When the Righteous Suffer - Part 1 — John Piper

Would you pray with me? Father, we take up now a theme, a reality that is so raw and so real for many that I tremble to think of the presumption of just talking for an hour about it. Whom have we in heaven but You?

And on earth, there is nothing that we desire besides You. Our flesh and our heart may fail, but You are the strength of our heart and our portion forever. I count everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

Father, come, work the miracles that we long for in this room, and there are two. One is healing, and we believe in it, and I pray for it, that some would date their deliverance from disease or a broken marriage or a wayward child or a depression from this night.

And Lord, for others who are to suffer longer, the miracle of, though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him. So these double miracles we ask for, I can't make them happen, but the Holy Spirit can, so I invite Him to come.

Would you help me to be faithful to Your Word? To be true to what it says? Let there be a spirit about this time together that is in accordance with the truth and the weight of the truth. I thank You, Lord Jesus, for the words.

Jesus' Promises to Those Who Suffer

Blessed are You when men persecute You and revile You and say all kinds of evil against You falsely on my account. Rejoice in that day and be glad, for great is Your reward in Heaven. Not here. For so men persecuted the prophets who were before You.

So, Lord, come and give us the assurance of Heaven and help us to know that this slight momentary affliction that lasts only 80 years or 90 is not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed and is working for us a weight of glory beyond all comparison.

Build these convictions down to the roots of our being, I pray, through Christ, Amen. Amen. Thank you so much for being here. It's a great, fearful honor to me that you would come to hear about these things because it is so easy to get it wrong, wrong theologically and wrong emotionally.

Job's Friends and the Danger of Simplistic Theology

Job's friends, Eliphaz, Bill, Dad, and Zophar got it mainly right theologically. Not always. And they just got it so wrong practically. And so I hope you'll be praying for each other and praying for me that we won't get it wrong either way.

That we'll be faithful to the Word and what it says and in our speaking and in our dealing with each other between the sessions, we will be very, very alert to where people are on this issue. People are here because they're dying.

You need to know that. I have emails. People are here because others have died. So if it felt from the beginning like there was an unusual seriousness about this, there is. I have 10 or 11 reasons for why I've come to talk to you about suffering from Job.

And we list them off, they don't take long, but I'm gonna give you these. If you wonder why did you come to this place to talk about this to us, here they are. Number one, hundreds of you have suffered or are suffering and you are looking for light in the darkness.

For example, one of you wrote me, I prayed that God would show me how to respond, that he would anoint John Piper this weekend. I am praying that God would speak through John Piper in his words about suffering and that this would help me better understand God's purpose for me and my family now after that.

Suffering as Basic Christian Discipleship

Number two, your suffering is coming for sure. Basic discipleship included for the Apostle Paul in Acts 14, verse 22, you remember he's coming back on the missionary journey, going to every church, strengthening the souls, it said, strengthening the souls of the disciples, saying through many tribulations, you must enter the kingdom.

There is no other path, that's basic discipleship. If you work discipling people, that should be on your agenda early. You come to Christ, you come to suffer. There is no other path to heaven. That's number two.

Suffering, Satan's Design, and God's Purpose

Number three, persecution, disease, war, disability, disaster, freak accident, assault, they're all the same with regard to two things, which is why I don't want anybody to start making distinctions about, oh, that's just relating to persecution, not disease.

They're all the same with regard to two things. Number one, the design of the devil is the same in all of them. Destroy your faith. And the design of God in all of them, strengthen your faith. Doesn't really matter whether somebody's putting a gun to your head or cancer is in your head.

It's the same issue. The faith issue is the same, and that's why I'm here. I wanna deal with that, I want your faith to be stronger. I don't want the devil to win in your life. Number four, natural disasters have put theodicy, that is, the justification of God and his ways, in the news more than ever in my lifetime in the last five years.

Say, since 9 -11 or since the tsunami or the cyclone in the early 90s. We just forget these so fast. Half a million people were swept away in Bangladesh in 1991. Way bigger than the tsunami, and we just forget them.

