Satan
usually keeps his greatest strength and most violent temptations unto the last.
When he thinks we are at the weakest, then he commeth with the strongest
assaults. If Satan had sent Job word of the death of his children first, all
the rest would have been as nothing to him; he would not have regarded the loss
of his cattle when he heard that all his Children were crushed to death by the
fall of the house. As one great evil falling upon us, takes the heart off from
having any sense and feeling of a lesser evil; that great evil which fell upon
the Wife of Phineas, when she heard that the Ark of God was taken, afflicted
her so extremely, that she could not at all rejoice in the birth of her son she
had no sense of that. Here was therefore the cunning of Satan, lest Job should
have lost the smart of the lesser afflictions, least they should have all been
swallowed up in the greater, he brings them out in order, the least first, the
greatest reserved for the last.
We observe in war that when once the great ordinance
are discharged, the soldiers are not afraid of the musket; so when a great
battery is made by some thundering terrible judgement upon the soul, or upon
the body or the estate of any man; the noise and fears of lesser evils are
drowned and abated. Therefore Satan keeps his greatest shot to the last, that
the small might be heard and felt, and that he last coming in greater strength
might find the least strength to resist it.
To lose
all our children is as grievous as to lose an only child; now that is made a
cause of the highest sorrows, Zach 12:10. They shall mourn for him, as one that
mourneth for his only son; that is, they shall mourn most bitterly. Now as the
measure of mercies may be taken by the comforts which they produce, so we may
take the measure of an affliction by the sorrow which it produceth, and that is
the greatest affliction that causes the greatest sorrow.
.jpg)
