Insight for Living

Chuck Swindoll: There is an enemy we encounter we cannot see. We have a very real enemy and we encounter him regularly or one of his emissaries. And let me add, he is real. He has a strategy aiming to play tricks on your mind and conquer you and bring you down.

Bill Meyer: Have you ever looked back on a painful season of your life and realized that God was doing something you knew absolutely nothing about? That behind the scenes, in ways completely invisible to you, He was permitting things to unfold you could never have anticipated.

Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll continues his series Job: A Man of Heroic Endurance and takes us behind the curtain into a scene that Job himself never witnessed—a conversation that changed everything. Teaching from Job chapter one, Chuck titled his message "Setting the Stage for Disaster."

Chuck Swindoll: As Job sleeps, another scene opens to us that Job knows nothing about. It happens in our lives as well. When we’re not aware of it, God is carrying out a plan that would amaze us and on occasion would shock us. He is permitting things to get underway that we would have never expected.

Either that or He is not fully sovereign. This is a very important part of understanding Job. If it teaches nothing else, it teaches the absolute sovereignty of God, which is full of mystery. Without Job’s knowing it, something is happening in the heavenlies, and we are transported from Earth to the third heaven.

It is in the laser-like light of the third heaven we come in verse six, and God is sitting in His throne room, if you will, to use our terms. And He looks about and He sees the sons of God that have come to present themselves before the Lord. That makes sense. They’re accountable to Him. They do His bidding. They carry out His will. They accomplish His purposes. But there is an intruder.

There is one who is not among the elect angels. He is identified in the Hebrew text—get this—as "the Satan." What does it mean? Sometimes in noun form, it is rendered simply "the adversary" or "the accuser." He accuses God’s people day and night. And here the accuser appears among the other angels.

Beginning at verse seven down through verse 12, we have a dialogue that is a most interesting dialogue you won’t find anywhere else in the Bible. Only here. Here and in chapter two. The Lord said, verse seven; Satan answered, verse seven. I should have said the Satan, the accuser. The Lord said, verse eight; the Satan answered, verse nine.

And verse 12, the Lord said, and the Satan departed. So it’s a dialogue back and forth. The Lord God sees the intruder and speaks to him. "From where do you come?" Satan’s answer is brief and somewhat impudent. "Roaming about on the Earth and walking around on it." The Satan has access to this planet as well as the heavenlies.

He moves about and his demonic forces as well. He is a supernatural being. He could move from Asia to America. He could move from Mexico to the North Pole in a split second of time. Those kind of things are not the things that restrain spiritual beings. The same will be true of us in our spiritual bodies. And he says, "I’ve been roaming about on the Earth."

I love the statement the Lord asks: "Have you considered my servant Job?" Oh, I failed to read the most important part of his resume, chapter one, verse three, last sentence. "That man was the greatest of all the men of the East." No exaggeration. But you know the wonderful thing about Job is that he was a servant.

There was no celebrity about Job. There was no pride in Job’s heart. Job is a servant of God. "Did you observe my servant?" By the way, if our Lord were pointing out to the enemy you, would He use the word "servant" to describe you? I hope so. "Have you observed my servant Job down there? In fact," He adds, "there is no one like him on the Earth. A blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil."

With the word "evil," the original axis of evil responds, interestingly. "Does Job fear God for nothing? I mean, look. Talk about kid-glove treatment. Penthouse perks. Look at what he has. Watch closely. Have you not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has?" Look at the categories.

You have protected him in his body, you have protected him in his family, and you have protected his possessions, all that he owns, on every side. I mean, the divine wall around this man’s life is enviable. You have not only protected him, but you have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.

The accuser points out divine favoritism. The audacity of that. You have built a hedge around him. You have blessed him like no other. Who wouldn’t worship You? His great hope is to level Job. "You bring him down to the dirt like the rest of those humans have to live, and you see what he’s made of."

Look at how he puts it. "You put forth Your hand," verse 11, "and touch all"—I have marked that word in my Bible—"touch all that he has, and he will curse You to Your face." Now, it’s a clever plan. First of all, Job does not deserve that kind of treatment. Job has walked with God, certainly in his adult years.

