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Hey Bible Readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap. Today, Job wraps up his response from Eliphaz's third speech. In chapter 24, Job continues to point out that good things happen to the wicked and also add that bad things happen to the righteous. Surely you've seen this too.
When I first read this response from Job, it sounded more like a complaint, like he was kind of whining about it. But the more I look at it, the more it sounds like he is consoling himself with these details, reminding himself that his trials don't negate his status as a righteous man before God, while also trying to convince his friends as well. Job points out some really important stuff here.
We can kind of see that if you follow his friends' beliefs to their logical conclusion, you'd be likely to conclude that all those who are healthy and wealthy are living righteous lives, and that those who are poor, sick, and needy are in that situation because of their sin. There's no shortage of people who even subscribe to this kind of theology today.
One of the dangers of this is that anytime there's a disaster, a fire or a flood or a terrorist attack, some very public religious people will say it's God's judgment, as if they know the mind of God. They're guilty of the same reductionism that Job's friends are. In Job's story, we're even given a glimpse into God's motives because they're recorded in Scripture.
But in everyday 21st century life, we don't have access to that information. we would be wise not to jump to conclusions about why hurricanes and mass murders happen when and where they do. After Job's speech, Bildad pushes back, saying that not only is Job unrighteous, but that it's impossible for a man to be righteous at all.
And while there's some truth to this, that we can't be perfect, we can be declared righteous by God, despite our actions, because of the finished work of Christ. In scripture, righteousness is often used as a kind of legal term, more of a decision and a declaration by the judge than some accumulated overview of our actions.
For every one of us who is adopted into God's family, God the judge has declared us righteous. Not because we tricked him, and not because we got more things right than we got wrong, but because God the Son, Jesus, lived the perfect life and then granted his perfect righteousness to us. It's a legal transaction. He traded our sinfulness, which we were in full possession of, for his righteousness.
He took our death penalty and granted us his kingdom. If you want to talk about what's not fair in this life, that's the best place to start. It's unfair in the most beautiful way imaginable. In chapter 26, we see that Job has a reverence for God's mystery that his friends can't seem to grasp. There's a lot to take in here.
I thought it was interesting in verse 11 that he references heaven trembling at God's rebuke. This makes me think of the conversation we had about the sons of God rebelling against him in heaven. And in verse 12, Job even seems to prophesy about Jesus without even knowing it. Did you catch that? He said, "'By his power, he stills the sea.'" I know someone who did that.
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