The Conflict of the Ages | Burnie Lund | Job 1:6-2:10 — Burnie Lund

As we read our opening passage here in chapter one, starting in verse six, I want, I want you to ask yourself two questions as we read. Number one, why is Satan in heaven? Number two, how does God demonstrate his wisdom to the angelic witnesses? 'Cause that's the only people that are there in heaven at this moment. There are, there are no humans present that we know of. It's all angelic witnesses. So why is Satan in heaven? Why is he there? And number two, what is God revealing or showing to the angelic witnesses that are present? Follow along with me as I read in verse six. "Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them. And the Lord said unto Satan, 'Whence comest thou?' Then Satan answered the Lord and said, 'From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.'

And the Lord said unto Satan, 'Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?'" Escheweth just means he denies or shuns evil. "Then Satan answered the Lord and said, 'Doth Job fear God for naught? Hast thou not made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.' And the Lord said unto Satan, 'Behold, all that he hath is in thy power. Only upon himself put not forth thine hand.' So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord." Skip over to chapter two, verse one. "Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord.

And the Lord said unto Satan, 'From whence comest thou?' And Satan answered the Lord and said, 'From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.' And the Lord said unto Satan, 'Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? And still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movest me against him to destroy him without cause.'" In the intervening time that we read there, Job had lost all his wealth and all his children had been killed. Verse number four, "And Satan answered the Lord and said, 'Skin for skin. Yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face.' And the Lord said unto Satan, 'Behold, he is in thine hand: but save his life.'

So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. And he took him," Job did, "a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes." Many of us have read this account before, and it never really ceases to amaze how far Job fell and how terrible it was. And yet, it is true that this section here, the entire Book of Job, but especially these first couple chapters, they're really focused on what's going on in heaven. They're not focused so much on Job's suffering. Job's suffering is a byproduct. Now, when, normally when we read it, we think, "Well, the heavenly stuff is this setting the stage for the suffering." Well, actually, the heavenly stage is what is happening, and the suffering is the byproduct.

You see, the overall purpose of the Book of Job is this, and it's that God bears witness to His own wisdom, and glory you can add, by the sovereign and loving way He relates to His people. God bears witness to His own wisdom and glory by the sovereign and loving way He relates to His people. I feel like I should define sovereign here. it just simply means all-powerful, all-knowing, the right and ability to rule. So nothing other than God is powerful enough and able enough to do what He wills, and then He is also sovereign and loving Now you may ask, why is the Book of Job about God bearing witness to His wisdom and glory through His sovereign and loving relation to His people? Well, I think the explanation for that, or maybe a better term would be kind of, yeah, I guess explanation is the right word, is in Ephesians 3.

The Apostle Paul is speaking here, and the fundamental issue at stake or the problem that we face is that we get so focused on our own life. We think that everything revolves around us. We think that, well, the evil in my life, the suffering in my life, the difficulties in my life, those are the things that are mattered, and I don't know what God is doing in my life. but the truth is God has a much larger view of what He is doing. We get to participate in that. He loves each one of us, and each one of us is individually important, but God has a big master plan. It's called a plan of redemption that He is working throughout all of history. And really, as we come to this scene in heaven, it is really setting up the age-old, I guess, opposition between God and Satan, between God, who is the only good, and Satan, who is completely evil.

And so Paul, in Ephesians chapter 3, gives us some explanation and a reminder of the importance of this cosmic battle. We say all the time, we're in a battle, and we don't, fight against flesh and blood is true, but sometimes we forget the truth of that. So Paul, in Ephesians chapter 3 says, "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery," that's kind of an earthly idea. but then he moves into a heavenly idea and says, "Which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God," meaning from the point of creation.

"Which which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ," which means Jesus was present at creation, "to the intent," in other words, this was the purpose, "that now," at this time in the history of the world, "now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God." In other words, what Paul is saying is that God has a much bigger plan in mind when he looks at the world, and at history, and at all the activities that are taking place in our life. It's not just about you and me. God cares about you and me, and we get to participate in his plan of salvation, both by getting saved and by helping to propagate the gospel. But every instance of suffering or, difficulty in our, in our life, it's not the end-all, be-all. He says, "Have a bigger view. Have a-- Take a step back and look at the cosmic picture."

