#DailyDevotion When Your Friends Seem Like Enemies
February 16th
Read Job 12:1–6, 12–25
Job 12:2-5 “No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you. (3) But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you. Who does not know such things as these? (4) I am a laughingstock to my friends; I, who called to God and he answered me, a just and blameless man, am a laughingstock. (5) In the thought of one who is at ease there is contempt for misfortune; it is ready for those whose feet slip.
It is very difficult to talk to people who are experiencing misfortune. Job’s accusation perhaps may ring true at times. We speak from a position of ease. Maybe we do have contempt for the one experiencing suffering. They may certainly be experiencing it that way when we try to tell them why they are in the condition they are in. Like Job they may think and say to you in other terms, “No doubt…wisdom will die with you.”
Those people who in the midst of adversity may think the people around them are laughing at them and they themselves are a laughingstock. So we should be reminded of this when we try to comfort and council our friends or others around experiencing hardship. Remember Job’s warning, “misfortune; it is ready for those whose feet slip.”
There is not much hope in this section of Job. There are these words: Job 12:13 “With God are wisdom and might; he has counsel and understanding.” Job 12:16 “With him are strength and sound wisdom; the deceived and the deceiver are his.” In the midst of misfortune and affliction we can know God is in control. What he is doing or allowing to be done is according to his wisdom and might. In the context of these verses that is still not particularly comforting. For God builds up and tears down. He loosens and he binds. Our only hope in this is that God is not being capricious. He doesn’t do things willy nilly.
But if you are Christian, then you have a more certain hope. We have a word of promise from through the apostle Paul: Rom 8:35-37 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? (36) As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” (37) No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
We may feel as if we are being slaughtered, indeed we might be. But for those who have been called by Christ, baptized into his name and have put our faith in his salvation for us, we stand on this promise; nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. Paul reminds us Jesus is interceding for us. Therefore in all trials and tribulation “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” We are God’s children. Nothing can take that from us.
Heavenly Father, you bind and you loose. You lift up and you tear down. Grant us faith in the midst of you operating according to your wisdom and might to never take our eye off Jesus that in him we may know your perfect will towards us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.