Ray Comfort's Blog, page 30

A Study in Job

Again, the Scriptures pull back the veil so that we have insight into the eternal:

Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil? And still he holds fast to his integrity, although you incited Me against him, to destroy him without cause.” (Job 2:3).

Satan hissed, “Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will surely curse You to Your face!” And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand, but spare his life.” (Job 2:4-6).

So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and struck Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took for himself a piece of pottery and scraped his wounds while he sat in the midst of the ashes. He had lost everything but his beloved wife. Perhaps she would comfort him. But look at what she said,

“Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!”

It’s easy to vilify Job’s wife as a shallow godless and unfaithful woman, who failed to be a helpmate to her beloved husband. But let’s not be too quick to judge this poor woman. Like Job, her life was picture-perfect. She was rightly respected because of her social position next to her esteemed hubby. She had born ten healthy children, and she was happy in the knowledge that their future was financially secure. Who doesn’t want that for their kids? If anyone ever had God’s blessing it was Job, his wife, and their ten children. Then, in a moment of time, her precious children were dead; all ten of them. Who ever heard of such a tragedy!

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A Study in Job

The truth is, the best of us deserve wrath and Hell. The only reason that we are still drawing breath is that He is good, kind, and that He’s rich in mercy. Job knew this. Bible commentator Matthew Henry said of him:
“The devil tempts his own children, and draws them to sin, and afterwards torments, when he has brought them to ruin; but this child of God he tormented with affliction, and then tempted to make a bad use of his affliction. He provoked Job to curse God. The disease was very grievous. If at any time we are tried with sore and grievous distempers, let us not think ourselves dealt with otherwise than as God sometimes deals with the best of his saints and servants. Job humbled himself under the mighty hand of God, and brought his mind to his condition. His wife was spared to him, to be a troubler and tempter to him. Satan still endeavors to draw men from God, as he did our first parents, by suggesting hard thoughts of Him, than which nothing is more false. But Job resisted and overcame the temptation.”
Tragedy struck the hardest of blows to poor Job. He had lost his servants, his wealth, and he had lost his beloved children, despite the fact that he had so diligently sanctified them, such was his love and concern for their happiness. Now they were gone.

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A Study in Job

Jesus warned that the storms of this life fall on the just and the unjust:

“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall” (Matthew 7:24-26).

The difference between the two is seen in whether or not the house falls.

Everything good we have comes from God—the rain, the sunshine, our health, our food, cute kittens, super-cute puppies, beautiful babies, pure white driven snow, deep blue sea filled with tasty fish, cool water to drink, succulent fruit to eat, and fresh air to breathe: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17). However, instead of having a heart-felt thankfulness to God for all these undeserved blessings, this wicked world ignores His will, blasphemes His name, kills unborn children, fornicates and commits adultery, glorifies pornography, mocks the Word of God, promotes homosexuality, despises His gospel, and says that evolution gave us all these blessings of life. But the irony is that when tragedy strikes, they intuitively remember God and ask, “What did I do to deserve this?”

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A Study in Job

Job and Evil

Modern prosperity preachers set people up for a fall when the promise that those who trust in Jesus will have a life that is problem free. We don’t have to look too far to find some Christian who is going through a Job experience. In a moment of time, the godliest of us can lose savings, get a terminal disease, be involved in a serious car accident, or be the victims of violent crime, and have our lives irreparably shattered. This is not negative talk or the speech of unbelief. It is both biblical and reality in a fallen creation. We don’t live in dread of the future, but neither do we live in a world of make believe.

I know of a most respected pastor of a large church whose precious wife has serious Alzheimer’s. He has lost the love of his life. He also has lung cancer. They are both elderly, and bar a miracle in this life, their future looks very bleak. But as godly people, according to Romans 8:28 their dark experience is working for their good. They are going through it today, there’s a possibility that you and I may go through a fiery trial tomorrow:

“Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you…” (1 Peter 4:12).

