Friends of Job - Part 4
There’s a natural inclination to assess a person’s spiritual condition by how God has moved in the past. This is a dangerous line of reasoning, because it assumes that God has to move the same way every time. This is simply not the case. BEWARE THE FOLLOWING ABSOLUTES:
1. Problems ALWAYS reveal insufficient fear of God and prayer to God.
Job 15:4 “Yea, thou castest off fear,
and restrainest prayer before God.”
2. Older people are ALWAYS wiser.
V8-10 “What knowest thou, that we know not?
what understandest thou, which is not in us?
With us are both the grayheaded and very aged men,
much elder than thy father.
3. Godly people will NEVER suffer, but prosper.
V20-21 “The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days,
and the number of years is hidden to the oppressor.
A dreadful sound is in his ears:
in prosperity the destroyer shall come upon him.
V34 “For the congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate,
and fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery.”
LESSON - It is true that people steeped in sin have little fear of God and often lack the faith to pray to Him in an ongoing manner. What we cannot afford to assume is that ALL people in similar predicaments lack both. Next, to assume that spiritual maturity follows a person’s age is a false premise. What about the people who receive Christ as senior adults? Finally, It is dangerous to assume that prosperity is a sign of God’s blessing. If so, most professional gamblers could earn their way into Heaven. Job’s friends took general truths and established them as absolutes for which there could be no other explanation. Be careful not to assume that God’s actions in the past are always a sign of His will to be accomplished today.You may inadvertently follow the path of legalism.
~Mike
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