Tried By Fire # 2

Tried By Fire # 2

In the narrower sense of the term Job did know the way which he took. What that "other way" was he tells us in the next two verses. "My feet have closely followed His steps; I have kept to His way without turning aside. I have not departed from the commands of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my daily bread" (Job 23:11, 12). The way Job chose was the best way, the scriptural way, God's way - "His way". What do you think of that way, dear reader? Was it not a grand selection? Ah, not only "patient," but wise Job! Have you made a similar choice? Can you say, "My feet have closely followed His steps; I have kept to His way without turning aside?" If you can, praise Him for His enabling grace. If you cannot, confess with shame your failure to appropriate His all-sufficient grace. Get down on your knees at once, and unbosom yourself to God. Hide and keep back nothing. Remember it is written "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). Does not verse 12 explain your failure, my failure, dear reader? Is it not because we have so lightly esteemed His Word, that we have "declined" from His way! Then let us, even now, and daily, seek grace from on high to heed His commandments and hide His Word in our hearts.

"He knows the way that I take." Which way are you taking? - the Narrow Way which leads unto life, or "the Broad Road that leads to destruction? Make certain on this point, dear friend. Scripture declares, "So every one of us shall give account of himself to God" (Romans 14:12). But you need not be deceived or uncertain. The Lord declared, "I am The Way" (John 14:6).

2. Divine Testing

"When he has tried me." "The refining pot is for silver, and the furnace for gold: but the Lord tries the hearts" (Prov. 17:3). This was God's way with Israel of old, and it is His way with Christians now. Just before Israel entered Canaan, as Moses reviewed their history since leaving Egypt, he said, "And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you, and to prove you, and to know what is in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments, or not" (Deut. 8:2). In the same way God tries, tests, proves, humbles us.

"When He has tried me." If we realized this more, we should bear up better in the hour of affliction and be more patient under suffering. The daily irritations of life, the things which annoy so much - what is their meaning? Why are they permitted? Here is the answer: God is "trying" you! That is the explanation (in part, at least) of that disappointment, that crushing of your earthly hopes, that great loss - God was, is, testing you. God is trying your temper, your courage, your faith, your patience, your love, your fidelity.

"When He has tried me." How frequently God's saints see only satan as the cause of their troubles. They regard the great enemy as responsible for much of their sufferings. But there is no comfort for the heart in this. We do not deny that the devil does bring about much that harasses us. But above satan is the Lord Almighty! The devil cannot touch a hair of our heads without God's permission, and when he is allowed to disturb and distract us, even then it is only God using him to "try" us. Let us learn then, to look beyond all secondary causes and instruments to that One who works all things after the counsel of His own will (Eph. 1:11). This is what Job did.

In the opening chapter of Job, we find satan obtaining permission to afflict God's servant. He used the Sabeans to destroy Job's herds: he sent the Chaldeans to slay his servants: he caused a great wind to kill his children. And what was Job's response? This: he exclaimed "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (1:21). Job looked beyond the human agents, beyond satan who employed them, to the Lord who controls all. He realized that it was the Lord, who was trying him. We get the same thing in the New Testament. To the suffering saints at Smyrna John wrote, "Fear none of those things which you shall suffer; behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that you may be tried" (Rev. 2:10). Their being cast into prison was simply God trying them.

How much we lose by forgetting this! What a stay for the trouble-tossed heart to know that no matter what form the testing may take, no matter what the agent which annoys, it is God who is "trying" His children. What a perfect example the Saviour sets us. When He was approached in the garden and Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of Malchus, the Saviour said, "The cup which My Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?" (John 18:11). Men were about to vent their awful rages upon Him, the serpent would bruise His heel - but He looks above and beyond them. Dear reader, no matter how bitter its contents, (infinitely less than that which our Saviour drained) let us accept the cup as from the Father's hand.

~A. W. Pink~

(continued with # 3)