Job 21:24

Among the wicked there is such disparity that it is folly to think of judging by their experiences. Why? Because "one dies in his full vigor, being wholly at ease and secure." His possessions stay intact and his health holds up until he dies (v. 24). On the other hand, another wicked man dies in bitterness. His whole life was deeply unpleasant. At the end "they lie down alike in the dust." The end of the one is the same as the other, though their lives on earth were opposite. Who can answer why?

The experiences of the wicked vary. One dies quietly in prosperity, another in wretchedness; both alike reach a common end in the grave. Since this is so, it hardly suits his friends to state one unvarying rule. They claimed that judgment in this life was always a sign of sin, and prosperity a sign of righteousness in the people affected. Although he himself had reached no solution to his problem, he could at least urge his friends to "judge nothing before the time."

What Zophar and the others press was only half a truth. Now half a truth never sanctifies. What you leave out is perhaps of equal, or even greater, importance, and there was just the difference. With all his defects, Job was holding to the truth. He looked at it with a larger heart and a more exercised conscience. There are people who moralise, but this did not come from their souls. It was merely correct talk according to the thoughts of men. It was not really the language of faith at all. Job's was, despite all its defects.

"Another dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted of prosperity. They lie down alike in the dust" — and the careless world goes to their funeral and thinks it is all right with them both. That is what people call "judging with charity" — charitable judgment! They hope everybody goes to heaven, unless they are too bad — openly wicked! Now what is the judgment according to God? That if One died for all, then all died. That is the state of man. And He died for all — all mankind. They are all inexcusable.

It was not the case, he affirmed, that the wicked were always overwhelmed with disaster. On the contrary, they often lived on, grew old, and became mighty in power and prosperous, with their children established in their sight. At the end they had no long drawn-out misery such as he was enduring, but "in a moment they go down to Sheol." And all the time their attitude to God was, "Depart from us! We do not desire the knowledge of your ways."

Job here correctly diagnosed the attitude of the natural man to God. He did so about two thousand years before God inspired Paul to write his letter to the Romans. There, in the first chapter, we read that men, "although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him." Again, we read that they "did not see fit to acknowledge God." This is the tremendous fact we have to face. Sin has so completely alienated man from God that he has not the least desire for Him. "No one seeks for God," as Romans 3 states.

Many, like the psalmist, are perplexed at the prosperity of the wicked (Psalm 73:3). Everything seems to go well with them in life, and even in death. Only when the psalmist entered the "sanctuary of God" did he understand their end (verse 17). And it is the end that matters.