Will Man Serve God For Nothing?

Today’s topic is going to be in the book of Job. This topic is an emotional one for me, both because I find it to speak profoundly to my own experiences in life, but also because it highlights my failings before God in a manner that even the New Testament really doesn’t do for me. The Book of Job is in some ways a very simple story, but it is also profoundly deep. There are some things that it reveals clearly and helpfully to me, but there are also questions that it opens that I have not learned to answer yet. I think about the book of Job a lot because perhaps more than any book in the Bible, it makes me ask question about my own life, it makes me think about the future, and it makes me think about how God wants me, in the words of Romans 12:2, to be “transformed by the renewing of my mind” while I still have time on this earth. I hope that by sharing my own struggles with the message of the Book of Job, the Spirit can bless and invite you to delve deeper into the character of God and how our knowledge of His character can transform our lives.

Job has always been one of the most interesting and most empathetic books of the Bible to me personally, and as I study it more, I have come to believe that it is a book which church teaching tends to oversimplify. Job has 42 chapters, but the amount of content that most of us contain in our minds about it can probably be summarized in a paragraph. What is the value of those 42 chapters? Are there things that we forget in the book that we need to draw wisdom from? Job is probably the oldest recorded book in the Bible. But ironically, I think it may be one of the most relevant for what we as modern individuals need to understand about our orientation towards God. The attitudes about God expressed in Job are foundational to the rest of the Bible. The expectations that God had of the patriarchs, of Moses, and of the Israelites post-Egypt seem to all be predicated on what was probably first explored and written down for posterity in the book of Job. Job had no Mosaic Law, no written Bible, and he probably had no ordained mode of worship. After all, the book of Job tells us that Job performed his own sacrifices, something that would have been prohibited under Mosaic Law. Job may have predated Moses or even Abraham, or he may have lived among the descendants of Lot or Esau, whom Scripture seems to hint that God may have had interaction with. Regardless, Job knew who God was, and the attitudes and beliefs that Job held are recorded for us as a bedrock of what our views of God should look like.

If we were to summarize Job in a paragraph, I think most of us would come up with something like this: Job was a victim of Satan’s jealousy whose story tells us something about how much suffering a man should be willing to suffer and still serve God. It’s not a bad summary. There is a lot we should pay attention to in Job about spiritual warfare, the fact that evil should often be attributed to spiritual forces, and that we should have a perspective on our trials in life that pays attention to the spiritual realm. But the book isn’t about Satan. In fact, Satan himself is so unimportant to the central themes of the story that he’s never mentioned again or even implied after the second chapter. The following 40 chapters are silent about Satan.

There’s also a lot we should pay attention to in Job about suffering: about where suffering comes from, how much suffering a man can endure, about the place of suffering in life, and how we should react towards God when we suffer. But the book of Job is actually not about suffering either. It’s ancillary to the theme of Job, a side effect and a necessary consequence. If we read the book of Job with a primary view of suffering, there is indeed a lot of important wisdom that we will glean from it. But for mature Christians, who desire to glean all that God has in store to reveal to us, are we missing something by reducing Job’s story to a lesson about suffering? Let’s try to take a closer look at the story to find out.

The book of Job introduces the titular character as a man who is God-fearing, righteous in his conduct, interceding before God for others, and greatly successful in life, in all the ways that we moderns would measure success. But it also introduces the spiritual being who is the accuser, Satan, who lives up to his title as adversary with his words and deeds before God. The book of Job tells us that the angels assembled before God, and Satan came with them. God asked for an account from Satan of his travels of the earth. Satan gives his initial report, and then the conversation goes something like this.

God says, ‘Have you seen Job? He’s pretty impressive. He loves me, and he’s blameless in how he lives his life. Have you seen him?’

And this is where Satan crosses the line. He says, ‘Yeah, I’ve seen him. But you know what? I don’t think he’s that righteous. He only serves you because you’ve given him everything. If you took away everything that you gave him, he would curse you to your face. He would despise you.’

