Passages to read: (JOB 1:13-22, JOB 2:1-10)
In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul wrote that he did not want to give Satan an opportunity to take advantage of a problem that had arisen in the church "for we are not ignorant of his schemes," he said (2CO 2:11). The word translated "schemes," noema, means "plots, plans, strategem."
In EPH 6:11, Paul tells us to put on the full armor of God, that we may be able to stand firm against the "schemes" of the devil. Here the word is methodeia, which means "cunning arts, deceit, craft, trickery." We have to remember that our enemy is not only a master strategist, he is also a cheat and a liar.
In the Ephesians passage, Paul goes on to say that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood" but against the spiritual forces of wickedness. The word translated "struggle" is pale, a term for hand-to-hand combat.
Satan has tremendous plans for attacking all believers, especially those who are advancing, and his plans are personal. Every one of us will be singled out for attack by his fallen agents, and we can be sure that the tactics used on Job will be used on us. That is why it is so important that we understand the principle of JOB 1:12—the enemy cannot touch us except when and where God permits. And if God permits it, it is because He loves us that much.
Now it happened on the day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house, that a messenger came to Job and said, "The oxen were plowing and the donkeys feeding beside them, and the Sabeans attacked and took them. They also slew the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you."
While he was still speaking, another also came and said, "The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them, and I alone have escaped to tell you."
While he was still speaking, another also came and said, "The Chaldeans formed three bands and made a raid on the camels and took them and slew the servants with the edge of the sword; and I alone have escaped to tell you."
While he was still speaking, another also came and said, "Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house and behold, a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people and they died; and I alone have escaped to tell you." (JOB 1:13-19)
Our enemy's sense of timing is almost perfect. When did Satan decide to nail Job? At the time it would hurt him the most. Satan had studied Job. He no doubt had compiled a massive dossier on him, and in a file marked "Greatest Fear" he found what he wanted.
Job was afraid that his children would curse God. He was especially afraid on their birthdays, when they would all get together to celebrate (JOB 1:4-5, JOB 3:25). He worried that his children would forget themselves in their merrymaking, so he was always praying and offering sacrifices during these times.
So Satan, knowing that the right move at the right time is worth a thousand moves at the wrong time, waits until the birthday of Job's oldest son, his firstborn. "On that day," with precision timing, Satan opens his attack.
What would Job think when all this disaster hit him on this particular day? The most logical conclusion would have been, "My children have cursed God. That is why He has taken their lives, and it is why He has hit me with all this calamity." Maybe Job would have blamed himself for not praying enough. Satan wanted all of the disaster to bring fear and guilt on Job.
Every fear we nurse in our lives gives the enemy a place to work, a base from which to launch his assault. He knows what we are afraid of; he knows the things that cause us to question the goodness and the grace of God, and those are the very things he will use in his attacks on us.
When the enemy initiates an attack against us, we can be guaranteed it is going to be at the worst possible time and under the most adverse conditions. It will be when we are tired, run down, weak, and most vulnerable to temptation. Why does he always attack at times like that? Because he is a strategist. If we want to resist him, we have to understand his strategy.
If our enemy's sense of timing is almost perfect, then his sense of chaos is even better. Here is a tranquil scene, Job doing what he always did on days like this, and all of a sudden everything with which he is familiar is shaken, and the peace and the tranquility that I surrounded him are gone. In an instant.
Satan always seeks to disrupt conditions of peace and calm. His rebellion brought chaos into the universe. Whereas Jesus is the Prince of Peace, Satan is the king of confusion and turmoil. He hates us, and he hates for us to have inner peace because inner peace in the believer is the greatest evidence of divine power. Especially in adverse conditions, when we have peace in our souls, we drive him crazy.
The best way to have historical impact in this world is not to run around trying to make a big splash in society for God. The best way is to slow down and do the one thing that troubles Satan more than anything else—rest in the Lord. If we do not know how to maintain inner peace and calm, no amount of work we do will be effective.
