"Lord, You Are Not Good All the Time" (Job 2:9-10)

"Lord, You Are Not Good All the Time" (Job 2:9-10)

This is the dirty little secret of most Christians. We share it with Job’s wife. When things are going well, we do not have a problem with declaring that God is good (Job 1:10).

When things are going well, we do not have a problem with worshipping God (Job 1:5).

When things are going well, we don’t have an issue with our success being associated with our worship of God (Job 1:1; 2:3). All is well in the land. But when adversity arises, as it did with Job (Job 1:13-19; 2:7-8), then us “shallow, go along for the blessings Christians” display a different attitude.

We dare not utter this attitude in the presence of polite company, as did Job’s wife, but we still believe it deep within our hearts: “God can’t be good all the time, since I am being treated so badly in this time.”

Job’s wife utters what our hearts have felt. It is not that we don’t believe in God; we do. It is not that we don’t trust God, because we do when things are going well. We need Him to keep them going well. Consider the following three points.

1. It’s hard to trust God when He takes from us.

a. Job’s wife didn’t think that God is good all the time because He took her life from her. Her life centered around or was built on their possessions (Job 1:3), their children (Job 1:2), and their good name (Job 1:1, 8).

b. Job’s wife encourages him to “curse God and die” (Job 2:9).

2. Trust begins when we don’t understand.

a. Job’s wife could see their seven sons and three daughters, along with their 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen and 500 female donkeys, and their great number of servants (Job 1:2-3). That is the extent of our trust, and that is not trust at all (Romans 8:24-25; see also Hebrews 11:1).

b. Christians don’t experience God as trustworthy until they have gone through some hard times (James 1:2-4; Romans 5:3-5; 2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

3. It’s hard to trust God when He makes us wait.

a. Job’s wife wanted him to act and not wait (Job 2:9).

b. Job was waiting, sitting in a pile of ashes when his wife approached him (Job 2:8).

c. As a result of patiently waiting, we experience God’s goodness (Psalm 27:13-14; Isaiah 40:31; Lamentations 3:25-26).

d. The longer Job waited, it seems the more confident that Job became. He told his friends, in front of all his neighbors, “Though He (God) slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).

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