Thirty years ago there was a building boom in Calgary, and houses were going up everywhere. One construction company built an especially nice house and put it on the market. One day when a real estate agent brought some potential customers by, they made horrible discovery. Vandals had broken in and destroyed the interior of that beautiful home. The outside looked fine, but inside there was red paint spattered on the walls. There was black paint on the new carpet, doors were kicked in. Banisters had been torn from stairways, and railings were used to poke holes in the ceilings. That brand new home had to be completely renovated before it could be shown or sold.
This true story illustrates the fall of man, with the work of Satan and the effect of sin. Before we can be serviceable to our Creator, we must be recreated by God’s grace. All it takes is a quick look around us to see the hollow, rotten souls of our sinful race. There should be no question about the lies of evolution – Mankind is not improving but rather decaying. There is no other explanation for the headlines in the news-feeds. There is no other explanation for another murder this week in Spokane. There is no other explanation for a man who slams the head an innocent baby against the furniture.
How refreshing it is to find someone radically different – like the man called “Job.” Few men have had more opportunity to curse God and die than Job. Few men have had more reason to thumb their noses at society than Job. But he stands on the rocky shoreline of humanity like a lighthouse in the fog. I’d like to consider briefly three things about this man and his circumstances, hoping that they will be a blessing to us all.
Around the Patriarch Job raged a great CONTENTION.
It was a spiritual contention, far more than human slime with shotguns or Sabeans with swords. And the Lord provoked the battle by challenging His nemesis, his archenemy, to “consider Job.” “There is none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man, one that feared God and eschewed evil.” What has gotten into the Lord to act so irrationally – irresponsibly? It is not wise to taunt the doberman or to tease the tiger. The Lord hung out some raw meat before the Devil and invited his attack. Why? Because in an inexplicable, holy and divine fashion, the Lord was proud of His creation in Job. This does not teach us to be proud in ourselves, because our pride is always poisoned by our sin. But the Lord was delighted with Job – we might even say that he was proud of Job, in a holy sort of way. We’ll get to the reasons for that pride in just a moment.
People sometimes ask why God permitted sin and Satan to corrupt his creation. In Job we can see one answer to that question. There is a thousand times more glory to God in redeeming, renewing and renovating a sinner than to simply shelter an untested, unfallen, mindless puppet on a string. And in not destroying Satan, Jehovah has a medium to magnify His divine majesty.
When the Lord said “consider” – Satan entered the arena, willing to spar with the Champion. Satan is a pugalist at heart, willing at the drop of a hat to fight even against God. But it is wise to know your opponent, and Satan didn’t know even Job – let alone Jehovah. “Doth not Job fear God for naught?” “Elohim, you’ve made him rich; you’ve blessed him beyond measure. You’ve protected Him, and you’ve bought his loyalty. Take these things away and even Job will curse you to your face.” Some time ago, a friend was talking to me about a man who might be in trouble with the law. This lady was saying that for the first time in his life the man was praying for God’s help. As I listened I was thinking, “And what if God throws the book at him, and doesn’t deliver him from law? Will this young man serve God only if the Lord builds a hedge about him and protects him while in prison?” It certainly isn’t wrong for us to pray that the Lord will bless the man’s situation. But God deserves to be served and feared even when terrible things happen to us.
How often do the battles we see in Job rage around us as well? Perhaps the degree might be slightly less, but the test is the same. There is a great contention, not for our souls so much as for our allegiance and thus for the Lord’s glory. Whether or not you will be a victim or a victor depends – with God’s blessing – on your character.
Job was a man of great CHARACTER and great CONSTITUTION.
First, in the Lord’s opinion Job was a good and faithful servant. What constitutes a servant? I suppose that we might come up with a couple of definitions. Most of them would contain statements about labor, about energy, and about faithfulness. And certainly these definitions would be somewhat appropriate. But if Job was the source of our definition, what would constitute a servant? We know Job was quick to offer sacrifices to the Lord, making service and worship almost synonymous. And obedience was undoubtedly a part of Job’s life. But the most obvious thing about him could be illustrated in a piece of artist’s canvas. Job was a stretched piece of canvas, willingly submitted to Lord to receive any paint that He chose apply. “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job was a servant by being a willing tool in the master’s hand; a Stradivarius violin to Itzak Perlman.
