How should we respond when life feels unfair?
WATCH
Bad Theology, 3 of 4 from October 19, 2025
Suffering allows God to draw us closer, teaching us through our affliction and showing us His mercy.
Job 32-37 by Orrin Witt
SUMMARY
This sermon explores the complex question of suffering and justice in the book of Job. Pastor Orrin discusses how Job's experience challenges our beliefs about fairness and God's justice. The sermon encourages listeners to trust in God's purposes and to see suffering as an opportunity to draw closer to Him.
REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
💬 How can we maintain a humble posture before God when we're going through difficult times and don't understand why?
💬 In what ways has past suffering in your life produced growth, character, or a closer relationship with God?
💬 How does Jesus' innocent suffering on the cross change our perspective on our own suffering?
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
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Good morning.
It's so good to be here with you this morning. If you. If I have not had the chance to meet you and you're wondering who I am, sometimes I wonder the same thing I am. My name is Oren, and. And I'm the pastor at our neighborhood church, Lakeland.
And so this series has been an awesome opportunity where we're kind of trading off and preaching in each other's churches, and we like to do that. Got to speak with somebody earlier in the service, and, you know, it's like we text each other so, you know, you can't get away with anything around here. You know, like, we don't tell each other everything, but, you know, we celebrate wins together. And a lot of times I read about them in text, and it's really cool to get to put faces with those names and to celebrate what God is doing in the life of the church up here in Ocala.
Turn your Bibles with me to the book of Job, where in Job. We're going to kind of be all over Job this morning a little bit as you're turning there. If you need help finding Job, open your Bible right to the middle. That's Psalms. Turn left a little bit.
Job is right before Psalms. So that's your cheat code for finding Job. You ever feel like life isn't fair?
Isn't that, like one of the first lessons that we teach our kids? Well, life's not fair. It's not fair. Life isn't fair. And then later we teach them.
You actually wouldn't want it to be fair, because if life was fair, we would all spend eternity separated from God. But praise God, he made a way. Instead of fairness, we get mercy, which is so much better. But usually what we mean by fair is just. We don't use that word in regular conversation that much.
But a lot of times when we say life isn't fair, what we mean is I'm experiencing or observing some kind of injustice. It's not right. It's not fair. It's not the way it should be. When people suffer, we face hard times.
We go through things that just seem like. Seem like we didn't deserve that.
I hesitate to even use this example just because I feel like it's getting tired. But you guys don't hear me preach that often, so that's okay, you know, and if you don't know me, this will be new. But, you know, a couple years ago, when my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, six months into launching our church, right as we were getting momentum gone, and just felt like this absolute gut punch. And here we are, you know, felt like, you know, God called us into ministry. God called us to come down here to Florida.
We uproot our family and move all the way across the country and, you know, just pour. Pour our blood, sweat and tears into this thing. And we're serving God with just everything we have. I mean, sometimes we pay for the permission, pay for the privilege of doing it, and then that. Where's the justice in that?
Sure doesn't seem fair. And so as we look a little bit at what Job experienced and, and the confrontation of some of the wrong beliefs that we can have in our suffering, I identify with this a little bit. I've walked a little bit of this road. And many of you probably have, too, in your own way. And if you haven't, you will.
And I know that because Scripture tells us that suffering is part of our Christian experience as part of following God. In fact, there's a. There's a verse that we're going to look at this this morning, and I just. I wanted you to put your eyes on it right now, just in case I get all scattered and lost and forget to draw your attention to it later. But, like, this is one of the best verses to help us.
Job, chapter 36, verse 15. Job 36, 15. I want you to put. I want us to all put our eyes on this verse.
We don't always know God's purposes in our suffering. Man, I feel like I'm starting this sermon with, like, the conclusion, but that may actually be the best way to frame this. Job, chapter 36, verse 15. He delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity.
