AP

Job 15:9-10   What do you know that we do not know?  What insights do you have that we do not have?  The grey-haired and the aged are on our side, men even older than your father.

Eliphaz, the youngest and most confident and outspoken of Job’s four ‘comforters’, can’t understand how Job can be so ‘thick’!  After all he, Eliphaz, though young in years himself, has the backing of long-standing ‘traditional’ thinking on his side!  This thinking tells him that the simple formula, “The good prosper and the wicked suffer”, applies universally to every part of life, and, therefore, if Job is suffering it must be because of something(s) he has done or is doing in his life that is ‘wicked’.

However, it seems that the Sovereign God has included the story of Job in his inspired, infallible Word to prevent future generations from making the same dangerous mistake that Eliphaz and his three accomplices have made.  The essence of their mistake is their failure to see that, although God, throughout Scripture, encourages his people to live godly, obedient lives in order that they might enjoy his blessing, his absolute sovereignty over all things must never be forgotten.

Our experience of life should make it clear that ‘the peace that passes understanding’ comes to those who humbly accept God’s right to run his world in his way, even when we are struggling with the outworking of his Providence in particular situations.  Like his four ‘friends’, Job could not explain, to himself or to anyone else, what was actually happening to him, but that did not stop him from saying things like, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in [trust] him;” (13:15a) and  “if I go to the east, he is not there, if I go to the west, I do not find him.  When he is at work in the north, I do not see him; when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him.  But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (23:8-10).

The Apostle Paul says, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22), and the Apostle James says, “You have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy” (James 5:11).

“He loves, he cares, he knows; his love, though never dim, can only give the best to those who leave the choice with him.”  We don’t know what the future holds, but we know who holds the future! 

– Bruce Christian