The Lord Gives and Takes Away

Job’s Resignation, a sermon by Charles Spurgeon, London, 1886:

“Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away…” (Job 1:21)

Job was very much troubled, and did not try to hide the outward signs of his sorrow. A man of God is not expected to be a stoic. The grace of God takes away the heart of stone out of his flesh, but it does not turn his heart into a stone. I want you, however, to notice that mourning should always be sanctified with devotion. "Ye people, pour out your hearts before Him: God is a refuge for us."

When you are bowed down beneath a heavy burden of sorrow, then take to worshipping the Lord, and especially to that kind of worshipping which lies in adoring God, and in making a full surrender of yourself to the Divine will, so that you can say with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”

It will also greatly alleviate our sorrow if we then fall into serious contemplations, and begin to argue a little, and to bring facts to bear upon our mind. "While I was musing," said David, "the fire burned," and it comforted and warmed him. Job is an instance of this kind of personal instruction; he has three or four subjects which he brings before his own mind, and these tend to comfort him.

The extreme brevity of life 

Observe what Job says, "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither." We appear for a brief moment, and then we vanish away. I often, in my own mind, compare life to a procession. Well now, because life is so short, do you not see where the comfort comes? Job says to himself, "I came, and I shall return; then why should I worry myself about what I have lost? I am going to be here only a little while, then what need have I of all those camels and sheep? If my earthly stores vanish, well, I shall vanish too." Further, Job seems especially to dwell with comfort upon the thought, "I shall return to the earth, from which all the particles of my body originally came: I shall return thither." You recollect how the tribe of Gad and the tribe of Reuben went to Moses, and said, "If we have found grace in thy sight, let this land be given unto thy servants for a possession, and bring us not over Jordan." Of course, they did not want to cross the Jordan if they could get all their possessions on the other side. But Job had not anything this side Jordan; he was cleaned right out, so he was willing to go. And, really, the losses that a man has, which make him "desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better," are real gains. What is the use of all that clogs us here?


Job seems to comfort himself by noticing:

The tenure of earthly possessions

"Naked," says he, "came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither." He feels himself to be very poor, everything is gone, he is stripped; yet he seems to say, "I am not poorer now than I was when I was born." One said to me, the other day, "All is gone, sir, all is gone, except health and strength." Yes, but we had not as much as that when we were born. We had no strength, we were too weak to perform the least though most necessary offices for our poor tender frame. Old men sometimes arrive at a second childhood. Do not be afraid, brother, if that is your case; you have gone through one period already that was more infantile than your second one can be, you will not be weaker then than you were at first. Suppose that you and I should be brought to extreme weakness and poverty, we shall neither be weaker nor poorer than we were then. It is wonderful that, after God has been gracious to us for fifty years, we cannot trust Him for the rest of our lives and as for you who are sixty, seventy, or eighty years of age, what!


But perhaps the most blessed thing is what Job said concerning:

The hand of God in all things

"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." I am so pleased to think that Job recognised the hand of God everywhere giving. he said, "The Lord gave." He did not say, "I earned it all." He did not say, "There are all my hard-earned savings gone." What a sweet thing it is if you can feel that all you have in this world is God's gift to you! A slender income will give us much content if we can see that it is God's gift. Let us not only regard our money and our goods as God's gifts; but also our wife, our children, our friends. Alas! some of you do not know anything about God. What you have is not counted by you as God's gift. You miss the very sweetness and joy of life by missing this recognition of the Divine hand in giving us all good things richly to enjoy. But then, Job equally saw God's hand in taking them away. If he had not been a believer in Jehovah, he would have said, "Oh, those detestable Sabeans! Somebody ought to go and cut to pieces those Chaldeans." That is often our style, is it not, — finding fault with the secondary agents? Suppose my dear wife should say to the servant, "Where has that picture gone?" and the maid replied, "Oh, the master took it!" Would she find fault? Oh, no! If it had been a servant who took it down, or a stranger who removed it, she might have said something; but not when I took it, for it is mine.

Has He brought you thus far to put you to shame? Did He bear you through that very weakest part of your life, and do you think He will now forsake you?

Then Job adds, "However poor I may be, I am not as poor as I shall be, for naked shall I return to mother earth. If I have but little now, I shall soon have still less." I want you to notice, also, what I think really was in Job's mind, that, notwithstanding that he was but dust at the beginning, and would be dust at the end, still there was a Job who existed all the while. "I was naked, but I was; naked shall I return thither, but I shall be there." Some men never find themselves till they have lost their goods. They, themselves, are hidden away, like Saul, among the stuff; their true manhood is not to be seen, because they are dressed so finely that people seem to respect them, when it is their clothes that are respected. They appear to be somebodies, but they are nobodies, notwithstanding all that they possess.

