"You Deserve Worse."

INTRO

It has been a full week of suffering, complaining, and bad friends. Guess what is going to happen today? Another friend will tell Job he doesn’t like him. Remember, the first guy we talked about was Eliphaz, and then we heard from Job’s friend Bildad. Keep in mind at this point in Scripture that Job was covered in boils, sores, and had shared his feelings with his friends. In the following passage, we will see how Zophar responded.

Zophar gave two speeches in the book of Job. MacArthur wrote, “The first speech tells Job to get right with God (Job 11:1–20). The second speech accuses Job of rejecting God by questioning His justice (Job 20:1–29).”¹He also wrote, “Zophar the Naamathite now stepped in to interrogate Job. He was quite close to his friends and chose to assault Job with the same law of retaliation. Job must repent, he said, not understanding the heavenly reality.”²

TEACHING

Job 11:1–6: Job is a hard book to study. We are looking at human suffering and Job’s friends telling him over and over again he had done wrong. It gets old. At some point, you think surely someone would comfort Job. But no! Constable writes, “Four things about Job that bothered Zophar: his loquacity (v. 2), his boasting (v. 3), his self-righteousness (v. 4), and his ignorance (v. 5).”³

It is important to note that Job did remain innocent of any great transgression throughout the entire book. It is not that he was perfect (Job 7:21; 13:26). Job didn’t play that card. Zophar was playing the role of the judge and ruling that Job was guilty.

Job 11:7–12: Zophar gave praise for God’s wisdom.⁴I think the questions he asked in these Scripture verses were weird because nobody could or can understand these things. Zophar was so self-righteous he thought he understood God’s plans, His reasoning, and His logic. Zophar had sound doctrine and theology but had incorrect application, as he showed no love for Job. All he wanted to do was show Job how much he knew about God. Zophar indirectly called Job stupid. Nelson’s Commentary states, “He could be implying that Job’s ‘empty talk’ indicates that he is empty-headed (vv. 2–12).”⁵Who was this guy anyway? So far, he had been the worst to Job.

Job 11:13–20: Zophar appealed to Job.⁶In other words, if Job wanted to change, he needed to do four things that would lead to a radical change and repentance. When I look at these things, it is hard to take them as truth and principal because it came from someone of his stature. He was right about these things, although they came from a wrong attitude. Here are the four things Job needed for repentance:⁷

1. “Re-direct you heart to God.”8 Another way of putting this is to devote your heart to God. How do you devote your heart to God? Give up control of your life to God (Proverbs 3:5–6). When you trust in God, you are no longer relying on your own understanding, you are no longer trying to figure things out on your own. I think it is funny for Zophar to make this point while the whole time he had been trying to figure out God’s plan by playing judge.
2. “Stretch your hands to Him in prayer and forgiveness.”9 When you pray do you lift up your hands? I am going to try it! As crazy and self-righteous as Zophar was, he did speak truth about ways to keep your eyes on the Lord. Lifting your hands is a sign of release and submission.
3. “Put your sin far away.”10 If there is sin in your life, remove it! We can all decide if we want to hold onto sin or not. For some reason in the church culture, we think we can hide our sin.

“Don’t allow sin in your tent.”¹¹Do a walk-through of your house and question things that are not of God. Listen to the Holy Spirit?

Lift your hands to God! Don’t feel silly. We need to get over what people think of us and praise the Lord. Although these are great simple principles, I don’t like that Zophar implied works-based faith. Which implies if you do 1, 2, 3 you get 1, 2, 3. But let’s look at the benefits of these principles. Constable wrote, “These benefits were a clear conscience, faithfulness, and confidence (v. 15); forgetfulness of his troubles (v. 16); joy (v. 17); hope and rest (v. 18); and peace, popularity, leadership, and security (v. 19).”¹²I don’t know why people wouldn’t want these benefits as they are reflections of the Almighty Himself. I want to read a great quote from MacArthur that sums up these verses concisely.

“If Job didn’t repent, he would die. Zophar was right that the life of faith in God is based on real confession of sin and obedience. He was right that God blesses people with hope, security, and peace. But, like his friends, he was wrong in not understanding that God allows unpredictable and seemingly unfair suffering for reasons not known on earth. He was wrong in presuming that the answer for Job was repentance.”¹³

Zophar closed out his arguments by indirectly calling Job wicked. Constable wrote, “Whereas Eliphaz’s authority was personal experience, and Bildad’s was tradition, Zophar’s seems to have been intuition (cf. 20:1–5).”¹⁴His intuition was wrong.

CLOSING

The story of Job is a crazy story! I want to say that these three friends had good and right intentions, but their efforts sure did come out wrong. They based all of their accusations and advice on logic, not love. Ephesians 4:15 says, “But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into Him who is the head—Christ.” That is how we grow to become like Christ!