Job the Wrestler

Synopsis     Job 7:9-8:17     5/26/2021 

In his despair, Job decided that he would no longer be silent. He especially refused to be silenced by the arguments of his friends. 

And so, he began to address God directly. In this way, he cried out to God with questions. He wanted to know why God had attacked him without provocation. And he asked God why he even pays attention to insignificant, individual men in the first place.  

Furthermore, Job despaired at the condition of all men. Specifically, he observed how, even if he were innocent, God could make him condemn himself. What’s more, God is so powerful, that he could make it so Job was unaware of his own innocence. Finally, Job asked a final question. He wanted to know why, even if he had sinned, God refused to pardon him. 

So, Job’s friend Bildad felt the need to respond. In this way, he attempted to comfort Job while also defending God. In the end, Bildad urged Job to trust that God would restore his fortunes. 

Job Wrestled 

In the midst of his misery, Job contemplated his situation. And from that, he reflected on the condition of all men. He wondered at the awesome magnitude of God’s power. But he also wrestled with two competing ideas.  

First, God is all powerful – omnipotent.  Second, God is essentially just – righteous. 

But does the magnitude of God’s awesome power obscure His sense of justice? Job wanted an answer.

Wrestling with God 

Suffering entered the world because a man and a woman sinned. But now there are seven or eight billion people on the planet. Why should God focus on me? 

So, as God considers me, does it do it from afar? Or, is God aware of how the circumstances of my life look to me? And if He is, does He care? Should He care? 

Curiously, these questions don’t occur to me when everything seems to be going my way. I only wonder such things when I’m suffering. And yet, these questions go to the very essence of the nature of God. So, strangely enough, there is something about unavoidable suffering that has the potential to bring me closer to God.  

“to know him [Jesus] and the power of his resurrection and [the] sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death” Phil 3:10