People often ask this question….it just seems that life isn’t fair!! We do the best we can and then things go wrong for us!
The Bible tells us about a man like this, a good man who did the best he could and then he lost everything. It also gives us a picture of why this happened which will help us to see things differently when things go wrong for us too.
If we turn to the Bible and look at Job chapter one, verse one, we read….”there was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was perfect and upright, one who feared (respected and reverenced) God and who hated evil.”
So we see that Job always did his best and as we read down the chapter, we see the things that he did for himself and for his family. Let’s turn it into a story……
One day, God’s team of angels came to report to Him. God noticed a shiny, glistening, sneaky looking one among them who didn’t usually come, and recognised him instantly.
“Where have you come from, Satan?” He asked.
“I’ve been walking up and down all over the place,” Satan replied shiftily.
“Have you seen any person as good as My servant Job is?”, God asked, “No-one else is as good in the whole world as he is….he loves Me and hates everything evil! He makes me an offering every day, not only for himself but also for his family.”
“Ho”, sneered Satan looking at God, ” No wonder he is so good! You look after him on every side, and have given him all he’s got! I bet if you took it all away from him it’d be a different story! He would curse You to Your face if that happened!!”
God knew His man, and He knew He could trust Job to do the right thing.
“OK,” He said to Satan, “We’ll see. I’m allowing you to take away everything that he has. I know he will stand firm for Me.”
Satan chuckled gleefully. ” I’ll make him sorry for following God’s ways. I can beat him!”
So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.
The next day, Job got up early as he usually did, and made the morning sacrifice for himself and his wife. Then he made another sacrifice to cover each of his children. As he did this, he prayed for each of them, as he did every day. “Lord”, he said, “Please help the boys to stand firm for you; help them to resist temptations, and always be helpful to their mother and sisters. I pray for the girls, Lord that they will not be vain with how they look, but that they will try their best to be beautiful with their minds and their speech.”
Job knew that his eldest son was putting on a party that day for his brothers and sisters, and he hoped that everything would go well for them all. While he was sitting there after breakfast thinking about them, he saw one of his servants rushing up the path. He could tell something was wrong.
“What’s the matter?” he called out as the man got close enough to hear.
“We were out in the field ploughing with the bullocks and the donkeys were there beside them when a marauding tribe from over the hill came and rounded them up, killing all the herdsmen, and I’m the only one who got away!”
With that, he fell down on the ground panting with the run, and fright at what he had seen.
The man had hardly finished telling Job this when another servant came panting up. “Oh!,” he said, “There was a massive lightning storm over the paddock where the sheep were, and they have all been struck dead as well as the other servants there. I’m the only one who managed to get away to tell you!”
A third servant came panting in from another direction and said, “The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yes, and killed the servants with swords; and I only am escaped alone to tell you.”
Job hardly had time to take all this in when another servant came rushing in from the direction of the oldest boy’s house.
“Oh, oh,” he wailed when he saw Job, “Your sons and your daughters were eating their meal and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house when there was a terrific gust of wind rushing in from the desert like a tornado, and the roof was lifted off and the whole thing collapsed on everyone else in the house, and they are all dead! I’m the only one to escape and tell you!”
Job had been sitting down all this time, and now he stood up and tore his long robe off his shoulders. He went inside and shaved the hair all off his head to show how upset he was.
His wife and servants wondered how he would cope with all this bad news and the disasters that had happened. But he didn’t curse or swear, or even complain. It didn’t even enter his head to ask God why this had all happened.
Instead, he got down on his knees and prayed in front of everyone left in his house, and said, ” I was born naked with nothing, and I will go back to God the same way, with nothing. The LORD gave me these things, and the LORD has taken them away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”
In all these disasters Job didn’t sin or complain and blame God foolishly.
Soon after Job had had all these dreadful tragedies in his house and on the farm, God’s team came together once more. As God looked around them all, He saw that Satan was there among them again.
God looked straight at him, and said, “And where have you come from this time?”
“From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” Satan replied loftily.
“Have you seen my servant Job lately, that there is no-one like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one who fears Me and hates everything that is evil? In spite of all you’ve done to him, he still stays following Me even though you’ve done your best to destroy him for no reason.”
And Satan answered the LORD, and said, ” Skin for skin, yes, all that a man has will he give for his life. If you put your hand on him now and touch his bone and his flesh, he will curse You to Your face!”
God knew that Job wouldn’t let Him down in this test either and He said to Satan, “Look, he is in your hand; do what you like to him, but save his life.”
Satan grinned evilly as he went out from the presence of the LORD, and thought to himself, “I’ll fix Job this time! I’ll make him curse God yet!”
As Job went to bed that night, he was still very sad thinking about his family who had died. Somehow, his back didn’t feel too good. He rubbed it carefully, and then felt his legs hurting a bit too. When he got up in the morning, his feet were so sore he could hardly walk. His arms were hurting too and as he looked at them when he was getting dressed, he could see that they were covered with boils coming up all over them. So that was why his back and feet and legs were all hurting! He had boils all over him, even on his face and in his hair!
He was so sore that he didn’t know what to do with himself. He sat down by the fire that had gone out, and picked up the ashes and put them over his bare skin each morning. He sat there during the day moaning to himself with the pain. He couldn’t bear to get up and walk around, he was so sore.
His boils were oozing with pus, and he rubbed more ash onto them, and scraped the tops off the boils with a piece of a broken jar that was lying on the ground. His wife was at her wits end to know what to do. Here she had lost her three beautiful daughters who had helped her with the housework, and her seven sons had all died in the tornado. Now Job was covered with these revolting boils and sores and in terrible pain with it all. Where was God now? she wondered, why had He let all these dreadful things happen in their family?
