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A Relationship For Nothing

Brian Messerli
03/23/25 - Lord’s Supper Service

Job 1:9 - One of our greatest fears is that the people in our lives don’t love us for who we are, but only for what we can do for them.  I heard someone in an interview recently describing how hard it is for celebrities to have close relationships and to get married, because for many of them there’s always a question in the back of their minds:  does this person really love me for me?  Or is it because I’m rich and famous?  About 10 years ago, there was a song by R. City and Adam Levine called, “Locked Away,” and in the chorus he asked the woman he was with, “If I got locked away, and we lost it all today, would you still love me the same?”  God in His Word recognizes our tendency to build relationships for utilitarian reasons.  Proverbs 19:4 says, “Wealth adds many friends, but a poor man is separated from his friend.”  This is why the Pharisees in Luke 14 hosted dinners where they only invited their rich friends, because they didn’t love those people for who they are, but for their networking value.

Satan’s accusation here in Job 1:9 is that, “Job is just using you God!  He’s not serving You for nothing, he’s serving You for SOMETHING.  You’re like a wealthy friend to Job, and it’s simply a utilitarian arrangement where he serves you, and then you bless him with health, wealth, a wife, children, and a good life.  But if you stopped providing those things for him, Job would curse you and stop serving you!”  In other words, Satan doesn’t believe Job loves God for who He is, but only for what He can do for Job.

And Satan could not have been more wrong.  Job lost all of his wealth, all of his servants and livestock, and even all 10 of his children.  They died when a tornado hit their house while celebrating a birthday.  It’s one of the most horrendous tragedies in history.  There’s nothing more painful in life than losing a child.  We know firsthand from the loss of Fair Roberts how devastating it can be to lose even ONE child, but can you imagine losing all of your children?  And then Job lost his health and was stricken with boils which put him in a state of chronic physical pain as he desperately scraped his sores with pottery, tossing back and forth all night, unable to sleep from the physical and emotional pain.

Job 2:9-10 - While we can certainly sympathize with Job’s wife, because she lost her children too, it’s clear she’s not willing to serve God for nothing.  She was serving God because of all the blessings he gave her, but when Job asks, “Shall we accept good and not adversity?” he’s expressing his willingness to serve God for nothing.  Another way to phrase it is, “Shall we serve God only when He gives us something, but not when He leaves us with nothing?”

Job 1:21 - Job recognized everything he had were undeserved gifts from God.  God didn’t owe him those things, and if God decided to take them away, it wouldn’t stop Job from serving Him.  After all, he knows all the blessings in this life are temporary anyway, and we can’t take them with us.  Naked we came, and naked we’ll go, and Job is serving God even after God has stripped him naked!  Talk about serving God for nothing!  If you’re naked, you can’t possibly have any less.  And yet…

Job 1:22 - Job proved Satan wrong.  He DOES serve God for nothing.  He even comes to the point in Job 13:15 of saying, “Even if God KILLS me, I’ll still hope in Him!”  That’s even WORSE than being naked and having nothing, because at least if you’re naked you still have your life, but Job says even if God takes my LIFE from me, I’ll still serve Him!

Now, the name “Satan” means “adversary” or “accuser.”  And one of Satan’s main goals is to be an adversary to our relationship with God, and one of the ways he does that is by accusing us of sin and of sinful motives to God.  Here he tries to drive a wedge between God and Job by accusing Job of using God and taking advantage of Him.  This is one of the core lies Satan tells to God in Scripture, that human beings won’t serve Him for nothing.  They won’t really love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, they’ll only be fair-weather servants when things are going their way.

But also, I believe this is one of the core lies Satan tells to humans about God in Scripture, that God doesn’t really love YOU for nothing.  That God is just using you for His benefit in some way, and the relationship is purely utilitarian.

