Job 13

Job 13:1

He knows all the truths which his friends have expounded to him. They haven’t told him anything new that he had not known before, and they have not helped him.

Job 13:3

Job would like to bypass his friends and appeal to God directly. He wants to reason with God. Oh, if only someone had been there to tell Job about the grace and the mercy of God and how God wanted to help him.

Job 13:4

He repeats that his friends have not been able to diagnose his case and that they are not helping him. They are like a doctor who has a patient with diabetes and says the cure would be to take out his lungs. They missed the whole point.

Job 13:5

He tells them the best thing for them to do would be to keep quiet. He tells them that that would be smarter than what they were saying.

Job 13:6

He really speaks back to them. He says that when they are accusing him of committing some awful sin and that God is judging him, they are talking deceitfully for God. They are not representing God as they should. Job knows they are not God’s direct representatives. They could have helped Job if they had brought him to the place where he could see himself as he really was. Instead, they put him on the defense. As a result, he is actually making a good case for himself. All of this makes it look bad for God. It looks as if God is to blame in all this.

Job 13:8

Job says that God is going to judge them for misrepresenting Him.

Job 13:11

In the midst of all this, the faith of Job stands inviolate. He has experienced the onslaught of his friends who, by now, have actually become strangers to him, as we shall see.

Job 13:15

This is Job’s great statement of faith. Job’s friends, you see, were accusing him of some gross secret sin such as immorality or dishonesty or some other sin of the flesh. Job is not guilty of anything like this. But here we begin to see the root of his problem. Job says that he will go into the presence of God and will defend himself there. My friend, the minute you go into the presence of God to start defending yourself, you will lose your case. When you stand before Him you can only plead guilty because He knows you. You can’t go into the presence of God with an attorney who by some clever routine can clear you of the accusation. No attorney can annul God’s statement that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, that there is none righteous, no, not one, and that the soul that sinneth shall die. God just doesn’t change that at all. No smart lawyer can get you out of that.

Nor are you going to stand before some softhearted and softheaded judge. You are going to stand before the God of this universe who is the moral Ruler. No one can maintain a case before Him. The thing to do is to go in and plead guilty and cast yourself upon the mercy of the court. You will find that God has a mercy seat. It is a mercy seat because the blood of Jesus Christ is on it.

Christ paid the price for your sin. My friend, that is the only way you can escape the penalty. You can see that Job desperately needs someone to represent God to him and keep him from trying to defend himself before Him. Someone needs to show him that he can cast himself on the mercy of God. This book has a tremendous message for us, as you can see.

Job 13:16

There are glimmers of light that break through on this man’s soul. He says, “He shall be my salvation.” By the way, notice that it is the teaching of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament that God is our salvation. David held on to this fact, because David committed an awful sin. Of course he didn’t live in sin, but he needed a Savior. He wrote, “He only is my rock and my salvation; he is my defence; I shall not be greatly moved” (Psa_62:2). Salvation is not like a coin that you carry around in your pocket and might lose.

Salvation is God. Today salvation is Jesus Christ. You either have Him or you don’t have Him. You either trust Him or you don’t trust Him. There are no other alternatives, friends. You stand on one side or the other.

Either you are for Him or you are against Him. “…There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Act_4:12). He is the only “out” for the human family. It is marvelous that Job, who probably lived in the patriarchal age of the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had a glimmer of light.

Job 13:17

Job says, “Listen to me!”

Job 13:18

Job thinks he has a good case even before God. He says that he knows he shall be justified, but he does not claim that on the grounds that Someone else obtained that justification for him. There are people today who say, “Oh, I don’t mind coming before God. I can stand on my good works.” I have news for them: they have already been condemned before God. My friend, we are all sinners. We live in a world that is in rebellion against God because our hearts are evil. Not one of us is so important that God needs us in His program here on earth. He could get along without us very nicely. But, thank God, He loves us and He made a way for us to be justified. The Judge had mercy on us and sent His own Son to pay our penalty. That is the reason He can justify us.

Job 13:19

This is interesting. At the beginning Job said that he wanted to die. He wished he had never been born. Now he says that if he holds his tongue he shall give up the ghost. All right, Job, if you want to die, why don’t you quit talking? You will notice he doesn’t do that. He is going to talk. This is the way of little menwe all have a lot to say.

Job 13:20

Job is a frightened man.

Job 13:22

He is telling God what to do. I’m afraid many of us do that. I hear so many people say they have unanswered prayers. No, there are no unanswered prayers. God always answers prayer, and many times He answers “no.” At least He has said “no” to most of my prayers, but that is an answer. We must admit that a lot of our praying is really giving orders to God. We pray as if we were top sergeants talking to a buck private in the rear ranks. We say, “You do that,” or “You do it this way.” But God doesn’t move that way. Job tries to tell God how He should handle his situation. But God says, “I am not moving according to your plan. I have a plan, and I am going to work it out in your life.” I had the privilege of speaking to a group of Christian college students at a state college, and I was rather amazed to hear some of these young people arguing about prayer. They said, “What’s the use of praying? You can’t change God.” They felt there was no need for prayer. That reminded me of Job here. Their idea of prayer was that God should be the One who would come at their beck and call. I tried to make it clear to them that the purpose of prayer is not to change God. Where did we ever get that idea? Do we think we can change God by prayer? God has already made His plan, and He has all the information. Neither can we tell Him anything in our prayer that He doesn’t already know. The primary purpose of prayer is to change us. We often see a little mottoand I think it is partially truethat reads: “Prayer Changes Things.” I think it does change things, but the important thing is that prayer changes us, my friend. God is not a Western Union boy. Don’t get the idea you just call Him to come and deliver a message for you or to you. That is what Job was trying to get Him to do here. I’m not pointing an accusing finger at Job, because I have done the very same thing.

Job 13:23

Very candidly, Job is asking for a showdown with God. That is what he wants. He wants to know how many sins and iniquities he has so he will understand why he is being treated as he is. He says he is just like a leaf that has been driven to and fro and has been stepped on.

Job 13:27

Job feels that he is just rotting away. He cannot see any point to his suffering at all.