Listen to Part 1 of this podcast series here.

Whenever we begin to discuss God’s willingness to heal the sick, one of the first questions raised is, “What about Job?” The Book of Job raises questions in the mind of the sincere seeker after truth and we will devote three podcast episodes to this subject.

1. What is the lesson of the book? 
2. Why does God allow suffering and disaster? 
3. Did God put Job in Satan’s hands? If so, why? 
4. Does God “allow” sickness and trials to teach us? 
5. If it was God’s will for Job to suffer for some mysterious, divine purpose, can we be sure we’re not “another Job?” 

According to 2 Tim. 3.16, we can profit from the book of Job. Tune in to this episode, pulled from Pastor Joe McIntyre’s series, “Traditions that Hinder Healing.”

Part 3 airs on Friday, March 11.

Additional Resources

Traditions that Hinder Healing – Full MP3 Series

Free PDF Outline

Transcript

See, how many of you are married? Well, do you realize that you had to make a choice of your mate above every other person on earth? And doesn’t that feel good to know that somebody thought you were worth spending the rest of their life with? And isn’t it great to understand that they freely did that, you didn’t make them do that? Well, how much meaning would there be in love if God forced us to love him? So what does he do? Well, he says, I’ve given the authority of the earth to man, but if they’ll call on me, I’ll intervene. And whenever men call upon the Lord, he’s good and kind and gracious, delivers them, helps them. Even in the history of Israel, who are God’s people, they would go off into idolatry and every other thing, and he wouldn’t make them come back, but the judgments would come. They’d reap what they sow, and there would be consequences. They were under the law. And they would come back, and whenever they came back, God was merciful and first part of that was that God had human intercessors.

Now, let me show you how this works. Israel has has gone in. Twelve spies go into the land and ten come back and have a bad report and evil report. Now, let me tell you what their evil report was. They believed more in what they saw than what God said. And God called that an evil report. And we ought to be glad we’re not under the law because he was going to judge them under the law. And he comes to Moses, and he says, Moses, get out of the way. I’m going to destroy them, and raise up of you a new nation. Think of how you’d feel. Yeah! They don’t like my leadership, and God’s gonna cream ’em. Yay, God! That’s the temptation that Moses faced. But Moses had the heart of Jesus. He said, Lord, if you’re gonna blot them out, blot my name out of your book. Spirit of Christ operating in him totally identified with the people of God. That was in Exodus 33, and I have been referring to Numbers 13.

But what happened was, God says, Get out of the way. But Moses said, Lord! Now, in Exodus 34, the Lord comes to Moses, he says, Lord, show me your glory. And the Lord says, I will come down and proclaim My name to you. Meaning, his glory is revealed in his name. What’s his name? What does he reveal? “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering, abounding in mercy and truth, keeping covenant for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, but by no means clearing the guilty and visiting their sins upon them to the third and fourth generation.” Now, when I quote that, I leave that part out. You know why? Because everybody who has the judgment on them, they only have it because they’ve rejected the mercy. Because he says, he would be merciful to their iniquities, their transgression, and their sins, which would cover anything that any human was doing. So the only way that that judgment comes is if you reject the mercy of God.

But that’s the name that God revealed to Moses. And so in numbers 13 and 14, when the spies come back, and God’s ready to bring judgment. Moses says, Lord! Essentially, what he says is, do you remember what you said about yourself? Merciful and gracious, long suffering. Blot out their sin, Lord! And the Lord says, Moses, because of your word, I will spare them. What did Moses do? He took the revelation of God back to God in prayer. And God said, he doesn’t say it this way, but he’s well, I’m bound to honor that. That’s how I’ve revealed myself. And he’s bringing how I’ve revealed myself to me, I cannot turn him away. You see, there’s a higher law than judgment. But it takes an intercessor. When there’s no intercessor, the judgment falls. But now we’re under a new covenant with better promises.

The Father has come in and been incarnated in his son, who is the perfect revelation of His heart, who went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed by the devil, because he was anointed by God, and God was with him. He’s anointed by the Spirit, to destroy the works of the devil. And he went about healing all who are oppressed by the devil. Now I’m a simple person, if all who were oppressed by the devil were healed, then all in need of healing are oppressed by the devil.

“Well brother, you know we don’t want to get to, you know, thinking about demons and power of darkness.” No, let’s just blame it on natural causes. Well, certainly some sickness is demonized, demon possession but others is just natural stuff. Natural fruit of the fall. So either directly or indirectly, it’s the influence of the enemy on lives when they’re broken. So, God isn’t responsible for sin, sickness and death. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil.

Now what I’m trying to do is bring us into the new covenant, and let us read Job through the eyes of the New Covenant, so we don’t go back and live under the old covenant and think we’re there. See, you’re not living under an old covenant even before the Old Covenant when Job lived, when his revelation of God was very limited, and he had no revelation of Satan and had no understanding of spiritual warfare. He couldn’t see that it was the devil. He didn’t see that heavenly court. That came by revelation to the author of Job. He’s living in the darkness of thinking God allowed it to teach him or something. And then he’s got his comforters who have wonderful doctrine. “Well, Brother Job, it’s the sin in your life, repent.” And he says, “I haven’t sinned.” And God affirms that he hadn’t sins.

