Have you ever had a friend or family member who had two cents worth of opinions on everything? But their two cents rarely seemed to have much bearing on the issues at hand?

Such a person would have great affinity for someone like Bildad. It seems like having to wait through Zophar, Eliphaz, and Job, just like a balloon filled to max with air, has him ready to burst and so the second Job catches his breath Bildad utters the six-verse declaration of God’s greatness that is chapter 25.

GOD’S GREATNESS

The Lord is so great that, notice 25:5-6,

Behold, even the moon is not bright, and the stars are not pure in his eyes; how much less man, who is a maggot, and the son of man, who is a worm!

I’m not sure Job would disagree with anything Bildad has said. The speech is reverent, but utterly irrelevant. And so Job promptly responds in 26:4 by saying,

With whose help have you uttered words, and whose breath has come out from you?

It seems like Job is on to the friends’ role as unwitting stand-ins for Satan. 26:4 essentially asks, “Who has inspired the words you have spoken to me? It cannot be the God I know.” Just follow along from 26:7-14 as we hear about the greatness of this God Job knows. He:

• “stretches out the north”
• “hangs the earth on nothing”
• “binds up the waters”
• “covers the face of the full moon”
• “inscribes a circle on the waters”
• “astounds the pillars of heaven with his rebuke”
• “stills the sea”
• “shatters Rahab” (ANE sea monster)
• “makes fair the heavens”
• “pierces the fleeing serpent”

And what a majestic conclusion comes in 26:14,

Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him!
But the thunder of his power who can understand?

Job has just ignited a theological time bomb that will explode the Counseling System of his friends. He says, “God reigns sovereign over all the created order and it’s only by shaking the created order that He will judge and defeat evil (evil he depicts in chapter 26 with Sheol, the sea, Rahab, and the fleeing serpent). Your Counseling System cannot account for this Sovereign Lord of all. His rule and control gets worked out in ways you can’t and won’t expect. It’s utterly surprising.

The question is will God’s sovereignty be a comfort to Job in the midst of his suffering?

SURPRISING SOVEREIGNTY

What will you do when God’s sovereignty surprises you? When His sovereign will throws you for a loop, what will be your first response? “How dare He do this? How dare He bring that into my life?” Or will God’s sovereignty be a comfort in the midst of your suffering?

Let’s notice two implications, from Job’s experience in this text, about God’s surprising sovereignty; two reasons why His sovereignty should be a comfort to us in suffering. Look back with me at 23:10, a verse that highlights these two points.

Job has just previously said, “I cannot find God. He seems to have deserted me.” Eliphaz says God is “high in the heavens” too great to be bothered with the affairs of men; Bildad says men are as maggots and worms when compared to the sovereign God of the universe, but notice Job’s great faith at the beginning of 23:10,

But he knows the way that I take . . .

This is a Hebraic way of saying, “He knows me. Even though I can’t seem to find Him, I know He has not forgotten about me.” Which leads to the first implication of surprising sovereignty: surprising sovereignty draws near. If you are suffering and are tempted to think God has deserted you, or if you have friends like Job’s who tell you God doesn’t care about your pain, take great comfort in these words: God knows His own and draws near to them. And He draws near to us, ultimately, through the work of His Son – Jesus Christ.

If you are not a Christian, the Bible says there is a time when God will come back and draw near to all mankind – it’s that final judgment Job’s longs for in chapter 24. Should you remain in sin and unbelief, His drawing close will be the most terrifying event you will ever know, for His justice must punish sin. But if you turn from your sin to Christ tonight in repentance and believe that He died on the cross to satisfy God’s judgment against your sin, God will draw near to you not with the sword of judgment, but with the joy of salvation and eternal life. I pray you would know this life-giving, paradigm-shattering sovereignty of God that gives new life to dead sinners.

The second implication I want you to see is that surprising sovereignty dooms fear. Look at how 23:10 ends,

. . . when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.

