Year 2, Day 113: Job 19

Kick ‘Em While Their Down

Job begins again with a very typical three pronged approach.  Since we’ve seen it quite a lot already in the book of Job, I’ll begin to summarize.

In the first few verses, Job talks again about how his friends are attacking him.  He does make a few good points.  Why do they feel the need to continue to kick him while he is down?  Has Job’s potential error been so egregious that it affects anyone but him?

Those lines of thinking do have me going today.  Why do we as human beings have a “kick ‘em while they are down” mentality?  Why do we like beating a dead horse?  {Why do I continue to like using clichés?  LOL}  Are we really that depraved as a human race that when we see an easy target we circle like vultures until we can safely go in for the kill and prove ourselves superior to the injured victim laying on the ground?  Does that really prove that we are smart, courageous, or even strong?

Yet, it is who we are.  We even have two other sayings along these lines.  We talk about “going in for the kill” or even “going for the jugular.”  Is that really what society is all about?  Is taking advantage of our neighbor the best way to build a society?  I personally don’t think so.

Lie: God Has Walled Me Off From Support

As we move past Job defending himself from his friends, he himself launches back into his own speech against God.  Again we can say that it is here that we find error within Job.  Has God really stripped away the crown from Job’s head?  Has God really pulled up Job’s hope like a tree?  Has God really counted Job as an adversary?

Of course not.  We know that all of this is because God is reveling in Job’s crown and approving of his righteousness.  And as we’ll get to that in the end, we know that Job is aware of this deep down as well.  The words that Job gives us here is out of his short-sighted grief.  So we hear the words, know them to be an exaggeration of his pain, and we hope for him to move beyond them.

Which, he does.  Actually, he does move beyond these words really quickly.  Job moves beyond them and into the realm of hope.  Thus is the way of the true follower of God.  The true follower of God may get down, but there is a resiliency in God that is unsurpassable.

Truth: My Redeemer Lives

Job knows that his redeemer lives.  What a beautiful statement of faith for a person who may well predate Abraham!  Job knows that one day – even after his flesh has decayed and his bones are dried up – he will stand before his God and he will experience righteousness.  Job knows that in the end, it will be his redeemer that stands upon the earth in control of it.

Can any of us have a greater hope?  Yes, we know that judgment will stand between us and the eternal.  Yes, life itself stands in between us and the eternal. But the true follower of God steps through life with eyes focused on the hope of standing before God in the presence of our Redeemer.  The true follower of God steps into death and into judgment with eyes focused on God and our Redeemer.

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