SONS OF GOD ARE MEN OF INTEGRITY - 13

It cost Job a lot to be obedient. Job's test concerned his integrity, honesty, uprightness, fearing of God and declining evil. God said to Satan in Job 1:8, "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 escheweth (turns away from) evil?" At the end of the chapter, verse 22, it says, "In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly."

Very few men could have stood the fiery temptations of chapter one, let along the trials of chapter two. Read them again. Job's three best friends did the right thing by sitting down silently with him for seven days and nights, not saying a word "for they saw that his grief was very great" (Job 2:11-13). They should have continued to keep their mouths shut and silently prayed for him.

Instead, they opened their mouths wide and in doing so became instruments to assist Satan's afflictions and pain on Job. A fourth young man called Elihu, who thought he was wiser than his elders, should have kept his mouth shut also. In Job 36:11-12 he accused Job in a cloaked way of disobedience by implying that when you do what is right, you will not suffer persecution and trials, but rather prosperity and pleasure. Does this sound like the unbalanced prosperity doctrine?

Jesus' life on earth was not an easy one. Nor the Apostle Paul's. All the disciples suffered hardships and trials. So did the true prophets.

However, at the end of Job's trials, because he never let go of his integrity, God blessed him twice as much as before his trial. Job confessed, "Till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me" (Job 27:5).

Men, we like Job, must at all times hold fast to integrity. After incredible calamity had fallen upon Job, his wife said to him, "Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die. But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job 2:9-10).

True sons of God are men of integrity. They will never denounce or curse God.

Be encouraged.

Colin Campbell