How'd You Like To Be Job?

I don't know why the book of Job fascinates me so much. Maybe it's because so many people are quick to put God and the devil playing a chess match with Job in the middle. I think this one passage of Scripture has been so misquoted and it aggravates me that God gets blamed in this way. Let's look at it for a minute.

Job 1:21, "And Job said, Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised."

This passage of Scripture gets quoted a lot at funerals, and while it has the appearance of being Godly, I really think it has been used by the enemy to confuse and bother people more than anything else. It's plain to see from the passages before this, (Job 1:12 -19) that it wasn't the Lord that had taken from Job, it was the devil. Job in his limited understanding of what was happening determined that it must have been the Lord, even though it wasn't.

Deception. That is the enemy's number one tool. He works to deceive us every chance he gets. If he can get us to thinking that God is the one doing things, or we have through some lack of effort on our part caused the calamity to happen, then he has won a small victory. He loves to take himself out of the equation when bad things happen, then sit back and watch us scramble around trying to affix the blame to someone other than where it belongs.

Notice the earlier passages (verses 13 -19) when the messengers start to come in. The first one arrives and tells how all of Job's oxen and donkeys were taken and his servants killed. While this guy is telling Job what has happened, the second messenger arrives and tells how all the sheep and servants were killed by fire from the sky. Before he can finish, a third messenger shows up and tells Job that all his camels are gone and the servants killed.

But the worst news came when the last servant arrived and told Job that a mighty wind came out of the desert and destroyed his oldest son's house killing all ten of his children. It is at this point that Job makes the statement found in verse 21. Now I've had some bad days, but I think that we can all agree that Job probably has had the worst day of anyone ever. He lost everything in the course of a few minutes time.

On a side note, did you notice that it was fire from the sky (lightning I'd imagine) and a mighty wind (a tornado) came in from the desert to destroy his son's home? Those sound an awful lot like what insurance companies call "acts of God" to me, does it to you? And if it was the devil that caused the calamity in Job's life, then shouldn't those actually be called "acts of the devil"?

The thing that I want you to see here today is found in verse 22, "In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrong doing." Even though Job said that the Lord takes away, that was not considered in God's mind, charging Him with wrong doing. It says that Job did not sin by charging God with wrong doing. What does that say about us when we do? If we say that some catastrophe in our life is caused by God, then according to this Scripture we are in sin.

I know that I have foolishly charged God with things in my past, but since learning who is behind things, I have corrected that in my life. How about you, have you ever charged God with something that should have been attributed to the devil? If your answer is yes, then you should probably hop on over to 1 John 1:9 and confess your sin to Him and receive the forgiveness that is yours in Christ. You'll be glad you did.

Okay to wrap this up, there is no cosmic chess game going on, the devil is not on equal footing with God. So in the future if bad things happen understand that it isn't God that is doing them, so place the blame square on the devil's shoulders and keep moving forward with God. I like to say it like this, God is good, and the devil is bad. That pretty much covers it in my life. If something good happens, then it is from God, and if something bad happens it is from the devil.

Strength and honor for the Kingdom and the King!