Job 10:2

He had now given up hope of any sympathy from them. "Here I am alone with all my sorrows; here are three dear friends who have not one bit of sympathy with me! No feeling and no compassion for all that I am suffering. They are quite comfortable that they have none of it, and quite astonished that I should have any of it. So they think I must be very wicked. It is all false."

There was no mediator, so from verse 2 on Job speaks every word straight to God. He reasons with Him about why God should treat him the way He was doing... He lets his bitter complaint run free and pleads with God, "Do not condemn me." God had not condemned him at all, though his sufferings made him feel that He had. "Show me why You contend with me" (v.2). In one respect it was true that God was contending with Job, and Job did not learn why until the last chapter of this book.

Much of the profit this book gives depends on one thing: God's estimate of Job and Satan's trial of him became known only in heaven. The reason for the trial stayed a secret for the time being — a secret not in heaven, but here on earth. Neither Job nor his friends knew anything of what God had said about him.

He is weary of life, and might as well pour out all his thoughts against God... but instead pours out all those thoughts before the eye of God. May not this very outpouring of misery suggest the root of faith in his heart? He will at least tell God to His face that he doubts Him: "though He slay me." He asks God why He contends with him. Does it please God to despise the work of His own hands, and let the wicked go unpunished?

The worst of it is not the physical agony, the boils and running sores torturing him. It is the bitter awareness that he is losing hold on God, and that he begins to look on Him no longer as a loving friend, but as a harsh, unmovable tyrant.

Even Job contends with God, though he knows it is no use. But the contending brings out what is in Job; he does not know himself till then. What comes out, sad to say, is a sinful and rebellious spirit. It lurked underneath the things he boasted about. There was in him an undetected principle of sin. It is a terrible lesson to learn about yourself, and everyone must learn it.

There was one thing that neither Job nor his friends understood, and that was grace; and it could not be understood. He did know that God was faithful. His piety made him feel, and hold firmly, that all the troubles he came into were from God.

God will explain His ways with you in good time, but not today. And does not most of your difficulty lie in wanting that explanation now?... Must we give our children the reason why we see fit to correct them? And if God gave us the deep secret of His corrections, would we benefit from it?