Job 19:1-22 ~ You magnify

Job 19:1-22

1 Then Job answered and said:

2 “How long will you torment me
and break me in pieces with words?
3 These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;
are you not ashamed to wrong me?
4 And even if it be true that I have erred,
my error remains with myself.
5 If indeed you magnify yourselves against me
and make my disgrace an argument against me,
6 know then that God has put me in the wrong
and closed his net about me.
7 Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered;
I call for help, but there is no justice.
8 He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass,
and he has set darkness upon my paths.
9 He has stripped from me my glory
and taken the crown from my head.
10 He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,
and my hope has he pulled up like a tree.
11 He has kindled his wrath against me
and counts me as his adversary.
12 His troops come on together;
they have cast up their siege ramp [their way] against me
and encamp around my tent.

13 “He has put my brothers far from me,
and those who knew me are wholly estranged from me.
14 My relatives have failed me,
my close friends have forgotten me.
15 The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger;
I have become a foreigner in their eyes.
16 I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;
I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy.
17 My breath is strange to my wife,
and I am a stench to the children of my own mother.
18 Even young children despise me;
when I rise they talk against me.
19 All my intimate friends abhor me,
and those whom I loved have turned against me.
20 My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh,
and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
21 Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends,
for the hand of God has touched me!
22 Why do you, like God, pursue me?
Why are you not satisfied with my flesh?

An expression used a lot that says, "Success breeds Success and Failure breeds Failure." We like it - Job can't even get the servant to answer him without begging - our talents and our faults promote us or we deserve the bad events occurring in life. All through the Bible, it doesn't say this; it says God gives us gifts. He determines who will be lifted up and who will not.

Job, like people with trouble in their lives, isn't the most sought after book in the Scriptures. It's like rain on a picnic. Really, to blame people for events in life, is like saying the showered out picnic was a judgment from God.

Well, we reason, God used Job's trouble for a purpose. Yes, He did. God uses circumstances in our lives, by faith and not by sight, we believe He shapes our lives. Job begins to see, at the end of the book, God's purpose is best because it is God's.

The book of Job has another purpose, it is our map and our guide when we have trouble. How did Job deal with all of his loss and pain?

23 “Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
24 Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!

25 For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.

26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
27 whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me!
28 If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’
and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’
29 be afraid of the sword,
for wrath brings the punishment of the sword,
that you may know there is a judgment.”

Job believed in God, he had hope. Solomon, after a lifetime of judging good & evil in Israel, believed God is just as present in adversity as in blessing. Just as David prayed for the infant he was told would die, David always believed, in unfortunate times, in the goodness and mercy of a loving Father.

<><