Last week we met Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. It’s not exactly our definition of friendship, is it? They sit with him silently for seven days but then their responses to his misery grow increasingly harsh. This morning is no exception. In fact, it is growing hard to believe that they have ever been friends. It almost seems like they have been waiting for years to discover some hidden sin in him that would bring him down. If there ever was even a shred of compassion or mercy it is gone and all that is left is the desire to force Job to admit that in one way or another he has been unrighteous and his life has been a lie. There is no room for innocent suffering.
In New York City near Broadway there is an bright neon cross that reads, “Your sins will find you out.” That is the truth that his friends are pushing him to admit. He has been found out. “Stop lying to yourself about your life. Stop hiding whatever it is you have been hiding all these years. How much more evidence do you need or does anyone need to realize there is something rotten you have been covering up. Unless you are honest with us and yourself you will suffer and eventually die in your sins. God is wanting to teach you something but you are not listening. You have fooled us with your false success long enough and now it is only right that you should be exposed.”
Eliphaz speaks:
“Though his face is covered with fat
and his waist bulges with flesh,
he will inhabit ruined towns
and houses where no one lives,
houses crumbling to rubble.
He will no longer be rich and his wealth will not endure,
nor will his possessions spread over the land.
He will not escape the darkness;
a flame will wither his shoots,
and the breath of God’s mouth will carry him away.
Let him not deceive himself by trusting what is worthless,
for he will get nothing in return.”
More and more they sound like the Accuser himself when he cynically described the nature of the relationship between God and Job. There is no such thing as a genuine relationship between them. It is only transactional. God loves man as long as he is good. Man loves God as long as he is blessed.
So, in Chapter 15 Eliphaz again taunts Job with sarcasm:
“Your sin prompts your mouth; you adopt the tongue of the crafty. Your own mouth condemns you, not mine; your own lips testify against you…What do you know that we do not know? What insights do you have that we do not have? The gray-haired and the aged are on our side, men even older than your father.”
“As long as Eliphaz rejects the notion that the wicked prosper and its corollary that the innocent sometimes suffer, he will never have to wrestle over the disturbing mystery of how this fits with the justice of God. Eliphaz views humanity as either all good or all bad. He allows no room for a good man to have doubts and struggles, and those who are bad Eliphaz wants to reduce to zero. In his question, “What is man, that he could be pure?” Eliphaz’s view of humanity comes through clearly. There is nothing in his words that leads one to the conclusion that God has any love for sinful human beings. Indeed, the deity Eliphaz worships is mechanical; he behaves like the laws of nature, so sinners can expect no mercy. The sinner always gets paid in full—trouble and darkness, terror and distress, the flame and the sword. God will see to it.” Elmer Smick in The Interpreter’s Bible
And Job responds to these “miserable comforters” by telling them that if things were reversed he would not accuse them the way they are him. He would encourage them but then, as always, he turns away from his friends and addresses his complaint directly to God.
“Surely, God, you have worn me out;
you have devastated my entire household.
You have shriveled me up—and it has become a witness;
my gauntness rises up and testifies against me.
God has turned me over to the ungodly
and thrown me into the clutches of the wicked.
All was well with me, but he shattered me;
he seized me by the neck and crushed me.
He has made me his target;”
I have to believe that only a fool or a righteous man could say such things. Especially today, we are not likely to be this open with our anger and despair are we? We would be either silent and resign ourselves to being overwhelmed or we would turn on God silently in our hearts. Not Job. Again and again he wants to speak to God personally to get an explanation for why God has turned against him. No one has been more careful to keep himself and his children from sin. If there is any justice in this then Job wants to hear how directly from God himself. Job is suing God for breach of contract.
Job evens wants his words written down in such a way that his protests would not be forgotten long after he is dead. He is not going to pass quietly from life. To the very end and forever after he is going to be asking God why there is no justice. He wants this on his gravestone for all to see.
“Oh, that my words were recorded, that they were written on a scroll, that they were inscribed with an iron tool on lead, or engraved in rock forever!”
And then Bildad speaks in Chapter 18.
“When will you end these speeches? Be sensible and then we can talk.”
There is a part of Bildad’s words that follow that comfort me even though they were intended to lacerate Job. I need to believe that the wicked will be punished and that evil men will receive justice in my lifetime and, hopefully, in a way that satisfied me. I’m not alone in this. All through the Old Testament there is the consistent confusion about why the wicked prosper and yet the innocent suffer. What good does it do to keep your heart pure?
Look at Psalm 73.
But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold.
For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
They have no struggles;
their bodies are healthy and strong.
