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Guest (Male): You remember exactly where you were. The phone call that changed everything. The knock at the door you never expected. The news that hit you so hard you couldn't breathe. In a single moment, life divided itself into before and after. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll dives into his series Job: A Man of Heroic Endurance.

In this study, he'll take us to one of the most devastating scenes in all of scripture. A good man, a faithful man, and a day that stripped away everything. Chuck titled his message "Reeling and Recovering from Devastating News."

Chuck Swindoll: I want to read for you and then ask you to participate in the reading at the end in a worshipful manner, unlike we normally end the scriptures. You'll be ready for it when we get there. And I want to read the passage like the dear Dr. Chafer, I understand, used to read it when he would read Job 1:12-22.

Then the Lord said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not put forth your hand on him." So Satan departed from the presence of the Lord. Now it happened on the day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house, that a messenger came to Job and said, "The oxen were plowing and the donkeys feeding beside them, and the Sabeans attacked and took them. They also slew the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you."

While he was still speaking, another also came and said, "The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them, and I alone have escaped to tell you." While he was still speaking, another also came and said, "The Chaldeans formed three bands and made a raid on the camels and took them and slew the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you."

While he was still speaking, another also came and said, "Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house, and behold, a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people and they died, and I alone have escaped to tell you."

Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." Through all this, Job did not sin or blame God.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into today's topic, be sure to purchase a copy of our searching the scriptures Bible study workbook by going to insight.org/offer. Beginning in Job chapter 1, Chuck titled his message "Reeling and Recovering from Devastating News."

Chuck Swindoll: December 7, 1941. November 22, 1963. September 11, 2001. If you've lived as long as I have, those three dates are like creases permanently etched in your brain. We remember where we were. We remember what we were doing. We remember how we felt. Devastating news. The Imperial Army of Japan has now bombed our ships and our men and women in the military at Pearl Harbor.

Some crazed gunman has assassinated our president in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. A group of unnamed terrorists have found their way onto airplanes they've turned into missiles, and in Lower Manhattan, the Twin Towers are no longer there. And a wing of the Pentagon is destroyed. And in the quiet countryside of Southwest Pennsylvania, of all things, another plane has gone down.

All of us remember the last. In the wake of the last tragedy, or atrocity, I'd rather call it, a name has emerged. Many others have been heroic, but this one especially. The name of a man we've never met, who is now in our mind a hero. Todd Beamer. Faithful husband and devoted father of two, wife Lisa carrying their third.

And we know now, having traced back and listened to recordings, that he called GTE Communication Center in Oak Brook, Illinois, and he spoke with a supervisor, interestingly, a woman with the same first name as his wife, Lisa Jefferson. And in the conversation, mixed with tears and panic and some calm words, he asked her to pray with him the Lord's Prayer.

And following the prayer, his last words: "Are you guys ready? Let's roll." And indeed, they did. And they diverted that missile from killing yet more than it did, all on board, as that ill-fated United Flight 93 crashed into a meadow, Pennsylvania. He was just a passenger on the plane. Todd Beamer was not trained to fight terrorists. Probably never dreamed he ever would, or perhaps ever could.

But he did and they did. And without realizing it, he had lived his whole life for that moment and became, in that unusual way, even in his short life, heroic. As I heard of the report, the words from the 19th century of Henry Longfellow came to mind: "The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night."

Funny, isn't it? We would never consider something we're going through as heroic. I don't know if you've ever thought of it, but the way we will be remembered by some will be for them heroic. Travel back with me centuries to a date no one could name, to a place few could point out on a map, to a setting that seemed idyllic. A man who hadn't been trained to endure the loss of everything.

Lost everything. And though himself also a good husband and a devoted and faithful father and a splendid businessman whose life was marked by integrity, watched it all leave in one fell swoop of events. And interestingly, Job would be remembered not for being healthy, wealthy, and wise, but for enduring the loss of everything.

Even in the biblical days when James took up his pen to write, he said, "You have heard of the endurance of Job." Hupomone, endurance, to abide under the load. You have heard of the man who endured under the load of the loss that hit him like a ton and a half pallet of bricks, one after another after another after another, and he endured. And for that, he was heroic.

How many lives facing radical surgery in a hospital have taken comfort from the life of Job? How many bereaving, grieving parents laying their son or daughter to rest long before they ever dreamed it would ever happen, thinking they themselves would go before the daughter or son, have turned to Job and found in his life and in his endurance the hope to go on? How many who have had failed businesses have turned to Job and discovered a reason they can make it because he made it?

