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Job 1:1 open_in_new
Job Challenged by Satan
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
We begin today a series of studies on one of the most interesting characters of the Bible. He is Job, the man of patience.
We remember the comment which the Holy Ghost made concerning Job, and which is recorded for us in the fifth chapter of James.
"Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy."
Job was probably a contemporary of Abraham. One thing which we think worthy of mention is this fact: In the old days, far back before Christ, and even before the days of national Israel and her Prophets, God had good and great men upon the earth; men who trusted Him and served Him.
According to the Word of God, the heathen world of today is dwelling in darkness and superstition, simply because the world of old in its wisdom, knew not God. It was for this cause that God gave them over to a reprobate mind.
Returning to Job as a theme for study, we assure the readers that they will find, before we have completed our consideration, that there is much of faith, much of spiritual wisdom, and even much of prophetic vision bound up in the marvelous Book that relates the story of Job.
The answer to many questions, which puzzle minds today, will be found in the Book of Job.
The demands of God as He calls upon Job to stand up like a man, reveal visions of God in His creative power and inherent glory which are hardly surpassed in the Bible.
Let none deceive themselves by imagining that the Book of Job is an ancient story which crept into the Bible. The Book of Job portrays with historical accuracy a God-given record of a man who lived in the land of Uz.
His testings at the hand of Satan were real. The speeches of his three friends, who became more accusers than helpers, are real. Job's responses, where the sunshine and glory of undaunted faith is mixed with the darkness and despair of temporary doubt, are real.
There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job. Let us begin our study of this man asking the Lord to illumine our minds to the message which He has for us.
I. JOB'S MORAL AND SPIRITUAL INTEGRITY (Job 1:1)
1. Job was perfect and upright. This is saying a good deal, but God said it. Let us not think for one moment that Job was sinless. He was not that, but God said of him "that there is none like him in the earth" (Job 23:8).
Other men beside Job have been spoken of as perfect and upright. Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5-6), was one of these. Here is the record concerning Zacharias and his wife, "They were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless."
Some people would have us to believe that all young men and young women in our day are corrupt. We do not accept this for a moment. Because we are living in a world dominated by sin does not mean that God does not have His true and tried ones, who are unsmirched by the filth of the flesh.
eat, and in the night to the frost. And I will punish him and his seed and his servants for their iniquity; and I will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah, all the evil that I have pronounced against them; but they hearkened not."
Think you, that he who penknifes the Word of God, and decries its message, shall escape the judgment of God? Against the modernists of today the "certain men" described in the Book of Jude, who have crept into the church unawares, and have turned the grace of God into lasciviousness, "denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ"; against these God has said, "to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.