I've Been Thinking About Mrs. Job

I have a confession to make. For the last three days, I’ve been thinking about another man’s wife. It has not been in any lustful or covetous way, but more of mysterious nature.  The wife I’ve been thinking about is Mrs. Job.

When God pointed His servant Job out to Satan, and how blameless he was, Satan said to the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing?. . .Put forth your hand and touch ALL that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face” (Job 1:9,11).

God then replied to Satan:   “Behold, ALL that he has is in your power, only do not put forth your hand on him” (v. 12).

God told Satan, you can touch ALL that he has, just don’t touch his life. God gave to Satan the power to take whatever he wanted from Job, except his own life.

So Satan went to work. He took away Job’s possessions and hired hands (vv. 13-17).

Then Satan went deeper. He took away both Job’s sons and daughters and had them all killed (vv. 18-19).  No son or daughter of Job was left.

Job’s whole immediate family was wiped out – except one – “His wife.”

Satan spared Job’s wife! Why did he do that? Satan went as far as to kill all of Job’s children. God gave to Satan the power to take away “all that he has” (v. 12). So when given the opportunity, Satan let Mrs. Job live. Why?

Proverbs 12:4 may provide an answer: “An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who shames him is as rottenness in his bones.”

You see, Satan’s goal was to get Job to curse God to His face (v. 11).  Satan therefore took away everything that was a blessing to Job except one – His wife who must have been like “rottenness to his bones.”

Why do I say this? First, because all the terrible things Job experienced, his wife’s best counsel to him is to tell her husband to “curse God and die” (Job 2:9).

Second, Job says to her in reply, “You are talking like a foolish woman” (v. 10). The word, “foolish” is better rendered, “senseless.” She most likely had the bad habit of talking without first thinking. So when she did talk, her words were like “rottenness to her husband’s bones.”

Third, Satan kept her alive. That says something folks! Satan took away everything in Job’s life that meant a lot to him, but he spared his wife. Don’t you think for one moment that there was a touch of “compassion” on the part of the devil.  Satan knew that by keeping Job’s wife alive, she would be more of a help to the devil alive than dead!

Fourth, when God pointed Job out to Satan twice for special recognition, He did not in include his wife.

Fifth, say what you will about Job’s friends and their rotten counsel, but at least they were there sitting with him during his time of deep physical and emotional pain. Where was his wife after chapter 2?

For Job, his wife was like a disease that eats away at a person’s bones, weakening his life from the inside out.

In this story, those whom Satan had killed were the good ones.  Those whom he spared were to become his personal agent to get Job to curse God to His face.

Sadly, some wives are like this to their husbands. They nag, complain, display a negative spirit, unforgiving, self-centered, domineering, overly aggressive, ungrateful, not submissive, foolish, and are like decay to their husband’s bones.

Job cursed the day he was born (3:1).  Some husbands may curse the day they got married.  I wonder, did God do Lot a favor when He turned his wife into a pillar of salt (Gen. 19:26)?  I know this can be turned around and apply to husbands as well.

I come away learning this wonderful principle:

“Knowing God is better than knowing answers.”  

When we suffer, we want answers as to WHY! What we really need is to use the times we suffer to get to know God more and seek for answers less. 

Harmful Faith

Say, “I believe!” “I believe!”

Say it again, “I believe!” “I believe!”

“What do you believe?” “I’m not sure, but I believe!”

Sounds corny? It was meant to be.

I start off this way to illustrate how we Christians often stress the need to have faith without little regard to the content of our faith. I come across this mindset now and then that basically says, “It is not important what you believe as long as you believe it passionately.”

Did you know that kind of “faith” can actually be harmful? For example, faith without discernment will lead to disaster. It is reckless, superstitious and pointless.

At work, I love to test this theory. I will say, “It’s been a quiet day so far.” Almost immediately the response I get is: “Shhhhh. Don’t jinks it!” Or, someone will knock on wood!

Superstitious faith will go to two extremes: At one end it looks within -- —relying on feelings, inner voices, fantasy, or subjective sensations.

Have you ever heard someone repeat often the phrase, “God told me?” Never mind the results are often less than desirable and the outcome makes God appear that He does not know what He is doing. But hey, “God told me.”

At the other end is faith that relies and hopes on some external human authority—the teachings of a favored leader, religious tradition, ecclesiastical dogma, or some other public figure that has many degrees after his name.

In the context of Christianity, the first superstitious side of faith can be seen in some in the Charismatic Movement. Feelings, emotions, visions, dreams, all tend to point toward a faith that is reckless and void of truth.

When someone tells me, “I prayed and this is what God told me,” and what I hear sounds bizarre or contradictory, I understand how the person (because I know the person) arrived at his or her conclusion.

When they prayed, they prayed in tongues (gibberish). In praying nothing, God received nothing. Thus, no answer was given. Because the praying in tongue person is already prone to mysticism (replying on inner urges, sensations and feelings), they hear from their inner self what they want and conclude, “God told me!” This is a reckless kind of faith and void of true meaning.

For faith to be a tool that God delights in and uses, faith must have the RIGHT OBJECT – Jesus! After all, He said, “I am the way, and the TRUTH, and the life” (John 14:6).

Second, not only should our faith be in the person of Jesus, who is the personification of truth, but it must also be in the Word of God, the precepts of truth. We are also told that “faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God” (Rom. 10:17).

Having the right object for your faith is a key to avoid reckless and superstitious faith. If the object of your faith is you – all your feelings and personal intuitions, or in man or some man centered tradition (like Roman Catholicism), it will lead you down the wrong path and the outcome will be very different from the path of the Scriptures.

Now listen carefully. Jesus gave to us a vivid warning. He said, “Every idle word that men shall speak, they will render account for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matt. 12:36-37).

The word “idle” means, “useless.” If God is going to hold me accountable for the things I SAY, then I want to begin by being accountable for the things I PRAY!

If I should be concerned for the words I say to others that I will one day give an account for, then how much more should I become concerned for the words I pray to God?

I cannot be accountable to for my words unless I understand what is pouring forth from my lips. I cannot make any course correction in my praying for something I am in complete ignorance of.

“But Pastor Rich, I sincerely believe that I am praying an angelic language that God hears and understand, even though it is gibberish. I really and sincerely believe this!”

I know. So also did I at one time. My mystical faith turned reckless. Daily I looked for inner promptings, mystical feelings, and superstitious forms to support my walk with God.

God led me to rethink Hebrews 11:6 – “For without faith, it is impossible to please God. For he who comes to God (the object of truth), must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”

Coming to God and pleasing Him cannot occur unless our faith is in God and Him alone. Anything less than this is a reckless and dangerous kind of faith which will lead you down the wrong path.

Charismatic Gnosticism

According to Charismatics, praying in tongues (gibberish) is one of the primary tools God has given to the Spirit-baptized believer to quiet, disengage, bypass and neutralize temporarily the rational and logical mind. Regular and repetitive tongue-speaking or tongue-praying is a means of attaining a higher spiritual state, and a hidden, and esoteric knowledge of divine mysteries which transcends, and sometimes contradicts man’s rational mind (Laurence Christenson, Speaking in Tongues and its Significance for the Church, pp. 26-27, 73, 76, 81, 116).

Many of those who engage in praying in tongues often describe their experience as being “higher,” “spiritually transcending,” and “mystical.”

What this all points to is a resurrection of the first century heresy called, “Gnosticism.”  

Gnosticism was perhaps the most dangerous heresy that threatened the early church during the first three centuries. Influenced by such philosophers as Plato, Gnosticism is based on two false premises. First, it espouses a dualism regarding spirit and matter. Gnostics assert that matter is inherently evil and spirit is good. As a result of this belief, Gnostics believe anything done in the body, even the grossest sin, has no meaning because real life exists in the spirit realm only.  Since the mind is housed in the brain which is comprised of organic matter, it is to be avoided and bypassed in order to experience a higher spiritual state.

Second, Gnostics claim to possess an elevated knowledge, a “higher truth” known only to a certain few. Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis which means “to know.” Gnostics claim to possess a higher knowledge, not from the Bible, but acquired on some mystical higher plain of existence. Gnostics see themselves as a privileged class elevated above everybody else by their higher, deeper knowledge of God.

Gnosticism is based on a mystical, intuitive, subjective, inward, emotional approach to truth which is not new at all.

In reality, Gnosticism is very old going all the way back to the time of Adam and Eve. It was there that Satan questioned God and the words He spoke and convinced Adam and Eve to reject them and accept a lie. He does the same thing today.

He still calls God and the Bible into question and catches in his web those who are either naïve and scripturally uninformed or who are seeking some personal revelation to make them feel special, unique, and superior to others.

Lesson:  The heresies of the present are essentially the heresies of the past only slightly changed so as to catch the unsuspecting by surprise.  

The devil is up using his old bag of tools to weaken the church in her relationship to Christ. Christians become vulnerable when they believe that the Bible and Jesus both are not sufficient for them to fully trust.

The offer to try something experiential, which was the offer Satan made to Eve still holds a strong attraction to many in the church.