Lessons Learned From Job 2
Scriptures: Job 2-11, Psalm 91:1&4; Matthew 16:13-19; 1 John 4:1
Introduction
In my message last week, I covered four lessons that we should know and understand about Satan. As a reminder, the first four lessons were: 1) Satan is not our friend; 2) Satan is not omnipotent; 3) Satan is deliberately looking for ways to enter and disrupt our lives; and 4) Satan will try to influence each of us through personal gain. This morning we will examine more lessons we can learn about Satan through Job’s experience. Let’s start with lesson number five: Minimize Satan’s impact in our lives by staying in God’s presence.
Lesson 5: Minimize Satan’s impact in our lives by staying in God’s presence.
When we left off the story of Job last week, he had lost what we would consider to be "everything" so it would appear on the surface that Satan had truly had a major impact on his life. As we begin to make the transition in our understanding that our lives exists on a much higher plain than just our physical lives here on earth, we understand that Satan had a minimal impact on the "overall" substance of Job’s life. Through everything that Job went through, he did not turn his back on God, but chose to praise God instead. When we are constantly in God’s presence and understanding what that means, even when we go through terrible times, we know that our lives are not just made up of material things we have here on earth, although that is what we primarily concentrate on. Last week I shared with you what Job said in chapter one, verse twenty-one. He said which was that he brought nothing into this world and he could take nothing out. We spend a lot of time on "stuff" that we cannot take out of this world. What we should be doing is spending time on "stuff" that will be with us when we get to our future lives.
Job did not turn his back on God. Satan tried to separate Job from his Creator, but that did not happen. When we stay in the presence of God, there are things that may tempt us, yet because we are in His presence (where we are supposed to be), we are strong enough to resist the temptation. Think about this analogy; most children will act "right" in the presence of their parents because they understand what will happen when they go against the will of their parents. They know what is expected of them and they act accordingly. They do not venture into trouble because they are in the presence of their parents. The same happens with us when we are in God’s presence. When we recognize that we are always in God’s presence, we should be mindful that we are never without help and support. God is always with us, sometimes leading us, sometimes walking beside us and sometimes carrying us. David sums it up in Psalms 91:1 & 4 when he said "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty…He will cover you with His pinions (feathers), and under His wings you may seek refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and a bulwark." By staying in the presence of God – there is safety, security and comfort. But again, remember what I told you last week about the hedge of protection. That does not mean bad things will not happen, what it does mean is that you will always have a protector and a means for handling anything that you are faced with in this life.
Lesson 6: Satan will not give up – he is Persistent.
I just shared with you how to minimize Satan’s impact on your life by staying in God’s presence, but don’t think that he will stop trying to influence you. Satan does not give up; he just tries other ways to get to you. Chapter two opens with Satan once again coming into God’s presence after roaming the earth and failing to get Job to curse God. God told Satan that Job still did not turn his back on Him even after everything Satan had done to him. Satan, of course not willing to give up, again accuses God of not knowing what will motivate a man to turn his back on God. Look at what Satan says in verse four and five of chapter two. "And Satan answered the lord and said, ’Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give up for his life. However, put forth Thy hand, now, and touch his bone and his flesh; he will curse Thee to Thy face." God knowing Job gave Satan permission to touch Job’s body. He attacked Job’s body with boils, from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. Job was a complete mess and horrible to look upon. Still Job did not curse God or turn his back on Him. Satan thought for sure that if he touched Job’s body, that Job would relent and curse God because now not only had God taken everything from him, God was now touching his body. Yet through all of this, Job did not curse God and this brings me to lesson 7.
Lesson 7: Satan will use those close to you to try and influence you.
Lesson six pointed out that Satan will not give up, he is very persistent. Part of him being very persistent is the steps he will take to get those close to you to negatively influence you. There is no easy way to say this, but Satan will use whoever is available to try and hinder you. If you are believing God for something, Satan will use those close to you to try and get you to lose your faith. It does not matter to him who he uses, anyone can be a target. He will use your spouse, kids, best friends, employers and anyone else who is available. After he caused Job to have boils all over his body and Job refused to curse God, Satan took it to the next level. Look at verses nine and ten. 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." Can you believe how Satan used his wife to try to get Job to curse God? I believe that Job’s wife loved him and it must have hurt her a lot to lose her children, their possessions and now watching her husband suffer as he was. I am sure that it would be been much easier on her, out of her love for him, if he died and was no longer in pain. I also believe that Satan understood this and whispered ever so quietly in her ears the words that she said to her husband. When she spoke those words, she probably thought she was demonstrating her compassion and love for her husband, but Job quickly rebuked her. Once again, Satan failed to get Job to curse God. After he failed to get Job’s wife to influence him he next tried to use Job’s three closest friends. Most of the remaining chapters are devoted to Job’s friends trying to get him to repent, acknowledge any wrong doing so that God’s punishment of him would stop. There are several lessons we will gain from his friends, but right now just think about how his friends were being used by Satan to try and get Job to lose his faith. These were Job’s closest friends and Satan understood that if anyone could influence him it would be these three. When they first arrived, they just sat with Job and did not say anything for seven days because they saw that he was in great pain. They could do nothing to relieve his suffering, so they just sat there with him. But look at one of his friends says that is representative of the other two believed also when they did start to talk with him:
From his friend Eliphaz:
"Remember now, whoever perished being innocent? Or where were the upright destroyed? According to what I have seen, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble harvest it." Job 4:7-8
Eliphaz was basically telling Job that what he was experiencing was due to his own making. But if you read verses twelve through twenty-one, you see something that is even more convincing of Satan’s hand this effort to try and get Job to lose his faith. In these verses Eliphaz tells Job that he has a vision and saw a spirit that made all of the hair stand up on his body. The spirit spoke to him and told him basically that man was nothing and could not stand before God pure. Has all of your past sins ever crossed your mind when God was telling you to do something for him? There is a reason for that. This spirit also told Eliphaz that God does not trust His own angels who serve Him and therefore definitely does not put any trust in man. Then the spirit goes on to tell him how useless man is, even to the point of dying without any wisdom. You really need to read those verses. When you read them the message becomes clear, a spirit that was disciplined by God now tells Eliphaz that if God would chasten His angels when they failed, what more would He do to man who is not worth hardly anything. Added to fact that God does not trust man and you can see why God would severely punish man for stepping out of line. All of this goes directly against what God had said about Job. God trusted Job to the point that He knew that Job would not turn his back on Him. But think about the impact of what Satan was doing. He pulled out all stops in attacking Job, trying to make him believe that this was all his fault and following through with how God really does not trust him. Still, Job did not change his mind.
