Job 7:18

In Job 7 it is: "What is man, that You should magnify him? and that You should set Your heart on him?" He says this in a complaining, bad spirit: Why does the LORD take such notice of me, and make such a trouble about me? Why does He not depart from me, or let me alone till I swallow my spittle? Why should the LORD think so much of me, and not cut me off?

What was mortal man, that God should make so much of him and test him without a break? Suppose he had sinned — why set him up as a target until he passed away in sorrow?

God let the malicious adversary strip him of his possessions, family, and even his health. The adversary then had to leave the case, completely baffled. Job kept his integrity through all his suffering. But if things had stopped there, the experience would probably have harmed Job. He might have grown self-satisfied, saying that he had stood true to God in good times and bad. Chapter twenty-nine makes it plain that a weed of self-satisfaction was already growing inside him. He probably did not know it was there, but God's holy eye saw it clearly. God, therefore, took up the work at the point where the enemy had to abandon it. His aim was to rid His servant of that harmful weed, and so do him good in the end.

The interest of God in the individual soul, though so puzzling to Job at that moment, is most precious. What greater proof of it could we have than this book? Think of one of the largest books of the Bible given entirely to God's dealings with one soul — a man who was not even a descendant of Abraham! God cared so much for His servant that He would not "look away" from him or "let him alone," despite his prayer. He carried His gracious work forward until He had finished it, and Job had reaped its full blessing.

His interest is the first thing to consider: "He never withdraws His eyes from the righteous." Yet in his distress even a Job could feel this as a painful trial rather than a gain… Job, for all his outward perfection, had not yet seen God as he was to see Him… How blessed it is, once we have truly seen Him, to know that every step we take matters to Him! For every hour of the day He has a thought about how we should spend it.

If the reader will turn for a moment to Hebrews 12:3-12, he will find much precious instruction on the subject of God's dealings with His people… it presents three distinct ways in which we may meet the chastening of our Father's hand. We may "despise" it, as though His hand and His voice were not in it; we may "faint" under it, as though it were unbearable, and not the precious fruit of His love; or, lastly, we may be "exercised by it," and so reap, in due time, "the peaceable fruits of righteousness."

Psalm 8 and Psalm 144 stand in beautiful contrast to Job's complaining. There a similar question brings out wholly different answers, in and through the Lord Jesus. Yet the Lord entered the glory of Son of Man, set over all things, through infinitely deeper suffering… Job gives way to murmurs and complaints that God should take such notice of man in His daily government. Not so the Lord. He was rejected by all and tasted death for everything, and now we see Him exalted above the heavens.