Standing Fire
W.F. Adeney Job 1:22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly. Thus ends the first scene. Satan is completely defeated. His surmise is proved to he utterly false. God has permitted the hedge about Job to be broken through, and the destroyer has ravaged his possessions till the garden is turned into a desert. Yet the good man does not renounce God. I. TO CHARGE GOD WITH WRONG IS A SIN. This was the sin to which Satan was tempting Job. The suggestion was that he should say that God was acting cruelly, unjustly, wrongly. Now, as this seems a natural inference from the events, why was it wrong for Job to follow it? The answer must be found in the truth that God is not known inductively by means of external phenomena. "Judge not the Lord by feeble sense." He has made himself known by special revelations, and he is ever making himself more and more known in the voice of conscience. From these sources we know that the Judge of all the earth must do right. To doubt this is to forsake the higher light and to sink into culpable folly. To prefer a charge against God is worse than to doubt him. At least we might be silent. II. THE ABSENCE OF SIN CAN ONLY BE PROVED BY TRIALS. It is easy to hide sin from view in times of quiet. Then the base metal may shine as brightly as the pure gold. The fiery test reveals its worthlessness. The important question is as to whether we have a character that will stand fire. It is of little value for a man not to be sinning when he has no inducement to sin. His goodness then is at best a negative innocence, and very possibly it is only a slumbering of latent evil III. THE MOST DIFFICULT THING IS NOT TO SIN WHEN ONE IS MOST TEMPTED. There were many sins, doubtless, to which Job was not at all liable. It was little to his credit that he was not guilty of them. The point of interest was that "in all this," i.e. in this specially trying series of calamities, Job did not commit the particular sin to which they pointed, i.e. charging God with wrong. People pride themselves on their goodness in various directions; but this is of small importance if they fail when they are really tempted. IV. THE SECRET OF STANDING FIRE IS IN THE STRENGTH OF GOD. Now Job has the reward of his long devotion to God. Ver. 5 shows him a man of prayer in the days of prosperity; it shows him praying for his children in their need; thus Job was being prepared unconsciously for the evil day. When it came it found him ready, though it was quite unexpected, because it found him living near to God. When the whirlwind is about us it is too late to think of strengthening the tent-stakes. We need the inward strength of God, which comes by the slow growth of Christian experience, if we are to stand like the sturdy oak in the sudden swirl of calamities. - W.F.A. Parallel Verses KJV: In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly. WEB: In all this, Job did not sin, nor charge God with wrongdoing.