Job 1:1-22
Prologue
1 In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. 2 He had seven sons and three daughters, 3 and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.
4 His sons used to take turns holding feasts in their homes, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5 When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would send and have them purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, "Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." This was Job's regular custom.
Job's First Test
6 One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. 7 The LORD said to Satan, "Where have you come from?"
Satan answered the LORD, "From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it."
8 Then the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil."
9 "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan replied. 10 "Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. 11 But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face."
12 The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger."
Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.
13 One day when Job's sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house, 14 a messenger came to Job and said, "The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, 15 and the Sabeans attacked and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!"
16 While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, "The fire of God fell from the sky and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!"
17 While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said, "The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and carried them off. They put the servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!"
18 While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, "Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house, 19 when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!"
20 At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship 21 and said:
"Naked I came from my mother's womb,
and naked I will depart.
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
may the name of the LORD be praised."
22 In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.
Genesis 3:1-24
The Fall of Man
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
"Cursed are you above all the livestock
and all the wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel."
16 To the woman he said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
"Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return."
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 1:31
God Saw All that He Created and it Was Very Good
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
John 1:1-5
The Word Became Flesh
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 14:1-4
Jesus Says Believe in God, Believe Also in Him
1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Romans 6:19-23
The Wages of Sin is Death
19 I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. 20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
God allows suffering...God allows troubles in this world, Jesus tells us this...And God being God, He could have stopped Eve from eating the forbidden fruit...But we know that God allows us free will through His unconditional LOVE for us...
God could have stopped the evil one from being involved in Job's life, but He didn't...Job did not have to suffer, but God allowed him to suffer...God allowed the evil one to come into Job's life...Man needs to learn things about life and experience life, and God includes and allows pain and suffering in that learning and experiencing process...C. S. Lewis says we want God not to be the Father, but to be more like a God the Grandfather...This is where we always get our way, and disciplines and pains in life should not be allowed...But God made life, outside the Garden of Eden, with pain and suffering and more like the Father...After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit they changed, their lives would change...God says after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they had become like one of us...They now knew that there was good and there was also evil...But God did not sin, Adam and Eve did...God does not sin, we do...God gave Adam and Eve free will in the garden, and they chose to disobey God and eat from the one tree that He told them not to eat from...But by giving us free will, we sometimes choose to do bad things...And so evil seems to lurk in our free will choices, and we are tempted by the evil serpent...But we also can choose to do good things and for the most part we do...But before Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they did not know good from evil...They must have known goodness, for all that God created He said was good...So now they know about evil, after eating the tempting fruit...
God had given them much intellect, and had Adam name all the animals that He created...Adam and Eve could grow in knowledge in paradise...But in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, had some knowledge, but they did not know about good and evil (or at least about evil), yet they learned about evil in paradise...It seems Adam and Eve were acquiring knowledge everyday, and worked and were in the garden everyday and this was paradise...It also seems that goodness has to be in paradise, for it has to be to be paradise...But evil was not in the garden originally...So early on goodness was with the Adam and Eve, and evil was not...So evil came upon them the day they ate the fruit, because now the realized what evil was...And again, God allowed evil through the free will, He gave them...Only when they knew ate the fruit, they would sin and know this was sinful...Adam and Eve would now know and be able to distinguish and know what evil is, and thus know what sin is...The two did not know sin before, because they were in paradise...But so much happened after they ate the fruit...I mean so much changed...Much of the problems of our current world is attributed to this specific fall of man...Their lives very much dramatically changed...Our lives would change forever, after this eating of the fruit...They could now distinguish what is morally right and wrong...It almost seems that God gave them a conscious that day they ate the fruit (but that is very much an opinion)...And God also gave them death...The wages of sin is death...The two could now could not eat from the Tree of Life and retain their immortality...And so they were banished from Paradise...
In Job's life he would also be allowed to suffer...Job learned some things after his sufferings...Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden, after they ate the fruit...They also learned a lot from that experience...C. S. Lewis says that in the problem of pain, and the problem of evil God shouts to us...God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world... Lewis does not say that pain is God's direct judgment upon people...Job had not done anything wrong that we know of...Many times in life, we seem to bring some of our own problems upon ourselves...We also know that God does not only call to people when they suffer; he also calls them through their sense of right and wrong, and through what gives them pleasure—both of which ultimately come from Him...God allows this free will...In this free will, He is reminding us there are good things in this life, and that our individual desires get answered, but something remains missing...We have one final and eternal desire for Him...It is an internal and eternal desire for Him....The earthly desires expire after the initial feeling of being satisfied...Pleasures are only temporary...These earthly desires satisfy only the temporary—indeed our earthly life itself—do not give us all that we desire...The final eternal desire is what we actually want...We desire to be with Him and His Son and in heaven...Back to a Paradise...
It is so interesting that a Man two thousand years ago, came and taught all about the eternities...Jesus taught about God, love, forgiveness, hope, and humility (among many other things)...And in His many teachings He never taught that man would not suffer...Believer's believe that His wisdom is unsurpassed...Jesus taught us to believe in God and to believe in also in Him...By believing, we must learn to trust both Him and His Father...Our knowledge of eternity does not exist...We are only finite creatures, so we have problems understanding, explaining, and defining eternity and what eternity is like...The same goes for the problem of suffering...Suffering happens to young children and to good people and we have problems explaining it...Why can't we explain suffering and why it happens to children and to good men like Job?...Man has the knowledge to ask the question -Why is there suffering...We just do not have the knowledge to answer that question...We have human limitations...Jesus was with the Father from the beginning and knows about eternity...We do have to trust in God and believe that God allows suffering out of His eternal wisdom...And through this trust we have a relationship with God and His Son that helps us with our earthly sufferings...This relationship with prayer and faith and trust are so important on earth...
And we often learn from prayer, faith, and trust that man is a Spiritual creature, and we desire to be with God...This desire to be with God will be answered at our death...There is irony there, that to get to the One we want the most, one must die first...But God does not give us a desire that He cannot fulfill...The wages of our sin is death...Sin, suffering and death is something man cannot fix...Jesus can fix these things...He suffered and had His death on the cross for our personal sins...So a Son died on the cross...A Son dying is a most suffering time for a Father...Our earthly sufferings are a shared experience with God and His Son, who died on the cross...And His death on the cross is and was for us...Jesus, with His understanding, knowledge, and wisdom is the One who can fix sin, suffering and death forever...So the wages of sin is our death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our LORD...