We left Job last week with him having experienced the loss of everything but in spite of that his response was not numb shock or anger. It was simply “the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

We are in Chapter 14 this morning but I think it is important to give the context before we get there.

The final words of Job in Chapter 1 might have been the end of Satan’s test but it wasn’t. He insists on upping the stakes and while staying faithful after losing everything is not insignificant it is too easy.  The real test will be when his own life is in danger. “A man will give all his has for his own life. But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones and he will surely curse you to your face.”

One more time we see the difference between the Creator’s view of us and Satan’s. Satan dismisses courage, self-sacrifice, bravery, and dying for a cause. Satan would visit Arlington Cemetery and say, “I don’t get it. Why did they do this? What was in it for them?” Satan would see sacrifice as foolishness. Men and women who gave their lives or suffered abuse and torture for a cause would be seen as losers or suckers. No one, really, does anything except for self-interest. Ayn Rand comes close to this when she wrote: “Man—every man—is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others; he must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with the achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.” 

So, God agrees to put Job in Satan’s hands except he cannot take his life.  I suppose Satan does not really want to take his life as much as he wants Job to curse God. Taking his life would not satisfy him. He wants Job to reject God completely and then live in despair. The object is not so much the suffering of Job as it is the discouragement of God. How to make God look like a loser for believing in his creation is the goal. It’s a much bigger game than making Job suffer.

So we read in Chapter 2 of the arrival of Job’s three friends – Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar.

“When Job’s three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.”

Henri Nouwen wrote about the ministry of presence. We do not need to say anything but simply be present with people in pain. That’s difficult for most of us because we want to know what to say. When we don’t know what to say or how to fix the pain we sometimes simply stay away because it is uncomfortable for us.  However, sitting is often enough.

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

For seven days and nights his friends do exactly this. They do not offer advice. They mourn with him but, more importantly, they just sit with him because they saw how great his suffering was.

But there is no indication here or in the rest of the book that they prayed for him or offered to speak to God for him. They would not advocate for him.  After seven days of silence Job speaks and they are compelled to answer him. But not with compassion. They are too anxious to solve his problem. They are too intent on explaining the ways of God to Job.

Sufferers attract fixers the way roadkills attract vultures. At first we are impressed that they bother with us and amazed at their facility with answers. They know so much! How did they get to be such experts in living?

 It all sounds so hopeful. But then we begin to wonder, ‘Why is it that for all their apparent compassion we feel worse instead of better after they’ve said their piece?’

Many of the answers that Job’s so-called friends give him are technically true. But it is the ‘technical’ part that ruins them. They are answers without personal relationship, intellect without intimacy. The answers are slapped onto Job’s ravaged life like labels on a specimen bottle. Job rages against this secularized wisdom that has lost touch with the living realities of God.

“In every generation there are men and women who pretend to be able to instruct us in a way of life that guarantees that we will be ‘healthy, wealthy, and wise.’ According to the propaganda of these people, anyone who lives intelligently and morally is exempt from suffering. From their point of view, it is lucky for us that they are now at hand to provide the intelligent and moral answers we need.

“On behalf of all of us who have been misled by the platitudes of the nice people who show up to tell us everything is going to be just all right if we simply think such-and-such and do such-and-such, Job issues an anguished rejoinder. He rejects the kind of advice and teaching that has God all figured out, that provides glib explanations for every circumstance. Job’s honest defiance continues to be the best defense against the clichés of positive thinkers and the prattle of religious small talk.

What if they had continued to simply sit? What if they had simply listened and not jumped into explaining or correcting or prescribing but simply listened.  I had a visit with Mark Gregston this week at Heartlight Ministries in Hallsville and we were talking about parent child issues. He said so many of the problems in the families could be helped by people simply listening to each other in a way that made the others feel they had been heard. Instead, we have parents getting more fixed and kids becoming more intent on rebelling and things unravel. In the same way, perhaps Job’s three friends would have done more good by listening longer and let Job talk instead of jumping on him from the outset.

Daniel Kahneman, the Israeli psychologist, writes in his books that it is hard-wired into human nature that we want to find the reason for things we cannot explain. It’s at the root of all conspiracy thinking. “The mind is always hungry for causes” is the way he puts it and that’s exactly what Job’s three friends do once Job begins to speak. They are intent on identifying the cause of his suffering but not with compassion.

What is the first thing Eliphaz says after Job has broken the silence? “If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? But who can keep from speaking? Think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands. Your words have supported those who have stumbled; you have strengthened faltering knees. But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged; it strikes you and you are dismayed. Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways leave you hope?

Can you hear Job saying, “Have you not heard anything I have just said?”

But then Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar each take their turn at making Job feel even worse.  For eleven whole chapters they speak what they consider to be wisdom but none of it is encouragement or even compassionate.  It is wisdom without a heart. It is truisms and phrases they have heard but have never had to experience in their own lives.

