Job chapter 2. I titled this Round 2. I put three different titles
on this, but this one is Round 2. We read chapter 1, looked
at chapter 1 last week, and now this is Satan coming back again
for another round, another shot at Job. Satan, he never rests. He never rests. It says in Isaiah 48, 22, There
is no peace, saith the Lord unto the wicked. There is no peace
of heart, no peace of conscience, and no rest to the wicked. They are restless. Satan is restless. He is just restless. Satan is
always going about seeking, the Scriptures teach us this, seeking
whom he may devour. Devour like a roaring lion. It says in 1 Peter 5.8, Be sober
in your mind, in your thinking. Be sober. Be vigilant, on guard. Vigilant. Because your adversary,
we have an adversary, and it's not flesh and blood. I mean,
we do have people who don't like us, who don't like the gospel
we preach, but our adversary is Satan. It's spiritual adversaries. Because your adversary the devil,
as a roaring lion, walks about seeking whom he may devour, take
down." Vicki and I was watching it, but she got caught up watching
it, a nature program the other day, and this grizzly bear came
up against this big caribou. And she said, you think you'll
be able to handle that caribou? I said, oh yeah. And it took
him a little bit, but he finally took it to the ground. He took
it down into the water and drowned it. But he took on that big old
caribou and then he devoured it. After he killed it, he devoured
it. Satan, like a roaring lion. Desiring,
greatly desiring. And this is so, this is real.
What I'm telling you is real. He desires to take you down and
devour you. You give God too much glory.
You worship God. He wants that worship. If you'll
notice, and I noticed this today going through this, this whole
thing is about worship. This trial of Satan coming before
God has to do with Job worshiping God. Does Job worship God or
not? It has to do with worship. That's
exactly what it had to do when he tempted our Lord in the wilderness.
It had to do with worship. He wants to be worshiped. And
that same spirit and attitude is in every person Every person
that's lost, who do you look first at in a picture? Whose name do you like to hear
called? Athletes can't give it up because
those accolades are a form of worship. It's a form of worship. And the spirit of the world has
the same spirit of Satan, it's wanting to be worshipped. And listen, when Satan fails
in one attempt, he tries another. He never gives up. He never gives
up and goes away. This is a constant battle till
we leave this life. Satan constantly is seeking to
bring us down individually, and collectively as a church. He's
seeking to do that. But all His attacks are under
the wise guidance and power of our Lord. They're under His power. And the Lord allows Satan to
attack us at times, to reach in and touch us at times, for
our spiritual growth. That's why He does so. He allows
Him to do so for our spiritual growth. You know, it takes sunshine
and rain to cause a garden to grow, doesn't it? And so it is spiritually. It
takes trials as well as blessings for us to grow spiritually. You can't grow without trials.
You can't do it. It is written in 1 Peter 1.7
that the trial of your faith being much more precious than
gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire." Painful. This is painful. What Job's going
through is painful. And I've seen God's saints go
through some painful, painful things. "...that it might be
found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus
Christ." That it's real, it's genuine, it's of the Lord. Now,
Satan was allowed to attack our Lord when He walked on this earth
in the flesh. He attacked Him on every turn.
The Pharisees just followed Him everywhere. He couldn't even
turn around and there was a Pharisee attacking Him. You know what
He said to those Pharisees? You're of your father, the devil,
and the works of your father you will do. They never left
the Lord alone. They constantly attacked Him.
Satan behind the scenes that you and I couldn't see, and we
can't see, you know, I can read in the Gospels, but Satan behind
the scene is constantly attacking him, trying to take his life.
But his hour has not yet come. How many times did he say that?
Mine hour has not yet come. And keep in mind, through all
this suffering that God has allowed Satan to put Job through, is
to prove that Job's worship of God is not superfluous. And a better way to maybe to
say it is this, Job was not a paid lover. He was not a paid lover. He didn't love God because of
all that God gave him. And this is gonna be proven as
we go through this. Now verse 1, we see this, all
the heavenly hosts come before the Lord, and all are accountable
to God, even Satan. Satan, as I've said this before,
he's not a loose cannon just out there running around willy-nilly. He has to give an account, all
of them are accountable. to God Almighty. And Satan has
to get permission, he has to get God's permission to touch
Job, to touch God's servant. He's got to have divine permission
to touch him. And then we see in verse 2, Satan
has a very real presence on this earth. People think that he's
in hell. He's walking up and down in this
earth, to and fro, seeking whom he may devour. You see there in verse 2, God
asking what He's doing, and He's not asking for information. This
is for us. This is for us. This is for our
learning. He says He's going to and fro
in the earth. Going to and fro. He's walking
up and down in the earth. He's very busy, He's very active,
and He's very evil. You know, you see these riots,
you see all these things that are going on out here in the
world, and then you have a preacher in a pulpit lying on God, and
they miss him. It's called the confusion of
battle. He even has the preacher out
there talking about the morality and having all these different
things we ought to do and ought to be. But as long as he keeps
you off Christ, as long as that devil can keep your minds away
from Christ, that's what he wants to do. That's what he's after. He's very busy. He's very active
from walking up and down in it. And while we sleep at night,
he doesn't. He never gets tired. Restless,
but never tired. But the Lord knows his heart
in verse 3. And this is so comforting here
in this conversation, is that the Lord knows, He knows his
heart. Satan comes before Him. And the
Lord knows that Satan has set his heart on his servant Job. When He says, Have you considered,
hast thou considered My servant Job? He's saying, Have you set
your heart again on My servant Job? that there is none like him in
the earth. You'll notice how the Lord repeats Job's character.
