Has Anything Changed

I've been thinking again … kind of pondering mentally and spiritually as to just what difference Jesus really made in our lives. I'm not speaking about salvation, that's a given … there is no salvation without Jesus.

What I'm thinking about is … is there anything that's different today in our spiritual warfare compared to believers who lived maybe 500 years before Jesus was born? Travel even farther back in time to Jobs day. Because I believe Jesus broke whatever authority Satan had over us through His death on the cross and resurrection, I ask this question …

Do we have a better recourse in our response to … the trials of life … than Job had, including attacks from Satan, if God was to bring up our name and point us out to him for testing as He did with Job?

Remember Job? He was just like most of us, living life by doing his best for the Lord, and then for some unknown reason … "the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job?" (Job 1:8) God is the one who brought up Job's name to Satan and never explained why.

Evidently Satan had noticed Job in the past because he accuses God of keeping a hedge of protection around Job and asks Him to … "put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face." (Job 1:11)

Satan with permission, goes and destroys all Job has including his ten children, but … "in all this Job did not sin or make a charge against God." (Job 1:22)

Again … "the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job … he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause." (Job 2:3)

Again Satan challenges God to … "put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face." (Job 2:5)

But God, who afflicts not willingly, said to Satan … "No, if it must be done, you do it." (My translation)

This time Satan goes and afflicts Job with boils all over his body. His wife tells him to curse God and die. (Thanks a lot sweetheart.) Job answers … "What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips."

Satan, in walking around the earth, could certainly attentively consider Job, but to inflict him he could not … unless permission … to do so had been given to him. And it was.

Satan is an accuser who desires and delights in any opportunity to inflict pain and suffering on man anytime he can, and will go as far in doing so as he is allowed … being restrained only by the express command of God. Even so, Satan is described as being bound with a chain and never dares to touch man unless God allows it.

So now with that background, I ask again … should there be any difference in our response today compared to what Job's response was to the evils of life brought upon him by Satan? Does Satan still have access to God as he did with Job? Does God still turn Satan loose on men? Or did Jesus and the cross make a difference? Are we now in a different age or dispensation in which God no longer gives Satan permission to attack His children as He did in the past?

We know that Satan was allowed to bring evil to Job. We also know from the Book of Daniel that it took twenty-one days of spiritual warfare before Gabriel with Michael's help was able to overcome the satanic power of the prince of Persia.

The writer of Hebrews, speaking about Jesus states … "by going through death He might bring to nought and make of no effect him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and also that He might deliver and completely set free all those who through the fear of death were held in bondage throughout the whole course of their lives." (Hebrews 2:14-15, Amp.)

According to these two verses, Jesus has broken the power of Satan and reduced him to nothing; therefore he should have no effect on us because we have been set free from any bondage we were held in.

But even so, we find the Apostle Paul spiritually delivering Hymenaeus and Alexander into the hands of Satan, I assume to be afflicted in some way as a chastisement so they … "may learn not to blaspheme." (1st Timothy 1:20)

Paul in dealing with sexual sin in the church, states that it is proper … "To deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." (1st Corinthians 5:5)

Evidently Paul had no problem believing that God still allows Satan to use his evil power as a tool for judgment and correction. Does God bring pain and suffering? I would say … Not willingly. So He lets Satan do it.

Satan will never pass up any opportunity given him to bring the temptation to sin or the trials of pain and suffering through sickness or disease. Therefore because of this, I must conclude that Satan still retains certain powers over our physical minds and bodies. I don't like it … but it is what it is.

And then you can add to that one of God's laws … "You reap what you sow." All of us suffer under that one. Sin has its own reward.

God in the past has and it looks today as though He may still use the ministry of Satan (who is under His control) to execute and send His judgments as the evils of nature upon both righteous and un-righteous men for any reason that may seem just and right to Him.

God seldom reveals to us the reason for His conduct towards us. He only asks that we trust Him as Job did … in receiving both good and evil from the hand of God. Job was speaking about the things in nature, the storms of life, and the terrible calamities that just happen to man; things that God could stop but doesn't.

Therefore Job called these things as evil coming from the hand of God. He does have all things under His control you know. If He doesn't, when did He lose it?

The … "evil" … I am speaking of is not the evil of sin. "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." (James 1:13)

Honestly, we really don't know exactly what goes on in the spiritual realm do we? I really don't know if there are battles still going on in the heavens yet today. I don't think there is; at least not like the twenty-one day battle in Daniel.

I think the Word of God is very clear on that when it states that … "all power has been given to Jesus, both in Heaven and in the earth."

John Wesley has said … "The affairs of earth are much the subject of the counsels of the unseen world. That world is dark to us: but we lie open to it."

Has anything changed?

I believe it has … Jesus has delivered us from the power of the devil … unless for whatever reason God deems it necessary to send us out into the storm so we will put our faith on trial like He did with both Job and His disciples.

He sends His rain on the just and the unjust.


Comments welcome.