Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? (Job 1:1-12)

We're gonna start in verse 1.

We're gonna make our way to verse 12 today.

Job 1.

There was a man in the country of Uz named Job.

He was a man of complete integrity who feared God and turned away from evil.

He had seven sons and three daughters.

His estate included 7,000 sheep and goats, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and a very large number of servants.

Job was the greatest man among all the people of the East.

His sons used to take turns having banquets at their homes.

They would send an invitation to their three sisters to eat and drink with them.

Whenever a round of banqueting was over, Job would rise early for his children and purify them, rising early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of them.

For Job thought, perhaps my children have sinned, having cursed gods in their hearts.

This was Job's regular practice.

One day the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them.

The Lord asked Satan, Where have you come from?

From roaming the earth, Satan answered him, and walking around on it.

Then the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job?

No one else on the earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil.

Satan answered the Lord, Does Job fear God for nothing?

Haven't you placed a hedge around him, his household, and everything he owns?

You've blessed the works of his hand, and his possessions have increased in the land.

But stretch out your hand and strike everything he owns, and he will surely curse you to your face.

Very well, the Lord told Satan.

Everything he owns is in your power.

However, do not lay a hand on Job himself.

So Satan left the Lord's presence.

Okay, if you'll pray with me briefly.

Dear Lord, we thank you for this day.

We thank you for this opportunity to gather as the body of Christ, Lord God, to read your word and to reflect on your goodness and your will, uh, that we might be just encouraged, strengthened, and equipped.

We pray that uh this day that it would not be just uh my opinions and my words that uh your children hear, but that it would just be the words that you have for them in this time.

So we uh thank you and praise you and pray all these things.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

You may be seated.

Okay.

So, um, Job is a very interesting book.

Job is a book primarily full of lies, dissembling, and misinformation.

Almost everybody who speaks at any point in time in the book of Job is wrong.

Dead wrong.

Okay?

Um, surely none of us can relate to that in our personal lives.

But it's very important when we read the book of Job to realize that when his Job's friends, especially, are talking, they're wrong.

Because it's the worst kind of lies we find.

Often the worst kinds of lies sound like the truth.

Right?

It's written in the Bible.

It sounds very Bible.

But I can guarantee you that Job's friends are wrong and they get chastened by God at the end of the book.

So Job is definitely instructive in terms of keeping in mind the context of what we are reading.

Um, there's a couple reasons that we're teaching out of Job today.

Um, it's what I have been personally studying, and so a lot of the things that I'm gonna be talking about are things that uh God has been teaching me.

And when I was uh talking to Chris and he was saying, Oh, if you're interested in teaching, you can have such and such a day.

Uh I was like, Okay, God, what what should we talk about?

It doesn't have to be Job.

It doesn't have to be Job.

We can talk about anything, God, and God's like, no, we're talking about Job.

Um so it will hopefully be an encouragement today, but it's an encouragement that takes a lot of work from us, changing our point of view on things.

Okay.

Um the other thing worth mentioning is that honestly, I have a hard time with the book of Job.

I think that's one of the things that makes it so beneficial to talk about as a group, is it's okay to struggle with the Bible.

It's okay to wrestle with the Bible.

The one thing that you need to keep in mind when you're having a hard time with a passage or a section of the Bible, right, is that the Bible's right.

And we're not.

Okay?

It is, I would argue, virtuous to struggle with things in the Bible, right?

Jacob wrestled with God.

And he got blessed as a result of wrestling with God in Genesis 23, or sorry, 32, 24, and through 32.

Uh, he got blessed and he got his hip displaced.

So we need to keep that in mind.

When we are wrestling with God, we're struggling with godly precepts, it's going to be a blessing to us.

And that does not mean it's not going to hurt to get there.

But let's go ahead and get started into reading through the text itself.

Okay.

So, Job 1, 1 through 3.

There was a man in the country of Uz named Job.