And surely we will let God be Master in His own house: where we are only the children, He shall take whatever He pleases of all He has lent us for a while.

Job's last comfort lay in this truth, that:

God is worthy to be blessed in all things

Let us never rob God of His praise, however dark the day is. "Blessed be the name of the Lord."

Job means that the Lord is to be blessed both for giving and taking. "The Lord gave," blessed be His name. "The Lord hath taken away," blessed be His name. Surely it has not come to this among God's people, that He must do as we like, or else we will not praise Him. God is, however, specially to be praised by us whenever we are moved by the devil to curse. Satan had said to the Lord concerning Job, "Put forth Thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse Thee to Thy face"; and it seemed as if God had hinted to His servant that this was what the devil was aiming at. "Then," said Job, "I will bless Him."

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By C. H. Spurgeon, London, 1886; sermon published at biblehub.com, titled Job’s Resignation.

Itching to Hear? Vote with your Ears

What pricks your attention as a Christian? What do you want to hear more about? Alternatively, is there anything in the Bible that has made you think, “I don’t really want to hear that,” or “I don’t need to hear that.”

Choosing what we listen to or hear is just one way in which we try to maintain control over ourselves. But when we do this with God’s Word, we are not submitting to it and trusting God as our ruler, who wants us to willingly come under the control of his Spirit.

If we’re honest, we are all tempted as Christians in this way; to discriminate between one part of God’s Word from another. We can be selective hearers. This could be simply by giving more attention to parts of God’s Word that we like. Or we may tend to highlight only what stands out to us as encouraging. And we may steer clear of parts of God’s Word that we don’t like. And in this way, we take away from God’s Word by ignoring or even omitting from the Scriptures what we, in effect, choose to silence.

This temptation to be led by our own desires when coming to God’s Word relates equally to those who teach or preach or prophecy within the Church. A simple memory verse system might focus only on all the positive, uplifting quotes throughout the Bible. Or a preacher may find themselves focusing in on a particularly distinct, unique emphasis that they feel is relevant or ‘fresh’. Or they just have their preferred, choice of topics. In this way, those who speak in the Church are tempted with the ‘sin of omission’; in effect taking away from the message and teaching of the Bible.

The Apostle Paul warns us strongly about this.

“… the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth…” (2 Timothy 4: 3-4)

The surprise of this statement is that Paul lays the blame upon the listener. They are being driven by their own desires in how they select teachers and who they gather around them. It is because they cannot put up with some of the teaching of the Bible that teachers spread who give them just what they want to hear already.

Why should this be of great concern to us? Because our salvation, Christian growth and maturity are all at stake, as the Apostle Paul warns in 1 Timothy 4:16:

“Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.”

One of the greatest risks of selective hearing (and selective preaching) is the ever-present danger of false teaching within the Church. False teaching only exists because there is a market for it. If there were no pupils there would be no teachers. You cannot teach anything unless you have someone who will listen. And so, the Bible warns us that we need to vote with our ears.

How do you know if you are listening to false teaching unless you are listening to all of God’s Word – that is, unless you are continually allowing the Bible to interpret itself for you by listening to it as one unified message from God? How do you know if you are a false teacher unless you are faithfully, carefully holding together all of God’s Word and its teaching in your ministry, without adding to it or taking away from it? After warning Timothy about false teaching in the last days (2 Timothy 3:1-9), Paul instructs him:

“the sacred writings… are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 15b-17)

One of the reasons why the Bible says that false teachers themselves will be judged more strictly is that, not only do they tend to selectively use the Bible -- and in this way change and distort its overall message – they also (whether consciously or not) misread and thereby misapply the Bible:

“There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.” (2 Peter 3:16).

And so, as well as simply adding to or taking away from what the Bible teachers, false teachers also interpret the Bible in such a way that it contradicts a clear and plain reading of the Bible when comprehended in its entirety.

Our job as Christians is not actually to ‘interpret’ the Bible – which literally means to explain its meaning. Rather our job is to ‘read’ it, which, by definition, means to ‘comprehend’ its meaning within its own context. It explains itself. The Bible stands alone as a self-authenticating, self-interpreting book with its own vocabulary and progressive message, and this requires of us careful attention and literacy as does all proper ‘reading’. We need to ‘hear’ it and accept it (all of it) as God’s own word:

“when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.” (1 Thessalonians 2:13).

False teaching in the Church has been with us from New Testament times, and before. In fact, in the Old Testament, Moses warns Israel against false teachers which may not only include ‘prophets’ but may also include your brother, mother, son, daughter, wife or fellowman (Deuteronomy 13:1-15; 18:20-22). And almost every New Testament book (Philemon is an exception) contains warnings against false teachers and false prophets. Jesus warns us that false teaching will, in fact, be a defining mark of the last days in which we now live (Matt 24:11).

The issue is so serious and is of such dire consequence that Paul can say in Galatians 1:8:

“…even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.”

So, what can each of us do, to safeguard against and resist false teaching in our lives as Christians? 

First, there are some obvious big things we can do that are a priority for every Christian in every circumstance:

1. Make a habit of praying before and after you read or listen to God’s Word, that you take it to heart by responding with repentance and faith, remember that Christians are fundamentally those who not merely listen to God’s word, but who accept and obey it: Psalm 1; Psalm 119; Mark 4:10-20; John 5:39; John 10:1-29; 1 Thessalonians 2:13; James 1:22-25.

2. Listen through all the Bible as regularly as possible. The 66 books of the Bible were all written to be read aloud, and so are best understood by sitting back and listening to them in their entirety. They also have one unifying theme and message which progressively unfolds in the pages of salvation history itself. Once you have ‘heard’ and ‘listened’ to the whole of a book, you will have a better grasp of its overall message and context. From there you can slow down and dive into the nuances with a hard copy, and grapple with (and ideally meditate on) its variegated teaching. But make sure you read and comprehend each part within its whole – read in context – and that is much easier if you use of the very recent blessing of being able to listen to whole books of the Bible in audio.

3. Don’t buy or propagate any material containing teaching you know to be wrong or misleading – this only supports and helps it to be more successful. We mustn’t compromise God’s Word by supporting material that confuses or even contradicts it. The Bible commands Christians not to support false teaching or false teachers (2 John 7-11).

4. Make sure you are part of a church that makes expository preaching, based on Bible exegesis, the staple diet of the congregation. If you can, attend a bible study group too that is progressively going through all the Scriptures (1 Timothy 4:13; 2 Timothy 15-17).

5. Speak up with the truth in love to fellow Christians. We are to expect differences amongst us, and this should not surprise us (1 Corinthians 11:19). Debate is good and healthy, in order to maintain unity in the Spirit – unity does not arise from coming together (sticking to one another) but from coming around Christ (sticking to him); we are united in him (Ephesians 4:3-5). This means that the loving way to edify one another is to be speaking the truth to one another (Ephesians 4:15-16) and all teaching one another (Colossians 3:16). This means we mustn’t be afraid to confront or even rebuke a fellow Christian with the truth of the Bible, and no one is above this (Galatians 2:11-16).

Secondly, there are some less obvious actions that may apply to us given the circumstances, which may require them:

6. Warn other Christians if they continue to go down a road of disobeying the clear commands of the Bible or contradicting its clear teaching (after you have ‘spoken the truth to them in love’). In such circumstances, we are told to withdraw fellowship from fellow believers as a warning sign to them, so that by God’s grace they will repent – in other circumstances, we are told to do this because they may be false Christians corrupting the church by their influence (2 Thessalonians 3:14-15; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Titus 3:10-11; 1 Corinthians 5:2, 13; Ephesians 5:5-7). Acts 5:1-11 is a monumental example of how seriously God wants us to treat holiness among Christians, his Church. We are called to judge ourselves as Christians (1 Corinthians 11:30-32). The pattern of Matthew 18:15-20 is helpful here. You could take a second or a third person along after your warning if they persist in disobedience or in false doctrine. If they continue, you should tell the elders of your church so that they can protect the whole flock if needed (Acts 20:28-31).

(There is an important distinction that the Bible makes here, however: we are commanded to judge those inside the Church (1 Corinthians 5:12b-13), not those outside. So, while this point does apply to false Christians it does not apply to unbelievers who make no profession of faith. Their judgment is not our business and would be practically impossible (1 Corinthians 5:10, 12); rather for the sake of the gospel we are told to “answer” outsiders with wisdom, grace and a holy life - ‘salt’ in Colossians 4:5-6).

7. Leave your church if you need to stop supporting false teaching and at the same time unite with true fellowship around sound teaching: “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said… go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord” (2 Corinthians 6:14-18 - It was in the context of false teachers in Corinth influencing the church there that Paul gave this command to leave and be separate). Join a church where you can be united to Christians devoted to sound teaching (Acts 2:42; Titus 1:9; 2:1).

 Paul’s command, in speaking about false teaching and false teachers, is to “flee” and instead “pursue” holiness:

“If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness…. flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith…” (1 Timothy 6:3, 11-12).

So, we can fight the good fight by voting with our ears: Hearing all of God’s Word and not listening to (or supporting) false teaching. And we can fight the good fight by not forgetting to also vote with our tongues: Speak up for the truth and share it with one another in love. And if you need to, vote with your feet: Flee from false teaching in the Church and from false teachers; keeping the unity of the Holy Spirit who sets us apart in truth and godliness.