He delivers the afflicted by their affliction, and he opens their ear by adversity. Those of you that have walked through and come through on the other side of a very, very difficult season or trial in your life, you know what I'm talking about. Because you've experienced that if you've suffered well through a difficult trial, you have experienced a closeness with God that you never could have otherwise, because your affliction opened your ears to His Word. It drew you to Him. And so I want to start there because that is so important to frame the unanswered questions in the book of Job.
God never really tells him, here's, oh, listen, because I like you, here's why I did all this. Nope, Job never gets an answer to that question. But that is as close to an answer as we'll get so let's go ahead. We're going to. I know you always start your services here by the.
With the disciples prayer. I may be pushing the wrong button here. Maybe I broke it when I dropped it on the floor earlier.
Broke the clicker. Anyway, go ahead and put it on the next slide there. Let's go ahead and recite the disciples prayer together. This is a great way to focus our hearts. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done on, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Amen. Well, what we see here, what we're going to look at this morning, is that Job had three things wrong. So we're looking the Job has four friends, and there's four of us that are preaching this series. And so we each took one of Job's friends and took the task of presenting what they talked about. Well, in the case of Elihu or Elihu, because that's how we usually read it.
So we'll just say it that way. In the case of Elihu, he is the only one of Job's three friends that God does not rebuke. At the end, when God finally speaks from the whirlwind and cuts in and kind of interrupts this little gathering of this little men's group, he calls out Job's other three friends, but he does not rebuke Elihu. And so it's important for us to look at some of the things that Elihu says. Some of the.
All three of them. All four of them sound very spiritual. All four of them declare true things about God, and three of them also declare things that are not quite actually true about God.
What Elihu addresses are some of the things that Job said in some of the previous chapters that were wrong.
Now, I've listened to some of the other sermons in this series, and I know that you've heard some of the ways of thinking about Job's friends and like, oh, you know, with friends like these, who needs enemies? And that's kind of true. They're not particularly gracious. They were very gracious those first seven days when they didn't say anything. And then, you know, comes the helpful advice they give.
But it comes from a good place. And also, it's easy for us to read our Western. You know, we would never do that. Well, that's not really the point of the story that, like, look how insensitive these guys were. No, the point of the story is what is true about God when we suffer, what is the right way to think about our suffering?
Because there are a lot of ways to think about our suffering. And this is the thing. When we are suffering, it's kind of like the hardest time possible to, like, say anything challenging to a person who is suffering. I mean, when you're suffering, how receptive are you to correction in those times? And so the Book of Job is extremely important as we shape our worldview and shape our own thinking, particularly about suffering and what it means for us.
So let's go ahead and have a word of prayer as we dig into this this morning. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for this time that we can gather and. And lift your name high.
God, we can't overdo that.
You are so much higher than us and so much greater than us. And God, we confess that one of the things we do when we suffer is. Is we often commit the sin of thinking we stand in moral judgment over you.
We forget our place.
And instead of trusting you and just admitting that we don't understand, we have a tendency to declare that you're being unfair or that you're not good or that somehow you missed something.
So, God, we confess that this morning. And we acknowledge that just because we don't understand doesn't mean that you're not right.
God, give us the humility to feel that. God, we thank you. We thank you so much that you don't give us fairness, you give us mercy. You offer that to each one of us.
And God is. As your children, we gather this morning to study your word. Another great gift from you, something that Job really didn't have, certainly not in the form we have it today. And so, God, we recognize that we have no excuse for holding these wrong views. So shape our thinking this morning, shape our theology as it surrounds suffering and your purposes.
In Jesus name, Amen. All right, so continuing four weeks of church where you learn bad theology. Let's go through this. So Job had a few things wrong. He had a wrong presumption, he had the wrong perspective, and he had the wrong posture.
Believe it or not, I'm not even Baptist, and I came up with those all by myself.
Let's look at the first one here. The first thing. So one of the things, like I mentioned that Elihu does is he's the youngest. He mentions this in his. Where he first cuts in and begins to speak.
He says the first thing he says in chapter 32. He says. He says, elihu, the son of Baruchel the buzite, answered and said, I am young in years and you are aged. Therefore I was timid and afraid to declare my opinion to you. I said, let days speak, and many years teach wisdom.