“Yes,” Job says, “God reigns sovereign over my suffering – He’s trying me right now in this pain – but I need not fear what He’s doing for I will come out as gold.” Job’s friends put God’s sovereignty before His eyes so he would see his suffering as rather ordinary judgment for unrepentant sin. Yet, Job believes in God’s unpredictable power to use His suffering for unfathomable good.

Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.

Is that a song you can sing in suffering? I hope so. Surprising sovereignty draws near and dooms fear. Will God’s sovereignty be a comfort to you when you suffer?

This post is adapted from my recent sermon, “Suffering with Eliphaz and Bildad,” on Job 22-26.

Chapter 19 closed with Job singing out his “Hymn of the Redeemer” and warning his friends they will suffer God’s sword of judgment if they don’t turn from their wrongdoing. The time has now come for Zophar to erupt in anger once again and lecture his friend. Notice the key question he asks Job in 20:4-5,

⁴ Do you not know this from of old,
since man was placed on earth,
⁵ that the exulting of the wicked is short,
and the joy of the godless but for a moment?

Here then is Zophar’s law of life on earth: The joy of the wicked lasts but a moment. He says, “The wicked never persevere in prosperity, at some point – normally much sooner than later – everything will go bad for bad people.” And so what he does for the rest of chapter 20 is give Job three promises about the fate of the wicked.

ZOPHAR’S 3 PROMISES ABOUT THE WICKED’S FATE

The wicked will lose their status (20:6-11). Notice how Zophar illustratively makes this point in 20:6-7,

Though his height mount up to the heavens,
and his head reach to the clouds,
⁷ he will perish forever like his own dung;
those who have seen him will say, ‘Where is he?’

Although the wicked are perched on high right now, they will soon be cast down and disappear. Their unrepentant wickedness will cause the wicked to “give back his wealth” (20:10) and youthful vigor to “lie down with him in the dust” (20:11).

The wicked will lose their satisfaction (20:12-19). The dominant image in this section is that of food that tastes good, but eventually turns out to be horrible. Just as the sweet fruit Adam and Eve ate in the Garden of Eden only brought death and destruction, so too will the wicked man eventually lose his satisfaction and delight in life. Look at what Zophar says about this in 20:15,

He swallows down riches and vomits them up again;
God casts them out of his belly.

The wicked will lose their safety (20:20-28). In this final part, as one commentator says, Zophar “becomes more blunt than ever.” He says that evil does not merely result in inevitable evil, it ultimately warrants the terrible wrath of God. Notice the end of 20:21-23,

. . . his prosperity will not endure.
²² In the fullness of his sufficiency he will be in distress;
the hand of everyone in misery will come against him.
²³ To fill his belly to the full,
God will send his burning anger against him
and rain it upon him into his body.

Not only does burning anger rain down on the wicked, Zophar – like Bildad before him – wants Job to know that God pursues the wicked with inescapable punishment (cf. 20:24-25). Notice then how Zophar concludes it all in 20:29,

This is the wicked man’s portion from God,
the heritage decreed for him by God.

 “I’m warning you pious and pompous Job. God has decreed that a wicked man’s lot in life is to inevitably and invariably lose his status, satisfaction, and safety.”

Like his friends before him, Zophar comes close to the truth but falls just short. Where has he gone wrong? He has taken a wrong turn and is driving down a road named, “False Teaching.”

In the next chapter, Job declares God is just toward the wicked, but his justice often doesn’t make sense to us in this life. And that’s where Zophar goes wrong. He says the wicked eventually get all the punishment they deserve before death, but Job sees too many wicked people dying in peace. Therefore, God’s justice must ultimately fall on them in the life to come.¹ The, “When?”, question of justice is echoed all throughout the Bible, particularly in the prophets. God’s people often complain that evildoers prosper while they suffer. And you know how God always answers that complaint, “Just wait. Their time of justice will come – at the end of all things. They prosper now, but will suffer forever. You suffer now, but will prosper forever.”

