Biblical Examples of Worshipping God
Job 1,2
DATE: 8 Oct, 2006 AM
PLACE: BBC Ballincollig
I. Introduction (John 4:23)
A. This is a study series looking at True Worship, and True Worshippers
B. We have been looking at HOW God’s people worshipped God
1. How Abraham worshipped even though he was about to lose his son Isaac
2. How Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would NOT worship this world’s false gods of gold, money, power, music, and were ready to pay the ultimate price to be able to worship the God of heaven simply, and effectively
3. Today let’s turn to the priceless pages of the Book of Job, and learn once again our worship will always be tested, put on trial, but that true worship will always triumph
C. The test of one’s worship is what happens when everything goes wrong? Can you STILL worship your God? Do you still hold onto your faith? Do you STILL “trust and obey”? Can you still say, “He is good” and “His mercy endureth forever?”
D. People have a weird concept of how to worship…
1. You got to be in church
2. You got to be almost comatose, mesmerized, hypnotized
3. You got be happy and prosperous
E. But none of the above is true according to almost ALL instances of worship in the Bible – especially the situation we are about to study this morning - Job
II. Background
A. Who Was Job? (Job 1:1,2)
1. A Believing Man (Job 1:1)
a. Perfect towards God – blameless – right with God
b. Upright means he had nothing to hide and be embarrassed of – he was clean – not that he had never sinned but that he always had his sin covered by the blood! Pardoned, forgiven!
c. Feared God – faith in God means nothing if there is no fear of God
d. Hated sin – faith in God means nothing if there is not a HATRED of sin – escheweth evil means Job avoided, spit sin out of his life. God cannot bless a person who does not HATE sin in his or her life!
2. A Blessed Man (Job 1:2,3; James 1:17)
a. God had blessed Job’s home
1) Had a wonderful, faithful wife – one wife by the way
2) Had TEN healthy, happy children
b. God had blessed his business – farming – loads of animals, loads of land – loads of money
c. God had blessed his name – a great name – well known
3. A Burdened Man (Job 1:4,5)
a. His own spirituality (closeness and walk with God) was no guarantee of his family’s spirituality
b. His children were a worry – blessings can often make the next generation lazy, especially in dependency upon God
c. So he prays for his children, intercedes for them, and sacrifices for them in case they were doing something stupid
1) Under the Old Testament, people HAD to offer sacrifices to cover for sins
2) Fathers were responsible for their children’s relationship with God and had to sometimes intercede for them when they sinned or else they would be punished by God
3) Job was NOT going to abandon his kids to the world, and to their own devices!
B. What Happened To Him?
1. The same thing that happens to absolutely everybody in this life – disasters (Job 3:25)
2. You can be dotting your i’s, and perfectly crossing your t’s and yet STILL get horrendously side-swiped by disaster!
3. Four of the worst disasters that can happen to any of us, all happened at once
a. Loss of all income and security
1) Sabeans stole his 1,000 oxen and 500 asses
2) Lightning storm kills of his entire herd of 7,000 sheep
3) Chaldeans stole his 3,000 camels
4) All but 4 of his servants are lost along with all the farm animals
b. Loss of his children - a tornado kills all 10 of his children
c. Loss of his health – a crippling, devastating disease
d. Loss of support – his own wife wants to just die
C. How Did Job Respond (Job 1:20-22; 2:9-11)?
1. The experiences of Job show us how to respond when absolutely everything that could go wrong, does go wrong!
2. THAT is why this BOOK is so important!
3. It would make a great movie – a great film, a great book wouldn’t it? ;)
III. Message – The Worship of Job – Here is How to Really Worship God
A. His Worship Was A Choice
1. It was NOT based on feelings, on fortune, on being forced
2. It was a choice that he made
3. Job was tested, tempted
a. To stop believing in God
b. To commit suicide
c. To NOT praise God
d. To NOT accept from God what God gives us – sovereignty
4. Yet Job worshipped – it was a CHOICE first and foremost that he made
5. Just as Daniel did when HE “purposed in his heart” to not sin, and to stop living for God, even though he had lost his family, his homeland, his freedom, and his future!
