In our devotions last week, we looked at the worldview and rhetoric of Job's friends. We could spend more time looking at their words, but they are essentially saying the same thing. Their message is consistent: Job is being punished because he has done wrong and he needs to repent if he wants to receive God's blessing once again!

When we read Job's words of reply, he is much less consistent. He speaks as a man who is distraught and confused. He will say things in one passage that do not match what he says in another. This is of course not unexpected for those who are suffering deeply as Job is. His understanding of life, God and the universe is crumbling around him and it doesn't seem to make sense anymore.

Over the next few weeks we will look at some of Job's speeches and we will see a man who is really struggling, yet refuses to give up hope. You might expect him to descend into a state of resignation where he effectively throws in the towel. That's what his friends are urging him to do, and he comes perilously close.

At a rational level, Job cannot understand what is happening to him. What he sees does not match what he knows. This is where his heart kicks in. In his commentary, David Clines speaks of Job's relationship with God saying "intellectually the game may be at a stalemate, but emotionally everything is still at stake". Job is a genuine believer and he does not want to let this go without a fight!

So this is one of the big questions when we look at Job: can a man be wrong and right at the same time? Listen once again to the words of Christopher Ash:

God will say that Job has spoken rightly about him (42:7). And yet Job says a great many things about God that are not right. How are we to reconcile this apparent contradiction? When we listen to Job’s speeches, we need to bear in mind the distinction between Job’s perception and Job’s heart. His heart is the heart of a believer, which is why the Lord commends and affirms him at the end. But his perceptions are partial and flawed. We hear in these speeches the honest grapplings of a real believer with a heart for God as he sees what he thought was a secure worldview crumble around him. This is why we will hear Job say some things that are plain wrong, and yet we hear him say them from a heart that is deeply right.

As Christians we have the same Spirit as Job. God has given us a new heart- a redeemed and restored heart that is deeply right. And while there may well be times when we feel abandoned, we know that in Jesus we have a Good Shepherd. His is a "love that will not let me go". Nothing can snatch us out of God's hand! (John 10:28)