Zophar has a short perspective on God’s justice (“It all comes in this life!”), while Job takes the long – and right – perspective on God’s righteous judgement of the wicked.

WHERE ARE THE TEARS?

We should also not miss the lambasting and devastating Zophar is his portrayal of God’s wrath. I once heard a story of a church who needed a new preaching pastor that had invited several different candidates to preach. One pastor arrived and preached on Psalm 9:17 and the terrifying phrase, “The wicked shall be turned into hell.” When the elders met later in the day to evaluate the sermon the chairman quickly concluded he was not the man for the job. A few weeks later another candidate came to preach and took for his text Psalm 9:17. The chairman of the elders convened the evaluation meeting that afternoon by saying, “We have found our man.” The other elders were not a little surprised, but the chairman said, “When the second man emphasized that the lost will be turn into hell, he said it with tears in his eyes and concern in his voice. That first preacher seemed to gloat over the sinner’s death.”² The great Robert Murray M’Cheyne was right when he said, ”The man who speaks of hell should do it with tears in his eyes.”

If we could go back to that ancient day, do you think we’d see any tears in Zophar’s eyes? I’d be shocked to seem them. He seems to gloat over the plight of Job and the promises of judgment coming his way. Just like Bildad last week, Zophar gives no application, instead concluding, “This is your portion Job, deal with it.” Oh what tears must often cover the truth we confess! We confess the Bible to be true, and it tells God is angry at sin and his judgment will rain down if sinners don’t turn from their unbelief.³ What will you do with such truth? Don’t go to the opposite extreme of Zophar and apologize for God’s wrath, but do announce it with appropriate agony.

This post is adapted from my recent sermon on Job 20-21, “Suffering with Zophar Again.”

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On a January day in Paris, in 1895 Alfred Dreyfus, a young Jewish artillery officer in the French army and devoted family man, wrongly convicted of selling military secrets days earlier in a rushed court-martial, was brought out to a military courtyard on the Champ-de-Mars publicly degraded before a gawking crowd. His insignia medals were stripped from him, his sword was broken over the knee of the degrader, and he was marched around the grounds in his ruined uniform to be jeered and spat at, while piteously declaring his innocence and his love of France.

In a similar manner we find Job, in chapter 18, summoned to his Bildad’s courtroom and wrongly convicted of “wickedness deserving of extreme suffering,” degraded as deserving of hell. All the while Job maintains his innocence, so even though Satan is using Bildad to tempt Job with hopelessness, we now want to see “Job’s Hopefulness” in chapter 19.

IS GOD AGAINST ME?

Look at Job’s immediate response to Bildad in 19:2,

“How long will you torment me
and break me in pieces with words?

Far from offering comfort, Job’s friends continue only to wound him with their wrong counsel (19:3). Job freely admits in 19:5-6, “Yes, Bildad, it seems as if God is treating me like an unrepentant enemy, but I’m not his enemy. This makes no sense.” In 19:8-11 Job piles up all these verbs to describe how God is attacking him. And look at how he summarizes it all in 19:12,

His troops come on together;
they have cast up their siege ramp against me
and encamp around my tent.

Job feels like God is a commander in chief who has sent untold forces to lay siege upon his soul, a soul Job likens to a “tent.” It’s a brilliant portrayal of Job’s fragility and weakness; Job is a mere tent in the middle of a massive sovereign onslaught. Now in 19:13-20 Job goes on to say that not only is God warring against him, but that his family and friends have left him all alone. Notice the anguish of 19:14,

My relatives have failed me,
my close friends have forgotten me.

Skip down to 19:19,

All my intimate friends abhor me,
and those whom I loved have turned against me.

The storm rages and Job just wants to taste some friendly mercy (19:21), but he can’t find any. And so in 19:22 he likens his friends to being dogs, predators not satisfied to merely feast on his weak body. They want to destroy him. It’s an astonishing storm of apparently senseless suffering is it not? It sounds like Job is utterly hopeless, it sounds like Job believes God is against him. The question thus is, “Will Job trust God is for him even though his suffering makes no sense?”

