Today we meet Bildad, the second of Job’s “miserable comforters.” That’s exactly what Job called his three “friends” later in the dialogue, at Job 16:2.
Out “text” this morning is Job chapter 8, with only 22 verses, some of which I will prayerfully note.
Bildad to Job: “How long shall the words of thy mouth be be like a strong wind?” Job’s rants, just “hot air” blowing! Verse 2 … and the “war” is already waging!
And by verse 4 (of chapter 8 remember) Bildad as much as says that Job’s 10 children all died because of sin in their lives! “If thy children have sinned against Him (the Lord), and He have cast them away for their transgression ….” God gave them over to death, the Hebrew suggests!
And try to realize the pain Job 8:6 would have caused the already sensitive Job. “If thou wert pure and upright; surely now he would awake for thee, and make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous.” If you were living right, Job, God would prosper you! This is the classic “Health and Wealth” theology still rife today in America.
In verse 13 Bildad labels Job as one who “forgets God!” And a rank “hypocrite!”
Verse 20, another slam: “Behold, God will not cast away a perfect man, neither will he help the evil doers.” According to the Bildad viewpoint Job is not “perfect” before God. But in Job 1:1 God Himself said Job was perfect before Him!
Yes, Bildad is as vicious as Eliphaz had been back in chapters 4 and 5 of Job. If not more so!
And Bildad’s appeal to the men of old, to yesteryear, has caused many commentators to consider him the “traditionalist” among Job’s accusers.
Job 8:8-10, for example. “Enquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers. (For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow.) Shall not they teach thee, and tell thee, and utter words out of their heart?”
“The former age!”
“The fathers!”
“THEY shall teach us!”
And it is true, up until the Book of Job the Bible has (95% of it anyway) illustrated that “the more one obeys God, the more God blesses that person!” And excessive “hardships” and “trials” are a pretty good sign God is “whipping” a person, usually because of sin!
But the Book of Job breaks that pattern!
(And the Book of Job is God’s Word as well! Every bit as much as Genesis through Esther has been!)
Here (in Job) … a good man suffers!
No matter how much the Fathers have taught us to the contrary!
Lesson … tradition (“it’s always been”) can be wrong!
Tradition is not completely reliable! In fact, it can be deadly.
Only God is perennially (really eternally) right!
In fact, God is RIGHT, even when things do not look that way!
Bildad did not speak right things about Job!
Here’s God talking in Job 42:7. “The LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends (including Bildad): for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.”
Wow!
Oh, how we need to search the Scriptures, to get the “Mind of the Lord” … and not simply (blindly) follow tradition!
— Dr. Mike Bagwell
Hey Bildad: “Words can deeply wound! And cut into the innermost parts of the soul, the heart!” So says Solomon in Proverbs 18:8.
A lesson we all need to learn!