Finding God's Comfort # 2

Finding God's Comfort # 2

satan was unwilling to agree that Job was such a man as God thought him. He suggested another test: "Put forth you hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce you to your face." That is probably satan's opinion of all religion. At least there are a good many people in the world who claim to believe that all religion is really selfish, based on mere self-interest and dependent on outward favor. "Every man has his price!" they say. People serve God, they say, only because He is kind to them and so long as He continues to give them favor and goodness.

We need to guard ourselves most carefully at this point. Our Lord has told us of those who begin well in their following Him - but when persecution arises because of the word, they stumble. There were disciples of His who went back and walked no more with Him, because of the severity of His teaching and of the hard requirements of discipleship. No doubt there are many professing Christians who do renounce Christ when He touches their bone and flesh. it is needful that we who begin to follow Christ, look well to our own lives that, come what may of suffering, cost or trial - we shall be faithful and steadfast.

God had His answer ready: "Behold he is in your hand, only spare his life." It is comforting to us to know that even satan with all his power, cannot break in upon a child of God whenever he pleases, and injure God's little one in any way his fiendish cruelty may choose. satan could not touch Job - until God gave him permission, and then said to Peter that dark night: "Simon, behold, satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat." We are not given the full details of Peter's case - but no doubt it was precisely as in Job's here; satan did not believe there was any reality in Simon's attachment to Christ, and asked permission to prove it. Christ permitted Simon to fall into the adversary's hands. It seems for a time a terribly hazardous thing - but it proved only a sifting. Much of Peter's professed earnestness was sifted out - but a true spiritual reality remained.

We tremble when we think of satan's terrible power, and dread lest he destroy us. But one is stronger - the "strong Son of God, immortal Love." If we are his and keep near to Him - He will shelter us, not allowing satan to touch us, only when the testing and trial will do us good, and not allowing us to be tempted above what we are able to endure.

When he had received permission from God, satan so sorely afflicted Job that his wife urged him to renounce God, expressing surprise that be still held forth his integrity. But Job answered, "What, shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" Too often weak faith is moved from its steadfastness by trials. People say, "God cannot love me - or He would not send this affliction upon me." Job's answer, however, shows noble faith. We take good, earthly good, from God's hands. We believe that He loves us so long as He showers upon us favors and gives us pleasant things, human joys. Very well; when He changes the form of His providences and gives us troubles; when He withdraws the favors - should we conclude that He no longer loves us? We are permitted to see within the heart of God, in this case of the change in His treatment of Job, and we see that God never loved him more - than when He allowed him to suffer so sorely. It is always the same. At the close of the first trial Job said, "Jehovah gave, and Jehovah has taken away." The same Lord that gave - took away; yes, and the same love. God knows best what we need any day and what will most advance the kingdom of Christ - and we ought to trust Him so implicitly, so unquestioningly, that whether He gives a new favor or takes one away; whether He grants us our request or withholds it; whether he bestows upon us earthly good or or causes us to suffer loss and adversity - we shall still believe and say, "God loves us - and He is blessing me."

This record of Job's misfortune goes on to say: "In all this Job did not sin with his lips." If Job had let himself murmur against God in his pain - he would have sinned with his lips. If he had lost faith and had spoken impatiently, fretfully, rebelliously - he would have sinned with his lips. We need to think seriously of this. We call lying, sinning with one's lips. We call profane swearing, words of bitter anger, sins of speech. We sometimes forget that complaining of God's ways with us, repining at God's providences, are also sins. Sweet, quiet, trustful, joyous submission to the will of God - is the kind of behavior God is pleased with in His children in time and trouble.

Afflictions Sanctified

Job's three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zephar, heard of his sore misfortunes and came to console him. They were struck speechless at the sight of his calamity and for several days and nights they sat with him on the ground, none of them speaking a word. At length Job, moved by their presence and sympathy, broke out with a passionate cry for death. Then began a long debate between Job and his friends on the question of suffering. Eliphaz expressed wonder that Job, being righteous, should be crushed by his trouble, and that he should so murmur against heaven.

One of the choice statements made by him was, "Behold, happy is the man when God corrects." He is not happy at the time, at least, in the world's way. No affliction for the present seems to be joyous - but grievous. No one enjoys having troubles, sufferings, trials, sorrows. Therefore this statement made by Eliphaz appears very strange to some people. They cannot understand it. It is contrary to all their thoughts of happiness. Of course the word "happy" is not used here in the world's sense. The world's happiness is the pleasure that comes from the things that happen. It depends on personal comfort, on prosperous circumstances, on kindly and congenial conditions. When these are taken away, the world's happiness is destroyed. But the word here means "blessed," and the statement is that blessing comes to him who receives God's correction. To correct, is to set right that which has been wrong. Surely if a man is going in the wrong way, and God turns his feet back and sets him in the right way, a blessing has come to the man.

Afflictions are God's "corrections." They come always with a purpose of love in them. God never afflicts one of His children, without meaning His child's good in some way. So blessing is always intended by God. It is usually afterward that people begin to see and to understand that good that God sent them in their trial. "You do not understand what I am now doing" said Jesus, "but you shall understand hereafter." "No chastening seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it." So when we have troubles and afflictions, we may know that God wants to do us good in some way through them.

~J. R. Miller~

(continued with # 3)