Dear Friends,
Why do true lovers of God sometimes suffer? For some clues that will help us answer that question we turn to the book of Job, that great lover of God and that great sufferer for God. Today’s devotional helps solve the problem. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Job 1:1-5 (ESV)

  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. 2 There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. 3 He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. 4 His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5 And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did continually.

“That was Job’s character before the trial which made him famous; perhaps, if it had not been for that trial, we should never have heard of him; now, as the apostle James wrote, ‘Ye have heard of the patience of Job.’ God, by great; afflictions, gave to his servant that usefulness for which he had possibly prayed, without knowing how it would come to him. A long-continued life, of prosperity may not so truly glorify God as a life that is checkered by adversity; and God, who intended to put honor upon his servant, did as kings do when they confer the honor of knighthood, they strike with the, back or flat of the sword, so God smote the patriarch Job that he might raise him above his fellow-men. The Lord intended to make him Job the patient, but to that end He must make him Job the sufferer.

“From this Book I learn what gospel perfection is. We are told that Job was perfect and upright, yet I am sure that he was not free from tendencies to evil, he was not absolutely perfect. As old Master Trapp says, ‘God’s people may be perfect, but they are not perfectly perfect;’ and so it certainly was with Job. There were imperfections deep down in his character which his trials developed, and which the grace of God no doubt afterwards removed; but after the manner of speech that is used in Holy Scripture, Job was a ‘perfect’ man; he was sincere, thorough-hearted, consecrated; and he was also ‘upright.’ He leaned neither this way nor that way, he had no twist in him, he had no selfish ends to serve. He was ‘one that feared God.’ Everybody could see that; and, consequently, he hated evil with all his heart.” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit XLVII, (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1901), p. 41-42]