So we'll be looking at Job chapters 20 and 21 this afternoon and let's read together chapter 21. Then Job answered and said, listen carefully to my speech and let this be your consolation. Bear with me that I may speak and after I have spoken, keep mocking. As for me, is my complaint against man? And if it were, why should I not be impatient? Look at me and be astonished. Put your hand over your mouth. Even when I remember, I am terrified and trembling takes hold of my flesh. Why do the wicked live and become old? Yes, become mighty in power. Their descendants are established with them in their sight and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear. Neither is the rod of God upon them. Their bull breeds without failure, their cow calves without miscarriage. They send forth their little ones like a flock and their children dance. They sing to the tambourine and harp and rejoice to the sound of the flute. They spend their days in wealth and in a moment go down to the grave. Yet they say to God, depart from us for we do not desire the knowledge of your ways. Who is the Almighty that we should serve him? And what profit do we have if we pray to him? Indeed, their prosperity is not in their hand. The counsel of the wicked is far from me. How often is the lamp of the wicked put out? How often does their destruction come upon them, the sorrows God distributes in His anger? They are like straw before the wind and like chaff that a storm carries away. They say, God lays up one's iniquity for his children. Let him recompense him, that he may know it. Let his eyes see his destruction and let him drink of the wrath of the Almighty. For what does he care about his household after him, when the number of his months is cut in half? Can anyone teach God knowledge, since he judges those on high? One dies in his full strength, being wholly at ease and secure. His pails are full of milk, and the marrow of his bones is moist. Another man dies in the bitterness of his soul, never having eaten with pleasure. They lie down alike in the dust, and worms cover them. Look, I know your thoughts and the schemes with which you would wrong me. For you say, where is the house of the prince, and where is the tent, the dwelling place of the wicked? Have you not asked those who travel the road, and do you not know their signs? For the wicked are reserved for the day of doom. They shall be brought out on the day of wrath. Who condemns his way to his face, and who repays him for what he has done? Yet he shall be brought to the grave, and a vigil kept over his tomb. The clods of the valley shall be sweet to him. Everyone shall follow him, as countless have gone before him. How then can you comfort me with empty words? since falsehood remains in your answers. As I've said, we'll be looking also at chapter 20 in connection with this speech of Job in chapter 21. We have come here in these two chapters to the third interchange between Job and his friends in the second round of their discourses. So we've seen the first round, Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar, and we've seen the first two rounds in this, first two interchanges in the second round, Eliphaz and Bildad, and we come now to the third of the interchanges with Zophar and Job. Now when we look at the message of Zophar in chapter 20, I think we're going to see that the basic message that Zophar gives to Job here in this chapter is the same as the messages of the friends have been all along, that the wicked suffer judgment. But there is a difference here in this one, because as he talks about the judgment of God on the wicked, Zophar identifies a particular kind of wicked man, and he then talks about God's judgment on that particular kind of wickedness. And the implication here is that this then, this kind of wickedness that he identifies, is the particular sin of which Job has been guilty. And that particular sin is the sin of oppressing the poor for his own advantage. So that's the main difference between this speech of Zophar and the previous speeches of all the Friends, really. And the answer of Job, then, also differs somewhat. from the speeches that he has made before. And we're going to look at a number of differences between this speech of Job and his prior speeches. But I think the thing that we're going to see primarily in this speech of Job in chapter 21 is that he argues this time directly against the point that the wicked do not prosper. The argument of his friends has been all along, the wicked do not prosper. And Job says basically in chapter 21, that's simply not true. So those are the two things that we want to focus on as we look at these two chapters. Now, the introduction to Zophar's speech is also somewhat different than the introductions to his friends' speeches in prior chapters. We've noticed as we've gone through these introductions that usually they include an accusation that Job's words have been empty and foolish. And Job's responses to his friends has basically made the same charge against them. Your words have been empty and foolish, comfortless for me. But here, I think in verses 2 and 3 in his speech, Zophar is responding specifically to what Job said in verses 28 and 29 of chapter 19, the very end of his immediately preceding speech. Job says there, if you should say, how shall we persecute him since the root of the matter is found in me? Be afraid of the sword for yourselves, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment." In other words, Job is saying there, if you continue to persecute me as you have been doing, then you should be afraid of the judgment of God coming on you. And I think it's this that Zophar is responding to when he says in the first part of verse three, I have heard the rebuke that reproaches me. So he's saying, I hear what you're saying, Joe, and because I understand what you are saying, the spirit of my understanding causes me to answer. I'm going to be addressing myself specifically to that. And then in verse two, my anxious thoughts, or perhaps my troubled thoughts, might be a little clearer there. My troubled thoughts make me answer, that is, what you have just said in verses 28 and 29 troubles me. Not because it shakes my complacency in my own theology, but rather because I think this is a false accusation that you are now making against me and against us. And then the last part of verse two is not, I think, translated very felicitously in the New King James. The King James has a better translation here. The King James says in the second part of verse two, and for this, I make