“If you would earnestly seek God and make your
supplication to the Almighty, if you were pure and upright, surely now
He would awake for you, and prosper your rightful dwelling place.” (vv.5-6)
Here
in chapter 8 Job gets to hear from the second of his friends, Bildad. He
basically tells Job if he would get right with God, God would bless him. And, that his continual suffering indicates there must be some hidden sin, something he
is denying, something un-confessed.
The
arguments of Bildad were from observation and based on suppositions. He used
many "ifs" in his counsel and supposed many things. This
was the way he interpreted the situation, but his interpretation was wrong. For
as we know from chapter 1, “there is none like Job in all the earth, a perfect
and upright man, one that fears God and turns from evil” (v.8). Therefore, Bildad was way off base in his supposition of Job's unconfessed sin.
This kind of conclusion speaks to us in many ways today. One of which is to learn
to distinguish between fact and supposition. Just because we read something
does not mean we may assume it is also true. And just because
one person interprets a set of facts a certain way, does not mean that his
interpretation is correct. All the facts may not be given. And often the
withholding of one essential fact can change the interpretation.
Bildad was not working with all the facts. He was not privy to
the heavenly conversation of chapter 1. His judgment of Job’s condition was
based on incomplete information and therefore not of God. May God help us all to not counsel others in
the same manner.
The Truth
“See to
it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception,
according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of
the world, rather than according to Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)