MY REDEEMER LIVES

Someone once said, “It’s only when the night is darkest that stars shine their brightest.” How true that is with Job. It’s amazing how the depth of Job’s dark night of suffering only serves to amplify the shining star of trust in God; Job is full of hope. Notice 19:23-24,

Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!

He longs for his story to be written (what a glorious irony that it in fact was) on a page or in a rock and vindicate him as a true believer and child of God, whatever his friends think of the matter.

Job it seems as though Job knows an engraving on a rock can fade and “so [he] now makes the wonderful jump from a yearning (‘Oh, that . . .’) to a faith-filled hope (‘I know . . .’).” Hear now one of the most amazing declarations of hope in all the Bible in 19:25-27,

For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me!

Oh, may God give us such faith. May hope in this Redeemer lead us to never fear when death is near. I want you to see three truths about the Redeemer in which Job hopes. First, Job hopes in a living Redeemer. This Redeemer literally “lives forever.” In the Old Testament a kinsman-redeemer was someone tied to you by covenant, usually a relative whose calling was to stand for you when you were wronged; he was your “Champion” and “Vindicator.”

Second, Job hopes in a defending Redeemer. The original Hebrews says this Redeemer will stand “upon the dust,” he will trample the dust that came to symbolize death and “stand” for His own. This verb stand refers to a witness standing in court to bear testimony.

Thirdly, Job hopes in a consuming Redeemer. To gaze upon the beauty of this Redeemer is all consuming; “his entire inner being was ready to burst with a holy passion to look upon God. At the conclusion of chapter 17 Job asked, “Where then is my hope?” His answer, “Here then, in this living, defending, and consuming Redeemer, is my hope.”

What will be your anchor of hope when senseless suffering comes? There is but only one anchor, this Redeemer Jesus Christ.

One of my favorite things to do with our kids is help them overcome any innate fear of heights (acrophobia) by playfully launching them into the air.

Owen, our almost three-year-old, has been the funniest to do this with. The minute he is separated from my hands he does two things: hold his breath and then immediately stare at my two hands. For he trusts those two hands will catch him, and they always have.

What we see in Job 8-10 is that Job feels as though God has thrown him up into the air of suffering and as he hangs suspended the question is whether or not Job will trust in God’s sovereign hands to catch him and comfort him. Just like Owen stares at my two hands, I see Job staring at God tonight and wavering on two things. And oh how helpful Job continues to be for us! His questions amidst suffering still ring true for many of us. So as we begin to close I want to ask two final questions, pondering God’s two hands as it were, that are vital for whether or not you will trust God during suffering you don’t understand.

WHEN YOU SUFFER . . .

1) Will you trust God’s justice?

2) Will you trust God’s goodness?

In chapters 9-10 Job wonders aloud about the reality of God’s justice and goodness, and are not those two issues always at the forefront of our trust in God during suffering? If we believe God is just and God is good, even in unexplainable suffering, we will be able to trust Him and praise Him. If we don’t, we lessen His glory. Are you suffering? What do you think about God’s justice and goodness over, under, and in your pain? What a witness to the world it is when Christians and churches trust God in unexplainable suffering? Job’s journey will soon reveal that he indeed trusts in these perfections of God.

We need only look to the cross of Christ to see how mysteriously these perfections relate. There at Calvary Jesus experienced the fullness of God; wrath and mercy, justice and goodness, collided and the world has never been the same. God was just and good in Christ’s suffering, so dear Christian you can rest assured He is just and good in yours.

A friend once asked me, after watching me play this “Launch the Stone Boy Into the Air” game, “What happens if you drop them?” I looked at him and said, “These hands will never drop my boy.” But, if I’m honest, it’s possible. Something could go wrong and they boy slips through. Yet, we can be encouraged from Psalm 55:22, “Cast your cares on him . . . for he will never let [his children] fall.” Will you trust God if your suffering is unexplainable?

