Job 19 – Job Answers Bildad: “My Redeemer Lives”

Job 19 – Job Answers Bildad: “My Redeemer Lives”

Answering Bildad
Job answered Bildad saying: How long will you torment me and break me in pieces with words? 10 times you’ve cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me. Job admits that if it’s true that he erred it remains with himself. Eliphaz, Zophar, and Bildad were “magnifying” themselves against Job, and using his terrible condition/disgrace to argue against him.

God Has Done This
Know that God has put him in the wrong and closed his net about him. Job cries out “Violence!” but is not answered. He calls for help, but there is no justice. God has walled up Job’s way, so that he cannot pass, and God has set darkness upon Job’s paths. God has stripped away Job’s glory and taken the crown off his head. God breaks him down on every side, and Job is gone, and God has pulled up Job’s hope like a tree. God has kindled his wrath against Job and counts Job as his adversary. God’s troops come on together; they have cast up their siege ramp against Job and encamp around Job’s tent. God put Job’s brothers far from him, and those who knew Job were estranged from him.

Everyone Despises Job
His family/relatives failed him, close friends forgot him. Guests and servants count him as a stranger and foreigner. His servant doesn’t respond, and Job pleads with his servant for mercy. His breath is strange to his wife and he is a stench to his siblings. Children despise and talk against him. All his close friends abhor him and those he loved turned against him. Job’s bones stick to his skin and flesh, he has escaped by the skin of his teeth.

Job Begs for His Friends’ Mercy
He begs his friends for mercy because God has touched him! He asks why they pursue him like God and why they aren’t satisfied with his flesh.

Job Knows His Redeemer Lives & Expects Bodily Life After Death
Job longs to have his words written in a book, and engraved in a rock forever. He knows that his Redeemer lives, and that he will stand upon the earth. After Job’s skin has been destroyed, in his flesh he shall see God. He will see God himself with his eyes. His heart faints within him.

If We Bear False Witness Wrath, Punishment & Judgment Is Coming
If Bildad says, “How we will pursue him!” and, “The root of the matter is found in him,” be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.

When trying to analyze the circumstances of suffering friends be careful of your selfishness and the pursuit of magnifying yourself. Self exaltation compounds the misery of our friends if we are tempted to think that they are suffering for specific sins that are worse than us. This can take the form of thinking friends are suffering because they don’t have enough faith – as much faith as we have -, or enough good works to merit God’s grace. This is a false gospel, friends. Beware of this kind of logic. In Job 19:28-29 Job articulates a warning for bearing false witness like this and living in this type of self-deception and false assumptions about others – wrath, punishment, and judgment. God has done this, everyone may despise us, and we may beg our friends for mercy and not see any from them. It’s here that Job recognizes that the only hope he has is actually in the same God that is afflicting him. That’s what we see in Job 19:23-27. This isn’t a full articulation of the bodily resurrection that we read in other places in the Old Testament (Isaiah 26:19 and Daniel 12:2) or in the New Testament (i.e. 1 Corinthians 15), but this is a hope of life after death, and it’s not a hope of a spirit life alone, but life in the flesh after death. To behold God in the flesh after death. Think of the glory of this. After walking in this world suffering, and seeing the brokenness that the world, the flesh, and the devil inflict think of the full rest and satisfaction it will be to see our Redeemer God. Praise God that Job’s hope was fulfilled in Jesus Christ and that though we face misery and pain we can confidently long for final and full communion with God by faith alone in Christ alone. God forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

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