But it is the spirit in man, the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand. It is not the old who are wise, nor the aged who understand what is right. Which is a good point.
The point is not that old people don't know what they're talking about. That's not what he's saying there. He's saying that age does not automatically mean maturity, and being advanced in years does not automatically mean wisdom, though it often does. And he was right to let everyone else speak first. He was right to listen to his elders and consider what they were saying.
But he was also right not to just swallow whatever they said as definitely right. And so he. He waits his turn and he cuts in here at the end. And God so often uses the people in the story that the other people in the story would not have accepted or whatever. Anyway, that's a whole other thing.
We won't get into that.
But God uses Elihu to rebuke the others, and particularly Job.
The wrong presumption that Job has is, I'm innocent, so God must be unjust. I'm innocent, so God must be unjust. Let's look at. Keep your finger there and turn back to Job. Chapter 9.
Job 9. Starting in verse 15, Job is speaking. This is earlier. And here's. Here's the thing.
I want to. I want us to be charitable to Job because it is so easy when we suffer to just say what we're feeling. Sorry it's so cold. Now that the summer's over, I'm getting a runny nose in here. I was in Ohio yesterday morning.
I woke up in Ohio and there was frost on the shingles. Oh, am I glad. Boy, am I glad to be back here. It's a great place to be from, isn't it? Anyway.
Anyway. Sorry.
It is very easy when we suffer to say things that we're feeling. And so let's be a little bit charitable to Job and not necessarily just, you know, excoriate him for, you know, saying something that was wrong. It's easy to say something that's wrong when that's what we're feeling. Job's expressing what he's feeling. And here in verse 15 of chapter 9, he says, though I am in the right.
I cannot answer him. I must appeal for mercy to my accuser. If I summoned him and he answered me, I would not believe that he was listening to my voice. Do you hear that?
Do you hear the cry in his heart there?
If I asked God for an audience with him and I told him what I was thinking and feeling and what I was going through, I wouldn't even believe he was listening to me. You ever feel like that? You ever gone through something that was so hard and prayed so hard and nothing changed that? It just felt like if God even hears me, he must not be listening.
Verse 17. For he crushes me with a tempest and multiplies my wounds without cause. He will not let me get my breath, but fills me with bitterness.
You ever been angry with God, even if you knew you shouldn't be, that's how you felt? I appreciate the honesty in what Job is saying. And remember, Job's a righteous man. Let's not forget I'm not trying to paint Job in some like, you know, like throw mud at him. The scripture declares Job as righteous.
God presents Job as righteous, and he is Even righteous people, everyone except Jesus, even the best among us, are going to struggle and we're going to feel things that maybe aren't even true. And we're going to go through hard times. And so even someone who is righteous as a person is not perfect.
Fills me with bitterness. If it's a contest of strength, behold, he's mighty. If it's a matter of justice, who can summon him? Though I'm in the right, my own mouth would condemn me. Though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse.
That's a good point.
Even as upright as we may be in the best of times, could God not find something in which we were still lacking? Absolutely good?
He says, I am blameless. I regard not myself. I loathe my life.
It's strange to read that separated from how he was feeling, I loathe my life.
And here it is. It is all one. Therefore I say, he destroys both the blameless and the wicked.
Goes on in verse 24. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He covers the faces of its Judges. If it is not heathen, who then is it? Job is expressing his own innocence and how unjust it is that this is happening to him.
He doesn't disbelieve that God exists. He believes in God. But what he's saying is, if this is happening to me, God must be unjust, because I don't deserve This. I didn't do anything to deserve this. Have you ever said that or ever felt that about yourself or someone that you care about going through a hard time?
He didn't deserve that. I love the thing. If you ever listen to the Dave Ramsey show, he's famous for saying, and I often repeat this, you know, how you doing today? Better than I deserve. And why does he say that?
Better than I deserve. Okay, That's a really important perspective to have. Because every day we wake up and draw breath, we're better than we deserve.