haste. And that, I think, is a better translation. So he's saying, what you've just said, Job, is very troublesome to me. And I'm going to make haste to answer you, therefore. I've heard your rebuke and therefore I need to speak and I need to speak quickly to respond to you. In verse four, then, he says, he does, again, something a little bit different. You remember that several times before this, Job's friends had said to him, you should listen to what, not only to what we say, but to what the ancients have said, that is, men of former times, those who are wiser than ourselves, you should listen to them. But this time, Zophar doesn't do that. He says, go and look at evidence from history. If you don't want to believe us and if you don't want to believe these ancients, go and examine what has happened to man throughout the history, his history on the earth. Do you not know this of old since man was placed on the earth? He says, go and learn it for yourself if you don't want to believe other people. And what he wants Job to learn then is stated in verse five, that the triumphing of the wicked is short and the joy of the hypocrite is but for a moment." So that's the thing that he's trying to teach Job here. The triumphing of the wicked is short. So he does not deny that for a little while, anyway, the wicked may prosper, but he insists that judgment comes soon, comes quickly upon them. And as we said, as he works his way through his argument here that the triumphing of the wicked is short, he also identifies a specific sin, and by implication, accuses Job of that sin. That sin, as we said, is oppression of the poor, and it's specifically described in verse 19. He has oppressed the poor and forsaken the poor. He has violently seized a house which he did not build." So that's the accusation. That's the kind of wickedness Zophar is talking about throughout this chapter. And if you go back a little bit in Zophar's speech, you can see that he keeps on making reference to this kind of thing. Thus in verse 10, Zophar says, his children will seek the favor of the poor and his hands will restore his wealth. Or in verse 15, he swallows down riches and vomits them up again. God casts them out of his belly. Or in verse 18, he will restore that for which he labored and will not swallow it down from the proceeds of business. He will get no enjoyment. So this is what he's thinking. He's using the example of a wicked man who has oppressed the poor, who has robbed the poor, essentially, for the sake of his own gain. And by implication, then, he's accusing Job of that specific sin. Now there are a couple of other evils that accompany this basic sin. One of those evils is covetousness, which he mentions in passing in verse 20. He knows no quietness in his heart. He will not save anything he desires. There you see his covetousness. And the other is pride. And that is mentioned especially in verse six. Though his haughtiness bounce up to the heavens and his head reaches to the clouds. And of course, the point that Zophar is making is for a man to oppress the poor in this way for his own advantage to enrich himself requires pride. He has to consider his own needs and even his own desires is more important than the poor man's well-being. so he's willing to do anything to the wicked man or to the poor man in order to advance his own prosperity and his own peace and his own ease. That takes a great deal of arrogance. The basic sin, then, is this oppression of the poor. And then, of course, what he's doing throughout the chapter as he's talking about this particular sin is he's explaining to Job what happens to these wicked men, to the men who do this specific kind of wickedness. And that begins in verse 7. So let's go to verse 7 and look at that. Verse 7a, he will perish forever like his own refuse. And what he means is he will perish forever like his own dung. Secondly, in verses 7b through 9, he basically says those who knew him and saw him will see him no more because his life is like a dream and it's insubstantial and it's quickly passing as those visions men see at night. His life does not last, therefore. That's the second thing that happens to him. The third thing is in verse 10, his children will seek the favor of the poor and his hands will restore his wealth. Now, commentators take that in two different ways. Some say that the children of this wicked man will beg from the poor because they have become so impoverished themselves. And by begging from the poor, they will seek to restore the wealth that their father has lost or that they have lost because, of course, his wealth will not remain. But others say, no, that's not the idea here. The idea here is rather that his children, the children of this wicked man, will seek the favor of the poor whom their father oppressed by restoring the goods that their father took from the poor. his hands will restore his wealth. That is, the children's hands will restore the poor man's wealth, the wealth that was taken from the father, by the father. I don't know which is correct. It's very difficult, I think, to determine. I'm more inclined to take the first interpretation rather than the last, but I think either one is probably possible. So that whatever it is, somehow his children are going to suffer. His children are going to have to restore the wealth which their father robbed from the poor or his children themselves are going to be impoverished because all that wealth that he accumulated is lost. And then the fourth thing that Zophar mentions in verse 11 His bones are full of his youthful vigor, but it will lie down with him in the dust. That is, he will perish in the midst of his youthful vigor. His life will be cut short." So those are the judgments that Zophar mentions, first of all. And he's quite brief about those judgments. But then we have a longer section in this speech of Zophar. verses 12 to 22, really, or 12 to 23, in which he argues that all these riches that this wicked man has accumulated, he will vomit up again. This is also part of God's judgment upon him, of course, but ultimately it's all going to be lost to him. That's a rather lengthy argument. As I said verses 12 to 22 or 23 So he begins then by saying he savored this wicked man savored this evil in his mouth It's like him He was like a man who's eating food that he really enjoys that he really loves and he loves the taste of this food and so he he keeps it in his mouth for as long as possible and to savor it, to enjoy the flavor of it before he swallows it and takes it into his stomach, though he