Blessed Be the Name of the Lord

​“Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:21)

​This is truly and amazing statement by Job when we stop and analyze all that he had just been through.  Job had just suffered the loss of all of his property, all of his livestock, all of his servants, and all of his children were suddenly killed by a ferocious windstorm that came upon them and caused the house they were in to collapse on top of them.  Most of us through a similar situation would have lost our mind and gone certifiably insane or, minimally, we would have begun to question the goodness and trustworthiness of God. Yet, we read in the very next verse, “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.”  How can that be? How is that possible?  Job’s statement in v.21 says it all.  “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”  He understands that he brought nothing into the world; he literally came into the world without a stitch of anything.  Thus, anything he now has, anything he can now count as a blessing, has obviously been given to him from God.  The problem with most of us is that sin tends to cause us to think that what we have has come from out own doing.  But James 1:17 tells us that everything good we have in this world and in this life comes from God.  This is because, as scripture says, God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11).  The Bible is clear that when it comes to the sovereignty of God, He does what he wills when he will and to whom he wills and answers to no one.  Thus, Job understood that if God takes away what he gave us in the first place, we have no right to murmur.  Because of our sinfulness we deserve nothing good from God.  God does not owe us anything.  Thus, anything this side of hell is all grace.  Understanding and believing this doctrinal truth will keep us from losing our minds when it seems like the world is crumbling down around us.  Naked we came from our mothers’ wombs, and naked shall we return. The LORD gave, and the LORD takes away; blessed be the name of the LORD!