We are considering what we can learn from David’s life. The first Scripture we find is in 2 Timothy 2:3-4, and also verses 8-11.
Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.
Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel;
for which I suffer hardship even to imprisonment as a criminal. But the word of God is not imprisoned.
For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus, and with it eternal glory.
It is a trustworthy statement:
For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him;
if we endure, we shall also reign with Him.
Or, as it is put in other versions, we shall also be kings with Him. That includes the Danish version. I do not suppose you have that around here. If we endure, we shall also be kings with Him.
The endurance spoken of here concerns suffering. Yesterday, at the depression seminar, I mentioned one Scripture that has meant quite a lot to me in staying out of depression. It is an understanding that everyone who is a soldier must have.
We have been called to be soldiers, and every soldier must be willing to suffer. It cannot be helped. If you are a soldier in the army of God, you must be prepared to suffer.
Years ago, the Lord gave me a Scripture in 1 Peter 4 that explains quite a lot for my own life. I will repeat this, since many of you were not with us yesterday.
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you;
but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation.
The Lord tried to say to me, “Do not be surprised at what you are experiencing.” At that time, I had been under constant enemy pressure for several weeks. I could not understand it, and I thought that I needed deliverance.
But what I really needed was to understand that this is a normal condition for everybody who has become a soldier in the army of the Lord. Do not be surprised, because what happens is nothing strange. It is something quite normal—something we must expect if we are training for kingship.
If we are soldiers and kings, all of the Old Testament speaks about warfare. It was the king who had the responsibility of conducting warfare. It is the king, not the priest, who is to go through warfare.
So it is normal to understand that we are under enemy pressure because we are soldiers. They will shoot at us, and we will sometimes be wounded. It cannot be helped. Enemy pressure is a part of the life of everybody who is in the school of kings.
The Scripture says that if you want to share His glory, you must also share His sufferings. You cannot have the glory without the suffering. You cannot attain to that glorious position of being king if you are not willing to partake in and share the sufferings of Christ.
So if you do not experience suffering or enemy pressure, I will tell you why: it is because you have not become a soldier. You have not committed yourself to the Lord in such a way that you are following Him. You have not joined the army of the Lord.
This is something you can choose. It is a free choice. This is not something that the Lord will force upon any of us.
We used to say that in Psalm 37:5 we find the normal temperature of the Christian. I do not know whether it is the same over here, because 37.5 is the normal temperature of the body. That is a wonderful Scripture, really. You can look it up yourselves.
But I will give you the normal temperature of the soldier, of the king. That is Psalm 23:5.
Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou anointest my head with oil;
my cup runneth over.
The presence of the enemy is always there when you enter into becoming a king. When you are a soldier, you must take it as a normal thing that the enemy is always there. You must learn to function in your Christian life, with everything you do, having the feeling that the enemy is around.
Even in a thing such as eating a meal, you must learn to do that while the enemy is looking.
This pressure is not depression. It is something that we cannot avoid when we are in the battle. It is the suffering that comes from the fact that we follow the Lord and take up the cross.
Because we desire to share His glory one day, we must also be willing to share His sufferings.
It says further in 2 Timothy 2 that if we endure, we shall be kings with Him. So please understand that we must learn to endure. What is it that we should endure? It is suffering.
This is what Paul talks about in his own life:
For which I suffer hardship even to imprisonment as a criminal.
For this reason I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus, and with it eternal glory.
We are invited to endure hardship and sufferings. We must understand that this is normal for everybody who is running for kingship.
If you want to be a normal Christian—that is, if you want to live your own life and use God for yourself—there is a place for that. It is no sin. Then it is all right. But if you want to attain to kingship and be used by God, if you would allow the Lord to use you for His purposes, then it is another matter.
Then you must be prepared, and not be surprised, that you will come under enemy pressure and have to enter into sufferings as you proceed.
