Passage Read: Job 29-32
Meditation Verses: 30:1-3
Thought
There are men that Job in his righteous understanding refused to employ. Men who were weak and useless, gaunt from hunger and wasting away. The whole community had driven them away; everyone recognized that there was a problem with them. A few verses later, he identifies them as fools. They were not wise men; they were not teachable, they could not be helped. And now they and their children mocked Job and spit at him. Job helped orphans and widows; he would have helped them if they could have been helped. But they were men who chose to live by their own ways, rather than listen to and walk in the wisdom of God. They were poor and suffering because of their own foolish choices and stubbornness.
Application
Righteousness does not require that I help everyone. I need to help the poor and needy, those who cannot help themselves. But the lazy and foolish, the stubborn and rebellious, if he will not take advice and learn from the wise, these who prove themselves to be fools, I have no obligation to them. I don't need to hate them, but I don't need to open myself up to suffer at their unreliable hands either. "If you save an angry man, you'll have to do it again." If I take away the consequences of a man's foolish choices, he'll never learn. If I let him suffer those consequences, there is hope for him. But righteousness does not require me to rescue every stubborn man from his own foolish lifestyle. Rebuke once, twice, offer help, guidance, but if he refuses to learn from it, I serve him better by leaving him to his bad choices.