Now he’s done more than just report to God, as he’s been invited to. He’s attacked Job of course. But he’s also attacked God’s omniscience by countering God’s observation of Job. And he’s also attacked God’s integrity by accusing Him of bribery. And at this point, it seems reasonable that God would retaliate. He could cast him out of heaven, imprison him, or invoke a final judgment of the kind that 2 Peter indicates the rebellious angels received. But even if God wanted to do that, there is now something at stake here. If God dismisses Satan, it leaves Satan’s questions on the table. They’re unanswered. And for the sake of all of us who benefit from the testimony of Scripture, God wants the questions answered. So the rest of the book is about not only vindicating Job, it’s about vindicating God. It’s about showing that Satan’s accusations were wrong.

And we know what happens next. God gives Satan permission to take away all of God’s blessings from him: everything except take Job’s life. Job loses his possessions, his health, his children, and his peace. Job has nothing left except his life. After all, Job must remain alive to answer the question: whether man will serve God for nothing. Now we as the readers know why all this is happening. We know Job is righteous. We know his friends are wrong when they say that Job is being punished for his sin. We know that God has his wise and righteous reasons for allowing Job to undergo the terrible sufferings that he does. But Job does not know these reasons. For me, as I read and empathize with Job, this is one of the hardest parts. Frederich Nietzche said that a man who has sufficient why can bear any how. But Job has no why. God is silent to him. God did not cause Job’s sufferings, but he did allow them. And God is silent to him. Even as the story ends with a happy ending, and God speaks to Job, and God restores Job’s fortunes, God never tells Job why. And that part is so frustrating to me.

We will come back to this. But I want to make sure we understand what Satan is accusing and what question is being answered by the next 40 chapters of Job. If Satan is the triggering event, we must pay attention to his accusation to understand what the book of Job is really about. Satan’s accusation before God is not that Job would abandon righteousness if he suffered more. Satan’s accusation is slightly different. He says, in chapter 1 verse 9,

“Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.”

Understand that Satan’s accusation is not only an indictment of Job but also an indictment of the character of God. Satan is the accuser of both Job and God. Satan contends that God is guilty of bribery, and Job is no more righteous than any man that can be paid off, as his service to God has been rewarded with protection from the spiritual realm and success in all the material aspects of his life. It’s easy to see what accusations Satan has of Job. But we must also understand the subtle allegations that Satan is making against God by extension. If the righteous on the earth serve God only because God blesses them, than God is no more worthy of worship than any wealthy benefactor. From Satan’s perspective, God simply bribes his servants. And God is willing to accept worship that is false and coerced. We really need to think about this in our own lives. Do we worship God because He is good, or because He is good to us? Those are not the same thing. And doesn’t Jesus admit this himself? In Luke 6:32 Jesus tells us that true love is to love those who do nothing for us, for even sinners love those who love them.

If God is worshiped only because of what he gives to people, how he advantages his worshippers, then there is nothing about who God is himself that is actually being worshiped. God is being worshiped in the same way that we join an insurance company that gives us the best rates. We don’t care about the insurance company. We aren’t saying anything about the insurance company’s goodness or transcendence. In the same way, we malign God and make Satan’s accusation true if we worship God only for His blessings, only for salvation, only for God’s promises of heaven. The book of Job makes the stakes higher: is God worthy of worship for who he is alone? Will man serve God for nothing?

And this is where we must be careful about how we view the book of Job if we only glean from it what the book says about Job (and by extension, us) and how mankind should orient themselves towards God. The book of Job is about Satan’s accusation towards Job, yes, but that is only half of the book of Job. The other half, and what I contend is more important, is about Satan’s accusation towards God. The mature Christian must recognize that the book of Job is not only about the character of the righteous, but also about the character of God, and that is important. Keep that in the back of your heads because when we reach the end of the story of Job, those two threads are going to come together to close the theme of the book in a way that will tell us something we need to know.