If we go to Philippians, that is another New Testament illustration. Philippians 1:29 says:
For unto you it hath been granted in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer in His behalf;
having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me.
In the Danish Bible, it says, “For to you there has been provided grace for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.”
In other words, where there is suffering, the Lord will provide grace. So bear it and go through it.
We are not speaking about oppression. We are not speaking about coming under the enemy’s control. We are speaking about going through sufferings, and whenever there are sufferings, the Lord has provided grace for us—not only to believe, but also to suffer. How wonderful that the Lord has provided grace for suffering.
When I used to go to Eastern Europe and considered the sufferings of my brothers and sisters in Romania and Czechoslovakia, I was rather frightened in the beginning. I thought, “Well, if I had such sufferings, if I had to go through what they are going through, I feel that my whole Christian life would collapse.”
But then I understood that if that situation should occur, of course the Lord would give grace to me, just as He had given grace to them. They are ordinary people like you and me. If suffering should come, then the Lord will provide grace so that we can suffer.
Also, in Acts 9, when Paul the apostle was called by the Lord, it says in Acts 9:15-16:
Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel:
for I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake.
Is that not incredible? Right from the outset of Paul’s ministry, the Lord decided that He would reveal to him how much he had to suffer for His name’s sake.
The Lord will not hide this away. The Lord is not here to trick us into something. He has made it very plain to us. If we want to attain to kingship, then Paul—next to the Lord Jesus Himself—may be a picture of what a king is in the kingdom of God, of what kingship is.
The Lord had called him to be an instrument. This is a very good word, because when we come to that position where we no longer just make use of God for ourselves, but begin to understand that it is God who wants to make use of us, then we are instruments.
We must understand that if God is going to use us, we must be prepared for suffering.
I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake.
So, brothers and sisters, the Scripture is very clear: in the making of the king, suffering is a part that cannot be excluded. To suffer injustice, persecution from the world, and even sometimes from parts of the church, is a substantial part of the divine training program.
Let us have a look in David’s life before we go on, because David had to suffer. From the day when he was anointed to become king in Israel, his sufferings began.
In 1 Samuel 17, we see how he suffered injustice from his brothers. First Samuel 17:28-29 says:
And Eliab his eldest brother heard when he spake unto the men; and Eliab’s anger was kindled against David, and he said, Why camest thou down? and with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thine heart; for thou art come down that thou mightest see the battle.
And David said, What have I now done? Is there not a cause?
Here, suffering started from his brothers. This is something we might also experience on the road to kingship: not only suffering from the enemy and from the world, but also sometimes suffering from some of our brothers.
If you go to 1 Samuel 18:10-11, David is in the house of Saul:
And it came to pass on the morrow, that an evil spirit from God came mightily upon Saul, and he raved in the midst of the house: and David played with his hand, as he did day by day; and Saul had his spear in his hand.
And Saul cast the spear; for he said, I will smite David even to the wall. And David avoided out of his presence twice.
David finds himself in a situation where he is confronted with persecution from King Saul. Then, of course, he had the sufferings while he had to flee into the desert and live there for many years. He had the sufferings that came upon him as he went into warfare against the Philistines and the enemies of God in the land.
David was a man well acquainted with suffering.
The extraordinary thing about it is that David had opportunities, if he had wished, to cut himself out of suffering. It is interesting that he had that temptation more than once.
When we speak about the persecutions from King Saul, more than once David could have brought himself out of the sufferings with one single stroke of his sword. Nobody would have blamed him for doing so.
I am referring to the incidents when he was in the cave, and Saul was lying almost at his feet. David could have brought himself out of the suffering with just one stroke of his sword.
Let us read from 1 Samuel 24, just to remind ourselves of this point: the ability to cut ourselves out of the sufferings that we run into as we walk on the road to kingship.
And it came to pass, when Saul was returned from following the Philistines, that it was told him, saying, Behold, David is in the wilderness of Engedi.
Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel, and went to seek David and his men upon the rocks of the wild goats.
