Job 16

CHAPTERS 16 AND 17THEME: Job’s answer to EliphazWe will now hear Job answer Eliphaz for the second time. This is very much like a debate. First we hear one side, and then we hear from the other side. Actually it should not have been this way, because these men had come to be Job’s comforters. Instead of being comforters they have become debaters. They are really attempting to beat him down, attempting to gain an intellectual victory over him. But they are not winning the debate. My feeling is that it is a standoff. Eventually a young man who has been standing by enters in and picks up the argument. Finally, God will break in on the scene. That, of course, is what Job needs and what Job wants. Eliphaz has just played the same old record over again. He is the dreamer. He has had a vision. He is a spiritualist. He claims to have some inside information that no one else has, but he didn’t get any advance information after his first speech. He just comes up with the same old thing.

Job 16:1

Job says, “You haven’t said anything new to me. You haven’t said a thing that I haven’t already heard. Besides, you are miserable comforters.” These men, I am confident, were friends of Job, but they ended up in a debate. Job has his chance to give a rebuttal after each man speaks, which is what we have here now.

Job 16:3

Job is saying, “I would have thought you would have been ashamed to speak as you have. Those are vain words, empty words. They do not meet the need.” Unfortunately, a great many sermons are like that. Some of them are not even Bible-centered and cannot be used by the spirit of God. Unless the spirit of God can use a sermon, it will come to naught. It will be a vain, empty thing. There is a lot of preaching in the world today that is absolutely meaningless as far as worship of God and expounding His Word are concerned. The same can be said for a lot of the singingand the entire servicein some of our churches. The fault may lie with the preacher, but it doesn’t always rest there; sometimes the congregation, the listeners, can be responsible for the breakdown that takes place.

Job 16:4

Job is telling them that if their situations were reversed, he could have given a little speech of condemnation against them. Paul was concerned about this type of thing, and he wrote to believers in order to counteract it, “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted” (Gal_6:1). Don’t go to debate with such a person. Don’t go to preach at him. Restore him in the spirit of meekness, which was illustrated by our Lord when he washed the feet of those who were His own. He is still doing that today. When you and I confess our sins, “… he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1Jn_1:9).

He still washes feet; that is, He still cleanses his own. But He also set us an example. If you are gong to wash someone’s feet, you can’t put yourself above him, look down upon him, point your finger, and begin to preach at him. You will need to kneel down and take the place of a servant to wash feet. That is quite a bit different from arguing with the person. It’s too bad that these friends didn’t come to Job in that way, but they didn’t. They came preaching at him. Realizing that, he tells them that if he were in their position, he could do the same thing. He could shake his head at them and heap up words against them.

Job 16:5

Job says that he would approach them in a different way. He says he would want to strengthen them. He would want to comfort them. He would want to “wash their feet,” that is, restore them to fellowshipwhich is what they should have done for him.

Job 16:6

Job is not helped at all.

Job 16:7

Job says, “You’ve made an old man out of meyou have filled me with wrinkles.”

Job 16:9

These men are the same as the ungodly. They are supposed to be friends to Job, but they treated him like an enemy. And do you know that there are Christians today who can be meaner to you than many of the unsaved people? There is nothing meaner than a Christian when he is mean. So Job classifies his friends as ungodly. You see, they think they are defending God, but in doing so they are unfair and even brutal in their accusations against Job.

Job 16:12

Job recognizes that God has permitted this to happen to him. Many times when I was a boy and would go hunting, I would see the dog catch a rabbit. He would grab the rabbit by the nape of the neck and shake itoh, how he would shake it! Apparently Job had seen that, too. Job said that that was how God was shaking him. God does that sometimes, friends.

Job 16:13

Thinking of the bitterness of gall, he is saying that his bitterness is poured out of him.

Job 16:14

He says that God has been walking up and down on him like a giant. Job feels that God has made a door mat out of him, as it were. You couldn’t find any more vivid description than Job gives us here. Great writers of the past, novelists, poets, and essayists, have read and reread the Book of Job. Its language is superb. Its descriptions are magnificent. I would recommend it to you for your reading so that it becomes a part of you. The beauty of the language here is wonderful.

Job 16:15

Have you noticed how close to death Job was? He wished for it, and yet he avoided it. He stood right on the threshold of death during all of this time. I think he felt that at any moment he might die. He was a sick man, a very sick man.

Job 16:17

Now again we see emerging the thing in the heart and life of Job that needed to be dealt with. You see, his friends have not been leading him to a place where he would judge himself. Instead, they actually ministered to a spirit of self-vindication. They put him on the defensive. The minute Job started to defend himself, he put God at a disadvantage. Job justified himself instead of justifying God. The problem was that his friends condemned Job instead of leading Job to condemn himself. They were using the wrong approach with him. The minute a person begins to defend himself, he puts himself in the position which John very candidly stated. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us …If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1Jn_1:8, 1Jn_1:10). That makes God a liar. It puts God in the place of being blamed. It takes God from the position of being the Judge and puts Him down as the One who is judged, the guilty one, the criminal. A person then is bringing a charge against God. There are actually many people who sit in judgment upon God. That is what Job is actually doing here. He is justifying himself by saying, “Not for any injustice in mine hands"the minute he says that, he is also saying that God is wrong in letting this happen to him. Job says, “Also, my prayer is pure.” I have heard that same statement coming from Christians. Friend, I doubt whether any of us pray a pure prayer. That is the reason I always tell the Lord, “I am asking this in Jesus’ name"because I know that Vernon McGee would not get through on his own. Job thinks he would get through.

Job 16:18

Now Job cried out in spectacular language. He asks the earth not to cover up his blood. If the blood of Abel cried out to God, then certainly Job thinks his blood ought to cry out to God. Friend, God does not cover up blood. And God sees the blood that Christ shed, especially when you reject it.

Job 16:19

The Bible all the way through teaches that God keeps a record of us. There are those today who like to pooh-pooh such an idea. They say, “Can you imagine God up there sitting at a desk keeping books?” Friend, who said he is keeping books? God doesn’t need to do that. If a mere man can make a little machine called a computer, don’t you think God can have a way of keeping records that surpasses anything we can imagine? I am of the opinion that everything we have ever said, everything we have ever done, is recorded. I don’t know about you, but I can say for myself that I don’t ever want to see the record that is made of me. I am very happy that some of it is blotted out under the blood of Jesus Christ. Oh, thank God for that!

Job 16:20

This is the picture of Job as he sits there in that desolate place with tears streaming from his eyes. His friends stand around him and look at him in scorn and call him a hypocrite and accuse him of being a liar. They don’t know him, they don’t know God, and they don’t know themselves.

Job 16:21

Here is another of those cries of Job. How wonderful it is for believers to know that we have an Intercessor. We have an Advocate. We have an Attorney who represents us before God. Everything has been taken care of for us. We have One who pleads for us before God. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1Ti_2:5). Friend, He would like to be your Advocate if He isn’t already.