Lifestyles of the Rich and Righteous

“The Gospel According to Job” Blogpost 2
by Jason

Click below to listen to a sermon about the public/professional and private/personal life of Job. Learn the attributes of a man who is both rich and righteous. And more so, discover the theology of this great man.

In Job 1:1 God called Job a blameless, righteous, God-fearing man.
Could there be any greater thing said about a man?
And could it be said by someone any greater?

Let’s look a little closer at Job’s life and see if we can discover why God says such a thing about this man:

Let’s look at Job’s public life.

Job owns and operates a rich, powerful, private estate that would have virtually been a self-contained town. See Job 1:2-3

Jobs attitude towards his wealth is revealed in Job 29:12-17. Job was very active in social justice. Publicly Job is a man immersed in the whirl of business and management, but he views his portfolio through spiritual eyes. I guess you could say that Job was truly missional, using every aspect of his life as a means of missionary endeavor. He lived like Jesus would live one day. He rescued the needy; he cared personally for the handicapped and the dying; he provided a home for the orphans; he even took on the villains of his day who preyed on the underprivileged. All this he did without any government programs or assistance or without any tax benefits or receipts for charitable donations.

Let’s look at Job’s private life.

In Job 1:4-5 we catch a sneak peak into Job’s prayer life that reveals much about this man.

We see Job – this powerful, wealthy man – continually spending time in prayer. In particular in this text, we see him praying for his family. His greatest fear is that his children may “curse God in their hearts.” Job must have understood how easy it is for rich kids to become spoiled little hypocrites. And kids are never more in danger of sinning than when they all get together with all the in-laws and throw a party. When you honestly understand this then you understand why Job’s prayers were not wasted prayers.

Job’s prayer life reveals several things about him as a God-fearing man:

1. He believed in the efficacy of prayer. Job was not the type of man to waste his time on things he didn’t believed worked. But Job knew that prayer worked so he continually made a habit of praying.

2. He believed he had direct access to God, what we may call the priesthood of the believer. He didn’t rely on a priest to pray for him or his family; he took this responsibility upon himself.

3. He believed in intercessory prayer. Thus we learn that Job’s private life was not a selfish life; it was outward-looking and people-loving.

4. Job’s prayers extended into the murky realm of inadvertent sin / unconscious sin. Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” Job didn’t just pray that God would forgive the sins that he and his children knew they committed but all of their sins.

This is a remarkable grasp of the gospel on Job’s part. Job understands that a person is either righteous or not, either a person’s sin is completely forgiven or the person is not forgiven at all. He understood that if God accepts us at all, then He accepts us wholeheartedly.

Either a person is wicked or righteous. And the difference is whether or not a person has been to the Cross. And Job’s faith was in the Cross! Job 1:5 says, “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.” The burnt offerings represented Job’s faith that God would pour his firy wrath upon a sacrifice for sin. We understand that Jesus was that ultimate sacrifice for sin, who suffered full wrath of God upon the Cross. Job was practicing an ancient pre-Cross form of Christianity — a practice as old as Adam and Eve, and Able, and Noah, and Abraham.

Furthermore, notice that Job made a sacrifice “according to the number of them all.” That reveals that Job understood the concept of substitutionary sacrificial atonement. Jesus’ death on the Cross was a Substitutionary Sacrifice; He died for each of the elect.

Jesus was not guilty of ever committing a sin but paid for all of my sins. I am the guilty one. Job’s kids were guilty. Job himself was a guilty one. But because Jesus is Job’s sacrificed substitute, when God spoke of Job, He called him blameless not guiltless, but blameless — Justified, Pardoned, Righteous.

Job was a God-fearing, God respecting, God trusting man — a Jesus worshipper. Job was a man of faith, faith in the substitutional, sacrificial work of Jesus on the Cross. Job realized that all that He had was given to Him by a gracious, loving God. So Job used all of his wealth to bless others. Job used all of his wealth to demonstrate the love of God. And Job’s private life was just a self-less. In his private life, he was a man of prayer. He was a man who spent his time with God, interceding on the behalf of others.

Does God consider you a blameless and upright, God-fearing person?