As we come again this morning to the study of God’s Word, though you know it and know it well, I am convinced, let me state for you again that principle of Bible study which is absolutely indispensable: total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit.
Only the Lord is able to reveal Himself. He delights to do it. This is His book. Like our Lord Jesus, there is a human side, and we need to get that. Like our Lord Jesus, the Bible also has a divine side, and we must get that as well. Only the Holy Spirit can unveil Christ in terms of Who He is.
Before we go to prayer and then go to Job, let me share this little verse from Daniel 2:22 and the last part of verse 23:
It is He who reveals profound and hidden things;
He knows what is in the darkness,
And light dwells with Him.
The last part of Daniel 2:23 says:
Even now You have made known to me what we have requested of You.
And so, in those two verses together, we see that light dwells with the Lord, but then He waits for a request. He is willing to grant when we request. So let us bow together and request of Him the light that dwells with Him.
Our heavenly Father, this morning again we want to bless Your name and praise You for the Holy Spirit Who lives in our hearts. You have given us Your life. How we praise You.
We thank You that, according to Your Word, it is His privilege to unveil the Lord Jesus in a living way to us. And so, once again this morning, we would ask You, Lord, to take the veil away. Our eyes are so earthbound so often. Turn our eyes, we pray, in a fresh way to our Lord Jesus Christ.
We pray that as we meditate on these wonderful truths from Your Word, You would give us a liberating discovery of the sufficiency of Who You are. We thank You, Lord, that You are going to meet with us. You have prepared our hearts, and now we just wait.
I pray that You deliver these brothers, every one, from everything which is not from You. We thank You in advance, in the matchless name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
As we continue to behold our Lord in this wonderful book of Job, let me review the theme that we touched on—just enough to get us back in the direction.
I believe the theme of Job rises from that double insinuation Satan made in the first two chapters. Follow along, please, in Job 1:8:
And the Lord said to Satan,
“Have you considered My servant Job?
For there is no one like him on the earth,
A blameless and upright man,
Fearing God and turning away from evil.”
Then, in Job 1:10:
Have You not made a hedge about him,
And his house, and all that he has, on every side?
You have blessed the work of his hands,
And his possessions have increased in the land.
But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has;
He will surely curse You to Your face.
Then go to Job 2:3:
And the Lord said to Satan,
“Have you considered My servant Job?
For there is no one like him on the earth,
A blameless and upright man,
Fearing God and turning away from evil.
And he still holds fast his integrity,
Although you incited Me against him
To ruin him without cause.”
Satan answered the Lord and said:
Skin for skin!
Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life.
However, put forth Your hand now,
And touch his bone and his flesh;
He will curse You to Your face.
Now, the double insinuation is this. The insinuation Satan made against Job was that he was a mercenary. In other words, the only reason he served the Lord was because God put a hedge of blessing around his life. God blessed him. God was a protector, a giver of gifts.
Satan suggested that if God did not act like a glorified Santa Claus and give him all these gifts—if He took away the hedge—He would have no following. The only reason Job, or anyone, serves You is because You are good, generous, and give gifts. If You took Your gifts away, You would have no followers. In fact, people would curse You.
That was the insinuation against Job. The flip side was Satan’s insinuation against God. He did not state it outright, but it is implied: God is not wonderful enough in Himself, apart from His blessings, apart from His gifts, apart from the hedge He puts around a person’s life.
God is not attractive by Himself. He is not lovely enough to be adored, chosen, served, worshiped. That was the double insinuation: the only reason man serves You is because he gets something out of it, and by Yourself no one would ever serve You. You are not intrinsically lovely. You are not intrinsically attractive. There is nothing in You. You are not worthy. That is why You have to keep giving out gifts, or You would have no following.
I believe the theme comes out of that double insinuation: Is God intrinsically wonderful apart from the hedge? Is there enough in the Lord Himself, apart from any blessing, to choose Him, embrace Him, trust Him, love Him, serve Him, adore Him, and worship Him?
That is what Job deals with. The book, I believe, gives a resounding yes to that question: God is enough.
Job does not see that at first, and that is really the genius of this wonderful book. God is going to take Job step by step and stage by stage to the place where that double insinuation is completely answered, and Job comes to believe, “I want God just for God.”
The way God took Job there is the way He takes me there, the way He takes you there, and the way He leads all His people. Those are the things this weekend, God gracing us, we want to see.
I suggested last evening, to drive home that great theme, that God had preserved a revelation of Himself for this book: a title of God which, two-thirds of the time it is mentioned in the Bible, is mentioned in Job. That is the great title, El Shaddai.
El Shaddai: the God Who is more than enough. He is not only the God Who enables you to survive and get by when the hedge is down. Ah, the opposite is true. He is the God Who is more than enough and Who, without the hedge, brings you to completeness, fullness, and satisfaction in Himself.
This morning we are going to look at a great portion of this book, where the truth that God Himself—El Shaddai—is everlastingly enough and more than enough when the hedge comes down is brought before us.
From Job 3 through Job 37, they were asking the wrong question. From chapter 3 to chapter 37, they tried to answer the question, “Why does this man suffer so?” Why does Job suffer so? And the larger question: Why do the godly suffer?
If you glance at the sheet of notes, you will see that they had three debates. In debate after debate, they are trying to unravel the mysteries of suffering. Why does God allow suffering like this?