Genesis 3:4-5 [It’s important to know that in ancient Mesopotamian creation myths, the gods did not create human beings because they loved them.  That’s a totally unique claim in Christianity.  The false gods of the ancients created them for utilitarian purposes.  The Babylonian gods, for instance, created humans to be their slaves and to relieve themselves from hard labor.  The gods were tired and needed humans to do the work they didn’t want to do.  The Egyptian gods created humans to feed them through their sacrificial offerings.] - Satan implies that God doesn’t really want you to know what he knows, He wants to maintain power and control over you.  Satan doesn’t explicitly say God is using them, but He’s accusing God of having questionable motives.  He’s not telling them to avoid the forbidden fruit because He loves them, but because He’s benefiting and getting something out of their ignorance.  And that’s one of Satan’s favorite accusations to throw at God; that “He’s up to something, that He can’t really be so loving and kind as to seek our good, He must have some ulterior motive.  There must be something in this for Him, there’s no way He’s loving us for our own sake and that He would want a relationship with us for nothing.”

Do you all see how this sets us up to appreciate the power and beauty of what Jesus came to show us?  The two main accusations by Satan are that, “Humans won’t serve God for nothing,” and that “God won’t serve humans for nothing.”  When Jesus came, He shut Satan’s lying accusing mouth for good by proving both charges wrong.  For the rest of our time this morning, let’s consider how:

Matthew 4:2-4 - The very first step in Jesus’ ministry was to purposely put Himself in a position of having nothing.  No food for 40 days, He’s out in the wilderness with no friends, no family, no job to make money, He’s in physical pain from the hunger, and Satan comes along and says, “Hey you’re God’s Son, you shouldn’t have to suffer like this.  Just make some bread and you can end your hunger right now!”  But Jesus assures Him, “I don’t need bread, I don’t need comfort, I need absolutely nothing except the words of My Father.  Jesus was a human serving God for nothing.  Then Satan tries to entice Jesus to follow HIM by giving Him everything!  He’s assuming Jesus’ devotion is purely utilitarian, so if Satan can give Him all kinds of benefits and power in this life, then Jesus will be devoted to him.

Matthew 4:8-10 - Jesus’ motivation for who to serve has nothing to do with the health or wealth they can give Him.  It has nothing to do with living His best life now.  For Jesus, the only question that matters is, “Who is WORTHY of worship?”  And for Jesus, the answer was God.  He was going to serve God because He loved Him for Him, and not for what He could GET from Him!

And this attitude was only magnified as His ministry progressed.  It’s not just that He wasn’t rich or powerful, it’s that He had nothing.  He said, “Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”  He lost His family, in the sense that His brothers didn’t believe him and thought He was crazy and His mother didn’t really understand what He had to do.  And when He was crucified, He died the death of a slave and a criminal with zero social status, zero wealth, zero power, and He even died naked as the soldiers gambled to divide up His clothes.  Naked He came into the world as a baby, and naked He died on a cross for our sins.  Yet through it all, Jesus remained faithful to His Father, and proved Satan wrong like Job did but to an even greater extent.  Because Job said, “Even if God kills me, I’ll serve Him,” but God spared Job from being killed by Satan, so Job’s statement was only theoretical.  But for Jesus, it was real because God did not stop Satan from killing Him, and yet even to the point of His final breath, Jesus served God for nothing. He proved that Satan was wrong; that humans can love God for who He is, and not just what He can do for them.  We can even serve Him from a cross, because God is worth serving for nothing.  Why?  Because the cross also shows us He served us for nothing.

1 John 4:7-10 - Jesus revealed to us the true depths of God’s love by proving that God loved us for nothing.  He didn’t send Jesus because of all the great things we would do for Him.  No, He knew we’d put His Son on a cross!  He didn’t die for us out of some utilitarian reason like having us do slave labor for Him or to keep Him fed through our sacrifices.  He didn’t do it as a power trip because He likes telling us what to do.  The cross proves that God’s love is completely selfless, and He loved us for us.  We never have to wonder, “Is He just using us?”  We can be absolutely confident His love for us is genuine because He gave it to us purely for our own sake and our good.  Now, of course, God benefits from our relationship, He gets joy from sharing His love, and we benefit from our relationship with God even more!  But the cross proves our relationship with God and His relationship with us is so special, and our love for each other is so deep, that it’s worth having even for nothing.  Even if we lose everything in this life, all we need is our loving relationship with God through the body and blood of our Lord Jesus.