If we all got. If we got what we deserved, we'd be burning in hell.
So we are certainly better than we deserve. But Job here is saying what he's feeling, and what he's feeling is, I don't deserve this.
So he said that back in chapter nine, if you turn back to the 30s, chapter 33, Elihu is going to address this.
So Job feels like, I'm innocent. I don't deserve this. God must be unjust. And so Elihu corrects him here in chapter 33, and makes the point that just because you're suffering, suffering is not proof of God's injustice. Let's look here at.
Pick it up. In verse eight, he says, surely you've spoken in my ears, and I've heard the sound of your words. You say, I'm pure, without transgression, I am clean, and there is no iniquity in me. Behold, he finds occasions against me, counts me as his enemy. He puts my feet in the stocks and watches all my paths.
Behold, in this, you are not right. I will answer you, for God is greater than man. Why do you contend against him, saying he will answer? None of man's words says, in this, you are not right. This is important.
Okay? And this is this. Understand, Job, the book of Job is not a master class in how to comfort someone who's suffering. Okay? That's not the point.
This is not like. Take notes, okay? I'm gonna go visit someone who's going through a hard time. Here's all the things I should say to them. No, this is for us to get our minds straight about God before we face suffering.
He says, you've said these things about how innocent you are and how great. How Job isn't talking about how great he is, but about just how he doesn't deserve this. And Eli says, you're not right.
You're not right in saying this, for God is greater than man. So here's the thing. While some suffering is a direct consequence of our choices, much of it is not.
There is some suffering that we will experience in this life that is self inflicted.
The way I love to express this is play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Okay? This is true. This is part of, you know, this is part of the paradigm that God built into creation, that what a man sows, that will he also reap. That principle of sowing and reaping builds into the paradigm of this world consequences.
There are certain choices you could make that will cause your family to break apart without God's intervention. In other words, just because you're going through a hard time doesn't automatically mean that God is somehow afflicting you. You may be afflicting yourself with really bad choices. That does happen, but that's not the only way that suffering happens. And the assumption that if I'm suffering, that must automatically mean God is afflicting me because I, you know, as if I did something wrong isn't right.
God uses suffering, and we looked at that earlier in chapter 36. God uses suffering in our lives to shape us and mold us. And it is uncomfortable, to put it mildly.
Often God uses trials to shape us and to prepare us for his purposes. And the Bible is super clear on this. If you don't have to turn there. You may be familiar with James chapter one. Do you remember, if you're familiar with it, how James chapter one starts, Verse two.
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.
Count it joy. When we face trials in the prayer circle this morning, I often try to do this because it's like I need to hear myself say it out loud. God, thank you for our trials.
I want you to know that doesn't come from my heart.
That comes from what I know to be true. What I know should be the desire of my heart, but I don't feel that.
But that's a perspective. I need to teach my heart to say that. Because James, the brother of Jesus said, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
I heard John MacArthur speaking on this verse and he made such a good point that I want to make sure I give him credit for it. But his point was, how do you count it joy when you meet trials and when you face difficulty?
The point is this. When you go through a very difficult time and you come out on the other side with your faith unshaken, that just proved to you that your faith is genuine. Have you ever wondered if your faith was real? Have you ever struggled with whether or not you were really saved?
You ever struggle with just that question of how can I know? How can I know that I won't fall away if I face something difficult someday? Well, one of the ways you can know is when you face something difficult and you come through it with your faith intact, you can praise God for. For the preservation ministry, the sealing ministry of the Holy Spirit that kept you, that gave you the faith to walk through that, and then your faith is stronger on the other side. And you can praise God with joy, seeing that the testing of your faith produced steadfastness.
Romans, chapter 5. Suffering produces endurance, character and hope. We don't have to turn to all of these, because I don't think we actually have time to. But 2 Corinthians. And we'll be getting to this here in a couple of weeks as we continue working our way through Second Corinthians.
