Who wouldn’t want to face their accuser? But if you suspect that God is the one who accuses you, is it even possible?
Job seems to think so. In the short version of his complaint he says “I haven’t done anything wrong, and yet I am being treated like a sinner. I want to talk to God about this and have Him explain to me why this treatment is fair.” And in Job’s mind that is a reasonable request. I guess a lot of things seem reasonable to us because we are largely ignorant of how all eternity works. I suppose that our demands of God seem a little like the demands of toddlers to their parents…or perhaps the demands of toddlers to the President or a King. It’s hard to put myself in Job’s place, because I have never been as sick and injured as he was, and I haven’t suffered the loss he suffered. In fact, it truly is hard to imagine that God would allow the experiment to go this far. For that reason, it’s invaluable to us to have the account of Job, it reminds us that our lives can become pretty dismal while we are still in “good graces” with the Savior. There simply isn’t any guarantee of perpetual blessing.
On the other hand, what has Job lost so far that he had any control over? His children are grown and on their own. They are responsible for themselves by now, and their eternal fate is in their own hands. Yes, Job continued to offer sacrifices for them, just as you or I would pray for our own children, but that isn’t going to get them “into heaven”. Only their own good confession will accomplish that. Are the flocks and fields worth lamenting over? Fortunes come and go, and eventually we leave it all behind anyway. Health? Every one of us would wish to be healthy right up to the day we die, but few are. Our health deteriorates, our vision fails, our heart cannot keep up, we lose our hearing and our strength. Our minds begin to fade…(ok, ok….I’m getting depressed here.) The point is: if someone is suffering greatly as they approach death, what does it mean on a spiritual level? I don’t think it means much. Either way, in a few days or weeks we will be with Jesus, and never feel pain again. I don’t mean to be glib, it’s just that suffering at the point of death is a sad reality for many godly people.
What has Job lost that he had control over? Nothing.
His complaint is that he is being treated unfairly, because he proposes that God has to bless him since he hasn’t sinned. To put it another way “if we don’t sin, then you have to bless us”. Actually, that isn’t true.
On the hopeful side, I sense that Job is willing to serve the Lord regardless of whether he is blessed or not. He is in no danger of denying his faith, he simply wants an explanation, and he believes that God owes him that.
He will get an explanation (of sorts) later in the book. You don’t want to miss that.
Faithfully,
PR