Job A Servant In The House

A few months ago, Pastor asked the Minister to speak throughout some of the Bible Studies on Wednesday nights. The week I spoke, had been a difficult week. Truth be told, it’s been a difficult year.

I wanted something that would encourage someone, possibly lighten the loads of the weary. People need gladness right now, and so when I went to the well to see what God had chosen, He gave me a text… in the book of Job.

God doesn’t only have a sense of humor, He has the perfect sense of timing. Which, since He created time itself, only makes sense. Although, we still sometimes question, which is humorous in and of itself when you think about it.

Job 1:8 (ESV Strong’s)

8 And the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?”

Briefly, if you’re not familiar with Job, he’s the man who seemingly had everything, and we say, lost it all. He’s the man who, experienced unexpected tragedy, and disease that hit him, as far as he knew, out of the blue.

One minute, he had everything to live for, and in a day, most of it was gone. Then, soon after, he got sick. Does that sound familiar? It may interest you to know, and I don’t remember ever looking this up before but Job means hated, as in persecuted.

I mentioned that we say he lost it all, but there was somethings he didn’t lose. He did not lose his wife. She spoke in pain, anguish, and sorrow some things she shouldn’t have, but after it was all over, Job had more children, and it does not record he remarried. It’s rational to think, she was still around.

God would later address Job, and his friends, but not Job’s wife. Before we condemn her, I’d like to point out, Job wasn’t the only one who lost his children. Keep in mind, God spoke to Job later, and to his three “friends”, but never condemned Job’s wife. He didn’t condone her words, but didn’t condemn them either. She was speaking out of sorrow, and I believe God had mercy on her pain.

The three friends of Job were a Temanite, name for a city renowned for wisdom, a Shuhite or descendant of Shoah meaning wealth, and a Naamathite, Namath meaning pleasantness. So you have Wisdom, wealth, and pleasantness come to address the problems of Job. I didn’t remember knowing this until studying for this lesson, but Job means either hated or persecuted.

When you consider what their names mean, you can sense trouble is brewing. Wisdom, wealth, and pleasantness came to speak to a man who felt hated and persecuted, even though he was loved by God. They come to the place where the persecuted dwelt, to a city called Uz.

This city means wooded, or consultation. Have you ever needed advice, you set confused, in need of consultation, but your view is clouded? In other words, you can’t see the forest for the trees? That was where Job found himself.

He was living his worst nightmare. He had lost everything, or had he? There were a few things left, not many but a few. He’ll even have three “friends” to visit.

Before we go along this road with him and his three “friends”, let’s take inventory of what he had lost, and what he hadn’t. First, he loses his livelihood . Verse 14, a messenger arrives, and says the Sabeans took your oxen and donkeys. Notice they weren’t what was killed, we find out who gets killed in Verse 15.

Verse 15, The messenger is apparently more than just a messenger, he is a servant. “… yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” So Job kept one servant from the Sabeans.

He loses his ability to worship. The sheep would hav been used for sacrifice. Verse 16, another messenger comes. He says the sheep are all burned up, and so are all of the servants except me. So we know Job had one servant left from the fire.

Next, he loses his transportation, or ability to travel freely. Verse 17, another messenger comes. The Chaldeans took the camels, they didn’t kill them, they took them. They killed all the servants, except me. So Job had one servant left from the Chaldeans.

Does this sound like 2020? He loses his livelihood, his ability to worship freely, and his ability to leave home, or travel abroad? If that wasn’t enough, he would go on to lose something even more precious to him.

Verse 18, the last servant arrives, with the worst news imaginable. There came a wind from the wilderness, smote the four corners of the Earth, and the house fell. Your children are gone, and all of the servants in the house, except me. Job had one servant left from the fall of the house. That’s four servants in all.

After all of the other things, that turned out to be far less important than the last two, it’s not over. He’s lost his loved ones, to unexpected mind boggling events, not of his own making. Then, a lot like what many have faced in 2020, he gets sick.

We know what is gone. What is left? Four servants, One Wife, and according to the Verse before it, a broken piece of pottery he used to scrape himself with. Have you ever wondered where he got the broken piece of pottery?

Where did he get the pottery? Maybe they were a treatment for his sickness. Maybe, he threw a pot in sorrow, or maybe the servant who ministered to his children, had a vessel in his hand when it all happened?

The Bible records he didn’t say anything wrong at the news, but it doesn’t say he didn’t react in sorrow. Maybe he reacted to losing all of this by throwing something, wouldn’t you? I don’t know, but it struck me that, like Job, that pot wasn’t shattered before all of this started.

The Scripture records he sits down in ashes, as a symbol of his affliction or mourning according to the commentator. Some Commentators say this happened in his house, others outside of it. Given that his friends saw him a long ways off, I believe it was outside.

We do know, he didn’t lose his house. His eldest son’s house was destroyed, but not Job’s. This was what Job had left, not much considering what he had lost. He had a house he couldn’t leave, a wife who was heartbroken, and four servants with no way to minister to him.

