Ask Pastor Mike Live

Guest (Female): I wanted to talk to you about Job and his testing. I know that it was definitely to prove to Satan that Job was a good man and loyal to God. But was there any benefit to Job himself? In my prayers, I tell God, "Please don't say to Satan, 'Have you considered my servant Jennifer?'"

I do not want to go through all that stuff, and I do not really want to be tested. But at the same time, I do not want it to be that God and Satan are telling each other, "See, Jennifer won't let me test her." I wondered if there was a benefit to Job, and if it is wrong for me to ask God to please not consider His servant Jennifer.

Focal Point Ministries: In a way, I know what you mean, but that is not really what you mean because you would like the Lord to be pleased with you. We want to live a well-pleasing life to the Lord. We want the Lord to be proud of us as good and obedient children, as First Peter says.

I want that, but what I do not want is to be led into temptation, which Jesus even taught us to pray. "Lead me not into temptation." I do not want the attacks of the enemy, even though I know I am going to get them. I am supposed to put on the armor of God, as it says in Ephesians, so I am ready for the fiery attacks.

I really do want God to be pleased, and in a way, I want Him to say, "Have you considered my servant Jennifer?" That would mean God is pleased with me and my sanctification. But we do not want attacks, and we certainly want to pray, "God, please don't lead me into temptation. Please don't let me get attacked. Please, God, guard me from the evil one's onslaught." We can pray both of those things, even though Job did not have one of those answered.

I think the reason this all happened was much bigger than Job himself. The problem of reading the Scripture in its proverbial form, particularly in the book of Proverbs, is that we see that righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people. We have a very simple equation: do good and good things will happen; God will reward it. Do bad and you are going to be punished, and bad things will happen.

This is what we call in theology the retribution principle. At the time that Job was probably written, which most scholars would say was during the high period of Israel, the Golden Era during Solomon's day, they certainly knew and needed to recognize that there are exceptions to the retribution principle. Retribution does not come with every bad thing that happens to you.

In the New Testament, we have all kinds of examples of that. The righteous are always being persecuted. If we desire to live godly in Christ Jesus, we are going to get persecuted. Jesus looks at a man born blind in John 9, and the apostles clearly have this retribution principle. They assume no one is blinded unless it is retribution for some bad thing. Jesus says that is not the case. Paul has the thorn in the flesh, and it is not because he is in sin. He searches his conscience and he knows before the Lord it is not sin; it is something God asked to take away and God said no.

The whole book of Job is trying to establish once and for all that retribution is not always the case. There are reasons beyond what we can see for sometimes bad things happening to good people. Job was a good person, relatively speaking. No one is righteous except for God, but relatively speaking, he was a sanctified, growing, godly person.

Bad things happened to him, and the whole point is we get a look behind the fabric at what is going on in his life. We see there is a heavenly argument going on. In fact, we know that bad things happen to us and sometimes we shrug our shoulders at why that happened, and we do not know. What Job is supposed to teach us is that the retribution principle is proverbially true. You do well and there are rewards for doing well. You do bad and there are consequences. You sow to the flesh, you reap from the flesh corruption. You sow to the Spirit, you reap life and good. That is generally true, but there are exceptions.

When there are exceptions, Job is trying to show us there is something going on that you do not know about; just trust me. At the end, when Job asks Him the questions through the whole book, God shows up in chapter 38 and says, "I'm going to answer you." He does not answer Job the question he wants to know, which is why this is happening.

His friends are trying to say the retribution principle says there is sin in your life. We knew from the first verse there is not sin in Job's life, nothing unrepentant. He is living a righteous life, but bad things are happening. Job is tormented by this. At the end, God comes on the scene and all He does is say, "I'm great. I do things you'll never understand. You weren't there when I made the world. You don't even understand how the goats give birth in the mountains, so you just need to trust me."

The whole point of Job is that when bad things happen, it does not mean that you are doing wrong. You should always ask the Lord about that. "Search my heart, try me, see if there's any wicked way in me." Psalm 139 is a good prayer to pray. But if we say, like Paul, "I know I'm not in sin," and God does not take it away, then we are supposed to say God's grace is sufficient for me. That means I can trust that God is still good even though the bad stuff is happening. God will use the bad in some way, even if we do not see it in this life.

