The like of Facts

 

Job 21: 17-26

 

“How often is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out?  That their calamity comes upon them?  That God distributes pains in his anger?  That they are like straw before the wind and like chaff that the storm carries away?  You say, ‘God stores up their iniquity for their children.’  Let him pay it out to them, that they may know it.  Let their own eyes see their destruction and let them drink of the wrath of the Almighty.   For what do they care for their houses after them, when the number of their months is cut off?  Will any teach God knowledge, seeing that he judges those who are on high?  One dies in his full vigor, being wholly at ease and secure, his pails full of milk and the marrow of his bones moist.  Another dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted of prosperity.  They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them.”

 

As one who earns his income in sales, it was important to not only be able to answer the question about your product but also your competitors.  Never tell the customer anything but the facts to the best of your knowledge and if you error as soon as you knew the difference to make sure and inform your customer.  I was wrong, I was in error in my statement to you, I misinformed you, those seem to be words that do not come easy for a person who is concerned about how he is perceived.  Channel One the deceptive channel always tells you; what he does not know will not hurt him, and he will lose respect and trust in what you say if you tell him.  As I have stated many times, Channel One is from the pit and it always leads us in the wrong direction.

 

That’s what Job’s three friends have done, and it has come back to haunt then in that Job keeps addressing their inaccuracies.  Verse 17, Job’s rhetorical question on the lamp of the wicked, and it seems that the lamp stood for a happy life and Job made sure that Bildad’s statement on the wicked does not hold water, in that many seem to live a very long life.  It seemed to Job in his own suffering that the wicked got a pass often in this life, but that is not consistent with what Scripture tells us.

 

Once more, I will be generous with Job in a time of deep emotional stress and physical pain, Job does not think it is fair to allow the punishment that belongs to the wicked man to be passed on to their children. 

 

Job asks, can anyone teach God?  Job’s friends had said no one is pure or especially wise before God.  Yet they came across as if they might be the only exception to that rule.  Job only knew what he had observed in life and so the worldview of his friends made no sense to him.  Job had not witnessed how a man’s goodness or wickedness had anything to do with life’s fortunes.

 

But in Galatians 6:7&8, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he has sown. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice