My Integrity Is At Stake

Job 6:22-29 – Have I ever said, ‘Give something on my behalf, pay a ransom for me from your wealth, deliver me from the hand of the enemy, rescue me from the clutches of the ruthless’? “Teach me, and I will be quiet; show me where I have been wrong. How painful are honest words! But what do your arguments prove? Do you mean to correct what I say, and treat my desperate words as wind? You would even cast lots for the fatherless and barter away your friend. “But now be so kind as to look at me. Would I lie to your face? Relent, do not be unjust; reconsider, for my integrity is at stake.

Job 2:3,10 – Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.”…He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.

Ecclesiastes 12:11 – The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails—given by one shepherd.

Job 19:5-6 – If indeed you would exalt yourselves above me and use my humiliation against me, then know that God has wronged me and drawn his net around me.

Job 27:2-4 – “As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice, the Almighty, who has made my life bitter, as long as I have life within me, the breath of God in my nostrils, my lips will not say anything wicked, and my tongue will not utter lies.

Job 35:2 – “Do you think this is just? You say, ‘I am in the right, not God.’

Job 42:6 – Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”

Psalm 66:10 – For you, God, tested us; you refined us like silver.

Zechariah 13:9 – This third I will put into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are my people,’ and they will say, ‘The Lord is our God.’”

Application:

• ·         Job’s reply to his wife silences “the accuser”, who is not heard from again.
• ·         Scripture is in a class of its own.
• ·         The wicked may get themselves into trouble, as Bildad had pointed out, but Job here attributes his suffering to God.
• ·         Job’s faith in God continued despite his personal perception of denied justice.
• ·         God cannot be stirred up to do things against His will. Though it is not always clear how, everything that happens is part of His divine purpose.
• ·         The psalmist who thirsted for God also questioned why God had forgotten him and rejected him.
• ·         To his humility Job adds repentance for the presumptuous words he had spoken to God.
• ·         From one point of view, times of distress constitute a testing of God’s people as to their trust in and loyalty to God.
• ·         “My people” will be restored to proper covenant relationship with the Lord.

All Scripture verses taken from NIV