And he came to the sheepfolds by the way, where was a cave; and Saul went in to cover his feet. Now David and his men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave.
And the men of David said unto him, Behold, the day of which the Lord said unto thee, Behold, I will deliver thine enemy into thine hand, and thou shalt do to him as it shall seem good unto thee.
Well, brothers and sisters, many times we will come into situations where people around us quote Scripture and say, “Now the time of deliverance has come. Do you not understand? Now is the day when the Lord will relieve you of all these sufferings.”
They will quote the Scripture, and they will be very persuasive in trying to convince us that we ought to get out of this mess. We ought to get out from this enemy pressure. We are to find another, more complacent way of living as Christians. We are to understand that if we really are Christians, there should be no such thing as pain, problems, sickness, pressure, or whatever.
You can hear an echo here of modern-day preaching.
David had the opportunity, with one stroke, to bring himself out of this suffering and persecution which had come upon him from the hand of King Saul.
Then David arose, and cut off the skirt of Saul’s robe privily.
And it came to pass afterward, that David’s heart smote him, because he had cut off Saul’s skirt.
And he said unto his men, The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my lord, the Lord’s anointed, to put forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the Lord’s anointed.
Oh dear me, that is tremendous. What a conscience he had—such a sensitive conscience. He was a man after God’s own heart. Just because he had cut off the edge of Saul’s robe, his conscience bothered him.
David persuaded his men with these words and did not allow them to rise up against Saul. Saul arose, left the cave, and went on his way.
When David confronted Saul, he said:
My lord the king, see, yea, see the skirt of thy robe in my hand: forasmuch as I cut off the skirt of thy robe, and killed thee not, know thou and see that there is neither evil nor transgression in my hand, and I have not sinned against thee, though thou liest in wait for my life to take it.
It is incredible. In one way, he even had to apologize to the one who persecuted him. He was bothered in his conscience.
He could have cut himself loose that day from some of the sufferings he had in his life, but he knew that the Lord had put him into that position. He knew that if he were to come out of his suffering, it had to be the Lord who would lead him out in His hour, in His time.
David knew that he was in God’s training program to become a king.
In the New Testament, Hebrews 11 speaks of the heroes of faith. There is one category that has really impressed my heart.
Hebrews 11 speaks about mighty men of God who did mighty things by faith. Verse 32 says:
And what shall I more say? For the time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah; of David and Samuel and the prophets:
who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,
quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight armies of aliens.
Women received their dead by a resurrection: and others were tortured, not accepting their deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection:
and others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment:
they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword: they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated.
That is the part of it we like most: conquering kingdoms, performing acts of righteousness, obtaining promises, shutting the mouths of lions, quenching the power of fire, escaping the edge of the sword, becoming mighty in war, and putting foreign armies to flight.
But then it comes: “Others were tortured, not accepting their release, in order that they might obtain a better resurrection.”
These people knew what kingship is all about. These people were really running for kingship, because they knew that suffering is a part of the making of a king.
But it is something that we can choose. It is a free choice. We can decide whether we will go through or whether we will not go through.
Look again at the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10:
And by reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations, that I should not be exalted overmuch, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, that I should not be exalted overmuch.
Concerning this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.
And He hath said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for My power is made perfect in weakness.
Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
Wherefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.
In the beginning, when Paul went through these experiences and sufferings which the enemy had been allowed to put upon him—because God allowed a messenger of Satan to buffet him—he came under such enemy pressure that wherever he went, no matter which city he entered to minister, there were problems and afflictions.
People wanted to stone him. People persecuted him. People mocked him. People even tried to kill him. These were sufferings which the enemy had been allowed to bring upon his life.
Paul went to seek the Lord about it. He began to pray, and he prayed three times. Now my question is: if he had gone on and insisted in his prayer, would the Lord have released him from these sufferings?