Everything God does in our lives comes from rest. So of course Satan's attacks in this area will be especially vicious. He will never attack us without trying to throw something in that will destroy peace in our soul. If guilt is all he can use, he will use guilt; if fear, fear.
It takes a great deal of toughness and strength to remain poised under pressure and testing. These are qualities not natural to man. They are developed through self-discipline and hard training. We have to develop that toughness of skin and thickness of hide that allows us to absorb blow after blow after blow without losing our focus on the Prince of Peace.
Our enemy gets as much of a kick out of violence as he does out of simple chaos, so violence is another of his favorite tactics. He knows that even the language of violence has an amazing effect on people when they are brought face-to-face with it.
Job is told, by probably hysterical survivors, that the Sabeans and the Chaldeans in separate attacks "slew the servants with the edge of the sword." The word translated "slew" refers to a violent attack; the term "edge of the sword" is a fear phrase. It would especially arouse fear in people who thought as concretely and in as vivid word pictures as the Semitic people did. Think about the sword, the edge of the sword, about how it would cut when it was used on people; think about how these raiders hacked Job's servants to pieces, and it would be easy to start getting scared. That, of course, is what Satan wants.
Notice the phrase repeated three times between JOB 1:13 and JOB 1:22, "while he was speaking." Satan seldom sends one piece of trouble alone; he prefers to land one punch after another after another. Why? Because he understands the shock effect of multiple blows. One of the most basic principles in self-defense is that you never fire at a target only one time. Multiple rounds increase and intensify the shock effect.
Finally, our enemy loves to send calamity that looks as if it were an act of God. Job's servant helps create this impression when he says that "the fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them." Though God allowed the fire to come, this was not the fire of God. This passage indicates to us that all natural calamity is the result of creation out of balance with the Creator.
We sometimes forget that the spiritual war is fought in the physical world. All these physical calamities happened to Job in the space of about 10 minutes, and it was all part of the spiritual war.
Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said,"Naked I came from my mother's womb,And naked I shall return there.The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.Blessed be the name of the Lord."Through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God. (JOB 1:20-22)
Job's sorrow and grief are beyond measure. He rises and tears his robe as a symbol of a broken heart. His soul has been ripped in two, but his response to all the sorrow is to bow before the Almighty God and worship.
His pain is encompassed by his faith, and so Job does not give Satan the victory he desires. The enemy wants one of God's own children to say, "Why me? Why did God let this happen to me? How could a loving God allow this suffering?" Satan is no different today in dealing with us. He still wants to malign the character of God through the mouths of God's own children.
Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them "to present himself before the Lord.
And the Lord said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Then Satan answered the Lord and said, "From roaming about on the earth, and walking around on it."
And the Lord said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man fearing God and turning away from evil. And he still holds fast his integrity, although you incited Me against him, to ruin him without cause."
And Satan answered the Lord and said, "Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. However, put forth Thy hand, now, and touch his bone and his flesh; he will curse Thee to Thy face."
So the Lord said to Satan, "Behold he is in your power, only spare his life." (JOB 2:1-6)
Again there is an angelic convocation in Heaven and again Satan struts in, though perhaps with less lilt in the face of Job's response to his attack. Again God asks him where he has been and again Satan tells Him, "around." Then God asks the one question the enemy surely does not want to hear: "Have you considered My servant Job?"
When God says that Job holds fast his "integrity," the Hebrew word is tummah. It means "simplicity, singleness of purpose, innocence." Job's integrity is his refusal to blame God for the things that have happened to him. He holds his integrity even though, God says, "you incited Me against him to ruin him without cause." The phrase "without cause" tells us something—there was no sin involved in Job's suffering. He was not suffering because of discipline.
Satan's answer to God's question is an accusation; he charges Job with selfishness. One of the most compassionate, gracious, thoughtful men in history is accused by Satan of being selfish and self-centered.
