Job’s First Reply (Part 2)

We were unable to complete our look at two chapters, unsurprising to be sure. But it does allow us more time to develop the third point, and one that I mentioned last week is an important point to consider.

In almost every instance of life, we have an opportunity to view life from objective truth or subject experience. We are mutable creatures, and our attitudes and outlooks change about as often as South Carolina switches between the four seasons all within the same week and occasionally on the same day.

An illustration may prove helpful to communicate what I am saying. If I were to have my prescription glasses tinted yellow, not only would that be cool, it would also change the way my eyes see everything. You would all be yellow, the red carpet would probably look a little orange. The pages in my Bible would be yellow rather than white.

The objective (your skin color, the color of the carpets, or of my Bible pages) is true regardless of the tint of my glasses. It is the subjective, my glasses, that change the way I perceive those objective colors.

In a similar, although more significant way, we are called to live according to truth, objective truth. We are called to view life through the lens of God’s goodness and God’s providence (see, for example, Romans 8:28-29, 32).

The problem is that there are many things in our lives, some self-inflicted through sin and others imposed on us because of the fallen world and the enemies of our souls, that put tinted glasses on our faces. These subjective aspects can be detrimental to the soul, and that is what we see in the life of Job.

And perhaps you too have some tinted glasses covering your eyes that are leading you to be, like Job, miserable. They may not be quite as drastic as Job, but maybe you are going through a physical challenge and are seeing God not as the good gracious God He is, but as an unfair God who has thrown your life for a loop.

Or maybe someone hurt you by their words, or betrayed you, and you view God as standing far away, totally oblivious to your hurting and breaking heart.

Or maybe you think God is too busy to see you caress a sin.

We could go on, but you get the picture. We have seen…

I. Job’s Warped Lament- 6:1-13

A. What is biblical lament?

B. Job’s Warped Lament

C. Job’s remarkable faith- 6:9-10

II. Job’s Worthless Friends- 6:14-30

A. His worthless friends brought more sorrow instead of help- 6:14-23

B. His worthless friends could not point out Job’s sin- 6:24-30

C. His worthless friends forget the Gospel- Romans 8:18, 28-30

Now it is time to see Job’s wrong view of God.

III. Job’s Wrong View of God- 7

We will move through this chapter quickly, for although the wording of this poem is important, we can capture the big ideas in three groups. First, consider Job’s dim view of life with God.

A. Job’s dim view of life with God- 7:1-10

Job is allowing his experiences to be applied to all without any qualification as God’s dealings with humanity. Remember, in Job chapter 1 he enjoyed many blessings, but all of them were nothing compared to his relationship with God. When his children, servants, and possessions were taken away, he still had his relationship with God.

Then Satan, by God’s allowance, afflicted Job with horrific curses, causing Job (and Job’s friends) to see him as cursed by God. The one thing that kept Job going, God, seemed to be against him. Now his view of life is dim.

We cannot fail to appreciate Job’s honesty as he struggles with his afflictions. He cannot get into a comfortable position, nor can he find release in sleep. As soon as his skin starts to scab over, it bursts again.

He is like Eeyore from Winnie the Poo, but for good reason. He truly has suffered. But the one thing that Job has difficulty with, and one of the blessings of this book, is that even though a believer is going through a difficult season, God’s love for them does not change.

It did change his view of life, dimming it, making it depressing, if you will. No longer does Job say, “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord!” Now Job is saying, “What is the point of all of it? Why can’t I just die?” It is an understandable, but nevertheless, dim view of life with God (or, perhaps without God? notice the lack of any reference to the Creator).

B. Job’s deliberate accusation of God- 7:11-16

This language is shocking, especially when we consider Job is righteous. Notice the audacity, Job blames God for the suffering he is enduring. What is interesting, and a thought we will develop more as we progress through this book, is his mentioning of the sea monster. *SOME TRANSLATIONS JUST HAVE SEA*

Without going into too much detail, many of the ANE cultures, including Israel and even before Israel, saw the sea monster, or Leviathan, as a cosmic being with incredible strength and power. We would liken it to a deity, not on the same level as God of course, but one of His most powerful creations.

