English Language Study Guide for January 12, 2008
Job 11
2-4: Even today believers are maligned when they express any confidence that God has saved them. Many cults, denominations and movements deny that the Christian can ever know for sure that he is saved and that he will be saved. Job’s friends attack him because he insists that he is right with God.
5-6: Zophar wishes that God would speak for Himself and correct Job.
7-12: How can Job presume to know God? Obviously Zophar himself doesn’t know God or he would understand how someone else could know God.
2 Timothy 1:12 For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.
13-14: Zophar adds that Job cannot approach God with unclean hands. Is this not stating the obvious, something that Job readily admits?
16-19: Security will come after you confess your sins and approach God with clean hands.
Yes, yes, Job knows this and has done this; but still there is trouble.
20: The unrepentant will perish.
Poor Job. His friends keep pointing fingers at him and falsely accusing him.
Job 12
Job answers.
2: You guys know everything. The world will be in a real mess after you die. (What sarcasm!)
6: Look around and you will see that the unrighteous DO prosper. Proponents of a health and wealth gospel should look around and see how many rich and healthy heathen there are.
7-11: Creation knows that God is in control of all things.
12-25: God controls the length of our days. God breaks things down and we cannot build them up again. God shuts doors and we cannot open them. When God withhold the rain, drought results. He rules over kings and princes. He knows the secret deeds and thoughts of men. Clearly Job believed in the sovereignty of God.
Job 13
Job continues.
1: This is what I have observed. Of course we are to live by faith and not by sight; but when a lifetime of sight contradicts our faith, it’s time to reconsider.
2: I’m not inferior to you, Job counters. A holier-than-thou attitude can humiliate its listeners into submission; but Job will not be pushed down.
3: His friends have insisted that Job speak with God about these problems–and Job agrees that this is the best course of action.
4-6: But his friends have not been any help at all! And Job pleads with them to consider his reasoning. Too few people actually know how to listen; and fewer still know how to analyze another person’s reasoning. The brain wasn’t designed to keep the skull from imploding.
7: Beware of those who put themselves in God’s place. Many religious leaders speak their own thoughts and not God’s.
13: Stop bothering me.
15-16: Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. He shall be my salvation. Does Job’s confidence in God shine forth?
18: I know I shall be justified. (Do you know that you will be justified by God?)
22: Lord, call me and I will answer; and Lord, please answer me when I call You.
23: I want to know my sins. The world would be a different place if everyone wanted God to show his sins.
24-28: Lord, why are these things happening to me?
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