March 6, 2023

Passage Read: Job 17-20
Meditation Verses: 19:2-5

Thought

If Job's friends truly care about him, then they are driven by compassion to bring him to repentance, so that the Lord will forgive him and restore His favor to him. Surely they're not gloating over him! But because they lack understanding, of God and of Job, they cannot believe God would allow such tragedy to come upon Job unless he had greatly sinned. So they can't hear or believe anything Job says in his own defense, which is a sad thing to say about friends. They should have known him well enough to be completely shocked and at a loss as to why God would do this to him. Instead they assumed he must have had some secret sin that he managed to conceal even from them, but now God was repaying him.

Application

With the advantage of hindsight, I can afford to be more gracious to those around me. Yes, few of us are as righteous as Job, but I don't need to hound people to get them to confess their sin. Friends who suffer may be suffering consequence for sin, but if the sin is not fairly apparent to me, I can ask, but if they are aware of nothing, I need to trust them. All suffering is not because of sin, so I need to be careful not to be single-minded "in compassion" to compel my friend to confess.