Standard Bearers

Without Faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). The Bible is full of examples of those having unshakeable Faith and confidently trusting God through it all. Many of us know these stories and rely on them for motivation and inspiration in our own lives. The Bible tells us that Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the reading of the Word (Romans 10:17). So we have to hear something to then believe it. But that something is provided for us and that something is the Bible. What we are to have our Faith in depends on the dispensation (the act of dealing out to different persons or places; for example: The Old Testament and The New Testament) we are talking about. Today, we are under grace and our Faith is in what Jesus Christ did on the Cross for us. Before Jesus was born, God’s people were under the Law and had Faith in themselves to follow the Law properly. They had Faith in the sacrifices they were making when they didn’t fulfill the Law, and Faith that God would accept these sacrifices in place of their sins. Christ was the last, one true sacrifice for all sins for all time for all who believe (Hebrews 10:12). For all who believe – this is us. The ones who have Faith in Christ’s finished work and do not rely on our own works or “righteousness” for salvation, for Christ’s righteousness is accounted to us when we believe (Romans 4:22-25). With that being said, it is not surprising that if Christ modeled Faith and how to live for us, that God too would demonstrate the Faith that He wishes for us to have. God is so just. He expects of us things that He himself exemplifies, and there is no greater Father than that. 

The Book of Job is about a man named Job who lost everything when God allowed the Devil to essentially destroy his life. God did this to prove that Job would not sin against God no matter his circumstances. Job is described as “perfect” and “upright” and “one that feared God” and “eschewed (shunned; avoided) evil” (Job 1:1). God says that “there is none like him in the Earth” (Job 1:8). Even though The Book of Job is about the persecution of Job at the hands of the Devil, it could just as easily be seen as an account of God’s Faith. We’ve heard of the Faith of Christ and we know what we ought to have our Faith in. But little do we take a look at the Faith OF God. 

In the first chapter, the Sons of God (the Angels) come to present themselves before God, and for some reason Satan comes and presents himself among them. Upon seeing Satan, God asks him where he is coming from. Satan replies with, “From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.” (Job 1:7) This is noteworthy because Satan himself cannot help but to tell us exactly who he is. He is the useless raven “which went forth to and fro” (Genesis 8:7) that Noah sent out after the flood. He is the roaring lion that “walketh about, seeking” (1 Peter 5:8) who he may devour. He is listless. He is a vagrant. He is deplete. Though he fills himself with the vain purpose of preying on the weak (the Devil devotes his energy to the weak in Christ), he himself is weakest of them all.  

God provoked the Devil to act upon Job (recall that the Devil could do nothing so long as the LORD preserved and protected Job). He brings the Devil’s attention to him by listing off how perfect Job is and highlighting that there is no one like him. The Devil tries to demean Job’s fear of God by saying it is in vain because God protects him and all that he has. The Devil says. “Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.” (Job 1:9-11) Note the flattery the Devil attempts to use by pointing out all that God has done for Job, taking away any glory that God had given to him. 

Truthfully, we know that God was responsible for Job’s blessings on the Earth, but those were the rewards for Job’s character and behavior. God gave us free will (as demonstrated from the beginning by Adam and Eve) and Job utilized his free will to be a just, prudent, and righteous man. Job was righteous because he did not have to believe in Christ’s Blood because that was not available for him in his time as his story takes place around 2,000 years before Christ. Instead he had to perfectly follow the Law and have a heart acceptable to God (one could follow the Law but could still have an impure heart). This was why the end of the Law because of Christ is so crucial. Because one could do all the right things but not have the right heart, they could never be perfect enough to get to heaven where no sin can enter. The Law showed us the problem of sin, but God loved us so much that He sent us the solution – Jesus. 

