More Friendly Advice!
Bildad spoke up again…. “Job! You aren’t listening to what we say! Don’t you think we know a thing or two? You’re just like someone who is caught in a trap by the heel, and calamity will overtake you….”
Don’t we all feel other’s condemnation of us when things go wrong for us? On the other hand, we must remember to say things that build up, rather than that which will pull down when people suffer calamities! It’s not necessarily what we say to their face, but often words of condemnation that we say to others about them behind their back.
Job didn’t hold back when he answered Bildad… “Why can’t you can’t say anything helpful to me? Ten times now you’ve been reproaching me! Even if what you are saying is true, I’m paying for my mistakes now! I feel as though God is tearing me down on every side, no-one is being helpful to me…my friends and relatives keep away from me, my servants keep out of my sight, even my wife can’t stand the sight of my sores! Oh, I wish my words were written down! ( little did he know they were!) I would write them with an iron pen on a scroll of rock!” Job then uttered these wonderful words of testimony in the midst of his misery…. “I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end He will stand on the earth…even if I die, I will see Him for myself! It doesn’t matter what you all say after all!”
Then Zophar could not keep silent any longer… “Look here, Job, don’t you realise that those who are wicked aren’t joyful, that even if they are the most important people in the world they won’t last?” He carried on in the same vein, insinuating that Job must be one of them to be suffering like he was. “Don’t you know that they won’t last and that he will end up nothing; his food will turn sour in his stomach? He won’t enjoy his wealth after all, especially that which he has gained from oppressing others! God will send His burning anger on him and it will be as though he has arrows piercing right through him. He will end up losing everything he has….this is what God does to those who don’t follow Him!”
Job wasn’t slow to reply… “You listen carefully to what I’m saying! You can laugh at me later, but listen now! I’m talking to God, not you…why do the wicked prosper like they do? Nothing ever seems to go wrong for them, even when they scoff at God! They say what’s the point in praying anyway?”
Even while Job was talking, the answer came to him… “Their destruction will come upon them in the end, and God will bring them to nothing. They can’t teach Him anything anyway! Even if they have everything down here, they will still die, and die without God! They will have to face Him in the end, and they will have nothing to say. You guys haven’t comforted me at all with all your words!”
We must always look for the wider picture when calamities come upon us. God, Who knows the end from the beginning, could see the whole thing as a panorama that would unfold before them all in the end. We all know people who have suffered dreadful calamities in their lives, and yet things worked out in the end for them. Let us always keep this in mind, and look past our immediate distresses…..King David could say, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning!”
(Psalm 30:5) (Job, chapters 18-21)