We have been doing a series of messages about Job, the patriarch from the Old Testament. The title of the series is “Job: Patient Endurance and Faithfulness.” Last time, we talked about the devil’s role in this story and how you can avoid the attack of the enemy by being aware that he is coming, that he has devices and schemes…put yourself in a position where he has no legal claim or right to you.
So, in our story, Satan is back for round 2. He has been unsuccessful in his first attempt at trying to get Job to recant his faith, so now he wants to try again.
In Job 2: 4 So Satan answered the Lord and said, “Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. 5 But stretch out Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will surely curse You to Your face!”
Skin for skin. Meaning: He saved his own skin the first time, but his mind will change when he himself is faced with the prospect of suffering. None of us wants to endure physical suffering, we would avoid that prospect like the plague. God gives permission to Satan to inflict suffering but do not take his life. So, Job is inflicted with pain; with a severe skin disease from head to sole. Boils that erupt, inflicting gruesome pain in the nerve endings. He has already experienced the emotional pain which has been heart-rending: the loss of children, the loss of all his livelihood, the loss of the love and support of his wife. That heaviness of heart… and now the grueling affliction of physical pain … will it ever go away? For some it drives them to suicide. What does a man/ woman do who is faced with unbelievable suffering and pain except look for a little bit of relief.
Job 2:8 And he took for himself a potsherd with which to scrape himself while he sat in the midst of the ashes.
This verse sums up the despair and agony, pain, the futility of life and the brokenness of our human condition under the hand of the enemy. It's easy to lose the perspective of our faith/ our belief in God/ our hope of eternity in situations like this. Job picked out a nice sharp piece of broken pottery, something with a nice razor-sharp edge with which to scrape himself. I don't know how many of you can handle an itch. Sometimes we just must find relief to stop that itching. For Job; the pain that he felt in the nerve endings of his boil-covered flesh was somehow relieved by the cutting and scraping of his skin, at least for now it seemed to go numb, there was some kind of relief. It was a diversion.
There are many people in our world today who are looking for a diversion from the emotional pain that they keep on thinking about: that hurt of abandonment or rejection or sexual abuse; and they medicate and they cut themselves in order to escape or as a diversion from the emotional pain. And Jesus says; ’Come unto Me, all who are burdened and heavy -laden and I will give you rest.”
Join us in person on Sunday at 10:00 a.m. or via livestream by going to https://www.firstbaptistsudbury.com and clicking on livestream for “Dust in the Wind?”
Blessings,
Kevin