Along with being a good servant, Job was declared to be “perfect.” This is a very interesting word especially in the context of divine holiness and human depravity. In what way could Job or anyone else for that matter, ever be called “perfect?” “There is not a just man upon this earth that doeth good and sinneth not.” The Hebrew root behind “perfect” is “complete.” The word summarizes all the other good things that the Lord says about the man. His life, in one sense before the eyes of man, and in another sense before the Lord, was well balanced.
For example, Job was “upright” – conformed to rightness, not wrongness. It was against his conscience – against his nature – to sin against his Saviour. When there came the opportunity to slip a $20 bill out of the cash drawer, the temptation couldn’t find anything to stick to, because Job was upright in all his ways. When it came to reporting his taxes, he was totally honest. Both men and God saw that he was upright.
Furthermore, he had true reverence for God, he “feared” the Lord. It wasn’t that Job couldn’t sleep at night out of anxiety that the Almighty Judge might be coming. But rather, the man believed the Lord to be holy, and he had absolute respect towards his God. The Word of God was precious to him; the sacrifice was more important than the birthday present. The Name of the Lord was never to be uttered profanely and, jokes about Jehovah were unthinkable. When the House of God was open for worship, Job was there with his family.
And because of Job’s reverence for the Lord he abhorred sin – eschewing evil. One of the great themes of this Book of Job was the character of the man’s day-to-day life. His wife urged him to curse God and end his sufferings. His so-called friends kept insisting that he must have committed evil to deserve such calamities. But Job stubbornly refused to embrace or admit to any form of sin and evil. This means that he knew what evil was. He recognized its ugly face and was aware of its terrible power. He not only eschewed evil, but ran from it whenever it approached.
It was this perfection in Job in which the Lord delighted. It was this perfection which permitted the Lord’s question: “Hast thou considered my servant Job?” Do you suppose that the Lord would ever ask that same sort of thing about you?
The contention around Job was not to be won by Satan, because it was built on a great FOUNDATION.
Job was perfect before the Lord, not because of anything native to Job or discovered in nature. Satan implied what silly sociologists have been pronouncing for a over a century. “The only reason why Job is such a good man is because his environment is guaranteed by God.” Do you remember “Habitat for Humanity” made famous by President Carter, going about building houses for needy folk. I will grant that there is nothing wrong with donating time, sweat and 2x4s to build houses for people who might otherwise never have one. But I think that deep down the idea was that by giving a house to a poor man, we are going to rid the world of the potential of evil. Give that man a nice house, and he won’t ever steal, attack or murder someone. Unfortunately, Habitat for Humanity has been around a while, and the world is not a better place. Surroundings don’t make the man. And Job wasn’t a good man because God built a hedge about him.
What made Job great was the grace of God upon him in another way. That man was a sinner just like everyone else, once hating the true God and everything about the Lord. How then did Job ever come to fear and love Jehovah? It was only by the grace of God. Look at Job’s faith, dependence and submission to God at the end of the chapter. Look at the same again at the end of chapter 2. There can be only one source of that – the Lord Himself.
Job had, in some Old Testament sense of the word, been born again by the grace of God. His was not a natural human heart, with its natural inclinations. He said later that he had a Redeemer. “I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the later day upon the earth.” Like all other humans, Job was a sinner. But in his case he had been redeemed out from under the judgment for his sin. Through his perfectness and uprightness? No, no. These were only evidences of the Lord’s grace.
Job was one of the great men of the Old Testament, because the Lord had showed him mercy. God was, in a sense, proud of Job, but His pride was based on His own creation. Job, merely responded to God’s grace, as we all should, putting the Lord first in his life.