1 ¶
Lo, mine eye hath seen all this, mine ear hath heard and understood it.
2 What ye know, the same do I know also:
I am not inferior unto you. 3 Surely I
would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God. 4 But ye are forgers of lies, ye are all
physicians of no value. 5 O that ye
would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom. 6 Hear now my reasoning, and hearken to the
pleadings of my lips. 7 Will ye speak
wickedly for God? and talk deceitfully for him? 8 Will ye accept his person? will ye contend
for God? 9 Is it good that he should
search you out? or as one man mocketh another, do ye so mock him? 10 He will surely reprove you, if ye do secretly
accept persons. 11 Shall not his excellency
make you afraid? and his dread fall upon you? 12 Your remembrances are like unto ashes, your
bodies to bodies of clay.
Now, more
angrily, Job declares that he is at least as wise and understanding as his
friends and that he knows just as much as they do about the situation. He does
not need to be taught by them. He wishes to speak directly to God face to face.
He wishes to reason with God. As God said to the backsliding Jews;
Isaiah 1:18
Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins
be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson,
they shall be as wool.
As I have noted
before, I have heard people say they had questions for God and when they faced
Him they would ask those questions. I doubt they will be able to do that as
they will be overwhelmed by His presence and their own unworthiness.
Job doesn’t
realize what he is asking. He will learn when God speaks to him later.
Job calls his friends
liars and quack doctors, like the old American phrase for people offering phony
cures, snake oil salesmen. He wishes them to hold their peace, a phrase that
has come down to us as meaning to be quiet. It is said that it is better to
keep silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
He tells them to listen to him, that they have spoken wickedly of God and
misrepresented Him. God doesn’t need our self-righteous blather to justify
Himself. Our speech has a limited value and it is not to offer excuses for God
or to condemn others who are suffering.
Colossians 4:6 Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned
with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.
Ephesians 4:29 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of
your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister
grace unto the hearers.
Those of you
who picture yourself as Moses played by Charleton Heston, carrying the tablets
containing the Ten Commandments in your arms, standing over the wicked children
of Israel, condemning and railing against them, when you talk about lost
people, the government, or any other of, “those people,” would do well to
consider these passages. Do you misrepresent God in your “righteous
conclusions” about what is going on in the world?
Oh, how angry
you get! Oh, how certain you are of God’s righteous judgments. Did God permit
the World Trade Centers, a potent symbol of financial power and greed, to be
brought down because America tolerated homosexuality and abortion, as Jerry
Falwell said? Did God let those 3,000 or so people lose their lives for that
exact reason? How do you know? Did He tell you? Who do you think you are to
claim to know the mind of God as if He had drawn near to you, put His hand on
your shoulder and whispered in your ear, “watch this.”
Like Job’s
friends you make a mockery of Christ. You say, “I am certain,” and Job’s
friends would say the same and be just as full of the Devil. Job accuses his
friends of mocking God.
Matthew Henry
explained, “…a good intention will not justify, much less will it sanctify, a
bad word or action…Pious frauds (as they call them) are impious cheats; and
devout persecutions are horrid profanations of the name of God.” (21)
As Job’s
friends we can have a good intention of serving God when we attack our brothers
and sisters in Christ and attempt to impose the bondage of our own convictions
upon them that we accomplish the opposite effect of our desire. Rather than
draw people closer to Christ we drive them from our fellowship with them and
perhaps to bitterness.
As an example, and
I have to set this up with some historical context so bear with me a moment, to
the first century Christians the day of worship was also a work day as Sunday
was no day off from work for 300 years after Christianity’s beginning. Pliny
the Younger, the governor of Pontus and Bithynia, wrote to the Emperor Trajan
about early Christian worship in the early second century, between 111 and 113
AD.
They
asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been
that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing
responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not
to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their
trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was
over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of
food--but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased
to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had
forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more
necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who
were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive
superstition. (22)
Now, I bring
this up to point out that Sunday was a work day until the third century so
these Christians, often and usually very poor and slaves, would then go to
their work for the day after worship. They would have come to worship wearing
their work clothes. We have adopted the custom of wearing our, “Sunday finest,”
or our, “Sunday go-to-meeting,” clothes as phrases from the past have said. If
someone comes into the assembly dressed in less of a fashion than our
convictions dictate it is not unusual for us to act or think indignant at their
lack of sobriety and respect, as we perceive it. The more bold of us might even
approach that person and drive them from the assembly with our self-righteous
attempt to tell them, “the way it is.” Such things are wicked. The only rule of
dress is modesty, not drawing attention to ourselves on purpose with our
clothing, and wearing something, say, a mini-skirt or a muscle shirt, that
might detract from worship or inspire a temptation. To impose your conviction
of hair up in some kind of a bun as hair hanging down was once considered
scandalous and improper, your conviction of the propriety of a long dress, or your
conviction for closed toed shoes for women, as it was once considered indecent
to show the “naked” foot, as a condition for coming to worship with the church
or to impose your conviction for men to wear a business suit are all absurd and
even a great evil if done as a proof of your piousness which you wish to share,
in loooovvvvve, with the less spiritual.
Think back on
Henry’s statement about pious frauds and impious persecutions.
Verse 9 asks
the valid question as to whether or not you would really want God to search out
your convictions that you express so confidently in trying to control,
manipulate, or accuse others.
Psalm 139:23
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
24 And see if there be any wicked way in
me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Does the pious
person with their nose up in the air really think that their standards could
stand a close examination by God? Job asks rhetorically if his friends would
not be better off to take God more seriously and not to presume to speak for
Him out of ignorance.
I hear these
sorts of things all the time from conservative and from liberal Christians. Some
verses to consider;
Romans 2:1 ¶
Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest:
for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that
judgest doest the same things.
Matthew 7:1 ¶ Judge not, that ye be not judged. 2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be
judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. 3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in
thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
2Corinthians 13:5 Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the
faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus
Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?
Do the
standards you set for yourself match the standards you set for others? Do you
presume to speak for God when God is silent? Do you invent standards that are
not Biblical because they make you feel more spiritual, and then apply them to
others but not yourself?
Job’s friends
have committed the sin virtually every Christian who takes their faith
seriously is in danger of committing. They have applied God’s truth falsely. In
finite bodies of clay they have assumed knowledge available only to God. Here,
in the book of the Bible written before all others in time, we have this alert,
this warning from God. Will you listen?
(21) Henry, Commentary.
(22) Pliny,
“Pliny the Younger to Trajan on Christians”, Early Christian Writings, http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/pliny.html,
(accessed 9.18.2014.)
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