Job

“Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?” Job 1:9

Y

es and No.  Job was good for nothing.  The devil suspected otherwise.  The devil was sure that Job only appeared to “fear God and eschew evil.”  He suggested that Job was not as interested in God as he was in the “goodies.” 

 “Take away his things,” he suggested, “and he will curse you.”  The idea was that God had so blessed Job that it was easy for him to live piously.  Poverty would change that, the evil one predicted.  When that was not enough to “break” God’s servant, the enemy, to poverty added pain. 

 Job was reduced to a heap of brokenness in a matter of hours.  Job had nothing left.  Now the world would find out that there are certain men and women who are indeed “good for nothing.”  

There are many people who are “good” for something, that is, they will act right if there is “something”  in it for them.  When people have prosperity, it is easy to appear good.  When the policeman is walking his beat, the delinquents appear to be angels.  They are “good”  for good reason.  When the lights went out in New York in 1977 chaos broke out in many neighborhoods.  People ripped the metal gates off store fronts and stole whatever they could carry away. 

 When gas was in short supply during the same period, many people became “down right ugly.”  In the ghetto, no one is more dangerous than the person who has “nothing to lose.”   The truth is that there is “none good, no not one.”  That is the default position of every son of Adam. 

There is however a thing called “Amazing Grace,” and that is something.   It changes sinful hearts and makes them new.  It replaces a “love for the world and the things of the world” with a love for God.  It creates a new race of “born again” creatures, who like Job (by the grace of God) are glad to be “good for nothing.”  Now that's something! 

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