More Questions From Job

"More Questions from Job"

Job 1:20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,

21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.

22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

2:10 But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.

Introduction: One of the great questions in the book of Job is one that men have been asking ever since Adam saw the first sunrise. It is a question that all of us will have to answer at some point in life because we will all experience things and circumstances that will provoke us and give us pause. Here's the question that I'm taking about: Is God good? Now some of you are going to say immediately that, yes He is good and I would agree because of 40 plus years as a believer has taught me that He is good. But, there may be some of you that are just not absolutely convinced because of something that has happened in your life. It might be the death of a loved one (especially a child) or an unwanted divorce or the loss of a job or something equally as difficult.

I. THE PROBLEMS JOB FACED

a. They were personal

I think that I would be safe in saying that other than the Lord Jesus himself, very few people have ever faced the personal problems that this godly man faced. When you lose all you've worked for all your life, it is personal. When you lose your greatest treasure, your precious children, you take it personally. When you lose your health, you take it personally and when you lose the support of your mate, your helpmeet, your wife, you take it personally. Now most of us have a certain amount of sympathy for someone who is having trouble but these things weren't happening to someone else, they were happening to Job.

ILL - You know the difference between major and minor surgery? Simple, if it's happening to you it's minor and if it's happening to me it's major, right!

b. They were problematic

I say that they were problematic for this reason. Verse 1 of chapter 1 tells us that Job was an exemplary individual. Adam Clarke's Commentary says: Perfect and upright - úí åéùø tam veyashar; Complete as to his mind and heart, and Straight or Correct as to his moral deportment.

Feared God - Had him in continual reverence as the fountain of justice, truth, and goodness.

Eschewed evil - ñø îøò sar mera, departing from, or avoiding evil. We have the word eschew from the old French eschever, which signifies to avoid. All within was holy, all without was righteous; and his whole life was employed in departing from evil, and drawing nigh to God. Coverdale translates an innocent and vertuous man, soch one as feared God, an eschued evell. From this translation we retain the word eschew. That brings us to the problem. How could this good man suffer so greatly and more importantly how could a good God allow him to suffer? This is an age old question. It has been with us from the very beginning of the human family. Go to Genesis and you will find that Satan's suggested that God was not good because He prohibited Adam and Eve from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and thus being like God himself. We wonder why bad things happen to good people like us. But Jesus said that there is no one good but God. The best of us are no better than the worst of us when we measure ourselves by the goodness of God.

ILL - MEASURING GOODNESS

Goodness can only be measured by God. God is the standard of goodness. If we compare ourselves to others we're using the wrong measurement. If we determine goodness by what other people call good, we're using the wrong standard.

It's like the little boy who came to his mother and said, "Mommy, I'm eight feet tall."

She said, "You are?"

"Yes," he insisted, "I am eight feet tall."

His mother asked what he measured himself with, and he pulled out a six inch ruler

SOURCE: Rick Warren, The Power to Change Your Life (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1990), 93. Joel Smith in

Be Good For Goodness' Sake on www.sermoncentral.com.

c. They were perennial

Troubles are a normal part of life! If you are above ground and not under it, you are going to have trouble.