We have all experienced those difficult situations in our lives when we didn’t quite understand why things went the way they did. Yet through the midst of it all, the Father allows it to happen, and He uses it in order to purify us into His perfected image.
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28 KJV)
Consider when the Lord brought Job to Satan’s attention.
Then the LORD said to Satan,
“Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?”
(Job 1:8)
Job was considered to be blameless, upright, God fearing, and perfect in the sight of the Lord. Yet out of the Lord’s love for him, he allowed Job to be tested resulting in the loss of his children, wife, land, wealth, and animals.
When Peter is tested, Satan asks to sift him and Jesus allows him to saying,
“I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not,”
(Luke 22: 31-32).
Why does the Lord allow this?
“I said in my heart, ‘Concerning the condition of the sons of men, God tests them, that they may see that they themselves are like animals,’”
(Ecclesiastes 3:18).
In the Old testament they sacrificed burnt offerings in hopes it could atone for sins and clean the conscience of man. On Passover, our Chirst was crucified as that sacrificial lamb. As He sat among the disciples He said,
“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me,”
(Matthew 16:24).
Yeshua understood the process of dying to self. He understood what the high priests of His day did not. David understood that without understanding the knowledge of God, we are like beasts (Psalm 49:20). Paul understood that to truly live, we must die (1 Corinthians 4:10). We were called to be living sacrifices unto the Lord by following the example He left for us, that we might follow His steps and become perfect.
“For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps.”
(1 Peter 2:21)
The Father gave us the Torah as a blueprint to understand how to present a proper sacrifice. The Lord, as we may know, never wanted burnt sacrifices in the natural (Hebrews 10). The Lord wanted a sacrifice that was spiritual. Our understanding of Him is reflective upon what type of sacrifice we bring.
If we go back to the beginning, remember what the Lord said,
“Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil” (Genesis 3:22).
It is necessary for us to experience evil so that we may recognize what is the Lord’s character and what is the beast. It teaches us, and allows us to then choose with our own free will, which is the path we ought to take. The Lord will use everything according to His will in order to refine us into the perfect image of Him. He does this so that by transformation we would learn to overcome this flesh just as Yeshua has.
Job understood this when he said:
“Who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth, And makes us wiser than the birds of heaven?”
(Job 35:11)
If we break up this verse in ancient Hebrew, “us more than the beast” is H4480 in the Ancient Hebrew Lexicon. It’s the mem meaning water or blood, and the nun meaning seed or as Yeshua says in Luke 8:11, the word. This speaks of a bringing out of- through the revelation of the word. The same pictographs are used in Exodus 20:2 for “out of the house”, when the Lord says,
“I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
As we may know, Egypt means a place of limiting God. Through the revelation of the word, we are coming out of the place of bondage (limiting God) or coming out of our beastly nature.
Job saw the beast (animal nature) as the flesh or his carnality. Job was not talking about beasts, as in the beasts of the earth, he saw those beasts as parables. The beasts were only symbolic of the carnal mind, the fleshly reasoning, and the mindsets he had to overcome. The Father gives us opportunities to overcome flesh in order to kill the beasts that live within us. In exchange, He washes us with His word. Doing all this, He allows us the chance to take dominion over it so that through the Lord our God, we crush Satan under our feet.
“And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.”
(Romans 16:20)
As a result Job gained everything he lost and more (Job 42:10). After Peter denied Jesus, he returned only to become an apostle. The Lord only gives us things that we can handle (1 Corinthians 10:13). The Father is strategic in helping us understand that the things of this world mean nothing. They are only really put in our lives to teach us how to return back to Him. The Lord is looking for those who will overcome the things of this world, in order to step into the fullness of the Glory, and become One with the Father (Revelation 3:21).
“For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
(Romans 8:29 KJV)