What is the measure of a friend?

 Job 11:13-20

 

“If you prepare your heart, you will stretch out your hands toward him.  If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away, and let not injustice dwell in your tents.  Surely then you will lift up your face without blemish; you will be secure and will not fear.  You will forget your misery; you will remember it as waters that have passed away. And your life will be brighter than the noonday; its darkness will be like the morning.  And you will feel secure because there is hope; you will look around and take your rest in security. You will lie down, and none will make you afraid; many will court your favor.  But the eyes of the wicked will fail; all way of escape will be lost to them, and their hope is to breathe their last.”

 

What is the measure of a friend?  It is someone who knows your shortcomings and is honest with you and will be there for you in your time of sadness and sorrow and also is your biggest cheerleader.  These three so-called friends began doing it correctly, about 95% of being a friend is showing up, but these first two so-called friends moved to be Job’s accusers as if they were without sin and Job was a person who had welcomed injustice into his home.

 

This was solution Zophar, all Job needs to do is to confess his sins, one wonders if Zophar wants Job to confess to him and his buddies, or God?  Then clean up your act and you will be restored to your neighbors and God.  These first two friends have gone to a very dangerous place, in that they act as if they are speaking for God.  My council is to run from such people!

 

You may want to reread verses 15-19, be careful of a person who makes promises that only God can make.  What a contrast to the verses above, going from a repentant sinner to an unrepentant and wicked sinner.

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice

 

An Accuser not a Friend

 

Job 11:1-12

 

“Then Zophar the Naamathite answered and said: “Should a multitude of words go unanswered, and a man full of talk be judged, right?  Should your babble silence men,
 and when you mock, shall no one shame you?  For you say, ‘My doctrine is pure, and I am clean in God's^[a] eyes.’  But oh, that God would speak and open his lips to you, and that he would tell you the secrets of wisdom! For he is manifold in understanding. Know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves.  “Can you find out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limit of the Almighty?  It is higher than heaven—what can you do?  Deeper than Sheol—what can you know?  Its measure is longer than the earth and broader than the sea.  If he passes through and imprisons and summons the court, who can turn him back?  For he knows worthless men; when he sees iniquity, will he not consider it?  But a stupid man will get understanding when a wild donkey's colt is born a man!”

Do you recall Bildad the first to be more of an accuser than a friend?  It seems that his friend Zophar has taken the role of the prosecuting attorney.  He begins by calling Job a talker, has no mercy in his speech, and often twists what Job has stated.  It seems that he only finds fault in what Job has said and no longer can see Job as a friend but as a sinner getting all that is coming to Him. 

 

Job never claimed that he had not sinned, or that he was pure before God, his only claim was that he is blameless.  One would be wise to recall God’s words to the devil.  Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job?  No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity.”

 

As followers of Christ, we are on this side of the cross and God the Father through the premise of our trust in the blood of Jesus Christ.  Because of God’s grace and the faith, he has given us to believe that Christ’s bloodshed on the Cross has covered all sin, for all that have bowed a knee to Jesus.  Job never claimed to understand all the ways of God, once more Zophar taking liberty with Job’s words.

 

 Zophar is taking the role of being God’s defense attorney, a very dangerous place, for God never appointed Him or you to that role.  In fact, I’ve yet to find in Scripture God defending Himself, when ask by Moses who should I say sent me, God said tell them “I Am” sent me.  In Romans 1:18-25, makes it very clear that men are without excuse when they reject God.

 

I worked with a young salesman in my early days at 3M  and Joe would often say the hardest thing to overcome in sales is ignorance and apathy and is that not true also as one who is a follower of Christ?

 

From the Back Porch, 

 

Bob Rice

Are you asking God questions or Just making statement?

  

February 15, 2014

 

Job 10:1-17

 

“I loathe my life; I will give free utterance to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.   I will say to God, Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me.   Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands
and favor the designs of the wicked?   Have you eyes of flesh?  Do you see as man sees?  Are your days as the days of man, or your years as a man's years, that you seek out my iniquity and search for my sin,  although you know that I am not guilty, and there is none to deliver out of your hand?  Your hands fashioned and made me, and now you have destroyed me altogether.  Remember that you have made me like clay; and will you return me to the dust?  Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese?  You clothed me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews.  You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit.  Yet these things you hid in your heart; I know that this was your purpose.  If I sin, you watch me and do not acquit me of my iniquity.  If I am guilty, woe to me!  If I am in the right, I cannot lift up my head, for I am filled with disgrace and look on my affliction.
 And were my head lifted up, you would hunt me like a lion and again work wonders against me.  You renew your witnesses against me and increase your vexation toward me; you bring fresh troops against me.”

