Facing The Giants: Will A Man Serve God For Nothing? Series

The hard truth is that faith cannot be tested by prosperity. Anybody can praise the Lord as long as everything is going the way they want. Even a lost person can praise God. But what if the opposite is true? What if suddenly the life is filled with tragedy that you don’t deserve?

The prevailing theology of Job’s day was that if a man truly served God, God would bless him physically and materially. In the Old Testament, salvation is depicted more in terms of physical and material blessings than in terms of spiritual blessings. In the Old Testament, they had not yet developed enough spiritually to understand that the greatest blessings are spiritual blessings. When you read the Psalms, most of the times the writers are thanking God for physical blessings. When you come to the New Testament, you’ll find the opposite is true. You won’t find Paul thanking God for his three camel garage; he thanked God for the spiritual blessings he has in Christ Jesus in heavenly places. Those today who preach a health and wealth gospel base most of their teaching on Old Testament Scriptures.

I once got a newsletter from a colleague in the ministry, and he made this statement: “Your financial condition is a reflection of your spiritual condition.” That sounds good at the Hyatt Regency ballroom here in the states, but I’d like to hear him preach that same message in Ethiopia or Rwanda.

Job even believed this Old Testament theology himself. It was as if God were treating him as an enemy. Scholars have come to believe that the name Job meant “enemy” in ancient times.

2. Will a person serve God when he has to stand alone?

Will a person serve God when his friends forsake him, nobody understands him, and he finds himself standing alone?

Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!” But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips. (2:9-10, NASB)

Is that a testimony of faith or what? After Job’s wife’s disappointing statement, here came Job’s three friends.

Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this adversity that had come upon him, they came each one from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite; and they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him and comfort him. And when they lifted up their eyes at a distance, and did not recognize him, they raised their voices and wept. And each of them tore his robe, and they threw dust over their heads toward the sky. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights with no one speaking a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great. (2:11-13, NASB)

I’d find that incredibly comforting, wouldn’t you? It reminds me of vultures perching on a limb, waiting for the fellow to expire. Finally, after the end of seven days and nights of silence, Job’s friends came to a conclusion. All three of them said the same thing: “Job, you’ve sinned. You’re going to have to confess and get right, or God is never going to return you to His favor.”