The book of Job isn’t just a bystander to the grace of suffering and God’s presence in our suffering, but it is also our main biblical protest against faith which has been reduced to explanations or “answers.” plenty of the answers that Job’s supposed buddies give him are technically true. But it’s the “technical” part that ruins them. They’re answers without private relationship, intellect without intimacy.

The answers are slapped onto Job’s ravaged life like labels on a specimen bottle.

In reply, Job rages against this secularized knowledge which has lost touch with the living facts of The Lord God. The late ( and I would add great ) Joe Bayly and his other half, Mary Lou, lost 3 of their kids.

They lost one child following surgery when he was only eighteen days old. They also lost the second boy at age 5 because of leukemia. They then lost a 3rd child at eighteen years after a sledding accident, due to complications related to his hemophilia. Joe writes in a superb book, the very last thing we discuss.

Somebody came and talked to me of God’s dealings, of why it occurred, of hope outside the grave. He talked continually ; he revealed things I knew were true. I was indifferent, except I wished he’d depart.

He just sat beside me for an hour and more, listened when I announced something, answered briefly, prayed simply, left.

You have done it right when those in pain hate to see you go. Had we lived in his day, there is not any way we could say, “I know how you feel.” we do not.

Mates care sufficiently to come without being asked to come.

No one sent a message announcing to Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar, “Would you please come and bring a little sympathy and comfort for Job? The person is dying in this cooking pot of suffering and pain.” That was not required, because real chums show up when anyone they like is truly injuring. Sympathy includes identifying with the sufferer.

They enter into their melting pot, for the point of feeling the misery and being personally touched by the agony. Comfort is making an attempt to reduce the pain by helping in making the sorrow lighter. Pals overtly express the depth of their feelings. They have methods of doing that, don’t they? It is not odd to see a mate standing nearby in the surgery room fighting back the tears.

It isn’t unusual for the buddy to express deep feelings. To the contrary, they come alongside and they get as near as possible. Pals aren’t offended as the room has a bad smell. Chums don’t turn away as the one they have come to be with has been reduced to the shell of his previous self, weighing half what he used to weigh. They don’t walk away as the bottom dropped out of your life and you are at wits’ end. These men literally tore their robes, spattered dust on their heads, and raised their voices and sobbed as they sat down on the ground with Job. They demonstrated the depth of their torment by staying a week and 7 nights without letting out a word. Buddies understand, so they say little.

She stands there, tears streaming down her face, holding the body of her child in her arms. And at that exact moment, Elijah holds out his arms and claims, “Give him to me.”.

He claimed to her, “Give me your son.” Then he took him from her bosom and carried him up to the higher room where he was living, and laid him on his own bed. And Elijah simply announces, “Give him to me.”. Somehow he knows that nothing he will be able to say at this moment will satisfy this mourning mother. No words from him can ease her stricken spirit.

He does not remind her of all she owes him or of how humiliated she deserves to be for blaming him. He simply asks her to put her burden in his arms.

Pause for a moment to notice that Elijah is again in a situation that, at least from a human viewpoint, he does not merit.

He has obeyed God by going to Ahab then hiding at Cherith. He has walked with Our Lord God from Cherith to Zarephath. He’s done precisely as the Lord instructed, He is trusted God, and now he is receiving the brunt of this girl’s blame.

God often appears to put us in the vise, and then He tightens it and tightens it more, till we think, in the agony of His sovereign squeeze, “What’s He attempting to do to me?” We walk closer to Him and even nearer to Him. We do not see how we could walk any closer, but still more tests come, one on top of another. He stands proud and silent in the shade of The Lord God, grounded in religion, assured of his Lord’s power. He simply claims, with quiet compassion, “Give me the boy.”.

Elijah had walked into a situation that was, from all human point of view, not possible.

But the excellent news is that he saw outside the difficulty. He handled the difficulty with religion, not fear.

Elijah was determined that those first first-impression blues were not going to get him down. The widow had her eyes on the impossibilities : a few flour, a little quantity of oil, some sticks. Elijah rolled up his sleeves and targeted only on the probabilities.

How could he do that? As he was a developing man of the Lord God. He had seen the proof of The Lord God’s faithfulness. He had obeyed God, and, without delay, he had walked to Zarephath. You can not talk the talk if you have never walked the walk. You can not inspire someone else to think the unlikely if you have not assumed the very unlikely. You can’t light another’s candle of hope if your own torch of religion isn’t burning. When Elijah saw the near-empty flour bin and oil jug, he claimed, about with a shrug, “That’s no problem for God. And fix some for you and your boy too.” Then he told her why. Listen to these assured words of religion : “The bowl of flour shall not be exhausted, nor shall the jar of oil be empty, till the day that the LORD sends rain on the face of the earth.”. That lady must have looked at Elijah, this beat, dusty stranger, with wonder and distraction, as she heard words like she’d never heard before. These are the sort of awesome associations God uses to build up our religion.