Job Lets Loose

“Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me.  Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?  Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!  That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever!”  Job 19:21-24

Bildad had given Job a very harsh rebuke.  I call Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar “The Three Not So Amigos”.  I know that they were only trying to help Job in their own not so delicate ways, but they came across as extremely judgmental against him, particularly considering that none of them knew the real situation with Job.  They accused him of all sorts of things without one iota of evidence.  They sounded like politicians who always “jump the gun” and blame folks for things they had nothing to do with.  Once the truth comes out, though, they never apologize.  In the end of Job’s spiritual journey, there is no apology recorded of his three friends to him, but Job forgives them anyway.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “the patience of Job”, used to describe someone who is exhibiting great patience in the midst of trying circumstances, and I doubt there has ever been anyone with the exception of God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, who has shown more patience than Job.  He had to sit there and listen to one insult and accusation after another.  Job had allowed Bildad to accuse him as if he was the vilest sinner on the earth without interrupting him, but it was now Job’s turn to speak, and he didn’t hold back.  How much longer was he going to have to listen to their verbal harassment?

Job appealed to his friends to consider that if he had done anything wrong, it was not intentional, more of an error, and it was on him to make it right.  It wasn’t their job to convict, sentence, and punish him.  Job kept trying to explain where he was coming from, but he also knew that they didn’t really understand what was behind it all, but neither did he.  He just assumed that God was punishing him without a good reason.  He felt trapped.  He could see no light at the end of his long tunnel of adversity.  After the first attack by Satan in which he lost his children and his wealth, he made the statement that “the LORD had given and also taken away”, yet he blessed the LORD (1:21b).  However, after the second attack when his body was covered in horrible sores, he became cynical about his situation.  After the first curse, he seemed to reluctantly accept his loss, but after the second curse, he became a man who questioned his own existence.  Death was better than this.

If one desires to find out who his real friends are, then watch what they do when he sinks low down into the pit of despair, perhaps going from riches to rags or from the “life of the party” to one plagued with depression and anguish.  Matthew Henry wrote that “Adversity is the proof of friendship”.  Job lost most of his friends, but these were his “fair-weather friends”.  Job thought that his friends would rally around him when the going got tough, but they didn’t, and he blamed God.  God is not the author of sin, but, in Job’s case, God did allow the devil to manipulate the minds of Job’s relatives and friends to reject him in order to bolster Satan’s challenge.  Even Job’s own wife couldn’t stand to be around him.  He begged for sympathy.  God had touched him, he believed, and put him in this miserable condition.  Did his friends ever consider that what happened to him could happen to them?  Their lack of compassion was bad enough, but their judgments were worse.  God’s judgment was the ultimate judgment.  They didn’t need to add to it.  Job wished that he could write his story down in a book for all to read.  God granted him that desire; he just never knew it.  His story is told in God’s word for all who will to read and learn by.  What the book of Job reveals about God and man’s relationship to Him gives us a deeper insight into our relationship with the Lord.

If the estimates are correct concerning the time in which Job lived, it was several hundred years before the Hebrew people entered the promised land and Israel was constituted as a nation set apart from the nations surrounding Israel.  It was an even longer period of time when the prophets, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah, foretold of the coming Messiah, the Savior of the world who would eventually rule and reign in righteousness, judging evil, and rewarding obedience to His word.  Thus, the knowledge of a Savior, a Redeemer, was made known to men, like Job, within the spirit of man by the Spirit of God.  Job stated, “For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me” (19:25-27).  Job understood that this Redeemer, we know as Jesus Christ, would in the final days of this present earth, come from heaven and stand upon the earth to judge sin and rule in righteousness.  Jesus told John in Revelation 1:7 that He would come in the clouds and every eye would see Him.  I suppose we could call Job one of the first prophets, or at least, one who foretold the future concerning God’s plan for His creation.  Job didn’t know that his Redeemer would be Jesus Christ, the Son of God, but he did know that it would be God who would redeem him.

Job then began to chastise his friends for their harsh and judgmental attitude toward him.  “Bad things have happened to you, Job, so you must be bad”, was their song, repeated over and over.  Job just wanted them to leave him alone and let him deal with his own situation.  He then had a warning for them:  be afraid that the sin of your judgmental and haughty attitude will find you out.  Job ended his speech for now.  Who would speak next?

Next week:  Zophar’s Analysis