Year 2, Day 118: Job 24

Troubling Perception

Job 24 troubles me today – because I know where my thoughts are leading me and I will need to be careful.  You see, Job 24:1 sets the whole tone for this chapter.  Job 24:1 is all about Job not understanding God’s sense of timing.  Job is basically saying, “Why are the unrighteous ones allowed to go on in their unrighteousness when they deserve judgment?” and “Why are the righteous prevented from seeing justification when they deserve to see the presence of God?”

Job has a clear perception of the world.  There are people who readily take advantage of the poor in this world.  There are people that see the poor as easy pickings and defenseless.  So they target the poor.  In today’s day and age, we see this in the media and in advertisements as well as in the business world.  This world is not short on people who will use any means to target the defenseless and convincing them to go into a place that they do not want to go.

Certainly one does not need to only take adv advantage of the poor to be wicked.  There are wicked people who take advantage of each other.  There are power hungry people who trample on everyone in their way – poor or not – to get what they desire.  There are all kinds of wicked self-mongers in the world who only think about their own desires and what they need to do to accomplish their heart’s desire.

As Job asks, why are these people allowed to go on living?  Why are the people in this world who see the defenselessness of the poor allowed to continue to persecute them?  Why are the self-mongers allowed to continue in their wicked ways?  Why does not God see their identity and take care of them?

These are important questions to ask.  These are questions that are true to the compassion found in God and those who know Him.  But these questions need perspective, too.  These questions need to be tempered with another perspective of truth.

Tempering the Human Perspective With God

In the end, I think I need to return to my original restatement of the second half of Job 24:1.  “Why are the righteous prevented from seeing justification when they deserve to see the presence of God?”  The hard answer to that question is that there is nobody who fits into this category on our own.  All of our righteousness is like filthy rags.  None of us deserves to be in the presence of God.  So this second question may be appropriate to ask, but it really has no subject.  There is nobody who deserves to see the presence of God right here and right now.

The reality is that we know grace.  While none of us deserve to be in God’s presence, there is a portion of humanity that has found out that we are invited into such a place anyway.  Thanks be to God!  But the key to this is grace.  By the Law and God’s Word we are found lacking.  By Christ and God’s Word we are found forgiven and justified.  Righteousness is all about grace from our perspective.

Seeking the Judgment of Others

So if we are the beneficiaries of grace, why are we quick to see – and especially seek – the judgment of others?

That’s really the deep point of thought for the day.  When we ask to see God now, we are asking to have the period for God’s grace for others to come to an end.  When we ask to see God now, we are telling God that all those other people in the world who have not come to know Him do not deserve any more time to try and let God reveal Himself to them. 

Think about that last sentence for a while.  When we pray for God to come a settle accounts with this world, we are essentially praying for the period of grace to end for those who have not come to know God.  When we pray, “Come now, Lord Jesus,” we are praying in our hearts, “I don’t care about those who may come to know you in the future but who do not know you now.”  When we pray that prayer, those of us who are in grace are demonstrating our inability to display grace to others!

That is clearly wrong.  We should pray that just as we have found grace that God would be slow and merciful and give them as much time as possible!  As hard as it may be from time to time, we should pray that the period of grace be maximized, not minimized!  We should pray that God stays judgment for as long as possible, not as short as possible.

We should be praying that the wicked are afforded every opportunity to know God.  Yet like Job, our humanity cries out for us to see justice now.  We call out for Christ to return now.  Yes, we should long for our eternal life with Christ and God.  That will come.  It is inevitable, after all.  But for now, we should be focused on the wicked and helping them come to know God.  Why shorten the unknown just to get to the inevitable?  Why call for something that will definitely happen when there is an unknown period of work to be done before it?  Should that not ultimately be God’s call to make?

<><