TEEN TREE OF LIFE 
Are You Having A Jōb Moment?
Part 6
March 10, 201 9
Before you begin, ask yourself a very important question: Do you believe that Jesus Christ died on The Cross for all of your sins? If you answered yes, you will need to be sure that you are filled with The Holy Spirit. How do you do this? You name your sins to God The Father in His Son’s Name. This is called rebound. As a Christian, you must rebound any time you sin. This is taught in 1JOHN 1:9: If we confess our sins [directly to God], He [God] is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, if you have never believed that Jesus Christ died on The Cross for all of your sins, all you have to do is say to yourself that you believe in Him and you are saved! The Bible verse which teaches us this is ACTS 16:31: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.”
In everything that Job went through, he never once sinned out loud. He only had mental attitude sins. Most sins are done with our mental attitude – in our thoughts. Mental attitude sins include arrogance, jealousy, bitterness, vindictiveness, excessive ambition, excessive competition; and sinful thoughts such as fear, guilt, worry, anger, judging, and hatred. But Job stayed in fellowship with God throughout his Evidence Testing. He accepted the trials and troubles as gifts from God just as he accepted the prosperity. Most believers are willing to accept the prosperity that God GIVES, but not the suffering or adversity that God ALLOWS. Job didn’t know why he was suffering and neither will we! What Job did know was that God would never leave him stranded: Don’t be obsessed with getting more material things. Be relaxed with what you have. Since God assured us, “I’ll never let you down, never walk off and leave you,” we can boldly quote, God is there, ready to help; I’m fearless no matter what. Who or what can get to me? (HEB 13:5-6 The Message Bible) Job was certain of God’s Faithfulness and so should you be.
Remember always that God will allow situations in your life that are tough. This is the time when you have to rely on the doctrine that you’ve learned. He has provided everything you need to get through the trials He puts in your life in advance. Never forget that God will prepare you before you need it. He will never give you more than you can handle. He waits until you have studied and applied enough of His Word to allow testing this strong. So relax! Undeserved suffering is a time for you to grow spiritually and to glorify God.
If you believe in any kind of justice, the story of Job’s life might seem to contradict what you believe. An unbeliever (or even a believer) might see Job as a man who doesn’t deserve to suffer but is suffering intensely. Job’s three friends – Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar – are only able to make sense of these moments in his life by concluding that Job is a wicked sinner. But from our study, we know this is definitely not true. Job’s three friends wrongly believed that good things only happen to good people and, that bad things, only happen to bad people – NOT!
Look at what happened to Jesus Christ! A PERFECT Person was put on The Cross to die. But one of the most important lessons about The Cross is that there is UNDESERVED SUFFERING which leads to UNDESERVED BLESSING. The Cross shows us that because a righteous man, named Jesus Christ, suffered – unrighteous people like us can experience God’s Mercy and His Grace. This is the wisdom of The Cross: The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It’s written, I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head, I’ll expose so-called experts as crackpots. So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn’t God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation. (1COR 1:18-21 The Message Bible)
Paul, the twelfth apostle, goes on further to write: And when I [Paul] came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified [on The Cross]. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God. (1COR 2:1-5) The Book of Job foreshadows The Cross. The word “foreshadow” means to signal or indicate beforehand – in advance. In other words, Job’s life and the Evidence Testing he suffered came first, before Our Lord and Savior’s suffering on The Cross.
James (who was also Jesus’ brother) wrote only one epistle (letter) in the Bible. James teaches us that true, genuine faith will lead to action and that we should be doers of the word and not hearers only: But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude [mislead] themselves. (JAM 1:22) In other words, we should not only learn God’s Word but we should apply it! Jesus Christ teaches us the same thing: “If you love me, show it by doing what I’ve told you. I will talk to the Father, and he’ll provide you another Friend so that you will always have someone with you [the indwelling of The Holy Spirit]. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. The godless world can’t take him in because it doesn’t have eyes to see him, doesn’t know what to look for. But you know him already because he has been staying with you, and will even be in you!” (JOH 14:15-17 The Message Bible).