Next his “friends” arrive, and keep their mouth shut for seven days. Then everyone starts talking. Job starts speaking, they follow, and things go down hill from there. Oh there’s some high points. Job says, “I know My Redeemer lives, and I’m going to trust Him.”

The problem is, his friends weary and anger him. He tries to defend himself, and in his confusion, he tries to figure out what it all means. He doesn’t reject God, but in trying to figure things out, he allows himself to speak out of sorrow and pain.

He’s not in Kansas anymore. Nothing makes sense, sort of like the day we’re living in. Left and right are no longer directions, their factions. In the 80’s they sang we are the world, now they’re trying to set fire to it. People are hated for no reason, and life seems in chaos.

When did directions become political agendas? The reason I don’t get political, is because everyone has a soul. I don’t want to alienate anyone from The Gospel because of my opinions. Opinions, to me are like noses.

The last time I looked, the Cross reaches both to the left and the right. Saying “Whosoever Will”. God wants us all to meet Him at the cross. He’ll take care of the rest. My Job, if you’ll pardon the pun, is to point you to Jesus.

Like our day, there was a lot of talking.. Everyone kept on, and wouldn’t stop. Maybe that’s why, as the chapters go along, and his three whatever you call them, they’re not friends, keep making things worse. Job doesn’t attack God, but he does begin a series of questions that breed more questions.

It’s easy, in the pain of your heartache, to say stuff you don’t mean, or to misread things. Job does that, and ends up trying to say a lot. He’s human, he’s hurting. When you speak out of hurt, you can sow a lot of problems. I’m not judging, he would say later, I said things about things I didn’t know about.

His life is as broken as the infection covered clay he holds in his hand. He defends himself not against the wicked one who wants to get him, and his little friends too, but against any accusation that he deserves what he’s been dealt.

The question isn’t whether or not we deserve a, b, or c. Blame, guilt, self righteousness, and condemnation, none of those things are going to help Job. None of these things are going to help us. Whether your situation has anything to do with our own mistakes doesn’t change the situation. We’ve all made mistakes, whether they’re the cause, or the symptom of a current crisis.

If only he had someone to talk too. Someone to speak something besides the empty handed “wisdom of the Temanite. Someone who’s got something of real wealth, or value to say instead of the Shuhite. Maybe someone who could speak comfort, and true pleasantness, and not this Naamathite. None of them are living up to their name, except Job, and he can’t help it.

As I said though, we say Job lost everything, but there was someone who still cared. There was someone who still made sense. There is such a man. His name is Elihu, the son of Barachel, the Buzite, of the family of Ram.

We don’t hear him speak until Chapter 32. Commentators have been puzzled by him for generations. We’ve always believed there is no record of his entrance recorded, until he speaks. What if that isn’t really the case? What if, and I’m not saying he was, but what if, instead of being the fourth unannounced friend of Job, he was one of the four surviving servants?

What if, the very person Job needed to talk to, was in the house the entire time? What if, like Job, his heart ached for the fellow servants he lost? What if, like them, his future also depended on the prosperity of Job? What if, he was the servant who served Job’s children, that escaped the collapse?

If that’s the case, Elihu could understand why Job felt hated and persecuted. Whether he was the servant or not, he was a Buzite. Buz means contempt. Even if it was only a historic reference, Elihu could speak to Job on the level he was at this time.

Job 33:32 (KJV Strong’s)

32 If thou hast any thing to say, answer me: speak, for I desire to justify thee.

Elihu said, I’m in your corner Job. In your despair, you’ve said some things that are human, but they’re not kosher. Let me speak to you in your pain. Instead of condemning you like these three, let me help you to stand.

He says a lot of really great things. In 33:4 he says, The Spirit Of God has made me. In 33:6, he says like you, I’m pinched out of clay. In 34:14-15 he says, if God were to gather His Spirit, taking everything back, we would all be reduced to dust.

Job 36:15-16 (ESV)

15 He delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity.

16 He also allured you out of distress into a broad place where there was no cramping, and what was set on your table was full of fatness.

He goes on to say, God delivers the afflicted, and this is important, not out of their affliction, but by their affliction! In Job 36:15-16, he also says He opens their ear by adversity. The very things you’re going through Job, are going to be what gives you victory and honor! God doesn’t plan on avoiding the ashes you are in, but to rescue you in the ashes. Maybe that’s why Isaiah said what he did.

Isaiah 61:3 (KJV)

3 To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified.

If there were no ashes, would there be beauty to replace it? As the other writer says, weeping, or mourning endures for the night, but joy comes in the morning. Notice the same pronunciation for mourning and morning, both are tied to joy.

One of the last things Elihu says is in Job 37:22, ”Out of the north comes golden splendor; God is clothed with awesome majesty.” Did I mention, Elihu means He Is My God! He’s addressed Job’s wrong direction, and pointed him instead, to the direction of God, Who is ready to speak.