Yes, I believe so. If he had gone on and insisted that the Lord should release him from those sufferings, I believe the Lord would have heard his prayers and released him. I do not think that God would force us into any kind of suffering for Christ’s sake.
The Father never forced the Son. The Lord Jesus went into His sufferings on our behalf with a freely willing heart.
If you go to John 10, it is wonderful and glorious to read how the Lord Jesus made His own choice. He was not forced to do so. The Father did not even put pressure upon Him to do so.
John 10:18 says:
No one taketh it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again. This commandment received I from My Father.
The Lord Jesus, the King of kings, went freely and willingly into suffering. He could have brought Himself out of suffering with one single prayer.
When He was in that garden, Gethsemane, He said to Peter—when Peter took out his sword and would, so to speak, cut the Lord Jesus loose from His sufferings—“Do not do it, Peter. If I want to get out of this situation, if I want to get out of the sufferings, I only have to offer one tiny little prayer to My Father, and He will send Me legions of angels and do away with the enemy.”
The suffering process is a choice we have to make. The Lord said that we should take up our cross. It is a choice. God is not forcing it upon our lives.
But we are speaking here about choosing between two categories of Christians: those who want to use God as an instrument for their own blessing, benefit, and well-being; and those who will allow God to choose them as His instrument.
Today we see another message being preached. I think it is called the prosperity gospel.
Please do not misunderstand me. The Lord wants to bless us. The Lord wants to heal us. But we must always make sure that we are in His purpose. We must always make sure that when we ask for His blessings, those blessings enable us to go on in the purpose of God.
God is the Father. Every father, if you are persistent, will eventually give you what you ask of him. But not all the answers you get to your prayers will turn out in the end to be happy answers. There are quite a few unhappy answers to prayer as well.
Look at the prodigal son. He had his way with the father, and he ended up in a mess, making a mess out of his life.
We always have to ask about the purpose and understand that we want to become instruments and be used by God. So we should be careful not to ask ourselves out of the training program for kingship.
Those who preach the gospel of prosperity tell us that we should always be rich, always be healthy, never sick, always strong, never weak. We should not have any problems. There should be no pain, no affliction, nothing that bothers us, because if there is, then something is wrong with our faith.
What attitude should we take to such a message? I think that Paul, in Philippians 1, has a beautiful attitude. In fact, he says that if anybody wants to exploit divine privileges for his own good, all right—serve yourself. It is no sin.
In Philippians 1:15-18, he says:
Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will:
the one do it of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel;
but the other proclaim Christ of faction, not sincerely, thinking to raise up affliction for me in my bonds.
What then? only that in every way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and therein I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice.
It is a wonderful attitude. But still, we have to understand the difference.
If you want to exploit everything God has for you, and use all your energy, all your time, and all your life to get whatever you can get—and there is a lot you can get—well, it is no sin. But you will never, in that way, attain to kingship, because you are using God. You are making use of God.
You cannot be a king until you allow Him to make use of you—not until you become an instrument, not until the purpose of God for your life has preeminence, and your own personal needs, well-being, and condition are secondary to the purpose of God. Not until then can you enter into the training program of the king.
Paul realized, when he prayed this prayer, that he had asked the Lord to release him. Somebody said that this thorn in the flesh was actually an evil spirit that the Lord had allowed to be assigned as an advance man for Paul.
You know what an advance man is? The great evangelists all have an advance man. All the poor ones like me and the other brothers, we have not got one. We cannot afford it. But all the big evangelists have an advance man.
That is the man who goes before the preacher to arrange all the campaigns, set up committees, send out the flyers, do the advertisements, and speak to the local pastors in the city before the day comes when the gospel campaign begins.
Paul had a very special advance man. It was a messenger of Satan, allowed to go before him and create disturbance, problems, conflicts, opposition, and rebellion wherever he went.
He asked the Lord to take him away, and I am sure I would have done the same. I might have been more persistent in that prayer than Paul was.
