Life Matters - August 14, 2024
When we have an awareness of, and consider, all the hurt, the damage, the emotional and physical devastation that evil hath wrought in this troubled world, the extent of it is so staggering to any sensitive person as to cause one to stumble at the difficult question of “Why?” Why is there evil? People suffer calamities, inflictions, afflictions, pain, and death. Even many young and innocent suffer abuse, the violation of their bodies and emotional wellbeing. Why does God, who is all-powerful, and also benevolent, not put a stop to it?
The unbelievers may, and many do, say that if God is all-powerful it follows that He is not benevolent; and if He is, in fact benevolent, then it follows that He is not all-powerful. As Believers we may at times have the same questions and thoughts as we sift the ‘’evidence’’ through our finite minds. Why does not God, being the Master Potter, (Romans 9:21) why does He not only make vessels of honor? Why did He limit Himself by creating us free to choose our own way, or His?
Let us consider a man who, in trials more severe than most of us will ever face, did not forsake his God, but remained as moldable clay in the Master Potter’s hands. And came forth more useful than ever. A vessel unto honor. There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job, of whom God, in His Word, testifies that he was a perfect and upright man, one that feared God and eschewed evil. (Job chapter one) Job was a healthy man with a healthy wife and ten healthy children, seven sons and three daughters. Job was a man who rose up early in the morning to offer up sacrifices to God on behalf of his children because he was concerned that they may have sinned. He was a family man. He loved his children. And his wife. Job was a wealthy man whose hard work had paid off well, so well in fact, that his sons had their days of feasting, taking turns to host it, each one for a day. That is seven days of feasting with each other and their three sisters. We are not told how often this happens, but is it any wonder that Job is concerned about the children of his youth now reveling and living in affluence?
Job‘s substance included 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen and 500 donkeys. Job was a successful man materially, emotionally, and spiritually. He had a heart and mind that was moved with concern and prayer, a fulfilling life as he was able, and did, give to the poor and needy. His was a comfortable, blessed life in the sunshine and timely rains of Canaan, the Promised Land.
But Satan had other plans. An agenda of destruction. An agenda to indict God unfair. And therefore unjust. The accuser of the brethren, who was permanently barred from Heaven at the death, burial, resurrection, and victorious ascension of Jesus (Revelation chapter 12) still had access, at this time, to God’s abode and ‘’there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.’’ God asked him from whence he came? And Satan answered, ‘’from going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it.’’ ‘’Hast thou considered my servant Job,’’ God asked, ‘’there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and escheweth evil.’’
‘’Doth Job serve God for naught?’’ was Satan’s retort, have you not ‘’made a hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side?’’ You have ‘’blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But,‘’ Satan then says in what comes across as a sneering challenge, ‘’put forth thy hand now and touch all that he hath and he will curse thee to thy face.’’ (Job 1:11)
God does not tell us why He released Job’s stuff into Satan’s power, but we can safely assume He had confidence that Job’s faith would hold and that his coming through the fiery trial as gold would be faith-strengthening to himself, his contemporaries and others even to this day, who read of Job’s calamitous experiences in the section of Scripture bearing his name.
Satan’s agenda of turning Job against God, even to cursing, brought swift destruction upon Job’s stuff and upon his children. In doing so, Satan’s obvious goal and hope was that the blame would miss himself and hit God, who had blessed Job, and that the blame would stick there. His goal was that God would be the recipient of Job’s cursing. And is this not Satan’s goal always? That he himself would be praised as if he blessed? And that God would be blamed as if He destroyed? And so to deceive us? We believe this to be so, that Satan’s goal is always deception, for God is a God of blessing. Destruction and evil is always pushed by the devil and his minions, never by God and His people. The devil would have our thinking reversed, to see reality backwards, which is The Lie and includes the lie that our own way brings happiness, which, though the extent of it may be hidden from us for a time, is compatible with Satan’s goal of destruction and incompatible with God’s goal of blessing.
God desires to bless. His goal, however, being eternal, allows for hardships, when He sees it is to our benefit for His goal. God may well use a vessel of dishonor to perfect a vessel of honor. May we be clay in the Master Potter’s hands.
Life Matters!