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Beloved congregation of Christ,

This morning we’re beginning a series on the book of Job. We’re not going to
go verse-by-verse through the entire book. We’re going to look at some of the
highlights of the book to help us get a good grasp on its overall message. Later
in the year we’ll come back to the Gospel According to John.

But today we’re starting with Job. Now if I were to ask you what the book of
Job is about, I imagine many of you would immediately say “suffering.” When
we think of the man Job, we think of the horrible suffering he experienced.
We think of the questions he asked, the despair he experienced, the miserable
friends who gave him no comfort. All of that certainly is in the book of Job.
The book of Job is about suffering. It definitely talks about suffering and
teaches us to think properly about suffering. So it speaks into our lives when
we’re experiencing trials and difficulties too, whether that’s with our health or
our finances, or family troubles, or whatever.

However, the main message of the book of Job isn’t about suffering. It’s about
God. It’s about God’s reputation, God’s glory, God’s sovereign rule, God’s
purposes, God’s wisdom. You see, our tendency as human beings is to right
away focus on the horizontal. That happens even when we’re reading and
studying the Bible. We right away go to us. What does it say about me? But
we forget that the whole Bible is a revelation of who God is. God is showing us
first of all who he is. That ultimately brings us to Jesus Christ. All of Scripture
ultimately brings us to him. This is true of Job as well. In Job, God speaks to us
about us, yes, but in the first place we need to see how he reveals himself to
us.
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The book begins with a description of Job. We don’t know exactly when he
lived, but it was mostly likely during or maybe before Abraham’s time. So Job
wasn’t Jewish. Job wasn’t an Israelite. He was like Melchizedek in the book of
Genesis. He was a godly believer, but not connected biologically with
Abraham’s family.

After the initial description of Job, the scene shifts to heaven. There’s a
meeting, a heavenly council. The “sons of God” are called to meet with God.
Here in Job, the “sons of God” refers to the angels. They’re all called to give an
account of their activities. That includes Satan. Satan is the leader of the evil
angels. He is real and the account of him here is historical. This isn’t an
allegory or parable, but the true story of what happened behind the scenes.
This wicked angel Satan was also called to account for what he had been doing.
Even though he’s a rebel against God, he’s still accountable to God. Satan tells
God in verse 7 that he’d been roaming throughout the earth. And that
comment then leads us into our text. Our text is about God. It’s about Satan’s
opposition to God. It’s about his cynicism towards God and his work. The
theme of the sermon is this: When it’s God’s work, cynicism is senseless.

We’ll see how:

1. God had worked in Job’s life

2. Satan was senselessly cynical
3. God remained confident in his work
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Please look with me at verse 8. God speaks to Satan. Satan has been prowling
around the earth. God asks him whether he’s noticed Job: “Have you
considered my servant Job?” When God calls someone his servant in the Old
Testament, that’s remarkable. Not just anybody gets called God’s servant. It’s
what God calls believers like Moses, David, and Isaiah.

God doesn’t stop there in verse 8. He goes on to note that there’s no one else
like Job on the earth. That suggests that Job lived before men like Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. Job really stands out in his day.

The reason he stands out is because he is “a blameless and upright man, who
fears God and turns away from evil.” Let me first tell you what that doesn’t
mean. It doesn’t mean that Job was morally perfect. It doesn’t mean that Job
was sinless and completely holy. How do we know that? Well, for one thing,
the Bible is clear in other places that every human being has a sinful heart.
Romans 3 quotes Psalm 14, “None is righteous, no, not one.” That includes
Job. The only exception was Jesus Christ – Jesus is the only sinless human
being. For another thing, if you keep reading in the book of Job, you’ll find
that at the end of the book, Job repents. Sinners repent. Job repented.
Therefore Job was a sinner. He’s not a perfect super-saint.

So what does God mean when he describes Job as a “blameless and upright
man”? That’s referring to Job’s overall way of life. He was a pious man, a man
whose life showed that he believed in God. He made it his habit to follow
God’s ways. That doesn’t mean he never sinned. But when he did sin, he
hated it and asked for God’s forgiveness and renewal. He was never happy
about his sin, but wanted to fight against it. He made it his aim to turn away
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from evil, from what God would consider wicked and sinful. Job was living like
a believer, showing the fruits of faith in his life.

