Satan, Suffering despair and Job
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| Get Thee Behind Me, Satan (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Satan had been allowed to attack Job’s possessions; now his power is increased, and he is free to attack Job’s personal inheritance direct. When a man is hit by undeserved destruction, the immediate result is a slander against God—“Why should God allow this thing to happen?”
There are people to-day who are going through an onslaught of destruction that paralyses all our platitudes and preaching; the only thing that will bring relief is the consolations of Christ. It is a good thing to feel our own powerlessness in the face of destruction, it makes us know how much we depend upon God. In these days the outstanding marvel is the way mothers and wives have gone through sorrow, not callously, but with an extraordinary sense of hopefulness. One thing the war has done is to knock on the head all such shallow optimism as telling people to “look on the bright side of things”; or that “every cloud has a silver lining”: there are some clouds that are black all through.
The Ordeal of Despair (Job 1:20-21)
Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. (Job 1:21)
Facing facts as they are produces despair, not frenzy, but real downright despair, and God never blames a man for despair. The man who thinks must be pessimistic; thinking can never produce optimism. The wisest man that ever lived said that “he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” The basis of things is not reasonable, but wild and tragic, and to face things as they are brings a man to the ordeal of despair. Ibsen presents this ordeal, there is no defiance in his presentation, he knows that there is no such thing as forgiveness in Nature, and that every sin has a Nemesis following it. His summing up of life is that of quiet despair because he knows nothing of the revelation given of God by Jesus Christ.
“Blessed are they that mourn.” Our Lord always speaks from that basis, never from the basis of the “gospel of temperament.” When a man gets to despair he knows that all his thinking will never get him out, he will only get out by the sheer creative effort of God, consequently he is in the right attitude to receive from God that which he cannot gain for himself.
The Ordination of Discretion (Job 1:22)
“In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.” The apostle James talks about “the patience of Job,” but “patience” is surely the last word we would have applied to Job! He “skins” his friends with his terrific criticisms. Yet Job was never fundamentally impatient with God; he could not understand what God was doing, but he did not charge God with foolishness; he hung in to the certainty that God would yet be cleared, and so would he. Our Lord said that He was “meek and lowly in heart,” yet meekness is not the striking feature in the Temple when He drove out those that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers. Our Lord was meek towards His Father’s dispensations for Him, but not necessarily meek towards men when His Father’s honour was at stake.
In the Wickedness of Desolation
The Sieve of Satan (Job 2:1-6)
In chapter 2 the veil is lifted from behind the seen and the tragedy is explained. Job’s possessions have gone, but he still holds to his integrity; now Satan conducts his sneer one bit nearer. The first sneer was to God—“Man only loves You because You bless him”; now Satan obtains permission to interfere with Job’s intimate possessions, his sense of integrity and his health—“Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life.” The last stake of Satan is in a man’s flesh. There are times when a man’s intimate personal possessions are under Satan’s domination.
The apostle Paul calls Satan “an angel of light,” he comes to a man whose personal possessions are being attacked and says—“You have lost the sense of the presence of God, therefore you must have backslidden.” There is a wicked inspiration in it; the thing underneath is the wickedness of desolation. Desolation is never a right thing; wrong things happen actually because things are wrong really. One of the dangers of fanaticism is to accept disaster as God’s appointment, as part of His design. It is not God’s design, but His permissive will.
There is a vital moral difference between God’s order and His permissive will. God’s order is—no sin, no Satan, no sickness, no limitations. The unaided intellect of man recognises this and says, “I will cut out sin and the Redemption and Jesus Christ, and conduct my life on rational lines.” Then comes the permissive will of God—sin, Satan, difficulty, wrong and evil, and when desolation and disaster strike a man there is a wicked sting at the heart of it, and if he does not allow for the real thing behind it all he is a fool. We have to grasp God’s order through His permissive will. A Christian must not lurk in the bosom of Christ because his thinking gives him a headache. It is moral and spiritual cowardice to refuse to face the thing and to give in and succumb. The greatest fear a Christian has is not a personal fear, but the fear that his Hero won’t get through, that God will not be able to clear His character. God’s purpose is to bring “many sons unto glory.” Right through all the turmoil that is produced, and in spite of all Satan can do, this Book of Job proves that a man can get through to God every time.
The Scourge of Suffering (Job 2:7-10)
The first outer court of a man’s life is his flesh, and Job was smitten “with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown.” Then the wife of his bosom counselled him to “renounce God, and die. But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish [impious, rv mg] speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips” (rv). That is where the scourge of suffering lies. When I suffer and feel I am to blame for it, I can explain it to myself; when I suffer and know I am not to blame, it is a harder matter; but when I suffer and realise that my most intimate relations think I am to blame, that is the limit of suffering. That is where the scourge of suffering lashed Job, the power of the sneer of Satan has come now into his most intimate relationships.
The Solitariness of Sorrow (Job 2:11-13)
Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place. . . . And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept . . . So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great.
Job’s friends were hit desperately by the calamities that had overtaken Job because their creed was the same as his had been, and now if Job was a good man, as their own hearts told them he was, where was their creed? They were dumbfounded with agony, and Job was left without a consoling friend. The friends came slowly to the conclusion that their view of God was right, therefore Job must be wrong. They had the ban of finality* about their views, which is always the result of theology being put before God. The friends suffered as well as Job, and the suffering which comes from having outgrown one’s theological suit is of an acute order. Job’s attitude is—“I cannot understand why God has allowed these things to happen; what He is doing hurts desperately, but I believe that He is honourable, a God of integrity, and I will stick to it that in the end it will be made absolutely clear that He is a God of love and justice and truth.”
Nothing is taught in the Book of Job, but there is a deep, measured sense of Someone understanding. This man was buffeted and stripped of all he held dear, but in the whirlwind of disaster he remained unblameable, that is, undeserving of censure†† by God.
Chambers, O. (1972). Baffled to fight better: talks on the Book of Job (5th ed.). London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott [for the] Oswald Chambers Publications Association.