 

Most of these seventeen verses are rhetorical in nature, Job is asking not to get an answer but to make a statement.  If you have been listening, Job has already given the answer to the questions he is asking.  Job wonders why God would be treating a righteous man in this way and not the wicked?  Job also knows that God knows he is not guilty, but wonders why he is being treated in this manner, is it because God has the power to do as He wishes?  (That’s Job’s thinking not mine.)

 

Now never forget that Job is sitting in the garbage with maggots eating on the boils that are all over his body, ask this question, what would I be doing by now?  Knowing the answer to all the question does not stop one’s mind from wondering, why has He not killed me?

 

At this time Job has lost all self-worth and would not look his friends in the eye, he just kept his head to the ground, he had no clue that he was but a pond in a power struggle of God and the devil.  He is wondering is God stacking the deck against me, is he dealing with me as a righteous judge?

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice

How Can a man defend himself before God

 February 13, 2020

 

Job 9:1-12

 

“Then Job answered and said: “Truly I know that it is so:   But how can a man be in the right before God?   If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand times.   He is wise in heart and mighty in strength—who has hardened himself against him, and succeeded?—he who removes mountains, and they know it not, when he overturns them in his anger, who shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble; who commands the sun, and it does not rise; who seals up the stars; who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea; who made the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the chambers of the south;  who does great things beyond searching out, and marvelous things beyond number. Behold, he passes by me, and I see him not; he moves on, but I do not perceive him. Behold, he snatches away; who can turn him back?  Who will say to him, ‘What are you doing?”

The theme of chapter 9 is how can a man defend himself before an all-powerful and holy God.  How can the created address his Creator?  Today we must look at all verses in chapter 9 that address this question.  Verse 16, “If summoned him and he answered me, I would not believe that he was listening to my voice.”   And verse 19, “If it is a contest of strength, behold, he is mighty!  If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?”   Andverse 32,  “For he is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him, that we should come to trial together.”

 

Often I and I’m sure you also turn to a helps page in our Bibles to get better understanding, but all that is needed in this case is to read the verse following 32 and we find what Job desires.  Verse 33, “There is no arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both.”  

 

How Job needed someone who could stand before a holy God and arbitrate his case.  When you address the Father, you have one who will make intersession, and you know His name and better, yet He knows yours.  If your name has been written in the book of Life, then you made the transition by faith from religion to a personal relationship with the living Christ.  The apostle John addresses this in 1 John 2:1,2, “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.  He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” 

 

 In the gospel of John we find this insight from Jesus about the Holy Spirit also being our advocate, John 14:16,17, and 26.   “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be^[a] in you.”  Verse 25,26,  “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you.  But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”

 

So no longer do we need to worry or fret on how we can approach a holy God, for the Spirit that lives in us will be our intercessor the Holy Spirit will do so.

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice

 

 

  

 

Do you know a Bildad?

 

Job 8:8-23

 

I’ve never had a friend like Bildad, but I have known a few people that remind me of him.  In verses 8-9 it seems as if he is telling Job that life is short, much like a vanishing shadow, and I wonder why did Bildad shared that with a man that is in such bad health that his friends did not recognize him?  Bildad gives an example of the papyrus and how it dies without water, does he believe that a man like Job would not know that?   Then he shares with Job that the godless will also perish without God.

 

Bildad keeps giving examples as in verses 16-19, “He is a lush plant before the sun, and his shoots spread over his garden.   His roots entwine the stone heap; he looks upon a house of stones.   If he is destroyed from his place, then it will deny him, saying, ‘I have never seen you.’   Behold, this is the joy of his way, and out of the soil others will spring.”

Do you recall Jesus telling the people in Matthew 12:3-6, to make sure they were planted in good soil.  These were His words, “Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed.   As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.  Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.   But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.”  Bildad is also using such an example but in his account the plant grows and does well and he is referring to the godless but being in the rock and not good soil it is easily pulled up and leaves no trace of it being there.

 

Now the chapter closes with verses 20-23, “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.  Those who hate you will be clothed with shame,  and the tent of the wicked will be no more.”  Bildad, seems to be saying Job, if you are a righteous man you have no worries, but Job righteous men do not find themselves in the place you are so God is dealing with you as you deserve.  

 

Let me close with this statement; God loves you and He is not getting even with you for your sins, Jesus God’s only Son took His Fathers full wrath for your sins and mine.  I am not saying that your bad habits may not have brought on your sickness, but that was your choice and not Gods.  So, if someone is telling you God is causing your sickness, I would put distance between you and them.