The Devil is already a defeated foe. He is a liar and in this text he is twisting the truth. Even though God is responsible for Job’s protection and blessings, Job earned that reward, and all that God had done for him was just and correct. What the Devil wanted to do to Job wasn’t just (which is why Job’s name means “persecuted”) or correct. But God allowed it because He had Faith. Of course God knew that the Devil was already defeated beneath Him and He knows the beginning to the end. He knew that Satan was coming to that meeting that day and He was prepared to provoke him with His servant’s perfection. He did this to remind the Devil that he lost one and not just one, but the best one. God was calling the Devil out for his failure. After learning that the Devil is a vagrant, in the same text we learn that he is also a failure. God highlighted this by lifting up His own servants’ triumph. God didn’t brag on Himself. He didn’t argue or debate. He was so confident in His fruit (Job) that He didn’t have to. He essentially said ‘do what you want, I have Faith’, Yes. God has Faith. 

But what is God’s Faith in? You. God’s Faith is in Himself. But when we have His Spirit in us, He has Faith in Himself within us. When we understand this profound thing we can learn to truly step back and let God do because the battle isn’t ours, it is the LORD’s (2 Chronicles 20:15). In this historical event, His Faith was in Job. But He had Faith in other men too, like Noah. He had Faith that Noah would do His will and obey His command with which the survival of humanity hinged. God had Faith in Job that Job would not curse Him or sin against Him and God didn’t wait for the Devil to mention Job. He had such Faith in this man that He provoked the Devil to try him. 

God knew the Devil was a purposeless vagabond wandering about seeking for a target. So, He made the Devil busy for a while with a task that would prove to be impossible for the Devil. God only knows who or even how many people on the Earth at that time were protected from the Devil’s preying while he was busy with Job. This is an important lesson to learn. Sometimes we might be shouldering storms for the betterment of others. Not that that is the moral of Job’s story. But we can see how when the Devil is wasting all his time and energy on someone like us, a fortified child of God who cannot be shaken because they are rooted in the Word of God and their Faith is shown in action and their spirits are covered by the Blood and they are fully sheathed in the Full Armor of God, that the Devil cannot stand. Perhaps God puts the Devil to work on those who are strongest for their enhanced toughening and so that the Devil cannot be wandering like a roaring lion because he is too busy at work in one place. 

One mistake we make is that we give the Devil too much imagined power. We believe that he can be in all places at one time and that he can hear all our thoughts and all our desires and that he is all knowing of everything. While the Devil is literate on God’s Word and is cunning and smart, he is actually so blinded by psychopathic rage that he is too ambitious and delusional. He actually believed he could just stroll into Heaven and challenge the LORD. He even now believes that he can take control over the whole world and defeat God with armies of human men. Just think about how insane that is! He was already thrown out of Heaven once and defeated there, and he is constantly defeated in the battles he picks with God and His people all throughout the ages. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. The Devil is definitionally a psychopath and insane. He is blind. What he can see is God’s light. The brighter the light is within us, the greater the target we are for the Devil. Now consider Job who was one of the very few people God ever called perfect. The Devil had probably been stalking this man, starving for an opportunity to bite. But he could not do that so long as the LORD had Job in His hands. When he learned there was a meeting in Heaven, he saw an opportunity. But God’s Faith overruled the Devil’s desire. 

Only God is all powerful (omnipotent). Only God is all knowing (omniscient). Only God is in all places at all times (omnipresent). Disarm the Devil by allocating the proper “power” he wields. It is imperative that we understand our enemy so that we can successfully stand against him and defeat him. He is seeking for weak Christians that he can easily devour and he is insatiably seeking for the opportunity to take the brightest lights out. But the brighter our light, the greater God’s presence and priority is in our lives, the challenge before the enemy then rises to impossibility. Because he is too insane to understand that he is defeated, he will still try to target these brightest lights and only reap further wrath upon him. When we are in God’s hands the Devil can do nothing which is why it is so important that we stay so closely connected. But God can and has allowed storms to pass upon us, even great ones that we never saw coming, and it is in these storms that we must look to God and the Faith He has modeled before us.