He was a man of complete integrity who feared God and turned away from evil.

He had seven sons, three daughters, and his estate included 7,000 sheep and goats, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and a large number of servants.

Job was the greatest man amongst all the people of the East.

So I will give you a brief background of the book of Job because we're talking about it and understanding what's going on is important.

So we'll do our who, what, when, where, why.

Who?

Job.

Uh Job is obviously uh the person that this book is primarily about.

Um and Job means a persecuted or afflicted one, a little foreshadowing there.

Um and so he's an important man that everybody in his area knew because he was rich.

He was also a man who followed God, which is important for the what.

Bad things happen to Job.

Lots of bad things.

If you're unfamiliar, he loses everything.

Uh and then the book is kind of processing through that.

I would argue that uh the why of the book of Job is the answer to this question.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Where?

Probably less interesting, the land of Uz.

Um do we know much more than that?

Not with any degree of certainty.

Uh is the son of Shem, Shem, the son of Aram, uh, and it's likely outside of Israel.

When does this book happen?

This book is interesting because it is one of the stories of the oldest happenings in the Bible.

It happens after Isaac, before Moses, as far as we can tell.

Uh our earliest timeline is based on us being born.

And our latest timeline, uh, it's assumed to be pre-Lavitical law, because uh we see that um Job acts as his own priest, which was common before Leviticus was written, but not after.

Um yeah, and so there is some controversy with the book of Job.

Um, it's likely that Job himself did not write the book of Job.

We don't really have any indication that he did.

And there is a big discussion about when the book of Job was specifically written, and it has a lot to do with the stylistic uh uh analysis of the writing, and it's frankly, in my humble opinion, not that profitable.

Um what we do know is that it is the inspired word of God, which means that it's important for us to read and understand this.

Okay?

Uh as a rule, when I'm going through and studying the Bible, when I'm running into arguments and discussions, and they seem to come from uh the position of not believing in the Bible, and they lead to uh coming to conclusions about the Bible that aren't important, I tend to ignore those things.

So that's who, what, when, where, why, the book of Job.

And uh the essential question we are going to answer today is why do bad things happen to good people?

So uh Job is considered to be a righteous man, and we get a delineation in uh Job 1.3 of all the things that he's been blessed with.

So starting in Job 3, or sorry, Job 1.3, his estate included 7,000 sheep and goats, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and a large number of servants.

Job was the greatest man amongst the people of the East.

This sort of gets into the crux of our issue in a way, right?

So we come to the issue of wealth.

And we can see between the Old Testament and the New Testament, people have a very different idea of wealth.

Jesus kind of takes the script and he flips it on its head, right?

He says, it would be very hard for a wealthy man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Whereas a lot of the patriarchs and the people of Israel historically were blessed with wealth, with security for following and obeying God.

Which comes to the question, which is it, right?

And the answer is really that the wealth isn't important.

Okay?

In this context, it's important to know that he was wealthy because we need to understand where he's coming from, what he's losing, and what the perception is of him, right?

He was this big wealthy man, and everybody looked at him and said, Oh, God is blessing this guy.

He must be holy.

But it turns out, even when God is not blessing us with these physical gifts, with financial security, he is still with us.

We can still be in his good favor.

Okay, so it is one of those things, and we tend to feel that way too, right?

When we fall on hard times, and we all fall on hard times, we look at God and we say, God, why?

Why are you letting me go through this trial?

What did I do wrong, and how can I fix it?

Because we think of God in the same way that we think of each other, which is fundamentally wrong.

Okay.

So uh let's take a look at Job 1, 4 through 5.

So, Job's sons used to take turns having banquets at their homes.

They would send invitations to their three sisters to come and eat and drink with them.

Whenever a round of banqueting was over, Job would send for his children and purify them, rising early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of them.

For Job thought, perhaps my children have sinned, having cursed God in their hearts, and this was Job's regular practice.

So, Job is righteous.

