Cause and Effect?

To whom hast thou uttered words?
(Job 26:4)

Unlike Job’s friends and counselors, a person filled with the Holy Spirit knows what to speak, comfort and not hurt, etc. Job is rebuking those whose religious spirit leads them into a cause and effect relationship with the Lord, one whose whole experience is based upon a works sort of mentality, and not one of fellowship.

How similar are the parallels today! How many people have left the church when, because they were struggling as all Christians will, they were chastised as if they were nothing but outright, rebellious heathen! How many “armchair theologians” today use the “you must have done this (a), that is why this (b) has happened to you” formula? How many others see someone hurting, and their first thought is, “I wonder what they did wrong?” How many are excited to be helping everyone they perceive as hurting only so as to find the supposed cause?

What nonsense – and it is explicitly countered here in the book of Job.

God works everything out after the counsel of his own will (Ephesians 1:11), and just because He is a good God does not mean that our definitions of what He ought to do are correct. God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45); our part as Christians is to have faith even when things are seemingly going against us. Job was right, God gives, and God takes away (Job 1:21).

God does as He wills, not as we will, and He is NOT bound by our obedience. This is a ridiculous assertion: that our obedience makes us worthy and makes God act regardless of His wishes! Doing what we are called to do only makes us unprofitable servants (Luke 17:10), and we can do nothing without God (John 15:5).

That is what this whole book of Job is about; our repentance in the face of God’s sovereignty no matter what, and so many today make a mockery out of this! Pray that God would bring them into the true light before they start heaping condemnation upon the heads of others, which really lands upon their own head.

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