Page 115 - Reading Job to Know God

His troops come together, and build up their way against me and camp
around my tent.”
He does not understand why God gives him the deaf ear. Job says, only God
can solve my problem, not you. I only want one thing from you men and it is
not answers. Verse 21 and 22
“Pity me, pity me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has struck
me.”
He says, all I want from you is a little pity. How about some understanding.
Maybe a little sympathy. I am not asking you to help me out of my problem.
There is only one who can do that. And then he sinks back again in despair,
and in verse 23 through 29 he says, “What’s the use?”
“Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a
book! That with an iron stylus and lead they were engraved in the rock
forever! As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives.”

You see he believes in God with all his heart. He says, “Though He slay
me, I will trust Him!” But he expects to die. He says:
“As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take
His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my
flesh I shall see God: Whom I myself shall behold, and whom my eyes
will see and not another. My heart faints within me!
He says, I know that I will be vindicated someday even if it is after this life.
Job is stubborn. He will not yield. And so Zophar says I am going to add
some light to all of this. Like the others, Zophar is also irritated. Job ended
his discussion with Bildad with this suggestion. Verse 29,
“Then be afraid of the sword for yourselves, for wrath brings the
punishment of the sword, so that you may know there is
judgment.”
Job ended his answer to Bildad with a suggestion that God might strike them
down the way He struck him. And old Zophar did not like that insinuation
because that would make him a sufferer and a sinner. Zophar’s great
contribution to this confusion can be summarized in these words.
Chapter 20, verse 5,8 and 23

“That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the godless
momentary?

“He flies away like a dream, and they cannot find him.”

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