There's none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright
man, one that fears God and shuns evil. And still he holds fast
his integrity, although thou movest me against him to destroy
him without cause, but he's held his integrity. But you notice that word consider.
Satan had considered in his heart to bring Job down, to destroy
his testimony. That's what Satan would love
to do, is destroy your testimony and mine. I often pray, I do,
I often pray, Lord, keep me from bringing reproach on your name.
Don't let me do anything. Put a hedge about me, put a watch
on my tongue. Because Satan would do anything
to destroy my testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ and yours too.
He'll do it. That's what he wants to do. He
wants to destroy his testimony, break his faith and hope in the
Lord, draw him away from serving the Lord. That's what he wants
to do. And it was no different with
our Lord when He walked on this earth. He went after Him. He
went after Him. He tried to get him to fall down
and worship him as God. He said, I'll give you the kingdoms.
I'll give you this. I'll give you that. I'll give
you the kingdoms. He just wanted him to fall down
and worship him. That's all. Just a little worship. Not a
lot. You know, just a little. Throw me a crumb of worship here.
If he can get anybody to do that, he's got you. But notice here, after Job had
lost everything, the Lord says the same thing about him. He's
an upright man. He's perfect, upright, shuns
evil still. He didn't change him, did it?
Listen here. Trials will not change who you
are. It will reveal who you are. It won't change who you are.
It will reveal who you are. Someone said, trials build character.
Trials reveal character. That's what they do. They reveal
character. Our standing in Jesus Christ
never changes. No matter what we go through,
what God puts us through, Because you'll notice at the end of the
book of Job, the same thing is said about Job, isn't it? And
Job says some pretty hard things as you go through this book. You see, he does say some pretty
hard things. But you know, at the end of it,
God said he's a perfect man. You know why? Our standing in
Christ never changes. God sees us as He sees us in
His Son, Jesus Christ. We are perfect in Him and that
never changes. It never changes. And the Lord
adds this, He said, and He still holds fast His integrity. He
still holds firm principles. He still holds to His high moral
character. He didn't diminish it all, did
He? He holds fast his integrity, but it has this meaning right
here. Someone said this, it indicates
a strengthening of the grip he already had. You know, this is
so. When God puts one of His children
through a very difficult trial, you know what? The heart of the
trial is, the heart of the grip is to Christ. I assure you that's so. For a
child of God, the harder He puts you into the furnace, the harder
your grip will become on Christ because He's the only thing you've
got. You don't have anything else. You don't have anything
else but Him. And he says here also, Thou movest
me against Him. Now, Satan didn't make God do
that, but this is our learning. You moved me against him to destroy
him without a cause." This is a powerful statement
because you know what it's saying? This statement shows that the
trial was not because of some sin in Job as his three friends
suggested. God said, You moved me against
him without a cause. There was not a cause in him
for me to do this against Job. as far as sin goes. And if you'll
notice, if you'll notice, when Satan comes to God, the accuser
of the brethren, you know he doesn't bring up any sin that
Job did. He doesn't say, you know what,
Job did. You know, he's the accuser of
the brethren. He could have pulled something
up, but he didn't pull anything up. He just says, does Job worship
you for nothing? Job's worshiping you. He's suggesting
that Job Worship is monetary. It's monetary. It's from the
blessings and for the blessings. Now let me show you here what
Satan knows about human nature. He knows that by nature, we have
this self-preservation about us. We have this self-love that's
very, very strong. And Satan answered the Lord and
said, skin for skin, All right, we took everything from him.
But those are just outward things. Those are just material things.
Even though his children, I took his children, they were still
outward things. But he says, here's skin for skin. Yea, all
that a man hath, he will give it for his life. What will a
man give in exchange for his soul? Satan knows human nature. Satan knows that man loves himself
the most. And he'll give anything to keep
his life. He'll give anything. Man will
do anything, give anything for his life. We have some examples of that
in the scriptures. Abraham betrayed his wife to
save his life. Didn't he do that? You know,
David acted like a madman at one time. He feigned himself,
he says, as a madman in order to save his life. This is the
king. This is the king of Israel acting like a madman so he could
save his life. He's not acting like a child
of God. He's not acting like a king. He's acting like a madman
to save his life. Peter denied the Lord. Why? To save his life. He said, I don't know the man. I don't know the man. So we know
there's a lot of truth in this statement. Satan has studied
us for a long time. a long time. He knows how weak
man is. He figures, I got the innocent
man, the perfect man who had never sinned before. I got him
to fall. Surely I can get a man who's full of sin to fall. Boy,
the power of God's grace is to keep us. It's amazing. It's amazing. It is. Put forth thine hand," there
in verse 5, put forth thine hand now. Now, I don't know how much
time went by from the first trial to the second trial. You see,
the first trial, he takes everything. Takes his 10 children, takes
his servants, takes his camels and asses and all that he had,
took it all. And Job retained his integrity,
his hope, his faith, his love for God, and his worship, his
worship of God. And then some time goes by. John
Gill says he doesn't think there was much time that went by. But
the Jews, by the way they calculate things, they think at least a
year went by. But this is why I call it round
two. You see, the first one took everything. Now he's going to
touch Job personally, inwardly, physically. And touch his bone and his flesh
and he will curse thee to thy face. The first trial was all outward.
Now let's make it inward. Let's turn it inward. Let's make
it physical. Let's make it physical. Have
you ever seen anybody or known anyone, and you may have been
this way yourself, have pain that won't let up? I mean, there's
been people who have committed suicide. They've committed suicide
because the pain was so great it would not let up. And people
have had to, they've committed suicide over it. And so he says here, let's make
this thing real personal. And I'll show you what Joe's
made of. Touch His body and I'll show
you who Job counts really supreme. Himself and not you. Well, you
know how brazen Satan has to be to be speaking to God like
this? That's the depth of evil. To
come to God and ask Him to let you just rip the guts out of
one of His children. That'd be like me coming over
to Johnny and saying, let me have Carrie. I guarantee you,
I'll get her to cuss you tonight. And I'll just rip her apart. And when I'm done with her, she'll
hate you. That's what's going on. That's what's going on. And it's not the first time it's
ever happened. I mean, it's happened before more than just over Job.
I know it happened over our Lord. You know it happened over Him. Listen, if you are a servant
of the Lord, if you are His servant, Satan has you in his crosshairs.
You are in his crosshairs. Now, in verse 6, the trial is
ordered up by God. He orders this trial. And the Lord said to Satan, Behold,
he's in thine hand, but save his life. You can't take his
life, but you can take his health. You can take it all from him.
So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord. I bet you
he was skipping, he was happy, he's gonna get to do some mischief.
You know, there is a medical term, I don't remember what it
is, where people take pleasure in someone else's pain. When
they literally, and this is real, they literally take pleasure
in your pain and suffering. I don't give it a medical term,
I tell you what, I give it satanic. It's satanic when someone takes
pleasure in your suffering. We don't take pleasure in one
another's suffering, do we? We pray for one another. We love
one another. We don't take pleasure in your
fall. Even the Scripture says, Rejoice
not when your enemy falls. It tells us not to rejoice even
when our enemy falls. But Satan, he went from the presence
of the Lord and smoked Job with sore boils." Have you ever had
a boil? A really sore boil? Well, he's got them from head
to toe. He can't even walk. They're on the bottom of his
feet. He can't sit. He can't lay down. He can't roll
over. All he can do is sit there and
take a broken vessel, a broken pot shirt, pottery, and scrape
and get the pus out of it, and that's what he's doing. He's
scraping him raw. He's raw. I'm telling you, the
man is raw. From head to toe, he's raw. Can't
comb his hair. He stinks. He's rotten. He smells
rotten. It's just putrefying. Putrefying. The affliction was from the top
of his head to the bottom of his feet. But now listen, this
is how our Lord was afflicted with our sins. When he was made
to be sin for us, from the top of his head to the bottom of
his feet, he was afflicted with our sins. When he was made to
be sin for us, he bore our sickness and carried our sorrow. But this also shows how cruel
Satan is. There's no such thing as mercy
with Satan. He don't even know what it is.
He's not experienced it, he don't know what it is. And in verse 8, And he took him
a potsherd to scrape himself withal, and he sat down among
the ashes. He was brought to the end of
himself in this trial. This was the end of the road,
as far as he was concerned, because in the next chapter, he curses
the day he was born. We see how difficult his trial
really was in a little while. But there sat God's faithful,
perfect servant, scraping his sores with broken pottery. This is God's child. This is
God's perfect servant. Perfect, upright, shuns evil,
and here he sits. You know why he's in this trial?
Because he's God's child. That's why. Why do you go through
trial? Why do you suffer, hurt? Because
you're God's child. That's why. And then it only gets worse.
His wife turns on him. How painful is that? Your body
is hurting all over, you can't sit down, you can't do anything.
It's just the most uncomfortable thing you could ever think of.
And then his wife turns on him, and she says, Does thou still
retain thine integrity? That's a knife to the heart. Curse God and die. Curse God and he'll kill you
and it'll all be over. Let's just get this thing over
with. She was ready for him to die. But I'm not gonna make excuse. I'm not gonna make excuse for
her and what she said, sin is sin. But you know she lost those
10 kids too. We forget that. You know everything
Job lost she lost? She lost them too. She buried
those 10 kids just like he did. She buried them. It's not easy
for a mother to bury her 10 children that she carried. She lost them,
so I'll give her one there. I'll give her one. But you know,
the church scattered and left Christ all alone when he was
suffering, didn't the church leave? Didn't all of them leave?
Peter denied him. All the sheep were scattered.
They all left. No one stood with him. He suffered alone. Is there
any sorrow like unto my sorrow, all ye that pass by?" He suffered alone also. But Job said to her in verse
10, He said to her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. Watch, shall we receive good
at the hand of God? And shall we not receive evil
or trouble? Shall we not be troubled or chastened?
Shall we not do that? And all this did not Job sin
with his lips. Anyone will worship God for the
blessings like Job had been given. It's when God takes everything
away and we still worship Him. That proves the power of grace.
That proves the power of God to keep us. When we worship God
for God, and not for what we can get out of Him. God is to be worshipped because
He's God, not because He gives us gifts and blessings. You know,
our Lord did this. Psalm 22, He said, I cry unto
thee in the night time, but thou hearest not. In the night season,
I'm not silent. You know what He says? But thou
art holy. He doesn't condemn him. He justifies
God for not answering him. But thou art holy. Thou art holy. And I'm going to bring this to
a close. In verse 11 through 13, Job's
three friends, they heard about this. They heard about Job's
losses. They heard about all of his losses.
And they had gotten appointed time and said, let's get together
and go up and visit Job. And it's good to do that. Visit
the sick. Pure religion, undefiled, is
to visit the fatherless and the widow and their affliction. To
visit the sick. To visit one another when they're
down. And so they got together and they made this trip. I don't
know exactly how far it is. I didn't check it out. But they
made this trip to visit Job. They were going to comfort him.
Of course, later on, Job calls them miserable comforters, but
they were going to comfort their friend. And when they got within
seeing distance, when they got within seeing distance, he was
unrecognizable. You know what it says about our
Lord? In Isaiah 52, he's called, in Isaiah 52, the servant. It
says, his visage, his appearance was so marred, more than any
man. And here, when these three friends,
they see Job, they can't believe it. They don't even recognize
him. That's how messed up he was.
His flesh was so messed up. It says, "...and they knew him
not." During verse 12, "...and when they lifted up their eyes
afar off and knew him not, they lifted up their voice and wept.
And they rent every man his mantle and sprinkled dust upon their
heads toward heaven. And they sat down upon the ground
seven days, seven nights, and none spake a word unto him, for
they saw that his grief was very great." You know what? Sometimes there are no words. Sometimes grief is so, I don't
know if you've ever been around somebody like that. I was one
time around someone like that. And when I went to talk to him,
I couldn't talk. I couldn't talk. I could see the grief was so
strong. The only thing I did was put
my arm around him. Sometimes there's just no words.
And sometimes it's better off just to sit down with them and
shut up. Just to be quiet. You know, when
you're fumbling for words and you're trying to think of what
to say, how about nothing? Just put your arm around them. Our Lord, you'd be surprised,
you and I'll be surprised someday to realize how often our Lord
sat with us in sorrow. Not a word was spoken, but he
sat there with us. Sometimes the trial can be so
severe, it can be very, very, very severe, but I know this,
and we know this already because we know the book of Job. Here's
what we know. His grace is sufficient. The trial will never be greater
than the grace of God is sufficient for. Never. He said He would
never try us above what we are able to bear. But as I've gotten
older, you know what I realize? God is able to make me able to
bear all things. So it doesn't matter what the
trial is. He's able to enable me to bear
up under it, no matter what it is. No matter what it is. And Joe proved, and I close,
and Joe proved that his worship, his worship was real. He's real. God took everything from him
and he still worshiped God. He worshiped him for who he is.