Many study Job with that very error. They go through the whole book asking the wrong question. If you ask the wrong question, no matter what answer you come up with, you are going to end up with the wrong answer.
The book of Job does not solve for us the mysteries of suffering. It does not answer that question. It never tries to give the answer to, “Why is Job suffering?” or, “Why do the godly suffer?”
The question of the book—and this is where we are heading—is: Is El Shaddai enough? Is God enough when the hedge comes down?
Now, that question the book answers, and so that is the question we are going to follow.
When we left off last evening in our introduction, I was trying to show you how God, in order to drive home the truth that He is enough when any part or all of the hedge comes down—by Himself, apart from anything else, He is enough—found a man like Job, whose hedge was high, full, and beautiful.
Step by step, He dismantled that hedge in order to have an illustration forever in the Bible that God is enough when the hedge comes down.
By removing Job’s hedge, God completely answered the double insinuation of Satan. But more than that, He brought Job to the place where he saw God, and God alone, as his sufficiency.
I will not develop it again or go through all the details, but just in overview, recall the hedge that came down. This man was certainly blessed by the Lord, and in a moment of time he lost all his possessions. He was a wealthy man. He lost his ten children. He lost his health. He lost the support of his life partner. He lost the respect of all his friends, family, neighbors, servants—everybody. He lost his reputation. He lost his ministry.
And when we ended up, I showed you how he lost the sense of the presence of the Lord.
So much did he rely on the sense of God’s presence that, after a while, he began to hold the Lord’s love and wisdom in suspicion. He actually began to think that God had become his enemy. His best Friend in the universe, he thought, had become his worst enemy.
Now, I have no doubt that I could start right here with Jerry and go row by row, and you would all have testimonies that there had been a time in your life when God came after your hedge and you found that God was enough.
I heard one of those testimonies last night. He was sufficient. He took the place of my wife. He took the place of my child. When I had to bury my parents and grandparents, the Lord was enough. He was sufficient. When my children were unexpectedly tried, the Lord was enough. More than enough when I got that doctor’s report; more than enough when I lost my health; more than enough when my employment fell through.
But Job—it was not one or two things. It was everything. It was everything. God not only mowed his hedge down; He uprooted his hedge, completely dismantled it, and pulled it up by the roots.
Now, you know the Lord and I know the Lord. God is a planter and blesser of hedges. He is not primarily a blaster of hedges. But when the hedge comes down, this is the question of Job, brothers: Is He enough?
I see—do you know that up here? Do you know that here? Is He enough? That is the message of Job.
That brings us this morning to the second part of the book. Remember where we are heading. I do not want to lose this, especially in this part of the book. We are heading to Job 42:5-6:
I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear;
But now my eye sees You;
Therefore I retract,
And I repent in dust and ashes.
The book of Job goes to the place where Job was able to say, “Now my eye sees You.”
That is where I am praying this weekend will go. That is the end of this. That is what we are looking for: “Now my eye sees the Lord. Therefore, I repent.” Oh, may God help us.
Now, I will be honest with you, brothers. If you have gone through Job—and I am sure you have; you are students of the Word of God—when you come to these three debates, have you found it tedious? I have.
Try teaching it. It is like running through quicksand sometimes, getting through the arguments of all these different people. I do not want to stand here and bog everybody down by going through this section, which, just reading it, is very heavy because it is all worldly wisdom.
I have the same struggle going through Ecclesiastes that I had going through this particular section. In fact, I had a struggle with the Lord about this. I toyed with saying a few words about this, jumping over all these chapters, and then doubling up on “my eye sees You,” because that is where my heart is. That is what I want to talk about.
But honestly, to bring Job to the place where his eyes saw God, he had to be dragged through this. So I do not want that heavy. Please pray for me today, because that is a little bit on my mind. This is tedious, but I do not want it to be tedious.
I do not mean to apologize for this lesson, because I believe it is God’s will. So I am not apologizing for the lesson. You say, “Well, it is not very liberating.” Well, maybe not, but it leads to liberation, and so that is why we need to touch it.
Without the Lord’s mercy, I could never attempt to look at these particular chapters. One reason is that it is a big block of Scripture. To take all of that in one little session is an impossibility.
But what I would like to do, God helping, is give an overview of Job 3 through Job 31 this morning. That is a lot of material, but I told you that in this section they are attempting to answer the wrong question. They are trying to figure out why Job is suffering, and that question is way off base.
If you glance at the sheet, or if you know the book of Job, you know that they had three great debates. One spoke, then Job answered; another spoke, and Job answered; another spoke, and Job answered. Then they started all over again. In the third debate, only two of them spoke, and Job gave very long answers.
At the end of it all, in Job 38:1-2, God speaks:
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said,
“Who is this that darkens counsel
By words without knowledge?”
In one sentence, He looked over all the debates and made this comment: after all those mental gymnastics, all that debating back and forth, you are actually further from the truth than you were when you began the debate. You have darkened counsel. You have not gotten any light. You have not come any closer to the truth. The mystery is now darker than when you started reasoning and discussing it.
Now, I told you the true question of the book is about El Shaddai: Is He enough when the hedge comes down?
Does Job answer that question? He actually answers it twice. The first time he answered it, he was not trying to answer it. He was trying to answer the wrong question. But in answering the wrong question, he gave an answer to the right question. The answer he gave to the right question, however, was the wrong answer.
