6. this war: World War I (1914–18).
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?
——————— 8 ———————
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).
48 Baffled to Fight Better
2. In the Wickedness of Desolation (a) 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.
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.
(b) 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.
(c) 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.
(b) 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." That