As Job suffers; he questions. All he knows of God; he questions.  He knows God is the Almighty who is in all and over all he created. But he still questions prompted by his physical pain, emotional torment while grieving the family he lost as well as all he worked hard to build.  Job is honest before God. Job still trusts God and humbly holds God forever above himself.  His friends, however, cannot listen without passionately delivering high and mighty speeches of judgement that reflect their smaller knowledge of who God is.  They sound right in their words—all the words we have heard in Sunday School or from the pulpit; but their words do not soothe the pain or comfort the loss Job is suffering.  Their words are more like salt thrown into an open wound which serves to bring on more pain! 

Jesus teaches, “you are the salt of the earth” but when we as salt compound the pain of the sufferer; we lose our salty ability to help show the way to the Source of Life.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” –Jesus, Matthew 5:13

“You are the salt of the earth,” means that as believers who follow Jesus by example we must act as a positive, preserving, and distinct influence in the world.  We must seek to prevent moral decay by our own actions while seeking instead to add value to someone’s life.  Jesus’ habit was to use objects of familiarity of his audience. Salt was used in ancient times for preservation and flavor. Being good salt highlights a calling to live out God’s Kingdom required values of love, justice, mercy (Micah 6:8) while making tangible, godly impacts on society.  Salt has lost it flavor when society instead infects us!

Bildad’s speech in this chapter is the shortest in the book does focus on God’s power and justice. But how salty are his words delivered with seeming disdain for Job’s situation?  If we are in Job’s corner, we become uncomfortable as his friends judge and attack him with their righteous words and we become disturbed at what and how they talk to Job.  They talk like they know God better than anyone else; but we will read and learn later that Job’s friends faith will be exposed by God as those who really didn’t know what they were talking about.

Too often, those who say the most about God know the least about God. Hold that thought as we continue…

Job 24

“Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment?
    Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?
² There are those who move boundary stones;    they pasture flocks they have stolen.
³ They drive away the orphan’s donkey
    and take the widow’s ox in pledge.
⁴ They thrust the needy from the path
    and force all the poor of the land into hiding.
⁵ Like wild donkeys in the desert,
    the poor go about their labor of foraging food;
    the wasteland provides food for their children.
⁶ They gather fodder in the fields
    and glean in the vineyards of the wicked.
⁷ Lacking clothes, they spend the night naked;
    they have nothing to cover themselves in the cold.
⁸ They are drenched by mountain rains
    and hug the rocks for lack of shelter.
⁹ The fatherless child is snatched from the breast;
    the infant of the poor is seized for a debt.
¹⁰ Lacking clothes, they go about naked;
    they carry the sheaves, but still go hungry.
¹¹ They crush olives among the terraces;
    they tread the winepresses, yet suffer thirst.
¹² The groans of the dying rise from the city,
    and the souls of the wounded cry out for help.
    But God charges no one with wrongdoing.

¹³ “There are those who rebel against the light,
    who do not know its ways
    or stay in its paths.
¹⁴ When daylight is gone, the murderer rises up,
    kills the poor and needy,
    and in the night steals forth like a thief.
¹⁵ The eye of the adulterer watches for dusk;
    he thinks, ‘No eye will see me,’
    and he keeps his face concealed.
¹⁶ In the dark, thieves break into houses,
    but by day they shut themselves in;
    they want nothing to do with the light.
¹⁷ For all of them, midnight is their morning;
    they make friends with the terrors of darkness.

¹⁸ “Yet they are foam on the surface of the water;
    their portion of the land is cursed,
    so that no one goes to the vineyards.
¹⁹ As heat and drought snatch away the melted snow,
    so the grave snatches away those who have sinned.
²⁰ The womb forgets them,
    the worm feasts on them;
the wicked are no longer remembered
    but are broken like a tree.
²¹ They prey on the barren and childless woman,
    and to the widow they show no kindness.
²² But God drags away the mighty by his power;
    though they become established, they have no assurance of life.
²³ He may let them rest in a feeling of security,
    but his eyes are on their ways.
²⁴ For a little while they are exalted, and then they are gone;
    they are brought low and gathered up like all others;
    they are cut off like heads of grain.

²⁵ “If this is not so, who can prove me false
    and reduce my words to nothing?”

Bildad

Job 25 Then Bildad the Shuhite replied:

² “Dominion and awe belong to God;
    he establishes order in the heights of heaven.
³ Can his forces be numbered?
    On whom does his light not rise?
⁴ How then can a mortal be righteous before God?
    How can one born of woman be pure?
⁵ If even the moon is not bright
    and the stars are not pure in his eyes,
⁶ how much less a mortal, who is but a maggot—
    a human being, who is only a worm!”

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

May we all pause for a moment or two and ask God’s Holy Spirit to evaluate our saltiness.  Listen for His response to us.  Are we flavoring the world around us with the living and active God who lives in us?  Or has our saltiness gone stale and flavorless?

The discussion between Job and his friends continues. Bildad replied to Job’s claim of innocence while Job responded sarcastically to Bildad, all because Bildad’s advice lacked consolation. We know that Man cannot be compared with God. God’s immensity cannot be measured.  Seek God first and listen to Him with a trusting and obediently heart.  Only then will true, everlasting peace come and reside in all the circumstances of life here as we prepare for life eternal there.

Lord,

Thank you for these words of wisdom from your Word to our hearts. Thank you for feeding our souls as you renew our minds.  Thank you for the peace we feel even in the eyes of life’s storms that come and go.  Like the Psalmist reminds us;

He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” (Psalm 46:10)

Just saying the words out loud to you dissolves my fears and anxious thoughts as you replace fear of the unknown with awe of You—the Known God, who has not given up your authority and power over all you have created.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

In Jesus Name, for your glory and our good, Amen