10/4/20 Job 1:1, 2:1-10 “Hard Times”

02 Oct 10/4/20 Job 1:1, 2:1-10 “Hard Times”

10/4/20     Job 1:1, 2:1-10   “Hard Times”

This is approximately the week that we used to go out with the youth group and be homeless and hungry.  I thought that when I started this week, I would have look pretty hard to find a Scripture to fit this theme.  We used to fast for 30 hours which was no small feat for a group of teenagers.  We also did a variety of projects to help the homeless in Fargo.  I am very proud of all the young people who took part in this.  One of the tough things about this is that we didn’t have a home that we can go to if it got cold or rained or anything and it did all of these things and more.  We were living homeless and hungry.  But anyway, back to finding a passage, you should never doubt God.  I went to my sources to see what was up for this week.  I found this wonderful passage in Job.  Today we are going to discuss some of the calamities that befell Job.  I would like to try to parallel these with what our homeless people go through every day and I would also like to take a look at our own lives to see if we can find any resemblances to Job.

Several years ago, I was trying to save the church a little money by trying out a new phone plan.  I talked with the sales rep and he assured me that we would save money on our monthly bills.  So, I ordered the new system and it worked fine.  I got the first bill and it was quite a bit higher than our old one but I knew that there were some charges that were one-time charges and the bill would go down.  Well the next month’s bill came and it was a little less but it was still quite a bit more than what we were paying.  I called the company and they told me to wait another month and it should clear up.

A month later came and the bill was still higher than the month before and what we had been paying.  I called again.  I was told that this was the price of the plan and there was nothing anyone could do about it.  I finally talked with someone in charge and they stuck with their story.  I told him what the salesperson had promised us but he told me that was too bad.  So, I finally asked him if he or his company or anyone who worked for this company had any integrity at all or if they just lived in a world of lies.  He took offense to that.  However, they called back a day later and said that the old plan would be put back in place and the bill would be back to where it was before.

As we look at the first verse today, we see that Job was blameless, upright, he feared God and shunned evil.  In other words, he was practically a perfect man, a man of integrity not like the world we live in today.  He was probably as perfect as a man can be in our broken world.  And he was a man who had it all.  He had wealth, he had family, he had herds, and he had happiness in the knowledge that he knew God.

There has been quite a bit said in the last few years about the book of Job.  There are those that feel that this is not a true story and that this is some sort of made up tale to help us understand the nature of God.  There are others, and I would tend to agree more with these people, who say that this story happened and it happened about the same time as Abraham was around.  Many scholars agree that this was probably the first book written, although this is also in dispute.  Experts really can’t agree on much of anything!  It is really hard to say just when things happened or when things were written when we are talking about thousands of years ago.  Anyway, there is a lot of controversy in these areas but that is not really important.

The important part of this is that we have a good man who loved God.  In the first chapter that we didn’t read, we find that Job lost all of his wealth.  All of his family is killed along with all of his livestock and servants.  Everything is gone.  In today’s reading we find that about the only thing he has left is taken away.  His health is now gone.

Now the question that many people ask about this is “Why did God allow Satan to do this?”  I think that the answer is very complex and I doubt if I can completely answer it in the short time we have today and maybe I will never know the answer until I get to finally go home.  However, I am going to mention two things that I think are happening here.

The first thing is that God had put a hedge of protection around Job.  Job was a good man and God was protecting him.  This is in the first chapter and we also find that Satan is roaming the world looking for trouble.  I’m sure that he was busy ruining lives just like he does today.  But he couldn’t get at Job.  This is very similar to Adam and Eve being protected by God in the Garden of Eden.

I think that there is a certain amount of protection that God gives to us even today.  I think that if you are faithful, prayerful and are always trying to obey God, then He will give you a certain amount of protection.  However, we live in a world dominated by Satan.  He is the king of this world and his badness will spill into the lives of the righteous.  I think that Billy Graham might have been somewhat protected.  Mother Teresa was probably somewhat protected.  But they were not completely protected.

We go back and read in Chapter 1 where Satan came back and begged God to remove this hedge so that he could have a chance at Job.  So, God agreed to do this as long as he didn’t harm Job.  In the second chapter we find that they furthered the agreement as long as Satan didn’t kill Job.

Now I will try to answer a little as to why God did this.  One of the reasons that God did this is that He knew Job could handle it.  God knew the faith of Job.  He knew that when he survived this attack from Satan, he would be far stronger than he was before.  God also knew how hard this was going to be for Job.  My gosh!  This man had lost everything except his wife and a few friends.  He still would not give up his faith.  Many people today just throw up their hands and say this isn’t fair when things like this happen.  They might even start a riot!

And these people, not the rioters, are right.  This isn’t fair.  But then if you think about it, is Satan ever fair?  Nothing about Satan is ever fair.  He is a liar.  Everything that comes from his mouth is a lie.  He is a cheat.  He has every bad attribute that we can think of.  We need only to look at our own lives.  Is it fair that someone has died before their time?  Is it fair that I have so much trouble making enough money to feed my family?  Many aspects of our lives are not fair.  God has never promised us a life time of leisure.  He has promised, however, to be there in times of trouble.  He has promised to comfort us at any time we ask.

