How bad can your life get before you would challenge God and give up on him? How bad does the trial have to be before it would cause you to break? Satan is attempting to find out what it takes to break Job and his faith. We could read the first chapter of the book of Job and hope that this was the end of the account. Job suffered greatly but did not curse God. Job lost everything but he did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing. Now go and be like Job. But as you look at your copies of God’s word, you can thumb through the book of Job and see that there is so much more to say and so much more teach about suffering and the way God runs the world.
The Vindication of Job (Job 2:1-3)
Open your copies of God’s word to Job 2. Job 2 opens that it is another day. Nothing has changed. Time has marched forward. It is another day in the future. Job has lost everything but there is another presentation of the spiritual beings before the Lord (Job 2:1). Satan also presents himself before the Lord. Yet again we are seeing that Satan is not doing things in the world outside of the knowledge of God.
You will notice in verse 2 that the Lord addresses Satan in the same way that he did in Job 1:7. The Lord asks where Satan has come from and Satan answers the same. Satan is roaming the earth. Satan has not given up. Satan did not quit. Even though Job has passed the test and God has been vindicated that people can serve God for who he is and merely for his blessings, Satan does not yield. Satan is still going to be the roaming lion, going over the earth seeking who he can devour (cf. 1 Peter 5:8). Satan is not done. But God is glorified through Job’s response. Look at what the Lord tells Satan in verse 3. There is no one like Job on the earth. He is blameless and upright. He fears God and turns from evil. Now listen to this additional statement that the Lord makes to Satan about Job. “He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason.”
There are three important points to observe in what the Lord says about what has happened to Job. First, Job is still blameless. Even though Job has lost everything, Job has shown his integrity. Job serves God for God, not for the blessings. Second, Satan is the reason this happened. God did not wake up one day and want to destroy Job. Satan wanted to destroy Job. Satan is the adversary and he came in accusing Job and accusing God. Third, Job’s suffering is not because Job did something wrong. Job was destroyed for no reason. There was no cause for Job’s loss.
The Continued Trial of Job (Job 2:4-8)
Satan is not impressed. Satan does not care. Satan is not won over by the Lord or by the Lord’s point. Satan completely shrugs off what the Lord says. Satan says something that we need to think about in verse 4. Satan says in verse 4 that a person will do anything to preserve his life. He will give up his possessions and blessings if it means that he can keep his health. So Satan offers a new accusation. Stretch out your hand and strike his whole being, then he will curse you to your face. Take away his health and Job will be done. Harm him and he will quit. Do you see the point that Satan makes? The point Satan makes is that the person of Job was not affected. His possessions, his wealth, his livelihood, and his children were taken from him. But the body of Job was preserved. But if you strike his body, if you harm his person, and if you will remove his health, he will curse you to your face. Then he will quit. Satan says a person will give up anything to keep his life.
The Lord allows Job to be placed in Satan’s hand. He is in your power. But you must spare his life. The door is swung wide open. Job is allowed to be placed in Satan’s hand. The restriction is simply this: you cannot kill him. Can I please remind us to that we are up against a terrible adversary? Satan is bent on our destruction. So Satan goes out and strikes Job with painful sores from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. Job is thrown into extreme physical agony. Job now sits in the ashes and scrapes himself with broken pottery.
It is hard for us to imagine the severity of Job’s suffering. But I want you to listen to what the scriptures tell us that Job’s physical condition. In Job 2:12 we are told that Job’s three friends did not recognize him. His sores have so disfigured Job that he has become unrecognizable. In Job 2:13 we read that the friends do not say a word to Job because they saw that his suffering was very intense. In Job 7:5 Job says, “My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens and then breaks out afresh.” In Job 7:4 Job says that his pain is so great that he cannot sleep. In Job 19:20 Job declares that his bones stick to his skin. In Job 30:17 Job says that the night brings severe pain to his bones so that there is no rest. In Job 30:30 we read that his skin is turning black and falling off of him. Further, his bones are burning with heat. His suffering is truly intense and extreme. Please think about these descriptions when you read that Job has loathsome, terrible sores from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet.
But leads us to another important truth about suffering. Our trials can get worse. Suffering can intensify. Satan may come back to the Lord and desire to plunge your suffering further to try to break your faith. We see God giving this message to Jeremiah in Jeremiah 12. God tells Jeremiah essentially that if you are going to give up when you are running with people, what are you going to do when you are running with horses? Satan does not and will not quit in trying to destroy our faith. Satan can use physical pain and suffering in our bodies to accomplish his goal.