Job is now the best of the best. He is the greatest in the land of the East, and he is a servant of God. But Satan’s response is, "You want to know what he’s really made of? Remove all the protection. Strip away all the veneer of comfort, and you’ll see, deep inside, he’ll turn on You. He will curse You to Your face." Satan’s prediction.

"Instead of treating him like an overindulged child, why don’t You treat him like anybody else on Earth? Let him feel the pain of a disease. Let him know what it’s like to suffer the sorrow of death of a child. Let him go through the loss of some of those possessions. You’ll see what Job’s made of."

His point is that he’s worshiping God because of what he gets out of it, not because the Lord is first in his life. Verse 12 is an amazing statement. The Lord said to Satan, "Behold, all"—I’ve marked that—"all that he has is in your power." Now, that’s a—don’t go any further. It’s a frightening, frightening thought.

Look at the permission slip He passes Satan. "All that he has, he’s yours to deal with." He puts a caveat there. "Only do not put forth your hand on him. Don’t you touch his life. Don’t you touch his body. Don’t you touch his soul. Don’t you touch his mind. You touch his possessions. You touch his family. But leave him alone."

So Satan departed from the presence of the Lord. Now, I know some of you are still hung up on how in the world did the intruder get in. Right? I don’t know. Now let’s go on. There are a lot of these things I don’t know. I just know what’s written and I accept it.

There was a time in my life I had answers for questions nobody was asking. And I philosophically meandered all around Robin Hood’s barn coming up with answers that I thought were so profound but they had no biblical basis. We’re never told why. Oh, we have a lot of commentators giving you their opinions, but they’re worth nothing more than your opinion or mine.

So why waste our time with opinions? The fact is Satan is allowed in, and Satan is allowed this moment of bargaining, and God, for some profound, unrevealed reason, says, "I’ll take you up on that." Does He still do that? I don’t know. I don’t know. I know He did it here. And I know when the light flashed green, that’s all Satan wanted. "Let me at him."

We’re talking the original Ground Zero in a matter of hours. He is reduced to a twisted mass of humanity. But let’s leave for this period and let’s apply what we’ve heard, okay? I find four principles that emerge from these first 12 verses that help me today. At least I can say these four things from the text, and they seem worth mentioning and worth remembering.

You may wish to write them down. Who knows? Someday you may need them, just as I’m sure at this time Job needed someone to help him remember them when this happened. Number one: There is an enemy we encounter we cannot see. I don’t mean to frighten you with this, but I do mean to educate you.

There is an enemy we encounter we cannot see. Get past your empiricism. You were trained in college, you were trained to think deeper and not to buy into all of this superstitious stuff. "If you can’t prove it in a test tube, it isn’t there. If you can’t see it, it isn’t real." Nonsense is my answer to that.

Some of the most real things in life you and I will never see. We have a very real enemy and we encounter him regularly or one of his emissaries. And let me add, he is real. He is real. He has a strategy aiming to play tricks on your mind and conquer you and bring you down. His hope ultimately is to ruin your testimony and to destroy your life.

In the process, if it takes ruining your family relationships, he’ll go there. If it takes tempting you to take cut corners in your business where you would not have done so in earlier days, he’ll go there. Whatever it takes. We encounter an enemy, and because we cannot see him does not mean he is not just as real.

Second principle: There are trials we endure we do not deserve, but they are permitted. There are trials we endure we do not deserve. My imaginary lady in my early example did not deserve to have a husband that walked out on her. She did not deserve to work for a company that turned against the principles that she thought they believed in.

She did not deserve that kind of physical report. She was a hard-working single mother trying to raise three kids under the age of 15, but it was all permitted. That’s imaginary. Yours isn’t. Do not try to unscrew God’s inscrutability. Do not try to grasp His profound plan. Do not try. That’s a waste. That’s a waste.

