We don’t say it, but it’s hard not to feel, it wasn’t fair for Job, a “perfect” man (Job 1:8 KJV) by God’s own estimation, to be subjected to all the pain, suffering, and deprivation he endured at the hands of the satan. But, doesn’t God the Judge determine what is fair? The same kind of thinking was voiced about the blind man in the NT. “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him” (John 9:2-3). The Almighty never apologized to Job and said, ‘I did it to win a bet with the satan.’ After the Almighty responded out of the whirlwind, Job could only say, “Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:3, 6). LORD, may we be as Your servant Job. Amen.
Reward of His Suffering
For the Love of God
Human freedom and independence are often advanced as the driving reason to motivate humans to achieve anything. For a disciple, love for God is the pinnacle reason to do everything. “And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2 NET). When given a choice between freedom and love for God, we know our preference. There is a story about two devout Moravian Christians, Johann Leonhard Dober and David Nitschmann, who chose to sell themselves into slavery to bring the Gospel to the African slaves of the islands of St. Thomas and St. Croix in the Danish West Indies (1732). As the ship departed from the docks to carry them to the West Indies, the missionaries called out to their loved ones on the docks, “May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His Suffering!” They successfully established a mission, baptized converts, and returned — Dober remaining in Europe and Nitschmann accompanied John Wesley to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (America).