Sermon Tone Analysis

On January 31st of this year, the World Justice Project released its 2017-2018 WJP Rule of Law Index.

This report measures the rule of law adherence, meaning that it checks into how citizens actually experience the given law in their country.

The U.S. was ranked 18th in 2016 and fell one spot to #19 in this most recent report.

One thing that this report noted about the U.S. was this: “Continuing a long-term trend, the U.S. scored notably poorly on several measurements of discrimination.”

Now, the report goes into greater detail to explain what this means, but even as I bring this subject up we recognize that justice is a big deal in our country.

The just practice and enforcement of the law matters to us, but our country, as wonderful as it is, has a difficult challenge ahead of us.

Let’s imagine for a short while what it is like to be the one who believes that you have been wronged but that you have absolutely no chance of seeing justice upheld in your situation.

What type of emotions would you be experiencing?

For some of you, this question is not theoretical.

You have been wronged in the past and see no way of receiving justice.

There are probably several emotions that we could list.

One of those emotions would be frustration.

Another would be hopelessness.

Both of these emotions are represented in Job’s speech in .

Let’s imagine for a short while what it is like to be the one who believes that you have been wronged but that you have absolutely no chance of seeing justice upheld in your situation.

What type of emotions would you be experiencing?

For some of you, this question is not theoretical.

You have been wronged in the past and see no way of receiving justice.

There are probably several emotions that we could list.

One of those emotions would be frustration.

Another would be hopelessness.

Both of these emotions are represented in Job’s speech in .

But before we cover Job’s speech, we will spend time looking at Bildad’s first speech.

He’s not really that helpful.

If you can imagine a cut-and-dry, traditionalist type, you are probably close to understanding Bildad.

We could summarize his words this way: “God does not pervert justice.

His justice is absolute, so much so that you can count on this: people who experience bad things have been bad, and people who experience good things have been good.”

If we were to sum up Job’s speech in chapters 9-10, it might look something like this: “If that’s all there is, let me fade into death.

But I think there’s more to it!”

Now, this is perhaps over-generalizing what these men say, but maybe these summaries help you prepare for what we are about to consider in these three chapters of the book of Job.

We will see Job himself going back and forth between wanting to bring his case before God and not believing that such an action would accomplish anything.

He wrestles with believing God is just and in control and yet experiencing such unexplained and, he believed, unwarranted calamity or trouble.

What will you do when your faith and your experience collide?

If there is any section of Job’s speech that helps us see the bigger picture, I would point to .

He feels quite clearly his need for help in bringing his case before God.

And I plan to return to this need of his for one to stand between him and God as we get to our conclusion.

In our passage today, (1) Bildad Speaks in , and (2) Job Replies in .

Let’s begin by looking at Bildad’s speech.

Bildad Speaks —

God’s justice is absolute — 8:1-7

Job has just recently said, in , these words:

Now Bildad takes up the terminology and compares Job’s words to a great wind.

This is not a compliment!

Job is wasting his words, and Bildad is looking to make sure Job understands that God’s justice is not to be questioned.

Yet, just as we saw problems with Eliphaz’s view of God, so too we will see error is how Bildad views God.

Job said in ,

Perhaps in response to that, Bildad asks two questions in 8:3 as he seeks to clarify for Job that God’s justice is not crooked or perverted.

It is absolute and without error, as he goes on to illustrate and explain in 8:4-7.

Now to be clear, we do believe that God is just.

says this:

But consider the “justice” that Bildad calls Job to accept here.

The first example he gives insensitively and foolishly pertains to his children.

Though he begins the verse with “if,” the message is clear.

His children are dead.

They must have died because of their transgression.

Again, for Bildad, the world of blessing and punishment or retribution is black and white.

Bad things happen to bad people.

His children were killed in most unusual gust of wind.

They must have earned that punishment somehow through their actions—through their transgression.

But this is something that Job is likely to reject immediately.

Why? Go back to .

