Human Response 640: Ignore and Forget God

Job 21:14-15 Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of his ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit should we have, if we pray unto him?

Unbelievers ignore, forget, push away, or deny God, intentionally, or even unintentionally. What’s in it for me if I serve God? What good do I get out of believing God? Prayer doesn’t work.

In this chapter, Job refutes Zophar’s idea that evil people never experience wealth and happiness. In the real world wicked people do indeed prosper. In this verse, the response of the wicked to prosperous times is to forget God and to think that they don’t need him. Prosperity is not necessarily a blessing when it leads to an attitude that thinks, “I don’t need God.” Living through good times can be more dangerous than living through bad times. It is too easy to ignore God and leave Him out of our life when things are going well. The heart gets hard, and then it gets harder for a hard heart to come to God when we need Him.

It is better for us to respond to life always with a need for and a dependence on God. The Law reminds us of our guilt and shame, weakness and emptiness, sinfulness and selfishness, no matter how outwardly good our life seems to be. The Law leads us to the Gospel in humility, repentance, and faith in Jesus. When life is hard we need the Good News of Christ. When life is soft we need the word of Law to bring us to Christ. We know there is an answer to the question “What’s in it for me?”