Job’s complaints sounded to Elihu like he was questioning God’s justice. It is not exactly what Job was doing, but he certainly seems to claim that God had afflicted him without any reason. Elihu is indignant about this and believes that Job has blasphemed God as a result. In actual fact, Job was not making any dogmatic statements about God at all. He never says that God is not just, only that God had denied him justice. In a sense that was true. It is often true that, in this life, we don’t get justice. Often, we suffer great injustices as Job did and God does not prevent or resolve this. But this doesn’t mean that God is not just. It simply means that the situation remains unresolved. It doesn’t mean that God is evil, it simply means that the world has become evil. Evil is at work in Job’s situation, we saw that at the beginning with the introduction of Satan into this story. God will ultimately bring about justice, but we will not always experience this now in our lives. In this life we will often get what we don’t deserve. That goes both ways. More often we get the good that we don’t deserve. Shall we then accept this and not the opposite? Sometimes we get the evil we don’t deserve. It’s the way the world is, and God doesn’t like it. Job never claimed innocence, despite what Elihu says, but he struggles with the way things are and there is no sin in that. No one is more grieved over the world than God.
Ask God to help you to feel what he feels about your life and your circumstances.
Read Job 34 and 35