We get that right off the bat, and it's a repeated theme.

It's important to understand that Job is righteous according to God, because if we are asking the question, why do bad things happen to good people, we need to answer, is Job a good person?

Well, he's righteous.

Nobody's good, no, not one, but he's righteous.

And his righteousness is established in repentance, right?

So he repents not just for himself, but he's like the prayer warriors in each of our lives from whom we have benefited so much.

Okay?

He, every time his kids get together, prays against the idea that maybe in their heart they thought less of God than they should have.

I don't know, I can't speak for all of your situations, but I myself have many prayer warriors in my life.

I have my mother, I have my father, I have my grandmother who pray for me continuously.

And I can tell you for sure, 100%, that I would not be here or even alive, frankly, without those prayers.

And so Job, in that way, is a prayer warrior for his family.

Okay?

He's praying continuously for them.

Every second of every day, his thoughts are consumed with his family and praying for them.

It's his regular practice.

And this gets into one of the things.

There are two sorts of hints at how Job's righteousness is established.

This is one of the big ones.

He repents early and often because we all mess up.

We all sin.

All have sinned, all fall short of the glory of God.

It's about repentance.

It's about saying, God, I'm going to turn away from that.

Um, which also leads into the other part of his uh righteousness.

If you take a look at uh 1-1, it says that he was a righteous man.

He feared God and he turned away from evil.

Never said he didn't occasion upon evil.

He never walked up and it was there, didn't have intrusive thoughts that came into his head that he didn't have to repent for.

But he turns away actively from evil.

He doesn't sit in there, he doesn't dwell in that.

He goes to God and he brings it to God.

Um, I would also like to encourage you in this time, prayer should not be the last resort.

It's the only thing we have.

It's the best thing we have.

Before you act, pray.

You're putting it backwards if you're doing it the other way about.

Okay.

So our next section is Job 1, 6 through 8.

One day, the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them.

So this picture is uh the angels come up to heaven and they're all making reports to God about whatever they were doing, right?

Uh angel, I believe, literally translates to messenger?

Can somebody yeah, messenger.

So when you relay a message, then you go and report to the person that you relayed the message for, right?

And so when all the angels and Satan are before the Lord, the Lord asks Satan, where have you come from?

Um, and Satan responds, from roaming through the earth, Jesus, uh Satan responds, and walking around on it.

We'll talk more about his response in a minute.

Uh the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job that no one else on the earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil.

So we have a lot to break apart in this verse.

So let's uh start at the top.

We kind of touched on the angels reporting to the Lord and Satan coming with them.

This shows us one of the things that we can forget.

So, in our modern culture, in uh pop culture, in the stories that we read, we often see a betrayal of this battle between good and evil and their equal and opposite forces.

It is important to remember that that is a lie from Satan.

God's in control.

Okay?

So, in the same way that all of the other angels are responsive to the Lord, Satan also shows up, right?

And so he's an accuser, and he goes before the Lord and he accuses the saints.

But he is not equal and opposite.

He is inferior in every way to the Lord our God.

Um, so if you were unaware, if you didn't immediately pop into your head, what part of Job did uh Zachary probably struggle with?

Uh it's right here.

Have you considered my servant Job?

Why?

I hope, this is my personal hope, and it's not the will of the Lord.

Um, I hope the enemy of our soul never has an occasion to even know who I am or what I am called, think about me or the city I live in.

Um, no, thank you.

Um and so it's hard to be like, okay, why is, from my perspective, right, from a human perspective, from a limited and corrupted perspective, why is God doing Job like this?

Why are we bringing Job up?

And so, instead of doing what I can do, which is thinking about it in my own head, in my own room, to myself, and coming to an ultimately twisted and wrong and evil conclusion that would bring me further from the truth, uh, I decided to talk to people I know and trust who love the Lord.

I decided to read through some commentaries and figure out why are we doing Job like this.

