Job was a perfect man, God said. But there was some legality in his piety, for he was always trying to keep God's judgments from his family by sacrifices, and he says, "The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me." God speaks to Satan about him, and Satan replies that he fears God for what he gets. Satan was glad to bring trouble upon him, and ransacks heaven and earth, and uses the elements and all the surrounding nations for the trial of Job. First, he loses his oxen and asses and servants; then the sheep and servants; then the camels and the servants; and at last Job's own sons and daughters. But Job is a worshiper; he says, "The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD."
Then in chapter 2 God allows Satan to have another turn at Job, and he was glad to have it: "Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life." How gracious! However great Satan's power, it is only limited. Was ever a man so tried as Job? He had lost all his property, all his children, and then his health. Moreover, the one from whom he might have looked for a drop of comfort, his wife, tells him to curse God. But Job is victorious. The conflict was between God and Satan; and do you think God would provide for His own defeat? I think Satan acted in a very foolish way to reach his end. If I wanted to make a per son break down, speaking humanly, I would be always grinding at him, and would spread it over a long space of time. Satan brought these trials suddenly upon Job, but a saint in any great trial—suppose the bank breaks, and he loses all his money—rises above it like a cork on the water. He turns to God. It is not the great trials that break one down, but the little wearing things that make a man live the life of a martyr. Speaking from experience, it is in these things that we generally break down.
Observe that after the first two chapters of Job, Satan is off the scene altogether; we hear nothing more about him. Then Job's friends come. One thing was wrong with Job; he thought himself a very good man. In chapter 29 he says, "When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me." But at the end he says to God, "Now mine eye seeth Thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." We may be in Christ, blessed with all spiritual blessings; but there is something more than all this—it is the knowledge of God, as it says, "Some have not the knowledge of God."
Abraham had not sinned like David, and did not need trials like Job; he had been walking
with God, and he was a worshiper. In Genesis he said to his servants, "Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you." God spoke to him in a way to touch every cord in his heart: "Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou
lovest." One might say, How cruel! But God had strung a harp in Abraham's heart that He was going I o get music from, and said, I will get something for Myself from him. When God asks us to sacrifice anything for Him, do we worship?