DayBreaks for 11/05/19: Job and His Complaint
From the DayBreaks archive, November 2009:
If you have been accused (especially wrongly) of something, you want to face your accusers and try to clear your name, don’t you? This is one of the key rights we have as individuals in America. It’s not a new idea that came up only when America was founded, it’s been around for years and years. Witness Job’s complaint from eons past: Job 9:32 – God is not a man like me that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court.
Job’s friends had accused him of great and terrible sin. To their way of thinking, there could be no other explanation for why Job was in such a pickle. In spite of all that they’d known of Job and observed in his life, they now were convinced that he’d been secretly involved in massive deception and sin. Who wouldn’t want to face such accusers? But Job realizes that for them to really know the truth, God would have to be called to the witness stand. They certainly weren’t going to take Job’s word for it – not when they suspected him of being such a sinner to start with. (How quickly the good opinion others may have of us can deteriorate if they suspect we’re sinning!)
So it is that Job issues his complaint about God. If God were a human like Job (or you or me), we might be able to compel Him to come to the court so we could confront him and clear our name. Sadly, it is a case we would lose but for the blood of Jesus – and Job knew nothing about Jesus or his future sacrifice.
Let us not miss the irony that is so heavy in Job’s statement: what Job was longing for became reality when Jesus (God) became a man like me and was put in the court dock. As Mike Mason wrote, “…in Jesus Christ the Almighty God has become ‘a man like me,’ and moreover a man who by standing before Pontius Pilate and the Sanhedrin has confronted every one of us in court – and yet not, as we may have expected, in His rightful capacity as Judge, but rather as the accused, the prisoner in the dock. Through this reversal of roles He meant to show us that it is mankind who first condemned God, not the other way around, and that only by faith in Jesus can this condemnation be lifted so that we can be set free.”
We “condemned” God first in the garden when mankind decided pleasure was to be preferred over obedience and we’ve been “condemning” God ever since through every act of rebellion that suggests other things are to be preferred over His will.
So, millennia later, Job’s statement about God was resolved by Jesus’ incarnation. Humanity put Jesus on trial then to determine if He was who He said He was. Many concluded he was not who He claimed to be. But others had the vision to recognize, as did the centurion who watched him die, that “Surely this man was the Son of God!”
Here’s what may be a scary thought: as a believer, Jesus is on display through your life and actions and words. What do people see and conclude about Him because of you?
PRAYER: Thank you for becoming a “man” like us so that we could see, hear, touch and thank you that you have made it possible for us to ask you questions through prayer! Thank you that we do not stand in the court with you as our accuser, but as our friend, defender and Judge! In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Copyright by 2019 by Galen C. Dalrymple. ><}}}”>