Zophar: But the eyes of the wicked will fail; all way of escape will be lost to them, and their hope is to breathe their last.
Job: The tents of robbers are at peace, and those who provoke God are secure.
So who is right?
We see pain and suffering in the world. We experience them.
Job is crying out for an answer. And at times we take the way of his friends ... If you are suffering it is because you deserve it. But, that doesn't have to be true. You may be suffering and there is no wrong being punished in you.
The only way to truly have a hope of knowing what is going on is to struggle with God. To wrestle with Him. To talk and listen. To live. To try.
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
And in all of our suffering we have Christ. Who stood upon the earth and bore the pain, felt the temptations, cried the tears, lived the life, and made the sacrifice.
And in our flesh we shall see Him with our own eyes. And have comfort.
Everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.
As salvation for Job came from looking forward to Christ. From seeing through his pain to Christ standing in heaven as the witness who testified for him on high. Our salvation comes from Christ as well.
Our sins may be forgiven, but we must strive to live a life worthy of His name. How small of a thing it is to live a life of thankfulness. God poured out the gift of salvation for me ... I can not spit upon that. I must live a life that honors it.
And I will fail.
But, I must remind myself daily ... and try daily.
And here we come to one of my favorite books of the Bible: Job.
Let the day perish on which I was born.
And so begins the argument of Job to God. What touches me about Job is that he is so open with God and his friends. He knows he did no wrong and he is confused about justice. About how the LORD deals with the evil men of the world. And how he is being dealt with in his own life.
He cries out in pain. Both emotional and physical pain. He is hurt and confused. Job is like all of us in suffering. Though he certainly suffered more than anyone I have known.
The lessons of Job are not about suffering in silence. It is about the struggle of your own suffering and reaching out to God and others.
If your children have sinned against him, he has delivered them into the hand of their transgression.
I may die tonight driving home. God may feel I deserve to die for sins in my life. Or it just may be the time that He acts to take me out of this world.
How I die, or why, or when does not matter. What matters is how I live my life NOW. Each of us has a life that is essentially one-on-one with God. Each of Job's children had that same life. We the readers know, and Job knew, that why they died was not for their sins against God. The plan they were part of was larger than that. Just as the arc of your life is larger than what you see or what you even know as your life.
Lastly, for those that are grieving it is foolish and cruel to feel righteous anger towards them. And it is stupid to vent that anger in hateful words as Job's friends had done. If those that hurt are angry with God, so be it. It is silly to imagine that we can protect God from someone being angry with Him. God IS. He can certainly handle a relationship with someone in pain.
Your calling is to be His hands and feet in this world. Not the hateful mouth.
But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears ...
How true for those that don't want to hear the truth. We stop up our ears. For myself, the way I stop them up is with anger and not letting the other person speak. To fill my ears with noise.
LORD, open me up. Open my eyes to see the hurt. Open my ears to listen to those in pain. Open my heart to feel the pain and suffering of others.
Sometimes I find myself coasting. I know enough of what is "right" and "wrong", not just in my heart, but in the eyes of others. So you learn to talk the talk. You spend time speaking on how to live for the LORD and not enough time actually living for the LORD.
This is a real risk for those that lead in the church and those that teach. Mainly because we know more than enough to coast for a very long time. If your car engine is idle and out of gear you may go a ways before problems come upon you. And at the first hill that shows up a coasting life will be very easy to see. Because you will not make it over.
LORD ... engage my life. Help me to look first to you and tap into the power you have for me.
I don't like cleaning. Strangely, I do like to vacuum. My wife likes to clean though.
We were going through our house and cleaning out all the drawers with junk in them and under beds and in the storage room and in the closets and on and on. Of course to me the stuff she was going through and throwing away wasn't junk ( yes ... it was ... I just don't like to admit that ). And thinking about it, the reason it really bugged me was because I didn't want her to see all the junk I did keep instead of getting rid of.
It is the same with God and the sin in my life. You don't want to deal with it and expose it to God. But your body is God's temple. Unlike your salvation keeping it clean isn't a one shot deal. Cleaning out the mess of your life is a continual process. As the temple in Jerusalem was cleaned and repaired time and time again. So we need to work on our spiritual life. Open up the windows and throw out the trash. That amazing feeling you have standing in your cleaned up room is nothing compared to standing before God with a cleaned up soul.
We have grape vines in our backyard that I need to clean up. Part of that is finding the branches that no longer produce and cutting them from the vine. And another part is finding the ones that do produce and shaping them, by cutting them back, to become healthier.
The LORD is our vine dresser. He cuts away that which doesn't bear fruit and cuts into those that do as well. We may focus on the parts that are cut away and cast into the fire, yet it is what is left that interests me. Being fruitful in the LORD isn't about being left alone. It is about being pruned. To be cut into the shape the is best for us and is most pleasing to God.
This isn't an easy process. Pruning stresses the branch so that it will do what the vine dresser desires. Likewise God will allow many painful events into our lives. Nothing that will break us as simple branches in His faithful hands. But events that will rather shape us to produce the fruit He desires from us.