And so all these religious traditions come at him, none of them understanding the goodness of God. Why? Because it wasn’t revealed in a way that they could take hold of it. Or if it was, they missed it. You see? And there’s a spiritual war going on over their lives that they’re unaware of. But you’re not under that Old Covenant. And let’s say that God was giving the devil permission to test us. Why would he allow that? Well, if you take the New Covenant seriously, the only reason he would allow that is so that you could take authority over it and see it bow. Because the Bible tells us to resist the devil, and he will flee from us.

So how could you be another Job? You can’t. The new covenant doesn’t allow you to be another Job. “Well, why did God allow the test I’m having?” Maybe he didn’t. Maybe you did. Because if you believed in the sovereignty of God the way it’s taught in traditional churches, then you would believe that everything that came to your life came through the hands of a loving Heavenly Father, and God won’t allow you to be tested beyond what you’re able. Well the Bible does say God won’t allow you to be tested beyond what you’re able, but it doesn’t say that God tests you and orchestrates the test.

Well, why is that important? Well, because if God is testing you, it’s because he thinks there’s something wrong with you, and he needs to fix you. But the Bible says that God has set in the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, to equip you, not tests and trials and hardship. And if his apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers are doing their job, you’re going to rain in life. As Weymouth translates it, you’re going to reign as a king in life through the one Christ Jesus, you see. Doesn’t mean there’s a life free of testing. It’s just that God is not the author of it. And if God isn’t the author of it, then we know who that leaves and by process of elimination, we figure out that maybe if it’s evil, it’s the devil. Oh, brother, I don’t want to be devil conscious. You know, for years I wasn’t devil conscious. Because I was taught God was behind everything, and if God’s behind everything, you don’t need a devil. Why resist him? He’s just God’s agent to perfect you.

“What you need to do is embrace the evil that God is sending, because he’s trying to teach you a lesson.” You know, I had the hardest time ever figuring out what that lesson was. In fact, it just depressed me. It condemned me, made me feel unworthy. Because God was teaching me a lesson. I couldn’t figure out the lesson. There had to be something wrong with me because he’s perfect. Do you see where this stuff gets us? It gets us in the muck of unbelief. Where we don’t know if God is for us, or whether God is against us. We don’t know whether we’re a new creature, or we’re an old creature. We don’t know if we’re a sinner or saint. “Today, I feel more like a sinner.” “Today, I feel like a saint.” “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. Let not that man think you will receive anything from the Lord.”

So if I think like that, it’s going to affect my prayer life. Because if God’s trying to get the evil out of me by testing me, then I must be evil. And if I’m evil, how can I boldly come to the throne of grace and obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need? Why I would come with my tail between my legs, and I’d be begging God to have mercy on me. But I wouldn’t be coming boldly to the throne of grace in obtaining it. Because I would fear that he was more interested in exposing what was wrong with me than revealing what he’s done in me that’s right. Oh, that’s good preaching, you missed a great opportunity.

See, I come to my father now. And he’s just reminding me of everything he’s done for me in Christ. And I’m just rejoicing and praising Him, that the throne of grace is my habitation. That every day I come there every day, I’m welcome there. And if I find miss a day, I feel a lack of peace, joy and strength in my life, because I haven’t refueled at the throne of grace. But see, Job didn’t know these things. Job was an amazing man for the day in which he lived. But Job didn’t know there was a devil. And Job didn’t know who was causing his test. And God, in a sense, was limited because Satan had the right to oppress fallen men. Because of the fall. You see? “Well, how can you say that?” Well, do you remember in the upper room, the Upper Room Discourse before Jesus went to the cross? He says, “Now, the ruler of this world is cast out.” Jesus said, The devil was the ruler of the world, before he did his work.

That’s a doctrine a lot of theologians don’t like because it seems to mean that God isn’t sovereign and all powerful. Well, God’s all powerful. God is sovereign. God is omnipotent. But God has delegated the authority of man which has been usurped by Christ when, when Satan tempted, Jesus, did I say you usurped by Christ, I mean usurped by the devil. When Satan tempted Jesus, you remember he said, he showed Him the kingdoms of this world in a moment of time, and he offered those to him, if he would bow down. He said, “All of this glory I will give you, because it has been delivered to me. Well, now, if that wasn’t a real temptation, it would have been stupid of the devil to tempt Jesus with that. If he didn’t have that, he couldn’t tempt him with it. But it was a real temptation. It was the very thing Jesus came to get back, but the only way he could legitimately get it back was by obeying the Father, not by bowing to Satan.

