The dramatic saga of life, death, anguish and victory
by R. Douglass Mahaffey
The poetic saga of the prophet Job is drama-filled, tragic and shows true resilience of a man that God never left nor forsook. It reads almost like a play with Act and Scene I beginning with a personal show down between God and Satan. God tells Satan that during his search for whom he may lead astray, Job was one that even in the face of a test of affliction, loss of loved ones, wealth that totally disappears, and even his family and friends turning their backs on him, He was sure that Job, through the grace of God, would prevail.
Satan offers a test of the validity of Job's faith. He questions as to whether or not it is because God has a hedge of protection around Job. He offers a test to allow Job to be completely vulnerable, without God's protection around him. "Surely, his present faith would be for naught if your hedge of protection was lifted from him."
God tells Satan that no matter what harm Job experiences, he will not renounce God. God allows Satan to place any affliction upon Job's family and possessions, but he could not touch Job's body. God displays His ultimate dominion over all heaven and earth as He limits Satan to the power that he can have over Job. Satan has no choice but to comply with God's supreme authority.
His sons and daughters were in the eldest son's house eating and drinking wine, enjoying the toils of their father's riches. While they feasted, Sabeans, enemies of the land, attacked the animals and servants and killed them all, except one servant, who came to Job to bear message of what had come to pass.
When the first servant had finished telling Job what had happened, another came to him and told of fire from heaven that consumed all of Job's flock of sheep and servants. He was the only one left to tell what had come to pass.
Afterwards, another came to him and bore message that the Chaldeans came upon the camels and took off with them and killed all of the servants tending the camels. He was the only one left to tell what had come to pass.
Finally, the last messenger came to Job and told him that all his sons and daughters were feasting when a great wind blew and knocked down the house and killed them all. He was the last person left to tell what had come to pass.
The first strike blown against Satan was Job rising, renting his clothes, shaved his head in reverence to God, fell to the ground and worshipped God. Job proclaimed, "Naked, I came out of my mother's womb and naked I shall return to the earth; the Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."
In his grief for his sons and daughters, not bearing mind to the rest of his losses, Job went through this and did not sin; Act I ends.
In Act II, Satan again came before God and God asked him about Job. God told him that even after what he had done to Job, Job stood strong for God. Satan told him that the hedge of protection still was around Job's body. He said that if he could smite him with physical afflictions, Job could not handle the pain that he could bring about him without renouncing God.
God told Satan that Job's body was his to do as he wished, but he could not kill him. Satan smote Job with sores and boils all over his body; from the soles of his feet to his head. Job scraped all of the boils from his body and sat in ashes.
When Job has been sunken to his very lowest point of his life, after losing everything but his wife and his very life, his wife comes to him and presents her point of view as to why Job has been afflicted with such hardship. She told him that because of all the good that Job had accepted from God, that they must now pay it back by receiving evil.
His three friends in his town came to comfort him. Upon first sight, they did not recognize him. They all cried when they finally realized it was him, took off their clothes and sat in the ashes with him in morning for their friend, Job.
In the opening of Act III, Job broke his silence of a few days. He cursed the very day that he was born. He could not understand why God would allow all of the grief that befell him. He wished for his very death. His friend, Eliphaz told him that in the days of his strength, he had taught many and helped them to be strong in their own weakness, yet that day, in his own weakness, he wished for death. He asked him if this was not a test that had come upon him so that he might prove all that he had taught others about strength in their afflictions.
Eliphaz then relays to Job a vision that he had about the sin of man and how terrible it is to receive communication from heaven. He asks, "Why does man pretend to be more just, more pure than God?"
He talks about the presumptive pride of mankind and the patients of God to put up with us. Man can not be cleansed without his maker. Eliphaz asks if God will justify sinful men and clear them from their guilt. He asks, "or will he do so without their having an interest in the righteousness and gracious help of their promised Redeemer, when angels, once ministering spirits before his throne, receive the just recompence of their sins?"
Job gives justification for his grief and desire for death. He tells that in addition to the outward hardships he had experienced, the inward sense of God's wrath had taken away his resolve and confidence. In his grief, he had no relief, but what he did have was burdensome and loathsome. But even though he was wishing for death, he still gave service to the glory of God. Those who have God's grace in them bear the evidence of it; they exercise it and the wisdom they possess because of that grace will be their strength in times of need.
Disappointed in his friends, he then compares his suffering to the evaporation of rivers and streams in the summer time. People who put their trusts in temporal things of the flesh, find that it fails them when they need it most. But to those who put their trust in God, shall have all their needs (not necessarily their wants) met according to His riches in glory. It is best to commit our trust to Him. God keeps our souls. Every upright believer shall have praise of God.
As the saga of Job progresses, Job even went so far as to tell God that he was angry with him, yet, as Job finally listened after expressing his feelings, the more God is able to deal with Job, in Job's bearing of the afflictions so that God shall be praised. God never left Job in his sufferings and even when Job's own wife advised hi to curse God and die, Job rebuked her with the wisdom that can only come from the holy anointing that God can provide in forbearance to the fact that it was God that allowed this so that his faithful servant could prove him right to Satan.
As the saga draws nigh in the final act, in his anger, Job did not sin, and he did not renounce God. God shows Job that in his ignorance, God is all knowledgeable, being the creator of everything; and nothing existing that wasn't created by God. God showed Job his weakness in arraigning divine counsels, and shows him that he ought not oppose the ways of God's providence because it has the wherewithal to satisfy our every need. In Job's riches and great possession, he took for granted that God would continue the supplication of his needs and wants.
Job humbled himself before God and God reasoned with Job to show his righteousness, his power and his wisdom. In this saga of Job, his troubles began in Satan's malice, which God restrained; his restoration began in God's mercy, which Satan could not oppose. God turned his wrath toward Eliphaz and the other two friends of Job for their insolence toward Job's hardships. He ordered Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, Job's friends to offer up burnt sacrifices to him for not speaking of God with righteousness, but instead, twisting the metaphorical thorn in Job's side because of all of his sufferings as though God himself brought it onto Job with no care as to the pain he went through.
God established His grace back unto Job because of Job's obedience and his resilience in withstanding the test. God rewarded him with twice more wealth, land, crops and livestock to Job's possessions than he had before. God also blessed Job with seven more sons and three more daughters.
As the curtain draws and the cast takes their last call, Job prove his best, his last works his best works, his last comforts his best comforts; for his path, like that of the morning light, shines more and more unto the perfect day.
R. Douglass Mahaffey - Founder and Publisher of The Wise Conservative.
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