Are you still with me? The wrong, right, and all that kind of stuff.
In the three debates, while Job is trying to answer, “Why am I suffering?” he also gives an answer to, “Is God enough when my hedge comes down?” And he gives the wrong answer.
At the end of the book, he answers it again and gives the right answer. But first he gives the wrong answer.
All right, Job: Is God enough when the hedge comes down? Here is the wrong answer he gave at the beginning of the book: “Yes—if.”
God is not enough if. And he added that “if.” If what? If I have God plus an answer to the question, “Why?” I need both. God is not enough by Himself, but God with an explanation would be enough.
He was not angry at God for doing all this, but he wanted to know why. So he said, “God alone plus nothing is not going to satisfy. I need the Lord plus some kind of explanation. What is going on in my life? Why did God allow this? What is God doing?”
“I would gladly yield to the Lord. I have already yielded, but He must show me His purpose. How does He expect me to walk in faith if I do not know what He is doing, if I do not know what is happening, if I do not know what is going on? If I knew in advance, then it would be easier for me to trust Him, and I would not go through all these mental gymnastics.”
Brothers, may I suggest that this is the wrong answer to the right question. Is God enough when the hedge comes down? May God enable us not to say, “Yes, if, with You, Lord, You also give me some explanation.”
If I have some light on what He is doing, then it will be a lot easier. I will never know the Lord as El Shaddai as long as I supplement Him. He will not be supplemented. To supplement God is to change Him completely. You cannot add to Him. I cannot add to Him. Even the desire for the answer, “Why?” is supplementing the Lord.
Until I can get through that—and look what Job had to go through to get through that—I will never give the right answer to the right question.
I would like to set before you the folly of those three debates. I will not analyze everything. I just want to give you an overview—several observations about the debates as a whole, Job’s three friends, and so on. It is the most surface of all things.
You have the factual divisions there on the sheets I handed out. I think it would have been easier if I had charted it rather than outlined it, but it is what it is.
My first observation is this: the first debate, Job 4 through Job 14, was hot. Many strong words were spoken in that first debate, and some, I am sure, they wished they could have taken back later.
The second debate, Job 15 through Job 21, was hotter.
My observation of the third debate? Hotter yet—the hottest. The strongest words of all were in that third debate.
You can debate and debate and debate with those who are convinced against their will, and it will get hotter and hotter and hotter as you go through. You are going to end up darker and darker and darker than when you began.
You remember that great poem:
Sticks and stones will break my bones,
But names will never hurt me.
Do not believe it. Words are very powerful. They do a lot of damage, and a lot of damage was done. Many bones were broken by the words in these debates. I am not sure anything is really gained by debate.
In this connection, let me give you John 7:17:
If anyone is willing to do His will,
He shall know of the teaching,
Whether it is of God
Or whether I speak from Myself.
What I like about that verse is that it makes knowing not a matter of the mind, but a matter of the will. If any man is willing to do His will, he will know.
We think that before we can know, we need more information. We have to study harder and gather more facts. According to God, what you need is to choose the will of God. Then you will know.
What I need is to choose the will of God. People remain in ignorance because they do not want God’s will, not because they do not have enough facts. We do not need more facts. If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know.
We do not need strong arguments. We do not need proof texts. We do not need a deeper study of a catechism. We need a heart that says, “I want You, Lord. I want to do Your will.” You will be amazed how the light will come on when you have a heart set to do His will.
My second observation has to do with Job’s three friends: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.
G. Campbell Morgan points out three good things about these three friends. I have got to tell you that, because I do not have much else good to say about them.
His first observation is from Job 2:11:
When Job’s three friends heard of all this adversity that had come upon him,
They came each one from his own place:
Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite.
And they made an appointment together
To come to sympathize with him and comfort him.
Brother Morgan was impressed that these three friends came to sympathize with and comfort someone who was suffering.
Many find it very awkward to be in the presence of suffering. Not because they are mean; they just do not know what to say. It is an uncomfortable place. G. Campbell Morgan said, “At least they came.”
According to Morgan, by verse 11 they were also courteous: they made an appointment to come. They did not just show up. When I read that, I am not dead sure whether they made an appointment with each other or an appointment with Job. But, like I say, they are in so much trouble in this book that we will give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Morgan is right. To their credit, they did not just show up unannounced.
Then Brother Morgan makes this point from Job 2:12-13:
When they lifted up their eyes at a distance and did not recognize him,
They raised their voices and wept.
And each of them tore his robe
And they threw dust over their heads toward the sky.
Then they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights
With no one speaking a word to him,
For they saw that his pain was very great.
G. Campbell Morgan points out that they were burdened. They sat there in silence. They had come to sympathize, and it was real.
I had a friend who is now with the Lord Jesus. He had MS, and for many years the Lord gave me the privilege of being his therapist. I do not know anything about therapy, but I went over and stretched his limbs several times a week, and then we had Bible study together. That was my main reason for going, and how we enjoyed the Lord.
But of all the Christians I have ever met, I have never met a man who was more honest. Whatever he felt, he said. It was almost abrasive. They say first impressions are important, and I have never met anybody who met this man who wanted to be his friend. His first impression was terrible.
I was stretching his leg one time, and a brother who had not seen him for about two years came to see him. I welcomed him and was happy to see him. My brother, lying there on the bed, said, “What brings you here? Guilt?”
