Rich, Decent, Godly, Generous, Well Thought Of

When life is good, what do you really lean on? The Story Of Job.

How has comfort and luxury affected you? Has having more made you more grateful and generous, or has it quietly made you expect life to stay comfortable?

Has success made you more dependent on God, or more dependent on what you own, what you have built, what you have saved, and how well life is going?

WHAT THE BOOK OF JOB IS ALL ABOUT

I just love Job. Here is a guy doing it all right. Things are good, balanced, Godly, and then God allows some crazy bad stuff to happen to him. If you do not understand the larger story of God, Job could almost seem like a sick joke. Frankly, the illustration of him was probably far worse …

“They saw Job from far away, but he looked so different they almost didn’t recognize him. They began to cry loudly and tore their robes and put dirt on their heads to show how sad they were.” (Job‬ ‭2‬:‭12‬ ‭NCV‬‬)

Here is a man loving God, living right, caring for his family, respected by others, and enormously successful, and then his life completely falls apart.

The book begins this way: “A man named Job lived in the land of Uz. He was an honest and innocent man; he honored God and stayed away from evil. Job had seven sons and three daughters. He owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred teams of oxen, and five hundred female donkeys. He also had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.” (Job 1:1–3 NCV)

That opening matters because God does not introduce Job as a fraud who finally got what was coming to him. The Hebrew describes him as tam, a man of integrity, and yashar, upright or straight in the way he lived. Job was not sinless, but he was genuinely Godly. He feared God, stayed away from evil, cared deeply about his family, and had an excellent reputation. He was also extremely wealthy. His sheep, camels, oxen, donkeys, servants, and household represented enormous wealth and influence. Job was rich, decent, godly, generous, and well thought of.

SO WHAT WENT WRONG - WHY DO WE LOVE GOD?

Then everything changes. Job loses his possessions, many of his servants are killed, all ten of his children die, and then his health collapses. Eventually he is sitting in ashes scraping his diseased skin with broken pottery. His wife tells him to curse God and die, and his friends eventually begin trying to explain suffering they really do not understand.

At the beginning of the book, Satan’s accusation is basically this: “Of course Job worships You. Look at everything You have given him. Take away his protection, his wealth, and his comfort, and then we will see what Job really loves.”

That becomes the great question underneath the whole book: Do we love God because He is God, or because of what God gives us?

HOW DO YOU RESPOND WHEN IT GOES SIDEWAYS

That question gets personal pretty quickly. It is easy to say God is good when the marriage is good, the children are healthy, the money is there, the body is working, and the future looks good. But what happens when one of those disappears? What happens when the diagnosis comes, someone dies, the relationship breaks, the money disappears, or life simply stops making sense?

Job teaches us that suffering is not always evidence that we have done something wrong. Sometimes suffering absolutely is the result of bad choices, but not every storm is punishment. Not every loss means God is angry with you, and not every painful season means you somehow missed God. Sometimes faithful people walk through terrible suffering while they are still faithfully following Him.

Look at Jesus. Nobody lived more perfectly, and nobody suffered more unjustly. Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble.” He never presented Christianity as a way to avoid pain. He also told the story of two houses, one built on rock and the other on sand. What we sometimes miss is that both houses were hit by the storm. The person who built on the Rock still got the storm. The difference was what remained standing afterward.

GODLY LIVING BRINGS NO GUARANTEES

We sometimes unconsciously believe, “If I love God, make good decisions, give generously, treat people well, work hard, and live responsibly, surely God will keep really bad things from happening to me.” Job destroys that formula. So does the cross. So do the apostles. Paul was beaten, imprisoned, persecuted, and shipwrecked. James was killed. Peter suffered. Jesus Himself was crucified. God’s people get tested.

Christianity does not say, “Trust God and nothing terrible will happen.” Christianity says, trust God because even when terrible things happen, they cannot take away what ultimately belongs to you. That is where eternity changes everything.

Job spends much of the book grieving, questioning, and wrestling with God. He wants answers, and when God finally speaks, He does something interesting: He never tells Job about the conversation with Satan that we were allowed to see at the beginning. Job never gets the full explanation. Instead, God essentially reminds him, “You do not see everything I see.” He asks Job, “Where were you when I made the earth’s foundation?” (Job 38:4 NCV)

God is not mocking Job’s pain. He allowed Job to cry, question, grieve, and struggle. What He eventually confronts is Job’s assumption that because he cannot understand what God is doing, God must not know what He is doing. That is where faith becomes real.

SO WHAT IS REAL FAITH?

Faith is not always saying, “Now I understand.” Sometimes faith is saying, “I still do not understand, but I trust the One who does.”

Near the end, Job says, “My ears had heard of you before, but now my eyes have seen you.” (Job 42:5 NCV) Job began the story knowing God, but he ended the story knowing God more deeply.

Then God rebukes Job’s friends, Job prays for them, and God restores his life. His possessions are doubled, he again has seven sons and three daughters, and he lives another 140 years. Scripture says, “The Lord blessed the last part of Job’s life even more than the first part.” (Job 42:12 NCV)

But the message is not that if you suffer long enough, God will eventually double your money. Plenty of faithful believers died without earthly restoration. Jesus did. The apostles did.

WHAT’S THE TAKE-AWAY

The larger message is that suffering does not get the final word. God does. He is God and we are not.

This life matters deeply, but it is not the whole story. We can become so attached to seventy, eighty, or ninety years here that we forget we were created for forever.

Paul called the troubles of this life “light and momentary” compared with eternal glory, not because suffering is easy, but because eternity is so unbelievably large in comparison.

CONCLUSION

So enjoy what God has given you. Enjoy your family, your home, good food, travel, laughter, and the memories you get to make. If God has given you money, enjoy it and be generous with it. But hold every gift with an open hand, because comfort makes a wonderful gift and a terrible god.

Maybe prosperity tests us one way and suffering tests us another. Prosperity asks, “Will you forget God because life is good?” Suffering asks, “Will you still trust God when life is not?” Job had to answer both questions, and eventually so will we.

The storm is not proof that the Rock failed. The storm reveals what your life was built on.

This life is not our final home; it is a stepping stone to eternity. So when life is good, thank Him. When life hurts, cling to Him. When you understand what He is doing, trust Him, and when you absolutely do not understand, trust Him still.

Job lost nearly everything and discovered that underneath everything else, he still had God.

Maybe that is the greatest lesson of the whole book: if everything else changes, but you still have Him, you still have the one thing you can never afford to lose.

GOD, when life is good, keep me grateful and humble. Do not let comfort become my god. When life gets hard, keep me from assuming You have abandoned me. Help me trust You when I understand and especially when I don’t. Build my life on the Rock, and remind me that this life is only the beginning of eternity with You. Help me live with eternity in mind. IJNIP amen. ♥️