God bears witness to his own wisdom and glory by the sovereign and loving way he relates to his people. He loves us, he relates to us in that way, and he relates to us in an all-powerful, sovereign way, but he has fundamentally a bigger picture in mind. We all tend to focus on the microcosm of our own existence, but God has this larger plan and purpose in progress. And so today's message, this first message, sets the stage with point number one, and the only point that we will deal with today, the conflict of the ages. The conflict of the ages. As we study Job, I wanna encourage you to begin thinking about the good and evil in our lives from a universal or cosmic perspective, not just so much as just me or my family or my circle, but in a larger sense. Not a purely earthly perspective. This is not a local conflict that we are involved in. the Book of Ephesians talked about putting on the whole armor of God.

It says, "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and against powers." In other words, the, struggles that we face in this life have a spiritual, unseen aspect to them, and it's not just a local conflict. It's not just a regional conflict. This is a cosmic, universal, all of history type of conflict. And so let's step back for a moment and consider, first of all, Satan's rage. Let's consider Satan's rage. Satan hates God Satan rebelled against God probably very early after he was created. since God created all things in the world in the, in the week of creation, at some point in that week, we believe that the angels were created. Don't know when it was. Some people say it was on the day that God says, "Let there be light." angels have been called morning stars. There's some argument for that. It's not a big deal. But either way, early on in the history of the world, Satan rebelled against God.

For whatever reason, he said, "I refuse to submit to God's authority. I will be like God. I deserve to be like God. I have the ability and power." Whatever it is, he rebelled, and he led about a third of the angels to rebel against God as well. So they became fallen angels, or what we would call demons. Then, also early in the history of the world, Satan, in the form of a certain serpent, came to Adam and Eve and deceived Eve and tempted Adam and Eve. And unfortunately for all of us and for the world, Adam gave into the temptation, and Adam allowed sin to come into the world. It says in Romans 5:12, "Wherefore, as by one man, Adam, sin entered into the world, and death by sin." And so Adam brought sin and death into the world. And for a moment it seemed that Satan was somewhat victorious because he had corrupted God's creation. The pinnacle of God's creation was mankind. humans were created at the very end.

We were created in the image of God, and God gave us the command to multiply and to subdue the Earth. And so humans were God's greatest creation, and Satan corrupted humanity through sin And so those devastating consequences were in effect. But even in the moment of judgment, when God was judging Adam and Eve and even the serpent, God offered hope to the world. In Genesis 3:15, he promised a coming Redeemer. That is the first promise in the Bible of the coming of Christ, in Genesis chapter 3 verse number 15. And so we had the fall, we have sin coming into the world, death coming into the world, Satan seemingly victorious, but God saying, "Not quite. I will send a Redeemer to redeem the world and to redeem my greatest creation, humanity." But Satan continued on in his rage and in his fight against God, and, he began to do his utmost to corrupt, all of humanity.

He evidently succeeded somewhat in influencing Cain through sin and temptation to kill his brother Abel. But God redeemed that line and worked through the third son of Adam and Eve, Seth, and kept for himself a pure group of people that followed him. But Satan corrupted all the rest of the world so much to the point that God said, "I'm gonna judge the entire world and destroy them all with a flood." And so we come to the flood, and it seems that Satan once again, had won and corrupted all of mankind to the point of total destruction. But he missed one guy. He missed Noah. And so the Bible says that Noah was different.

The Bible says that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And so God once again thwarted Satan's or Satan's rage, and his fight against him by preserving Noah and his family, a righteous man, and keeping the knowledge of God and righteousness and holiness alive in the world. And so Satan tries again. He continues on through the descendants of Noah, and eventually we get to the Tower of Babel after the flood, and there's a king, a mighty ruler named Nimrod, that he worked through and honestly led a unified rebellion against God at the Tower of Babel. They rebelled against God yet again, the entire, basically all of humanity. but yet again, God thwarted Satan's evil, dastardly plans, and He judged them by confusing their languages. That's why, where we get the word Babel. And then, basically dispersing mankind all across the earth in different people groups and in different nations all throughout the world.