Tornadoes down in your neck of the woods here and flooding up in my neck of the woods. These are strange days, and almost whenever anything like that happens, NPR and the stations, they're on the phone to a Jew, an imam, and an evangelical, and tell us where God was.

This is news, and therefore, we need to think about it. It's not private, it's not a private issue that only Christians talk about. Number five, God is rejected wholesale by many because of suffering in the world and because of these issues.

The other day, I was listening to a debate between Doug Wilson and Dan Barker, an atheist. It was valuable for me to listen, not because of what Doug said, because I knew what he'd say, and I liked it all, but because of what the atheist said, which simply took my breath away.

It is so good for me to be exposed to the horrors inside people's heads that come out in blasphemous words, tripping off the tongue as though the earth would not open up underneath, which in mercy, it didn't.

But one of the things he said was, any God who creates a hell deserves to go there and many other such things. Now, hell simply represents the worst suffering, the worst in intensity and the worst in length, and therefore, dealing with that is what many people simply cannot handle, and therefore, they write God off.

He just does not exist, at least the God of the Bible doesn't. We've got to deal with it because people reject God because of these issues. Number six, there are Christian critics of the sovereignty of God.

Divine Sovereignty in the Face of Disaster

Oh, how they spoke loudly after the tsunami and in regard to personal suffering. Here's a page from Mission Frontiers, one of my favorite missionary magazines, in which my good friend, I love this guy to death, Ralph Winter, you'll probably watch this, and I'm gonna take him to task while he watches, wrote, insofar as we automatically attribute all misfortune, all disease, all sickness to the mysterious mind of God, that perspective cuts the nerve of any intense, intentional fighting back.

For example, Charles Coulson is as brilliant and dedicated a Christian as they come, yet, after his daughter had struggled for many years with an autistic son, called him Alex, Coulson praised her when she came to the conclusion that, quote, Alex is exactly the way God wants him to be.

First, Winter says, the idea that God would want any child to be brain damaged is inconceivable. Even more important, this fatalistic perspective, no matter how brave and noble, cuts the nerve of anyone wanting to join the increasing number of parents who want to get to the bottom of why autism is skyrocketing.

I don't believe either of those statements is true. I don't believe it's true that it's inconceivable that God should will your child's disability, and I don't think it's true that those who believe in the absolute sovereignty of God are less involved in fighting evil and sickness and every other kind of horror in the world than those who don't believe in it are.

I don't think historically that's true, and I don't think it's true today, but that's what some Christians are saying. Or, David Hart in the Wall Street Journal says, after the tsunami, no Christian is licensed to utter odious banalities about God's inscrutable counsels or blasphemous suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God's good ends.

Well, I do utter that with no fear in the presence of God Almighty that it is blasphemy. Number seven, the wise, good, just, absolute sovereignty of God is pastorally precious beyond measure. I've been a pastor for 28 years.

I have buried many people. I know that one of my 17-year-olds is still in a coma from the accident last week. I know these things. I live with this every day of my life. I also read the newspaper. I also look at the internet.

We are, I am inundated with pain, my own and my people's, and I testify, and don't just argue, I testify. After 28 years, the absolute, good, wise, total sovereignty of God over our lives is pastorally precious beyond measure.

It's not an embarrassment in the hospital. I promise you, it's not. The words Satan meant it for evil and God meant it for good have sustained many a broken heart. Number eight, suffering is appointed as one way for the Gospel to spread.

Suffering as a Means of Gospel Advance

This is what I'm gonna talk about at a conference here later on the weekend called The Purpose-Driven Death. That's a very, very, very biblical title, and it's rooted in Colossians 1 .24. Do you remember what Jesus said to Peter and John when they were talking at the end of the Gospel of John?

And he said, what is that to you? And then he said, I will show him by what death he will glorify me. I will show him by what death he will glorify me in the last verses of the Gospel of John. That's a purpose-driven death.

Now, the point here is God doesn't just use after the event suffering to spread the Gospel. God designs to spread the Gospel by the suffering of his agents. The suffering of his agents is one of his appointed means by which he will make himself look magnificently superior to life.

