Job 1 – https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/…
What makes you, you? We humans are very complicated creatures. There’s a lot to us. No doubt there are many different things that you could tell me about yourself. There are probably many different things about you that are interesting and unique and wonderful but if there was just one thing that made you, you, what would it be? If you stripped away everything else, what is the one thing that you wouldn’t want to let go? That’s a question that most people perhaps never ask themselves and certainly most people never have to see it happen. But Job did.
In just a few moments, Job saw nearly all that he had taken away. All the stuff he likely would have chit-chatted with friends about was wiped away, all his riches, all his family! Job is stripped bare before our eyes, showing us who he really was, what the one thing that mattered most to him was. It wasn’t his riches. It wasn’t his family. Those things mattered to him but not as much as this. Job said “Naked I came from my mothers womb and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” When Job’s life was suddenly and completely destroyed, when he went from having everything to having nothing, He still blessed God. Why? Meet Job, Verse 1, “There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” Job was a believer. I was blameless because by faith all his sins were forgiven. He feared God (stood in awe of Him) because of His great power and His great love. He turned away from evil because he loved the God who loved him first! Job knew where his real treasure was – the name of the Lord. He knew that no one could take away from him what His God, His savior had promised Him. This was at the heart of who Job was. He was a believer. In the end, nothing else really mattered. What about you?
In Christ
Pastor Ude