So now Satan has his work cut out for him. He's gotta, he's gotta create rebellions in all these little pockets. Instead of just having one group of people to work with, now he's gotta do it, across a whole bunch of different nations, and he works really hard at doing that. His rage can never be sated. He will always fight against God until the day that God judges him in finality. Praise God that that day is coming. but Satan, at this point, maybe he was looking at Noah and looking at what happened there. He's like, "Man, I almost got the whole world, but I missed Noah," or, "I wasn't able to get to Noah." And now he's looking at this man named Job, and he says, "Oh, we got another influential, righteous, godly man. I need to do something about this. I need to take care of this man and get him to fall or something." And so Satan evidently has access to God, even today. He's called the accuser of the brethren.

He accuses us day and night, the Bible says. And so one day he will not have access to God. That's in Revelation chapter 12. You can look it up later. he will be completely, thrown out of Heaven and never to be able to come back again. and in the meantime, though, and in this account here in the Book of Job, Satan has access to God, and he intends, we assume, to go to God and to somehow try to derail Job. But God in His omniscience says, "You know what?" I already know what he's going to do. I'm gonna just, you know, get the ball rolling myself. and so, Satan always tries to do this. in Luke chapter 22 verse 31, we must not forget that he tried to do this to Peter as well. The Lord said, "Simon, behold, Sitan Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat." So Satan is always going for, those who are living for the Lord, those who are following God, those who are striving to follow the Lord and to be obedient to His will.

So that's a warning to all of us, that we need the Lord's strength in our life. even as we follow God, even as we do what is right, even as we seek to serve God and live for Him, we will encounter, opposition, and perhaps demonic opposition at some point. Now, we don't have the influence of Job. Most… I don't think anyone has the wealth of Job. I don't think anyone has 10 children like Job. but we all have, basically the opportunity to live for God just like Job did, and so we must be careful, in to trust in the Lord and to walk in His strength and not in our own. but this heavenly interview is progressing, and Satan probably says, "You know what? this is going really well. I didn't even have to bring it up. God brought it up to me." God says, "Hey, have you noticed my servant, Job?"

Now, God knows, what is gonna happen, and God knows that Satan is trying to fight against Him and, but Satan takes the bait and he says, "Of course I do, and you should do something. You should, test him because you will see that his faith isn't real. You will see that Job really doesn't believe in you like you think he does," as if God didn't know his heart. I, this is Satan. This is Satan we're talking about. And so, God agrees, to allow Satan to test him, or He allows Satan to put his hand upon Job. And so, at first, we say, "Man, I wish He wouldn't do that." I'm sure Job at the time wished that he wouldn't either. it was a very long, costly, struggle for him. and at the end of the day, Job never found out why. And to be honest, we never find out why. We don't know necessarily why God did this other than God has a plan and a purpose, and He desires to demonstrate His glory and His wisdom in His relationship with His people.

And so what Satan failed to understand ultimately is God's redemption. So Satan's rage is raging away there, but what Satan does not understand is God's redemption. If you look at verse number 12, God says that Satan can have Job, but He limits his power. if you look at verse 22, it says, "In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." In other words, God didn't do anything wrong. Like, we look at that and say, "Why would you do that, God? Why would you allow your servant, your faithful servant, to be afflicted by Satan in such a way?" And yet verse 22 says that God knew what He was doing, and we have no right to question what God was doing. If you look at chapter two, verse number three and verse number six, again, God allows Satan to test Job, but He limits him with His His omnipotent power. He says, "No, you will not do this. You will not take his life.

you will not touch various aspects of him, but you can go so far and no more." In verse number six, the Lord said unto Satan, "Behold, he is in thine hand, but save his life." And so it is subtle, but as we look at it, we understand that God is in control. We understand that God is not allowing anything in the life of Job that He doesn't believe is in Job's ultimate best interests. He's not allowing anything in the life of Job. He's not giving Satan free access and free reign to Job. He is limiting him, limiting him with His power And so Satan cannot understand this. Satan can never understand this. Even as God is using his power to control Satan, God also loves Job. God also is, caring for Job. God is, God is on Job's side. That's why God says, "Have you seen my servant Job? There's nobody like him in all the earth. He's perfect. He's righteous. he fears me, and he departs from evil or eschews evil." So God thinks very highly of of Job.

