ResponsiveReiding

Seeing that Eliphaz’s last rebuke seemed to have no impact on moving Job toward owning the sin his 3 friends are convinced is at the root of his woes – Bildad steps up to the plate once more in chapter 18. There is a discernable shift in his language in this latest rejoinder. The first 4 verses are spoken directly to Job with appropriate personal pronouns: ‘How long will YOU hunt for words?’; ‘Why are we stupid in YOUR sight?’; ‘YOU who tear YOURSELF in anger, shall the earth be forsaken for YOU?’ But for the rest of Bildad’s discourse, he speaks as though Job isn’t there and he is only addressing his other friends. It is a cold and callous tactic, treating Job as though he isn’t even in the room with them, and discussing his case with the others like he is off in some other place. It is dismissive and belittling. It adds yet more woes to these already overburdened shoulders. And so Bildad charges in.

Bildad’s basic theme is not far different than anything already said. In short he argues: ‘Your own words condemn you Job. The order of the world – that the wicked suffer – will not change just because its you suffering this time. You brought this on yourself. Every aspect of your suffering is the result of your own wickedness. Just own it, you don’t know God.’

One wonders how Job goes on – why he goes on in the face of all these false accusations. But Job is, as he is proverbially known – the most patient of men. He can argue with his friends and just walk away. He wants to see it through. Deep down He knows there is an answer, and he hopes that he will be vindicated yet.

The rest of Bildad’s words continue to jab our dear sufferer.

18:1-4 / Come on! Is the entire world order supposed to be changed because you now have a situation which seems to not fit? Get over yourself.

18:5-7 / His sin has blinded Job. He can’t see these matters clearly because his own wickedness has clouded his vision – he is in darkness. And such darkness brings on weakness as well. He will not be able to endure much longer.

18:8-10 / Job has brought this entire affair upon himself and he can’t even see it. He’s been trapped by God due to his own self-deception.

18:11-13 / This is why you is frightened and why he has no strength to endure.

18:14-16 / He had pie in the sky hopes that he could continue in sin and prosper, and this is coming down all around his ears. The whole thing smells of God’s judgment. And judgment will continue on all sides.

18:17-19 / What’s more – whatever reputation Job used to have – or thought he had – will vanish. God is in the process wiping out his name. That is why he has no children left. His very memory is to be erased in disgrace.

And so, as though these accusations have not been cruel enough, Bildad takes the roughest, rustiest sword of all – and lays the death of his children at his feet as well. One cannot read Bildad’s words without weeping for Job. What could tear his grieving soul more?

And how we are warned here about how we bring our conclusions to events that are not over yet. Our God sees the beginning from the end – but we do not. We are so prone to look for absolute conclusions when matters are still very much at play. How often we do this with the woes of friends, or even ourselves. So heavy is the mystery of ‘why’ that we feel we MUST conclude SOMETHING, or we cannot go on.

How much then we need to know our Savior better. To rest in His character and His love for us rather than trying to divine those things from external circumstances. What says His Word? What says the incarnation? What says the cross? If we are His – His love never wavers, not in the slightest. And as His, we can trust His hand even in the darkest providences. He never has less than the eternal best of His children at His heart. Never. Never.

Proverbs 19:18 Discipline your son, for there is hope; do not set your heart on putting him to death.

Don’t give up. Keep disciplining – training – correcting, encouraging and instructing your children. Even when it seems to have no effect. Do not let your mind cross the line and deem it hopeless.

At the same time, discipline has to be differentiated from mere punishment.

Discipline includes training, loving guidance and instruction. Showing your child how it is done and coming along side him or her to help them grow and mature and do well. Mere punishment will make a heart hard, resentful, and will make you enemies of each other. How many truly tragic stories revolve around the failure to distinguish these two.

Think of the way in which our Heavenly Father shapes and molds us, never resorting to mere punishment. How He gives us His Word. And then not only supplies it to us, but then gives us infinite helps to better understand and master it. Teachers and preachers, commentaries and devotionals. Biographies of godly men and women and a rich and massive history of the Church. Then add those who come along side us who have known and walked with Christ before us and for many years. And the amazing gift of the prayers of those around us, and not least of all but highest indeed, the never ending and always perfectly tuned intercessions of Christ Himself on our behalf.

Now transpose that to interacting with our own children. For what is our goal in discipline? Not mere to make them feel the sting of poor decisions – though that is an ancillary factor – but to train them and encourage them to do better. When an infant is learning to walk, think how one holds their little hands and supports them in their faltering first attempts. How patient we are. How filled with smiles and constant encouragements of “come on, you can do it, that’s it! Come to Mama, come to Papa, I’ll catch you, you won’t fall…” How much we invest in them growing and mastering this essential of everyday life.

And when they fall or stumble – do we then kick them, or castigate them or berate them? No! We want them to do this and learn to do it better. We kiss their wounds, not inflict new ones. We hold them closer and encourage them all the more.