There is no date, there was no warning, there was no explanation before the fact, and therefore there could be no understanding at the time why it happened like it did. We forget that because we know why. We've read Job 1 and we've read Job 2, and we know of this strange cosmic agreement between the giver of light and life and the ultimate wicked spirit, Satan. We know the deal that was struck.

Job knew none of it. None of it. And he didn't know for the longest time, if I may, maybe never till he died, the whole story. But acting with the character he had developed over years of trusting God and walking with Him, the loss of everything did not cause him to curse God and turn against Him. In the book "Disappointment with God," we read: It helps to think of the book of Job as a mystery play, a who-done-it detective story.

Before the play itself begins, we in the audience get a sneak preview, as if we have showed up early for a press conference in which the director explains his work, chapters one and two. He relates the plot and describes the main characters, then tells us in advance who did what in the play and why. In fact, he solves every mystery in the play except one: How will the main character respond? Will Job trust God or deny Him?

Later, when the curtain rises, we see only the actors on stage. Confined within the play, get this, they have no knowledge of what the director has told us in the sneak preview. We know the answer to the who-done-it questions, but the star detective Job does not. He spends all his time on stage trying to discover what we already know.

He scratches himself with shards of pottery and asks, "Why me? What did I do wrong? What is God trying to tell me?" To the audience, Job's questions should be mere intellectual exercises, for we learn the answers in the prologue in the first two chapters. What did Job do wrong? Nothing. He represents the very best of the species. Didn't God call Job blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil?

Why then is Job suffering? Not for punishment. Far from it. He has been selected as the principal player in a great contest of the heavens. But he didn't know it. All he knew is one day things were great and the next day things were horrible. The next day he was healthy and the following hours he was sick unto death. And he never knew why.

I have found in life that when you don't know why you're suffering, the suffering is harder. If I could just pinpoint the reason, if I could just find a sin that I could confess and, having confessed it and dealt with it, maybe the suffering will be easier to bear and I'll get out from under this. But when I cannot find one, certainly not one that would merit this kind of experience, I'm just like Job, I'm at a loss and so are you.

There's an interlude that passes that I don't want you to miss between verses 12 and 13 of chapter 1. I know that familiarity with the book has caused some people to sort of yawn their way through Job. I regret that. This is sort of like seeing a movie for another time as people will say: I saw more the second time, I saw even more the third time. If you will, act like you've never read this before. That'll help.

Please notice the end of verse 12: "So Satan departed." The beginning of verse 13: "Now it happened." Stop. All the scene between God and Satan is invisible, as I've said, not known by Job. We know from what we read later that the kids have all gone to Job Junior's home for a little feast time together. All 10 of them, having fun as only grown family members can have, if they're still talking to each other. And this family is.

They're eating and they're feasting and they're having one great time. And the father, being the good father that he is, not super-pious but genuinely concerned, the father turns to prayer. Perhaps one of the kids will have begun to drift, or maybe something will be said that'll cause another to do something off-color or inappropriate and would somehow hurt the relationship that she has or he has with the Lord. And so Job turns to prayer and he's on his knees in his bed chamber.

At the same time, if you were to look out Job's window, you would see the oxen plowing the field, preparing for the next crop. It's a sunny afternoon, a little cloud in the distance, but not much. There are sheep grazing on the field and donkeys are feeding nearby. The camels are being made ready for the next trucking experience along the caravan as Job is involved in that trucking business we mentioned last time.

All of the field hands are at work, working with animals they know by name. Sons and daughters are having one great time telling family stories and laughing over recent events. And if you listen closely through the door, you could hear the prayers of a good father as he remembers one child after another by name. Dads do that. Suddenly, there's a knock at the door, and Job normally is not interrupted by any of the servants, but this messenger has something worth interrupting to say.

And after that, Job's life will never be the same again. Ever. It's like the phone call you would get in the middle of the night. It's like the rap at the door. It's like the visit from someone who is an official from the government. And the messenger bursts in without being told it's okay, and he says to Job: "The oxen, the oxen were plowing and the donkeys were feeding beside them, and those people from Sheba, they attacked. We've talked about the possibility of them coming, they've attacked and they took those animals, all of those animals, and they've cut the servants to ribbon."

While he was still speaking, another one came on the scene and he said: "There was this bolt of lightning, it was like fire from heaven that came down, and it consumed all of the sheep and all of the field hands who take care of the sheep, and I'm the only one left." And another pushes him aside and says: "Job, you wouldn't believe it, but three raids from the Chaldeans have hit that area where we had the camels and they have taken all the camels away and they have killed every one of the servants, and I alone am left."

