Sabbath: Retributive Punishment
Read for This Week’s Study: Job 8:1–22, Job 11:1–20, Isa. 40:12–14, Gen. 6:5–8, 2 Pet. 3:5–7.
Memory Text: “ ‘Can you search out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limits of the Almighty?’ ” (Job 11:7, NKJV).
Finger of Blame
The problem of human suffering surely continues to daunt humanity. We see “good” people suffer immense tragedy, while evil ones go unpunished in this life. A few years ago a book came out called Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? It was one of numerous attempts over the millennia to come to a satisfactory answer to that problem. It didn’t. Many other writers and thinkers have written of their struggle to come to terms with human suffering. They don’t seem to have found the right answers.
This theme, of course, is the theme of the book of Job, and in it we continue to explore why even “good” people, such as Job, suffer in this world. The crucial difference between the book of Job and the others, though, is that Job is not based on human perspectives of suffering (though we get plenty of that in the book); rather, because it’s the Bible, we get a look at God’s perspective on the problem.
This week we read more speeches from the men who came to Job in his misery. What can we learn from them, especially from their mistakes as they, as others have done, try to come to grips with the problem of pain?
Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, November 12.
(21)
After going through the teaching, I learnt so much about God and His concerns for man.
The love of God can not be quantified.
How can one grasp the knowledge and wisdom of God? The depth of his love for everyone is as if it was his very son, even Job and his friends. But his ability to take Lucifer's attempt to destroy as his tool to win them all over reveals the depth of God's ability to save.
Good people do suffer unjustly in a sinful world. The only explanation I can find is that it is collateral damage in a fallen world. Job is a special case story of God allowing Satan to unjustly persecute Job to prove that Job was not just a fair weather friend of God. It is brutal and unfair to Job, but Job demonstrates that he will not let go of God even if it costs him his life. The book of Job is difficult, but it all comes out for good in the end. No one likes misery and suffering, especially me, but in such times I have to remind myself of Romans 8:28, that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord, who are called according to his purpose. We can't always see it at the time while in the crucible of a life crisis, but eventually we will look back, and in perspective it will be revealed to us how it worked for our own good, even if at the time it didn't seem so.
There is an internet site .."40 Cliches Christians Should Never Use"
Here is one cliché related to this week topic:
"'God is in control.' ---- This raises a very fundamental problem of Theodicy, which most Christians I’ve met who say this are not necessarily prepared to address. Theodicy is the dilemma between belief in an all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful God with the existence of evil and/or suffering in the world. And the other problem is that, if you believe that human beings have free will (a central tenet of most Christian thought), it needs to be recognized that that, in itself, is a concession of control by God. And like other phrases I’ve mentioned about God’s role in daily life, be careful in tossing this one around. Telling someone who was raped, abused, tortured, neglected, etc. that God was in control during that experience likely is enough to incent that person to turn from the concept of God forever."
Its clear to me that Job’s friends heard about his predicament and so they decided to come to see him. They were driven by the desire to lend support, comfort and to empathise with him. When they arrived they were obviously shocked by what they saw and this, I think,rendered them speechless. When they eventually mustered courage to speak to him, there was a conspicuous lack of sympathy and comfort in all their statements. Instead, Job's friends blame, pass judgement, condemn him and are reduced to finger pointing. The entire peroration of their speeches was that Job’s sufferings was a direct result of his sin. What is clearly aparrent is that there was no oil and balm in their speeches for their comrade. While Job's wound’s were still bleeding, his sores still open, Zophar, laid into him for being proud and untruthful in justifying himself. All three friends without access to all the facts over simplified Job’s problems and made their conclusions based on limited information. This is one of the critical issues we must learn from this story. Our suggested solution to a problem must always be mindful of the fact that there might be more to the problem than initially thought of. Therefore we could so easily make an erroneous conclusion about a person’s condition or circumstance by failing to take all the facts into consideration.
True Zophar made correct statements about God viz His greatness and glory. He asked, "Canst thou find out God, find Him out to perfection? No. What canst thou do? What canst thou know?" The point he made here was that human beings do not have the capacity to comprehend the nature of God. God is unsearchable and His rulership can not be contested save by the evil one. Zophar regretfully launched a vicious attack on Job and in the process treated him with contempt and invidiously represented his friend. He charged Job with something that he had not even said (v. 4).
One of the most common traits of human nature is to condemn others based on cursory examination of the facts. We are often too ready to invoke the name of the Lord and conclude that He'd speak on our side, as Zophar thought. But when God spoke, He spoke for Job against his three friends. My point here is that given our filthy sinful state in God's eyes (Psalm 14:2), what gives anyone of us the right to point fingers and speak harshly with condemnation against other human beings?(Luke 6:37). Our duty is to encourage and build one another up (1 Thessalonians 5:11); be kind and compassionate to one another (Ephesians 4:32); stop passing judgement on one another (Romans 14:13) etc. Please Lord, teach us humility and true love.
God's love to mankind is a great indication that He don't want us to be lost but have eternal life. God's love is uncountable