Job 9:33
During the current Quarter for my MTI class through Samford we have been
studying the book of Job. We are all familiar with the tale of Job and his
suffering. We have even sung hymns about the "patience of Job." But
how does the book relate to us and our lives? And Why do good people suffer?
Why does it seem that the wicked prosper and the righteous are the ones who
never seem to “get ahead?” Why does God “allow” bad things to happen to people
who we feel don’t deserve it? Why do we feel we could do a better job of
dispensing justice to the universe than God can? These and other hard biblical
questions seem to permeate throughout the Book of Job.
After all his suffering Job believes that if he could just "pull
God into court" and plead his case then God would wipe away his
"mistaken" case of suffering. But he realized that God was too
powerful to face alone and asked in the verse above for a "defense
attorney," or mediator, to plead his case. Job did not realize that he was
making a prophecy. Hundereds of years later we got that mediator in the form of
our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Jesus went to the cross to plead our case, bear our
sentence, before God.
Pastor Ray Stedman puts it thusly, "Job is laying the foundation
here in his own understanding for the tremendous revelation that comes in the
New Testament when God becomes man. God takes our place, lives as we live,
feels as we feel, solves the great problem between us and God, and brings the
two—God and man—together. For the first time in Job, we begin to sense what God
is driving at."
We also have that that blessed assurance that our sins are forgiven.
But it does not answer the question of why good people suffer? Why does
it seem that oftentimes the wicked prosper? Job's friends believed in Divine
Retribution. They believed that when someone is suffering they must have sinned
and are being punished for it. They insisted Job and his family must have
sinned, refused to confess and was being punished accordingly. But.. he didn't
and wasn't. Job was blameless. He had not sinned. God had allowed Satan to test
Job by taking away everything that was dear to him.
Thus Job maintained that it was a case of mistaken identity. Job did
exactly what we do when we go through a time of suffering and pain. We ask
"why?" The difference we are not blameless. But we have the mediator
that Job desired and lacked. We have the confidence of Jesus. In the last
chapters of Job, God answers Job by explaining to him why He is not to be
questioned. After God shows Job the error of his ways, Job merely says, "I
have already said too much and I will now cover my mouth."
The key to Job is that while he questioned God's sense of justice, he
remained faithful to God throughout. He did not, as his wife suggested, curse
God and die. That is lesson in all of this. It is normal to question why. It is
what makes us human. But we have to trust God and remain faithful even when
things don't turn the way we want them to.
When you go back and read Job, when you see or experience suffering it
is best to just remember...
"The proper question is not so much why but who."
Amen.
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