And because you will not be able to do that, you will become increasingly more confused, ultimately resentful, finally bitter, and then Satan will have won the day. Accept it. Accept the trial as permitted by God. Nothing touches my life that has not first passed through the hands of God. Nothing. Nothing.

That’s either true or He is partially sovereign, which is a little like saying, "I am almost a husband." He is fully sovereign, and He permits trials that we do not deserve. Number three: There is a plan we explore we will not understand, but it is best. There is a plan we explore but we will not understand, but it is best.

It works together for good. It isn’t altogether good. It works together for good. The disease Job went through wasn’t good. It worked together for good. The loss of his family wasn’t good. It worked together for good. We see in the pinpoint of time. God’s view is panoramic.

Tozer put it this way: "We think of ourselves as inhabiting some parenthetical interval between the God who was and the God who will be, and in this ever-present now we are lost in that ancient and cosmic loneliness." God’s cosmic plan is at work now, and He doesn’t feel the need to explain it all to us.

If He tried, our answer would be like the student looking at his calculus teacher. "What?" You wouldn’t get it, nor would I. And yes, I’m going to add this: Sometime it’s the permission of demonic attack. And I don’t know why. It’s the whole battle with good and evil, and it is here, and it is you will live with it.

And my answer to you is to come to terms with it. Acknowledge it. Seek the power you have in the Lord Jesus. Don’t try to understand it. Don’t try to understand it. Let me say another word about the enemy. Can I do that? Years ago—in fact, for 49 years—Dr. William Henry Green was professor of biblical and oriental literature at Princeton Theological Seminary, 1851 to 1900, when he died.

Wrote a fine book called Conflict and Triumph. By the way, that was the era in which the American Presbyterian Church was having its fight over the inerrancy of Scripture. A.A. Hodge, B.B. Warfield, J. Gresham Machen—those names you’re familiar with, or should be. Along with them, this man Green, Dr. William Henry Green, stood with them for the inerrancy of Scripture.

Listen to what he says about the enemy, referring to Satan. "He is not a mere spy traversing the Earth intent upon ferreting out all he can discover. He is the old spirit of malice and wickedness, aiming to pervert men from the right ways of the Lord and to destroy all goodness as far as it is in his power. There is a profound meaning in his appearing here among the sons of God before the Lord.

Don’t miss this. It is designed to express his subordination and subjection to divine control. He cannot act at his own discretion. He is not at liberty to pursue his mischievous designs to whatever extent he may choose. There is a—I love this—there is a superior restraint to which he is obliged to bow, a superior will that sets limits to his rage and allows him even within these limits to act out his evil nature only for the sake of some divine end which he is made to be instrumental in achieving."

He concludes, "Satan is the enemy of goodness and the enemy of humanity. With the powers of an archangel and with the malice and subtlety of a fiend, he is intent on our destruction and hesitates at nothing by which it can be accomplished. He pursues his mischievous designs with sleepless vigilance. Invisible to human eyes, he has all the advantage of secrecy and taking his victims at unawares."

He never sleeps. He never rests. He never takes it easy. You’re never out of the crosshairs of his scope. He knows you better than you will ever know yourself. He is permitted to do that. The fourth principle: There are consequences we experience we could not anticipate, but they are necessary.

There are consequences we experience we could not anticipate, but they are necessary. I know, I know. Some of you are thinking, "Don’t quit." Well, not all of you, but some of you are thinking, "Don’t quit here." We have to. It’s enough to digest for now. I don’t know where you find yourself, but I would be willing to wager that three-fourths of you are going through something that is unfair.

Knowing humanity as I do, I would wager most of you, most of us, are going through something that we don’t deserve. By that I mean generally. We got what we deserved, we’d all be pretty hot right now, but you know what I mean. You didn’t ask for that, you didn’t anticipate that, you didn’t think it would come.

You’ve done your best to do, you’ve kept your part, you’ve maintained your bargain of it, you’ve stayed by. And look at what’s happened. And I just want to say to you, you have moved onto Job’s turf. And if nothing else, it has prepared you to pay close attention to the teaching of this book. It has something for us all.

