What if God sees everything that you’re doing...all of the good...all of the serving Him..all the sacrificing and striving and trying to be good and follow Him….and STILL bad things happen??
What we see in this story, is a man who always obeys God, and always gets rewarded for it. He’s a very rich man, lots of kids, success everywhere he goes. He’s a GOOD man, a man of complete integrity. Job was as close to perfect as humans can get, basically. And he lived a good life because of it. (success can put up as many blinders as failure can…)
Job 1
Job 2:3-13
We see Job doing two things incredibly RIGHT here:
He weeps
He worships.
Job 3:1-5
Job maintains the entire time that he’s innocent. He’s done nothing so wrong that it would possibly justify this. But he also maintains that God is just.
And so, in the end, he DEMANDS a response from God. He MUST know how God can possibly justify this.
Job 32:2-5
Elihu make some SOLID points…he’s essentially saying:
You ASSUME God isn’t answering you.
--maybe He has, and you weren’t listening.
Job 33:12-18
You ASSUME God is going against his own sense of justice.
when really, you’re putting your own justice on Him.
Job 34:33-37
You ASSUME you are without sin.
But by doing so, you are committing the sin of pride.
Job 35:1-13
You ASSUME that because He hasn’t answered so far, He isn’t going to.
when really, you’re just not being patient.
Job 35:14-16
You ASSUME suffering is a punishment.
but what if it’s a warning?
Job 36:13-21
You ASSUME you should understand everything about God.
but really, who could? ever?
Job 36:26-29
We’re too busy trying to defend ourselves...that we can’t see the EGREGIOUS assumptions we’re making about God.
And because of those assumptions, we’re ANGRY AT GOD.
We’re comfortable in our assumptions..
Job 38:1-11
Job 40:1-14