Do Christians Still Receive Divine Protection?
In the days of the Old Testament and even when Jesus walked the earth, the Jews believed that if you had a relationship with God and you weren't a perpetual and unrepentant breaker of the law, you would have a hedge-like protection or a protective fence by which God divinely kept you safe and allowed you to prosper and be kept from tragedy in your life. They also believed that if you were poor, afflicted with chronic illness or disease, if you were blind or lame, it was because you were either a sinner or your parents were sinners of such great proportion that God saw fit not only to take His divine protection away, He also saw to it that you suffered by inflicting these tragedies upon you and even your children if your sins were bad enough. There are many who believe that is still true today. God brings killer storms and other tragedies into peoples live because of such sin as retribution.
If you look in Psalm 91, you find a scripture that supports the theological doctrine of Divine protection.
Psalm 91:1-16 NASB
1 One who dwells in the shelter of the Most High Will lodge in the shadow of the Almighty.2 I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, My God, in whom I trust!” 3 For it is He who rescues you from the net of the trapper and from the deadly plague. 4 He will cover you with His pinions, and under His wings you may take refuge; His faithfulness is a shield and wall. 5 You will not be afraid of the terror by night, Or of the arrow that flies by day; 6 Of the plague that stalks in darkness, or of the destruction that devastates at noon. 7 A thousand may fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, But it shall not approach you. 8 You will only look on with your eyes and see the retaliation against the wicked. 9 For You have made the Lord my refuge, The Most High, your dwelling place. 10 No evil will happen to you, Nor will any plague come near your tent.11 For He will give His angels orders concerning you, To protect you in all your ways. 12 On their hands they will lift you up, So that you do not strike your foot against a stone. 13 You will walk upon the lion and cobra, You will trample the young lion and the serpent. 14 “Because he has loved Me, I will save him; I will set him securely on high, because he has known My name. 15 He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. 16 I will satisfy him with a long life, And show him My salvation.”
And then if we look at the story of Job we see that God had a fence of protection around Job’s life as well as all that he had and owned because Job was a righteous man devoted to honoring and glorifying God. But to prove His faith in Job’s righteous and loving heart toward God to Satan, God removed that protection from Job’s life.
Job 1:6-12 New American Standard Bible
6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. 7 The Lord said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” 8 The Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.” 9 Then Satan answered the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing? 10 Have You not made a fence 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. 11 But reach out with Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will certainly curse You to Your face.” 12 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not reach out and put your hand on him.” So Satan departed from the presence of the Lord.
Satan then pursued and persecuted Job with calamity after calamity in an effort to invoke Job to curse God. Job loses some of the most important things in his life including his income and his children. Still Job refuses to curse God and remains faithful in believing in God’s just sovereignty and goodness.
After Satan failed to get Job to curse God by these tactics, we find Satan going back to God, saying, Job’s trust in God is only steadfast because he still has his health. So God, removes that protection but does not allow Satan to kill Job. Satan then afflicts Job with painful sores from head to toe. At this point, even Job’s wife encourages him to curse God and die.
Listen to Job’s response to his wife found in Job 2:10 NASB But he said to her, “You are speaking as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we actually accept good from God but not accept adversity?” Despite all this, Job did not sin with his lips.
All of Job’s friends mocked him and accused him of being a sinner and committing some hidden nefarious deeds. They each felt like that was why Job was suffering. I believe that their mocking and judgmental behavior was indicative that they could finally feel superior to Job and feel better about themselves after years of being jealous and feeling inferior to Job as they watched him prosper under God’s love and protection. They were jealous of Job’s good standing and relationship with God. What we should note is that the reason for that loving and protective relationship wasn't arbitrary, it was because Job sought to honor, commune, and glorify God not only because of his love for God but also for the benefit of his family.
I think that what we can glean from this, after Job’s responses to his friends unfounded accusations was to continue to glorify God, was that Job knew that the good in his life came from God even though he now felt misjudged by God and laments to God for the losses in his life and cries out to God for the injustice of his suffering.
One of the points of Job’s story is that we don’t have the right to condemn God for His actions and choices even though we may not understand them or agree with them, We need to come to grips with our ignorance and that He has knowledge of which you and I are ignorant. If we know that He is the creator of everything that is good for us, we should have enough faith in God and know that He has a plan that is meant to glorify us whether we can recognize it or not, as long as we persevere the tragedies and tribulations in this life. In the end, like Job, we will have a restoration that we cannot come close to comprehending now.
In chapter 38 after Job verbally laments and cries out to God for the injustice of his suffering, God responds to Job this way in verses 2 and 4.
2 “Who is this who darkens the divine plan by words without knowledge?
and
4 Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding,
God points out that we have no right to judge His decisions because of how ignorant we are of what He has done or what He is doing.
Job had no idea that he was being glorified for his faith instead of being punished for his iniquities as those around him claimed. That may give some the idea that God is trivial but it should reveal how important our faith is to God no matter what we may be going through.