Well, according to G. Campbell Morgan, at least they did not come out of guilt. They came out of a genuine heart. They wanted to comfort their brother and give him some kind of encouragement.
The third thing Morgan mentions to their credit is that they had a lot to say, and you will see that in the debates. G. Campbell Morgan points out that they said it to his face and not behind his back. It was not gossip.
Well, I guess that is a good thing to be said about them. They came, they sympathized, and they said what they had to say right to his face. As I said, I had to bring that up because from here on in I struggle to find anything else positive to say about these guys.
Job, throughout the three debates, had some choice words about his three friends. They started off silent, wanting to sympathize and comfort him, but let us spot-check the record. Listen to some of Job’s comments.
Job 6:15-18:
My brothers have acted deceitfully like a wadi,
Like the torrents of wadis which vanish,
Which are turbid because of ice
And into which the snow melts.
When they become waterless, they are silent;
When it is hot, they vanish from their place.
The paths of their course wind along,
They go into nothing and perish.
To Job, his friends were like a dry riverbed.
Job 12:1-2:
Truly then you are the people,
And with you wisdom will die!
Job 13:4-5:
But you smear with lies;
You are all worthless physicians.
Oh that you would be completely silent,
And that it would become your wisdom!
Job 13:12:
Your memorable sayings are proverbs of ashes,
Your defenses are defenses of clay.
Job 16:1-2:
I have heard many such things;
Sorry comforters are you all.
Is there no limit to windy words?
Job 17:2:
Surely mockers are with me,
And my eye gazes on their provocation.
Job 19:2-3:
How long will you torment me
And crush me with words?
These ten times you have insulted me.
You are not ashamed to wrong me.
Shameless tormentors. Well, that was Job’s opinion. He did not agree with Morgan on everything.
I have another dear friend who is suffering with Crohn’s disease. I study with him every week. It is a beautiful time to study with this brother. When I started to study Job, I said to Lillian, “I have got to go see Lenny, because he knows about suffering, and maybe he can give me some light on Job.”
We were there in our first session, and here is what he said: “Satan could not win when he took Job’s possessions. He could not win when he took Job’s children. He could not win when he took the support of Job’s life partner. He could not win when he took Job’s health. So Satan came to a last resort and sent in his friends.”
Well, I do not know how much truth there is in that. Often our friends are a real test to our faith, you know?
If it were not for Job’s friends, I do not think he would ever have come to see God as El Shaddai. These friends were uncharitable. They had unfounded suspicions against Job, and that was very painful. They used false reasoning. They said cruel things.
A word in season is precious, and a word of a friend may wound, but it is a healthy wound. Some of the reproofs Job gets here, however, are harsh, bitter, and unwarranted.
But I believe God sent these friends to expose some very important things that needed to be brought up in Job’s heart. If it were not for Satan’s insinuations, the removal of the hedge, and Job’s friends, I wonder if he would have ever come to the place where he said, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You.”
When it was all over, I believe he praised God because of all the darkness in these chapters.
Let me tell you a little bit about Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. In a general way, all three debates have the same theme. Do not forget, they are answering the wrong question: Why is Job suffering?
The three friends, though they are different and approach it from different angles, all have the same argument: Job is suffering because he is a sinner, because he is wicked.
They all took turns arguing that. In all three debates, they give the same answer: the reason for suffering is punitive. God is punishing him. He has done something wrong. Though we do not see what it is, and he will not admit what it is, we know that is why the hedge came down.
In the first debate, the attention is on how holy God is, and therefore how sinful man is. “Job, you must see it in the light of God’s holiness.”
Here is what Eliphaz said in Job 4:19:
How much more those who dwell in houses of clay,
Whose foundation is in the dust,
Who are crushed before the moth!
Bildad picks up the same idea in Job 8:6:
If you are pure and upright,
Surely now He would rouse Himself for you
And restore your righteous estate.
God does not rescue you, Job, because you have sinned.
Zophar comes at it again in Job 11:
He knows false men,
And He sees iniquity without investigating.
That is debate one: God is holy; Job, you are sinful; that is why you are suffering.
I told you the first debate was hot and the second one hotter. Here is the focus in the second debate: a logical conclusion. This time the emphasis is not on how holy God is; this time the emphasis is on how wicked man is—every man.
Some of the greatest descriptions of wicked men are found in this second debate in the book of Job. Wicked men suffer. Are you suffering, Job? Ergo, you are wicked.
Then the third debate is the hottest of all. They keep the same line of reasoning. In debate two, they said, “The wicked suffer. You suffer. You are wicked.” In debate three, they said, “Great suffering comes to really wicked men. You have a lot of suffering. Therefore, you are very wicked.”
To add to your wickedness, there must be hypocrisy. You were lying about all those good things that were said about you. That never happened. So they come right out with bald-faced lies and go after Job.
In Job 22:5, Eliphaz says:
Is not your wickedness great,
And your iniquities without end?
The last words Bildad says to Job are in Job 25:6, and he closes his debate by calling him a worm and a maggot.
Aren’t you glad your friends came to counsel you and comfort you in your time of distress?
In passing, let me just say this. I am sure you know it, but there is great danger in looking at suffering and saying it is punitive.
For one thing, the world’s greatest Sufferer, our Lord Jesus Christ, was sinless. There goes that argument right down the drain—that suffering is because of sin.
