The Testing of Job - Job 1:1 - 2:8

Teacher: Rusty Kennedy
Series: Bible Stories

Rusty's Notes

God Allows

• Why did God let “allow” to enter the picture when He had the ability to control everything… and still does?
• Free will
• When did God “allow”?
• Somewhere before Genesis 2
• I cannot understand the sovereignty of God.
• But I do know that God is love.

1 John 4
8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice, for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us. 13 This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his Son as the world’s Savior. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God. 16 And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.[1]
 
The Book of Job

• This book, like many others in the Old Testament, got its name from the central character in it rather than from its writer.
• Concerning the time the events recorded took place, there have been many views, ranging from the patriarchal age of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (beginning about 2100 B.C.) to the second century B.C.
• While Job may have written it, there is no concrete evidence that he did.
• The name "Job" means "hated" or "much persecuted."
• Perhaps Job was a nickname that his friends gave him during his suffering.
• Job is the title of the book in the Hebrew, Greek (Septuagint), Latin (Vulgate), and English Bibles.
• The book does not identify its writer. Furthermore, the ancient Hebrews could not agree on who wrote it.

 
It is quite clear from this book that God inspired it to reveal answers to questions that arise from God's nature and His dealings with human beings.

• Specifically, it answers the question: What is the basis on which God deals with people?
• Elsewhere in the Old Testament, we find God typically repaying good with good and evil with evil, but that is not how He dealt with Job.
• The book of Job places the stress on God's ways, not Job's suffering.

 
God blesses people for two reasons.

• These are: first, His sovereign choice to bless; second, people's response of trust and obedience to Him.
• Because we cannot control God's sovereign choice to bless some people more than others, we tend to forget that.
• We tend to focus on what we can control to some extent, namely, securing His blessing by trusting and obeying Him.
• This is understandable and legitimate, but it leads to a potential problem.
• The problem is that we may conclude that we can control God.
• Since God blesses those who trust and obey Him, and He curses those who do not, we may conclude that if we trust and obey God, He owes us blessing in this life.

 
JOB AND HIS FAMILY
JOB 1
1 There was a man in the country of Uz named Job.

•  Uz was probably located southeast of the Dead Sea.
• Show Map

He was a man of complete integrity, who feared God and turned away from evil.

• The fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, was the hallmark of Job.
• Wisdom is to know that there is a God and He created us to love Him and others.

2 He had seven sons and three daughters. 3 His estate included seven thousand sheep and goats, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very large number of servants. Job was the greatest man among all the people of the east.

• Evidently there were several other great (wealthy) men in that part of the world in his day, but Job surpassed them all.

4 His sons used to take turns having banquets at their homes. They would send an invitation to their three sisters to eat and drink with them.

• Seven sons, a banquet for each night of the week.

5 Whenever a round of banqueting was over, Job would send for his children and purify them, rising early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of them.

• Evidently, he offered sacrifices each week for his children in case they had committed sins in their merriment.
• There were ten whole sacrifices offered by Job on each opening day of the weekly round, at the dawn of the Sunday; and one has therefore to imagine this round of entertainment as beginning with the first-born on the first day of the week."
• The author uses the numbers three, seven, and ten, all symbolic of completeness, to demonstrate that Job's wealth was staggering.

For Job thought, “Perhaps my children have sinned, having cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular practice.
 
SATAN’S FIRST TEST OF JOB
6 One day the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them.

• The term "sons of God" elsewhere refers to angels (38:7), though it usually refers to human beings.
• These verses reveal that angels, including Satan, periodically report to God on their activities.

7 The Lord asked Satan, “Where have you come from?”
“From roaming through the earth,” Satan answered him, “and walking around on it.”

• Did God need to ask Satan where he was?
• Similar to asking Adam & Eve, “Where are you?”

8 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil.”

• Rather than offering up Job as a suggestion.
• Possibly another rhetorical question.

9 Satan answered the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing? 10 Haven’t you placed a hedge around him, his household, and everything he owns? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.

• Satan is implying that God has paid Job to love Him.

11 But stretch out your hand and strike everything he owns, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

• The Satan believes nothing to be genuinely good—neither Job in his disinterested piety nor God in His disinterested generosity.

12 “Very well,” the Lord told Satan, “everything he owns is in your power. However, do not lay a hand on Job himself.” So Satan left the Lord’s presence.

• This is just a reminder to Satan of what already was.
• Satan is also called the “prince of the power of the air” in Ephesians 2:2.
• He is the “ruler of this world” in John 12:31.
• These titles and many more signify Satan’s capabilities.
• He wields a certain amount of authority and power in this world.
• He is not a king, but a prince, a ruler of some sort.
• In some way he rules over the world and the people in it: “The whole world is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19).


• This is not to say that Satan rules the world completely; God is still sovereign.
• God, in His infinite, inscrutable wisdom, has allowed Satan to operate in this world within the boundaries God has set for him.
• Satan’s limits are clearly seen in Job.
• Satan must give an account of himself to God, and it seems he must have God’s “allowance” to carry out his plans.
• At no time can Satan do all he wants, for God restricts his actions.

13 One day when Job’s sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, 14 a messenger came to Job and reported, “While the oxen were plowing and the donkeys grazing nearby, 15 the Sabeans swooped down and took them away. They struck down the servants with the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you!”
16 He was still speaking when another messenger came and reported, “God’s fire fell from heaven. It burned the sheep and the servants and devoured them, and I alone have escaped to tell you!”
17 That messenger was still speaking when yet another came and reported, “The Chaldeans formed three bands, made a raid on the camels, and took them away. They struck down the servants with the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you!”
18 He was still speaking when another messenger came and reported, “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house. 19 Suddenly a powerful wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on the young people so that they died, and I alone have escaped to tell you!”
20 Then Job stood up, tore his robe, and shaved his head.

• Tearing one's robe typically expressed great grief in the ancient Near East.
• It symbolized the rending of one's heart.
• Shaving the head evidently symbolized the loss of personal glory.
• When a person mourned, he or she put off all personal adornments, including what nature provided.
• Hair in the ancient world was a symbol of one's glory.

He fell to the ground and worshiped, 21 saying:
Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will leave this life.

• Mother’s womb is another term for earth.

The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
22 Throughout all this Job did not sin or blame God for anything.[2]

• A man may stand before God stripped of everything that life has given him, and still lack nothing.

 
SATAN’S SECOND TEST OF JOB
JOB 2
1 One day the sons of God came again to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them to present himself before the Lord. 2 The Lord asked Satan, “Where have you come from?”
“From roaming through the earth,” Satan answered him, “and walking around on it.”
3 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil. He still retains his integrity, even though you incited me against him, to destroy him for no good reason.”
4 “Skin for skin!” Satan answered the Lord. “A man will give up everything he owns in exchange for his life. 5 But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
6 “Very well,” the Lord told Satan, “he is in your power; only spare his life.” 7 So Satan left the Lord’s presence and infected Job with terrible boils from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. 8 Then Job took a piece of broken pottery to scrape himself while he sat among the ashes.[3]

• Job's illness resulted in an unclean condition that made him a social outcast (cf. Exod. 9:9-11).
• He had to take up residence near the city dump where beggars and other social rejects stayed.
• He had formerly sat at the city gate and enjoyed social prestige as a town judge (29:7).

The change in his location, from the best to the worst of places, reflects the change in his circumstances, from the best to the worst of conditions.

[1] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), 1 Jn 4:8–16.
[2] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Job 1:1–22.
[3] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Job 2:1–8.