Outside of such faith, Job’s terrible suffering was comfortless. There was no consolation. Satan had killed his children, taken his health and wealth, and stolen the joy of living. He had thrown him into the dirt face down, and ground his grimy heal into the back of Job’s head. Job not only bemoaned his sad state, saying that his flesh was caked with worms and dust and his skin is cracked and broken, but he began to finally rail against God. He wasn’t going to retrain his mouth any longer—“I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.” He looked to the heavens and said,
“Am I a sea, or a sea serpent, that You set a guard over me? When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,’ then You scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions, so that my soul chooses strangling and death rather than my body. I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are but a breath.”
It’s important to keep in mind that Job didn’t have the insight that we have through the Scriptures. We know that it wasn’t God that destroyed Job’s life, it was Satan. It wasn’t God who had killed his children and afflicted him with disease, it was Satan. This is confirmed by Jesus in the New Testament, when He warned that the devil came “to kill, steal and destroy” (see John 10:10). The Scriptures further say,
"And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. But when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said to her, ‘Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity.’ And He laid His hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath; and he said to the crowd, “There are six days on which men ought to work; therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day.” The Lord then answered him and said, ‘Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall, and lead it away to water it? So ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound—think of it—for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath?’” (Luke 13:11-16)
When Job was first afflicted, he kept his integrity by saying, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” He understood the sovereignty of his Creator. But he now he begins weaken and complain against God.
Of course there are some afflictions in life for which we can’t blame anyone but ourselves. They are self-afflicted afflictions such as lung cancer after a lifetime of smoking, liver or heart disease after a life-time of drinking alcohol, or those who suffer because they become gluttons, or get sexually transmitted disease. However, we are told that the devil walks about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, and that our battle isn’t against flesh and blood but against spiritual powers. It may have been those powers that inspired Job’s wife to tell him to curse God and die. Such poison came from the place he more than likely least expected it—his own wife. But that’s often how the enemy works. He attacks our most vulnerable position from the place least expected. When Peter tried to stop Jesus going to the cross, Jesus said, “Get behind me Satan.”
Continued tomorrow...
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