Also, there is a difference between punishment and chastening. How often someone has come to me and said, “Such and such has happened. Why is God punishing me?”
You know, and I know, that as a believer God will never punish you. Now, chastening is something else altogether, and we are not going to get into that, but that is different.
You say, “Why will He not punish me?” Because He has already punished you in the Person of Jesus Christ, your Substitute. He has already punished me in the Person of Jesus Christ, my Substitute. He would be dishonest to collect for the same debt twice. He will not do that. He is a holy God. He is a just God.
It is wrong to think of God’s approval in terms of blessing. Just because God blesses you does not mean He approves of you. Just because there is a lack of blessing in your life does not mean that He disapproves of you.
Satan tried to whisper that lie in the ear of the Lord Jesus as He hung on the cross. The tormentors were going by and shouting things at the Lord, and one of them said:
Let God deliver Him,
If He delights in Him.
They put deliverance and delight in the same sentence. In other words, if He is not delivered, that means God did not delight in Him.
Well, I will tell you, God delivers some people in whom He does not delight, and God does not deliver some people in whom He does delight. Their whole argument is off base.
But that was the essence of the three debates: Job’s suffering is punitive.
Job argues against that in the three debates. He does not believe he has done anything wrong. He cannot put his finger on one thing. He has searched his heart.
I am not going to read all the arguments and verses, but here in a nutshell was Job’s reasoning. His first argument was this: “You say the wicked suffer. You say the wicked have their hedges removed. Well, my eyes are open, and I see some wicked men who are not suffering. What do you do with that?”
Job 21:30 teaches that the wicked prosper; they are reserved for the day of judgment. Their hedge is not in jeopardy now. How do you answer that?
There is no question that all through the three debates Job claims his innocence. He claims to be righteous, that he has done nothing. At the end, God Himself says in Job 40:8:
Will you condemn Me that you may be justified?
Listen to Job’s opinion in Job 33:9-10:
I am pure, without transgression;
I am innocent and there is no guilt in me.
Behold, He invents pretexts against me;
He counts me as His enemy.
To reason with his three sorry counselors and miserable comforters, Job tries to figure it out. I think he really did think this thing through.
Job asks, “If I have sinned—I have searched my heart and cannot find it—then let me ask you this, my three friends: Why will God not reveal it to me?”
Job 13:23:
How many are my iniquities and sins?
Make known to me my rebellion and my sin.
If I did sin, why will God not tell me what it is? That was his reasoning.
Then he goes this far and says, “If you are right, why will He not forgive me? He forgives other sinners. If I have sinned, why will He not forgive me?”
Job 7:21:
Why then do You not pardon my transgression
And take away my iniquity?
Then, as they debated, he began to think and came up with something else. He said, “Wait a minute. You say I have sinned. I cannot find it. He will not show me what it is, and if it is there, He will not forgive me. I do not understand this.”
Maybe, he thinks, “Maybe you are right, boys. If He is going way back in my life, when I was a young man, maybe He is getting me now for the sins of my youth.”
Job 13:26:
For You write bitter things against me
And make me inherit the iniquities of my youth.
He said, “That is possible. If there was something when I was a young man, that might be why He is doing this now.”
But the strength of Job’s argument, as he contemplates all these things, is this: “I have looked at my heart. He will not reveal it. If it is there, He will not forgive it. If He is doing something because of when I was young, then I have no choice.”
He makes this conclusion: God has no reason. He is just capricious. It is arbitrary. There is no cause.
Job 9:17:
He bruises me with a tempest
And multiplies my wounds without cause.
There is no reason except that He decided to do that.
I told you last evening, it is a dreadful thing to come to believe—to hold God in suspicion. I hope no one here ever comes to even start to think that God is his enemy. Job came that far.
Sometimes you just say, “Well, the Lord is against me,” but it is a big step here. Let me give you an illustration.
As I read this, I wanted to understand Job. I tried to enter into his reasoning and what he was going through. He was going through a real trial, and at that point he had not seen the Lord. He did not say, “I need God plus my hedge.” He said, “I need God plus a reason. Just tell me why.”
If my sweet Lillian—some of you know her; she is God’s gift on the earth, she is wonderful—walked through the door one day and, without warning, I just smacked her down, gave her a big wallop, and she went right to the floor; and she got up and said, “Why did you do that?” and I did not answer; and a day went by and I did not answer; and a week went by and I did not answer—how do you think my relationship with her would be on Wednesday? Or Friday?
After a while, she would be terrified of me. Every time she walked in the room, she would cower and duck. She would never know when I was going to let her have it again.
That is what Job was.
He was enjoying the Lord, having this great relationship with God. He walked through the door, and God whacked him. Down he went. He said, “Why?” Silence.
Try to enter into Job’s heart and some of the things he went through. He is trying to reason. He is digging in his heart. He is looking, and he cannot find it. These guys are saying, “It is because you are wicked, because you are hiding it. You are a big hypocrite. You are a wicked sinner. You have been lying all this time.”
He said, “That is not true. I have been real, as far as I know my heart. God, show me my heart. Forgive me my sin. Forgive me the sins of my youth.”
It must be that You have no reason. You just decided one day to take target practice, set me up, and there I am. What choice do I have? If You are trying to prove You are stronger, You win.
That is what he argued. God wins. There is nothing I can do about it. If God decides to go against me, how can I fight? How can I resist? He is God, and I am man.