So Job suffers. He has nothing. And his friends come to give him advice. By their line of thinking, God is just, and everything is under His control. Therefore, Job must be suffering because he has committed some great sin. But Job contends that this is not true. He contends that he has committed no sin that would cause God to punish him in this way. These arguments between Job and his friends, and their viewpoints about God, fill the majority of the book.

Finally, God appears to Job. If the book of Job was primarily a lesson in suffering, we would expect God to give Job a reason for his suffering. But God doesn’t do this. God doesn’t even mention Job’s suffering. Because that’s not the lesson that God needs either Job or us to learn. Instead, God talks about Himself. He declares to Job that He is great, He is above reproach, and He possesses all wisdom and knowledge and goodness.

And again, this is where I get frustrated. God seems harsh, he seems inconsiderate. God could make Job’s situation so much better by revealing to him the truth of what is going on. God just needs to tell Job that He is not punishing Him. He just needs to fill Job in on the backstory of His conversation with Satan. But God says nothing about it. He doesn’t even acknowledge Job’s suffering. Why?

Because He can’t. This was part of the challenge in the beginning. Will man serve God for nothing? Consider what happens if God explains the situation to Job. Job will now understand that he is being tested. He will understand that He has been praised and glorified by God before the angels. He will understand that He still enjoys God’s favor. He may even surmise that his fortunes will be reversed when the test is done. If Job becomes aware of any of these, he will no longer be serving God for nothing.

And so God holds the line. God gives Job nothing. God knows what Job is capable of and He will not concede the challenge to Satan. And finally, God rebukes Job in Job 40:2, inviting Him to serve God for nothing, saying, “Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it.”

And Job responds the way that is right. He submits to serve God. He declares that God is good and righteous and that God does not need to justify himself. He admits his own fault in demanding that God answer for Job’s dispossessions. In other words, God does not need to give Job anything. God is worthy of worship only for who He is. And that’s it. The trial is over. Job has proved Satan wrong. Job has proven that a man can serve God for nothing.

Of course, we know that the book of Job is not the whole story. It is one scene in life. Job’s restoration at the end of the story tells us that it is God’s desire to reward. The New Testament tells us that God gifts us eternal life with assurance that we don’t need to doubt. The story of Jacob tells us that God wants us to seek blessing from Him. But we also know that God wants us to face the trials of life as well for the sake of our maturation and our confirmation towards the likeness of Christ. And anyone who has experienced deep depression knows that in the midst of trial, our sense of perspective shortens drastically. It can become all too easy for us to feel like we are serving God for nothing. And it’s in these moments that we need to have prepared ourselves beforehand to rest in knowing who God is.

And this is where the lesson comes to us. Would we serve God for nothing? I know I’m not there yet. I know that I do not possess the faith and integrity that Job had. In fact, I am so far from it that I struggle to believe that any man could do what Job did. Some people struggle with believing that God parted the sea, or appointed a whale to swallow Jonah. But for me, these miracles pale in comparison to the difficulty I have in believing that man can serve God for nothing. I have seen glimpses of it. I’ve seen Christians attain the unbelievable in their faith in despite what they suffer and what they feel that God has refused them in life, and they still remain faithful to the God that they know is perfect.

And the book of Job tells us how one can accomplish that kind of faith. Ask yourself: why was Job vindicated? Was it by his perfect conduct? Certainly not. Part of Job’s dialogue is declaring that God has dealt with him unjustly and demanding that God give him a reason for his suffering. God refutes this, and He calls Job a faultfinder. He calls him one who reproves God. And yet in Job 42:8 God will declare that it is Job who has spoken what is right of God. And the point, I think, is this: despite Job’s relational problems with God, it is Job, and not Job’s three friends, who knows who God is. And it is Job’s understanding and continued worship of God’s character that vindicates Job through his trial. It is also because of Job’s understanding of who God is that Job is able to pass the test, and why Job is able to repent and submit before God, and ultimately why Job is able to serve God for nothing. Job knows that God is worthy for His own sake. Job knows that God owes Job nothing. It is because Job’s intimate understanding of who God is that Job is able to weather the trial and continue to worship Him.