Essentially Elihu introduces God. Cue the whirlwind, which functions here as God’s Chariot. This was years before Nahum said,

Nahum 1:3 (ESV Strong’s)

3 The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.

Can I step out of the story to point out, we are made from dust. If the clouds are the dust of His feet in the Old Testament, is it any wonder that in the New, He said He that is with you, shall be in you? His goal wasn’t just to walk the clouds, but to live in the hearts of His people!

God speaks to Job out of the Whirlwind, which means means storm or tempest. Elihu whether a servant or not, was at Job’s house to serve Job. God, who had allowed Job to experience what he had, was speaking to Job in the midst of his storm. Most people assume that God is somewhere else when their world is being tossed around them like a hurricane. He’s a lot closer than you think!

Jesus said I am a very present Help in times of trouble. In other words, you may be so caught up in the pain of the sores and blisters, that you don’t feel His hand, but He’s still there. The God Who became a Servant is in the house.

Speaking of Servants Job, it’s not your house. It’s His House. If it were your house or my house Job, when the business crashed, when the ability to go to Worship was taken, when we were stopped in our tracks a few months ago, or when chaos runs rampant now, we’d be in trouble.

Yet, it’s His House, and we are His Servants. He knows how to mend the broken Job! Before you’re clay pot was broken, before it was formed, He formed you and I. The Apostle Paul would go on to say we are all vessels in a great house in 2 Timothy 2:20.

Until this Message, I’ve never looked at Job this way. I didn’t figure this one out. He gave me how the events of one man’s life thousands of years ago parallel the weirdest year of our lives so far.

Someone who lived before Christ, before Isaiah, David, or Moses, speaks to us today. It really shouldn’t surprise us, but it always does. God takes care of all of us, because we are His Servants, we are His Children, Galatians 1:4.

You and I get stressed, because as David said we are but dust. Yet, God didn’t just make us, He made what He made us out of. He made the dust. We’re all clay, some brown, some red, some olive, some pink, but we’re all just clay. Isn’t astounding someone could get made because someone’s a different shade of dust than someone else, when we’re all just dust?

When we try to act like we’re the ones in charge, when we have all the answers, people get hurt, possibly even killed. Yet, when we remember, we are all servants, and broken ones at that. We’re all crack pots in some way. We can come to the Owner of the House, He’ll put us on His wheel, and make us better than new.

The chapter doesn’t end with Job getting all of his stuff back. Sis Holland mentioned something that I never quite looked at like this. Job got more kids, but if you’re a Momma, more kids don’t replace the ones you lost. Even if you get all those back, it doesn’t replace the ones you ache to hold again, but we’ll see Job when we go to Heaven.

Job was a Servant if God, and if we Job, he was the one that raised his kids. What if the kids he thought he lost, were his welcoming crew when it came time for him to go to Glory? Some things you’ve thought you lost, you may not see on this side again, but they’re waiting at a place that is far better.

Job 42:7 (ESV)

7 After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.

The book ends this way, God looks at Eliphaz and tells him, “I’m angry at you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” “My Servant Job.”

Please notice, God didn’t call them Job’s friends. He knew better from the beginning. Who we view as friends, as my Pastor, Pastor Denny Livingston has pointed out, may only be acquaintances. We need to look to God to shed His Light on all of our relationships.

He may not want us to discard the relationship. He may be using us to win them, but He does want us to see them in the proper light, or perspective. Had Job known this, they may not have been able to hurt him, but also, they also would not have been close enough to see God through Him.

Like us, there was a lot Job didn’t know. He scraped his soars with a broken piece of pottery, that could have very easily made things worse. He had contaminated it with his infection. God has no such limitations.

He can take the broken piece of clay, and do the same thing with it that He would do with the leper in Galilee. He can take hold of our infirmities, and rather than being infected by our unholiness, He can transfer His holiness to us. The Lord can take that old broken piece of pottery, and make it brand new.

There’s an old song that comes to mind. A group you may or may not have heard of, called the Hinsons used to sing it.

Potter hear the clay, saying mold me in thy way,

That I might share this love instilled in me,

His skillful hands performed the task,

Just like thee is all I ask, and Father let

your spirit breathe on me.

Sometimes in molding us, as a matter fact, I think every time, the potter has to place holes in the clay to shape it. It’s not cruelty, it’s growth. It’s not to destroy us, but to build us up.

Job realizes his error, and comes to The Owner of it all. He uses the same phrase in the last chapter that He did in the first, “My Servant Job”. Everything is restored Job. I never lost it, I just took it off the board for a little while, so I could minister to you.

Job 42:7 (ESV)

7 After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.

Chapter 42 says Job saw four generations of his family. This may not have been the case had he not went through what he did. His affliction elevated him. If our battles bring generations into the door of the Kingdom Of God, then what seemed so bad, becomes an eternal glory! What if 2020 brings generations in the house? Whatever we face it’s okay, it’s not our house, we are just Servants In The House!!!