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A Study in Job

A friend once told me that he had had a terrible morning. His car broke down, and he had to go to the expense of renting a vehicle to get to work and the hassle of getting his repaired. But then his eyes lit up with joy as he told me that he had bumped into a man at the repair shop who listened intently as the gospel was shared. The man had been prepared by God for this conversation. My friend was convinced that it was a divine encounter, and it made sense of the morning’s hassle.

Often the Christian doesn’t have to look too far to see God’s hand in life’s trials. God promises to work all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes (Romans 8:28). So I, in a semi-jest cynically responded to my friend Scotty, “So what was the purpose of Job’s experience, as he sat in misery covered with sore boils from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet? Was he holding a gospel tract and looking for some divine encounter?” I couldn’t see too much light in Job’s long and dark experience, other than the divine revelation that he was vile, and I knew that there was a less painful way to get that.

Scotty smiled and said, “Are you kidding? Millions have taken comfort from Job’s experience.” It was a “duh” moment for me. It was true! Millions of people have found consolation in their sufferings because of the Book of Job. The Maker of the universe looked into the future to the day when billions of copies of the Bible would be printed and bring light to those who find themselves in terrible darkness. Job had no idea how much good would come from such suffering. He didn’t know that he would be admired down and preached and written about through the ages:

“My brethren, take the prophets, who spoke in the name of the Lord, as an example of suffering and patience. Indeed we count them blessed who endure. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and seen the end intended by the Lord—that the Lord is very compassionate and merciful” (James 5:9-11, NKJV).

He had no idea that he would become one of the greatest heroes of the best-selling book of all time, which would be published more than 3,000 years after his dreadful experience.

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A Study in Job

Job was different. He was insightful and thankful, even in his unregenerate state. Look at his humble words as his life was torn apart:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Charles Spurgeon put his words into perspective when he said,

“Job lost his ten children at a stroke. O Death, what an insatiable archer you were that day, when ten must fall at once! Yet Job says, ‘The Lord hath taken away.’ That is all he has to say about it: ‘The Lord hath taken away.’ I need not repeat to you the story of the gardener who missed a choice rose, but who could not complain because the master had plucked it. Do you feel that it is just so with all that you have, if he takes it? Oh, yes! Why should he not take it? If I were to go about my house, and take down an ornament or anything from the walls, would anybody say a word to me? Suppose my dear wife should say to the servant, ‘Where has that picture gone?’ and the maid replied, ‘Oh, the master took it!’ Would she find fault? Oh, no! If it had been a servant who took it down, or a stranger who removed it, she might have said something; but not when I took it, for it is mine. And surely we will let God be Master in His own house; where we are only the children, he shall take whatever He pleases of all He has lent us for a while. It is easy to stand here and say this; but, brothers and sisters, let us try to say it if it should ever come to us as a matter of fact that the Lord who gave should also take away.”

What wise and wonderful words! Job held onto the things of this world with a loose hand, and so much we want to buttress ourselves against inevitable suffering. Job’s words need to be close to all of our hearts because his experience could happen to any of us in a moment of time. Every day we hear of lives being torn apart by bombs, tornados, hurricanes and accidents, and so that attitude is our fortification and consolation. We are mere custodians of loved ones. They belong to God as He is their Creator.

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A Study in Job

So the supernatural Book of Job is entirely in keeping with the rest of the supernatural Word of God. Like many other strange instances in Holy Scripture, the four men coming to Job with the exact same account may be hard to swallow, but gnat-straining thoughts of doubt will only keep us from the comforting truths of Holy Scripture. It is a freeing thing to be able to let go of doubt and rest in knowledge-based trust. It’s like a man who has never flown in a plane, letting go of his natural reasoning. He could sit in his seat indignantly mumbling that it is impossible for human beings to fly at 35,000 feet in the air in a massive steal can with wings, at 500 miles per hour. Then again, he may say that it’s a reality that he can’t deny and relax, or he can reason a little and consider how gravity can be superseded by the law of aerodynamics, and a steal can, can be airtight and filled with renewable air to keep human beings alive at that height. So you and I can rest in the fact that all of us that believe in a Creator of creation believe in the supernatural, or we can have a knowledge-based trust that works things out a little by realizing that God has deliberately placed strange and hard-to-believe instances in the Scriptures, to humble the proud. All who trust that the Bible is the Word of God are forced to humble themselves and become as a little child, much to the scorn of a proud and godless world. But that is the way of salvation. The door has been made low to exclude those who are wise in their own conceits. God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