God also says that Job was one who feared him. When applied to a believer,
“the fear of God” is not dread. It’s not terror. When applied to a believer, “the
fear of God” is more like an awe and reverence for God. Incredible respect.
Rather than being afraid of God hurting you, you’re afraid of doing anything
God would regard as sinful. Job had that fear of God. In his heart was the
desire to please God and walk in his ways.

Now an important question to ask here is: how did Job get the fear of God in
his heart? How did Job get this desire to please God and walk in his ways?
How did Job end up being a pious man who made it his habit to follow God’s
will? It’s exactly the same way anyone ends up being a God-fearing believer
today. It’s because of God’s work. It’s because God has worked in that heart
with his Holy Spirit. First Corinthians 2 says the natural person doesn’t accept
the things of the Spirit of God. That can only change when God changes the
heart with his Holy Spirit. It can only change when there’s regeneration, when
someone is born again through the Holy Spirit.

That tells us something about God. Jeremiah 13:23 says, “Can the Ethiopian
change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are
accustomed to do evil.” For human beings regeneration is impossible. Faith is
impossible. The fruits of faith are impossible. We can’t change our hearts. We
can’t change our lives. But God can. God has the power to do what for us is
impossible. God alone has the power to turn a heart of stone into a heart of
flesh. First Peter 1 speaks about that reality. It speaks of God who caused us
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to be born again by his mercy. Later in the chapter, the Holy Spirit describes
those who have been born again, not from themselves, but through God,
through the living and abiding word of God.

That’s what happened with Job. Job was a blameless and upright man because
of God’s work in his life. God had worked in his heart with his Holy Spirit. Job
believed because God gave him the gift of faith. Job experienced God’s
forgiveness because God was gracious. Job lived the life of a believer because
God gave him sanctification through the Holy Spirit. He gave him
sanctification, that process of growing in holiness. Job was God’s star believer.
Job was a powerful living example of what God can do in a sinful human being.
In this way, Job was bringing glory and honour to God. His life was moving in
the direction God had designed human life to move.

Have you experienced this work of God’s grace in your life? Would God
consider you blameless and upright, someone who fears him and turns away
from evil? Let me tell you how I’d answer that question. God has been at
work in my life. I know this because I have faith in Jesus Christ. I trust him as
my Saviour. So I know I’ve been born again. And I praise God for that. It’s his
work in me. But am I blameless and upright? I want to be. But I feel like I’m
far from it. Do I fear God? I want to. I do sometimes. But I don’t always do so
as consistently as I want. Do I turn away from evil? My desire is to do that.
But again, there are times when I turn to evil and not away from it. Can you
relate?

Listen loved ones, despite our inconsistencies, God has been at work, and he
continues to be at work in our lives. When we have Jesus as our Saviour, God
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is gracious and compassionate towards us. Through Jesus and what he did on
the cross, God forgives our sins and weaknesses. And we can pray to our
Father and ask him to continue his work of grace in our lives with his Holy Spirit
– and because that’s a prayer that pleases him, he’ll hear and answer. When
we pray for growth in being blameless and upright, God will hear and answer.
When we pray for help in fearing him more, God will respond. When we pray
for God’s help to turn away from evil, that pleases him and he’ll do it. He’ll
give us the help. Because we have our Saviour in heaven, Jesus intercedes for
us, he pleads our case, and God will work. He’ll do it for his glory and also for
our welfare, so that we flourish. The gospel promises us this blessing.

Sadly, there are those who are cynical about God’s work. What does it mean
to be cynical? It means to be negative and doubtful. When you’re cynical, you
question the sincerity of what you’re hearing or seeing. If you’re known as a
cynic, people probably don’t have a positive view of you, or view you as a
positive person. And the greatest cynic in the universe is a fallen angel named
Satan. What he’s most cynical about is God.

You see it in our passage. Please look with me at verse 9. You can almost
imagine Satan saying this with a sneer, “Does Job fear God for no reason?”
He’s scoffing at God and what he claims about Job. Really, Satan is mocking
what God claims about his work in Job’s life.