The steadfast love of the Lord is better than life. Psalm 63 .3, how can you show that if you only prosper? Talk, talk, talk, talk, won't do it. One of the best histories of modern, actually, the totality of mission since Jesus is Stephen Neal's book, The History of Missions, and he has a few pages, which I copied out here, on why was it under God that the Christian movement virtually conquered the Roman Empire in 300 years?

What was it about these simple people that so vitally spread throughout the Roman Empire? And he lists six reasons, and the last one was this. Quote, under the Roman Empire, Christians had no legal right to exist.

We Americans, we just get bent out of shape when our rights are taken away. It's like, why do you think Christians should have any right for anything? This country is a footnote on the future reality, a weird one, and we act like it's the thing.

Like, what if we can't post our commandments or we can't preach our sermons? Why, read your Bible. We don't have any rights in this world. We are aliens and exiles and refugees. Satan is the god of this world.

We testify unto death. I'm starting to paraphrase. Let me get back here and read. Under the Roman Empire, Christians had no legal right to exist. Every Christian knew, every Christian knew that sooner or later he might have to testify to his faith at the cost of his life.

That's why it spread. American, wimpy Christianity won't spread. It's those who know it may cost them their lives who treasure Jesus more than they treasure life, let alone any lifestyle. They'll spread, and the rest will just shrink into its little comfortable enclave.

That's number eight. Number nine, the supreme value and glory and admirableness of Christ is shown where people see him as more valuable than anything else we could lose. I didn't say it very well. Let me try to say it again.

The beauty, the admirableness, the glory of Jesus Christ is displayed, demonstrated, shown, revealed most clearly where Christians treasure Christ more than they treasure what they're losing. Child, health, life, marriage.

If you get in God's face and begin to demean him or belittle him or dis him because of something that's being taken away, you're showing where your treasure is, and it doesn't speak well to the world about him being our supreme treasure.

There's the big issue. That's the big issue of this seminar. That's the big issue of the book of Job. That's what Satan wanted not to be known, that God is more valuable than Job's family. He desperately didn't want that to be known.

That's number nine. Number 10, Job is the main book in the Bible for dealing with this issue straight up. It can help us with all of these things. It was written, unlike any of the other books, mainly for this.

The issue is all over the Bible, but Job is where it comes to a head as we heard Scott quote from James 5, 11. I wrote down one more as I was coming over here. This is number 11. In my own name, I have no right to address suffering people about suffering.

I haven't suffered much. And I thought today as I reflected on that, okay, but there aren't two classes of people in the world, sufferers and non-sufferers. There are hundreds of classes of people, namely everybody suffering at different levels.

Some more one day, some less another day, some more one year, less another year. And therefore, if we start saying who can talk to whom about how much they've suffered, almost nobody will talk to anybody about this.

Besides that, I do not speak to you in my own name. And I would encourage you not to believe anything John Piper says that is not warranted by the Bible. If I cannot show you what I say in the Bible, you have a full reason to say not sure about that and put it on the question mark and go home and think about it.

So mainly we're gonna be looking at the Bible in this session. So if you have a Bible, which I hope you do, let's go to Job. It's almost in the middle of the Bible, a little bit before Psalms, right before Psalms.

Job's Righteousness Before His Suffering

We'll get maybe through chapter 31 tonight. You believe that? I never get through 31 chapters in years, let alone minutes. But that's my goal and if I don't reach it, I'll quicken the pace tomorrow. Job chapter one.

There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. And that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. So he sets up, the author sets up the book with a very good man, nobody like him.

Blameless, upright, feared, reverenced, treasured, God, I don't think the word fear is slavish. Doesn't work in the context if it's a kind of cowering, slavish fear. It's a kind of trembling wonder and awe and delight to come into the presence of God and fear that you would do anything to dishonor him or demean him or belittle his value.

He fears him and the implication or the result of that in his life was that he turned away from evil. Verse two, there were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7 ,000 sheep and 3 ,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and very many servants so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east.

So his goodness had been blessed with prosperity, as many of yours has. Verse four, his sons used to go and hold a feast. Now this is a illustration of the kind of uprightness that he has. His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.

