At reading, let's pray. Our Father,
we wait before You this evening in this house of worship. We
have come that You might speak to our hearts, that we might
hear a word from our God, that You might correct us, strengthen
us, build us up, rebuke us, encourage us, Lord, by the things that
are before us this evening. We pray that you'll help us to
rightly divide this Word, that we might understand it, and that
we might use it profitably in our Christian life. And we might
see Job, a man that thou had greatly blessed, falling into
great trouble, and how he reacted and his friends. And we ask,
Lord, we may learn many things from this. For we ask it with
the forgiveness of sin, in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen. Alright, Job 21.1-15. We could
read a lot more, but time will just not permit. We'll have to
read it and then look around. Job 21.1, Job answered and said,
Hear diligently my speech, and let this be your consolations.
Suffer me, I pray, suffer me that I might speak, And after
that I have spoken, mock me. As for me, is my complaint to
man? And if it were so, why should
not my spirit be troubled? Mark me, and be astonished, and
lay your hand upon your mouth, even when I remember I am afraid,
and trembling takes hold on my flesh. Wherefore do the wicked
live, become, O yea, are mighty in power. Their seed is established
in their sight with them, and their offspring before their
eyes. Their houses are safe from fear,
neither is the rod of God upon them. Their bull gendereth, and
faileth not. Their cow calveth, and casteth
not her calf. They send forth their little
ones like a flock, and their children dance. They take the
timbrel and the harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. They spend their days in wealth,
and in a moment go down to the grave. Therefore they say unto
God, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty that we
should serve Him? And what profit should we have
if we pray unto Him? Now, I'll tell you now that verse
14 and 15 is where we intend to wind up today and where we
will eventually bring our focus. But I want to look this day with
you at Job expostulating concerning the wicked. And there is a reason
why He feels that it is necessary that he do this. Now, for a little
bit of background to get us on our way, make us ready for our
text, and look at the overall context that I think we most
often times ought to do. One must have somewhat of a working
knowledge of the book of Job to rightly get in the frame of
mind of him in our text today. We almost have to go back to
the beginning of the book that we might learn the source of
the quarrel that came between Job and himself and his friends,
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, who he would, in chapter 16 and
verse 2, refer to as miserable comforters." When he
heard much that they had to say, that was his response, that they
had come to be miserable comforters unto him. Now the book opens
with a commendation of the man Job as a pious and a devout religious
servant of God. Job chapter 1 and verse 1. calls him perfect and upright,
one that feared God and escheweth evil." And he turned it off. And he turned it off, that is,
evil. He pushed it from him. He avoided it. He stayed away
from it. Now, this by no means says that
Job was an absolutely sinless man. We do not read that in the
passage of the Scripture. For none were sinless except
our Lord Jesus Christ. Just that Job was a religious
man, he was devoted to God, he was pious, and he had integrity
as he served his Lord. As a confirmation of this, we
see the Lord's two commendations of him on this matter in Job
1.8 and Job 2.3. Not only was Job a pious and
a good man, But he was highly watchful over his children, the
flock of his house, and their welfare. In chapter 1 and verse
5, offering sacrifices in case they had sin, offering in behalf
of them in all he had ten, And doing so continually are the
margins said all of the days. He looked to the spiritual welfare
of his children. What's more, we read that Job
was a very wealthy man in his time. Job chapter 1 and verse
3, his herds numbered in the hundreds and into the thousands. He possessed herds of sheep and
of camels and oxen. and female horses, and a very
great household," Margin said, husbandry, in that this man was
the greatest man in the East, the Scripture says of him. But
as a result of a meeting before the throne of God, where Satan
appears there even to challenge God's assertion that Job was
a good, a just, and an upright man, saying, the Almighty had
bribed Job by blessing him so richly and so abundantly, saying,
as Edgar Gibson wrote in his introduction to his commentary
on the book of Job, that Job's piety was only a refined form
of selfishness. In other words, he simply served
God because God was good to him and greatly blessing. Now, the
wicked accuser of the brethren, as he is called in Revelation
12 and verse 10, suggest in Job 1, verses 9 through verse 11,
