Let Me Know Why You Contend With Me!

Quite frankly, we think we have a right to know why. That’s the way we think in our American culture, but that is not true. Do your children have a right to know why you tell them this or that? They think they do, but do they? Now you may choose to tell them but they do not have a right to know. Does a person in the military have a right to know why his commanding officer orders him to do something? Can you imagine a football player calling a time out in order to ask the coach to explain why he called a certain play? No, we don’t have the right.

So if that is true on the human level, is it not more true when it concerns the sovereign King of the universe and His created beings? Yes and I don’t think I would get any disagreement on that issue even though we still may not like it at times. So Job does not have a right to have some explanation from God and neither do we. I think it is important to declare that in light of the culture we live in.

But let me move on to something else that I want to communicate to you this morning that is essential for us to grasp in this story of Job and it is this: not only was it not Job’s right to have an explanation or to know why but it was critical that he NOT know why all this was happening to him. It was critical for him NOT to understand why he was going through this. Do you see that?

What would have happened if he had known what we know as a result of reading the 1st 2 chapters?

What would have happened if he had known that this was a test between God and Satan?

What would have happened if he knew that God was allowing this to answer/silence Satan’s blasphemous accusation that mankind would not worship God if He allowed them to suffer, and that by giving good things to them and preventing bad things he, in essence, paid them off so that they would worship him.

That was the whole premise behind Satan’s argument, was it not? “You are not a God worthy of worship. You have to pay people to honor You. Of course, Job serves You – look at what You’ve done for him.”

According to Satan’s thinking self-service is the fundamental law of life – the old what’s-in-it-for-me philosophy. He cannot imagine anyone serving God from other than selfish reasons. To him, every human act can be explained by a selfish motive. The opening chapters of Job exposes Satan as the 1st great behaviorist for his argument was that Job was conditioned to love God. Take away all his awards and blessings and his special privileges and his faith will crumble and disintegrate.

So one of the reasons why God allows the godly to suffer is to answer the blasphemous accusations of Satan and prove throughout the seen but also, dear brothers and sisters, throughout the unseen world that man will honor and worship God even though he has lost everything, even though he knows God allowed it to happen – he will worship God simply because of who God is. It is so important for us to comprehend this truth. We have a witness to declare, not just before the people who know us but literally before the whole unseen world. It is so much bigger than we can imagine.