The Rejection of Suffering (Job 2:9)
But in verse 9 we see that Job’s wife has something to say to her husband. “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.” Please think about what she is saying. She is essentially asking Job why he is staying faithful to the Lord. Why be blameless? Why hold on to God? If you are going to lose everything and now you are going to suffer with extreme pain in your body, then what is the point of serving God? You see that she falls into the way of thinking that many think about when it comes to serving God. We serve God when we are getting what we want. We serve God when life is good. We serve God when God is blessing our lives. We serve God when things are going our way. But when life is not good and life is not going the way we want it to go, then why serve God? Job’s wife is proclaiming that God is not worth serving. If God does not do what we want, then why serve him? Why be faithful? Why hold on to your integrity? I do not think these words from Job’s wife are a hatred of her husband. She is just telling him, “What is the point of this God thing if God is going to crush you and not protect you from this kind of extreme suffering?”
But we need to consider the other angle of suffering. Job’s own wife is tempting Job to sin. Job’s wife, because of her perspective about suffering and God, is encouraging Job to quit. We need to be very aware that our own family can encourage us to say and do the wrong things while we are in trials. Your family, which you would be assume would be your support, may actually be another tool used by Satan to encourage you to give up on God. So how will Job respond to his wife?
Foolish Talk (Job 2:10)
Notice that Job says in verse 10 that this is foolish talk. This is not the way we talk about God. This is not the way we look at our suffering. This is not the way we talk about what it means to serve God. Now why is this foolish talk? Job asks an important question. “Shall we accept only good from God and not adversity?” (Job 2:10 CSB). What Job asks is the essence of what this trial is all about. I want us to think about what it means to accept or receive good things from God. What we are doing is we are serving God and blessing God when we receive good things from him. But do we do the same thing when we receive trouble? Are we serving God and blessing God when adversity strikes us? Does anything change in our faithfulness to God? You see that Job’s wife is saying that Job should change. Job should change what he is doing in his life.
The problem is all about how we look at our relationship with God. Do we look at our relationship with God as a covenant or a contract? Notice that Job’s wife consider our relationship with God as a contract and God is not holding up his end of the contract. God should bless us. God should give us good things because we serve him. This is simply a transaction. We serve God and God does us good. But if God does not do good for us, then we will terminate the contract. This is the same mentality that causes marriages and friendship to fail. We are only in the relationship for what we get out of it. If we are not getting what we want, then we terminate the relationship. The contract mentality says that we are here only for us. We are here for what we receive and do not have a regard for the other. But this is not the way Job looks at his relationship with God. His relationship with God is not a contract. In fact, he says that it is foolish talk to think of this as merely a contract with God. Job’s relationship with God is a covenant. He will receive the good and the trouble. He is not going to curse God simply because life has taken a horrible downturn. He is not going to quit on his God because life has become a disaster. He serves God for God.
Health and Hope
So the message I want us to consider is the challenge Satan tells God. Are life and health the dealbreakers when it comes to loving and serving God? Satan says the real way to break a person is to take away their health. Satan says that if you put people’s lives in danger then they will certainly give up. Would we still serve God even if we were put the most extraordinary of physical pain? Would we still serve God when life gets really hard? What suffering does is asks us, “Where is the line?” Where is the line at which we will no longer serve him like we are now? How inconvenient does our situation have to be in which we will maintain our faithful service and worship of the Lord? What if God says to Satan about you that you are in Satan’s hand but do not take your life?
But what can we focus on to give us hope in our trials? I would like you to notice that this is the second time that Satan tells God to do the work of suffering on Job. Look at Job 1:11. Satan tells God to stretch out his hand and strike Job. Satan wants God to do it. Look at Job 2:5. Satan again tells God to stretch out his hand to strike Job. But God does not do this on either occasion. God is not tempted to do evil (cf. James 1:13). It is important that we clearly identify who is against us. God is not against you. God was not against Job. God was clearly for Job. The person that stands against you is Satan. The one that wants to see your faith destroyed is Satan. The one who wants to destroy your life is Satan. We must see who we are up against and what is happening in the spiritual realm. As I mentioned in the last lesson, we are not told yet why God said yes to Satan these two times. It is not the point of the book yet. We have to keep reading if we are going to grasp these questions. But we are learning that in these first two chapters that we are engaged in a spiritual battle while we live in the flesh. Listen to what the apostle Peter teaches:
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. (1 Peter 4:12 ESV)
Nothing has gone wrong when you experience trials. God has not left you. God has not retracted his care. Do not be stunned when you are blindsided by life. Expect trials. Prepare yourself for trials. Ask yourself how hard Satan can tear you up before you would give up. Do not lower your view of God. Elevate your faith in God. God loves Job. God loves you. Should we accept only good from God and not also accept adversity? What will your answer be?