Les Misery: Worthless Quacks
One Year Bible (Aug. 24)
Job 12:1-15:35
LES MISERY: Worthless Quacks
“As for you, you smear me with lies. As physicians, you are worthless quacks.” (13:5)
Job’s Three Amigos are definitely “practicing medicine” and it is not going too well at all!
Verse six actually tells us Job’s response to his “Quacking Friends”. He tells them, “If only you could be silent! That’s the wisest thing you could do!”
Have you ever spoken those words? Unfortunately, I have had to do just that and it wasn’t pleasant. I actually fled the situation…
My mother was in hospice care and I had been sitting in the same chair for way too long. I had a “pain in my neck” that wouldn’t go away. So, for my break, I decided to walk a block away to a massage place that required payment first. As soon as I got in the little room the woman there started talking about “strokes’ and on and on she went…She was on my “very last nerve”, and that was not the nerve that I went in to get treated…
I asked her if she could “please just work on my neck and not talk”. After I heard the word “STROKE” a few more times, I arose from my sheet and SPED right on out of there. I took my clothes and she kept all my money!
I truly feel for Job! He couldn’t exactly get up and leave the DUMP. Where does a man who is overflowing with boils and overwhelmed with condemnation go? And so, he tells them that “the wisest thing they can do is to be silent”... But they don’t! There are three rounds of their exhortations followed by Job’s responses. These discussions are getting heated and intensifying with each round!
Job refutes the theory of “The Three Amigo’s” in the first round that God always prospers the upright and punishes the sinner. Job is upright, yet he is afflicted. (Job 6:22-28; 12:3, 13:2-5,15,16) Do you see the CATCH 22 that Job is caught in? God himself pronounced Job as a “righteous man” in the prologue… (before the play began).
His Three Amigos live, breathe, and are bound by THE LAW. That is ALL they know! They are heaping the LAW on Job. His boils are bursting with Brimstone and Fire…
They know that God CAN NOT BE TWISTED and that sinners receive God’s punishment. They have seen NO SIN in Job’s life! NONE! What they have witnessed is a day of “SHOCK and AWE” like no other. In one day, Job lost EVERYONE and EVERYTHING… (Except for his Precious wife who wants him to “Curse God and Die!) The Three Amigos are living their life based on the LAW and that leaves them with only one conclusion, “Job must be a wretched sinner” to be punished in this way! Their goal...REPENTANCE.
The more that Job declares that he is an upright man and yet is afflicted, the more the battle rages. In the midst of our passage today, Job asks two things of God, “O God, grant me these two things, and then I will be able to face you. Remove your heavy hand from me, and don’t terrify me with your awesome presence.” (13:20)
Job knows that suffering has come his way through the hand of God but he has no idea why this has happened to him. He asks that God shows him something he has done wrong and or any rebellion in him. He truly doesn’t get it. He can not begin to understand ‘Why' this is happening to him…
Let’s look back at some of Job’s highlights in his response to “Bullseye Bildad” in Round One.
While Job knows that he has been a devout follower of God, he says, “How can a person be declared innocent in God’s sight? If someone wanted to take God to court, would it be possible to answer him even once in a thousand times? (9:1)
In Job’s own words, he recognizes the CATCH 22 that he has landed. Romans 3:10 tells us, “No one is righteous, no not one.” Job is firmly stuck between the Law of sin and the upcoming Liberty of Grace. Even his righteousness is not enough to pay the price for sin or to stop the enemy of God from attacking.
This book of Job is written to show us the heartbreak of this broken condition that man is in…
The law only condemns! While these men may have the best intentions, their execution is brutal because the law is brutal!
At the very same time that Job realizes his dependence upon God, he also realizes that God’s Ways are greater than he can comprehend, “He does great things too marvelous to understand. He performs COUNTLESS MIRACLES. Yet when he comes near, I cannot see him.” (9:10-11)
Job believes in God’s COUNTLESS MIRACLES but NO MIRACLES are coming his way…
In the second round of debates, Job points out to his Three Amigos that they are being pretty arrogant in their APPROACH and are not better than him in the APPLICATION of their faith. “You people really know everything don’t you?...Well, I know a few things myself-- and you’re no better than I am.” (12:2-3)
In round two, all three insist that the wicked ALWAYS suffer and ONLY the wicked. Job’s response to them is that the righteous suffer also (Job 19:25-26, 21:7)
What Job has are three Worthless Quacks… What Job needs is a GREAT PHYSICIAN!
“He will once again fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy.” Job 8:21.