But he got the answer:
My grace is sufficient for thee.
Here we are again, brothers and sisters. We do not have to be afraid of suffering or entering into suffering, because God will provide grace.
As we listened this morning about the time in which we live, and as the Lord spoke to us about what we can expect, if you dare sit down and try to get a realistic picture of what you can expect for yourself and your family in terms of suffering and martyrdom—for some of us who are here—then you must understand that at any time in history, the Lord has been able to provide grace for all His children.
My grace is sufficient.
That was the first message Paul got. Then came this: “For power is perfected in weakness.” Paul’s eyes were opened, and he understood that this was part of God’s purpose for himself and for the church: that he should suffer, because through suffering God would gain ground, His kingdom would be extended, the church would grow, and he himself would be made a king.
He would be kept in that training program where he would finally become the king. So that finished off his prayer.
Paul was not depressed. We are not speaking about depression. If you are depressed, we want to minister to you, and we want to do warfare against the enemy. That is too far—when the enemy gets in and tries to dominate you and depress you. This is not God’s will.
But to be under pressure is something normal. We must accept it. Many times it is there to allow the Lord to fulfill His purpose in our own lives and in the ministry we have.
Paul was not depressed because he came to the position where he would dare to say these words:
Therefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake.
Oh my, this is incredible. “I am well content with insults, with distresses, with persecution, with difficulties. I am well content in the midst of it.”
He was not depressed. He had fulfillment and contentment in the midst of it. He was rejoicing. He was happy in the midst of it because he understood that suffering is a part of God’s work, and it is certainly a part of the royal training program.
Paul knew that God made use of the enemy, and we have to understand this. It was such a reminder to me when Dana, the first morning, mentioned from the book of Joshua how Joshua went out to warfare against Jericho. There was an angel with a sword, and Joshua asked, “Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?”
The angel said, “No.” It reminded me that sometimes it seems that God, for certain periods, is on the side of the adversary. Let me put it another way: God is making use of His enemies.
If you do not understand that, you will not really be able to become an instrument of God. God is making use of His enemy. God even made use of an evil spirit to fulfill His purpose.
We have just read about Saul. It says that there came an evil spirit from God. Many Christians have tried to change that and come up with their own private version: that it means God allowed an evil spirit, but does not mean that God sent it Himself.
God is in supreme control, not only over all the good spirits and angels, but also over all the evil ones. He can use them if He wants to do so.
In Saul’s life, it was no less than an act of love that God allowed that evil spirit to come upon Saul. In his disobedience, God had several times tried to bring King Saul to repentance, but he would not repent. God had left only one means of dealing with him: to let an evil spirit terrorize him in order, if possible, to bring Saul to the point where he would break down and repent.
If some people who believe that nobody should suffer from anything had been around that day, they would have said, like David’s generals, “Now you understand, dear brother Saul, now is the day when the Lord will deliver you from an evil spirit. We will come against this spirit. Sit down here and relax, and we will cast out that evil spirit in the name of the Lord.”
By doing so, they would go directly against the will of the Lord.
“Are You one of ours, or are You one of our adversaries? God, are You on our side, or are You on the side of the enemy?”
The Lord never takes sides. He has His own side. He is not on our side, and He is not on the enemy’s side, but He has His own side. It is for you to see to it that you are on His side.
As long as you stay on His side, all is well. But you might experience that sometimes the Lord allows the enemy to have some influence and to do some things, even in our own lives.
Suffering is no hindrance for God’s kingdom. It never has been.
A dear brother just told us at lunchtime that during the persecution of the church in China, they multiplied ten times. I came out of Romania a year ago. For ten years in pagan Romania, they had thirty thousand Pentecostals in the underground church. Today they have more than three hundred thousand. There seems to be a principle: ten times.
In the time of martyrdom in the church, for everyone who was killed, God raised ten new believers. There is no hindrance.
The big question is this: are we making use of God, or is God making use of us? That divides Christianity into two camps. There is a dividing line here. There is a separation.
