"The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger." Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD." Job 1:12
While the children of Israel were on the way from Egypt to the land of Canaan they came one day to a valley, where there were a great many poisonous snakes. Many of the people were bitten and died.
If one of the boys was out playing, all at once he felt a sharp pain in his ankle. Then it began to swell and before long he was dead. If one of the girls went to the spring to get some water for her mother, when she stooped over to dip up the water she felt a prick in her wrist, and saw a snake wriggling away in the grass, and knew then that she did not have very long to live. If one of the men went out to get some wood for the fire, the first thing he knew he would be bitten. These things were happening all the time, and there was no cure for the bite of these serpents. So the people went to Moses and asked him to do something, and Moses prayed to the Lord.
God told Moses to make a serpent of brass and fasten it to the top of a long pole and set the pole up in the middle of the camp where every one could see it. If any one was bitten by a snake he was to look at that serpent on the pole, and he would not die.
That seems like a strange thing for God to do, now doesn't it? Why didn't God just kill the snakes and be done with them? It seems as though that would have been the very best way to save the people. But no, God left those serpents there to teach the people several things. First He wanted them to be watchful. If you have ever been out in the woods where you are afraid of snakes, you know how very carefully you walk. You never put your foot down unless you know where you are putting it. Those snakes made you watchful.
And He wanted to teach them to look up. That is why He put that serpent on the pole, that the people might not forget to look up to Him when they were in need or trouble.
But now you say to me, "What has all this to do with Satan?" It has a great deal to do with him. Satan is said to be a serpent, and when we are thinking of him we are thinking of a serpent.
Sometimes we ask this same question about him, ''Why does God let Satan live?"
A boy said to me once, "Why doesn't God just kill old Satan and be done with him? What good is he anyway?''
Well, God lets Satan live for the same reason that He let those serpents live, that were biting and troubling the children of Israel in the wilderness.
He wants to teach us to be watchful, to be careful of every step that we take and every word we speak, and every thought that we think. When people believe that Satan isn't around anywhere they become careless. God lets him live to make us better and stronger boys and girls and men and women.
And He lets him live that we may look up to Him when we are in trouble. You know when people have no troubles they are very likely to forget about God. But when they are tempted and troubled then they think about Him and pray to Him. And God wants us to come to Him.
God is going to attend to Satan sometime, but I am glad that He didn't do it before. He makes us plenty of trouble, but if we resist him he makes us stronger and better Christians.
There is a story of a Frenchman who was shut up in the great prison of the Bastile many years ago. They put him into a lonely dungeon into which the light came just a little while each day through a tiny window high up in the wall. He never saw anyone, or heard a voice, and became very sad and depressed, with nothing to think about or to do. One day he saw a little plant beginning to sprout up between the stones of the cell. He watched that plant. There was nothing else for him to think about. As it grew day after day he learned to love it very much. He did not know what kind of a plant it was, whether it was a weed or a flower. He said to himself, ''I am going to watch that plant, and if it turns out to be an ugly weed then I will know that I am never going to get out of this prison alive. But if it is a lovely flower I will know that I am going to be released."
One night he lay down to sleep and when he awoke in the morning there was a delicate fragrance in the cell. He jumped up from the straw on which he was lying, and went and looked, and there was a lovely little flower on the plant. When he saw it he called it ''mignonette," which means " little darling." Sure enough, a little while after they came and released him and he went away to his home again. And people who did not know about him used to wonder why he had the mignonette so much on the table in his home.
Now God is watching every one of us to see just how we are enduring the temptations of Satan, whether we are going to turn out just weeds, or beautiful flowers that will bless and help the world. N. S. Hutchison.
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| "Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God and die." Job 2:9 (KJV) |
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