First is Eliphaz:

“Do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. Blessed is the man whom God corrects. For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal. From six calamities he will rescue you; in seven no harm will befall you. In famine he will ransom you from death, and in battle from the stroke of the sword. You will be protected from the lash of the tongue, and need not fear when destruction comes. You will laugh at destruction and famine and need not fear the beasts of the earth.”

Can you just see Job saying, “Are you blind? Have you looked at me this whole time you have been sitting with me? Do you think this is helpful. In fact, he does say, “A despairing man would have the devotion of his friends…but my brothers are as undependable as the intermittent streams..Now you have proved to be of no help; you see something dreadful and are afraid.”

Then it is Bildad who speaks next and he takes a little different approach. He mildly rebukes Job and says, “How long will you say such things? Your words are a blustering wind..But if you will look to God and plead with the Almighty, if you are pure and upright, even now he will rouse himself on your behalf, and restore you to your rightful place. Your beginnings will seem humble, so prosperous will your future be…Surely God does not reject a blameless man or strengthen the hands of evildoers. He will yet fill  your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy.” In other words, just think positive, admit you were wrong then God will bless you more than ever. But first, you have to stop talking this way. It will upset God.

And, of course, Job rolls his eyes, clenches his teeth, scrapes his boils again and says, “What are you talking about? “Since I am already found guilty, why should I struggle in vain? Even if I washed myself with soap and my hands with washing soda you (God) would plunge me into a slime pit so that even my clothes would detest me. If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hands upon us both, someone to remove God’s rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak up without fear of him but as it now stands with me, I cannot.”

Finally, Zophar speaks even more harshly than the others and says, “Will your idle talk reduce men to silence? Will no one rebuke you when you mock? You say to God, ‘My beliefs are flawless and I am pure in your sight.’ Oh, how I wish God would speak that he would open his lips against you and disclose to you the secrets of wisdom..Surely he recognizes deceitful men; and when he sees evil, does he not take note? But a witless man can no more become wise than a wild donkey’s colt can be born a man.”

And then Job responds: “What you know, I also know; I am not inferior to you. But I desire to speak to the Almighty and to argue my case with God..your maxims are proverbs of ashes; your defenses are defenses of clay. Keep silent and let me speak then let come to me what may. ..Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him. I will surely defend my ways to his face.”

An incredible statement given what we know about the fate promised to those who would come face to face with God or even get too close to where he dwells. “Put limits for the people around the mountain and tell them, Be careful that you do not go up the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death.” As well, “then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord in your presence…When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”

In spite of that, Job desires to see God face to face and plead his case. “Although I am blameless, I have no concern for myself; I despise my own life.”  What do I have to lose?

And with that context we come to Chapter 14 and all I want to do is have us read it this morning.  That is why I have made copies of the chapter for you. I could go verse by verse and try to point out things but I would rather we just read it together but still ask ourselves questions as we do that. Make a note of a word, a phrase or a passage you want to consider this week.

What would you like to do with the number of days you have left?

Do you genuinely believe in resurrection and that you will live again when your days here are finished?

Do you believe that God counts your steps but does not keep track of your sins and they are covered over?

 

Job 14

 

“Man who is born of a woman

      is few of days and full of trouble.

He comes out like a flower and withers;   

 he flees like a shadow and continues not.

And do you open your eyes on such a one

    and bring me into judgment with you?

Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?

    There is not one.

Since his days are determined,

    and the number of his months is with you,

    and you have appointed his limits that he cannot pass,

look away from him and leave him alone,

    that he may enjoy, like a hired hand, his day.

“For there is hope for a tree,

    if it be cut down, that it will sprout again,

    and that its shoots will not cease.

Though its root grow old in the earth,

    and its stump die in the soil,

yet at the scent of water it will bud

    and put out branches like a young plant.

But a man dies and is laid low;

    man breathes his last, and where is he?

As waters fail from a lake

    and a river wastes away and dries up,

so a man lies down and rises not again;

    till the heavens are no more he will not awake

    or be roused out of his sleep.

Oh that you would hide me in Sheol,

    that you would conceal me until your wrath be past,

    that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!

If a man dies, shall he live again?

    All the days of my service I would wait,

    till my renewal[b] should come.

You would call, and I would answer you;

    you would long for the work of your hands.

For then you would number my steps;

    you would not keep watch over my sin;

my transgression would be sealed up in a bag,

    and you would cover over my iniquity.

“But the mountain falls and crumbles away,

    and the rock is removed from its place;

the waters wear away the stones;

    the torrents wash away the soil of the earth;

    so you destroy the hope of man.

You prevail forever against him, and he passes;

    you change his countenance, and send him away.

His sons come to honor, and he does not know it;

    they are brought low, and he perceives it not.

He feels only the pain of his own body,

    and he mourns only for himself.”