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice  

 

 

 

God’s self-appointed spokesman

 Job 8:1-7

 

“Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said: “How long will you say these things,
  and the words of your mouth be a great wind?  Does God pervert justice?  Or does the Almighty pervert the right?   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 though your beginning was small, your latter days will be very great.”

 

In my short journey as one who desires to allow Jesus to be my only authority, I ask Him into my life 50 years ago but for much of that time I had no real understanding of how much Jesus loves me.  How much I could trust Him with all that He has entrusted me with and look to His authority, and yet often to my shame I listen to Channel One, the deception channel.  At this time in life I’m learning to be on guard against the guy or gal that has all the answers about God and life on planet earth.  Many or like Job’s friend Bildad the Shuhite who believed he must speak for God and be His defense attorney.  

 

Bildad not only attacked Job for his words but without knowledge implies children got what they deserved, for God’s words are perfect and His ways of justice, so not only did Job’s children sin but Job must have also.

 

If you have a friend like Bildad, you might want to investigate the words coming from his mouth by examining all that they state about God by what the Scriptures give us insights and never allow them to tell you that what some scholar believes, if it is not in the Scriptures, he nor a scholar have anymore insights than you.  

 

Do you get it, Bildad had Job’s problem figured out and this is what Job needed to do was get a little purer and more upright and ask God for mercy and God would do just as Job ask, that is  Bildad’s logic in his role of being God’s self-appointed spokesman.  Watch out for the Bildads!

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice

A man of Integrity - suffering physical and emotional pain

 

Job 7:1-6

 

It seems as if Job in his suffering is no longer addressing his friend, but God his maker.  In verses 1&2, “Has not man a hard service on earth, and are not his days like the days of a hired hand?   Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like a hired hand who looks for his wages.”  One must understand that Job, this man of integrity is suffering physical and emotional pain and is very confused.  He is long past the question why and his friends, though trying to be of help have dismissed that he is close to being pure.  Job vents to his Maker, and is saying things and having thoughts he has never entertained.   Such as He is a harsh master, and uses terms like forced labor and that He is like a master that does not pay his servants for their daily wages.

 

I keep reminding myself that Jesus tells us that in this world we will have trouble, but take heart, for He has overcome the world.  We are also told that the world and its desires are passing away, but the person who lives for God will live forever.  I also remind myself how easily I get upset when a project I’m working on in the woodshop does not turnout, and I’m so glad I’m not Job.  “So, give thought to your life before jumping on Job for what he says in verses 3-5; “so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me.   When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I arise?’  But the night is long, and I am full of tossing till the dawn.  My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt; my skin hardens, then breaks out afresh.”  I’m such a wimp that one boil would have me in a total mess, and Job is covered in them with maggots.  I’m not sure a lesser man would do as Job’s wife has told him to do.

 

We will end today in verse six, “My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle
    and come to their end without hope.”  A person who loses all hope has not long for this world, and Job is sharing that is where he is at this time in the story.

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice

 

 

Where do you expect to find Job - not sitting in ashes at the garbage dump

 

Job 6:14-30

 

As one looks at Job, he is not sitting in his nice home, his servants are not waiting on him and his friends, no he is sitting in ashes.  From a physical manner he has boils all over his body and they are very painful, oozing and festered.  That pain is small compared to what he is going through, his wife has told him to curse God and die, his children are gone and most of his wealth, his standing in the community and now his friends have shown up.   Beginning in verse 14, “He who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty.  Job believes his friends are not loyal for he is not receiving love from them.  He feels his friends are fearful to get close to him because they fear God’s judgment might also come on them.

 

In verses 22-23, “Have I said, ‘Make me a gift’?  Or, ‘From your wealth offer a bribe for me’?   Or, ‘Deliver me from the adversary's hand’?  Or, ‘Redeem me from the hand of the ruthless’?  Job has not, nor will he ask his friends for a special gift or favor, but like most of us we expect a friend to stand by in the good and the bad.

 

I find verses 24-25 coming from a man who is searching his mind and heart to find where he has error,  “Teach me, and I will be silent; make me understand how I have gone astray.  How forceful are upright words!  But what does reproof from you reprove?”

What did I do wrong?  A person of integrity and that is what God has told us Job is, he wants to make right all sin even the unintentional ones.  Job feels as if his friends are not being honest with him, their actions show that they are dismissing his claim of being innocent, he’s not looking for kind words but truth.