Like Eliphaz, Bildad encourages Job to seek God (verse 5), and yet Job continually sought God, especially in regard to his children.

But there is an even closer referent to this word “seek” that we find in verse 5. Job closed his previous speech by saying in 7:21 to God, “…you will seek me, but I shall not be.”

Now Bildad is telling Job that it is actually his responsibility to be the one who is seeking God.

Bildad also calls for Job to be pure and upright, assuring him that God would then restore his rightful habitation, and yet we saw repeatedly in that Job was a blameless and upright man who feared God and turned away from evil.

In other words, the careful reader of this book should know after reading these first few verses of Bildad’s first speech that this man has it wrong.

He is not aware of what God’s view of Job was at the beginning, but we are and can conclude that Bildad is not being helpful here—in fact, he is plainly wrong.

To further see the cut and dry nature of his counsel, notice that he speaks of a “rightful habitation” (8:6) and on the other hand the “tent of the wicked [that] will be no more.”

He also contrasts the one who trusts in “a spider’s web” or literally “house,” and the one who “looks upon a house of stones.”

In Bildad’s mind, God’s justice is clearly seen in how life is going for someone.

Look at the quality of a person’s life and you can tell whether that person is seeking God and living a pure and upright life or whether that person is living a life of sin.

Bildad thinks this message is good and helpful, saying in verse 7, “And though your beginning was small, your latter days will be very great.”

Such advice not only gives hope where there might be very little reason to hope—at least in this life—but it also goes against the very basic teaching of the Bible that says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” () It goes against statements like this that would later come from the apostle Paul, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” ().

In other words, people who give such advice miss the very fact that if God truly operated by the principles that they are describing, none would be enjoying a life of blessing!

Have you been tempted to think recently, “God must really be pleased with me.

Look at how good he has made my life!” Beware of such thinking!

At its foundation lies, among other things, a heart of pride that thinks that in some way you have earned what you now enjoy.

Perhaps your choices have brought you to a situation of blessing—it is in fact biblical to believe that we reap what we sow—yet even as we might at times reap a harvest of righteousness, we must guard our hearts with the understanding, believers, that before God breathed life into our very souls and brought us salvation we were children of disobedience who were dead in our sins and under God’s wrath and condemnation.

Any good thing that we have done we must trace back to God’s gracious work in our lives.

God has created you to be one who does good works for the glory of his name.

Let not such tools think that they deserve the credit for doing what God himself has created them to do.

Tradition teaches this — 8:8-19

After clearly protecting God’s justice and giving Job hope—at least, this is what Bildad intends and thinks he is doing—he then appeals to tradition.

Bildad does not merely depend upon his own wisdom but seeks to show how his advice to Job is grounded in the advice of the ancients, or “the fathers.”

What is it they teach?

Well, they would point to plants.

also uses contrasting plants to illustrate truth.

And broadly speaking, Wisdom Literature made use of plants at times for illustrations.

says that wisdom is a tree of life, and says that wisdom’s fruit is better than gold.

likens the one who meditates daily on God’s Word to a fruit-bearing tree that is next to a stream of water, and it illustrates the wicked to be like chaff that the wind drives away.

So appealing to the wisdom of the past and how it is illustrated through creation—and specifically plants—is by no means wrong.

The papyrus plant grew in places like Egypt along the Nile River.

If harvested properly, it could be made into “skiffs, baskets, mats, and parchment” (Hartley, 160).

However, if for some reason it lost its connection to water, it would dry up even overnight and be useless.

Bildad used such imagery to demonstrate the downfall of those who forget God.

In a moment, life as they know it changes and falls apart or withers.

By way of another illustration, those who forget God are like those whose house is merely a spider’s web.

Such a house cannot stand and will not hold them up.

It does not endure (8:14-15).

Though verses 16-19 are not easy to interpret, Bildad is probably trying to illustrate a plant that rooted itself in a stone heap and, though it was somehow destroyed and for a time that spot looked like it had never had a plant, the roots survive and later, the plant sends up shoots once again.