Satan Bets on the Nature of Man - Job 1-2

 Job 2:4-5 (ESV)

Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.”

Satan is out to prove the Job’s piety is based upon his prosperity and not is love for God.   Satan believes that Job serves God because God has put so many blessings on his lap:

Job 1:9-10 (ESV)

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.

God has already given to Satan power to destroy Job’s property, his prosperity and his family.   His servants are gone, his crops and animals are gone and his ten children have all died, all in one day.   Yet, Job still worshipped God:

Job 1:20-21 (ESV)

Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

Now Satan is proposing that Job was apparently willing to give his “skin” for their “skin.”   Satan is accusing Job of being okay with the loss he suffered, as long as he was still alive, himself.   This seems like a completely absurd argument but it is coming from Satan.   What Satan is proposing is to have God strike Job’s own body and then you will have the real test of Job’s loyalty and/or love for God.   Although Satan is cruel and morbid in his thinking, his logic has been proven time and time again in the history of man’s crisis.   When we have a crisis today it is not long before mankind asks, “Where was God?  Why would He allow such a thing? If He was powerful He could stop this from happening?”    Satan may not know what Job will do, but he knows the hearts of man and they are desperately wicked.   Satan, in the above statement, is simply playing out the natural results of a man full of sin.  Job’s righteousness was not his own. It was given to Him by God. That is what the entire Scriptures teach.  It is through His faith that Job obtained righteousness because that is the only way to obtain it.   But, Satan believes Job will curse God if God touches the heart and soul of his person.    This, regretfully, is the mindset of most of mankind.  Satan may be cruel to suggest this but he is not wrong to believe it so.  Yet, we read though-out the rest of the book where Job struggles with what happens and seeks God in the mess of all this, yet he never curses God.   Faith, when acted upon, continues to bring blessing despite circumstances and Satan induced situations.