Um the Matthew Henry commentary was one of the commentaries I liked when I was going through because it posited several solutions for this, right?

Um it said, which I found helpful, uh, that if you want to understand God's response, you should probably look at the last thing that the other person said, right?

So the Lord asked Satan, where have you been?

And he's like, dude, I was on the earth just like walking around on it.

And parsing that is the important thing, right?

So we know that the fall of man gives a temporary and limited dominion of the earth to Satan.

He has some power on the earth from the fall of man.

I have references, don't worry.

Okay?

So there are some evidences we see from this that the devil was given a temporary and limited dominion over the earth.

Uh one of the uh biggest ones is Jesus' experience in the wilderness, right?

When Jesus is fasting in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, Satan comes to him.

Uh one of the things that Satan offers him is the world.

And Jesus's correction to that, importantly, is not, that's not yours to give, right?

He says, um, oh goodness, I didn't write down his response.

Was that uh you should not tempt the Lord your God?

I want to say.

Um, Paul also in 2 Corinthians 4 refers to Satan as the God of this age.

Jesus refers to the enemy as the ruler of this world in John's account.

Okay, so we can interpret Satan's, oh, I was just on the earth, you know, just walking around, as sort of like a brag, right?

Like the enemy loves to do.

Like, well, you know that thing that you lost to me in the fall of man, I was Just hanging out there.

In which case, God's response is like, hey, don't get it wrong.

You have these powers, you have this limited control, but people still worship me, the God of the universe.

So it could be a rebuttal to Satan's control.

Because God's not worried about the rocks we're standing on, frankly.

He's worried about the people here, their souls.

And so as a rebuttal to, oh yes, I get to, I get to have some limited control over the environment of the earth, God says, but there's still those who worship me.

The other interpretation of that is kind of like hands in the pockets, I didn't do nothing.

Oh yeah, I was just around the earth, just walking around on it.

I wasn't doing anything naughty.

And so this rebuttal to Satan could be okay, not doing anything isn't frankly a defense.

I often find myself teaching kids.

And when I am teaching kids, one of the strong recommendations I give to them is do not attempt to do nothing.

That is the most difficult thing you could endeavor to accomplish.

If you try to do nothing, you will do bad things.

Right?

You can't just sit on your hands and do nothing.

If you're not doing good things, you will be doing bad things.

And so, this is again an example of Job from earlier.

He's turning away from evil, right?

There's no one like him.

He turns away from evil.

That's an active pursuit.

So that can be also a rebuttal to that idea where Satan is claiming innocence.

I didn't do nothing.

And God said, even were that true, which is incredibly unlikely, uh, that's no great defense, right?

I didn't do nothing is not good.

If it were true, it would be just a just a flat neutral.

So let's take a look at that section again before we move.

Have you considered my servant Job?

No one else on the earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity who fears God and turns away from evil.

Then we get into Satan's response.

And unfortunately, we can relate a lot to Satan because we think like that guy in ourselves when we don't have the Holy Spirit correcting us.

Because Satan responds in verse 9 to the Lord.

Does Job fear you for nothing?

Haven't you put a hedge around him, his household, and everything he owns?

You've blessed the work of his hand, and his possessions have increased in the land.

This is the biggest struggle.

This is part of this question.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

We assume that not going through hardships, that having abundance is one of the ways we know we're in good favor with God, right?

This is Satan's well, yeah, if you're doing everything for him.

If it's transactional, well, yeah, you've given him a lot of things.

So yeah, he likes you just fine right now.

But but, Satan says later, if you take it away, we'll really see what's going on.

And to further illustrate that idea, right?

That we can be being blessed by God, whether we have material things or not.

In feasts or famine, we of course we have one of our favorite verses, Philippians 4, 11 through 13, uh, which is Paul saying, I have learned to be content whatever circumstances I find myself.

I know how to make do with little, and I know how to make do with a lot.