Satan goes further. He says that God has put a hedge around Job, protected
his house and his belongings. Everything Job does is blessed. He has
everything going for him. He has all these animals in his possession. Job is
prosperous. The only reason that Job serves God is because of God’s blessings.
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It’s a quid pro quo, a tit for tat. You do this for me, I do this for you. Basically,
Satan is saying that Job follows what we call the prosperity gospel. When you
believe in God, he gives you prosperity. When you obey God, he makes it
worth your while. But that’s a lie. It’s a lie that’s around us today. Sadly, there
are many churches here and around the world preaching this lie, this lie of the
prosperity gospel. They’re preaching that God is just a means to an end, and
that end is what you want. You want to be healthy, you want to be wealthy,
go to God. But as someone once said, if you’re coming to God for money, then
he isn’t your God, money is.

But here in Job 1, that’s what Satan is claiming is the case with Job and God.
Their relationship is just based on this mutually beneficial arrangement. God
gets Job’s belief, devotion, obedience. Job gets God’s blessings. Satan is being
completely cynical about what God has said regarding his servant Job. He’s
saying that God is naïve and unrealistic about what’s really going on with Job.
It’s not God’s work in Job, but pure self-interest. Job just does what he has to
do to get what he wants from God.

And Satan thinks he has a way to prove that his cynicism is justified. Let’s have
a test. If God stretches out his hand and destroys everything in Job’s
possession, Job will surely curse God to his face. Take away the blessing and
what’ll you be left with is curse. Then it’ll be obvious that Job was just a sinful
unbeliever like everyone else and his piety was just a sham. Then it’ll be
obvious that Job didn’t belong to God at all, but that he was actually serving
the enemy. Job was serving the father of lies. That’s what Satan was trying to
say.
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Satan’s cynicism here is so typical of this evil fallen angel. You see him being
cynical like this already in the Garden of Eden. Did God really say? No, God
just doesn’t want you to be like him. That was Satan being cynical about God’s
Word. You see Satan being cynical like this later in the temptations Jesus
experiences in the wilderness. Satan tells Jesus to thrown himself off the
temple, because didn’t God say that he would catch him with his angels? That
was Satan again being cynical about God’s Word. Cynicism is deeply
embedded in his character and it’s directed mainly against God.

But what I want you to see most is that Satan’s cynicism is senseless. It makes
no sense. It’s irrational. Why do I say that? Because the one who spoke about
Job in verse 8 is God. God is the source of all truth and rationality. Everything
God does and says ultimately makes sense. Satan can only speak words with
meanings because there is a God behind the use of language which makes
sense. Satan can only speak his cynical words because God is the one who
created communication, language, and even angels. This God is always
truthful. For Satan to say otherwise, for Satan to be cynical about God, is just
stupid. It makes no sense. But that’s Satan for you. It’s what he does. The
evil he does is just irrational.

All sin is irrational, whether it’s committed by Satan or by us. And being cynical
about what God has declared is senseless, whether it’s done by Satan or by
human beings. It is objectively senseless. Again, that’s directly because of who
God is, objectively speaking. It doesn’t matter how you feel about God. What
matters is how God really is, in himself. And he’s revealed that in the Bible.
He’s revealed himself to be the God of truth. He’s the source of truth. God is
the foundation of truth. He’s revealed himself to be the God who always sees
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things exactly the way they really are. With his Holy Spirit in our hearts, we
can see this. When we have Christ as our Saviour, we’ve been saved from this
senseless cynicism. We’ve been saved from its consequences – an eternity in
hell, but Christ also saves us from the power of cynicism in our lives. Instead of
being cynical about what God says in the Bible, we can hear the words of our
Father who loves us. Instead of sneering at Scripture, we can hear our Father
speaking, the one who loved us so much that he gave his Son for us.

As we look now at verse 12, you might think it remarkable or odd that God
allows Satan’s challenge to stand. He could have rebuked Satan. He could
have sent him away. He could have destroyed him then and there.
Remember: Satan is not God’s evil equal. God has authority over him. God
can do with Satan whatever he wants. But God doesn’t rebuke him or destroy
him. Instead, he says, “Behold, all that he has in your hand. Only against him
do not stretch out your hand.”