But chapter 12 says that God's power is made perfect in weakness. What shows us our weakness, perhaps most effectively? Suffering, trials, and affliction. That is when we are most painfully aware that we are lacking. So when we just like Job, when we suffer and it's not the result of specific sin, we got to be careful not to allow ourselves to believe that God is somehow unjust in our suffering.
Now, here's the thing. Job's. And see, I didn't have to preach these other ones. So I don't remember if it was Bildad or the other one. One of the other ones.
But they. I think all of them challenged Job, even though he said, I didn't do anything to deserve this. They kind of challenged. They pressed him on that. They were like, are you sure?
Like, examine your life. You really haven't done anything. You're a pretty rich guy. You didn't, like, step on other people to get where you're at. Are you sure?
Here's the thing. That's not wrong. They were not wrong to press into that a little bit.
When we face trials, it is good and edifying and sanctifying for us to take a hard look and say the words of David, search me, O God, and know me. See if there be any wicked way in me.
The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. And one of the ways that we are most deceitful is our capacity to deceive ourselves, our capacity to be in sin and actually believe that we are not in sin. That's why that prayer from David is so important. Search me and know me, O God. See if there be any wicked way in me.
Show me, God, if I have done something to bring this on myself, please use this. Please use this like a refiner's fire to root out any of the impurity and wickedness in my life. I don't want that, God. If there's sin in my life that I'm not even aware of, God, please show me. Help cleanse this from me.
It's not wrong to press into that. Are you sure that this suffering isn't the result of sin? Now, in Job's case, it wasn't, but his friends were not wrong to press him on that question and encourage him to take a hard look at his life. Now, the other guys concluded, well, you say there's nothing, but there must be something, okay, in that they were wrong. Because suffering is not automatically the result of God's justice or injustice.
God may be working other purposes, but that could be one. Take a look at that. But when it's not, let's remember that God is always working in our lives for his glory and our good. There's actually, Carlos, this is a homework assignment for you, okay? You're listening to that song.
There's a song called His Glory and My Good. We sing that at our church a lot. And it is so powerful to remember and be reminded that God, whatever he is doing in the lives of his children, is for his glory. And there's nothing that is for God's glory that isn't also for our good.
Which means that even our suffering must be good for us.
That can be hard to see, certainly hard to feel, but it must mean that, okay, we're through one point of three. So we're going to move a little faster.
Job's next thing. That was a wrong perspective. He said, God ignores my cries. He must not care.
God is ignoring my cries, so he must not care. If you want to look at Job, chapter 21, we're going to see where Job expresses this. Job 21.
Starting in verse seven, he says, why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power? Their offspring are established in their presence, and their descendants before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, and no rod of God is upon them.
Understand? He just lost his children knowing that he was a righteous man, knowing that he loved God and feared God, and having to bury his children, and then to look at other people that he knew were wicked, that still had their families intact. That stings. Let's not gloss over the pain in that.
Their houses are safe from fear and no rod of God is upon them. Their bull breeds without fail their cow calves and does not miscarry. That's just speaking of wealth. They send out their little boys like a flock, and their children dance. They sing to the tambourine and lyre and rejoice to the sound of the pipe.
They spend their days in prosperity and in peace. They go down to Sheol. They say to God, depart from us. We do not desire the knowledge of your ways. What is the Almighty that we should serve him?
And what profit do we get if we pray to Him?
Behold, is not their prosperity in their hand? The counsel of the wicked is far from me.
He talks about this some more in chapter 24. You know, why are not times of judgment kept by the Almighty? And why do those who know him never see his days?
He just feels like I'm crying out to God. I'm going through a hard time here. I'm calling out to him. Nothing's getting better. And the only conclusion he could come up with is, God must not care.
I know he hears me.
And so if he's not doing anything about it, he must not. He must not care about me. He closes out that, and in verse 12 of chapter 24, he says, from out of the city the dying groan and the soul of the wounded cries for help. Yet God charges no one with the wrong.
I think a lot of us feel that, and certainly have over the last recent years. We look around our country and just see, like, rampant lawlessness caught on camera. And nobody ever goes to jail. Or at higher levels, you know, higher level, you know, levels of corruption. That is, like, plain to see.
