Job 7 – https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/…
Have you ever asked that question? Has some great suffering ever squeezed those anguished words from your lips? Job simply didn’t understand. He didn’t believe that God was punishing him for anything in particular. That’s not to say that Job didn’t think he had sinned but he knew that God had forgiven his sins through the coming savior. He indicates that in verse 20. So he can’t figure out what this is happening. Why won’t God just let him die? Why won’t he at least let him have some peace in his sleep? He doesn’t.
We can’t always answer those questions. At least not in the moment. At least not very specifically. But there is a place we can turn when we are asking “Why God?” Because Jesus once asked the same question. On the cross, in the anguish of our sins, suffering the torments of hell, Jesus asked “My God, My God, why? Why have you forsaken me? Why are you letting this happen to me.” Psalm 22 prophesied that he would say this. In fact, if you study Psalm 22, you find that Jesus on the cross really didn’t understand why God was doing this. Though true God, he had laid aside His omniscience to suffer just as we suffer, just as Job suffered. He knew that He had lived a perfect life. He had never sinned. And yet there he was suffering on the cross, being abandoned by His father, punished as if He were the worst sinner in the world. And He was doing it for us. He was doing it for Job. He was doing it so that when we can’t figure out why God would let something so terrible happen to us, we could turn there and know that our sins are forgiven, know that our God loves us, know that He has some good in mind for us through this suffering.
When you suffer as Job did, remember that Jesus’ “why” is the answer to yours.
In Christ
Pastor Ude