This post is adapted from my recent sermon on Job 8-10, “Suffering with Bildad.”

What do we learn from this first interchange between Job and Eliphaz in Job 4-7?

Epliphaz said, “Innocent people don’t suffer (4:7). Therefore, Job you must be guilty of something. Be sensible, be humble. Despise not God’s discipline.” To which Job responds, “Oh, that God will give me death (6:8-9)! I am just a meaningless string floating in the universe and I wish God would take his sovereign scissors and cut me off. And why won’t my friends give me comfort (6:14)? Why have I become such a burden to God (7:20)? If I have sinned why won’t He just forgive me and restore me?”

One thing we see this conversation is that there are two ordinary ways in which humanity ordinarily speaks in suffering.

SPEAKING IN SUFFERING

You can speak in suffering with the language of logic. Eliphaz looks at Job, looks at the world, and shows, through his counsel, that logic rules everything in his mind. Logic is not a wrong in and of itself, but it can’t live in a straightjacket. Eliphaz is like a person who goes into a homeless shelter and automatically assumes everyone in attendance has deserved the hardship of homelessness. So there’s the language of logic and then there’s . . .

You can speak in suffering with the language of lament. Job is once again showing us that we must have a place in our lives for lament, for sorrow and weeping at pain. Job doesn’t remove logic from the equation, instead he displays what logical lamentation looks like. He knows he’s done nothing wrong and so cries, “Oh God, why? Why this anguish? Take it from me!”

When was the last time you sat down next to someone in the midst of suffering? What words dominated your counsel? Straightjacket logic or comforting lament?

Two Saturdays ago, after gathered worship, Emily and I drove up to Breckenridge, Colorado. Driving through the night was best for a variety of different reasons, but it meant that some of the scenic views were out of view in the darkness of the night. So, as we drove through the day on the way back I kept thinking, “Oh wow, this is incredible, I didn’t see this sight on the way up!”

And we can fall into a similar experience with Job. This book is preeminently about how a sovereign God reigns over the suffering of His people. Our journey through Job can be like a drive in the night, one that misses the beauties of God. Or we can drive through it with the Spirit’s light and find incredible riches for our feasting. So as we begin to close, let me highlight three truths, from our text, about our great God.

BEHOLD OUR GREAT GOD

God’s wrath is unbearable. In 6:4 Job says,

For the arrows of the Almighty are in me;
my spirit drinks their poison;
the terrors of God are arrayed against me.

Job believes that he is suffering under the wrathful judgment of God and he can’t take it. He is suffering and cries out in anguish for God to finish him off! Oh, how much more terrifying is the wrath of God which falls for eternity on those apart from Christ. What will you do with this wrath of God? Disagree with it? Apologize for it? Or flee to the only refuge from it – the Lord Jesus?

God’s ways are unsearchable. God is doing something through this suffering that Job, and none of his friends, can understand. His thoughts are higher than their thoughts, ways beyond their understanding. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. Do you have a biblical understanding of a God so great and glorious, beyond comparison, that it’s impossible for your finite mind to comprehend his infinitely wise ways? If not, the God you praise is smaller than the God of Scripture.

God’s worth is invaluable. Lest we think Job’s desire for death is merely the removal of pain, notice what Job says in 6:10,

This (death) would be my comfort;
I would even exult in pain unsparing,
for I have not denied the words of the Holy One.

“Like a prisoner undergoing torture and would rather die than eventually break, so does Job long to die without betraying his faith in the goodness of God.”¹ I heard a preacher recently says, “A church that would rather die than disobey is unstoppable.” And I think that’s absolutely right and captures something of the power of Job. Eliphaz says, “Innocent people don’t suffer.” Job knows he suffers innocently and is desperate, even if it means dying, to magnify the unending worth of God. Will you magnify God even if you suffer innocently?