Stinging Words

  1. Another friend now speaks, Bildad. He does not even try to encourage.
  2. Bildad also speaks Biblical truth. It’s just applied wrongly.
  3. We don’t know what God is doing in someone’s life.
  4. There was the man born blind that the Pharisees accuse of being born in sin. Jesus said there was no sin. He was given the gift of being used to bring God glory.
  5. We can’t look at someone’s life and decide what God’s up to. We can know some general things like He’s doing good and being loving and working out the salvation of His people, but we don’t know the mind of God. His ways are unsearchable.
  6. We have had people tell us we are cursed because we have disabled children. We’ve been told we need to repent of a certain sin. The problem is we live blameless before God. What are we going to repent of? It was a Job moment. Then they said it could have been the sin of an ancestor. Don’t believe that nonsense. God Himself says He will not punish a child for a father’s sin. And besides, Jesus took the punishment for our sin!
  7. There are healing teachers that teach there is always sin behind the need for healing. It’s obviously unbiblical. Jesus said so. And, as I’ve said, Jesus just healed without making people confess and repent first.
  8. This chapter is again filled with theological truth. God does not pervert justice! Bildad even gives a proper prophecy and says that Job’s latter days will be greater than his former days.
  9. He also says something very stinging. “If your children have sinned against him, he has delivered them into the hand of their transgression.”
  10. Job’s children were already dead. Job had atoned for them as much as he could, not that we know they were even sinning. Saying they could have died because of their sin doesn’t help Job. It could only hurt.
  11. There are reasons for death besides the wrath of God. Isaiah 57:1 says the death of a saint is precious and that we should consider that God is saving them from some evil to come. Death can be a gift.
  12. Whatever was going on, God was just in the death of Job’s children. And God was using it in Job’s life and in the lives of these friends and in ours! God is perfect in all His ways and does more than we could ask or imagine.