There are those who can never come to understand what it is to be used by God: allowing Him to use you to fulfill His purposes in the heavenlies and upon earth.
To me, it is a tremendous thing what the Lord Jesus says when He comes to the River Jordan to be baptized. He came not to make use of God, not to exploit divine privileges, not to exploit the blessings He had. He laid them aside, and He came to be used by God. He came to be the most effective instrument of God.
In Matthew 3:13-15:
Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him.
But John would have hindered Him, saying, I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me?
But Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.
But was it righteous? Is this righteousness that happens here? Not in the human sense of the word. That is why John tried to prevent Him from getting baptized—to prevent Him from committing His life to death and suffering, endless suffering on our behalf.
It must be some special kind of righteousness. It is not human righteousness.
In the Word of God, I think it was Brother Nee who pointed this out to me in one of his books, you find several kinds of righteousness. In Matthew 5:38-39, in the Sermon on the Mount, it says:
Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.
That is righteousness according to the law.
But I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil.
That is more than the law requires. That must be another kind of righteousness—the righteousness of goodness. It goes beyond what the law requires.
But then it goes on further:
But whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
That is out of this world. Simply, that is a divine kind of righteousness.
Let us fulfil all righteousness.
That is one example. Then I will leave with you, finally, in your hearts, this matter of suffering: the example of Job.
I have never heard anybody from that group of Christians who claim that we should claim everything—“name it and claim it,” and blame it—because it does not always work. I have never heard anybody able to explain what happened to Job.
If we are only for the use of God, if we only try to exploit God for ourselves, if that is our attitude, if that is our gospel, if that is all we believe there is to it, there are certain persons—Paul is one of them—that we would never be able to explain.
Now, also in the life of Job, let us turn to the book of Job and see a few things.
Job 1 says:
There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and turned away from evil.
And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters.
His possessions also were seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the children of the east.
Certainly, seemingly, he had exploited everything. He was a rich man. Everything went well. He was a man of prosperity. He was a God-fearing man. He was blameless, upright, and turned away from evil.
It goes on to say that his sons used to hold feasts in their houses, each one on his day. They would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When the days of feasting had completed their cycle, Job would send and consecrate them. He would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all, for Job said, “Perhaps my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did continually.
He was a righteous man. He lived with God. He was God-fearing. So he did not enter into suffering because he had committed a sin.
He entered into suffering the very day when God decided to use him as an instrument—the day when God picked him to use him as an instrument for the fulfilling of God’s purposes in the heavenlies.
That day, pain entered into Job’s life. Suffering entered into his family. Affliction came into his house. He lost his children. He lost his servants. He lost his cattle. He lost his health. He lost the support of his wife, and in the end, he lost his friends.
You cannot ask the question, “Was this fair and righteous?” Not after any human standard.
Those who proclaim that we should always live in a situation where we are surrounded by every good thing, with no pain, sickness, or suffering—because if such things happen, something must be wrong with us and we need deliverance—they would have said like the friends of Job:
“Job, there is something wrong with you. You must understand that this is a kind of punishment that has come upon your life because you have done something wrong. If you confess what you have done wrong, then you will be healed instantly and quickly, and everything will be all right with you.”
But Job knew that this was not the case. While his friends thought that he had committed some hidden sin that caused all his sufferings, Job knew this was not the case.
In the end of the book, the Lord says that Job spoke rightly about God, and that his friends spoke wrongly about God. Job knew that his sufferings were due to reasons known to God, beyond human comprehension.
In Job 9:1-3, Job says:
Of a truth I know that it is so:
But how can man be just with God?
If he be pleased to contend with Him,
He cannot answer Him one of a thousand.
He knew that God was doing something, and that God was righteous. He held to that standard all the way through.
In other words, he did not know the purpose, but he knew God. He knew that God is righteous, that God does not do any wrong thing. He is always righteous in whatever He does.
