(a) The Onslaught of Destruction ( Job 1:13–19) is a slander against God—"Why should God allow
The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers 47
was contradicted and his creed went to the winds. Satan's sneer is the counterpart of the devil's sneer in Genesis 3; there, the devil's object is to sneer about God to man; here, Satan's object is to sneer about man to God, he is "the accuser of our brethren."
"wait for Him"). That is the last reach of the faith of a man. Job's creed is gone; all he believed about God has been disproved by his own experiences, and his friends when they come say, in effect, "You are a hypocrite, Job, we can prove it from your own creed." But Job sticks to it—"I am not a hypocrite, I do not know what accounts for all that has happened, but I will hold to it that God is just and that I shall yet see Him vindicated in it all."
To-day there is in our midst a crop of juvenile sceptics, men who up to the time of the war had had no tension in their lives, and as soon as turmoil embroiled them they flung over their faith and became cheap and easy sceptics. The man who knows that there are problems and difficulties in life is not so easily moved. Most of us get touchy with God and desert Him when He does not back up our creed (cf. John 6:60, 66). Many a man through this war6 has lost his form of belief in God and imagines that he has thereby lost God, whereas he is in the throes of a conflict which ought to give birth to a realisation of God more fundamental than any statement of belief.
God never once makes His way clear to Job. Job struggles with problem after problem, and Providence brings more problems all the time, and in the end Job says, ". . . now mine eye seeth Thee." He saw that all he had hung in to in the darkness was true, and that God was all he had believed Him to be, loving and just and honourable. The explanation of the whole thing lies in the fact that God and Satan had made a battleground of Job's soul without Job's permission. Without any warning, Job's life is suddenly turned into desperate havoc and God keeps out of sight and never gives any sign whatever to Job that He is. The odds are desperately against God and it looks as if the sneer of Satan will prove to be true; but God wins in the end, Job comes out triumphant in his faith in God, and Satan is completely vanquished.
There are things in our heavenly Father's dealings with us which have no immediate explanation. There are inexplicable providences which test us to the limit, and prove that rationalism is a mere mental pose. The Bible and our common sense agree that the basis of human life is tragic, not rational, and the whole problem is focused for us in this Book of Job. Chapter 13:15 is the utterance of a man who has lost his explicit hold on God, but not his implicit hold— "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him" (rv,
Will I trust the revelation given of God by Jesus Christ when everything in my personal experience flatly contradicts it?
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dazed and amazed
Job 1:13–2:13
Jesus, Whose lot with us was cast, Who saw it out, from first to last: . . . Would I could win and keep and feel That heart of love, that spirit of steel.
has never withdrawn that authority from Satan. The disasters that attend a man's possessions are satanic in their origin and not of the haphazard order they seem to be. When Jesus Christ talked about discipleship He indicated that a disciple must be detached from property and possessions, for if a man's life is in what he possesses, when disaster comes to his possessions, his life goes too (cf. Luke 12:15).
I would not to Thy bosom fly To slink off till the storms go by, If you are like the man you were You'd turn with scorn from such a prayer.
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?"
Wilfrid Brinton
1. In the Whirlwind of Disaster (a) The Onslaught of Destruction ( Job 1:13–19) God gave Satan authority to interfere with all that Job possessed—"Behold, all that he hath is in thy power." All that a man possesses is at times not in the hand of God, but in the hand of the adversary, because God
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
6. this war: World War I (1914–18).