To the Bitter End

Job 2:1-8 ESV

1 Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. 2 And the Lord said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” 3 And the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason.” 4 Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. 5 But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.” 6 And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life.”

7 So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. 8 And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes.

There are moments in life when words fail us. When the phone call comes. When the diagnosis is spoken. When the grave is still fresh. When the house feels too quiet.

In those moments, we do not ask for explanations — we ask, “Where is God?”

Last week, we watched Job enter one of those moments. In a single day, he lost his wealth, his servants, and his children. And instead of cursing God, Job fell to the ground and worshiped.

But the story was not finished. Heaven had more to say. Satan had more to attempt. And Job had more to suffer.

Job chapter two brings us deeper into that suffering — not to satisfy our curiosity, but to test our worship. For the question before us is not simply whether Job will endure — but whether God is still worthy of worship when everything else has been taken away.

As we go to this second chapter of the book of Job, we see that it begins with words that are nearly identical to what was written in chapter one and verse six. Here in chapter two and verse one, we read, “Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord.”

Now, like we had said before in our first sermon in this series, these who are identified as “the sons of God” are indicative of various angels, both godly angels and fallen angels. They are like a “celestial council” who are summoned by God to God so that they may receive orders from God and also so that they may account to God for those things which they had performed. And among those angels summoned to God was the chief fallen angel, Satan himself.

Then as we look at verse two of our reading, we see the same dialogue that had taken place between the Lord and Satan as that which is recorded in chapter one and verse seven. God commands a report from Satan as He says, “From where have you come?”, and Satan responds by essentially saying, “nowhere in particular and everywhere in general”.

Then, as we move on to the beginning of verse three, we see that the words that God speaks mirror those of chapter one and verse eight. But here, at the end of verse three, new content is added.

After God once again tells Satan that Job is blameless and upright, that he fears God and turns away from evil, He also tells Satan that Job “still holds fast his integrity”. In other words, God says that nothing has changed about Job’s commitment to the Lord since the last time that He summoned Satan to appear before Him. He is still blameless and upright, he still fears God and turns away from evil.

And God says that these characteristics of Job remain intact even though “you incited Me against him to destroy him without reason.”

Let’s take a closer look at this. God says that the devil “incited” Him. What does that mean? Well, what it does not mean is that the devil persuaded God to ordain something that was against His will. Not at all! But what it does mean is that something had been suggested and God, in His most holy wisdom, determined to act in accordance with this suggestion.

God’s back is never against the wall, He is always free to do whatever He wants to do, and He does in fact always do whatever He wants to do, without being influenced in any way whatsoever.

And what God says He was “incited” to do, what God says He determined to act in accordance with was “to destroy” Job.

Now, as we have said before, particularly in our second sermon in this series, this does not mean that God was the One Who was actively destroying Job, the active destruction of Job was the work of the devil. God did not perform the evil itself, but He sovereignly ordained that it would occur. It could not have happened unless He permitted it. Satan acted freely and wickedly, yet only within God’s ordained boundaries, and only to accomplish God’s righteous and holy purposes.

And lastly, we see in this verse that God says that He was “incited to destroy Job without cause”.

Now, again, we need to point out what this does not mean. When God says that this was done without cause, He isn’t saying that there was no purpose to it as if it accomplished nothing and that it would lead to nothing. But what it does mean is that the devil’s best efforts were in vain. The devil said that if God let him do this, Job would curse God to His face, and so God says that though the devil was so confident in this regard, it was in vain, it did not cause what he hoped it would cause.

So, God told the devil that he gave it a good try, but it wasn’t enough. And how did Satan respond? Verse four tells us as it says that Satan told the Lord, “Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life”.

In this saying, the devil says that though he has been permitted to remove and permanently destroy all of Job’s possessions, still, what a man values more than anything else is his own life and that that is why Job remains faithful to the Lord, because his own life has not been threatened.

