Outline of My Sermon on Job 1:1-2:10

This is a sermon I preached at Wyatt Baptist Church last Sunday night. I'll post the second part next week sometime.

Trusting God in the Midst of Suffering Part 1

I. God’s sovereignty over all things:

There are some who say that God does not know what will happen to us, and that He is just as surprised and upset by what befalls us as we are. The intentions of this teaching are good. They seek to get God off the hook for allowing evil to come into our lives. Unfortunately it is simply not what the Bible teaches.

This is not helpful. If it were biblical, that would be one thing, but this idea is neither biblical, nor is it true.


1.God is sovereign over Satan as we see in verses 6-12. God has a leash. God is so much sovereign over Satan that Satan’s work is attributed to God.
a. We must not say that God does evil because the Bible says God is not the author of evil (I John 1:5, Genesis 18:25). He does not sin. (relevant texts: I Sam 2:6)
b. We must however affirm that God is completely sovereign over Satan. Satan does not move an inch without God’s permissive providence. God could end Satan by simply willing it to happen, but God has His good and sovereign purposes for allowing Him to remain for a time.
2. God is sovereign over sin, verses 14-17- Chaldeans in an unjust and unprovoked manner decimated Job’s property.
a. Again, God does not make people sin (James 1:13), but the Bible teaches that God uses the evil intentions of men for His great purposes (Gen 50:20, Acts 2:23, 4:27-28).
b. God’s sovereignty over sin does not negate our responsibility to God to not sin.
c. Though He does not sin, He accomplishes His purposes by restraining and permitting sin. (Romans 1:21-27). Picture it like a flood gate, God does not have to restrain sin, and Romans 1 even says that God can judge people by turning them over to their own desires. In other words, right now, God is restraining you and me from becoming the worst possible sinners that we could be. If He were to let us go, there would be no limit to the depths that we would sink. If God ceased to restrain us, we would dive into a spiral of depravity.
i. Example of Sabeans and Chaldeans- they were a mean group of people sitting around this day deciding whether to go kick some kitties or go decimate Job’s property. God restrained them from kicking the kitties and they went and decimated Job’s property. So these men had any number of options about what to do that day, and God ruled out the other possibilities that they could have done and left attacking Job’s property as the only one possible.
ii. Example of Christ- God restrained some courses of action that could have been taken not resulting in the death of Christ, and permitted the ones that would end up with Christ crucified.
3.God is sovereign over the natural order as in verses 18-19.
a.God is sovereign over the physical world- Psalm 135:6-7, Proverbs 16:33, Matt 6:25-30
b. God is sovereign over animals- II Kings 2:23-24,
c. God is sovereign over weather and catastrophes. Mark 4:35-41


Since God is sovereign over all of these things we should take heart. Believing that God is sovereign and that we can trust Him is massively helpful in living your daily lives.

We will learn more about how we ought to respond to this truth next week.