And there's congressional hearings and isn't that great? Except no one ever goes to jail.
From out of the city, the dying groan and the soul of the wounded cries for help. Yet God charges no one with the wrong. That's how it feels. It's how it feels.
God ignores my cries. He must not care. But Elihu reminds him, that's the wrong perspective. See, God hears the humble. But you're not going to manipulate God with false accusations.
God will not be manipulated. You're not going to force God's hand. He has his purposes. And included in his purposes is his timing. And that is so hard for us because God invented time and he exists outside of it.
He also exists in it because he can. We don't. We exist in time. Our lives are finite. And there's a sense of urgency built into the framework of our country is the right to a speedy trial.
Because we recognize that slow justice is no justice. Why do we recognize that? Because our lives are short. Because we know that the time. There will come a time.
This is. Okay, I'm going to go down this rabbit hole for just a second. Have you seen. Not so much anymore, but like you would see over the last 10 years or so that they'd like to. They'd find some 90 something year old guy all wrinkled up in a nursing home somewhere that it turns out had been an SS soldier, a Nazi, literally an actual one, not like today's, you know, like an actual one in the 1940s in Germany, that kind.
And they put him on trial and like execute him. You're like, he's like 90 some years old. I mean, you really need to do that. Yes, because justice for us has a limited amount of time. Once he dies peacefully in that nursing home or whatever, no justice can be done.
That's the sense. And that is the perspective that we are so often limited to. Okay, let's leave that rabbit hole alone. We'll just kind of leave it there. But my point with that is the urgency of justice.
Because there comes a time when we can't do it anymore because we're infinite. We are not going to sit on the throne and judge for eternity. No, God will do that. And those of us that believe in God, those of us that are his children, those of us who follow his word need to have the perspective that God doesn't settle all of his accounts on this side of eternity. And that is one of the hardest pills to swallow, particularly when our suffering is at the hands of others.
God does not settle all of his accounts on this side of eternity.
We look around and we see that the wicked do prosper. Nice guys finish last. See, we even have phrases about it.
But do they really?
You see, our perspective is so short. It feels like that. But I can promise you the wicked in eternity do not feel very prosperous.
This idea that Job says here that God charges no one with the wrong is wrong.
God hears the humble. And there's several times throughout the. We don't have time to look at all of them, but there are several times where that keeps getting brought up. But we have a great again to the book of James. You don't have to turn there, but James 4, 6 says that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
Solomon observed this in Ecclesiastes, assuming it was Solomon who wrote it. And Jesus tells us that he's numbered the hairs on our head and that we are of immense value to him. And so this idea that God sees us suffering and doesn't care, that doesn't hold water, that dog won't hunt. No, God cares. God cares a lot.
And we don't stand in moral judgment over God. And we certainly don't stand in judgment over, in moral judgment over his timing. We can't say, hey, God, listen slow. Justice is no justice. So if I don't get to see your justice against the wicked in my lifetime, then it's not justice.
Well, that's no, we don't get to tell God what's just. God is the one who defines for us what justice is. And trusting him for justice, particularly in eternity, is crucial. God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. And so one of the things that he this kind of segues into the next point is, is Job had the wrong posture.
This is really easy to do when we're suffering to get really self righteous and self, you know, justify, you know, like, I didn't deserve this. I served God, I served in church, I volunteered, I gave lots of money. You know, I did all the hard work and I did everything I should have done. Well, first of all, there's. That's never true, even when we feel like it is.
But this one right here, God owes me an answer. I don't think any of us would probably say that out loud.
That doesn't mean we don't feel that way.
That doesn't mean we don't feel that way. It's really, really easy to feel that way. God owes me an answer. Well, does he? In Job 13:3 we see Job says this.
He says, but I would speak to the Almighty and I desire to argue my case with God. Whoo.
That's not a good idea.
That's like inviting the fire inspector to just come in and take a look around your building for no reason. It's like that's a courtroom you don't put yourself in. You're going to find something you don't want to stand in that courtroom. In fact, God's mercy, the fact that salvation can be offered to you and me is because Jesus stood in that courtroom for you and for me.