In any and all circumstances, I have learned the secret of being content, whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or need, I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me.

We get to this issue, we think that we know what's important and what we need.

And that's often the part we get wrong.

We think, I need a place to live, clean water, food, and we actually ask for a lot more than that, usually, right?

Um, but it's important to remember what Jesus said um in Matthew 4.4.

Man must not live on bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God.

If we're talking about the things that you need, it's nice to have all of the possessions that we have.

It's nice to have a consistent home, a consistent job, it's nice to uh have friends, it's nice to have all of these things, right?

And they're conditional needs, right?

You need to live, you need food, water, and air.

You know what your non-conditional need is?

You need Jesus.

That's what you need.

The rest of it, you need for something else.

Okay?

So if we strip it down to the bare essentials, what we need is Jesus.

And the accuser, Satan, continues, but stretch out your hand and strike everything he owns, and he will surely curse you to your face.

How we respond when we're not being blessed is very telling.

This is how Satan thinks.

This is how the world thinks.

If things are going well, it's easy to be positive about it, it's easy to worship God.

I don't know about your personal experience.

Um, but I find when things are going poorly, I don't have anything but God.

It is for me personally easier to say, God is good when I can't pretend like all of the things that give me comfort and security are uh important, right?

So uh for those of you who don't know, um I lost my job at the end of last year and have been kind of in a limbo point, um, which is probably why God's been encouraging me to read Job.

Um while, you know, you can get mad, you can get frustrated, it's sad, it's tiring to be without work, to be in a limbo state where you don't feel like you have the things that you need.

Um, but it really does reveal what do you need?

And where does that come from?

Okay, so Satan is right about one thing in this.

Everything that Job has, all of its increased uh provisions, all of the protection around him, comes directly from God.

Okay?

We do work because we're called to do work, but work is not what provides for us.

God provides for us.

Okay?

And he doesn't need any help, frankly.

So we do what God calls us to, but we need to understand that every breath, everything we need comes from God.

And it's not something we can brag about.

We can't brag and say, oh, I'm such a smart businessman, that's why I'm doing so well.

Because it all comes from God, he owns it.

So, in verse twelve, the Lord answers Satan.

Very well, the Lord told Satan.

Everything he owns is in your power.

However, do not lay a hand on Job himself.

So Satan left the Lord's presence.

It's important to notice, is Job privy to any of this information?

No.

Uh, in fact, no part of the book of Job tells us that he ever becomes aware of this conversation.

Um, very helpfully, at the end of the book, instead of answering the question that Job has, uh, God calls him to account, um, which is when we get into why bad things happen to good people.

I would love to give you a one, one and done answer that fits every situation.

Uh, I think it's very telling that God doesn't answer it straight up, but instead redirects to the character of God.

Everything that we have is a gift from God.

And the point of everything, and so this is the part where there's a need for change in our mind.

My mind, at least.

I don't want to speak for you, I guess.

Um, we can get so caught up in all of the great things that God does for us, we can forget the point.

The point of creation is to glorify the creator.

God is good.

And he's not good just because he's aligned with our morals, our sensibilities, our feelings, the way we were raised.

He is good, end of sentence.

So when we go through struggles, when we go through hard times and they teach us about God, and they make our relationship closer with God, if they give us opportunities to share God with others, when other people can learn from our suffering about their relationship with God, that's a benefit.

That's a good thing.

Because God is good.

In everything, in every season, in every day, God is still protecting us.

Uh when I was going through a strong bout of depression, um I developed a habit of uh, and I called it a uh uh a litany of uh thankfulness, and I would just sit there, and I would just that was the extent of my prayer life in that season, is I would just sit there, usually in my car, and thank God for all of the things that I did have.

Because even in this, and so what Satan's gonna do in the next section is he's going to kill all of Job's livestock, he's gonna destroy all of his property and kill all of his children.

But God is still protecting Job.

He is still limiting what Satan is doing in this context.

