Word of Salvation – Vol. 54 No.1 – January 2009

 

Bildad’s Speech: Smoke Implies Fire

 

A Sermon by Rev Leo Douma on Job 8

Sermon 6 of 9, on Job

Scripture Reading: Job 8

 

Brothers and Sisters in Christ.

In a previous congregation that I served in, I heard of a conversation between two middle aged women. One was praising God for how richly he had blessed her. She was a faithful churchgoer who was doing well financially. But her fellow churchgoer felt irate at the first one, or was it that she was upset with God? You see woman number two was also a faithful churchgoer, but she was dirt poor, struggling badly financially. Why was God not blessing her, she wanted to know? Was there something wrong with her? Was God punishing her for not being good enough?

We get ourselves into all sorts of difficulties when we settle for a simplistic theology and are then quite black and white about it. Is it really the case that the well-to-do have been blessed by God and the down-and-outs have not been blessed? Is it the case that there is a cause and effect: If you are righteous God blesses you, and if you are bad he curses you? Well, yes and no! It’s far more complex than that. Consider the millions around the world who have little in the way of food, shelter, even parents and proper carers.

How do we view this big gap between the haves and the have-nots? In western culture we are incredibly wealthy. Does it mean God has blessed us? And is that because we are ‘good’? In the two thirds world they are incredibly poor. Is that because God has not seen fit to bless them, because they are not good? Or is it rather the case that many of us in the West need to reassess our lifestyles, because how we live is also a sign of enormous greed, of wastage, of abuse of economic power?

Now how does all this fit into Bildad’s speech here in Chapter 8 of Job? Bildad is the second of Job’s three friends who has been listening to Job as he sat on the ash heap. Bildad is not as gentle and refined as the first friend, Eliphaz. Bildad is more of a blunt traditionalist. He is an arch conservative who feels the forefathers had it all worked out. And he is very black and white. If Eliphaz highlighted God’s holiness, Bildad pushes God as a God of justice. And God never, never perverts the cause of justice. If a person is righteous he is blessed. If a person is wicked he is punished. That’s it. There is no other response possible. It’s black and white. It’s very simple and clear!

With that mind set it’s not hard to see that Bildad has little time for Job’s “carrying on”. Job insists that he is innocent and so wants to know why God has dealt with him so harshly. All his property was taken or destroyed, his ten children were killed and Job himself is very, very sick. Job has cursed the day of his birth, he has kept on crying out for God to take his life, he wants out, to die. Job has made it clear that he was not impressed with what Eliphaz had to say, that his friends were next to useless. Job had vented his anger at God.

Now Bildad speaks up and the first thing he says in effect is: Shut up Job, you bag of wind! Note verse 2: “How long will you say such things? Your words are a blustering wind.” There is no attempt to listen to Job, to hear what it is he is actually struggling with. Bildad has his own view and he is going to tell Job. His main thesis is found in verse 3: “Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert what is right?”

Bildad cannot conceive of God not following the simple rules of justice. You do wrong, you get punished. You do right, you get blessing. Is there suffering in your life, you must have done wrong. Where there is smoke there must be fire. No ifs or buts. It cannot be otherwise. God is unwavering in his justice. There is an inflexible righteousness and just power in God.

Bildad can be described as the ‘traditionalist par excellence’. He goes by the book. His source of information is not experience like Eliphaz, but his scholarship. It’s not so much that Bildad has a personal relationship with God but a scholarly learning, a hoarding of the knowledge of the past. Bildad has no concept that a current experience may require a rethinking of the formulas of previous generations because they are no longer adequate.

For example Job’s experience is that he is a righteous man, even God said so in Chapter 1, but still Job suffers enormously. For Bildad this is simply not possible. His understanding is too simplistic, too black and white, and this shade of grey doesn’t exist, it can’t exist. There is a sense in which Job’s experience threatens Bildad’s whole world view. If Job is actually innocent, and God is behind or has allowed his awful suffering, then Bildad’s entire system of thinking collapses. Then his whole theology starts to collapse. He must put Job in his place or he is lost.

We see how strongly Bildad reacts towards Job when he says in verse 4, “When your children sinned against him, he gave them over to the penalty of their sin” . Bildad is giving an example of God’s justice. But what a callous thing to do! Where is the grace towards this man Job who is grieving so deeply over the loss of all his children? Bildad is saying they must have deserved to die, because God is always just. He punishes the wicked. Bildad can’t stand what he perceives as Job’s arrogance, saying he is innocent, so why is God so cruel to him. Bildad makes it clear his kids died because they were wicked.

And if Job is at all good, then there is still a chance God will rouse himself on Job’s behalf. Not as a matter of grace. Not as a matter of forgiveness as Job asked for in Chapter 7. But because of good works, doing good, showing he is pure and righteous. God will again bless what Job does right. That fits Bildad’s formula: God blesses the righteous, but punishes the wicked (note verses 5 & 6). Bildad says to Job in verse 7, in effect, stop your complaining and death wish! Get yourself righteous and God will bless you even more. Change your attitude man! Cut out this nonsense of complaining against God and being angry with him.

Bildad says he gets his wisdom from tradition, he appeals to the tradition of the elders. Note verses 8ff: “Ask the former generations and find out what their fathers learned, for we were born only yesterday and know nothing, our days on earth are but a shadow.”

