Make God your friend

"Make God your friend" – Job 9:1-4 When Job asks: How will man be justified before God? He is not inquiring, (inquiring, investigating, or carefully examining) about the way of salvation, "but expressing the futility of always proving his innocence before Him who is so great."

I. It is absurd (ridiculous) to argue with God.

A. "One could not answer one thing in a thousand."

1. He is sovereign, wise, and all-powerful, as can be seen in the way He "controls the mountains, the earth, the sun, the stars, the sea, and wonders without number."

2. Surely, I know that it is so: And how will man be justified before God?

3. It is a pious confession of man's sinfulness, of his own in particular, so that if God were to treat us as our sins deserve, we would be lost.

4. (Job 9:3) Job feels it as an incontestable truth that no one can contend with His Maker.

5. In dispute: If He were to argue with Him in litigation (lawsuit) before the court, as seen from the above context, "He will not be able to answer one thing in a thousand."

6. When God spoke to Job from a whirlwind (Job Chapters 38 and 39) and addressed him with multiple questions, Job could not answer a single one of them.

7. Likewise, God can accuse us of a thousand offenses, and we cannot answer Him to excuse ourselves from a single one of them.

8. In Combat: Who Raged Against Him and Did It Go Well?

9. There can be no case of any sin that has dared to rage against God and that he has not found to be too hard for him, he will pay dearly for his foolishness (imprudence, irresponsibility, foolishness, nonsense).

10. (2 Chronicles 36:13, 16) The sins that brought about this tremendous ruin.

11. Zedekiah, in whose reign it occurred (the ruin of Judah) and (Jerusalem), the ruin brought upon him with his "foolishness" (senseless, imprudence, irresponsibility).

12. If He had made God His friend, He would have saved him from ruin.

13. Jeremiah brought him messages from God, but he is blamed here for not humbling himself before the prophet Jeremiah (2 Chronicles 36:12).

14. "Thus, refusing to be a servant of God, he was made a slave of his enemies."

15. If he had been faithful to the covenant he made with the king of Babylon, this too could have preserved him from ruin, but he rebelled (2 Chronicles 36:13) against him also after having sworn to continue to be his tributary.

16. This provokes the king of Babylon to treat him so severely.

17. What definitely ruined Zedekiah was, not only that he "did not turn to Jehovah God of Israel" but that he "stiffened his neck" and stubbornly refused to do so. (13)

18. He therefore refused to be cured and therefore to live.

19. (2 Chronicles 36:14) The great sin that brought about this ruin is idolatry.

20. The priests and even the chief priest, who had the obligation to oppose idolatry, were the ringleaders of this "prevarication" (perverting and inciting someone to fail in the obligations of their religion or office).

21. (2 Chronicles 36:15) God showed His tender compassion toward His people by sending them prophets.

22. This sin was greatly aggravated by their mistreatment of God's prophets, sent to provoke repentance.

23. It is expressly stated that the reason God sent these prophets to them was "because He had mercy on His people and on the place of His dwelling (church) and by this means, He wanted to preserve them from ruin.

24. But they mocked, (jibed, ridiculed, insulted, offended, outraged) and despised the messengers of God and their words by mocking their prophets. (2 Chronicles 36:16)

25. An example is the mistreatment they gave to the prophet Jeremiah at this time.

26. "This brought a rise of God's wrath against His people and there was no remedy."

27. For they sinned against the only remedy = (the one who can repair a damage, reparation).

28. There is nothing that provokes God so much as the mistreatment of His faithful ministers and even His faithful servants, for He takes it as a done to Himself: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?" Amen