James wrote to suffering Christians and encouraged them to wait patiently for the return of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ in JAM 5:7-11 The Message Bible: Meanwhile, friends, wait patiently for the Master’s Arrival. You see farmers do this all the time, waiting for their valuable crops to mature, patiently letting the rain do its slow but sure work. Be patient like that. Stay steady and strong. The Master could arrive at any time. [The Rapture] Friends, don’t complain about each other. A far greater complaint could be lodged against you, you know. The Judge is standing just around the corner. Take the old prophets as your mentors. They put up with anything, went through everything, and never once quit, all the time honoring God. What a gift life is to those who stay the course! You’ve heard, of course, of Job’s staying power, and you know how God brought it all together for him at the end. That’s because God cares, cares right down to the last detail.
We have thoroughly studied Job’s testing and his perseverance through it – six week’s worth! Now let’s think about how Jesus persevered. He put himself on The Cross, giving us free will to choose to believe in Him: “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (ROM 10:8-9 NIV) Because God The Son died on The Cross, He and God The Father and The Holy Spirit indwell us. And because of this, we are better able to get through our own troubles. AMEN!
Like every Bible book, Job is very much a book about God and specifically about Jesus Christ, the Righteous Man who suffered unjustly and is finally vindicated by His Father. It’s a mistake to think the book is only about a man suffering as a universal experience because Job is definitely not a typical or universal man. He is conspicuously great, exceptionally upright, and definitively righteous. Job in his extremeness foreshadows Jesus in his uniqueness. For that reason, The Book of Job is only about us if we are indwelt by The Holy Spirit and enter into some share of Christ’s suffering. Look at what Paul wrote: I want you to know how glad I am that it’s me sitting here in this jail and not you. There’s a lot of suffering to be entered into in this world—the kind of suffering Christ takes on. I welcome the chance to take my share in the church’s part of that suffering. When I became a servant in this church, I experienced this suffering as a sheer gift, God’s way of helping me serve you, laying out the whole truth. (COL1:24-25 The Message Bible)
The Book of Job is also about us, as believers in Christ because Satan still demands to “sift” us “like wheat” to attempt to prove we won’t be good witnesses in the Angelic Conflict. As we learned in this study – God in His Justice has allowed Satan to appeal his trial in the Angelic Conflict and we, as Christians, are witnesses for God as the Prosecutor. But only mature believers like Job have the capacity to be presented as witnesses. Do you think you’re a mature believer yet?
On the night He was betrayed, Jesus Christ said to His apostles: “You are those who have stood by Me in My trials; and just as My Father has granted Me a kingdom, I grant you that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Simon [Peter], Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission [obtained by asking] to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” (LUK 22:28-32) Satan’s strategy is to try to toss the apostles to and fro like wheat in a sieve and to distress them by scattering them from Christ: Then Jesus addressed the mob: “What is this—coming out after me with swords and clubs as if I were a dangerous criminal? Day after day I have been sitting in the Temple teaching, and you never so much as lifted a hand against me. You’ve done it this way to confirm and fulfill the prophetic writings.” Then all the disciples cut and ran. (MATT 26:55-56 The Message Bible) So, as you can see, his strategy worked!
We are now at the end of our study on Job – the amazing man with genuine faith who glorified God with such intensity that the story of his life is what The Holy Spirit decided to be taught to us first! Look at what Peter wrote about genuine faith: What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole. I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory. (1PET 1:3-7 The Message Bible)
And this is how Job’s life finishes out: God blessed Job’s later life even more than his earlier life. He ended up with fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, one thousand teams of oxen, and one thousand donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first daughter Dove, the second, Cinnamon, and the third, Darkeyes. There was not a woman in that country as beautiful as Job’s daughters. Their father treated them as equals with their brothers, providing the same inheritance. Job lived on another 140 years, living to see his children and grandchildren—four generations of them! Then he died—an old man, a full life. (JOB 42:12-17 The Message Bible)
-The Final Word on Jōb