At first, he just said God did it with no cause. But as the debates got hotter and hotter, God dug deeper through using his friends, and the secrets of his heart were exposed. Finally, he said this: “God did it for no reason.”
After all that reasoning, all that thinking, all that digging, all that trying to understand: God did it. No reason.
Then he added this: He did it, and He is wrong.
You see, now he is not questioning God’s right, but God’s righteousness. Job 10:3:
Is it right for You indeed to oppress,
To reject the labor of Your hands,
And to look favorably on the plan of the wicked?
If you are convinced that it is God’s hand in your life, never ask the question, “Is God right to do that?”
Psalm 119:75-76:
I know, O Lord, that Your judgments are righteous,
And that in faithfulness You have afflicted me.
O may Your lovingkindness comfort me according to Your word.
Psalm 119:128:
Therefore I esteem right all Your precepts concerning everything,
I hate every false way.
What a verse.
Deuteronomy 32:4:
The Rock! His work is perfect,
For all His ways are just;
A God of faithfulness and without injustice,
Righteous and upright is He.
But in Job 19:6, Job comes right out and says it:
Know then that God has wronged me
And has surrounded me with His net.
How deep Job fell. How far from “Is El Shaddai enough when the hedge comes down?” Because he needed to know the answer, “Why?” He was brought to this: God did it, God did it for no reason, and He is wrong. He had no right to do that—as if to say, “I do not deserve this.”
What a contradiction of Lamentations 3:39:
Why should any living mortal, or any man,
Offer complaint in view of his sins?
Brothers, if you got what you deserved, you would not be sitting here now. If I got what I deserved, I would not be standing here now. Because of our sin, God does not deal with us according to our sin. Bless His name. Everything short of hell is mercy.
Praise God, no matter what comes into your life, do not come to the place Job did and say, “God has wronged me.” You are getting off easy if your whole hedge comes down. I am getting off easy if my whole hedge comes down.
He charged God with wrongdoing. “God has wronged me. He has closed His net about me.” God is doing wrong because you are surrounded with a net? You did not have any complaints when you were surrounded with a hedge, did you, Job? You think you deserved that hedge?
To think like this, reason like this, and hold our God—His love and His wisdom—in suspicion, leads to despair.
Some of the saddest prayers I have ever read, I read in Job. It tears your heart out to see what he prayed.
Job 7:16:
Leave me alone.
Imagine a Christian saying to the Lord, “Leave me alone.”
Job 10:20:
Would He not let my few days alone?
Withdraw from me that I may have some cheer.
He looks for a little cheer in the absence of the Lord instead of in the presence of the Lord. What a terrible place for a Christian to be in—to say, “The only way I am going to get rest is if I do not have God. Get out of my life. Leave me alone. Depart from me so I can have a little cheer, a little happiness.”
That is where Job had come. How far from El Shaddai his reasoning took him: to the place where God was his enemy, God had picked him out for no reason, and God was wrong because of what He allowed.
Well, so much for the three debates.
Before we close, let me show you a couple more things about these three men. In their reasoning, although they all had the same basic argument—Job sinned, therefore he suffers—each came with a different foundation of worldly wisdom. Each based his arguments on something different.
I made a little acrostic because that is easier for me to remember, so I will pass that on to you.
Eliphaz begins with an E, and he based his arguments on experience. When you read what Eliphaz said in all the debates, over and over again he says, “According to what I have seen.”
Job 4:8:
According to what I have seen, those who plow iniquity
And those who sow trouble harvest it.
Job 15:17:
What I have seen I will also declare.
He had no word from God, but he said, “This is my observation. I have looked around. I have seen a lot of things.”
Then he says, “Job, you better listen to me because I had this vision.” Job 4:12-16:
Now a word was brought to me stealthily,
And my ear received a whisper of it.
Amid disquieting thoughts from the visions of the night,
When deep sleep falls on men,
Dread came upon me, and trembling,
And made all my bones shake.
Then a spirit passed by my face;
The hair of my flesh bristled up.
It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance;
A form was before my eyes;
There was silence, then I heard a voice.
And then the message is, “Job, you are a sinner.” It is amazing. It is based on experience: “I saw this, I saw that, I observed this, and I had this great vision.”
Bildad begins with B, and he based his arguments on books—really, on ancestors and tradition.
Job 8:8-10:
Please inquire of past generations,
And consider the things searched out by their fathers.
For we are only of yesterday and know nothing,
Because our days on earth are as a shadow.
Will they not teach you and tell you,
And bring forth words from their minds?
Bildad stands on tradition, the talk of the ancestors. He had a big library, and he is quoting this one and that one and the other one. “That is why you are a sinner, because he said this, and he said this, and he said this.”
Based on his education—no word from God.
Tradition is like having a watch that tells you what time it was.
Now, in the New Testament, tradition is used ten times: five times favorably and five times unfavorably. So there is a right kind of tradition. I do not want to just blast tradition.
Then Zophar. The Z stands for zeal. He was zealous. He had no foundation at all. He was not even wise enough to say, “I have seen; I have observed.” He was not smart enough to read a book. Zophar, this guy is unbelievable. He is just dogmatic. He comes in with his bright ideas.
Job 20:3:
I listened to the reproof which insults me,
And the spirit of my understanding makes me answer.
He knows it all. You say, “How do you know?” “Because.” “Because what?” “Because it is true. I know.”