So how did Job handle the fourfold and terrible news? He didn’t hold his fist to the heavens and accuse God of some sort of wrong. The man tore his robe, shaved his head and fell onto the ground and worshipped God. He was a godly man and he therefore knew that He is the giver of life, and ultimately He’s the One that takes it away. That was his fortification. Every blessing and every good gift comes from above.

But this isn’t how the ungodly think. God isn’t in their thoughts (see Psalm 10:4). Millions don’t attribute the blessings of loved ones, food, light, the seasons, color, beauty, fruits, eyesight, hearing and their own lives to God. They think that they are the mere product of change. There was a big bang, and there you have it, we are here. No one is to be thanked for anything. Others believe in the existence of God, but never even think to bow their heads in prayer and thank Him for His amazing kindness. Even though their very ability to breathe comes from their Creator, if you ask what God has done for them, they will shake their heads and say, “I can’t think of anything.” I know because I have asked many people that question. I also know because I was once in darkness, alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that was in me because of the blindness of my heart.

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A Study in Job

If you have never been born again (see John chapter 3) you are a natural man or woman. You therefore have a few intellectual problems that make you gasp a little when it comes to the subject of God and the supernatural. Let me ask you some questions to see if I can pin-point it for you. What was in the beginning? What produced this huge, incredible natural world in which we live? If you say it was the “big bang,” then where did the materials come from to make the big bang? If the Big Bang was the product, who or what was the producer?

Sound travels in waves as does light and heat, but unlike light and heat, sound moves by making molecules vibrate. So, for sound to travel anywhere there must be molecules for it to travel. Sound travels on earth to our ears by vibrating air molecules, but there are no molecules in space. Therefore there was no bang in space, because there are no molecules to vibrate. So if the Big Bang happened, it was more of a Big Silence. So what was it the caused this Big Silence to explode? You can’t say that it caused itself, because to do so it would have had to pre-exist itself to cause itself to explode. If it pre-existed itself, then it wasn’t the beginning, because it already existed. It’s not only scientifically impossible for something to create itself, it’s common sense.

The only rational explanation is that something immaterial, eternal, and unspeakably powerful created this world. It had to be something supernatural. So you are forced to fall back on a belief in the supernatural, and you are therefore saying that the impossible happened--something supernatural created everything, from nothing. That’s a belief in something that’s much bigger than a mere belief in flying pigs. So, if the supernatural had a hand in making birds, flower, trees, fruit, horses, cows, elephants, milk, cheese, eggs and butter, it’s only natural to believe in the supernatural as portrayed to us in the Bible.

Chapter one of Job necessitates the supernatural. Whoever penned its 42 chapters was either supernaturally lifted into Heaven to witness and record the dialogue between God and Satan and then Job and his three friends, or it was supernaturally given to him by divine revelation.

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A Study in Job

The Scriptures speak of only two classes of people living on this massive earth—the natural man (or woman) and the spiritual man (or woman). If you are a natural person, you live and think in the realm of nature. You understand through your natural senses, and everything has a natural and rational explanation. For you, pigs don’t fly, and people don’t walk on water. Seas don’t open up and allow masses of human beings to walk through them. Snakes and donkeys don’t talk, walls don’t fall down when people shout, arks don’t carry animals two-by-two, the blind aren’t made to see with the touch of a hand, and the dead aren’t brought back to life with a spoken word.