Okay?

God is still in control when everything's falling apart.

And it's hard to take that always, right?

It's hard to say, well, God's letting me go through this.

But we need to be listening because he works everything for good for those who love him and those who are called according to his purposes.

And when we feel like God has turned his face away from us, when we feel like we're not being blessed, oftentimes we are missing the plot.

You'll find this when you're interacting with different people, people upset and they feel like it's the end of the world.

Especially if you work with children, it gives you a perspective on this.

My phone broke.

My life is over.

The cute boy that I like won't even talk to me.

And that's how we are.

We're like, man, I can't make this month's rent.

God's like, okay, there's much more to life than making rent.

There's knowing God.

And importantly, because God knew that we are evil, right?

Uh he kind of proved that everything that he prove puts us through, everything that he allows to happen in our lives to bring us closer to the Him, He was not unwilling to do it Himself.

Okay?

So for me, the most horrifying part of the book of Job is uh when all of His children die.

I think we can all agree that that's pretty much the worst situation that we could imagine.

Um it reminds me of the story of Abraham and Isaac.

So, you probably all know, but I'll remind you anyway.

Uh God tells Abraham to go sacrifice Isaac.

And Abraham goes and he takes Isaac up a hill and he gets ready to sacrifice him.

And then God's like, stop.

It's good that you were willing to, but I'm not going to ask you to do that.

But that was a picture, in many ways, of what God did with Jesus.

We feel like God turns our face away, his face away from us when we don't have all the things that we think we need, when we're not comfortable, when we don't feel security.

But God did actually turn his face away from his own son.

And it was dramatic, right?

God sent his only begotten son to die a horrifying death on the cross, to forgive us of our sins, to forgive us of our trespasses, to create a way for us to know us, to know him.

And so, in light of that, in light of the work of the cross, in light of everything God has done for us, even in our worst hours, even when we feel like we don't have anything anymore that we can rely upon, even when we feel destitute and broken, we can still know that God loves us, that God provides for us what we need, because what we need is a way of salvation.

This time here on earth is limited, it's a blip.

The rest of our eternity, in heaven or hell, is what's important.

So he gives us what we need all of the time.

Uh and he loves us, and he wants what's good for us.

At the end of the book of Job, Job reflects on his interactions throughout the entire book.

The good, the bad, getting called to account by God himself in a whirlwind.

And what Job says at the end of Job is um I'm gonna paraphrase because I can't find it in my notes right now.

Um I had heard about God, but now I see God.

So Job was so righteous that God could brag to Satan that there was nobody else on the earth like him.

But through this suffering, he goes from a place in his heart to feeling as though he had heard about God before.

And say, in passing conversation, oh, I have heard about your cousin tomorrow.

At the end of the book, he can say, but now I have seen him.

He goes on and he says, I'm sorry for the words that he said.

I said, I'm sorry for complaining.

Because knowing God is the only thing.

So I hope that was very comforting for us all.

Let's go ahead and pray out.

Dear Lord, I thank you for your grace and your mercy and your love.

I thank you that you were good all of the time.

I thank you for the works that you do in each of our hearts to bring us to your salvation.

I thank you that you were willing to send your son, Jesus, to bleed and die on the cross so that a way could be made for us for salvation.

Knowing that our righteousness was nothing, that we couldn't be perfect, we couldn't do well.

You made it so that all we need to do is accept that your son came and he died for us to forgive us for our sins in our heart, to confess it with our mouths, and to repent from our sins, Lord God.

I thank you that your mercies are new every morning.

I thank you that your love for us is so great.

I just pray that in whatever struggles we find ourselves in in this season and this day, that you would help us to keep in our minds how great God is.

And to know in our hearts, when the enemy tries to tell us that things are going poorly because God doesn't love us anymore, that that's not true, and it couldn't be further from the truth.

Help us to grow to know you and to love you more and more each day.

In your name we pray.

Amen.