And so, in verse five, Satan says that if God stretched out His hand, that is, if God allows Satan to “touch (Job’s) bone and his flesh”, that is, if Satan is allowed to hurt and cause pain to Job in every physical dimension, that then Job would publicly curse and disown God.

So, again, the challenge has been set to the Lord, the devil says that Job didn’t curse the Lord when all of his possessions were destroyed and his children were taken from him, but he says that he will surely curse Him if he thinks that he is going to die.

And so, with the challenge in place, the Lord responds in a way similar to what we read in chapter one and verse twelve. There, God said that everything that Job has, He gives over to Satan to do as he wills, but to not harm Job physically.

Here though, God says that “Behold, he (that is, Job himself) is in your hand”. But even here, there is a condition as there was in the previous ordination in that God tells Satan that he may not take Job’s life. He says that the devil has permission to not spare anything of Job’s, except for his life.

And so, as we now move forward to verse seven, we see that the beginning of this verse mirrors the end of chapter one and verse twelve as we read, “So, Satan went out from the presence of the Lord”, being dismissed by God to go and perform that which God has ordained and permitted Satan to do.

And Satan, having gone out from the presence of the Lord, we read at the end of this seventh verse, got right to work as he “struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head”. And so, from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, in seemingly every part of his body, Job was plagued with loathsome sores.

Now, what these sores were, what this condition was that Job was afflicted with is not entirely certain. But though we don’t know what exactly the condition was, we may have some kind of an indication of what it was like.

For example, in chapter seven and verse five of this book, Job says, “My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out afresh”. And then over in chapter thirty and verse thirty of this same book, Job says, “My skin turns black and falls from me, and my bones burn with heat”.

And so, while we don’t know what exactly this condition was, from these descriptions, it sounds extremely painful; indeed, so painful that it caused Job to wish that he was dead, rather than endure it any longer. Which, by the way, proves contrary to Satan’s assumption that Job would rather curse God than die.

So again, we see the failure of the devil. He had hoped that at the prospect of losing his life, Job would publicly curse and disown God, but Job, though he knew this came about by the ordination of God, did not curse God. Yes, he asked why it had happened, and he was certainly not happy that it happened, but he never abandoned his allegiance to God.

And so, as we look at the final verse of our reading for today, we see that rather than cursing God, Job sat in the ashes, the place of mourning, accepting his divinely appointed lot.

And as he sat resigned to the will of God, he attempted to do away with his pain and discomfort as he takes a piece of broken pottery, perhaps something of his which had been destroyed in his initial testing, and he used it to scratch his sores to somehow give him comfort.

Yes, Job had found himself in excruciating pain. Yes, Job had found himself to be most miserable. Yes, Job had preferred death to this miserable existence. But Job never cursed or disowned God; not even once!

John Gill, a preacher and Bible commentator who lived in the 17th and 18thcenturies, tells us in his commentary on Job, chapter two, verse eight:

“His mouth was shut, his lips were silent, not one murmuring and repining word came from him, amidst all this anguish and misery he must be in; much less any thing that looked like cursing God and blaspheming him, as some are said to do, because of their pains and their sores, but Job bore his with the utmost patience”[1]

Everything that a man prizes: his wealth, his possessions, his offspring, his health was all taken from Job. And for all that Job knew, it seemed as though his life would be taken from him next. Of course, we know about the dialogue between the Lord and Satan, but Job didn’t realize any of that. The only thing that he knew is that one day he seemed to have everything and the next day everything was gone.

But amid the great toil, suffering, and pain, what Job did know is that God was worthy of his worship.

He didn’t worship God because of all of his possessions. He didn’t worship God because of his health. He worshiped God because God is worthy of worship.

May we worship God not only when He fills our hands — but when He empties them. Not only when He explains — but when He remains silent. Not only when He restores — but when He wounds. For He is worthy of worship — not because of what He gives — but because of who He is.

Amen?

[1]John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, vol. 3, The Baptist Commentary Series (London: Mathews and Leigh, 1810), 203.