And Job is not even able to get up off his knees, at least thinking: "I've got my kids." And there's one more that says: "Job, Job, the sons and daughters. No, no, no, no!" There was this tornado that swept through the wilderness, and wooden carts were thrown in the air and the wheels were blown apart, and it came right over the house of your oldest son and the house exploded, and every one of the kids was killed.

I have in my library half a shelf of books on Job. One of them is a treasured volume that has some wonderful works of art in it. And as I thumbed through the book just this past week, I came across the artwork of Gustave Doré, circa 1860, two woodcut prints showing two scenes that the scripture leaves almost too sacred to describe of Job. They're both called "Job Hearing of His Ruin."

And one of them shows an old man with his forehead across his eyes. His mouth is open, there's a little spittle, and it's like the wailing cry of a daddy after the news of everything gone and now the kids as well. The next scene that Doré paints and puts in woodcut shows a man prostrate, flat on his face, barefoot, alone. Also named "Job Hearing of His Ruin."

And what about his wife? She lost everything too. For those of us who have seen "Saving Private Ryan," there is a very moving scene in a country house, the Ryan family. And the mother is at the kitchen sink and she's working, and she looks up in a brief moment and she detects coming along the country road toward the front of the house a strange car painted in olive drab with government license plates.

And there are four stars in her window. And she clutches her apron to her face. "We regret to inform you, Mrs. Ryan," and she hears of the death of three of her four sons. And she drops to her knees. It is the most moving setting. The audience is as silent as you are. And that sets the whole plot for the finding and saving of Private Ryan to preserve the family name.

Forgive me if this doesn't sound fair, but I will tell you, there is some sense of dignity in the loss of a son to preserve the liberty of the United States of America. There is a nobility in placing those precious remains in a casket and in a grave knowing they died right. But Job lost all 10 in a freak storm directed by Satan. All of them. And for the first time in 35, 40 years, Mr. and Mrs. Job are childless.

And when you read the account and come to the end of the 19th verse, as four trembling messengers are standing there, a couple of them still bleeding from the escape, you have to pause and let the grief seep in. I would plead with all of you who love the Bible: Leave room for its emotion. It's full of it. Those who tell me the Bible bores them tip their hand in telling me they have just read words, they've not let their emotions run.

The only one taking delight in this scene is Satan. He and his demonic host, on the edge of their seat of authority, as it were, watching, waiting for the cursing that's going to come from those lips. He can't make it, spoiled man that he is. We've taken it all. See the then in verse 20. I don't know how long. Could have been all the rest of the afternoon he lay there. He could have stumbled outside to look for himself in the distance to see the house, now a shambles, holding the bodies of his children.

And I'll tell you, as painful as the words of the messengers were as he played them over in his mind, something even worse was the silence of God. Not one word of comfort from the heavenlies. You've been there, haven't you? No one to answer why, no one to explain the reason for the ruin. Alexander Whyte puts it so well: "Job's sorrows came not in a single spy, but in battalions."

Sorrows that come not one at a time, but in battalions. Loss upon loss. And beneath it all, the silence of God. No explanation, just silence. If you've ever been in that place, you know exactly what Job was feeling in that long dark afternoon. And if you're there right now, we want you to know the entire team at Insight for Living cares deeply about you. It's our prayer that today's message and this complete series on Job will provide reassurance that God knows your story.

Insight for Living has produced a variety of resources to help you learn more. For instance, Chuck wrote a full-length book on Job, written in a clear narrative fashion so it's easy to follow. Plus, you can also purchase the Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook for this series, which is perfect for either personal or group settings. And of course, all 22 of Chuck's full-length sermons are available to stream or download at your convenience.

You can find all these resources and more at insight.org/offer or call us at 1-800-772-8888. You may know of someone who's in the middle of Job-like suffering right now. Maybe it's a friend wrestling with grief, a family member who lost a child, or someone asking whether a loved one who died could possibly be with the Lord. Well, Insight for Living has prepared a hope-filled resource we call the "Understanding Heaven Passport."

Each section not only explains what Scripture teaches, it equips you to speak confidently and compassionately to the people in your circle who may not know the Lord, or who simply need the comfort that only God's truth can provide. This beautiful resource is available to you right now, absolutely free, when you visit insight.org/heaven. You can download your copy of the "Understanding Heaven Passport" and feel free to share it with friends and family as well. That's insight.org/heaven.

I'm Bill Meyer. Join us when Chuck Swindoll continues this study on the life of Job, Friday, on Insight for Living.

The preceding message, "Reeling and Recovering from Devastating News, Part 1," was copyrighted in 2002, 2004, 2025, and 2026, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2026 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.