and again in Job 2, verses 4 and 5, that if Job were to suffer
the loss of all that he had, then he would cease to love God,
he would cease to be faithful and to serve God, and would even
curse God to his face. The devil suggests unto our God. And you remember how that God
gave the devil leave to do two things. He gave him permission
to do two things concerning Job. Number one, to smite all that
Job had. To smite all that he had. But not to put his hand upon
Job himself. And you remember how with lightning-fast
rapidity, one after another calamity fell upon the head of this good
man, and his ten children are dead, and his flocks and herds
are carried away. Job 1.13-19. But the second thing
he did is that Satan is given leave to afflict Job. He is in your hand. Do as you
would, but he is restrained from taking the life of Job. He can smite him, but he cannot
kill him. Do what you will, but spare his
life. For Satan had suggested in chapter
2, verse 4 and 5, that if Job himself met with great bodily
afflictions and great suffering, he again would curse God unto
his fate. And so the wicked one afflicted
Job with sore boils from his head down unto his toe. And so it came to pass that Job,
who had gendered a large family of children, had lived a devout
life unto God and in great prosperity, a man that was respected by all
that knew him or came in contact with him, that that man is suddenly
smitten with one great calamity after another, until his flocks
and his herds are gone, and his children are dead, and he himself
is smitten with a very loathsome disease and torment in the body,
and his wife urges him to go ahead and curse God that he may
die. And when his friends come, he
is sitting up in an ash pile, scraping his sores and his corruption
with an instrument. And upon this scene come the
three friends of Job. They had heard all that had come
upon their friend, chapter 2, verse 11 through 13. And they
had come to mourn with Job. and to comfort their friend.
Their names again, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, a part of godly religion,
you know, being to visit the sick and the widowless and their
affliction. Now, Methinks that they are right
who say that when Job's condition, when they saw the condition that
Job was in, it was much worse than they had heard or that they
had even suspected or thought. It says, at first they saw Job
sitting there and did not recognize him as their friend whom they
had come to see. And they knew him and were familiar
with him, and that it had such an impact upon them that they
too sat down and wept. And for a week or seven days,
neither of them said anything. They sat there in stunned silence
and amazed at what they had seen in Job. And as we shall soon
see, what they saw in Job and what they heard from Job's lips
conflicted greatly with their theology. What they saw and what
they heard did not fit well in their theology. That God is a
God of retribution, and that He takes retribution against
sin, and that those who are suffering greatly are doing so because
they are sinful. Their theology was only the wicked
suffer, and the greater the sufferer. They're because of the greatness
of their sin. Good men live long lives and
they prosper. However, they refrain from expressing
such sentiment until they heard the lament and the cry that Job
uttered in the third chapter, wherein Job curses the day or
the night of his conception, curses the day that he was born,
wishes that he had been aborted, as a fetus or had died upon the
knee soon after birth. With this, his friends listening,
their suspicions are raised and they seem to think confirmed
that Job is a hypocrite. That their friend Job has turned
out to be a wicked man and a hypocrite. after all of his pretension,
that he is a wicked man, and that he is but receiving the
just reward of his deed or of his sin. And this begins, as
you know, a prolonged dispute or debate between Job on the
one hand and his three friends on the other. And these disputations
are carried on through the thirty-first chapter of the book of Job. And in this section, the three
take turns, as it were, condemning Job as a sinful man for which
cause his calamities had fallen upon him. one after another. They reiterate the fact, Job,
God does not deal with righteous men this way. Wherein was it
ever heard that the righteous perish? And on and on they went. Now, let's concede a couple of
points in regard to this running dispute between Job and the three. Number one, neither Job nor the
three friends knew of that celestial meeting in heaven which is described
in the first and the second chapters of the book. Neither of them
knew of the accusations of Job by the father of lies, so that
they were privy to these things, but Job and his friends were
not. They had no access to that knowledge. They did not know what had transpired
in the heavenly places. Secondly, some things which Bildad,
Eliphaz, and Zophar said, concerning the wicked, we certainly concur,
were true. They said some things that certainly