Zophar is the worst one. Honestly, the only good thing I have to say about him is that he only spoke twice in the last debate. That is the only thing I could think of about Zophar.
Eliphaz starts off sounding good, basing things on experience. He is a flatterer. He strokes Job: “Oh, we know, we have heard how you did this. You helped the widow. You were such a nice guy.” By the time he ends up, he is a bald-faced liar. This Eliphaz is unbelievable. He is using all this psychology to try to get to Job.
Bildad, his words are like a razor. He is so sharp. Job just lost his children, and Bildad says, “The reason you lost them—you are a great sinner, but you are still alive. They are dead. What do you think they did? They were so wicked. That is why your sons died.” That is what he told him in one of the debates.
And Zophar is just annoying. This guy drives me crazy. He is so dogmatic. He knows it all and has no reason, no foundation—just, “This is how it is. I know it because that is how it is.”
Perhaps there are some good things to be said about some of these brothers, but that is basically what I have on that.
Now let me make one final observation on these chapters as a whole. I do not know if you are in the same boat I am, brothers. I love the Lord Jesus—I know you are there in that boat—and I love His Word. It grieves my spirit when I find myself neglecting parts of this book.
There are parts of this book where I have not had the revelation of Christ. I make a studied effort not to neglect those parts, because maybe God will show me the revelation of Christ. But when I come to these chapters, Job 3 through Job 37, I do not want to read them. I find myself neglecting them.
I know that any view of Scripture that causes me to neglect Scripture—there is something wrong with my view. God does not want me to neglect these chapters. I have the same trouble with Ecclesiastes. There is that part that is worldly wisdom, and I do not trust myself.
I cannot read these chapters and say, “Well, I will discern what is good in there. Maybe Eliphaz said something worthwhile. Maybe Bildad said something worthwhile. Maybe Zophar—forget that.”
But I do not know how to discern. I cannot find out what that is. So I asked the Lord to give me some way to profit from Job 3 through Job 37. Here is what I came up with, and I suggest it as we close this lesson.
These chapters are all on worldly wisdom. It is all under the sun. It is all man’s wisdom. These chapters are filled with warnings—warnings. I think one practical way to study these chapters is to study them in order to be warned.
Notice that this is all poetry. I will just say this in passing. When God wants to communicate different parts of His Word, He uses different forms.
When He wants to show union with Jesus Christ, He uses letters—epistles—because there is a way that a personal letter can communicate that truth. So He chooses letters.
When He wants to teach mourners how to mourn, He gives us Lamentations.
Usually, if I were to lose my wife, for example—if the Lord took her to heaven—and you came to say, “Hey, I would like to talk to you about this business deal,” I would say, “Hey, not now. I have just gone through a lot. I have lost my wife. My head is spinning. I cannot think one thought in a row.”
But God, teaching Lamentations, gave that book in an acrostic. I do not know if you have ever written poetry or tried to do an acrostic. You have to take a studied effort. Every chapter has to do with the Hebrew alphabet in the book of Lamentations, and it ends with the faithfulness of God.
God says, “You have no excuse in the day of mourning to be scatterbrained. Sit down, meditate, and be logical.” He uses that form on purpose.
He uses negatives in the positive. He could have given the Ten Commandments positively: “Be honest.” But there is something more powerful about, “You shall not steal,” and, “You shall not bear false witness.”
He could have said, “Be pure,” but He said, “You shall not commit adultery.” He could have said, “Be honest,” but He says, “You shall not bear false witness.” He uses strong language to show that.
And so He uses poetry in this section on the debates.
They did not merely get up there and debate and argue. When you read the debates, you ask, “How hot did it get?” They spit at Job in one of the debates. One of them went up and struck Job. Here he is—dying, a sick man—and they actually hit him. That is how hot these debates got.
God puts it in poetry. Why would He put this in poetry rather than prose? Poetry is the strongest possible language. It is extreme language. It goes down deep. It takes the most profound thing.
I believe when God wanted to warn us, He could not come up with stronger language than poetry.
Let me end by giving you some things that I have been warned about in these debates. I am not going to develop them; I will just mention them.
Number one, Job 6:26:
Do you intend to reprove my words,
When the words of one in despair belong to the wind?
Isn’t that a verse, brothers? The words of one in despair belong to the wind. It is a warning not to take too seriously the words of those who are under pressure.
They belong to the wind. Do not put a lot of stock in them. Do not be sensitive. Do not be hurt when someone under pressure says something to you. Sometimes that could be your wife or your children. Do not put a lot of stock in that. Do not hold a grudge in that. There is a great warning. We are so sensitive.
My favorite verse on the tongue is Psalm 31:20:
You hide them in the secret place of Your presence
From the conspiracies of man;
You keep them secretly in a shelter
From the strife of tongues.
The presence of God is a soundproof pavilion from the strife of tongues. If you live in the presence of the Lord, you do not have to worry what anybody says about you. When they do say something and it gets through, do not put a lot of stock in that.
These chapters have been a great warning to me about partial truths. These debates are filled with half-truths.
For example: “All suffering is because of sin.” That is a partial truth. All suffering is indirectly because of sin. Some suffering is because of sin.
Job says, “He has chosen me as His target.” If you mean, Job, that God has singled you out because of His affection for you—He even told Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job?”—then, yes, you are His target, but not like you think.
The chapters are full of partial truths. Be careful of a half-truth.
