Repentance Does NOT Change Situations - Job 11

Job 11:15-16 (ESV Strong's)
Surely then you will lift up your face without blemish;
you will be secure and will not fear.
You will forget your misery;
you will remember it as waters that have passed away.

Repentance Does NOT Always Produce New A Situation.

The last of Jobs three “friends,” Zophar, finally gets his time to talk.   He, however, is the harshest of them all.   He has little patience for Job and takes the track that Job has sinned and he needs to repent.  He states that “if” he repents (Job 11:13, 14), then God will restore him.    The above verses are, according to Zophar, what that restoration looks like.    Although repentance is the avenue for restoration to God is not the parade that comes before situational change.   A young, unmarried, girl who finds herself pregnant can repent and find peace in God’s grace, but she is still pregnant.   Zophar is harsh.  He believes that all suffering is a direct aspect of sin.   He thinks that if we sin and reprint, God will usher in not just a spiritual peace but physical manifestations of that repentance.    When Zophar tells Job he will “lift up your face without blemish,” he is referring to Job’s physical disfigurement due to the afflictions he was hit with by Satan.   Zophar is a typical religious person today who simply tells people to repent and all will be okay physically.   Repentance can care for the penalty of sin we have between God and us, but it does not always care for the physical ramifications of sin in the world.  Remember, we know that Job is not suffering this demise because of his sin.    We read that in chapters one and two of the book.   But, Zophar’s philosophy is simply locked in that people who suffer must be sinners and those who suffer as bad as Job must be grave sinners.   The truth is that some suffering comes about from our sin (think of Jonah in the big fish).   But it is equally true that suffering comes form evil in the world (think of an airliner shot down by an evil regime and the passengers on board all die as no fault of their own expect that they were on the flight).   We have to start helping people understand that in the midst of suffering confession, repentance play a part for sin in our lives, but it is not the end, it is simply a pathway to God’s grace ... of which He WILL extend to our hearts and MAY extend to our situation.