And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them and he would rise early in the morning and burn burnt offerings according to the number of them all for, Job said, it may be that my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.

And thus Job did continually. What comes out there are two things about Job. One, a jealousy for the name of God. My kids curse the name of God. I want to make that right as right as a dad can make it.

And the second thing is concern for his kids. If they've cursed God, oh God, would you receive this offering? Would you have mercy upon my children? This is what dads do. They get up in the morning and they pray for their kids.

Right, dads? Right, dads? We get up in the morning and we lay hold on God and say, preserve those marriages, oh God. Keep their faith, oh God. Guard their orthodoxy, oh God. Protect their children, guard their hearts.

Fight for my kids, God. And you pray it a lot more when they're adults. Or maybe most when they're teenagers. Although now, I don't think that's true because I only have one teenager. She's 13 and all my boys are grown and I'm mainly concerned about them.

Then the calamity came. I'm gonna skip over verses six to 12 and come back to it in a moment. Now, there was a day when his sons and daughters, this is verse 13, chapter one, verse 13. There was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house.

They were having one of those parties. And there came a messenger to Job and said, the oxen were plowing and the donkeys feeding beside them and the Sabaeans fell upon them and took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword and I alone have escaped to tell you.

Verse 16, while he was yet speaking, there came another and said, the fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them and I alone have escaped to tell you. Verse 17, while he was yet speaking, there came another and said, the Chaldeans formed three groups and made a raid and the camels, they took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword and I alone have escaped to tell you.

Verse 18, and while he was yet speaking, there came another and said, your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house. And behold, a great wind, maybe a tornado, came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house and it fell upon the young people and they're dead and I alone have escaped to tell you.

Well, so much for Job's prosperity in one afternoon. All of his possessions are gone and all of his children are dead in one afternoon. The most upright, the most God-fearing man in the East. What happened?

This makes no sense, right? This is absurd. This is unintelligible. We would ask, what on earth is going on? And the answer of the book is, earth will never give you the answer. Heaven will give you the answer.

Not the whole answer that you want maybe, but it will give an answer. So let's back up now to heaven and see what happened. Verse six of chapter one. Now, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord.

I think that means angels. And Satan also came among them. The Lord, that's Yahweh, absolute sovereign Lord, said to Satan, from where have you come? And Satan answered the Lord and said, from going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it.

And the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job, that there's none like him on the earth? A blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil? That's weird. A thief sneaks into the jewelry shop at night while the owner is in the back room looking to steal diamonds.

And he runs into the owner and the owner says, what are you doing here? And he says, I'm looking around for diamonds to steal. And the owner says, have you seen the biggest one? It's up front under glass.

Here's the key. This is strange. Now, I assume that God's not a bumbler. He's like, ooh, I didn't mean to say that. I didn't mean to draw attention to Job. Ah, I should have brought attention to some carnal Christian over here.

Therefore, I do assume God is setting him up. Use whatever words you want. God is manifestly proud of Job. And I use the word carefully. I'm very hesitant to use that word of humans feeling about humans because pride means you have some stake, you've got some causality in what they are like.

God had a huge stake in what Job was like. And therefore, I say he was hugely proud of Job. Feared God. Job, fear of God called so much attention to the worth and value and power and truth and justice and goodness and wisdom and grace of God that God beamed over Job in the front, in the presence of Satan.

Well, Satan is not impressed. Verses nine to 11. Then Satan answered the Lord and said, does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has on every side?

You have blessed the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land. But you stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, he will curse you to your face. You see what he's doing?

This is the setup. This is what's at stake in the book. This is what the book is about. This is what the book is about. Will it become evident that Job values his possessions more than God? Or will it become evident to the devil and all the hosts of heaven and all the people of us that Job values God more than he values his children?

And his sheep and oxen and camels and donkeys? That's the issue of the book. God could have said, I don't need to prove anything to you, Satan. I know the heart of my man. I see everything. I know Job better than Job knows Job or anybody else knows Job.

