The Price of Gold
Job 23
If you have been keeping up with your daily Bible reading, we are in the Book of Job right now.
I have thoroughly enjoyed digging into it, but also looking forward to finishing it in a couple of days.
It is a difficult book to go through.
I do not pretend to completely understand it.
I am not even sure that is the point of it.
In my humble opinion, I think the Book of Job is more about the journey than the destination.
You meet Job, a righteous man who has enjoyed God’s bountiful hand of blessing on his life.
He does not know it, but he becomes a pawn in the battle between light and darkness.
Satan is seeking a new target in his war against God.
You will note that it is God that points him to Job:
Job 1:8 And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and eschewethevil?
Satan would love to get at this man.
I do believe some people have bigger targets on their back than others.
There are few things that our enemy enjoys more than seeing notable believers fall.
It is an old, old battle tactic to take out your opponent’s leader in order to demoralize them.
Satan say, “Well, if you would just let me, I would love to have a shot at breaking that man.”
He could not do it without God’s permission.
That is a very important point.
Nothing happens to you that God does not sign off on.
Satan cannot lift a finger without God’s approval.
So, Satan let loose his fury on Job.
The only restriction was that he could not touch Job himself.
In those days wealth was measured in the stock market.
Not our stock market, the literal stock market – how many sheep, goats, and cattle you owned.
You can read about Black Thursday and Black Tuesday when the Stock Market crashed in 1929 and plunged the nation into economic chaos and led to the Great Depression.
That was nothing to the personal loss Job experienced.
His wealth, his family all wiped out at once.
Yet Job’s faith did not break.
This is how he responded:
Job 1:20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,
Job 1:21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
Job 1:22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.
I don’t know if I have that kind of faith!
I hope I don’t have to find out!
Anyway, Satan’s plot is foiled.
He is pouting when he appears before God again.
What does God do?
Why he points to Job again!
Job 2:3 And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and eschewethevil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.
It is like He is taunting the Devil with his failure.
Satan say, “Well, if you let me attack his body then he’ll break.”
God says, “Go ahead, you just can’t kill him.”
Job is robbed of his health, covered in boils and sores from head to toe.
His wife turns on him – “why don’t you curse God and die?”
Spouses are so helpful sometimes.
Still Job will not break.
Then what I think may be the worst thing to happen to Job occurs – his friends show up.
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are there, and little Elihu hiding in the back until the end.
They sit there for a week, speechless.
I think they may have been waiting for Job to break.
Then they speak to “comfort” him.
For the next 36 chapters, they attack Job and Job defends himself.
Most of it is based on a false assumption.
They believe that sin leads to suffering.
Because Job is suffering, he must have sinned.
Suffering must be punishment.
That may be true, but it is not a universal truth.
That is one of the main themes developed through the journey through Job.
Our text is Job’s response to one of his friend’s oh so helpful speeches.
Eliphaz just knows that Job is a wicked sinner under the punishing had of God.
The solution, he believes, is for Job to repent.
He actually has a pretty good description of the blessings of repentance and restoration.
Sometimes, in spite of themselves, these guys stumble on some truth.
I am reminded of the old saying that even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.
Job 22:21 Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee.
Job 22:22 Receive, I pray thee, the law from his mouth, and lay up his words in thine heart.
Job 22:23 If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up, thou shalt put away iniquity far from thy tabernacles.
Job 22:24 Then shalt thou lay up gold as dust, and the gold of Ophir as the stones of the brooks.
Job 22:25 Yea, the Almighty shall be thy defence, and thou shalt have plenty of silver.
Job 22:26 For then shalt thou have thy delight in the Almighty, and shalt lift up thy face unto God.
Job 22:27 Thou shalt make thy prayer unto him, and he shall hear thee, and thou shalt pay thy vows.
Job 22:28 Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee: and the light shall shine upon thy ways.
Job 22:29 When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting up; and he shall save the humble person.
Job 22:30 He shall deliver the island of the innocent: and it is delivered by the pureness of thine hands.
Those are beautiful and moving words!
But they do not apply to Job.
So Job responds.
He wishes he could stand before God and argue his case.
He wants to trust in Him, but he has some doubts.
I don’t think any of us would blame him!
That was all introduction.
Now look at verses 9 and 10
Job 23:9 On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him:
Job 23:10 But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.
Job compares his ordeal to the refining of gold.
God must first be acquired in its raw form.
You can pan for flakes in a river.
You can mine veins of ore in mountainsides.
But what you come up is not in the form of rings, watches, broaches, spoons, or anything else.
Raw ore is broken down.
It is smelted under intense head.
It is heated and purified.
The melting point by the way is 1,947 degrees Fahrenheit.
When in its liquid form, the impurities separate from the pure gold where they can be removed.
That is just to get the gold to the point that it can be crafted into something beautiful.
Job’s faith says that his trial was like that refining of gold.
He was crushed, melted, and the impurities removed from him.
That was his hope to get him through his suffering – that God was making something beautiful through it all.
By the way, he is right.
I can show you the exact same thought using the exact same illustration in other parts of the Bible.
The first is prophetic, the purging of Israel in the Tribulation:
Zec_13:9 And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God.
The second is more applicable to us:
1Pe_1:7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:
Here is my point this morning.
What you are going through may not always be enjoyable.
Sometimes it may seem that there is no reason for it.
But here is the promise of Scripture:
Rom 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
God is working in us and on us.
He is molding us like clay to be more and more into His image and less of our own.
Sometimes that means being crushed.
Sometimes that means being melted down.
Sometimes that means painful purifying.
But when the Master Creator is finished – oh, what a masterpiece he leaves behind!
I know some of the burdens our church family is carrying.
I am not foolish enough to think there are not countless others that are endured privately.
Here is the hope I want to give you:
Nothing that you are going through is a surprise to God.
God works for His glory and your good even in suffering.
By the way, the book of Job bears witness to this.
After all of the back and forth between Job and his friends, God finally speaks.
He basically says, “I am God, I don’t have to explain myself, it is your duty to just trust in me.”
Job gives up accusing God of mistreating him and repents.
God restores His hand of blessing.
He did not have to do that – material wealth is not always a sign of His blessing.
But He did to prove a lesson.
Job had twice as much as he had before.
Job 42:12 So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning:…
Job was renewed spiritually and physically.
Why?
Because he had been purified through the fire.
When things get rough, when the way is dark, do not lose faith.
Hold to God’s guiding hand.
He knows where He is taking you.
You will get through it, and you will come forth as a priceless masterpiece.
CONCLUSION
- Run away from anyone that teaches that God only blesses and does not chasten.
- Health and Wealth – prosperity Gospel.
- Life stinks sometimes and only through God is there hope.
- Without God, there is no reason for suffering.
- With God, we can have hope that the darkness will lead to a brighter day.
- Even if our suffering leads to death, that is a BLESSING!
- We graduate from this life to the next.
- We move to that land of no tears or sorrows.
- There is no hope without Christ.
- In this life.
- For eternity.