27 January

Psalm 17:1-5

David says, ‘My steps have held closely to Your paths [to the tracks of the One Who has gone on before]’ (v.5a, AMP). The Hebrew word for paths literally means ‘wheel-tracks’. David is absolutely determined to stay on God’s tracks. In order to stay on God’s tracks you need to watch:

• Your heart (what you think about)
  ‘Though you probe my heart and examine me at night, though you test me, you will find nothing’ (v.3a).
• Your words (what you say)
  ‘I have resolved that my mouth will not sin’ (v.3c).
• Your feet (the places that you go)
  ‘My feet have not slipped’ (v.5b).  

Job, on the other hand, is realistic and honest as he struggles with pain, sleepless nights, grief and suffering. His suffering is not as a result of his own sin as Eliphaz and his friends suggest. Job rightly asks, ‘Show me where I have been wrong’ (6:24). God’s Spirit will always convict us of specific sins whereas Eliphaz and his friends say to him in effect, ‘You must have done something wrong to be suffering like this.’ Those who are suffering have not necessarily caused their suffering by their own sin. If we have, then God will convict us and show us the specific sin.

Eliphaz and his friends give advice that is a mixture of truth and falsehood and their words need to be interpreted as such. One thing Eliphaz says that is probably true is that Job was a man who helped people stay on God’s tracks: ‘Think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands. Your words have supported those who stumbled; you have strengthened faltering knees’ (4:3–4).

Your task is not just to stay on track yourself but, like Job, to help others as well by your actions and by your words.