In this area we are always collecting food for our food pantry.  There are still on average of 750 people a day in Fargo who are homeless and hungry.  Out of all of these homeless people there are many who would tell you that it is not fair the way life has been for them.  Some of them may have made a mistake and they are hooked on drugs.  Now they cannot get off of them.  Some of them have lost their jobs and can no longer make house payments and have lost their house and all of their possessions.  Some of the poor women at the YWCA have married men who feel that it is their duty and right to be able to beat up their wives.  There are many other reasons to be homeless.  Do you think that any of these people think that life has been fair to them?

Of course, they don’t.  Life hasn’t been fair and they have been beaten pretty badly by life as a result.  In many ways, our lives aren’t fair either.  This is all a result of that dirty, lying scumbag of a Satan.  He got our hedge of protection taken down and we have been suffering ever since.  Job was a good man and look at all that happened to him.

This is interesting to note.  You should know that as long as you are leading a life where you are in the bar every day, then Satan will leave you alone.  As long as you are leading a life where you are cheating people in any and every way, then Satan will leave you alone.  As long as you are indiscriminately chasing people of the opposite sex, Satan will leave you alone.  He will leave you alone because he has already got you.  You are living Satan’s dream life so he doesn’t have to do bad things to you.  You are doing them to yourself.

However, if you are preaching the Gospel to people every Sunday, then you will be attacked.  If you are a Sunday school teacher or Bible study leader, then Satan will attack.  If you have a daily prayer life and read the Bible regularly, he will attack.  He attacks because he wants you and he hates it when you are loyal to God.  He hates us as he hated Job.  But there is some great news coming here in a minute.

But before we get there, I wanted you to notice what Satan had done.  He had covered Job from head to foot with terrible sores.  This is a terrible thing to have happen.  Then Job had to go and sit in the ashes and scrape himself with broken pottery.  Ashes were thought to have some sort of healing element.  In those days the ashes were usually thrown out in a pile with the garbage just outside the city gates.  So, Job, who used to sit as a judge and a leader of the community, is now reduced to sitting in the garbage covered with sores.  But Satan wasn’t done yet.

So far Job has lost everything.  He has lost his health, his wealth and now he is humiliated in front of all his friends.  Then Mrs. Job comes along and asks, “Are you still holding on to your integrity?  Curse God and die!”  His wife even turns on him.  She wants him to be like many people in the corporate world today, like the phone company we talked of earlier.  She wants him to lose his integrity.  He is now all alone in this world.

Now I am sure that all you people who are married always treat your spouse in an honorable way.  I’m sure that the rest of you always treat others nicely.  Some of us just slip once in a while and others are just plain mean.  Look at all the people who have suddenly gotten totally rotten during this election.  Anyway, I would guess that Mrs. Job was probably a pretty nice person.  But this entire calamity had just gotten the best of her and she finally gave up.

This is where we find ourselves at times.  When God seems distant, we have a tendency to give up on Him.  When He doesn’t answer your prayers just like you want, you might give up.  I think that at times we give up on God for no reason at all.  There are times when we are all like Mrs. Job.

But you don’t always have to be like Mrs. Job.  The good news of this passage is that Job does not give up on God.  In the last verse of the 1^st chapter it says that Job did not sin by charging God with wrong doing.  At the end of the 2^nd chapter he replies to his wife, “You are talking like a foolish woman.  Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”  ‘In all of this, Job did not sin in what he said’.
I don’t know if any of you have noticed but being a Christian is hard work.  The kind of opposition that Job ran into is everywhere we look today.  Liberals think that we are the enemy.  Atheists think we are the enemy. We could dwell on this and be like the rest of the world.  We could say, “Oh, it’s too hard to do this and it is too hard to do that.”  Or we could turn to God and ask, “Dear Lord, would you help me to do this or help me to do that.”   We can command Satan right out of our lives in the name of Jesus.  That hedge of protection is still there if you would only call on Jesus. When you start to turn to the Lord and stay there, the way the Job shows us, then great things will happen.  We will see later what happens to Job.

For several years we joined the youth and went homeless and hungry for 30 hours and that was hard to do.  I knew they could do it just like I know you can do the things I sometimes ask at the end of my sermon.  I ask these things to try to help you have a better life.  I ask that you do these things so that you can follow in the steps of Jesus.

The huge lesson to be learned here is that we can all do hard things.  If you ask for help from Jesus, then you too can do what you thought was impossible.  If you need more proof than Job’s life or the youth of the area, then look where I am standing today.  God helped me out of a bad life and put me here.  We can all do hard things.  You can grow churches out here in areas where the so-called experts tell us that we should be dwindling.  You can tithe your income, give 10% of your income, and help your church meet its obligations without any trouble.  If everyone tithed their income, we would always have a surplus of money.  And you can do it if you ask Jesus for help.  As we go to communion, ask God to help you to do something hard. (As you go to your prayer time, ask God to help you do something hard.

Job had his life turn to about as hard a life as it gets.  He had lost everything.  Many of us have been in situations where we have lost a lot.  When the going gets tough is not the time to give up on Jesus.  It is the time to come closer to Him.  He calls you by name.  He knows the number of hairs on your head.  Come to Jesus who loves you beyond all your logic and understanding.  And thank you Jesus for first loving us.  Let’s pray.