"Tested on Faith"

Intro. JOB 1:1 There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; Right off we are told that he was blameless and upright, and that he feared God and avoided evil. In 2:3, God confirms this description of Job and adds that there was none like him in the earth, and he holds fast his integrity.

This is the only time that you hear God, instead of saying put your faith in me and put me to the test. Satan is trying God, and God in turn says I am putting my faith in my creation.

In the Old Testament it comes out 134 times, about putting your trust in God.

I. LET'S LOOK AT THIS DESCRIPTION OF JOB.

A. The bible says he was a perfect man.

1. The word perfect as used in the Bible means complete.

a. Job was a complete man. He had everything that we would consider necessary for a good life.

2. We are also told that he was upright.

a. The word in Hebrew, literally means straight. You might say that he was a straight-arrow man.

b. Nothing crooked or perverse about him.

3. He had a good-sized family, ten children; seven sons and three daughters.

a. They were close to each other and loved to fellowship together. We are told that his sons would take turns having feasts in their homes and would invite their sisters to join them.

b. How great it is when there is harmony within a family, and the greatest joys come from the family gatherings.

c. It brings a sense of strength and security.

d. As someone has said, "My children are my treasures."

4. He was a very wealthy man. In fact, we are told that there were none in all the East, as great as he.

5. Add to this God's declaration: "He fears God and avoids evil."

a. These two always go hand in hand.

b. The Bible tells us that the fear of the Lord is to hate evil.

c. When you see a man living in sin, you can know that he somehow lacks the fear of the Lord.

d. I see the things that some of the T.V. personalities do off stage, and you just know that they lack the fear of the Lord.

e. I fear the righteous judgment of God.

f. I stand in awe of the greatness of God.

g. My love for God is so great, that I fear doing things that would be displeasing to Him.

B. God tells us all of these things about Job so that when the calamities beset his life, we would not be tempted to think that God must be punishing him for some horrible evil in his life.

1. This is the mistake that his friends made as they sought to understand the miseries that came upon him.

2. This is the usual conclusion concerning evil that comes into a person's life. God must be punishing them for some evil.

3. God said in Isaiah, "My ways are not your ways saith the Lord, for My ways are beyond your finding out."

II. WE SEE THIS MAN COMPLETELY STRIPPED OF ALL THOSE THINGS THAT WE CONSIDER AS NECESSARY AND IMPORTANT FOR A GOOD LIFE.

A. He is stripped of his wealth. He is taken from riches to rags in a day.

B. His children are all killed when a tornado destroyed the house of his oldest son where they were dining together.

C. In these losses we find him worshipping God and declaring, "Naked I came into this world and naked I will go out, the Lord has given and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord." We are told that in all these things he did not curse God, or charge God foolishly.

1. Stripped of all of his material possessions he still has the sense of his own personality.

2. I may have lost all these things, but I am still here. I still have my health, and my wife is still with me and stands by me. He must have felt that no more calamities can come my way.

D. But this is not the end of all the problems. In the next round of troubles, he will lose his health.

1. He will be covered with painful boils, and will lie in ashes scraping the boils with a potsherd.

E. He will soon lose the loving support of his wife who seeing him in this miserable painful state, and feeling sorry for him will say, "Do you still maintain your integrity? Why don't you just curse God and die? Get it over with, get out of your misery."

F. We hear Job's response to her: "You speak as foolish women. Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

III. AS WE LOOK AT JOB, WHAT DO WE SEE NOW?

A. A man who is stripped of everything. All worldly props and the things which a man usually leans on for support are gone.

B. We see just the bare essence of existence. He has nothing, he has been stripped bare.

C. He has even lost his sense of self worth, and the third chapter we will find him cursing and bewailing the day of his birth.

1. We will find him asking why he didn't die in his mother's womb?

2. Why wasn't he still born?

D. In this condition of being stripped of all things, we will presently hear him asking the deepest, and most important questions of life.

E. Because our lives are so bound up in material things, we live a shallow life, and the questions that we ponder are very trite and shallow, they usually have to do with things.

1. Where shall we take our vacation next year?

2. Can I afford to buy a new car?

3. What has happened to the Rams football team this year?

4. I wonder if the kids put the trash out?

5. Which pair of shoes will go best with my outfit?

6. Do I want fries with my burger?

7. Why doesn't my neighbor shut up his barking dog?

8. Our questions are about things that are trivial, and have no eternal consequence.

F. There are questions that lie dormant buried deep in the sub consciousness of every man, questions we seldom even consider until we become stripped of all of the extraneous clutter that fills our lives.

1. It is at this point that these questions begin to surface and become very important.

a. Why was I born?

b. Where can I find God?

c. How can a man justify himself before God?

d. Is there life after death?

e. How can a finite man touch an infinite God?

f. Can a man truly know God?

g. Why does God often allow good people to suffer?

2. As we read the book of Job, we will find these questions being asked, but we will not find them being answered. They will just remain haunting questions. It is not until we come to the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus that we will find the answers to the truly important and deep issues of life.

IV. THIS BOOK TEACHES US NOT TO JUDGE.

A. Not to judge our brothers.

1. Our judgment is usually predicated on insufficient and often times false information.

2. Job's friends were so quick to judge him, but they were so wrong in the true assessment of the situation.

3. Were it not that God gave to us a behind-the-scenes view of the story, we also would have been judging wrongly.

B. We should not judge God.

1. People often charge God foolishly because of the present discomfort they are going through.

2. We don't know the whole story. This chapter looks so bleak.

3. Reserve your judgment until you finish the final chapter.

4. What a contrast we find between chapter one and the final chapter of the book of Job.

a. In chapter one we see God allowing Satan to strip him of everything.

b. In the final chapter, we see God restoring to him all that was stripped from him plus giving him so much more.

5. We are so prone to draw conclusions from the present negative circumstances. Many times God is working out a beautiful plan in our lives and this present trouble is necessary for the good to come.

6. Paul said: For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding eternal weight of glory. And again: For the present sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.

7. Jesus said to His disciples:

LUK 12:32 Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.