Job XIII

 Being who he was, Satan tried to get God to be the instrument of Job’s testing, but God saw through his ruse. “But now stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face!”

If you think he is unshakeable and unbreakable, that he will remain faithful regardless of creature comforts or blessing, then why not stretch out your hand against all that he has? That was Satan’s opening salvo, his opening gambit, but God would not take the bait. Instead, God said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand on his person.”

There was a line Satan was not allowed to cross, that being the person of Job. Everything else was up for grabs. Yes, even Satan is subject to the authority of God. He is on a leash, even though it may not seem like it at times, and there are limits to what he can do; otherwise, the havoc he would wreak would be unfathomable.

There is a difference between the consequence of one’s actions and testing the likes of which Job was about to endure. When one suffers because of sin, it’s not testing; it’s the direct result of disobedience and rebellion. Men love to spiritualize their failures and insist that being exposed for being a philanderer or adulterer, to say nothing of worse things certain high profile individuals have been criminally charged for committing, is God testing them or allowing them to be tested. It’s not. It’s their sin finding them out. It has nothing to do with testing but everything to do with the consequence of action.

The testing of the righteous allows for their faithfulness to shine all the brighter once the testing is done. It strengthens an already established faith and dependency on God that grows the spiritual man beyond the stage of what he’d been thus far. The sin of the compromised being exposed only serves to give an already battered church another bruise. We cannot conflate the two.

Job was a blameless and upright man not by his standard, or some other arbitrary standard, but by God’s standard. God saw him as blameless and upright. Job himself didn’t claim to be so; he didn’t brag about his uprightness; he simply loved God, served God, and worshiped God.

If you are more concerned about your image than you are about serving God, then you’ve lost the plot somewhere along the way. You have preachers and teachers spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on image consultants because they want to put their best foot forward and present their best face to the world when it’s not about them, nor has it ever been. Rather than make crisis management firms rich beyond their wildest dreams, why not walk circumspectly with your Lord and serve Him as a faithful servant should?

Job wasn’t trying to make a name for himself; he wasn’t trying to build a brand; he wasn’t trying to put on airs or pretend he was something he wasn’t for the sake of a following or a guest TV spot on some talk show. He was a man satisfied in God and desired only true fellowship with Him. That’s what Satan didn’t understand when it came to Job. Since Job was so rare, he’d never run across anyone like him and assumed offhand that if he was serving God, then Job had an ulterior motive for doing so.

You may look at Satan’s assumption and think it jaded, but all the evidence he’d had up until that point lent credibility to it. Thus far, his success had been predicated on his ability to find that one thing he could offer a given individual to make them take their eyes off their goal, purpose, or calling. In his mind, there was always something if you looked hard enough. There was always something that men would be swayed or tempted by, and he’d just have to find it when it came to Job.

It’s not as though the enemy’s cockiness wasn’t justified to a certain extent. He’d been at this long enough to understand human nature and knew how rare it was for someone to be wholly surrendered to God and serve Him out of purity of heart. He’d likely applied pressure the likes of which he was planning to apply to Job before and was sure that Job would fold, throw up his hands, and curse God when everything in his life turned to rubble.

We’ve all seen it play out often enough: When someone’s circumstances change, so does their attitude toward God. Although they may not have verbalized it, there was a part of their heart that felt entitled to creature comforts and the things of this earth because they worshipped God, and when those went away, they felt shortchanged and taken advantage of.

This is why purity of purpose matters when it comes to serving God. We don’t serve God to get stuff from Him or to make this present life more comfortable. We serve God because He is God because He sent Jesus to give His life so that we might have life and be reconciled to Him. We love Him because He first loved us with a perfect love, and nothing beyond that should factor into whether or not we remain faithful.

That sort of commitment and mindset is as rare today as it was during the days of Job. The unscrupulous among us realized how few people they’d be able to draw with that message, and they took it upon themselves to add to the Gospel and shift the focus from the things above to the things of this earth. Prosperity has become the focus of many congregations rather than humility, repentance, and obedience, and they’ve seen their numbers catapult into the stratosphere overnight. What happens when all the promises of thousandfold returns and a mountain of money don’t materialize, though? What happens when what drew people to their sanctuaries, the selling point that made them become members in good standing, turns out to be man-made fables without root or foundation in the Word of God? Those peddling such things don’t care about the fallout. They’re getting theirs, and they’re quick to brag about it. It’s the callousness of such men that’s most disturbing, knowing that sooner or later, those who’ve bought into the promise of wealth beyond measure will be disillusioned and disenchanted to the point of bitterness.

Job had wealth, and Satan wrongly assumed that this was his Achilles heel. He concluded that if he could strip Job of his possessions, it would only be a matter of time before he’d turn on God. Satan never figured that rare as they are, Job was indeed a man who feared God and shunned evil because knowing God more fully every day was his ultimate pursuit. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.