System Failure
June 3, 2018

Scripture: Job 8

I. Sometimes good things do not happen to good people.

A. Job’s second friend Bildad now begins to speak in Job 8. Bildad is angry with Job. In vs. 2 Bildad says to Job, “How long will you say these things, and the words of your mouth be a great wind?” Bildad is saying, “Job, you are a windbag. You are full of hot air.” Bildad feels like Job is blaspheming God. “Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right?” (vs. 3). To pervert justice is to twist it, bend it, make it crooked. By claiming to be innocent Job is making God out to be someone who has perverted justice by allowing Job to suffer.

B. Bildad’s system of theology was really simple. It is found in vs. 20: “Behold, God will not reject a blameless man, nor take the hand of evildoers.” In Bildad’s system, good things happen to good people. And bad things happen to bad people. That’s it. The world is no more complicated than that. But Bildad’s system fails because Job was one of the blameless people that God should not have rejected according to Bildad. Job’s blameless life is discussed by both God and the author of Job in Job 1:1, 1:8 and 2:3.

II. Sometimes bad things do not happen to bad people.

A. We see in vs. 8 that Bildad says that this simple system of bad things happening to bad people has traditionally been taught by wise people. So, Bildad tells Job, “For inquire, please of bygone ages, and consider what the fathers have searched out.” Then he gives an illustration beginning in vs. 11 to show how bad things happen to bad people. The wicked will be destroyed. Bildad talks about the reeds from which papyrus was taken in Job’s area. In a damp, swampy area, with a warm climate, those reeds grow quickly to between 8 and 10 feet tall.

B. But Bildad asks Job in vs. 11, “Can reeds flourish where there is no water?” If you take away the water supply of the reeds, they will wither Bildad says in vs. 12. He concludes in vs. 13 by saying such are the paths of all who forget God; the hope of the godless shall perish. The wicked might grow tall and proud for a short while, but soon they will be cut down just like reeds without water. Bad things must happen to bad people. But do bad things always happen to bad people? No! We know this is not true by our own experience or the example of history.

III. Sometimes grace happens.

A. The simple system of Bildad and people like him leaves no room for grace. In Bildad’s world everyone gets what they deserve. So when Job’s 10 children were killed by a tornado one day, what is Bildad’s explanation for their deaths? We see the explanation in vs. 4: “If your children have sinned against him, he has delivered them into the hand of their transgression.” Job, because your children died, they must have deserved it. They sinned. They died. That’s what they deserved. Is what Bildad saying really true? Is his system a true way of looking at the world? No. Sometimes Bildad’s system fails. Sometimes innocent people suffer. Sometimes innocent people – people like Job’s children and people like Jesus – die. There is a wonderful verse about Jesus in John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Application:
Extend grace to people around you. Reject the system of you get what you deserve.

Sources:
The book of Job
Commentaries on Job by Christopher Ash and Francis Andersen
“For the Love of God” by D.A. Carson