Satan's Plan For Mankind: Curse God And Die

Satan's Plan for Mankind: Curse God and Die

Job 2:7–10 NKJV

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So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and struck Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took for himself a potsherd with which to scrape himself while he sat in the midst of the ashes.

Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!”

But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

The Book of Job is one of the most puzzling books in the Bible as it elicits many uncomfortable questions about the goodness and fairness of God. We read that Job was a godly man who scrupled to the point that he was always offering sacrifices to the LORD in behalf of his many children, just in case any of them had sinned. He and his wife were quite wealthy as wealth was measured in those days. He had many herds, servants, and children. In conventional wisdom, we would say that Job and his wife were blessed, and that these blessings were proof of God’s favor. the corollary to this is that evildoers are cursed and come to ruin. So what do we say when we see a good man suffer or an evil man prosper?

The first problem that we have as humans is that we tend to be superficial and want simple answers. We don’t want to think, especially about unpleasant circumstances. We want a simple fix like a pill we can take rather than watching what we eat and learning how we should take care of our bodies. When it comes to our religious values, we want a simple fix to our spiritual problems such as making a vow or some sort of sacrificial act. We also expect God to conform to our idea of righteousness and fairness. If we are wronged, we expect God to bring justice. If we sin, we want god to be merciful and provide a simple means of erasing the bad entries from our account. But the Book of Job challenges all our expectations. So, let us look further into this book.

The Book of Job is apparently the oldest written account in our Scripture, written down long before the LORD had Moses record the Torah. This does not mean that Moses did not have some written accounts to form the Book of Genesis, but the emphasis is that Moses wrote at the command and inspiration of the Spirit. Job was not a Jew but was from Mesopotamia and lived in an age which resembles the time of Abraham, or about 1900 BC. We tend to think that people in those days were primitive. But we should note that the Egyptian pyramids were built several hundred years before Job. The culture of Mesopotamia was also rich. We have written records dating before the time of Job. We don’t know who the LORD used to record the Book of Job, but it was inspired by God and passed down through thousands of years to teach us.

We must understand that Job and all the characters in the Book of Job were real persons and not a myth. This is important. What happened to Job and his family happened to real persons who truly felt grief over the disasters which fell upon Job. In a myth or work of fiction, we might empathize with the characters in the story. A myth might elicit a strong emotional response. But in the end we are comforted by the fact that it was merely a story. By this we might learn some sort of “truth”, but out questions are blunted. The same God is also personally involved in our lives as well. We are not mythical people living in a mythical world. We truly feel emotions, whether good or bad. We experience injustice. We are hurt and we hurt others. We live in a very difficult age. The fact that Job is historical means that the LORD used a real person to speak to us.

The LORD lets us in on facts that were not apparent to Job. Job did not see Satan coming with the sons of God before the LORD. He did not hear Satan’s challenge to the LORD that Job only served the LORD for the blessings he received. If this hedge of prosperity were removed, Job would curse God and die. We should note that if the LORD did not know that Job would pass the challenge, he would not have allowed the things to happen to Job which happened.