You’re quite familiar with the fact that Job suffered terribly as an indirect result of his faith.
Satan told God — in effect — that Job’s faith was simply an appeasement of God in order to keep getting more wealth and good times.
God disagreed and had so much confidence in Job that he allowed Satan to destroy everything in Job’s life except the fact of his being alive.
In a single day, his children were killed, all his possessions stolen or destroyed, his many servants were murdered and his own physical health decimated to the point just short of death.
Oh yeah, then his wife told him that he should just curse God and die.
Some kind of wife, huh?
In the days that followed, Satan sent along three “friends” who lectured Job on how his misfortune was God’s punishment for some sin that surely had to exist in his life.
The judgmental trio offered a few relevant insights about God that should not be ignored, yet their prevalent remarks were based on ignorance of Job’s context and pride of self.
Rather than comfort as friends are supposed to do, and which they did for the first seven days with Job, they resorted to condemnation.
And we think we have problems?
As I read chapters 12-15 this morning in the One-Year Bible, however, I was profoundly encouraged by vv. 13-18 of chapter 15.
Remember what Job was enduring when he recorded these words. Perhaps then you’ll understand a bit more as to why God was SO proud of him and later poured out blessings on him that exceeded those which he had lost.
If a man dies, will he live again?
All the days of my hard service I will wait for my renewal to come.
You will call and I will answer You;
You will long for the creature Your hands have made.
Surely then You will count my steps but not keep track of my sin.
My offenses will be sealed up in a bag;
You will cover my sin.
Wow.
This is an amazing Old Testament glimpse of the Gospel that Jesus Christ would bring to the world.
Job and Jesus overcame incredible amounts of physical pain, but both knew that people weren’t saved spiritually because they could take pain better than everybody else.
Instead, they knew that eternal hope only comes through God’s choice to not hold a person’s sins against them.
The fact is that salvation only comes by grace.
If I want to go to heaven, God has to seal my offenses up in a bag and throw them into the furnace of hell.
If I want to live forever, my sins have to be covered.
In Jesus, God did both.
God took the punishment for all my sins — past, present and future — and poured it into the flesh of Jesus when He hung on the cross.
He was the bag that was tossed into the torment of hell in order to satisfy the justice due my sins and your sins, too.
And His blood was the covering that I needed so that God would see a soul robed in righteousness and graciously qualified to enjoy a spiritual relationship with God forever.
Dear friend, in the midst of your worst nightmares of pain and heartache, keep praying that God not only sustains you but that He speaks through you into the lives of others.
Pray that your words of praise in the times of pain will honor Him and equip others to see your confidence in Christ.
Perhaps those observing your faith will draw strength from your words just as you and I have drawn strength and evangelistic insight from the words of Job.