“How can you sit there like that Job?” she asked, “I can’t understand how God could let all these dreadful things happen to us! Why don’t you curse Him and die?”
“Come, come, my dear, ” he said, “You are talking like one of the foolish women. What? Don’t you realise that as we receive good at the hand of God, He can also send us bad things? ”
And in spite of all this, Job did not sin by complaining .
Day after day went by, and Job didn’t seem to get any better. His friends and relations heard about his troubles, and three of them came to see him. They were horrified when they saw how bad he was. They sat down with him by the fire and said nothing to him for several days. They really didn’t know what TO say.
At last Job spoke and said, “I wish I’d never been born! It would have been better for me to have never lived than to come to this day!”
Eliphaz, the eldest one of his friends said, “You must have done something dreadful Job, for God to allow these things to happen to you! He must be wanting to teach you a lesson about something. Bad things don’t happen to good people, so you’ll just have to make the best of a bad job. God must be trying to teach you a lesson!”
Job said again, “My life isn’t worth living like this! You’re not helping me at all with what you are saying. What have I been doing wrong that you have seen?”
Bildad piped up next and said, “Look Job, you know that God doesn’t punish people unless they’ve done something wrong. Rushes can’t grow without water, and God doesn’t throw away people who are good!”
“I know that God is the Mighty Creator,” said Job, “He has made all the stars and given them names. Oh! If only I could talk to Him face to face, I would ask why this is all happening to me! I would ask Him to show me my sin!”
“You MUST have done something bad Job!” Zophar was the next to speak. “You think you are right! If only God would tell you so you could put it right!”
“You guys all think you’ve got all the answers!” Job said, “I just wish you would all keep quiet! I know what I’m thinking, and I tell you this…even if God were to kill me, I would still trust in Him. I know He is my salvation in spite of everything!”
Job’s three friends had no answers left, and they just started saying the same things all over again.
“I’ve heard all this before”, Job said in the end, “You’re a miserable lot of comforters! I’m ready to die, I don’t know why God doesn’t take me away!”
The other two said some more things along the same lines and Job said, “Well, I don’t know why this is all happening, but one thing I DO know, I know that one day I will see God with my eyes, and that He will come to this earth. Even though I can’t find Him now, I know He can see me!”
Job’s friends had come to an end of talking, and Bildad made a short speech saying, “Well, how CAN a person be made clean before God? We’re all just like worms anyway!”
Job seemed to gather strength, and he started to talk about how great God was and about all the wonderful things He had made like the stars and the animals, and all the gold and silver that were in the earth.
“The most important thing of the lot,” he went on to say, “is to fear the Lord and follow Him, THAT is the true wisdom!”
While all this conversation was going on between them, another man had come along and sat down with them. When he could see that Job’s three friends had finished talking, then he started. “Look here Job,” he said, “You want God to talk to you. Well, I’LL talk to you and tell you where you’ve gone wrong. I’m a lot younger than the rest of you, but I know a few things. Look how God orders the weather that we get! He brings the rain and the snow, and He spreads out the clouds in the sky. He is awesome, and no-one else is as great as He is!”
While he was talking, the sky got darker and darker. Enormous clouds began to form, and they could see the clouds were bringing a tornado. As the wind picked up and began to whirl around, they all heard this Voice seeming to come out of the wind.
“None of you know what you’ve been talking about! Where were you all when I made the earth, the moon and the stars? When I told the tides to go in and out, and stopped the waves going any further than the beaches?”
They were all afraid as the Voice went on. Somehow, they knew that it was God Who was talking to them. “Have you made the hawks fly high in the sky? The peacocks with their beautiful feathers? And made the ostriches have no brains when it comes to laying its eggs in the sand and leaving them?”
Then God spoke directly to Job. “You didn’t know what you were talking about! Can you make the great whales in the sea, and the sea monsters?”
“Oh,” said Job, “I see now that I didn’t know what I as talking about! I wish I’d kept my mouth shut!” and he put his face down towards the ground.
God spoke to the others there next, and told them that they were quite wrong to have blamed Job for his troubles. None of them knew the real reason for them. It was nothing to do with Job being good or bad; it was to prove to Satan that Job would stand firm for God. Even though he wished he had never been born, yet he had never blamed God for his trouble.
“Now you others are to get an animal sacrifice each, and get Job to pray for you,” God said to them, “None of you have spoken right about Me like Job has. When Job does this, I will forgive you your foolishness.”
Job prayed for his friends in spite of the horrid things they had said to him….what a lesson this is to us! God forgave them, and then all Job’s other friends and relations came around and brought him presents to make up for the things he had lost.
The Bible tells us this about the end of Job…..
So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters.
And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Keren-happuch. And in all the land were no women found so fair and beautiful as the daughters of Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brothers.
So the next time we see bad things happening to good people, we know that perhaps it is so God can point to them and say to Satan, “Look at My servant there, I know that he (or she) will stand firm for Me no matter what happens!” Let’s make sure that we never let God down by complaining and moaning when things go wrong, but hold our head high and say like Job did, ” Even if God were to kill me, I would still trust in Him. I KNOW He is my salvation in spite of everything!”
Jack and his sister Sue were squabbling out in the yard. Jack was playing with his new toy car, and Sue wanted to have a turn. She got very cross when Jack picked it up and ran inside. She followed him and tried to take it from him.
