Job 11

CHAPTER 11THEME: Zophar’s first discourseNow we meet the last of Job’s friends. His name is Zophar, and he is the legalist. He assumed (and rightly so as far as he goes) that God works according to measure, according to law. He pretends to know what God will do in a given circumstance. He is different from Bildad, who was the traditionalist. Bildad said you can go back and look at what has happened in the past and learn from it. He has a scientific mind. He is like the scientist who thinks he can look at rocks and tell you how old the earth is. Zophar has a scientific mind, too, but he puts the emphasis on the laws. If one would bring him up to date, he would be more or less an atheist. His philosophy is that the universe is run by laws. It is obvious that we cannot have law without somebody who makes the law. Nevertheless, Zophar assumes this physical universe is following laws. Zophar is like the fellow who says, “Ask me another.” He is the I-have-all-the-answers type. He is the voice of legalism. He holds that God is bound by laws and never operates beyond the circumference of His own laws. He is probably the senior member of the group, and he speaks with a dogmatic finality that is even more candid and crude than that of Bildad.

Job 11:1

He is saying that Job is covering his sin with words. Job has tried to make it clear that a man in his conditionsuffering as he isis not apt to put up a front. Zophar simply ignores that and says that Job is trying to talk his way out of his situation. It is true that there are men who are able to talk their way out of a situation and who are clever at manipulation by words. That is the way some lawyers win cases in court. It is really not a matter of justice being done but rather the cleverness of the lawyer and his manipulation. This is not true of Job.

Job 11:3

Zophar goes a step farther and actually accuses Job of lying. “Should thy lies make men hold their peace?” He has accused him of being a hypocrite, and now he accuses him of lying. That is even more crude than Bildad had been. Bildad had said that Job was a hypocrite but had never called him a liar. Zophar is now going to assume the pious position of being on the inside with God. He thinks he knows what God will do under a certain circumstance. Of course, while he is on the inside with God, Job is on the outside, unable to know what God is doing. So Zophar feels that Job ought to listen to him because he has the final word and that his word is, in fact, the word of God.

Job 11:4

Since God wasn’t speaking, Zophar speaks for Him. I received a rather crude letter the other day. It was from a man who was rebuking me for a position that I held, which to him indicated I was not only a very ignorant and dogmatic man, but that I had no spiritual discernment whatsoever. Then he proceeded to give me his interpretation. When he finished, he said, “Now I am going to see whether you will listen to the Holy Spirit or not.” Isn’t that interesting? That man claimed to be the voice of the Holy Spirit. If I didn’t listen to him, it meant I wasn’t listening to God. As I read his letter, I felt confident that he was totally unaware of the fact that he was doing the very thing he had accused me of doing! Supposing the man did have some inside information that I do not have access to, he certainly was not proceeding in a way that was helpful to me. In fact, his letter was not at all helpful to me and ended up in the “round file,” which is the wastebasket. I put it there because it had no message for me. I don’t think Zophar had a message for Job.

Job 11:6

And what he says to Job is really a blow, not a comfort. He tells Job that he is not even getting half of what he really has coming to him. Now that is a pretty hard statement. He says the fact that Job is suffering as much as he is shows that Job is a lot worse than his friends even dreamed he was. Zophar is not very helpful to a man in Job’s condition! We must remember that all this time Job is a sick man and is in desperate pain. He actually thinks he may expire at any moment and at times he hopes that he will die.

Job 11:7

That is a great statement. It is a marvelous statement. But who doesn’t know that? Job will tell him later that everyone knows that. No man can discover God; God is revealed. The only way you can know about God is what He is pleased to reveal of Himself to us. I have come to the conclusion that He has revealed very little of Himself to us. In fact, the little that He has revealed to us has some of us so awestruck and some so confused that we can see why He hasn’t revealed more of Himself to us. You cannot “find out God” by starting out like a Columbus in search of Him. Nor can you find God by going into space in a sputnik. I recall that the Russians published in their paper the fact that they hadn’t discovered God in the early days of space exploration, and so they assumed He was not there. We can put little gadgets out in space, but they won’t find God. To think they could find Him is absurd! Man cannot look through a microscope or out into the heavens through a telescope and discover God. God must reveal Himself to man. This is a profound statement that Zophar makes, but it is nothing new to Job.

Job 11:8

He gives a lofty discourse about God which is tremendous. It just doesn’t touch the need of Job.

Job 11:10

Of course, he is speaking of Job herenot of himself! He feels that he is the man who has the answer.

Job 11:13

Again he comes at Job on the basis that Job is hiding something, that there is secret sin in Job’s life. All three of Job’s friends assume that Job is covering up something. Job actually isn’t aware of anything that he should put away; yet there is something, as we shall see later.

Job 11:15

Zophar is saying, “If you would just deal with the sin that is in your life and quit fighting it, God would hear and answer your prayers and restore you.”

Job 11:20

He concludes by saying to Job, “You are going to come to the time when the judgment of God will be upon you unless you confess your secret sin.” He predicts the absolute and complete judgment of Job. That concludes Zophar’s address which in reality is an attack upon Job. All three friends have now had their little say. Job’s answer will be one of the lengthiest discourses in the book.