Introduction:

In a little over a month it will be four years since Hurricane Sandy struck with a vengeance on Oct. 29, 2012. It caused unparalleled destruction and record storm surges that wreaked havoc across the East Coast, destroying people’s homes. Eight million residents were without power and property damages totaled over $20 billion. Folks like Kim Joyce of Staten Island, NY lost everything and almost lost her life drowning. Waves were crashing through her house. A big wave came like a tsunami and broke through the back wall of her home. It filled up with water, alone and terrified, she didn’t know if she’d ever see her mom again or another day. She managed to swim in the pitch darkness of night with her cat Kleo to a high concrete wall and to a house where rescue workers came and saved her. However, she lost her beloved cat, she died in her arms; she had swallowed too much water. Kim said, “I lost everything my home and everything inside it, including all of my photos. It took a while for me to feel grateful that I’m alive, but I got there. Life is full of losses. Nobody ever lost so much in one day as Job.

While it is common to think of loss and grief only in connection with death, life itself is full of losses that must be grieved, acknowledged and processed. We might have a loss dream, friend, relationship, education, lifestyle, career, a childhood our health or even a limb. Our lives encounter changes and transitions, people experience loss and need to use grieving, coping and a spiritual process to deal with the experience.

Dr. Gary R. Collins a noted psychologist said, our lives encounter changes and transitions, people experience loss and loss can affect our lives. It is an experience of anxiety and being deprive which can show itself physically, emotionally, mentally, socially and spiritually.”
We will witness and experience all of the tragedy that Job experienced.

I Job’s Prosperity (1:2-8)

1. Job was a very prosperous man in every way. He had seven sons and three daughters (1:2). He was the ideal father that loved his children. We read in verse 4 that his sons would go and feast in their houses, each on his appointed day, and would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. So, on their birthdays the family would celebrate.

Job would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” (1:5) Job was not only right with God, but he also wanted his children right with God.

Job was a very wealthy man. In ancient days wealth was measured in terms of land, animals, and servants, and verse three tells us that Job had an abundance of all three… Think about the resources necessary to keep this livestock…In fact, no one in that part of the world was wealthier because this verse ends by saying that Job was the greatest of all the people of the East, referring to his wealth. I take away from this; that we Christians need to be caution about judging rich people as all being evil. Job was a godly and upright man as seen by his own peers in verse one but more importantly by God in verse eight.
Job had prosperity but like all of us he also had problems; everyone does. What makes’ us different is how we respond and what kind of attitude we will have afterward.

II Job’s Problems (l: 6-19)

1. The book of Job gives us a little glimpse into heaven. Satan challenged God and asserted with a perverse kind of glee that humanity had rebelled against its Creator and no longer stood on His side. The Lord responded by putting forth Job as an example of one man who still loved and served Him. But Satan countered that Job served God only because of what he could get from such service.
Satan says that Job’s faith is weak and superficial, and if he had some adversity he would curse the God he claims to revere. Folks a careful study of Satanology teaches that Satan and his co-hordes are not in the fires of hell tormenting and stroking the flames but are free for a time to roam the heavens and earth. They are also responsible to answered God’s roll call as we witness in verse 6 and 7.

2. The Bible teaches there is a real devil and that he tries to destroy everything that is holy and just. I Peter 5:8 describe his activity here on this earth, look at it with me.
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

As Christians all of us have an enemy who is seeking to devour, literally the Hebrew word
kä-tä-pē’-nō means to “swallow,” us. When a lion roars it creates fear and sometimes causes a frightened sheep to flee from the flock and become easy prey. In a similar way the devil “roars” through adversity, hoping we will leave the flock, drop out of church, and become easy prey. It is very important that we continue to attend Bible study and worship when we hear the devil “roar” through adversity, lest we become an easy target. Sapphire mentioned yesterday that fellowship and commitment to S.S. and Bible study is important for this reason. The purpose of Satan is to destroy our faith and discredit the goodness of God.

3. Satan knew that Job was such a well-known person that if he could shake his faith in God, it would weaken the faith of everyone who knew Job. That’s why the devil often “roars” through adversity in the life of the best of people. The devil’s purpose is to shatter our faith in God to the point others will take note.
Note too that another activity of this evil despot is to accuse us before God. In verse 9-11 Satan accuses Job of being loyal to God because God has blessed him and placed a hedge about him from evil. But just let me at him and he’ll curse you. So the Lord put Job to the test to show the Accuser that he was wrong. What happened was that Satan attacked Job more violently than he did anyone else in the history of the world except for Jesus.

4. Note it was only after obtaining God’s permission, Satan tries to destroy Job’s faith in God. First, all of Job’s wealth was lost, either through natural disaster or thieves. While Job was being told of all his material losses one after another, a final messenger arrives with more tragic news in verses 19. Job has nothing left but his wife and health. What I find interesting is that Satan can always find evil people to do his bidding like the Sabeans and the Chaldeans. He also was able to use nature that struck the final blow and killed all his children. The timing of it all was even a deeper mystery to Job. As Lord Byron once said, “Truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.” Even fiction could not top the strangeness of what happened to Job.

III. Job’s Prayer (1:20-21)

1. One day Job is blessed beyond measure with family and fortune; the next he finds himself as desolate as a human can be. How does Job react? First, we read in verse 20 that Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell on the ground. Tearing one’s clothes and shaving one’s hair were common gestures of profound grief in biblical times. Showing his grief and sorrow was not a sign of weakness or spiritual immaturity. It was the natural and beneficial thing for Job to do. A tragedy of our modem western world is the suppression of grief, which is a God-given emotional relief valve. What effect would all this adversity have on Job’s spiritual life? It is clear in his prayer found in verse 21.

2. We can learn many things about Job from his prayer. First, he realized that everything he had was from God. When he came into the world, he had no fortune or family. Second, he knew the Lord Who had given it all to him had every right to take it away, and if He did take it away Job would still believe in His goodness. Third, Job’s great faith is revealed because in the midst of sorrow and suffering he could say, Blessed be the name of the Lord. Though deprived of family and fortune, Job was praising God instead of cursing Him, as Satan had predicted. Folks God knows what you are made of and he knows your breaking point. He knows the load you can bear. He was not praising God for what he had lost, but for God’s allowing him to have it all in the first place.

Application:
Are you struggling with losses that you have never really grieved for? Are there things in your past that you continue to struggle with to this very day? I’ve lost a mother and father but I also have lost some other things in life that I can never bring back. What about you?
Are you buying into the big lie that, “Time heals all wounds.” Refuse to believe or live in the lie that time is going to heal you. Time will fade the pain and soften the blow but like a scar it will not just go away. If you want time to be healing, you seek the places where healing occurs and spend your time there doing the work required. The Psalmist said, ” My soul melteth for heaviness: strengthen thou me according unto thy word. (Psalm 119:28).

Conclusion:
As you face the pains and heartaches and mis¬treatments of life, it is only by complete confi¬dence in the goodness and plan of God that you can overcome. The things that could destroy you can become building blocks on the journey of faith as you look for the hand of God in all the cir¬cumstances of life. “This is the victory that has overcome the world-our faith” (1 Jn. 5:4). Those pains and hurts need to be accepted for what they really are. –gospel…