This being is evil, and many of the cultures have their heroes battling and gaining victory of this being. What Job is saying, and we will change it a bit to make it more understandable for us today, is that God is treating Job like He would Satan.

Why was God doing this? Remember, Job has tinted glasses on, and so he is viewing God’s objective truth with his subjective experiences. But is this not what we do?

We get a bad diagnosis, and many of us say, “God, why are you doing this to me!?” Or our child rebels again and we question the goodness of God. Or everything that can go wrong does go wrong and we feel as if God could not care less about us.

We are a lot like Job. The only difference is that it takes far less suffering to get us to this Job 7 place than it did Job.

Job takes his experiences, terrible to be sure, and then views God from them. No longer is God the gracious God and close friend of Job, given Job’s circumstances.

Job’s last movement is 7:17-21, his desperate response to God.

C. Job’s desperate response to God- 7:17-21

“His only recourse is (as it were, unwillingly) to draw some terrifying new conclusions about the God he thought he knew.” Eric Ortlund, Piercing Leviathan

His last few words demonstrate his response to God’s apparent torture. Who am I that you should treat me like this? If I have sinned, why can’t you just forgive me? Or, why don’t you just leave me alone and let me die?

He is desperate. And we would think his desperation was primarily physical. He wanted to escape the pain, and certainly there is some truth to that. But more than that, if Job could not be restored to God, if Job’s very life, God himself, were to continue to curse him, death was all he could hope for.

He cannot conceive of God’s goodness, not because the objective truth has changed, but because Job is viewing God through his experiences.

What I find extremely convicting here is that I would be more concerned about the pain, and I am sure you would be the same. Not only does it take far less to get us to this Job 7 place, far too often our focus is on our pain, not the apparent separation from God, but the discomfort. Job is a truly righteous man, a man who loves God like David does in Psalm 27:4 . I hope you are getting a glimpse at why God said Job was a righteous man, and why God does not discipline Job at the end of the book that bears his name.

Psalm 27:4 ESV

4 One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.

I mentioned these last week, but I want to develop them a bit further.

Concluding Applications

1. Learn to biblically lament.

When God allows or brings trials into our lives, we do not have to sit like Stoic statues and grin and bear it. We do not have to only sing uplifting, joyful songs. God did not design us this way (at least on this side of the resurrection). He tells us to weep with those who weep, and sometimes we need to cry out to God with our brokenness.

Ben read Psalm 6, but notice Psalm 6:6–7 “6 I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping. 7 My eye wastes away because of grief; it grows weak because of all my foes.”

He doesn’t just bare his heart, but he does bare it. Many psalms can be used to demonstrate this important part of following Jesus Christ. We can lament over our struggles with sin, our sufferings, etc. We can also lament over the sinful world. Jesus Himself laments over Jerusalem (see Matthew 23:37-39).

Study the book of Lamentations, the psalms of lament, and learn how to bare your soul to God, and then turn in toward trust.

To lament is to bring the subjective (often mixed with the objective) to God, and then to trust is to turn back to the objective truth.

That’s what David does in Psalm 6. Notice Psalm 6:9–10 “9 The Lord has heard my plea; the Lord accepts my prayer. 10 All my enemies shall be ashamed and greatly troubled; they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment.”

2. Be a committed member who gives and receives encouragement from the Word of God.

If you and I struggle with maintaining an objective (i.e., biblical) view of life, it should not surprise us that our brothers and sisters in Christ struggle with it as well. We need to be able (by the Spirit’s help and study of the Word) to give encouragement from the Word of God. But we also need to receive (a humble experience for sure) encouragement from the Word of God, too.

Job went through this trial without the support and care of godly friends. Let that not be said of Warrior Creek Baptist Church.

3. Avoid judging God by your experiences, and instead judge your experiences by your God.

It is absolutely essential that you immerse yourself into the study of God. It is why our church motto is To know Him and make Him known. You have to, to use Dr. Berg’s phrase from our session last week, have “structured saturation.”

Read, read, read,

meditate, meditate, meditate,

memorize, memorize, memorize!

Be so familiar with biblical ruth that the only lenses on your face start with B and ends with ible.