But the spiritual man and woman see things very differently. For them, anything goes because they are dealing with the super-natural. With God anything is possible. Demon-possessed pigs can fly off cliffs, snakes and donkeys can talk, the deaf can hear, the blind can see, and what’s more, nothing needs to be explained. God created natural law, and He can suspend His own natural law any time He wishes.

As a Christian, I don’t wrestle with whether or not Jesus multiplied the bread and fish. I wonder how He did it. Were the fish cooked? Did the crowd of 5,000 plus people who ate it eat fish that was identical to the fish that He multiplied? How deep did the feet of Jesus go into the water upon which He walked? When the children of Israel walked through the Red Sea, could they see fish in the walls of water on each side?

There’s a reason that the person who is born again never doubts the miracles of God. They have had their own big miracle. The moment they repented they came to know God, their eyes and ears were opened, and faith came as a gift from God. It’s as though their lungs had been clogged with the filth of sin, and God had given them a heart/lung transplant. Believing the Bible came as naturally as breathing with a set of new and healthy lungs. A new life and “times of refreshing came from the presence of the Lord.”
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A Study in Job

The book begins with the ultimate Foreword—an incredible character reference:

“There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil” (Job 1:1).

Job was a sinner, and like the rest of us he battled against his sinful nature. However, he was “blameless” (no doubt through the sacrificial system), and he uniquely feared God and rejected evil. He wasn’t “born again” with a new nature, regenerated as the believer is in Christ, with the Holy Spirit helping him in his weaknesses. Yet in his unregenerate state, he shunned evil. That’s amazing for a human being, of whom Jesus testified that we love the darkness and hate light. We run at sin as a moth flies to a flame.

The cynic may look at Job and say that there was a reason he shunned evil. Poor people steal because they want to be rich. Job had no reason to steal because he was already rich. He was very rich. He had no reason to covet, be greedy or bitter at life’s realities, or be envious or jealous of others. So there go half of the seven deadly sins that poor people have to battle. Here’s how rich he was:

“And seven sons and three daughters were born to him. Also, his possessions were seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very large household, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East” (Job 1:2-3).

Job was rich, powerful, and he was blessed with ten healthy and happy kids. He had it made. However, the veil into the supernatural world is pulled back to give us a glimpse into the spiritual realm. Here we see God Himself speaking about Job to the ultimate cynic:

“Then the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?’ So Satan answered the Lord and said, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But now, stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face!’ And the Lord said to Satan, ‘Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand on his person.’ So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord” (Job 1:8-12).

We are then told that Job’s children were celebrating in their oldest brother’s house, when a messenger came and told Job that thieves had stolen most of his animals and killed his servants. Then the messenger said, “…and I alone have escaped to tell you!” While he was still speaking, another messenger arrived and said that Job’s sheep and more of his servants had been struck by lightning and killed. Then he said, “…and I alone have escaped to tell you!” While he was still speaking, another messenger arrived, and said that Job’s camels had been stolen, more of his servants murdered, and then the messenger said, “…and I alone have escaped to tell you!” Then (believe it or not), while he was still speaking another messenger came and said that Job’s beloved children were partying when a tornado hit the house in which they were sitting. All four corners collapsed, and killed them. Then the messenger said (you guessed it) “…and I alone have escaped to tell you!”

The Bible is full of, well, things that are intellectually embarrassing, and this is one of them. The narrative sounds like some sort of four-men-came-into-a-bar joke or the beginning of a Grimm’s fairytale. There are four disasters, and with each disaster only one person was saved. Each one finds Job and parrots the exact same sentence. For two servants to show up and say the same thing would be an amazing coincidence. Three is a big stretch. But four is ridiculous….that’s unless it’s in the Bible. It’s because it is in Scripture that the dynamic radically changes. If it’s in the Bible we are no longer talking about a coincidence or a big stretch. We are talking about the Supernatural.

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