This Week's Focus Passage

God Gives and Takes Away

Focus Passage: Job 1:21

‘Jehovah gave, and Jehovah hath taken away, blessed be the name of Jehovah.’

The context of any verse or passage in the Word of God is always to be brought under consideration if the understanding is going to be enlarged. Not surprisingly, the context of the statement above uttered by the patriarch, Job, in which these words are found, is extremely important. While it may be true that the words can be isolated from the context and still bear a distinct message apart, and by themselves, for it is a biblical axiom that God can do precisely what He wills with His own creation. Paul, in Romans 9:21, echoes the very sentiment found in Isaiah 29:16 and Jeremiah 18:6, about the potter’s right to do as he wishes with the clay; it is His clay. But the context in Job to be seen in that which precedes the verse of our focus suggests that there is something of a contest between Satan and Jehovah regarding the faithfulness of His servant, Job. Satan had contended that if God, ‘but put forth his hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face.’ Jehovah picks up the gauntlet, as it were, with the following response, ‘Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put forth not thy hand.’ So Satan went forth from the presence of Jehovah with this permission granted. We then learn that a messenger came unto Job, and said of his children:

The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them; and the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away: yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have taken them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house; and, behold, there came a great wind, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

These are the events that occurred which caused Job to utter his rather well-known faithful statement regarding the goodness of his God. These were terrible circumstances and surely brought this servant of Jehovah to a stand. Yet, as God had anticipated, Job proved to be both trustworthy and trusting. He would not, as his wife later recommended, Curse God, and die, but he stood true to His Lord and

blessed His name. I believe that many professing Christians, if we ever seriously were to examine the many various circumstances of our own families, would have to admit that we face, or have faced, challenges similar to those Job faced. Do we respond faithfully, as did Job, or not? To put it more blatantly, do we prove Satan to be mistaken, or God?

Our Savior taught His twelve disciples when He sent them to preach:

Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law: and a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.—Matthew 10:34-36.

Jesus has told us in this Matthean passage that we are liable to be called to suffer in somewhat the same manner as did Job, although He is speaking more closely of our being deprived of our sons and daughters in a spiritual sense, rather than in the physical sense that fell to the lot of Job. The people of God might well imagine that because they are children of the living and true God, there will necessarily be peace in their households; peace with their sons and daughters, and derivatively peace with their sons-in-law and their daughters-in-law. Our Lord has told us, and is telling us still, that this is not to be presumed. Our very own seed, the children of their mother’s womb, may not only not follow our course, but may be strongly against us, even unto death, as Christ spoke earlier in the 21st verse of this same chapter of Matthew, ‘Brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father his child: and children shall rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death.’ This is a hard pill to swallow; every bit as hard as the one Job had to taste. But we are nevertheless called to respond in the same manner. Our Father wished to prove Job, and He may wish to prove us. Are we going to be found echoing those words, ‘Jehovah gave, and Jehovah hath taken away, blessed be the name of Jehovah.’? Will we defend the honor and righteousness of our Father in heaven as did the old patriarch? Will we be content with whatever God disposes?

The Lord was proving Job; He was proving Abraham when He called him to sacrifice Isaac; He may be proving us. There is, however, another option. He may be chastening us. This is surely what we see in the life of David. After David’s sin with Bath-sheba and Uriah, the Lord sent the prophet Nathan to speak to David. Nathan’s message from God brought David to repentance, but still he was to experience the chastening hand of his Father. David had initially reacted to the prophet’s parable of the man who stole his neighbor’s only ewe lamb to serve to a guest by pronouncing the Levitical sentence upon him. That man, said the king, shall pay fourfold! Nathan told David that he had judged himself; he would pay fourfold; the sword would not depart from his house. The sword did not leave until it had consumed the child of adultery along with Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah. This teaches us to examine ourselves under the rod; is it for proving that evil has befallen us, or is it for chastening. May we respond faithfully.

David Farmer, elder

Fellowship Bible Church

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