But that tells us that there was a passing of authority to Satan that was ordained for a man and it was held by the abusing one, until the day when Jesus rose from the dead, stripped him of his power, put him to an open shame, and went into the heavenly Holy of Holies with his own blood, cleansed the heavenly sanctuary, and was enthroned at his Father’s right hand and given the fullness of the Holy Spirit to pour out on one hundred and twenty new creation sons and daughters waiting in that upper room. So all of a sudden a hundred and twenty, like Jesus, came out of that upper room, and there was chaos in hell, because Satan had been bruised in his head and all the demon forces recognized the unsaved anointing on this one hundred and twenty that was on that single man that they were having to deal with before the cross. And by the time the day is over, there’s three thousand of them.

But their vision was of the resurrected Christ. You know, it’s very important for us to understand that Christ died for our sins, but Christ died for your sins wasn’t preached in the book of Acts. Christ raised from the dead, was preached. The power of his resurrection was preached. They offered remission of sins. They recognized that remission of sins was included, but their focus was on the triumph over Satan and over death. And the destruction of the authority of Satan over mankind, if they would receive the gospel. They understood this. In fact, there’s a book, a classic theology book, written in 1930, called Christus Victor, and it’s a study of the history of the preaching of the Atonement. And it says, For the first thousand years, they preached the resurrection victory of Christ. But it was only in the Reformation that they began to focus on the death of Christ so much.

Now, of course, Christ dying for our sins is a tremendous aspect of the gospel, something we always want to honor. But you see, they preached the resurrection, because the problem with mankind was the dominion of death, both spiritually and physically. What is the resurrection, then? It’s the triumph of the God man over death, hell and the grave. And he made us his joint heirs, giving us victory over death. Deaths authority’s been broken. In Hebrews chapter two, it says, “That he became a man and partook of flesh and blood, that he might destroy him who had the power of death, even the devil.” One translation says that he might paralyze him. That’s a good one. But you see, he has been, it’s like, prophesied in the book of Genesis, the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. And that’s happened. The devil doesn’t like it widely broadcast. And so many churches have not really preached that victory.

I mean, you see, if the power of darkness is broken, the church has authority to take over the planet. They just don’t know it, and they just aren’t walking in it. Before the end of the age, there’s gonna be a church that’s reached in and taken hold of the glory. Because Ephesians five says that when Christ returns, He will present to himself a glorious church, without spot, wrinkle or blemish, having been washed in the water of the word. Tradition swallowed up of truth. Religion consumed by glory. All of our fears swallowed up by love. Because perfect love, mature love, casts out fear. Fear has torment. Is their torment in our lives? Well, I think maybe we need a bigger installment of the divine goodness of God from heaven until that fear is swallowed up.

Probably all of us have areas that we need more of God’s grace and love to flow into us. But you see, when you realize that you’re moving from glory to glory, as you behold the glory of the Lord, then you say, “You know, I need a bigger dose of glory. I’m gonna hang out with the glorious one. I’m gonna hang out with a glorified Son of God, the one enthroned at the Father’s right hand. I’m going to come and worship Him. and His glory is going to flow into me. I’m going to receive of the impartation of grace, God’s dynamic power, flowing into me by the Holy Spirit, to empower me to rise above every weakness, and to subdue every sin, and to put under a foot every enemy, and to walk in newness of life, in the resurrection power of the glory of the Father that raised Christ from the dead. I’m going to walk in that, because grace is going to enable me to do that. Because I’ve stopped trying to please God by my works and I’ve started pleasing God by believing him, trusting him, relying on him and forgetting about my carnality because he’s bigger than all of that. And I said, Lord, I can’t fix it, but you can in its weakness. So manifest grace, Father, I need more of your grace in this area, so that I can overcome. Faith is the victory that overcomes the world. So if I’m believing God, I’m overcoming. So we’re rising up. You see.

There’s waters of life flowing into us. Jesus is cleansing us by the water of the word. And we’re being changed from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord. And as you hear the anointed word of God, your human spirit says, “Yes, I want it. It’s mine, I’ll take it, I have it. I’m walking in it, I’m moving in it, Glory to God. Jesus is Lord.” And that starts to mean more than it’s ever meant before. Because if he’s Lord, Satan isn’t and I’m not. So I’ve given up my lordship. And I’m embracing his because as I let him be Lord of me, his lordship flows through me and my enemies bow. As I take my place, enthroned in Christ, you see, he’s seated until the father puts every enemy under his foot, and I’m seated in him. So I’m getting in on my enemies being subdued under my feet. Because I’m not trying to make it happen, I’m letting it happen. Because that river that’s flowing from the throne is flowing in me, and I’m getting full of it. People have said that for years. But I’m full of it in a different way. And as I get filled, there’s outflow. You see, cuz I’m not the Lake of Grace, I’m the river.

I’m not just the deposit, I’m the channel. Grace flows out of me and I start to see people with different eyes. I start to see him as Father sees them. As precious. As the longing and desire of his heart. And I want to help him bring them to him. I want them to see the reality of the grace of God so they stop drawing back in unbelief and fear.