Satan tried this same tactic with Jesus. Remember what is recorded in Matthew the 16th chapter? In verses 13-19, Jesus had asked His disciples who did men say that He was. After hearing several answers, He asked the disciples who they said He was and Peter answered that He was Christ, the Son of the Living God. Jesus told Peter at that moment that the Spirit of God had revealed that to him and based on that revelation He would established His church. Now in the next verses, another interaction between Jesus and Peter was recorded. In verses 21-23, Jesus had told His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and while there would suffer many things and be killed. Verse 22 records the following: "And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him saying, ’God forbid it Lord! This shall never happen to You." In that instant, Peter "seemingly" reached out to Christ in support because of his love of Him. If it was left up to Peter, Christ would not have gone to Jerusalem at all. But here is the point that I want to make. Look at Jesus’ response to Peter as recorded in verse 23: "But he turned and said to Peter, ’Get behind Me Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s." Notice that Jesus did not speak to peter, He spoke directly to Satan who was influencing Peter to say what he had said to Christ. Jesus understood that the words Peter had said were not his own words, but were words Satan had whispered to him to say.
This is the same thing with Job’s friend. Even after listening to Eliphaz, Job refused to back down from his faith or to accept the belief that what he was experiencing was his fault. Job held fast to what he knew was the truth, he had not sinned and brought this own himself. I also believe that Job knew that God was just and in His corner, unlike what the spirit had told his friend. Since this one did not work, Satan gave his second friend a chance. In chapter eight, Bildad begins to speak. His premise is that God rewards the good. Look at verses 4-6 and 20-21 in Job chapter 8. "If your sons sinned against Him, then He delivered them into the power of their transgression. If you would seek God and implore the compassion of the Almighty, if you are pure and upright, surely now He would rouse Himself for you and restore your righteous estate…..Lo, God will not reject a man of integrity, nor will He support the evildoers. He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouting."
Bildad was basically telling Job that if he was a righteous man, as he believed himself to be, then surely God would come down and restore him. Job, after listening to his first friend tell him that he was worthless in God eyes, now having to listen to his second friend tell him that if he was truly righteous, God would restore him. His friend was telling him that what he was going through was his own fault. Have you ever had that happen to you? You knew you had done nothing wrong and yet those closest to you thought you were guilty. Have you ever had a time when you did something that God had told you to do, yet those closest to you did not understand it and actually thought you were out of God’s will and whatever happened would be your fault. These are probably the feelings that Job was experiencing. Again, listening to his friend, Job refused to back down and confess something that he knew was a lie.
When his third friend speaks, this friend lashes out at Job because Job did not give ear to what the first two friends had said. Zophar rebuked Job in chapter 11 because he felt that Job was being resistant to the friends who were there to help him because they truly loved him. Can you imagine the pressure that was now on Job? Two of his friends had told him he needed to repent in order to get back in the proper relationship with God and then the third friend bashes him because he did not listen to the first two friends. Job was being attacked on all sides. The human side of us tend to go along with the crowd if the argument is convincing enough. Job’s closest friends were trying to convince him of something which in their minds would help God to forgive him and restore him. They did not understand what we know to be the truth, that Job was being attacked by Satan in an attempt to get him to turn his back on God. I am sure had they known this their advice to Job would have been totally different. Instead of accusing him, they would have been encouraging him to hang in there, that deliverance would be coming because he was a righteous. But they did not have this insight and therefore their counsel was tainted by the thoughts of Satan. Understand and remember that Satan is very cunning. He will use those closest to you to try and get you to lose your faith and confidence in God. We have seen several examples from Job’s wife and friends to Peter in his interaction with Jesus. Your understanding of how he operates in theses situations is critical. Not all advice that comes to you from those who love you is of God. You need to weigh what you hear from everyone carefully. I do not care if it is coming from me as your pastor, or your closest friend or relative, you need to be sure. I will end part two with these words from 1 John 4:1 which says "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirit to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world."
I will try and complete this series next week. May God bless and keep each of you.
