End of The Wicked

TEXT: JOB 27:11-23

Key verse: “This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage of oppressors, which they shall receive of the Almighty” (Job 27:13).

Thomas Carlyle had a bitter experience with his manuscript. For months, he had, with all his resources, busied himself with the manuscript, which he hoped to turn into a book entitled, ‘The French Revolution.’ When he got satisfied with the level of efforts he put into it, Carlyle sent the manuscript to his friend, John Stuart Mill, for critical evaluation. Mill passed the manuscript on to Mrs. Chapman, who he thought would be able to make a fair comment.

Unfortunately, the lady, after reading it by the fireplace on the evening of March 5, 1834, before she went to bed, dropped the manuscript on the mantel. Her maid, who came the following day to clean the room and to start the fire in the fireplace, thought the manuscript was a waste paper and used it as fuel to kindle the fire. That was how the work of many months got burned up in a matter of seconds.

The catastrophe, which befell Carlyle, will certainly be a child’s play when compared to the punishment, which God will mete upon sinners, if they fail to repent. This is the fact Job laboured to expound to his friends. Job’s friends had voiced a similar opinion but had mistaken Job for a wicked man, simply because he was in great affliction. Job tried to set the matter in true light by teaching what he knew to be the mind of God and not mere human opinion.

Much as he shared his friends’ idea that as a mark of God’s judgment, afflictions must trail the wicked, he knew that they did not always come the way they thought. The wicked may multiply children and “heap up silver as the dust, and prepare raiment as the clay,” yet, he cannot escape divine wrath even though it takes longer coming.

All he trusted on earth - wealth and social connection - will be unable to save him from the storm of God’s wrath even as he dies miserably. The question is: what is your relationship with God?

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY No one ever gets away with wickedness; retributive justice is sure.