In his response, Satan is saying to God: "Sure Job hasn't cursed You yet. You can steal his flocks, You can destroy his wealth, You can strike his servants and kill his family, and he is so selfish and so self-absorbed that it does not even touch him. He doesn't even feel any grief over his family. He just sits there and says, 'Everything's fine.' But You touch his body, make him hurt, and he will curse You for sure."
This is the third of five times that we see Satan's goal in afflicting Job (JOB 1:5,11; JOB 2:3, JOB 2:5, JOB 2:10). Because he so maliciously despises God, Satan feels vindicated when he can move any believer to malign God's character.
We are in the middle of the angelic conflict. When God allows into our lives any pressure, difficulty, adversity—minor or major—and we accept it without complaint, acknowledging that God knows what He is doing, then He receives honor and glory.
But when in testing we accuse God of being unjust or unrighteous or unloving, then Satan struts through the streets of Heaven and chuckles before the Throne of God. Any time we say, or think, "What is happening to me is not fair," we become a witness for Satan. Any time we ask the question, "How can a loving God allow this?" implying of course that God is not loving, we are following the line of the devil. Satan is the author of that statement.
God is never the source of evil. Notice in JOB 2:6 that God says to Satan, "He is in your power." That was not what Satan asked for. Satan asked for God to touch Job's bone and his flesh. He wanted God personally to strip Job of his health. God would not do it. "He is in your power," He said. "You want it done to him? You do it."
Satan may be allowed to get through our protection, but he will never get beyond God's limitation. In Job's case, God set the limit when He commanded Satan to spare his life. God is always able to say to the enemy, "This far and no further." And when God allows more trouble or persecution in our lives than we think we can stand, we have to remember that the extent of the severity of our testing is a measure of the extent of honor and glory it can bring to Jesus Christ throughout all eternity.
Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a potsherd to scrape himself while he was sitting among the ashes.
Then his wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!" But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips. (JOB 2:7-10)
The suffering and agony of Job at this point are terrible. He is covered with boils from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. He is in intense pain, and there is no way to alleviate it. The itching is unbearable, and so he takes a potsherd, part of a broken clay pot, to scrape himself as he sits m the ashes. Later in JOB 7:5, we are told that his boils develop two by-products: worms and scabs. InJOB 30:17 and JOB 30:30 we learn that he has severe fever and tremendous aching in his bones.
At this point, Job's wife joins the enemy. Satan had wanted this woman left alive; he has plans for her, and she falls right in with them. She becomes cynical and bitter and vindictive, and she blames God. She tells her husband he would be better off dead, and we can imagine that she does not say this just once. She likely says it—or at least shows it on her face—every time she walks past the ash heap where Job suffers in silence.
Job's response to his wife shows what a mild man he is. In these verses we glimpse an ancient family fight, centered around tremendous tragedy. There has been death in the family, banditry, warfare, robbery, loss of wealth, and—at least on her part—loss of perspective. When Job tells her she speaks as a "foolish" woman, he uses the Hebrew nebalah, which means "to fade, to wither." It is a word for falling away, for reversion; he is saying, "You are speaking like a reversionistic woman."
Then he asks her a question: "Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?" When he asks this, he Is illustrating three very important doctrinal principles.
- The believer who only wants blessing is weak and immature.
- The believer who gripes and complains in adversity does not understand either God or His plan.
- The believer who falls apart under pressure does not understand the angelic conflict or the power of God.
The war that Job was involved in stretched from the ashes he sat in to the Throne Room of God, but his battle was won in the soul. Through all his calamity and pain, "Job did not sin with his lips." But what came or did not come out of his lips was only a manifestation of what had already happened in his heart. Job won the battle because of his thoughts; he chose to believe God. Faith was the victory.
All human history boils down to individual, personal decisions. The angelic conflict is being resolved not in the heavenlies, not in the cosmic sphere, but in the souls of individual men and women. Every day, billions and billions of battles are fought in the minds of men over the plan of God. And every time any person chooses to take his thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ, Satan loses another round.
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