Job CLIII

 Job 23:13-17, “But He is unique, and who can make Him change? And whatever His soul desires, that He does. For He performs what is appointed for me, and many such things are with Him. Therefore I am terrified at His presence; when I consider this, I am afraid of Him. For God made my heart weak, and the Almighty terrifies me; because I was not cut off from the presence of darkness, and He did not hide deep darkness from my face.”

It’s interesting to note that a man who lived thousands of years ago, who did not have the benefit of the interwebs, commentaries, or even the Pentateuch, which are the first five books of the Bible, could have a better grasp on the reality of who God is than most seminarians or even seminary professors.

The closer we get to the end of all things, the more we try to convince ourselves that we can make God bend to our will, that He will do our bidding and act in accordance with our wants rather than His sovereign will.

Job had a profound understanding of God. He understood that God does whatever His soul desires and performs what is appointed for each person as an individual, because He is sovereign and omnipotent. He also understood that God was just, and His justice would prevail in the end.

Currently, Job’s consternation centered around the idea that although he had not been cut off from the presence of darkness, he had been cut off from the presence of God. If the presence of God were still tangible, if Job could still hear His voice and feel His embrace, not having deep darkness hidden from his face would have been an easier trial to overcome.

It’s not the presence of darkness, nor the trials of life that should vex us; it’s the absence of God’s presence that should trouble us to no end. For those not fully surrendered, for those insisting that they can have one foot planted in the world and the other in the Kingdom, the absence of God’s presence isn’t worrisome or troublesome, but a welcome occurrence. They know that their duplicity and feigned commitment are off-putting to God, and if He were near, if He were present, if they heard His voice, they know with absolute certainty He would speak correction and rebuke.

If God isn’t saying anything, I can pretend I am in right standing with Him. If He is not correcting or rebuking me, then I can keep doing what I’m doing, appeasing the flesh, and walking uncircumspect, while clinging to the illusion that He is well pleased with me, that He will abide and overlook my lukewarmness and divided heart.

James 1:22-25, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.”

Any man who feels relief when God is silent, equating His silence with validation of his choices, is doing what James said men do when they are not doers of the word but hearers only: deceiving themselves.

Job was troubled in his soul by God’s silence more than anything else his flesh had endured thus far. It was the voice of God he desired to hear, the presence of God he yearned to feel, and having endured the silence and absence for so long, Job was simultaneously terrified of God’s presence, as well as His absence.

The reason God’s presence now terrified him is that although he knew himself to be innocent of the accusations leveled against him by his friends, he now wondered if there had been something he had done to displease the Lord.

I cannot abide His absence, I cannot bear His silence, but I am terrified of His presence. That is not an enviable position to be in, but here Job was, having been affected by the words of his three friends to enough of a degree that the fear of what the Almighty might say terrified him.

When we allow ourselves to be affected by the words of men, whether they be praise or criticism, and don’t have the sure foundation of being a hearer and doer of the word, eventually the cracks will start to show, and there will be moments of indecision, hesitation, delay, and second-guessing.

Are you doing what the Word commanded you to do? If so, the words of men should be of no consequence. They do not determine how God views you; only He determines how He views you, and although Job was in this tug of war with himself, wherein he both feared and desired the presence of God, in the end, he had to acquiesce and submit to the reality that God does as He wills, whether men approve of it or not.

It’s easy to sit in judgment of Job and insist he should not have been terrified, especially when we fail to realize that you and I have countless privileges not afforded to Job. We have the written Word, we have numerous examples of faith, obedience, servitude, and steadfastness, but most of all, we have the Mediator between God and men, the Man Jesus Christ. Job had none of these things, yet God declared him to be both blameless and upright, a rarity among rarities, yet still a man ill at ease in the silence, yet fearful of hearing His voice.

There is an endearing quality to Job’s honesty, wherein he does not portray himself as superhuman, or having attained such spiritual heights as to not be affected by frailty and pain. Be wary of the man who says he’s never been hurt, bruised, or scarred. Either he stood at the back of the army, watching others do the fighting, never seeing the whites of the enemy’s eyes, or he was never on the battlefield to begin with.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.