were true with regard to the wicked. They made some very strong
statements concerning human depravity, but they were wrong in their
conclusion and in their application of the matter unto their friend
Job, and in trying to make his suffering the result of his wickedness. Here we might make the point
that if the greatest sufferers are the greatest sinners, and
if that's the way things ought to be judged, how then shall
we apply the doctrine of the suffering of Christ? Christ was
a great, great sufferer, but He was without sin. You remember in Isaiah 53 and
verse 4, they made an erroneous conclusion concerning the suffering
of Messiah. We did esteem Him stricken, smitten
of God, and afflicted." So their theology would not fit in the
case of Christ either. Now coming to chapter 21, which
is our text, this is a reply of Job to the latest ranting
of Zophar in chapter 20, wherein Zophar reiterates, that is, He
states again the doctrine of divine retribution against the
wicked. He states that the lot of the
wicked is that their triumphs are of short duration and that
God quickly cuts them off in judgment. He does not let them
live long or prosper. Thus, Zophar argues that the
lot of the wicked always has been and always will be that
judging calamities will always overtake them and bring them
to a bad end. For example, I'm turning back
to Job chapter 20 because I'd like to read verses 4 through
8. If you flip there, Job 20 and
verses 4 through 8. This is Zophar. Knowest thou
not this of old? since man was placed upon earth,
that the triumph of the wicked is short, the joy of the hypocrite
but for a moment, though his excellency mount up to the heaven
and his head reach into the cloud. Yet he shall perish forever like
his own dung. They which shall see him shall
say, Where is he? He shall fly away as a dream
and shall not be found. Yea, he shall be chased away
as a vision in the night." Down in verse 27 he said, "...the
heaven shall reveal his iniquity, and the earth shall rise up against
him." That is, Zophar is saying that heaven and earth will cast
their hand in witness against him that is a wicked man. Again in verse 28 of chapter
20, the increase of his house shall depart, and his goods flow
away in the day of his, that is, God's wrath. In verse 29
of that chapter, Zophar sums up the matter by saying this,
This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the heritage
appointed unto him by God. Now again we concede, there is
truth to a point in Zophar's words. The end of the wicked
will be terrible and great judgment. However, Zophar intends these
things be applied to Job, that he might see himself in the words
that are spoken. Because, as Matthew Henry wrote,
Zophar, intended by this multitude of words to prove and convinced
Job that he was both a hypocrite and a wicked man, and that this
was the reason that all of these calamities from God had come
upon him. Because God punishes the wicked,
and He does so in this life, Zophar said. Now, in chapter
21 we can see that Job responds to much of this personally and
individually, and challenges the opinions of his three miserable
comforters that the wicked and the righteous are known by the
way that God treats them in this life. That's what his friends
have said. You can tell the wicked from
the righteous by the way that God deals with them in this life. That a wicked man's life is troubled
and short. His miseries are many. And he
knows no lasting prosperity nor joy. While on the other hand,
the righteous man prospers. He lives to a ripe old age. He
enjoys the company of his grandchildren. This is the contention of Zophar. Job opens his particular response,
chapter 21, in verses 1 through 6, by asking them to patiently
hear him out, be silent while he states his position, that
he might answer Zophar's words concerning the wicked. And he
says to them, then in the third verse, hear me, and then if you
wish to, you may continue to mock me even more." And with
that, Job deals with a question. A question very important to
us today, whether it is true in every single case that the
wicked suffer in this life and have great troubles, and whether
their life is one of abject misery." Now, Job comes to the opposite
conclusion, and he proves his point. He shows that many are
imminently prosperous among the wicked, and that they live to
ripe old ages, and that they die uneventful deaths. At stake
in all of this is the integrity of the man Job. And he sees that
his friends would put him in the category of the wicked due
to his own calamity and sinful action. Albert Barnes, in his
commentary on the book of Job, sees Job as making three principal
points in chapter 21. They are A. In verse 7 through
verse 15, the wicked do prosper, Job said. He said the wicked
do prosper. Look at verse 7. They become
old and they attain great power. In verse 8, Their seed, their
prosperity, their progeny are established in their sight. They
see their families living before them and their grandchildren.
