With Friends Like These (Part 2): Bildad
Notes
Transcript
Do you consider yourself a pessimist or an optimist?
Do you tend to look on the bright side of life? Or do you tend to be more of a pragmatist?
As we are on our journey through Job, how might you describe Job? How would Job describe himself?
And then we have Job’s friends? How do you think Job’s friends might describe Job? How do you think they might describe themselves?
We’ve looked at Eliphaz last week - he basically said to Job, “If you’re following God’s ways you’ll be blessed; if you’re going against God you’ll suffer.” Or what I’ve described as the carrot and the stick. The carrot is the reward, and the stick being the punishment.
Is this how you view your faith? My guess is, “No.” So we look at Eliphaz and we think, he had it wrong. Yet we can read through so much of Scripture where we read similar statements:
If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”
for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
These are just two statements, but if you think about it this is much of the way that people interpret God’s relationship with us. Which leaves us in a dilemma, how is our view different?
We’ve asked the question, “Is God fair?” and the question continues to rise in our mind as we read throughout the book of Job.
Today we get to another of Job’s friends, Bildad. He has a slightly different view on Job’s dilemma but you likely heard similar echoes to Eliphaz’s argument.
Bildad asks the question: Job 8:3
Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right?
He asks the question rhetorically, and the unwritten answer is a resounding, “No!”
God does not pervert justice. He doesn’t pervert the right.
Then Bildad gives us three “If” statements:
If your children have sinned against him, he has delivered them into the hand of their transgression.
If you will seek God and plead with the Almighty for mercy,
if you are pure and upright, surely then he will rouse himself for you and restore your rightful habitation.
And he comes to this conclusion: Job 8:7
And though your beginning was small, your latter days will be very great.
Bildad’s summary statement is that if you seek God, plead for mercy, live upright, then surely God will rouse himself and restore Job to his “rightful habitation.”
There’s an assumption there, isn’t there?
Again it comes down to an earned righteousness. Which in Bildad’s defense is spoken about a lot in the Old Testament.
Bildad gives Job a very optimistic view of his future:
“Behold, God will not reject a blameless man, nor take the hand of evildoers. He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouting.
Bildad has three speeches in the book of Job. If you remember the friends have three cycles. One of the three friends will speak, and then Job will answer. So you get Eliphaz whom we heard from yesterday, then Job responds; Bildad, Job’s response; and finally Zophar whom we’ll hear from next week.
The difference that we’ve seen in Bildad’s view is different from Eliphaz. Eliphaz simply says God blesses the good and punishes the bad. He doesn’t come right out and accuse Job of wrong doing; Bildad on the other hand does when he says, “If you will seek God and plead for mercy” implies that Job’s in the wrong.
What the friends we’ve heard from so far get right is:
God is righteous
God can bless and God can punish.
God can restore
All of this they get right so far. What they get wrong, that we know of is:
God’s view of us is based solely upon what we do.
God’s blessing in our lives is limited to this temporal realm.
God is angry with Job.
The friends cannot imagine that any of this would happen to someone who was “right with God.” In their myopic view they rightly see that God is good, and right. So then it only makes sense (in their line of thinking) that Job must be wrong. Job must have done something egregious to have such calamity fall upon him.
One last thing Eliphaz and Bildad have gotten right:
God is just
God is just
This last one is a question we’ve been debating in our minds because we got to peak behind the curtain. In the prologue of chapters 1 & 2 we saw God holding court and “the Accuser” or “the Satan” which most of our translations simply name as “Satan” is there. And he and God have this conversation, “Have you considered my servant Job…” God boasts about Job saying there’s none like him. He’s fears God, is blameless and righteous, according to God there’s no one like him.
Satan counters and says the only reason Job serves God is because God has protected him. If God wasn’t protecting him he would “curse [God] to his face.”
How does God respond? In essence God says, “Wanna bet?”
This is a very confusing idea, as it seems that its God’s idea to allow for Satan to destroy all Job’s possessions and then his health. So…how can we say God is just.
The friends see that God is just, God is righteous, God is good, and so Job must have done something.
That is their greatest error is they are seeing all these horrible things happening to Job - that are not happening to them. Clearly then Job is in the wrong and they (in they’re own thinking anyway) are right. It never crosses their mind they may be wrong.
We know they were wrong because of what we’ve seen behind the curtain.
So what does this teach us? What are we learning from the book of Job?
First let’s think about what we have learned.
God is in Control
God is in Control
God is in control, we are not.
Think about what that means.
If God is in control then there is nothing that happens that is out of God’s control. That does not mean God is the one doing it. The truth is in this life we will have experiences that are plain and simple the result of our own actions. They are called consequences.
“The Accuser” is Real
“The Accuser” is Real
Clearly there is another actor other than Job and God within this story. “The Accuser” in the book of Job, in Hebrew “The Satan” is used as a pronoun, like a name. Satan is real. As the Apostle Paul wrote:
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
We Live in a Broken World
We Live in a Broken World
Our world is broken. What does the book of Job tell us about that? There is a blindness we have when it comes to our relationship with God. Was it always this way? No. According to the Scriptures it wasn’t. Yet - the world as we see it is not perfect.
How then can man be in the right before God? How can he who is born of woman be pure?
Bad Things Happen to Good People
Bad Things Happen to Good People
It’s not bad things CAN happen to good people. It is Bad things happen to good people. As we just said, we live in a broken world. Our world, our thinking, our concept of right and wrong and good and evil have been impacted by sin.
Good People Can Be Wrong
Good People Can Be Wrong
I don’t know Job’s friends. But I don’t see them as intentionally trying to demean their friend, Job. As I read through this book of Job they really are intending to help Job based upon their compassion for him and their understanding of who God is.
These are the friends who came to Job, who tore their robes in sympathy with him, who sat and cried with him, who stayed with him silent for seven days.
Some of us may be wishing they’d stay’d silent now.
How do we apply what we’re learning.
There’s More Than Meets the Eye
There’s More Than Meets the Eye
When you see someone depressed, hurting, and/or suffering - know that you don’t know the WHOLE story. They may not even know the whole story. Neither Job nor his friends knew of God’s conversation with the Satan. Job knew he was suffering and has no way of explaining the why of what’s happening. His friends see the suffering and in their world view there has to be a reason. Their issue is that they begin to try and figure out what he might have done to have warranted such catastrophes to fall upon him.
You’re Biased
You’re Biased
Just like Job and even Job’s friends, all of us given our perspective will think our conclusions are right. And, given what we know at the time, those conclusions may be. Yet we also have to recognize that we, like Job’s friends’ are biased!
Be Open to Changing Your Mind
Be Open to Changing Your Mind
Perhaps this can be one of the most challenging lessons for us. It’s not said specifically in Job. We simply see his friends lamenting with him and then trying to make sense of what they’re seeing. Surely this is happening for a reason. It must be something Job did.
We’ve all heard the phrase - “You always think you’re right.” As I’ve thought about that phrase I’ve concluded with a question. “Why would I say something I thought was wrong?” So of course I THINK I’m right.
The challenge is:
Am I willing to be teachable?
Am I willing to reconsider my position?
Am I willing to change my mind as new details come to light?
I’m going to close simply with these words from the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian Church:
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
When I was in college a friend of mine was a Physics major. As he entered his Junior year he lamented, “Basically everything I worked so hard to learn the first two years was wrong.” Not necessarily wrong in the general sense, but definitely wrong in the specific sense.
Let us, continue to grow in our understanding of God, in our understanding of ourselves, and in our empathy and understanding of others.
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
To God be the glory. Amen.