They are free from common human burdens;
they are not plagued by human ills.
Therefore pride is their necklace;
they clothe themselves with violence.
From their callous hearts comes iniquity;
their evil imaginations have no limits.
They scoff, and speak with malice;
with arrogance they threaten oppression.
Their mouths lay claim to heaven,
and their tongues take possession of the earth.
Therefore their people turn to them
and drink up waters in abundance.
They say, “How would God know?
Does the Most High know anything?”
This is what the wicked are like—
always free of care, they go on amassing wealth.
This is why Bildad’s scathing certainty about the judgement of the wicked is so comforting to me because it only reinforces what I want to believe. I really don’t want to love my enemy or do good to those who offend my moral sensibilities. I don’t want to remember that Paul tells me in 1 Corinthians 13 that love does not delight in evil or even delight when bad things happen to people who richly deserve punishment.
I want to believe with Bildad that:
The lamp of a wicked man is snuffed out;
the flame of his fire stops burning.
The light in his tent becomes dark;
the lamp beside him goes out.
The vigor of his step is weakened;
his own schemes throw him down.
His feet thrust him into a net;
he wanders into its mesh.
A trap seizes him by the heel;
a snare holds him fast.
A noose is hidden for him on the ground;
a trap lies in his path.
Terrors startle him on every side
and dog his every step.
Calamity is hungry for him;
disaster is ready for him when he falls.
It eats away parts of his skin;
death’s firstborn devours his limbs.
He is torn from the security of his tent
and marched off to the king of terrors.
Fire resides in his tent;
burning sulfur is scattered over his dwelling.
His roots dry up below
and his branches wither above.
The memory of him perishes from the earth;
he has no name in the land.
He is driven from light into the realm of darkness
and is banished from the world.
He has no offspring or descendants among his people,
no survivor where once he lived.
People of the west are appalled at his fate;
those of the east are seized with horror.
Surely such is the dwelling of an evil man;
such is the place of one who does not know God.”
I want all of that to be true for the wicked and those who seem to be untouchable.
But then I realize what that is doing to me. It is, as the saying goes, drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. It is destroying my soul – not theirs. It is turning me into Bildad or one who can only think about retribution for the sins of another. I become an expert in their sins and blind to my own. I want justice for them and mercy for me. I lie in wait for them hoping to see them eventually fall. And instead of the Spirit of God in my heart there is the gradual taking over of the Spirit of the Accuser there.
And so we come to our text this morning. Commentators call this the high point of the book and rightly so. It is when in the depths of his suffering Job holds on to his one hope.
I know that my Redeemer lives,
And that in the end he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed, yet, in my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see him with my own eyes – I, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me.
Twice before Job calls out for his advocate or an arbitrator
9:33 “If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both, someone to remove God’s rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak without fear of him, but as it now stands with me, I cannot.”
16:19-21 “Even now my witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high. My intercession is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man he pleads with God as a man pleads for his friend.”
But this is different. It is not an arbitrator who stands between Job and God. It is not an advocate who pleads Job’s case with God.
It is a Redeemer. Where have we seen the Redeemer before? Yes, in the book of Ruth. It is Boaz. What is the difference between an arbitrator/advocate and a Redeemer?
First, the Redeemer is a relative and not just a friend. It is the responsibility of the Redeemer to rescue the life of another relative and buy back or return their property, The Redeemer does more than advocate or intercede. He assumes the responsibility for the other person. In the case of Boaz his responsibility was to actually marry Ruth and have a son with her. It was not simply to settle her debts or provide for her. It was to take care of her as family.
Job is no longer asking for an intermediary or someone to plead his case but for a Redeemer to rescue his life. He is not asking for a friend but for a family member who will claim him before God. While everyone in his family has either been taken from him or deserted him he is asking for a family member he cannot see not just to plead his case before God but to take responsibility for his life – to save him from destruction.
None of his friends could possibly understand this. Their eyes are completely focused on what is in front of them or what they have been taught about the ways of God. Who could imagine Job’s cry for an unknown and unseen family member to rescue him – especially when his suffering has proved to them that he is deserving of it.
But we know, don’t we? We know that we have far more than a friend in Jesus. We know that it is more than an advocate who pleads our case before a mysterious God. As Paul says, Jesus is the first born of a new race of people, a new family, and that we are part of that family. We belong to him because he is our redeemer and he has now accepted us as his responsibility and we can rest in that. He will never leave us or forsake us. Nothing can separate us from the love of our Redeemer and our kinsman because he has stepped into our world to rescue us from sin and death and to restore what has been lost.