Job 31:40b The words of Job are ended.
All of us are probably familiar with the term “mic drop.” It is a moment where someone says all that can be said and essentially drops the mic. In Job 31:40 we have Job’s mic drop moment. He has said all he can say; he has thought all he can think; he has seen all that is possible for him. Job 31:40 says, “The words of Job are ended.” This is on the tail of his looking at his past, considering his present, and contemplating his future. What you see here is just how limited all of us are in seeing any of this.
Job 29:2 says, “Oh that I were in months past.” He goes on to talk about how great life had been. So many times the older we get, the better we were. That is part of a great imagination and a bad memory. Job says, “I wish it was like when I was young, when God was with me and I washed my steps with butter.” He was living life in luxury by comparison. Young men saw him and were deferential. The old men stood up. The princes stopped talking when he came into the room. The nobles listened. The ears that heard him blessed him. He wasn’t poor himself; he helped those who were poor. He goes on at length about how many good things he had done. Job 29:25 says that Job “dwelt as a king.” That was his past. He longed for the past.
If he longed for the past, he also loathed the present. He hated where he was currently. Job 30:1 says, “But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.” Now these kids look down on Job. He goes on to say, “And now am I their song, yea I am their byword.” He is saying, “They mock and abhor me because God has done these terrible things to me. All these young people are rising up. My best days are behind me.” Verse 20 says, “I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me: I stand up, and thou regardest me not.”
He longed for his past; he loathed his present; and in chapter 31 he contemplates his future. “Doth not he [God] see my ways, and count all my steps?” he says. Verse 5 continues, “If I have walked with vanity, or if my foot hath hasted to deceit; let me be weighed in an even balance.” The verses go on with a string of if/then propositions. If I had done wrong, then let me pay the price. But Job is saying, “I haven’t done wrong.” He was not guilty of any specific sin.
Job had this long string of “If I had done this, then let me be punished…,” but it never occurred to Job that this was not a matter of his guilt or innocence. He was not on trial as to specific guilt and he could not make things better simply by being proven innocent. In other words, he was limiting his future to an if/then proposition. It has got to be this or that. So many times we are limited in our future prospects because we make assumptions. My answer has to be this or this, and sometimes we may be limiting our options to things that are simply not true.
Sometimes our perspective limits our answer. There is a lot going on in this that Job could not have known. He could not have known of God’s discussion with Satan or of God’s high esteem for him. So, don’t limit God. I can certainty sympathize with Job and understand why a mere mortal would be limited, loathing the present, longing for the past, and contemplating the future, but in the limited perspective. Don’t limit God. Don’t miss Him in your past. It is easy to look back and think how great you were and miss God in your story.
Don’t be blind in the present. It is easy to go through the moment and see all the other things that are most obvious in our eyes, the pain, the problems, and things that shake us and demand our attention. It is easy to be blind to God.
Don’t limit God in your future. Don’t think it has to be either this or that. Well, it may well be, but usually it is not. Job’s perspective of the future was limited to what he thought the problems were and indeed he was wrong about the problems. God is not limited. Don’t limit Him in your past, in your present, or in your future.