God loves Job, but Satan cannot understand this. Satan can't understand the love of God. He cannot understand the lengths that God will go to redeem His people. Satan is a user. Satan is an abuser. Satan doesn't care about anyone except himself, and he cannot fathom at all the selfless agape love that characterizes God. The Bible says that God is love, and Satan has no grasp of that, no understanding of that whatsoever. If we would look at Job's life for a moment, and really understand what he's going through, we could really say, you know what? The love of God, we sang about it this morning. We sang about it, in several of the, of the songs. The love of God is present in Job's life. Maybe it's not as clear now. It will become more clear later, as we move through the Book of Job. But God deals with His people both powerfully and lovingly, and we can rest in that love.

The love of Christ is most often seen or most clearly seen through the gospel. We talk about that all the time. Job even references later on in his book his Redeemer. He references the… He will see his Redeemer in his flesh. That's a Messianic prophecy that he makes. But as we look at this, and we see God opposed to Satan, and we see Satan having only Job's hurt in his mind and God ultimately seeing the bigger picture and having Job's ultimate redemption in mind, we can understand that the Bible teaches that we actually, each of us, have two fathers. Or excuse me, each of us has a father. It's either God or Satan. Now, traditionally, we just talk straight about sin, and we go straight to talking about the sin in our life, and that is totally true.

But because we are looking at the contrast here between God and Satan, I want us to understand this morning That if you are not saved today, if you don't know for sure that you would be in heaven when you die, the Bible says that you're not saved, but it also says that you have a father, Satan. Those are hard, that's a hard truth to grasp. The Bible says that if you are saved, that if you have received, Jesus Christ, if you have repented of your sin and turned to God, that you have a father, but your father is God. Now, the world teaches that we're all the children of God, but they're mistaken. You're only a child of God if you have come to him in repentance and faith, trusting in Jesus Christ alone to save you from your sin. So my question that I have for you this morning as we compare, in a sense, God and Satan is: Who is your father? All of us have the tendency to take after our father. That's true in human life.

Our children take after us. Sometimes we are very annoyed by that. But the same is true in a spiritual sense. So is your life characterized by sin? Is your life characterized by lying, by anger, by bitterness? If so, you might wanna check and see if your father is Satan. Is your life characterized by holiness? Is your life characterized by peace, by joy, by love? Then we can say, "Well, we're probably… God is our Father," because we take after Him, because we are following in His steps. Children take after their father, and we have either God or Satan as our father Satan was a liar from the beginning. Satan was a murderer from the beginning. Satan brought sin into the world, and sin is the biggest problem that we all have. We're pausing for a moment on the story of Job because this is so vital, such a vital truth in our life As we look at our life We can ask the question, "Has my sin been forgiven?

Has my sin been covered by the blood of Christ?" Job offered sacrifices for his kids. Noah offered sacrifices for his family. All throughout the Bible, we see the necessity of a substitutionary sacrifice for sin Jesus is the substitutionary sacrifice for all of our sin if we will receive it. So today, this morning, if you don't know that God is your father, if you are perhaps concerned that Satan is your father, but you want God to be your father, it's very simple. All you must do is repent of your sin, turn to Christ alone in faith, accept Him as your savior, and receive the gift of eternal life that He has promised. That is the way to ensure that God is your father and not Satan. Unlike Satan, as we return to the story of Job, Jose Job knows something of the goodness of God's character. Job understands deep down that God is a good God.

Even though he's going through these great difficulties, Job understands that God is loving, and we see that in Job's response. Let's read in verse 20 of chapter 1. After all these things happened to him, he lost his wealth, he lost his children. It says, "Then Job arose and rent his mantle and shaved his head and fell down upon the ground and worshiped and said, 'Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.' In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." Even when he lost his health and all his physical ability and he was in great distress, we see in chapter 2 verse number 9, we'll be gentle with his wife. We don't have all the information there, but, "His wife said unto him, 'Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God and die.' But he said unto her, 'Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What?

Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall not we receive evil?' In all this did not Job sin with his lips." Job's response was amazing. Put yourself in Job's shoes for a moment. He lost everything. He was a pauper, a beggar, and even lost his family. Just thinking about it myself, if I lost my children, I would be hard-pressed not to be angry at God, in all, in all honesty, just in all honesty. I wouldn't know obviously how that would happen, but even if it came about by accident, I would just be left wondering the same thing as Job; why? Why did this happen? But I would be tempted to anger. I would be tempted to say, "I don't deserve this. I deserve better." It… financially, probably the same, but maybe not with such a deep, heart-rending feeling, but I would say, "Why is this happening to me? Why am I in ruins? How could I be on top of the world in one second, and then now I'm in the, in the dust heap? I'm in the dirt.

I'm in the ashes scraping myself with a potsherd." Put yourself into Joe's, Job's shoes. How would you respond? I'll be honest, I doubt that any of us would respond the way Job did. I doubt that any of us would respond and say, "I submit to God's will in my life. I'm content whatever God gives me." I would be tempted to rage against God. I would be tempted to have wrong thoughts against Him and say, "Well, God doesn't know what He's doing," or, "God is unkind," or, "God is not good somehow," or, "I deserve better. I have earned more than this." All of those are wrong thoughts. All of those are thoughts that display in myself the wrong ideas about God and the wrong ideas about my relationship with Him. How about you? How would you respond? I don't know what you are suffering with today. I know that in this room there are many who are suffering with, in their relationships in some way. Maybe it's family.

Maybe you've suffered loss of some kind. Maybe there are many this room, in this room that are suffering financially. Maybe you're in a major heart locker. Maybe you're overwhelmed with the debts that are piling up in your life. Maybe you're digging yourself into a hole. Maybe some in this room are struggling with their physical health. I know there are many that are doing that. Maybe you're facing things that you really don't want to consider very deeply. I don't know what your struggle is today. I don't know what your suffering is But God knows And the same comfort that we have looking at the life of Job can apply to us today. He didn't know why it was happening, but he trusted in a good God. He didn't know why it was happening, but he trusted in an all-powerful God. He did not know why his life was the way it was, but he trusted in an all-knowing God And that's one of the major lessons that we see in the Book of Job.

God has a big picture plan. We get to be a part of it. He loves us individually, and He works and relates with us in both a sovereign way and in a loving way. We can trust our all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God I've entitled this series Job: Hope for the Ages. And if you just read Job, you see all the suffering, you're like, "Wow, where's the hope?" There's hope in Job, and we'll see more of that as we, as we look further. But Romans 15:4 reminds us that "whatsoever things were written aforetime," including this account for Job, "was written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope." The word hope or the concept of hope is mentioned 15 times in the Book of Job. 15 times, the word hope is referred to in the Book of Job, and it means the same thing in the Hebrew of the Old Testament or the Greek of the New. It just means confidence or expectation.

We have a confidence or an expectation that God is working. God has a purpose in all that he does. The world doesn't have that assurance. If you don't believe in the God of the Bible, then you can have no assurance that the things that are happening to you in your life have a purpose. And yet the world says all the time, don't you hear it? "Everything happens for a reason. Everything happens for a reason." It does. But if you don't believe in God, how can you say that? Only belief in the God of scripture, the God of the Bible, gives us the confidence in that expectation. Job's suffering was not related to any sin. Job's suffering was happening because God had a greater purpose and a greater plan. In your suffering today, in your difficulties in your life, the hope that we have is not that circumstances will be better. They may. We hope they will get better. We pray they will get better.

But our hope, our expectation is in the God of the Bible, in our God, in the God that loves us, and in the God that we know is working on our behalf. I'd like to close with Hebrews 6:18, a great verse that sums up this hope that we can have. It says that, "By in two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us. Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast." Let us hope in our God this morning. Father, we come to you thankful for the truth of your Word. Lord, thank you for this account of Job. Lord, we don't even understand all the things that are in it, let alone did Job, and yet he trusted in you. Lord, it is our prayer this morning that you would help us to follow in his example.

Lord, may the songs that we have sung and the words of scripture remind us and encourage us to put our hope in you, the God who loves us and is working all powerfully on our behalf Lord, thank you for your plan of redemption. Thank you for Jesus Christ and the truth that every single individual in this room can have a personal relationship with you by faith. Lord, I trust that you have spoken to us this morning through your Word We ask that you would continue to work in this time of contemplation