This is the content of the bulk of the 42 chapters of Job that we tend to skip over. It is Job and his friends, fundamentally, discussing who God is. Here are some examples of what Job knows about God:

Job 19:25 “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth.”

Job 23:8 “Behold, I go forward but God is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive Him. When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him; He turns on the right, I cannot see Him. But He knows the way I take; when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”

Job 26:5 “The departed spirits tremble under the waters and their inhabitants. Naked is Sheol before Him, and Abaddon has not covering. He stretches out the north over empty space and hangs the earth on nothing. V.13 By His breath the heavens are cleared; His hand has pierced the fleeing serpent. Behold, these are the fringes of His ways; and how faint a word we hear from Him! But His mighty thunder, who can understand?”

Job 31:2 “What is the portion of God from above or the heritage of the Almighty from on high? Is it not calamity to the unjust and disaster to those who work iniquity? Does He not see my ways and number all my steps?”

Job 13:15 “Though he slay me, I will hope in him; yet I will argue my ways to his face.”

I have spoken before of how the Bible, especially the Old Testament, emphasizes the importance of knowing God alongside correcting our behavior before God. We cannot have one without the other, but there is a strong message in Job that it is the former need, knowing God, more than his behavior, which allows Job to persevere his trial. In John 17:3 Jesus prays to the Father and says, “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent.” Our order of worship reflects this duality. Sermons tend to emphasize our conduct before God, the ways we need to live and work and change. But worship tends to be mostly about knowing God. When we sing, we are contemplating and declaring the character of God. And that is critical for us.

If this exploration of Job intrigues you, I’d like to point you towards a lecture that has caused me to think more about Job. On Youtube you can find a sermon by a man named Jody Apple titled “Will Man Serve God for Nothing?” It’s an hour and thirteen minutes long, and probably for that reason it’s criminally underwatched at 38 views. But it’s a wonderful and though provoking examination of this subject if you are looking for more.

The story of Job challenges me that there is more I need to learn and internalize about God in order to have the kind of faith Job did. I don’t believe that in Job’s situation I could respond the same way. And that concerns me because I claim to be a worshiper of God. I claim to know that God is worthy of worship for His own sake. But can I be a testimony to that? I know that I still have more growth ahead of me to be able to truly worship God in that way.

There’s a dialogue in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings that I think speaks to this. At some point, the two main characters come to a point where they realize their quest is hopeless and that it will take their lives. Like Job, there is nothing left in it for them. Reflecting on this, Sam says to Frodo, “I think I’ve realized that in all those old stories of heroes persevering in helpless situations, they were able to make it through because they had something they were holding on to.” Frodo replies, “What are we holding on to Sam?” And Sam’s reply is, “That there’s something good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”

For us, that ‘something’ must be God, the source of all goodness. God is what Job was holding on to even when God gave him nothing. Figuring out how we learn to do that in a practical sense is more difficult to figure out, and I certainly don’t know yet how to train my mind and heart to get to that place. But I’ve seen beginnings of it in my life. One way I’ve experienced this is that when I’m in a negative place, struggling with my personal sin or frustrated with the evil of the world, I will pray to God and thank Him, not for anything He’s done for me, but simply that He is good, He is perfect, He is compassionate, He is all-seeing, He is just, He is powerful, and He is patient. And I thank Him that I can rest in knowing that there’s something good in this world, something better than me, something better than what is in the world. Something that is separate and apart from me that I can trust to be holy. And over time those have become much more than words for me. They’ve become knowledge that actually brings me true comfort. And I believe that’s a semblance of the model of Job.

In Jeremiah 9:23-24, God says this to His people:

“Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight.”

That’s where we have to start. We must understand and know God. This is the foundation for everything to follow in a secure, peaceful, and righteous life.