In a sense Bildad says: You young whipper snipper, you snot nosed kid. What do you know about life? You haven’t been around that long. You have some experience, some tragedy, and you think you can demand answers of God. Listen to the wisdom of your forebears. Remember how it has always been. You are not old enough to have gained wisdom. Do you want to find peace? Then stop challenging honoured doctrine and listen to the wisdom of the past.

Bildad illustrates that wisdom with some examples from nature that picks up on some ancient proverbs (11-17). Papyrus was an important plant to cultivate and harvest. With water it grows tall and looks majestic. But without water it shrivels and dries up faster than grass. Then it’s next to useless, no longer to be harvested. That’s the fate of those who forget God. You go against God’s ways and you perish, man.

You think you have something to hang on to Job, with your insistence of innocence. Others have trusted in themselves, in their wealth or their abilities. But that’s like trying to hang on to a spider web when you are falling over. Fine for a spider but useless for a man! A plant can look pretty solid when its roots are spread all over the garden. But it is soon ripped out and then its place doesn’t even remember it any more.

This last example is a shot at Job who said that if he died God would miss him and long for him. It was Job’s back handed plea for God to hear him. Bildad says: Yeah right. Think again, Job, my man. When you’re gone no one will remember you. Not even God. It’s dead and buried mate; finished, gone and good riddance.

Bildad finishes his (brief!) speech by coming back to his main thesis. God is always just. Verse 20, “Surely God does not reject a blameless man or strengthen the hands of evil doers.” Job, that’s the solid theology we have always accepted for generations. We know it’s true. Take a lesson from history; people who sin perish, those who transgress are punished. God doesn’t reject the righteous, nor does he maintain evil doers; never.

So acknowledge where you have sinned. And it must be big because you have suffered a lot. Where there is smoke there must be fire. Do the righteous thing and God will again bless you. “He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy. Your enemies will be clothed with shame, and the tents of the wicked will be no more.” Job, look, seek the Lord and everything will turn out fine. There is a certain irony here. Bildad is right in one way. In the end Job is richly blessed. But not by the manner Bildad is advocating. What God does with Job will completely demolish Bildad’s approach!

What shall we say of Bildad? He is a prisoner of tradition. Bildad refuses to allow any experience to temper his doctrine. For him all experience must be seen in the light of accepted tradition. There can be no exceptions. For exceptions can rattle his whole orthodoxy.

The doctrine of God’s justice is the very cornerstone of his orthodox theology. Bildad’s error lies in building his entire theology on the simple premise of (double) retribution: do wrong you are punished, do right and you are blessed.

The whole point of the book of Job, especially as we have seen in Chapters 1 & 2 is that God’s ways are not tied to this simplistic approach. God himself held Job up as a wonderful example of a righteous servant, but still allowed Satan to destroy Job’s life. Bildad’s cold, analytical, insensitive application of the justice of God has not allowed for the possibility we see in the book of Job, that the innocent may suffer.

Bildad’s idea of blessing is far too simplistic, as it is with many today. God’s blessing is seen far too materialistically – if we have lots of possessions, a big bank balance then we are ‘blessed’. Bildad cannot even begin to conceive that there may be blessing in suffering, that there can be an enormous spiritual growth, maturity, deep blessings, in loss and suffering. Bildad cannot conceive that Job could be suffering for the sake of others, to help not himself as such, but others who find themselves in deep trouble.

The doctrine of the cross of Christ would be anathema to Bildad. For a righteous man to suffer in the place of others would, for Bildad, make God unrighteous. Bildad’s theology, though sound in one way, in another way ends up denying God’s way of salvation. Bildad’s assertion in verse 20, “God will not reject a blameless man…” makes him the precursor of those who mocked Jesus with the same logic: “he trusts in God, let God deliver him” (Mt 27:43).

Job suffered. Each of us has our suffering. But when we know about God’s rejection of Jesus, our suffering can never again be as dark as Job’s.

One of the most disturbing things about Bildad is his refusal to listen, to really heed what Job was saying. Job would completely agree that God is just; that he looks for the righteous and blesses them. That had been his experience in the beginning. But that was not his experience later. He was innocent, yet he suffered. Job wanted to know why? That was his struggle. Why do the innocent suffer?

But Bildad just didn’t listen. He simply assumed his theology, God punishes the wicked, and thus assumed Job was guilty of something terrible. His counsel completely missed the point.

I am reminded of an experiment once conducted on a large group of ministers. They were timed to see how long they would listen to a parishioner before giving advice (average time 5 minutes!). Preaching can be like that too – simplistic application that assumes it knows it all from its traditional orthodoxy, without asking what we are experiencing now. What is needed is for us to be heard where we are, what we struggle with today and let God’s Word speak to us in the complexity of our lives.

When it comes to world hunger we must move well beyond the simplistic notion that others suffer because they are heathen or bad or lazy, or it’s their problem over there. Too much of our own lifestyles have to do with our reliance on money and materialism for a sense of happiness. It is too simplistic to simply say we are blessed of God so its OK to have all this stuff. More sharing of what we have and less reliance on our stuff would be an enormous spiritual blessing for many of us.

The apostle John wrote (1 John 3:16): “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?”

Amen.