Guest (Female): That was good, everything that you said. But also, sometimes those types of trials—for a specific instance, there was the murder and torture of these two young kids in their 20s here in Knoxville: Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. They were both murdered, raped, and tortured for a couple of days.

The dad of the girl was a really strong Christian, and for years he turned atheist. He is a speaker at churches now, actually, but he will say that he hated God because he always prayed that God would protect his daughter. He felt that the one thing that he asked for the most, God didn't do. For about eight years after all this happened, he was an atheist because he said that God hurt him. In these types of instances, it almost seems like that's too much testing. It is supposed to be that you don't get more than you would be able to handle, but he lost his faith for eight years.

Focal Point Ministries: I have heard this with a lot of people. We have bad theology if we think that if I pray that my kids are protected and God doesn't protect my children, then somehow I shouldn't trust in the Lord. The Bible doesn't promise us that He is going to answer our prayers for good.

I prayed for my kids, every one of them, to be protected before they were even in this world. I prayed for them prenatally. My third child was born with a congenital defect where she can't stand on her own two feet; she is paralyzed. Here was unanswered prayer when I prayed for protection, but I didn't lose my faith because I recognized God did not promise me that all my kids are going to be healthy. God did not promise me that my kids are not going to be murdered. God did not promise me that evil in this world was not going to affect me. That is the reality.

I might pray for my bank accounts to not go under, but they may go under. I'm not promised those things. I wrote a whole book in response to this when I had so many people saying, "How can you serve God, love God, pray to God, and preach for God, and your daughter is born handicapped, needing brain surgery, spinal surgery, and leg surgery? It doesn't seem like God really loves you."

I am saying God's love is not promising me that I'll have healthy children or that my children aren't going to be suffering. God never promised that. The book I wrote is called *Lifelines for Tough Times*. What I have tried to say is, using my own life example, Romans doesn't promise us that our kids won't be kidnapped and tortured. It doesn't promise us there won't be war on our soil. It doesn't promise us that we will be healthy.

What is promised to us is heaven where all those things are not going to happen. God is going to say we're going to have a reality where all of this is gone and behind us. But right now, God continued to warn us, starting in Genesis 3, we're going to get sick and we're going to pass away and we're going to die.

In this world, Jesus tells us we ought to just brace ourselves because we're going to have tribulation. But we should take heart because God has overcome the world. We are looking to a future. Job's ultimate pleasure and ultimate prosperity was in the future beyond this life, not just in the end of his life, because he still died and all of his kids still died. Death itself one day needs to be defeated, and all of us will live with all this in the background. I just have to look at what the Bible actually promises me.

Guest (Female): I remember her. My last question: why does God give all the money to people that are going to use it for bad? People like George Soros. You wouldn't want to give all the money to people who are going to use it for wickedness, but they seem like they are the ones who are always rich.

Focal Point Ministries: What you are stating right there is a principle that God says will be true in the next life. That is what God has promised: the New Jerusalem, this new world in which righteousness dwells. You are stating something that makes perfect sense there. It doesn't make sense here because of Genesis 3 and the fall.

God is the giver of life. Why would God give life to Soros? Why would God give life to Hitler? Why would God give life to a guy that murders some guy's daughter? God is a giver of life. He's giving life even in this world to people that we would say, "Wow, that doesn't seem right."

Well, it's not right in the scheme of the eternal state. In the eternal state, He's not going to give life, prosperity, health, wealth, or anything to anyone but His own children who have put their trust in Christ. That's where we need to get back to where the principles that are just inherent in our hearts are only going to be realized in the next life.

We set our sights on the kingdom. Set our minds on things above, not on things of this earth. In this world, there will be injustice. Much of the Old Testament is injustice after injustice. Well, that makes us long for the next life. In this life, we try to be agents of good. We try to stand up for what is right. We try to do what is just. We'll continue to do that and fight against the evil in this world, but evil is not going to happen unless God allows it.

He is allowing it in this world for a purpose, including the fact that He is going to be glorified by the judgment of evil on Judgment Day. There is no one that is going to get away with this, not even us. My sin and your sin, Jennifer, have been paid for on the cross. There was still an exacting of punishment even for what we've done; it just happened to be absorbed by His own Son. Jennifer, great questions. Thank you so much for listening.