Page 90 - Job

it. Tell me what I have done. Look at verse 24
“Teach me, and I will be silent; and show me how I have erred. How
painful are honest words! But what does your argument prove?”
If I have done something, tell me what it is! Then in verse 27-30 he says,
if not, then you had better come up with another argument because I know
I am innocent. So after explaining his cry, and after explaining his
disappointment in his friends, then he begins another lament. And if they
were shocked at chapter 3, they are really shocked now in chapter 7. The
first ten verses of chapter 7 are sort of a general lament over the evils and
the brevity of life. Life is short, he says, and life is bad. It is a misery and
the only thing more miserable than life is thinking about life, and that is
misery added to misery.
For preachers, verses 6-10 are wonderful passages. If you ever want to
preach a sermon entitled, “The Shortness of Life,” boy, here are the
passages to do it on. In verse 6 he compares life to a “Weaver’s
shuttle”. In verse 7, the “Taking of a breath”. In verse 8, to the
“Glancing of an eye”. In verse 9, to the “Vanishing of a cloud”. Then
he closes with how final it is. You leave home and you never come back.
That is how he describes it. And so he is just lamenting. This chapter ends
not in an answer to Eliphaz. He has answered Eliphaz. He has answered
him by explaining his own cry and by showing his disappointment in his
friends for not understanding him. But if you will notice from verse 11 to
the end of the chapter, rather than speaking man to man, Job to Eliphaz,
he turns around and he lifts his head up toward God. This is a prayer. He
prays to the Lord. We will not take time to look at every verse. Let me
give you the essence of it. Chapter 7:11-16. Here is what he said.
He looks up in the face of God and he says, “Am I a danger to Your
universe? Am I doing something that is dangerous? Why do You have to
tie me down like this? Why do You have to put me in prison?” He is
praying to God and don’t forget these men are listening. He asks God,
“Am I endangering Your universe that You have to bring all this upon
me? Just tell me; I will not do it anymore! Why do You have to throw me
in prison? Why do You have to tie me up? Why do You have to make my
flesh and my bones ache?”

Then in verse 17-20, he says, “God, don’t You have better things to do
than to pick on a poor insignificant man? You are a great God, and I am
just a man. I am nothing! I am nobody! Less than nothing! Why are You
spending so much time on me?” Then in verse 21,

90