We don't ask for that audience. Now, Job didn't have the benefit of what we now call the New Testament. He didn't have the benefit of knowing the life of Christ would be. But we know that those of us who believe in Jesus and have trusted him for our salvation, that he always makes intercession for us. He sits at the right hand of God the Father, and he makes intercession for us.
I don't want to stress the courtroom illustration too far, but with Jesus on our side, we don't have to show up to court.
So this attitude. I would speak to the Almighty and I desire to argue my case with God. No, no, trust me, you don't want that. You might feel that, but you don't want that.
God's justice is perfect. It is pure.
And he doesn't judge our sin in comparison to others people's sin. He Judges our sin next to Jesus Christ, who was perfect. None of us can stand next to him. It's better to have him arguing your case for you instead. Job kind of expressed that.
And Elihu answers him and basically says, have some respect.
God doesn't have to explain himself. And this is where we get to kind of where we started. Chapter 36, starting in verse 5, says, Behold, God is mighty and does not despise any. He is mighty in strength of understanding. He does not keep the wicked alive, but gives the afflicted their right.
Okay. He's not saying you'll get to see that this side of eternity. But God will be just.
But with Kings on the throne. Sorry. He does not withdraw his eyes from the righteous. But with Kings on the throne, he sets them forever and they are exalted. If they are bound in chains and caught in the cords of affliction, then he declares to them their work and their transgressions, that they are behaving arrogantly.
He opens their ears to instruction and commands that they return from iniquity. If they listen and serve him, they complete their days in prosperity and their years in pleasantness. But if they do not listen, they perish by the sword and die without knowledge. The Godless in heart cherish anger. They do not cry for help when he binds them.
They die in youth and their life ends among the cult prostitutes. He delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity.
That's where we started. I'm going to wrap up here. We're out of time.
But Job had a wrong presumption, a wrong perspective, and a wrong posture.
These are really easy to have when we're suffering. And what I want to challenge us with is a couple of things. First of all, Jesus suffered innocently. We think we might be experiencing suffering we don't deserve. But here's the thing.
We deserve so much worse. We deserve so much worse. Even the suffering that we experience is God's mercy because it's less than we deserve. Jesus is the only one who ever suffered innocently. And in him we see God's justice and mercy perfectly balanced.
God's justice because he hung on that cross in our place and took God's just wrath against sin. And we see God's mercy in that he offers us salvation because of that perfect balance.
It's really easy to believe bad theology when we're suffering and so pray for discernment. And if these are one of the reasons we want to study this is because as we look at some of these, some of the bad theology that is confronted in the book of Job, we see that actually a lot of these things you still hear people say, these are very common to the human experience and very common still today. And so if you, if these are things that you have caught yourself believing at times, repent of those things. And I'll leave you with this. It's especially easy to fall into these beliefs when we're not prepared.
So fill your mind with the truth before hard times come. Don't let hard times be the thing that finally gets you to open this. Now, that would be a good response to hard times. But if you haven't already had this open, it's going to be really hard to read it with the right perspective and the right presumptions and the right posture. Will you pray with me?
God, you are so good to us. And when we take an honest look at ourselves and our lives and our circumstances, we recognize that you are good even when what we are experiencing is not how we would measure goodness.
But we don't get to tell you what's good. You tell us what is good.
God, thank you for these chapters in your Word which confront very easy to believe distortions of who you are.
Yes, you are a God of justice, but you do also give us time to repent. And so in that, we are thankful that your justice is not immediate and swift, for we would all be swept away in it. So thank you for your long suffering and patience.
Thank you for giving me time to repent.
Thank you for Jesus who shows us what it really meant to suffer innocently. God, there are times that we experience injustice in this world.
Thank you that you see. Thank you that you hear our cries. And thank you that your scales of justice in eternity always balance.
God, commit these things to our hearts. Give us discernment. Give us wisdom in Jesus name. Amen.