Then there is a great warning against human reasoning. All debating—I think it is not worth it.
I do not want to raise more snakes than I can kill here, but I do not know what some of you might be—apologists—but I do not have a lot of room in my heart for this apologetics, where you have Christian apologetics and you have got to defend God, defend the truth, and all that kind of thing.
The Apostle Paul would not do that. First Corinthians 2:4-5:
My message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom,
But in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
So that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men,
But on the power of God.
The reason Paul refused to argue was not because he was not qualified. There was a big perceptive mass in his cranial cavity. He could argue. He could debate. He was brilliant, but he would not do it.
His reason was, “Then your faith would stand in the strength of my argument, and someone will come along with a better argument. Your faith will be standing in the argument of the last person you talked to.”
He said, “I will not do that.”
We had a young man come to my door. Ben, you know this guy. He had this problem with the deity of Christ. He did not believe Jesus was God, but he believed that Christ had died for his sins and paid for his sins. He was in that cult and had a book under his arm, Jesus Is Not God.
He said, “Will you sit down with me and go through every argument and show me from the Bible how every time they say this, this is the real answer?”
I was ready to do it, and the Lord checked me on that. I said, “No, I will not do that. Only God can reveal God. I will convince you, and someone else will convince you the other way.”
A couple of days later, he came back, knocked at the door, and Lillian answered. He said, “Is Ed around? I have got to tell him something.”
I came, and he said, “I just wanted you to know: Jesus is God.”
You know Who showed him? God. God showed him from the book of Colossians. He was reading Colossians, and the Lord revealed it to him.
You are not going to get anywhere by just giving this argument and that argument. So it is a great warning against argument.
Eliphaz based his whole argument on experience. It is a warning against basing your argument on experience. You need a word from God.
Bildad based his on books and tradition. You need a word from God. Great warning.
Zophar based his thoughts on nothing. Do not do that.
These chapters are also a great warning against self-pity. When you read the book, after a while Job is so involved. Read Job 3 and so on.
We have got to trust the Lord to enable us to sympathize with those who suffer in the will of God, but let us not encourage self-pity. That is what these brothers did. Great warnings.
These chapters are also a warning against interference in the lives of others—fleshly interference in the lives of others.
When Job’s friends tried to convict him of sin, they actually drove him to self-righteousness. We cannot tone down God’s Word, but we cannot tone it up either. We need to walk in the Spirit when we are dealing with those who are being dealt with by God.
These chapters are a great warning against self-defense, self-vindication, and self-justification.
In this connection, I love Psalm 37:5-6. I think, in this particular verse, the context of the verse is as little known as the verse is well known:
Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him, and He will do it.
He will bring forth your righteousness as the light
And your judgment as the noonday.
I believe the passage teaches that we ought to trust our reputation to the Lord. He will take care of it. You do not need to defend yourself.
That was the testimony of Jesus before Pilate. He opened not His mouth. Silence.
You say, “Well, I need to defend myself.” No, you do not. God is your Defender. The Lord is your Defender.
You see how valuable these chapters are as warnings: do not put a lot of stock in what someone says when they are under pressure; be careful of partial truths; be careful of arguing and debating; be careful of self-pity; beware of fleshly interference in the lives of others; beware of self-defense.
The seventh warning is connected with the fourth warning. Not only self-pity, but these chapters are a great warning against self-righteousness.
I think Job 29 through Job 31 are the greatest passages in the whole Bible on self-righteousness—how suffering reveals that hidden sin of self-righteousness. It is amazing what is in us. May God help us.
God, we say, is not the author of sin. That is for sure. Man is not the author of good. That is also for sure.
Another warning is the fickleness of man—how he changes under pressure.
It starts off:
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Just because you said that once does not mean you will say it again. We change. We are fickle. The Lord does not change.
Just because I trust God today does not mean I am going to trust Him tomorrow. At any moment in my life, I can take my eyes off the Lord. At any moment in your life, you can too.
We have got to trust a present Savior, not a past experience.
Psalm 39:4:
Lord, make me to know my end
And what is the extent of my days;
Let me know how transient I am.
A fool trusts his own heart. Brothers, we cannot trust ourselves for a lonely moment.
Let me give you the final warning and sort of wrap it all up. It brings us back to the theme of the book.
Job is asking the question, “Why?” The final warning is this: these chapters warn me against the danger of supplementing God—saying that I need the Lord plus an explanation, plus the reason why.
God is going to use this. This was a dark time in Job’s life. This was a terrible time. He was brought to such despair through these debates. But God is about to turn things. You know, with Elihu coming on the scene and so on, God is going to change things.
A person needs to come to the end—the futility of human reasoning—before he is going to see El Shaddai as enough: enough by Himself, without the hedge, without the reason why. Just the Lord.
God is taking Job there, and brothers, I pray He is taking us there.
Now, I know that was heavy, and I just pray God will be able to weed through that and give you some light.
Father, thank You for these wonderful chapters. Lord, there is so much in these chapters, and yet it is so much on the level of earth—the low, low level of earth.
We want to go upstairs. We want to go to the heavenlies. We want to have our eyes opened to Who You are.
I pray that You would use this section to prepare our hearts for where You are taking Job and where You are taking us. We want to answer without hesitation, without clearing our throats:
God is enough—more than enough—when the hedge comes down.
Show us Yourself, we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.