He doesn't need to prove anything to you or me. Be gone. That's what he could have done. Just like Jesus said, be gone to the demons. And they obeyed him. Satan always obeys God. He commands the unclean spirits and they obey him.

Satan is in God's presence by massive sovereign permission. But God evidently has already set this up. He's not gonna change his mind. He knows where he's going. So when Satan says the only reason he worships you, the only reason he fears you, the only reason he treasures you is because you give him stuff.

Verse 12, the Lord said to Satan, behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and somebody killed the servants and the kids.

God is in the process here of demonstrating to the heavenly hosts and to any others who have eyes to see that he himself is paramount in the heart of Job. That's what he's aiming to do. That's the most important thing in the world to God.

I didn't throw that sentence out quickly. His being paramount in the hearts of his people is the most important thing in the world to God. Everything else is a means to that end. His supremacy in the hearts of his people.

Job's Worship Amid Catastrophic Loss

All right, round one, Job, Victor. Let's read it. Verse 20, then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, fell on the ground and say the word. Say it and be amazed. He worshiped and he said, naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I shall return.

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. So Job's answer to the question who killed the kids is God. That's what it says. The Lord took them away and he took all my donkeys and all my camels.

Now, you could argue hermeneutically, oh, this is like Ecclesiastes. 99 of the book is false. That won't work here and there are numerous reasons why. The biggest one is in the next verse where the author foresees that objection and answers it.

Verse 22, in all this, Job did not sin with his lips or charge God with wrong. He didn't sin. In other words, when he said the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, that wasn't wrong. That wasn't sin.

He wasn't saying anything about God that would be sinful. That's why that verse is there because it's so breathtaking. Job, you're saying, you've shaved your head, you've ripped your clothes, you're weeping your eyes out for weeks and you're saying God did it and you're worshiping him.

That's what it says. Scarcely could the victory be over, it seems. I don't know how much time elapses between chapter one and chapter two, it doesn't say. And so we're given the impression it wasn't long.

He's covered with sores. Chapter two, verse seven, in the middle of the verse, loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes.

Now, these were horrible sores. If you read the rest of the book, just looking for instances where they're described, there's one place where they get so grimy with dirt and then they get worms in them.

You've never experienced anything like these sores. And it was from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet and they were loathsome. They were horrible, horrible to look at, horrible to touch. He wouldn't even touch them with his fingers.

He took a piece of broken pottery just to scrape the pus out and try to get the worms and the dirt out just anything. This was horrible. And so we ask again, what is going on? He passed the test and he was the best man to start with.

He worshiped you when his kids were killed. What more do you want? What is going on? And the answer is given in verse three, following again, the Lord said to Satan who had come again, like he did before, looking around, have you considered my servant Job that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil?

And then he adds, he still holds fast his integrity although you incited me, you Satan, incited me against him to destroy him without reason. That's an amazing verse. God, now not Job says, I did it. You incited me against my boy and I did it without reason.

Now that's not a helpful translation. In the RSV, it has without cause, that's closer. The point is, if you take the man Job and look at his life, there's nothing there that explains why this came down on him.

And that's right, there isn't. There's nothing there that explains the magnitude of this suffering coming down. But when you translate it without reason, it sounds like you might be saying there's no purpose.

That we're going to find out is not the case. But it sure looks irrational and absurd. I mean, if you're going to ordain that boils, come on a person, pick a bad person, which is exactly what Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are going to hammer Job with very soon.

Verse six, no, let's start at verse four. Then Satan, this is chapter two, verse four. Then Satan answered the Lord and said, skin for skin, all that a man has, he will give for his life. You made, in other words, you made me not touch his life.

You put those limits on me, but you stretch out your hand, verse five, you stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, he'll curse you to your face. And the Lord said to Satan, behold, he's in your hand.

Only spare his life. You see God's sovereignty there? Thus far and no farther you may go. I draw the lines for Satan everywhere he goes. I pull him back, I let him out. He's never free from my sovereign rule.

So Satan went out, verse seven, from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in ashes.

And now what's the result? His wife can't take him anymore. I feel sorry for his wife. In the poem that I wrote, I created a conversion for her. I have a lot of sympathy with this woman. Now, I think the author and Job do too because of the wording here.

