I Am With You When You Are Weak Series

“So … Satan … where ya been?”

“As if You didn’t know, LORD … I’ve been here and there … to and fro … looking about … You know.”

“And while you were ‘looking about,’ did you happen to notice my faithful servant … Job?”

“Oh, yeah …”

“Good man, that Job … no one like him. Always does the right thing. He goes to synagogue all the time … faithfully observes all the festivals and fast days … tithes … he’s generous … kind to everyone … helps out anyone in need … faithful to a fault, that guy … as blameless and upright as they come.”

“Yeah … everything that You say about him is true. He’s kind … devout … generous to a fault … but he’s had a pretty amazing and blessed life so far because of You. What if …”

“’What if,’ what?”

“Well … what if you were to ‘change’ his circumstances … put a little pressure on him … would he break? Would he turn his back on You? Would he be ‘faithful to a fault’ as You put it? I bet I can get him to curse You to Your face …whadduya think, LORD?”

“You’re on!”

So begins one of the most famous and well-known challenges in Biblical history. To keep the challenge fair, God puts certain restrictions on Satan. After all, Satan is a super-natural being. None of us could defeat Satan by ourselves. We have certain tools and weapons … prayer, the Bible, the Holy Spirit, the name of Jesus … but even armed with these, we stand no chance against a supernatural presence like Satan without the power and protection of God.

What God does is limit or confine the challenge to the physical realm. Satan can take Job’s possessions. Satan can take Job’s family. Satan can take Job’s health … but that’s as far as Satan can go. Satan cannot take Job’s life or Job’s soul. Satan agrees to God’s terms because he is convinced that that should be sufficient to get Job to curse God and turn his back on Him.

What happens to Job would be enough to cause most of us to do just that … to curse God and turn our backs on Him, don’t you think? I’ve known people who have turned their backs on God and even cursed God who have experience nothing close to what Job experienced. I mean … in one day Job loses his livelihood … he loses all his property … and then loses all of his children. When that doesn’t break him, Satan covers Job’s body with sores, boils, infection, and parasites. Job was in constant physical agony whether he stood, sat, or lay down. At the height of his agony, the last love of his life … his wife … tries to get him to curse God and die. Three of his friends come to comfort him but they only add to his spiritual distress by accusing him of bringing all this misery upon himself because of his sin and pride.

Can you relate to Job? If you can, then you have my heart-felt sympathy because I’ve never had everything taken away from me or had to experience the level of chronic pain that Job has … not even close … but there is someone else in the Bible who can relate to Job’s pain and suffering … the Apostle Paul.

Like Job, the Apostle Paul knew the heights of God’s blessings. At the beginning of 2nd Corinthians 12, Paul describes a sublime, supernatural experience that he had … an extremely rare honor that I don’t think very many people have had the joy and wonder to experience. “It is necessary to boast,” Paul says, “though nothing is to be gained by it. But I will go on to visions and revelations of the LORD. I know a person in Christ,” says Paul … referring to himself … “who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven … whether in the body or out of the body I do not know … God knows … and I know that such a person … whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know … God knows … was caught up into paradise and heard things that are not to be told … that no mortal is permitted to repeat” (vv. 2-5).

Paul says that he was taken up to the third heaven. Some ancient Jewish scholars … and some modern Jewish and Christian mystics … believe that there are different levels of heaven. Some believe there are three, like Paul … some believe that there are seven … others, like the Hindus, believe that there are many, many more. Some scholars suggest that the word Paul uses for “heaven” really refers to “realms” of existence … the earth, outer space, and heaven. However your interpret what Paul meant by “heaven,” it’s clear that what he is saying is that He was taken up to “Heaven” … the spiritual realm beyond the physical universe where God dwells … something that I look forward to seeing someday for myself … though probably not while I exist in this physical body … and I hope you expect to experience the same thing too when you shed these mortal coils, these tents of flesh, amen?