05. Jobs patience

Job”s patience

’So went Satan forth, from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils, from the sole of his foot unto his crown’. So, as Satan was permitted to act on the bodily flesh of Job, and thus plunge him in the deepest affliction and sorrow — poor man, what a picture! he scraped himself, and sat down in the ashes — in like manner, Satan may be permitted to act upon our old carnal nature, so that, spiritually, we find, from the crown to the sole of the foot there is no soundness in us, but wounds and bruises and petrifying sores.

It is then that Satan brings up his heavy artillery. The first heavy blow that the adversary now aims at Job, is through the words of his astonished and irritated wife. She said, ’Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God, and die’. How very striking is Job’s reply. He, no doubt, saw the distress of his wife at his own affliction; and, taking the brightest side, he gave her credit for meaning better than her words implied and so he said unto her, ’Thou speakestasone of the foolish women speaketh’. He does not say, What a fool thou art. But, speakest as one. ’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’.

Really, was not Job a beautiful character? Surely, one of the fairest specimens of all the sons of fallen humanity. The Lord had said of him, ’There is none like him in all the earth’.

It is remarkable, that when the three friends of Job come, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, we hear no more of Satan. And what better weapons can Satan use, than the words of mistaken friends? To be misjudged and misunderstood by those we love; surely this is bitterness. In this respect even, what did our blessed Jesus endure, when He came to His own, and His own received him not?