Now would we imagine for one moment that our Heavenly Father does one iota less for us as we learn to walk in uprightness and holiness? Do we think Him mean and rigid, impossible to please and irate because we still stumble and fall while learning how to take on fully the image of Christ Himself? Does He not know what it takes to grow? Is He not on our side in it? Is His Word not filled to overflowing with encouragements and tactics and techniques and hints and corrections and instructions for every new challenge? Does He not have our very best in His heart? Does He not provide His Spirit to indwell us and Christian brothers and sisters to walk with us and every means at His disposal to bring us to maturity?

Here is life in Christ expounded for us in large and glorious ways. He disciplines in teaching and correction – for there is hope! He does not set His heart on giving us up or over to our failures – to death. He is our Father. And He will love us into Christ’s image, and never beat us into mechanical conformity.

Proverbs 19:1–3 ‘Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than one who is crooked in speech and is a fool. 2 Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way. 3 When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord.’

Taken as a whole, Proverbs 19 functions as an extraordinary exposition of the nature of the Believer’s inward dialog when tempted by sin. Verses 1-8 demonstrate a vigorous back and forth within the heart and mind, while verses 9-29 list the way the righteous man argues back against the temptation of his own sinfulness until he “shouts it down”, for lack of a better term. The remnant of indwelling sin argues for ascendency and to re-establish the rulership the in the Believer it lost when Christ became Lord. And our need to recognize this form of inward argumentation, to grow in our skill in arguing for righteousness and against sin, and the need to arm ourselves with the Word of God richly so as to have a ready supply of counter-arguments to win the day – cannot be overemphasized. The renewing of the Spirit of the mind is central to our growth in grace, and to overthrowing the seemingly endless creativity with which our own souls seek to justify sin.

That said, we do not want to overlook some of the more independent concepts which also emerge from this rich portion of God’s Word.

The thought in verse 1 is simple – but so very often overlooked. In a society in which everything seems geared to encourage us that we can every wish or desire fulfilled some way, and that it is only right that it be so – indeed that it is our ‘right’ to have everything we desire – God’s Word counters with a resounding – NO! That’s not true!

When we believe we ‘deserve” everything we want, we cannot help but soon talk ourselves into every kind of vice, compromise and blatant sin we are capable of imagining. Thus verse 1 challenges the prevailing Western worldview – It is Better to be lacking whatever it is that makes me feel deprived – and do so trusting in the Lord – than to be scheming and manipulating both God and man to bring my desires about. And to be perfectly honest, how much of our prayer life reflects this very undercurrent of manipulating God into giving in to our schemes.

As a Pastor, many a person has come through the door of this Church with a great tale of how they had strayed from God, but now they are on fire, and oh, by the way, I’ve lost my job and my wife and pray with me for restoration. All of which is legitimate on the surface. But more often than I care to confess, when the job isn’t restored, the diagnosis not reversed, the spouse remains unreconciled – then it is not long before they are back out the door and serving self like before. The entire matter had been little more than thinking ‘if I just get my religious life in order – God will have to notice and fix everything.’ In other words – sorcery. Trying to manipulate God through vows, commitments and temporary lifestyle changes all tied to getting what they want. It is a sad and tragic reality. Thomas Aquinas wrote: “It is clear that he does not pray, who, far from uplifting himself to God, requires that God shall lower Himself to him, and who resorts to prayer not to stir the man in us to will what God wills, but only to persuade God to will what the man in us wills.”

So it is verse 2 builds on that issue and directs us to gain insight into the true nature of our desires. For if we do not identify the true longings within as in fact a need for Christ and NOT the externals – we cannot help but miss the way, and live in dissoloution.

Aimlessly seeking to fill up inward desires we have not even properly identified will lead us into all kinds of wickedness. The lost person does not realize their deepest need is Christ. And often, even the Believer fails to recognize that deep, still unmet desires, must be brought to Him. He, wants to satisfy us fully. We, do not want to be satisfied in Him. We do not see that our desires unmet in Him, are desires for Him that are mis-labled, mis-understood or perverted from their rightful object. Heavenly Father – open our eyes!

Such driving desire, not knowing why God may have withheld what I want, will lead me to mistrust Him: It will kill faith. I will miss His path.

But then – in verse 3, when we see how empty our pursuits have been, amazingly, we blame God. He, who all the while waits to be our satisfaction, who loves us immeasurably and fully, who desires our best, gets blamed because WE did not stop to recognize it was Him we were meant to be satisfied in all the while, and not the externals of this life in this world.

How often it is when we at last find the bankruptcy of following after the misnamed, misidentified longings – we will blame the disaster on God rather than ourselves.

Wicked man that I am – I am ALWAYS looking for someone to blame for my miseries beyond myself.

What a glorious Savior then is Christ – who leads out of this consuming vortex, to seek our all in Him and Him alone. Where there is never a loss of what is true joy, true contentment, true glory. Oh that our souls might recognize and long only for ‘the unsearchable riches of Christ’ – and NOT, this world’s riches we vainly think He will bring us apart from Himself. That we might never love any of Christ’s gifts, above the Giver Himself.