Job’s story is also a lesson that serves to remind us that other people may judge us out of their ignorance, their lack of knowledge of what is happening in our lives. Like Jobs friends, they judge according to an exaggerated self-indulgent idealism about God and their own relationship with Him.
Some Christians still make snap judgments and are quicker to anger instead of following the Biblical wisdom that challenges us or rather commands us as His disciples to be slow to anger and quick to forgive when we are so prone to being ignorant of what others are dealing with. We can see, like Job’s fair weather friends and even his wife, some who call themselves Christians become part of Satan’s attacks, becoming his allies in trying to separate God’s beloved from God’s protective love and encouragement.
While I believe that we do have divine protection as Christians, that divine protection doesn’t always guarantee us a trouble free life. In fact Jesus warned his disciples that they would have a hard road ahead of them and they needed to be on guard against certain people who would want them arrested and flog. There may be people in our lives at some point that will want us to be flogged both literally and figuratively in the court of public opinion.
Matthew 10:16-22 New American Standard Bible
16 “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be as wary as serpents, and as innocent as doves. 17 But be on guard against people, for they will hand you over to the courts and flog you in their synagogues; 18 and you will even be brought before governors and kings on My account, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. 19 But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given you in that hour. 20 For it is not you who are speaking, but it is the Spirit of your Father who is speaking in you. 21 “Now brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. 22 And you will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.
(Give and illustration of a scenario that might happen to Christians in the future when the Prophecy of the Anti-Christ comes into power and demands our worship. Of how we might be accused and arrested for being a Christian)
Jesus tells us to expect not only persecution but betrayal and hatred even from the people we love including family because of our faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. His name will be that contentious that hated and that contention and hatred will be manifested toward the faithful disciples of Christ. That is why we need to see each other as brothers and sisters: as family who are united by our love for Jesus and His desire to glorify us in the end, if we persevere and remain in Him faithfully. He promises that if we remain in Him, He will remain in us. He will never forsake us.
Now let’s turn our attention to Paul’s epistle to the Romans, he gives us a glimpse of God’s divine protection. Listen to the encouragement he offers to the Christians in Rome in spite of the persecution they may have to endure.
Romans 8:35-37 New American Standard Bible
35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or trouble, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 Just as it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We were regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
In the end we will be conquerors of all that besieges us. We won’t just conquer, we will overwhelm all that comes against us and the only way that could be possible is if we receive God’s faithful and divine protection. There is absolutely no way we could overwhelmingly overcome the thigs that Satan will besiege us with without God’s help and loving protection.
While it seemingly appeared to Job’s wife and Job’s friends that God was causing His troubles, you and I know that it was Satan who was doing the attacking, not because Job was sinning but instead to try to turn Job from loving God. He is still trying to do that to faithful Christians today through his attacks often using his those he has turned from obeying God for their own selfish reasons.
God was still there protecting Job from Satan but it was obvious that the hedge of protection had been lowered to show that it was Job’s love for God that motivated God to protect him from the worst that Satan could do to him.
God would not allow Satan to take Job’s life. God allowed Satan to attack and humiliate Job before his wife and his friends but He also knew that Job had the strength to persevere and still glorify God.
Paul paints that same picture in his first epistle to the church in Corinth. As I read this next verse found in 1 Corinthians chapter 10: verse 13, listen to the similarities to Job’ story.
1 Corinthians 10:13 New American Standard Bible
13 No temptation has overtaken you except something common to mankind; and God is faithful,
In other words, Satan isn’t going to throw anything new at you. His arsenal isn’t more modern and more powerful. He used all of his weapons on mankind before. It may be something that we haven’t personally experienced before, but someone in the past has. Let's read on!
so He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able,
Now, let me be clear about what this scripture truly means. It doesn’t mean that God is not going to allow us to be tempted beyond what we can overcome on our own. No!. We are all capable of being tempted beyond our breaking point if we remain on our own but if we sincerely turn to God and sincerely desire to be yoked to His righteousness, we connect to the strength and power to overcome any temptation or any attack Satan throws our way. It is that connection to God that is our strength and our protection that keeps Satan from fully destroying our lives, so that we do not suffer eternally. There is always God’s protection in Jesus Christ. It may not always be what we are used to. We may suffer and not know or understand why but for those who love God, the end is a restoration of the life we were meant to have; we were created to have in the beginning before Adam and Eve’s disobedient rebellion.
If you look at this life as your all in all as atheists do, you will always be ignorant of what God is doing and what God has done to protect you from the woes of this life. You will always be ignorant of the hope God has provided; the hope that creates an inspiration within us to glorify God no matter what Satan throws at us.
Not even the threat of death can separate us from that hope because nothing can separate us from God’s love.
1 Peter 1:3-5 New American Standard Bible
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, 5 who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
In the end we find that God’s protection never truly leaves us. Let’s pray