Look how it's words. Then his wife, I mean, she's just lost her kids. All right? 10 children. And she's watched her husband who valiantly worshiped God be struck with boils. This is not easy. We're gonna cut her a lot of slack, right?

If words come out of her mouth, there's this beautiful verse in chapter six that talks about words for the wind. Will you judge a man for words that are wind? There's a lot of words for the wind in the midst of tragedy.

Pastors need to discern what are words for the wind. And he doesn't correct them. He just lets them go off into the wind. He knows they will say better tomorrow. I hope she does too, although we're never quite made clear.

But here's what it says. You still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die. But he said to her, now here's what he did not say. You are one of the foolish women. He didn't say that. He said, you speak as one of the foolish women would speak.

I just think that's intentional. Giving her a break. You're not one of them, honey. This isn't you. And he answers, let me just put in a little parenthesis there. This has almost nothing to do with anything.

It's just here in my brain. I have a 13-year-old daughter who often says things to her mother she shouldn't. I hear the tone of voice from the living room. She's storming out of the kitchen on the way upstairs.

And I stop her. Talitha, forgive me for telling this story. Because it's really a tribute to you. Stop her in the middle of the steps. I said, Talitha, wait a minute. Before you go up, that wasn't you, Talitha.

That's your old nature, honey. You're a believer. You're a new woman in Christ. That's not the way the new woman talks. Just go up and get right with your Lord and your Savior and come and talk to your mom.

I just mention that to you because I think if you don't build into your kids an understanding of how they as Christians can sin, they will become class A legalists from the get-go. So, just make sure you have a way of doing the correction and doing the rebuking if the child has made a profession of faith.

I'm assuming not every child is a believer, but if they have. So, close that parenthesis wherever that came from. I've totally lost my bearings here now. Thank you. Here's what he says. This is verse 10.

But he said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God? And shall we not receive evil? In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. So, you have an exact parallel to verse 22 of chapter one.

Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. Here, Job did not sin with his lips. When he said, shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord and not receive evil? Now, here's a catch. He said, I have received evil from the Lord, meaning I have received calamity.

I've received my disease from the Lord. Look at verse seven again. Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome swords. It says Satan struck him with loathsome swords. Is one of those verses wrong?

No. It's very right to give Satan his due here. Satan was evidently the immediate agent, however he does it, like the woman that was bent over for 18 years, remember? And Jesus healed her and says, shall not a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bent over for 18 years, not be healed on the Sabbath?

Satan does that kind of thing in your life and my life. But what Job knows, he knows it because of all these things we're seeing, is that Satan's on a leash. He can't do anything without God's ordaining and permitting, and therefore he's just, he's looking right through the immediate cause up to the ultimate cause and says, shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord and not receive evil?

Now, I personally have a vision of heaven at this moment, that moment, in which Satan is kept on the leash. You're not going away. You're gonna watch this. And when those two times, Job says, blessed be the name of the Lord, though he give and take, and I will not curse him, my wife, because doesn't he have a right to give good and evil?

I see 10 million angels and 20 million hands go, blessed be the God of Job for his infinite worth and value in Job's heart. And I see Satan just. That's why we suffer. Those choruses ring out quietly here in hospital rooms among nurses, and they ring out with unbelievable power and the vindication of God's purposes in the heavenly places where all the demons cower and all the angels celebrate the triumph of the worth of God in the hearts of his people.

Satan's Limited Power and God's Sovereign Purpose

Let me just draw out a few lessons here that are real obvious. Satan aims to destroy your joy in God and your treasuring of God. That's very clear here. Number two, God aims to magnify his worth. We've seen that very clearly.

And the mirror that he chooses to show it in is the indestructible joy of his people in him even when they lose everything on the earth. Third, God grants to Satan limited power to cause pain. He's on a leash.

Behold, all that he has is in your power only upon himself. Do not put forth your hand. Chapter one, verse 12. Chapter two, verse six. Behold, he's in your power. Only spare his life. Number four, Satan's work is ultimately the work of God.