to suffer in any number of ways, but he chose a form of suffering that tormented the skin. He chose a skin disease where so many nerves are, and he chose the largest organ of the body. It was a disease so severe that it affected him everywhere in his skin, in his joints, in his internal organs, his breathing, his bowels and everything.
Now the Bible doesn't say specifically exactly what this suffering was. A lot of people believe it was some form of leprosy, and they may be right about this. The Bible doesn't really tell us what it was, [00:14:00] but it does describe the symptoms. It does describe the suffering. Satan struck job with this. The Bible says that Notice verse seven again, the devil was behind this.
The devil caused this. The devil was given this leeway to cause this kind of suffering. In Job chapter two, verse seven, the Bible says, so Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. So here's physical suffering I. That was caused by the devil.
Now, this is not demon possession, this is not anything like that, but it is something that the devil did. And there are other verses that talk about the devil inflicting some kind of physical suffering on people. One of them is in Luke chapter 13, beginning in verse 10. The Bible talks about a woman who was crippled.
She was bent over and the Bible says that she could not raise herself up. And Jesus loosed her. He said, [00:15:00] woman, you are loosed from your infirmity. And he laid his hands on her and immediately she was made straight and glorified. God. That's Luke 13, verse 13. Now, when the ruler of the synagogue complained about this and said that it was the Sabbath and he shouldn't be doing this, then here's what Jesus said.
Notice in Luke chapter 13 verse 15. The Lord answered him and said, hypocrite, does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his donkey from the stall and lead it away to water It so ought not this woman being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound. Think of it. He says, for 18 years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath.
Now, notice what Jesus said. He said that Satan had bound her. He had bound her for 18 years, so the devil had that power. Now, this woman is not demon possessed. This woman is not possessed by some kind of [00:16:00] devil. The Bible shows that she's crippled. And the Bible specifically says here that Satan had done this.
Satan had bound her with this crippling disease, and then in Acts 10, verse 38, Peter said, God anointed Jesus of Nazareth. I. With the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing, all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. So Peter talks about something that you read many times in Matthew, mark, Luke, and John, and that is that Jesus healed people of their sicknesses.
Now this passage says that at least some of the time, these people who were sick were oppressed by the devil. The devil was behind that. So you read about that in Acts 10 38. You read about that in Luke 13, verse 16, and you read about it in the Old Testament here in the Book of Job. And the Book of Job does go into a lot of detail about his suffering.
It does tell us what the symptoms were, what the details of that physical [00:17:00] suffering that job endured at the hands of the devil actually were. And when we read this, this will help us to understand and appreciate a whole lot more what job was going through. And the kind of faith that he had to have. Now, the first thing that the Bible says is that the devil struck him with sore and painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.
Now, one boil would've been enough to cause pain, but this man has them from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. He has them all over his body. The sore boils come from a word in the Hebrew, which means a boil or an eruption. This is an inflammation. It is a burning in the skin. In two Kings, chapter 20 verse seven, the Bible talks about a boil that has a kayah had that's a boil.
And then the Bible talks about different plagues in the Old Testament that used this word. So what happens here then is that he is in such pain and misery that he takes for himself a [00:18:00] pot shirt. Now that is a broken piece of pottery. It's not glass. This is clay. And Job used that broken piece of pottery to scrape himself, to scrape the sores because they itched so badly.
And the Bible says that he was in the ashes. Now that refers to an ancient custom of mourning. In Isaiah 55, verse five, the Bible talks about how the Jews use these ashes in times of mourning and grief. So here's job away from the comforts of his home, away from almost everyone else, and does he have any sympathy?
Does he have any doctor who comes to him? There's nothing said about that, but the Bible in this book does talk about what he suffered and how he suffered in Job. Chapter seven verses three and four. Job talked about the fact that he couldn't sleep, he was hurting so bad. Here's what he said. Job seven verse three.
He said, so I have been allotted months of futility and weary. [00:19:00] Some nights have been appointed to me. Many of his nights were wearisome. He couldn't sleep, he couldn't rest because of all the pain that he was suffering. Notice verse five of job chapter seven. He said, my flesh is caked with worms and dust.
My skin is cracked and it breaks out afresh. In Job, chapter nine verse 18. Job said this about his sufferings. He said He that is, God will not allow me to catch my breath, but he fills me with bitterness. In other words, his suffering was constant. He couldn't get a break, he couldn't get any kind of rest or any kind of pause in his suffering.
And again, you see there in Job chapter nine, verse 18, that he is saying that God was doing this to him. That's what Job believed. In chapter 16, verse 16, the Bible says that job said these words, my face is flushed from weeping, and on my eyelids is [00:20:00] the shadow of death. Job looked really bad. And not only that, the Bible shows that he had lost weight.
I. In Job chapter 19, verse 20, he said, my bone clings to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. I'm just barely alive. And he's basically saying he's like skin and bones. So you also notice in this chapter, in Job chapter 19 that nobody wanted anything to do with him because they were just ashamed to be around him because he looked so bad and he was suffering so much.
He says in verse 13, he, that is, God has removed my brothers far from me, and my acquaintances are completely estranged from me. My relatives have failed and my close friends have forgotten me. Those who dwell in my house and my maid servants count me as a stranger. I am an alien in their sight. I call my servant, but he gives no answer.
I beg him with my mouth. My breath is [00:21:00] offensive to my wife. I am repulsive to the children of my own body. Even young children despise me. I arise and they speak against me. And all my close friends, ab whore me and those whom I love, have turned against me. And that's when he follows that up by saying in verse 20, my bone clings to my skin and to my flesh.
So I point this out to say. That job was not only suffering physically, he was suffering terribly, emotionally in many different ways, and one of those ways. And we're gonna talk about this much more as we go through the Book of Job, but one of those ways that he was suffering was that people had shunned him.