The whole story doesn’t end with Satan departing from the presence of the Lord. There’s a whole lot more here. Let’s bow our heads, please. I have found in my years in ministry that when you mention the enemy as much as I have, two things happen. First of all, people get very quiet, and I think we should because it’s sobering.

And second, he is exposed, so he kicks his work up a notch. I would not be surprised that he didn’t turn on some of us in a more direct way, direct demonic attacks against us in some manner that would be a little out of the ordinary for our experience. Remember that last point: You can’t anticipate what’s going to happen.

The good news is for you who know the Lord Jesus as you have a power in Christ the Lord that no one else on this Earth has. They are at the mercy of the enemy; you are not. Greater is He who is in you—that’s Christ—than he who is in the world—that’s Satan. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you are able to restrain and withstand the attacks.

I urge you to walk very sensitively with Christ this week. Very sensitively. If you do not know the Lord Christ, I invite you to Him today. He hangs ready for you. May seem a strange way to put it, but you see it was the cross that opened the door between you and God, and it’s on the cross that He hung, and there He died that you might know what life is all about.

Forgiveness, relief, power, strength to go on, hope when the path before you seems hopeless. And I point you to Him today. Come by faith. Use your own words in a prayer. "Lord, I’m a sinner. I can’t make it on my own. I come to Christ who paid the penalty for my sins in full. Whatever you have for me, give me the strength through Christ to face it." We’d love to talk with you and help you get started in this new life.

Our Father, we realize in setting the stage for disaster that we have really spoken of a number of different people’s situations. Without knowing it, there’s a plan underway that will reduce us and break us and humble us, and who knows why?

Your plan ultimately is to prepare us to be like unto Your Son, Christ. But it will hit us full force, and we will need Your strength to go through this road less traveled. Help us to understand that a life that is difficult or a life that is unfair is still orchestrated by a God who loves us and has our best at heart.

Some of it to discipline us, some of it to reshape us, all of it for Your glory, for Your good. Prepare us now, our Father, for what is before us this week, and find us open and willing, humble and trusting. For I ask it in the name of the Savior, Jesus Christ. And everyone said, Amen.

Bill Meyer: Difficult or unfair—either way, it's still orchestrated by a God who loves you and has your best at heart. That's not a sentimental statement. That's the truth that arises from this timeless story in the Old Testament book of Job. And it's a truth that has sustained broken people for thousands of years.

If today's message has touched something tender in your heart, we invite you to reach out to us here at Insight for Living. You don't have to navigate this road alone. Chuck Swindoll and his creative team have prepared a variety of resources to walk alongside you through this series.

First, Chuck wrote a full-length biography on the life of Job. It's written in the engaging and refreshing style you've come to expect. In addition to the biography, we also have a brand-new 22-chapter Bible study workbook. It's part of our Searching the Scriptures studies, and it was created using the same Bible study method that Chuck applied when preparing this sermon series.

Plus, you can access audio recordings of Chuck's full-length sermons. You'll find this special bundle of related resources online at insight.org/offer or call us at 800-772-8888. And then we're pleased to offer a brand-new resource for families.

If there's a child between the age of 10 and 12 in your life—perhaps a son or daughter, a grandchild, a niece or nephew, or maybe a student in your classroom—we’ve created a book you’ll want to pass along. Insight for Living's beloved audio series, Paws & Tales, has entertained and instructed families for years.

And now, for the very first time, the adventures of Wildwood come to life in print. The Overcomers is a rich 300-page novel filled with wholesome adventure, memorable characters, and stories that quietly but powerfully reinforce God's love and His plan. You can purchase this brand-new book, The Overcomers, by calling 800-772-8888 or go online to pawsandtales.org.

I’m Bill Meyer. Join us when Chuck Swindoll describes what he calls reeling and recovering from devastating news, Thursday on Insight for Living.

The preceding message, "Setting the Stage for Disaster," was copyrighted in 2002, 2004, and 2025, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2025 by Charles R. Swindoll, Incorporated. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.