13:1-19
Job continues speaking to his friends and tells them that he has seen, heard and understood what is happening. He feels they are treating him as inferior to them because of his suffering.
That is a major point. Have you ever been in a difficult place and found other people start treating you as though you are stupid and become patronising? I have experienced that and I have seen it happen to others. What is it that causes us to do that to other people? I wonder if it is discomfort at another person’s suffering and fear at suffering the same way. We tend to shut down those who make us uncomfortable because we fear discomfort. But God calls us to be prepared to sit with discomfort.
Job continues talking to his friends and tells them he wants to speak to God and plead his case but their response, instead of offering support was to cast doubt on his character by telling lies about him and what he had supposedly done. In answer to Zophar’s smug comments about wisdom, Job responds that if they could be quiet they would be wise.
He challenges his friends on their faith in God and even their understanding of His magnificence.
He exhorts his friends to be quiet and let him speak to God and challenges them to bring real evidence of wrongdoing to God. In this he identifies their words have not come from God.
It is very pertinent that we be careful not to condemn or judge others. In doing so, we may be incurring God’s wrath. When you next feel the urge to judge another person, ask yourself what that judgement is about. Ask God to reveal to you what He wants you to learn from that situation. May you sit with a friend like Job and grow in love and knowledge of God and not harm your friend.
 

Job 12:1-25
Finally. Job has come to the end of his patience. He responds to Zophar with sarcasm and dismisses all his and his other friends’ advice as ‘nothing new’. He is now complaining that he has become a joke and object of derision to his friends. As if his suffering wasn’t enough, he has discovered those who are fortunate often fail to understand or want to understand the misfortune of others. I am wondering if he only just made that discovery. It is true. We all tend to do that. I wonder sometimes if there is an element of relief that it is the other person suffering, not us. And there is the element of smugness in thinking ‘that would never happen to me, I wouldn’t allow it’. I wonder if Job ever thought that, and now he has learned what it feels like.
How many of you grew up hearing ‘there but for the grace of God go you and I’. No idea where that comes from but I hear that a lot. At some time in my life I understood it meant we were all likely to have bad things happen to us so look at the suffering of others with empathy, not virtuous smugness. Have you made that realisation yet? Have you ever found yourself looking smugly at another suffering person?
It is interesting that Job has learned some important things from his suffering and the added trials of his unhelpful friends. Now he tells his trivial friends that God does what He pleases. Being good does not guarantee God will not send suffering on you.
Finally he is learning! He is beginning to learn that difficulties in life are not about being punished. Now he is able to sit back and acknowledge God’s greatness.
God’s greatness is His ownership of wisdom and power, counsel and understanding. Quite a positive thing for Job to say after spending so long feeling sorry for himself and complaining about God’s unjustness in punishing him.
He adds that God has power over all things. He causes droughts and floods. He is strong and victorious. He can strip the arrogant of their pride and free those who are imprisoned. He can build up and destroy a nation and pour light into darkness. Nothing is outside God’s control.
I like Job’s faith in God. Despite the battering he has received and his descent on occasion into self-pity, he has not lost sight of how great God is. Some of the greatest worship passages can be found in Job.
 

11:7-20
In the verses 7 to 10 Zophar speaks of God’s greatness and majesty and speaks of how no-one can oppose God’s decisions. He has an understanding of who God is and how great He is, but he lacks an understanding of suffering, which suggests he does not comprehend God’s involvement in our lives and the minutiae of our being.
In verses 11to12 he makes his beliefs clear. He tells Job God recognises deceitful and evil men, implying Job is deceitful and evil. Then he says a witless man cannot become wise. Again implying that Job is not wise and cannot become wise. Why is he not wise? Because he fails to acknowledge his sin. Zophar continues on this theme through verses 13 to 20. He tells Job to devote himself to God and stop sinning. Given that this is how Job was living at the time of his trouble commencing it is a particularly insulting and awful thing to say. According to Zophar, all Job has to do is repent of his sin and God will again bless him.
There are two misconceptions revealed in Zophar’s statement:
The first is the one both Job and his friends, in common with many Christians today, believe. That is that the troubles in life are caused by sin.
The second misconception is that God will give us a good life if we believe in Him and seek to do His will. God has never promised this, yet this is such a common misconception. Many people are brought to faith by preachers who promise them that everything will go well for them when they give themselves to God. When that does not happen, many question God and fall away from faith. This is false teaching. In John 16:33 Jesus said His followers would have peace in Him and trouble in this world.
These misconceptions are so difficult to shift from the doctrine people are taught. Like Job’s friends, many modern day Christians are equally unhelpful when fellow Christians fall on hard times. Gone is the love and compassion of Jesus. In its place is the harshness of the belief you are obviously a sinner because trouble has come to you and that good things in life, especially wealth, are signs of God’s favour.
Sometimes hardship is a sign of God’s favour.
The Psalms are full of references to evil people prospering while the righteous suffer hardship. Psalm 73 is a particularly good one to read on this subject. The person who acts like Zophar is speaking in contradiction to Psalm 73. In this life we will see evil people prosper and never answer for their sin. We will also see Christians suffer terribly and go to the grave never having that suffering relieved. But there is so much more than this life and all will receive their proper reward after death. The evil will be punished in death and the righteous will be rewarded. How much better it would have been for Job is his friends had understood that.