So he had that kind of discouragement and disappointment and that kind of lack of support as far as the system is concerned among his friends and the people that knew him. Now, he will say much more about that in this book. But I do want to turn to Job chapter 30, because he describes his suffering even more here in this chapter.
Now, this is later on [00:22:00] in Job's defense of himself, and the first thing he does in Job chapter 30 is to talk about how people were treating him. They were disrespecting him. They were shunning him. They were making fun of him and taunting him. But I want to go to his physical sufferings here because that's what we're really looking at.
In Job chapter 30, verse 16, he says, and now my soul is poured out because of my plight. The days of affliction take hold of me. My bones are pierced in me at night and my gnawing pains take no rest by great force. My garment is disfigured. It binds me about as the collar of my coat. He has cast me into the mire.
I have become like dust and ashes. Then beginning in verse 27, he talks about the pain and the fever and the aching. He says in verse 27, my heart is in turmoil and cannot rest days of affliction confront [00:23:00] me. I go about mourning. Not in the sun. I stand up in the assembly and cry out for help. I am a brother of jackals and a companion of ostriches.
My skin grows black and falls from me. My bones burn with fever. I. I wonder how many Bible readers know about this. I wonder how many people remember the details of his suffering and how great it was. Oftentimes, you'll find that Bible readers know that job was struck with these sore boils. These painful itching boils all over his body.
They know about that. But how many people realize the extent of his suffering that we just read? In all this terrible suffering. Was there anybody to help him? What kind of support group did Job have? Well, most people have others in their life to help them when they're sick. They have family, they have friends, they have nurses, they have a doctor, and the Bible does talk [00:24:00] about a few people who were there, especially at the beginning.
The Bible says that the first one who gave him some advice was his wife. That's in verse nine and 10. Her advice in verse nine was, do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die? Do you still hold onto your integrity? Are you still holding onto your faith, your fear of God, your uprightness?
Why would you do that? What good is that doing you now? You're suffering, you're going to die. You might as well end it. So just go ahead and curse God and die because God will strike you dead. Some say that she just felt sorry for him and she thought this was a way out, but regardless of what her motive may have been, job said that was foolish advice.
Notice what he says in verse 10. He said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from [00:25:00] God and shall we not accept adversity in all? This job did not sin with his lips, so Job said her advice was foolish. It's foolish to ever turn against God no matter what the situation is.
That was not an option for Job. It's not because he is stubborn. It's not because he is prideful. It's because he is determined. The Bible says in Job chapter 13, verse 15, that job said though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. In Job chapter 27, verse five, he said to his friends, far be it from me that I should say, you are right till I die.
I will not put away my integrity from me. Now again, that is not a prideful response. He knew they were wrong in what they were saying about him. He knew that they were falsely accusing him. He knew he didn't deserve this. He just didn't know that the devil was doing it. He thought that God was causing all this.
That was causing him perhaps the worst pain of all. Now, his wife was [00:26:00] not much help at all in all this. As a matter of fact, she made it worse. No wonder Satan didn't take her life. You know, the devil did take the life of his 10 children, but he didn't take her life. She said the same thing that the devil was saying.
The devil said that job would curse God to his face, and she's saying, here, just go ahead and do it. Go ahead and curse God and die. So the very person who was closest to him that you would expect to be there for him and encourage him and give him good sound advice, didn't do that. As a matter of fact, you really don't find anything positive said in this book about his wife.
Unless I'm missing something and you can read it for yourself, but you just don't find the Bible complimenting her. And we've already looked at Job chapter 19 verse 17, where Job said, my breath is offensive to my wife, and I am repulsive to the children of my own body. Now let's go to his three friends, because this is where it really gets interesting.
And this is [00:27:00] where we find ourselves introduced to three characters who are going to be major players in this book. In Job chapter two, beginning in verse 11, the Bible says, now, when Job's three friends heard of all this adversity that had come upon him. Each one came from his own place. Pha the team Aite Bill, add the shoe height and sofar the neite 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 and did not recognize him.
They lifted up their voices and wept and each one tore his robe and sprinkled dust on his head toward heaven. So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him for they saw that his grief. Was very great. So Job has already been suffering with this terrible illness.
How long? We don't know, but we do know that by the time that his three friends [00:28:00] heard about this, that they had to travel to get where Job was. Now, back in those days, travel was not as fast as it is today. So we can just imagine how Job is suffering during all this time. And we do know that it has had an effect on him because the Bible says when his three friends got there, they didn't recognize him.
His face had changed. He was so disfigured, they did not recognize their friend. And notice that the Bible says this, that the reason that they came obviously was to comfort him, to help him, to mourn with him. That was their intention. They wanted to come to be his support. So you have to compliment them.
And respect them for the fact that they took off of work or they set aside other duties and responsibilities and they traveled all that way just to come and to be with their friend and to be there for him and with him. But of course, if you've read this book, you know that all of that is about to change.
Sometimes people start out with the [00:29:00] right motive, and then when things are said that they don't agree with. Then it gets a little bit ugly, and that's what happened in this book. I want you to notice in verse 17 that they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and nobody said anything.
Here we find that the best and most effective thing they did for job in this book was to keep silent, was to keep their mouth shut. I'm not saying that it's wrong In situations like that, to speak a good word, obviously you want to tell people that you love them, but I'm talking about what we can learn from that, and that is sometimes the most effective thing you can do when you're visiting with a family, going through a crisis.
A death or sickness is what one minister and a counselor told me. He called it the ministry of silence. Sometimes that is very, very effective. If these three men had done more of that instead of arguing with Job, this whole story would've turned out a lot different. Thank you for listening [00:30:00] to my God and my neighbor.
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