(REFLECTIONS ON Job 2:1-13)

Everything was taken from Job, yet in his brokenness, he responded with worship. Yet, accusers and adversaries don’t just come around once in a lifetime, but just as we have gotten over one challenge, immediately another comes.

Again the accuser, the adversary, that is Satan, challenges Job’s faithfulness by asking God to “touch his bone and his flesh,” and after that Job will surely curse God. It wasn’t enough to take away all his possessions, and even his children, now it will be Job himself that will feel the physical torture and pain.

Already broken from losing all that he had, how could Job continue to worship God when his own health is taken away? Even his wife said, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!”

Those around Job couldn’t stand it any longer, what about Job himself? His friends that came to comfort him, “lifted up their eyes at a distance and did not recognize him, they raised their voices and wept.”

13 Then they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights with no one speaking a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great.

Yet, in all this, Scripture tells us that “Job did not sin with his lips.” He replied to his wife saying, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity.”

Through it all, Job continued to hold on to the belief that God is sovereign, and in His sovereignty He calls the shots. God gives and He takes away, how can we accept good from God and not accept adversity?

The Book of Job is teaching us about God’s sovereignty and we are reminded that it isn’t based on what we like or don’t like, what we accept or don’t accept, but sovereignty means that He reigns over us. Yes, Job will speak, and we will hear his voice speak of his pain, so we don’t have to be silent during times of immense suffering, but as we speak out, let us remember in our hearts that God is love and He is sovereign.

Yes, even if we refuse to accept God’s sovereignty, reject Him, curse Him, He is still God and He is still sovereign. That Job did not sin with his lips, helps remind us to keep the sovereign Lord above us, and never, even in our weakest times, attempt to stand above Him, but to remain below our Creator. There is peace when we surrender to the Lord.

God is love, not God does loving things according to our opinions, but He is love, He is merciful, He is compassionate, and He is sovereign. Yes, there is suffering, there is injustice, perhaps we may even want to scream, “no fair!” Yet, if we can capture the essence of what Job has done, which is keeping himself below the sovereignty of God, even in a time like this, then perhaps we will finally learn what it means to live in submission of our Creator and God.

And when we do that bowing down at the feet of the cross, denying ourselves and carrying our cross, and take the heart of Christ as Servant King, then maybe we will finally experience true, love, purpose, and peace.

This is what Christ did, by giving up Himself, despite the pain of Gethsemane when he cried out to the Lord. Yet in the end, Jesus said, “Not my will, but Yours be done.” Yet Job is not Christ, and so we will continue to follow his progression and growth in his difficult conversations with his friends.

This might not make sense to us now, but it is when we put down our weapons against the sovereign Lord that we will finally find rest in Him. There is peace when we surrender to the Lord.

Pastor Michael Lu
Enduring Word Bible Commentary: Job 2