Job LXXXIX

 Job 5:17-27, “Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects; Therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty. For He bruises, but He binds up; He wounds, but His hand makes whole. He shall deliver you in six troubles, yes, in seven no evil shall touch you. In famine He shall redeem you from death, and in war from the power of the sword. You shall be hidden from the scourge of the tongue, and you shall not be afraid of destruction when it comes. You shall laugh at destruction and famine, and you shall not be afraid of the beasts of the earth. For you shall have a covenant with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with you. You shall know that your tent is in peace; you shall visit your dwelling and find nothing amiss. You shall also know that your descendants shall be many, and your offspring like the grass of the earth. You shall come to the grave at a full age, as a sheaf of grain ripens in its season. Behold, this we have searched out; it is true. Hear it, and know for yourself.”

It’s easy to rationalize someone else’s pain and conclude that they’re reacting in a manner they shouldn’t be. We go back to the idea that every situation is unique, and every trial and the reaction to it is exclusive to the individual in question. We tend to generalize much more than we ought, and although generally speaking, the notion that the man whom God corrects is happy, in Job’s case, it was not correction; it was something wholly different, a new experience heretofore unheard of by Eliphaz and his two friends, and it was something they couldn’t wrap their minds around.

Correction is one thing. Giving Satan free rein to tear you down to the studs and then cover those with painful boils as a means of testing is something wholly different. Job’s friends couldn’t have known why these things were happening to him, and Job himself was likewise in the dark.

It’s even discombobulating for us who have the benefit of the Word and understand that sometimes God tests our faith for reasons that have nothing to do with correction, but as far as Job was concerned, he was the first, the prototype, the forerunner of being sifted, and tried to the point of unimaginable pain. He had no point of reference for what he was going through. There was no one he could point to in the past and reconcile his current lot with what another had gone through before.

Job’s friends had done their due diligence. They’d searched it out and concluded it to be true, but there had never been a man to have been sifted for the reasons Job was being sifted for, and so having a partial understanding of the situation, they spoke to him in words whose substance was undeniably true, but which did not apply to his current circumstance.

Having seen Job at his lowest, they’d concluded that his situation did not warrant the level of desperation or suffering he was feeling. God bruises, but He binds up; He wounds, but His hand makes whole; all true, but difficult to see when you’re still being bruised and wounded for no reason that you can discern.

The promises of God hold true even if their fulfillment is delayed. That is an absolute truth we, as children of God, with the benefit of hindsight and the foundation of Scripture, can abide in and draw comfort from. Even when you don’t know the reason you’re going through testing, when you’ve searched your heart and know that there is no unconfessed sin therein, when you conclude it isn’t correction but something else, take strength from the knowledge that He will bind up, restore, and heal in due season.

The knowledge of this doesn’t make it any easier, but it gives us the strength to press on, to endure and persevere when others have fallen by the wayside and given in to despair. I don’t have hobbies. I don’t bowl, golf, hunt, or roller derby. One thing I have been doing as far back as I can remember is collecting stories of individuals who spent time in prison, were tortured, persecuted, and unfairly treated for the sake of Christ during the communist rule in Eastern Europe.

None of these people had any recourse. They couldn’t go to the justice system, appeal their arrest with a judge, and though they trumpeted their innocence, no one paid them any mind. There wasn’t even a promise of deliverance or that someday they would know freedom once more. All they had was the daily choice of remaining faithful or giving in to bitterness.

It was a binary thing. Either they persevered and committed their ways to the Lord in all things or requested an audience with an overseer and wrote down some names on a piece of paper. The reward for their betrayal was no small thing. They would get to go home to their wives and children, they would no longer be harassed by local officials, and the threat of torture and imprisonment would no longer hang over their heads like the sword of Damocles. Even so, many, if not most, endured untold horrors at the hands of those who saw them as less than human because they understood that there had not failed one word of all His good promises.

If there had been any doubt regarding God’s omnipotence, faithfulness, and sovereignty in the hearts of these individuals, the offer on the table would have been too good to pass up. With one stroke of a pen, all your problems went away. No more beatings, humiliations, hard labor, or psychological torture; all of it went away in an instant.

They could not see the promises of God being fulfilled presently; there was no particular date they could count down to, yet unshakeable faith in the God they served gave them the assurance that one way or another, their deliverance was a certainty. God will heal; He will bind up, restore, and make the crooked paths straight because He promised it would be so, but in His time and for His purpose. When we’re in the midst of it, every second seems like an eternity, and we wonder if deliverance will ever come, but rest assured, it will.  

With love in Christ, 

Michael Boldea, Jr.