At that time, Job did not know that God was making use of him in an unseen spiritual battle to prove a point before Satan.
The day it happened was when Satan came with the sons of God into the council. The Lord said, “Satan, where have you been?” Satan said, “I have been all over the place.”
The Lord said, “Have you noticed My servant Job? How righteous, how faithful, how God-fearing he is? He would even do a little extra to make sure that his sons had not sinned.”
Satan said, “Well, that is no wonder, because You have surrounded him with a fence. You have blessed him to death. You have filled him with prosperity. You are safeguarding him on all sides, and no evil, no pain, can get at him.”
“Well, all right,” the Lord said. “Let us take away the fence.”
God would never have used Job if he had sinned or lived in sin. He would never have been able to prove His point and overcome the enemy through Job. In order for God to use us as instruments in the spiritual battle against the enemy, we have to be without deliberate sin.
God will never pick anybody who is living in sin. They cannot be used as an instrument. So God picked Job as an instrument because he had not sinned.
The sufferings that came upon him were not because he had sinned, but because God made use of him. There is such suffering for anybody whom God will make use of—for anybody who will enter into kingship, for anybody who would be a soldier, for everybody who will allow themselves to be used by God.
There are sufferings on the road. How wrong the friends of Job were.
In the end of the book, the Lord began opening the eyes of Job. In Job 40:2-4:
Shall he that cavilleth contend with the Almighty?
He that argueth with God, let him answer it.
Then Job answered the Lord, and said,
Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer Thee?
I lay my hand upon my mouth.
The Lord begins to open up to Job that He is in His full right to use anybody who belongs to Him. He has every right to make use of us for every purpose He wants to make use of us for. He does not have to give account for this.
The Lord goes on in these chapters to explain to Job that He had created not only all the good things, but also some of the dangerous things in creation. He had created the crocodile. The crocodile has been created by God, even if it looks as if it is altogether evil and does a lot of damage.
Through this picture, Job realizes that God is God, and God has the right to do what He wants to do. If God wants to use a crocodile, He will use a crocodile. If God wants to make use of Satan, He will make use of him. If He wants to use us in a confrontation with the enemy, He will do so.
But as He does it, He is righteous.
Finally, Job comes to that clear understanding in Job 42:2-6:
I know that Thou canst do all things,
And that no purpose of Thine can be restrained.
Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge?
Therefore have I uttered that which I understood not,
Things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.
Hear, I beseech Thee, and I will speak;
I will demand of Thee, and declare Thou unto me.
I had heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;
But now mine eye seeth Thee:
Wherefore I abhor myself,
And repent in dust and ashes.
There is no doubt that at one time Job really became bitter, as if he would say to the Lord, “Lord, why are You allowing me to suffer all these sufferings?”
But finally, he saw that he was being used by a righteous God, that he had become an instrument in God’s hand, and that he had been used to overcome the enemy. He had been a proof in God’s hand of God’s victory over His opponent.
God demonstrated His righteousness in the life of Job, but it included suffering in his life.
Brothers and sisters, if we want to be used by God, if we want to have a part in the fulfilling of His purposes, if we want to become kings whom the Lord can use to reign, rule, and overcome the enemy, it is not just a matter of the fighting heart.
It is not just that we know how to resist the enemy and take authority over the enemy. It is also that we know the place of suffering, that we are willing to suffer, and that we are willing to submit under the mighty hand of God and be used for His purposes to be fulfilled.
When Job had been used by God, he was restored, and the glory in his life was many times more glorious than before.
This is also a picture that when we come to that day when God will turn our destiny, when He will invite us into kingship to participate in His glorious rule, oh, what glory, blessing, and privilege we will experience.
So, brothers and sisters, may the Lord, by the Holy Spirit, teach us more about this matter. May we be willing to understand the place of suffering, and may we gladly receive it, knowing that He has granted us grace not only to believe, but also to suffer.
Amen.