 

Verses 27-29, Job is pleading for his friends to not forget the man they knew a man of high morals and who fears God and helps the needy.  “You would even cast lots over the fatherless, and bargain over your friend. “But now, be pleased to look at me, for I will not lie to your face. Please turn; let no injustice be done. Turn now; my vindication is at stake.”  A creditor in the time of Job would take and sell a friend into slavery in payment for a debt, and that’s what Job is comparing his friends to.  

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice

   

 

Job a pawn in a scheme of Satan with God

 

Job 6:1-13

 

Then Job answered and said: “Oh that my vexation were weighed, and all my calamity laid in the balances! For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea; therefore, my words have been rash.  For the arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me. Does the wild donkey bray when he has grass, or the ox low over his fodder?  Can that which is tasteless be eaten without salt, or is there any taste in the juice of the mallow?  My appetite refuses to touch them; they are as food that is loathsome to me.  “Oh, that I might have my request, and that God would fulfill my hope, that it would please God to crush me, that he would let loose his hand and cut me off!   This would be my comfort; I would even exult in pain unsparing, for I have not denied the words of the Holy One. What is my strength, that I should wait?  And what is my end, that I should be patient?  Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh bronze?  Have I any help in me, when resource is driven from me?

One must not forget God’s word to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil.”  Do not forget Satan’s reply in verses 9-11, “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land.  But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”  Job  becomes the pawn in a superhuman struggle.

 

His three friends show up and we have Job’s reply to Eliphaz, the first to speak after Job.  Over all his words are kind and yet he is doing what many do when they have no understanding of the vastness of the pain and suffering.  

 

In Job’s answer one comes to understand the massiveness of Job’s pain and loss, Job compares it to the sand of the sea and tells the reader it would be heaver than that.  Job has no doubt that he is the object of God’s attack.  He refers to God as a mighty warrior that has shot his arrows and the poison has made his words rash.  He goes on to talk about the animals and how they do not complain when they are well fed.  Job is telling his friend his council is like contaminated food.

 

Job’s understanding of what Eliphaz has shared is to not put his hope in his piety, or God’s disciplinary action, but in death.  Job tells us that would be sweet and that he has not denied the words of the Holy One.

 

When one loses hope it’s not a good thing, verses 11,12,13 tell us Job is at such a point.  He has no strength left, his future looks very dark, and he cannot fix this mess he has been brought into, because he has no real understanding of the why.

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice

To God I Commit my Life

 

Job 5:8-16

 

“As for me, I would seek God, and to God would I commit my cause,  who does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number: he gives rain on the earth
 and sends waters on the fields; he sets on high those who are lowly, and those who mourn are lifted to safety.   He frustrates the devices of the crafty, so that their hands achieve no success.  He catches the wise in their own craftiness, and the schemes of the wily are brought to a quick end.  They meet with darkness in the daytime and grope at noonday as in the night.  But he saves the needy from the sword of their mouth and from the hand of the mighty.   So, the poor have hope, and injustice shuts her mouth.”

 

What sound counsel is coming from the lips of Eliphaz, if all people would be wise to apply these words to our life how different things would be.  I read this morning that it is a hymn of praise that we find in verses 9-16, often used in worship ceremony.

 

Job 5:17-27

 

“Behold, blessed is the one whom God reproves; therefore, despise not the discipline of the Almighty.   For he, wounds, but he binds up; he shatters, but his hands heal.  He will deliver you from six troubles; in seven no evil shall touch you. In famine he will redeem you from death, and in war from the power of the sword.  You shall be hidden from the lash of the tongue and shall not fear destruction when it comes.  At destruction and famine, you shall laugh, and shall not fear the beasts of the earth.  For you shall be in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with you.  You shall know that your tent is at peace, and you shall inspect your fold and miss nothing.  You shall know also that your offspring shall be many, and your descendants as the grass of the earth. You shall come to your grave in ripe old age, like a sheaf gathered up in its season.  Behold, this we have searched out; it is true.  Hear, and know it for your good.”

 

The Author of Hebrews also tells us in chapter 12:4-6, the same thoughts; “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.  And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
    nor be weary when reproved by him.
 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
    and chastises every son whom he receives.”

 

 

 

 

The apostle Peter gives insight into the discipline of the Lord, in first Peter 1:6-7, “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”  No one in their right mind would desire what happened to Job to take place in their lives, but the apostle Peter tells us that our faith in Christ is more valuable than gold and in trials our faith is tested.

 

From the Back Porch,

 

Bob Rice