In verse 9, they live in security and in peace. In verse 10, their
business endeavors prosper. In verse 11, their offspring
are numerous and they are happy. In verse 12, They make mirth
with instruments of music and party and carry on in a good
time. In verse 13, they are wealthy
while they live. They go away to the grave without
great suffering preceding that. So that's the first point Job
makes. The wicked do prosper. V. 16-21, he says, the things
that befall them are not exclusive to them alone,
but they happen to all alike. Verse 23, 24. One dies in full
strength, being holy at ease and quiet, his milk pails full,
and with his bones moistened with mara. While in verse 25,
another dies in bitterness of his soul and never eats with
pleasure. Yet one thing they have in common,
in verse 26, They shall all lay down alike in the dust, and worms
shall cover them." And then the third point, C, is found in verse
29 through verse 34, which we didn't read. The true and the
just punishment of the wicked will come in a future life when
God meets out to them exactly the recompense of their sin.
Now, let's fall back to the section in verses 7 through 15, and we
want to consider particularly verse 14 and 15 in its context. as it relates to verse 7 through
verse 13. We have already seen there that
the wicked, many of them live long, prosperous lives, have
families, and they engage in mirth. They're not miserable
all of the time. And as Job acknowledges something
here, this is in spite of the fact that they boldly and arrogantly
affront God. in verse 14 and verse 15, which
Job might think a means to provoke God, to bring judgment upon them. So bold are they in their sin,
so pious are they as to bid God to go on and to leave them alone,
and declare that they are not obliged to serve Him, and that
they believe there would be no benefit derived from praying
unto the Almighty God. and that they fully intend to
live in neglect of God without religion. Yet they will not acknowledge
Him, they will not seek the knowledge of His way, neither is prosperity. Will they thank Him, nor in calamity
will they call upon Him. This is Job's contention concerning
the wicked, this in spite of the fact of 14 and 15. One commentator wrote, never
was there a better description of the feeling of the unregenerate
heart than is here expressed in verse 14 and verse 15. That in spite of the fact that
God gives to all life and breath and all things, in Him we live,
we move, we have our being, as Paul says in Acts 17, 25 and
28. Yet are there many of the human
family who would declare their independence from God, and they
say, if not out loud in words, yet in action, in conduct, and
to themselves, depart from me. Go away from me, O God Almighty. Of course, they cannot escape
the omnipresence of God, They cannot banish him from his
right to be everywhere, for he is omnipresent. See Psalms 139. For he is not far from everyone. Acts 17 and verse 27. Hardly can they stifle the cries
of their conscience when God stokes the fires in their conscience. But their actions and their words
express their feeling about God. Gill wrote on this text, they'd
rather have their consciences seared that they be empty of
religious feelings and inclinations, quote, that they may go on in
their sinful courses without control, unquote. In effect,
they say, God is not one they have any need of. God is not
one they have any occasion to call upon for anything at all. Matthew Henry was right. They
imagine that they can live without God. They have banished all mention
of God from their presence, and they stop their ears at the mention
of God of all of the earth. It is as if they imagined themselves
to have made a bargain with the Almighty. Leave me alone and
I'll leave you alone. They wish to be left alone by
God. Nor does their insolence end
there. But they go on to say in verse
14, the last part, a confirming of their justification for calling
for them to live godless. For, see that? For we desire
not the knowledge of thy ways. We have no desire, we have no
intention of learning or of seeking to learn the ways of God. That's what the wicked say. And
Job had heard it. By His Word or His ways may be
summed up all those things that God has done. His works in creation,
His Word, His divine providence and government, His creative
and sustaining work upon the earth, and especially do they
not care to hear of the great work of salvation whereby they
are portrayed as sinners lost, needing a Savior. In this they
resemble the pagans. In Romans 1 and verse 28, they
did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They figure
this is an ignorance which is bliss. to not know God. Conclusion. What greater proof or evidence
can be given of the depravity and the darkness of the intellectual
faculties of the lost than this portrayal of them here? That
these desire not to know a holy God. Without the knowledge of
Him, there will be no salvation. They do not know God and they
