Job 2 – https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/…
Have you ever known someone who was super predictable? I’ve been watching the TV series “Gotham” recently. Detective Gordon is like that. He’s very predictable. While everyone else is at least somewhat corrupt, he isn’t. He refuses to give in or to bend even a little. It’s an admirable quality. We have a word for it – integrity. It means to be whole, to be complete, to live your life wholly and completely by certain standards that you won’t turn away from.
In Job, we find another men with a great deal of integrity. God Himself says this about Job, “He still holds fast his integrity” (Verse 3). Even in great suffering, Job wouldn’t waver from his standards, his beliefs. His wife thought he should, “Curse God and die” she said. But Job gives a wonderful response, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?”
Does something really have integrity of it only holds up when things are easy? Is a belief worth keeping if it only helps when things are good? Job stuck to his integrity even in the midst of great personal loss and great personal pain because he knew that God also has integrity. God is the ultimate in that in fact. God is whole and complete. He has a standard which He adheres to and never swerves from. He is the same yesterday today and forever. Ultimately that standard is love. Job knew that the same God that sent him so much good, wasn’t any different because He had allowed some evil. Job wasn’t that easily fooled. Because he had faith in the coming Savior. Job knew Jesus albeit not by name. He knew the forgiveness of sins and eternal life which he would bring. And when you know Jesus, when you know God’s integrity of love, when you know His grace, then you know that whatever He sends your away and whatever suffering you might face, you can hold to your integrity because He does.
In Christ
Pastor Ude