Note that in verse 11, Satan said that God should stretch out his hand and
smite Job. But here in verse 12, God gives permission to Satan to do that.
Satan thinks that he’s right in being cynical. Well, then he can try and prove it.
He can try and justify his cynicism.

Why does God allow Satan to do this? Job doesn’t get the answer to the
question of why he suffers. God never tells him. In the following chapters, Job
will repeatedly ask “Why?” But even as you get to the end of the book, the
question isn’t answered for Job. God doesn’t tell him. That can happen with
us too. Sometimes we suffer and eventually God shows us that there was
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some good reason for it. But many other times, we suffer and God hides the
answers from us. I’ve experienced that and many of you have too.

But here with Job, even though he doesn’t get the answer, he doesn’t know
what’s going behind the scenes, we do. God reveals it to us. God is going to
prove that he is right and Satan is wrong. God is confident about the work of
his Holy Spirit in Job’s life. He is sure that no amount of suffering will be able
to overthrow what the Holy Spirit has done and is doing in Job’s heart. And
ultimately, this is going to bring glory to God. It will help people to be
impressed with God. That’s ultimately what God is doing here in verse 12.

Someone might raise a question here though. Someone might say, “Isn’t it
selfish for God to seek his own glory through anything, let alone through this?”
Think about it like this: I’m not an athlete. I’ve never played footy. But
despite that, imagine if I would be awarded the Brownlow Medal this year.
Everyone would realize that’s totally crazy, totally inappropriate. But what if
it’s awarded to Lachie Neale again? Despite what you may think of him or his
team, you’ll agree it’s quite a bit more appropriate for him to get it than me.
He’s a talented athlete. Lachie Neale deserves the recognition and praise.
That’s just a pale comparison with God, the God of infinite majesty. What’s
appropriate for the infinitely exalted God to receive? Doesn’t he deserve all
the glory and honour? And if he’s infinitely wise as well, can’t he be trusted to
get glory for himself in the best possible way?

As it happens, the way God brings glory to himself also serves for the benefit of
believers. Even if that’s through suffering. First Peter 1 speaks of believers
being grieved by various trials. But the Holy Spirit says it’s necessary. And
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believers can even rejoice because of what these trials do to our faith. They
show our faith to be the real deal and that “results in praise and glory and
honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” When Christ returns, our trial-tested
faith brings praise, glory, and honour for our Saviour.

At the end of verse 12, Satan goes out from God’s presence. He goes out to
afflict Job. As we read Job’s story, we can feel for him as he suffers. We can
empathize with his many questions. But ultimately, we have to look beyond
Job. God was at work. God preserved Job’s faith. He knew that Job would
never fall to Satan, because he knew who was living in Job’s heart. God knew
the Holy Spirit was there. And this is true for all God’s children in Jesus Christ.
When we have faith in Jesus Christ, we can be confident that God is confident
about his work in us. Because it’s his Spirit who gives us regeneration and
faith. No matter what trial we face, we can have the confidence and comfort
the apostle Paul expressed in 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, and I’ll end with this:
“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your
whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” AMEN.

PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

We worship you as the God of our salvation. We praise you for your work of
regeneration in our hearts. When we have faith in Christ, it’s because of you,
not because of us. When we desire to live a holy life, it’s because of you,
because of your Spirit in us. You worked in Job’s life and we thank you that
you work in our lives too. Please continue your work. Please give us all faith in
Christ. Make us more and more blameless and upright. Teach us to fear you
more and to turn away from evil more consistently. Father, please help us also
to see the senselessness of cynicism about what you’ve said in your Word.
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Teach us to see the irrationality of questioning or doubting you. And we also

pray that you would help us to be confident about your work in our lives,
especially when we face trials and suffer. For those among us who are
suffering right now, we pray that you would give them assurance and
confidence about your purposes and your plan for them. Give them comfort
and strength with your Holy Spirit and help them not to despair of your
goodness and how you’ll work out everything for your glory and our good.
Please show your mercy and favour.