are lost because of that. Yet, are there those who congratulate
themselves repeatedly that they have nothing to do with religion. They think it is a virtue that
they have avoided religion altogether. More and more of that kind are
appearing in our society today. But there is more. If we look
at verse 15, they add two more insults unto God in the form
of a question. Question number one, What is
the Almighty that we should serve Him? Or who is the Almighty that
we should serve Him? This is one of the names of God
used mostly in the Old Testament, the Almighty. from the root word
Shaddai, or Shaddia, El Shaddai, the All-Powerful One, the One
able to carry out His divine call and divine work, the Most
High God, the Mighty One is the One they're talking about. Like
Pharaoh who said in Exodus 5 and verse 2, Who is this Lord that
I should obey His voice to let the people go? I know not this,
Lord, neither will I let the people go." But secondly, the
question of the wicked is this. What will it profit if we should
pray unto Him? Like multitudes today, they neither
worship God, nor do they ever pray nor call upon Him, nor do
they attend church because they do not see how their self-interest
will be served by being religious, or going to the house of God,
or calling upon His name. Hear the apostate Jews in Malachi
3 and verse 14, "'Ye have said it is vain to serve God, and
what profit is it that we have kept His ordinances and walked
mournfully before the Lord of hosts?' Their attitude had become
that, so sinful had they become. Now, let's try to bring all of
this together that Job is intending. Job's friends were acting and
talking exactly like some of our modern Pentecostals. And
other self-righteous judges of others that say, after this order,
if you are sick, if you are poor, if you don't have a job or a
nice house, or if you drive an old clunker of a car, it is because
you have not exercised your faith, you have not named it and claimed
it," would some of them say to us in this day. Job's friends
argue, God would not treat a righteous man like Job is being treated. That his calamities must prove
him to be a man, a hypocrite. that he is in some way a great
sinner. Job answers them that he has
seen the wicked prosper and live long and die peacefully even
while they were rejecting God and religion and were spouting
out stout words against the God of heaven. Their families were
large and increased. They celebrate with myrrh. their
flocks and their herds greatly increased, while Job's are now
lost and carried away by his enemy." The psalmist wrote something
very interesting. And in the 73rd Psalm, I would
like to take the time to read verses 1 through 9. It deals
somewhat with this same subject. Perhaps we'll see a similarity
between them. Psalm 73 and verses 1 through 9. Truly God is good
to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. As for me,
my feet were almost gone, my steps had well nigh slipped,
for I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of
the wicked. Now listen, for there are no
bands in their death, their strength is firm, They are not in trouble
as other men, neither are they plagued like other men. Therefore,
pride compasses them as a chain. Violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes stand out with fatness. They have more than their heart
could wish. They are corrupt. They speak
wickedly concerning oppression. They speak loftily. They shut
their mouth against the heaven, and their tongues walketh throughout
all the earth. Here again, the psalmist said,
he had seen the same thing with regard to the wicked, that they
do prosper, they do live long, they have great fatness and they
possess many things, and they die quietly and peaceably. So the conclusion is this from
Job, neither Job nor his friends knew of the events in the heaven. So that the sufferings and the
miseries of Job were a result of the sovereign actings of Almighty
God. He experienced miseries and wicked
emotions. He did that by the will of God. Both good and bad experience
their troubles in this life. Both good and bad get sick. Both
good and bad suffer at one time or another. And then I close
with this. The trials of Job discovered
some degrees of sin in the good man. Some dross were found in
the good man, as in chapter 3. Some indeed was discovered when
these things came upon him. Who is there here that would
be critical of Job put in the same situation? Yes, Job said,
look, you're wrong. Good people. are not the only
ones who prosper and who live long and who die peacefully.
I have seen the wicked also do the same," said Job. And indeed,
all around us we see. We see that wicked, wicked, corrupt
old fools live to ripe old ages. Madeleine O'Hare, Fidel Castro,
people like that, wicked are they. And yet they have lived
long and have prospered. So Job discounts his friend's
reasoning and disputes that with good reasoning and sound judgment. All right, thank you for your
kind attention.