B. His Worship Was In Weakness
1. Grieving (Job 1:20)
2. Alone
3. Sick, Dying – no hope, except in God
4. Satan’s purpose of our trial or testing as a Christian – to get us to STOP worshipping God
a. Satan HATES the worship of God – the giving of honour and glory to God and not to HIM – he is consumed with the desire to STOP us from worshipping God
b. In Job, God allowed Satan to completely ruin Job – all the way down – an extreme, Job still found the ability to praise God
5. Worship, praise is NOT because we feel good – praise is not something I do on the basis of my feelings or my circumstances
6. My praise is based on the reality – the being of God
7. Job is the very first Book of the Bible – the oldest Book of the Bible - because the longest running question of mankind is how to trust and love a God when things go wrong – how to deal with trouble ans still praise God
8. Job determines to worship the Lord no matter what
a. He does it in grief
b. In loss
c. On an ash-heap
d. Alone
e. Weak
f. By faith – by trusting in an all good God, and letting Him do His job!
9. The Book of Job shows, in its extreme, is the purity of true worship that is not faked, or manufactured, and acted out! This stuff HAD to be real!
10. The Bible says…
a. Philp 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.
b. 1Th 5:18 In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
c. Eph 4:31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
d. Eph 4:29 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.
e. Psalm 34:1 I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
f. Heb 13:15 By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.
g. Psa 107:1 O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.
h. Psa 145:9 The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.
C. His Worship Was of God
1. Not of the good times, prosperity
2. Not of what God WAS in history, or in your past
3. Not of what he needed – we make what we need more important than God
4. But just of who God IS - God IS so worthy of worship
a. We say the same of people who have done great things: Eric Shackleton; Neal Armstrong; Christopher Columbus; Amilia Earhart
b. Greatness in a person demands of us our worship
c. So is it with God – and truly He is the only one worthy of any worship
D. His Worship Was for Others
1. For his wife first – she needed GOD, and the only way for her to get the encouragement to believe God again was to see her husband believe God
2. For his friends – who didn’t have a clue
3. For Satan – to get his spiritual butt kicked – he didn’t believe Job would be able to NOT curse God
4. For God – to be worthy
5. For US (Rom 15:4)
IV. Concluding Principles
A. The Power of Worship - it kept Job from:
1. Being suicidal
2. From blaming God
3. From hating God
4. From abandoning his relationship with God
5. Troubles affect different people different ways (see Jobs’ wife, who was affected horribly), but Job determined to always praise the Lord
B. The Person of our Worship
1. Job is being pulled by TWO extremes:
a. The devil wants you to see only defeat/disaster - that it is not worth it
b. God is trying to convince you, the Holy Spirit is trying to encourage you, the Bible was written to enable you to see Him who is invisible – to see His hand in your life
2. Job did not realize that this was a spiritual battle
3. He didn’t know that he was being used to teach us about GOD
4. Job is NOT the hero here!
a. Job is not the one to get all excited about
b. He is not who we should really learn from
c. When his wife gives up and he still stays strong (that’s wonderful and that’s true)
d. But Job is not the hero here
e. The person to learn from is GOD
f. The reason why God blessed this entire event is because Job recognized the power sovereignty of God
5. Job teaches us NOT about the strength aspect of OUR faith – what WE can do when we believe, and all that rubbish!
6. Paul found out in his infirmities (2Cor 12), he did not find strength, he SAW the strength of God in his weakness
7. He praised the awesomeness of God – didn’t just praise the grace of God
a. Yes God does strengthen us
b. He does enable us to do what we otherwise could never do
c. But he doesn’t do it by enabling OUR strength
d. He does it by doing it Himself – not by us doing it (EXAMPLES)
e. That’s why we glory in the Lord alone!
f. Paul gloried in his weakness, infirmity because it was THEN that he was able to truly worship and praise God for what God does for what God can do
C. The Result of our Worship.
1. Stacks of Blessings (Job 42:10-17) – NOT skimpy
2. Sanity – Job AND his wife got through all this by worshipping, not complaining, and griping, and getting bitter and angry
3. Scripture was written
4. Saints are encouraged, even 4,000 years later!
5. Satan is defeated over and over again!
Craig Ledbetter
Bible Baptist Church
Ireland