spares it and does not forsake it, but still keeps it in his mouth. Yet, he says, when he swallows it down, he's going to find out that that food is poison in his stomach. He doesn't know it while it's in his mouth, while he's enjoying it, but ultimately, he's ingested poison, and the poison is going to make him sick, and his stomach is going to turn sour. That food is going to be like cobra venom within him. But then notice how in verse 15, he switches back to the rich man, the man who has made himself rich at the wicked, at the expense of the poor. He swallows down riches. So he's saying this rich man who has robbed the poor is like this man who savors food in his mouth as long as he can, but ultimately he has to swallow it and he finds out it's poison, it makes him sick. And this wicked man enjoys the accumulation of his riches and maybe even enjoys the oppression of the poor by which he gets them, but ultimately it's going to be poison to him. He's going to vomit the riches up again. They're all going to be lost to him. God casts them out of his belly. He's basically, in acquiring his riches in this way, sucking the poison of cobras, and the viper's tongue then will slay him, verse 16. And so, verses 17 and 18, he will not see the streams, the rivers flowing with honey and cream. He will restore that for which he labored and will not swallow it down. From the proceeds of business, he will get no enjoyment. Why? For he has oppressed and forsaken the poor. He has violently seized a house which he did not build." Now, verse 20 then carries on the same argument. In the Bible I have here, there's a paragraph marking. I think this carries right on from verse 19. Because he knows no quietness in his heart, he will not save anything he desires. Actually, that's a mistranslation, and an important mistranslation in this context. The Hebrew is actually, because he knows no quietness in his belly. You see, he swallowed down these riches, and these riches are now acting on his belly like poison, and so there's no quietness in his belly. His belly is not at ease. and therefore he will not save anything that he desires. All that he coveted and all that he accumulated through his wicked covetousness will be lost to him. Nothing will be left for him even to eat, verse 21. His well-being will not last. In his self-sufficiency, he will be in distress. and is in the midst of his self-sufficiency, all this will be gone from him and he'll suffer distress and every hand of misery will come against him. That's probably a reference to the hand of the poor whom he robbed. And all these miserable poor people whom he has made miserable will turn against him. When he is about to fill his stomach with all these riches, God will cast on him the fury of his wrath and will rain it on him while he is eating." So you see how he intertwines this whole figure of eating food with the idea of accumulating wealth by ungodly and unlawful means. And he says his judgment is going to come, and it's going to come quickly. The triumphing of the wicked is short. In verses 24 to 28, then, he paints for Job a vivid picture of God's judgments on this wicked man. And what we have to see here is this wicked man, as the judgments of God begin to fall on him, turns his back to God and starts to run away from him. He tries to escape these judgments. And as he's fleeing, God takes a spear with an iron tip, as it were, and throws it after him. And of course, does not miss. Or God takes his bronze bow, a bow of extraordinary strength, and shoots an arrow after him, which pierces him through. It goes into his back and comes out his belly. It is drawn and comes out of the body. Yes, the glittering point comes out of his gall. terrors come upon him." So that's the picture he gives us of the judgment of God, a terrifying picture of God bringing his painful and destroying judgments upon this man as he seeks to flee from them. Total darkness is reserved for his treasures. An unfanned fire will consume him it shall go ill with him who is left in his tent." That's hell itself. Heaven and earth will reveal his iniquity and testify against him. And so, as he perishes under the judgment of God, the increase of his house will depart, verse 28, and his goods will flow away in the day of his wrath. This is the portion from God for a wicked man. And that word portion is important there, isn't it? This wicked man who accumulated all this wealth by oppression thinks that is his portion. And Zophar says, no, that's not his portion. His portion is this, God's judgments, these terrifying judgments in darkness as God pursues him. and destroys him. This is the portion from God for a wicked man, the heritage appointed to him by God. So his inheritance is not, then, the enjoyment of the riches he has gained, but his inheritance is pain and terror and darkness and death. So Zophar has painted for Job this picture of the wicked man, this particular kind of wicked man who's accumulating wealth at the expense of the poor. And the implication is, Job, this is your sin. This is what you must have done. And this is why all these sufferings have come on you. These are the terrors and the arrows of God that are afflicting you. Now he doesn't make that explicit here, of course. He talks in a semi-objective kind of way, but he would not talk that way, of course, if he did not believe that this was somehow relevant to Job. But when you go over to chapter 22, you find out that Eliphaz picks up this implicit accusation of Zophar and makes it explicit. Verse 6 and following of chapter 22. This is now the third round of speeches, which we'll be talking about, God willing, in a couple of weeks. For you have taken pledges from your brother for no reason and stripped the naked of their clothing You have not given the weary water to drink, and you have withheld bread from the hungry. So Eliphaz makes it very explicit. This is what you've done, Job. This is your sin. This is why all this suffering has come upon you. What Zophar implies, Eliphaz says outright. So let's turn then to chapter 21 and Job's answer to this. Now again, I think there are several things that we want to notice about this, the character of the speech of Job. First of all, nowhere in this speech does he address God. We've seen that in all of his prior speeches, Job is thinking about God, he's talking about what God has done to him, he's addressing God, or he's at least thinking about what he's going to say to God. God is very much in his thoughts and he's very much turned towards God in those earlier speeches. But here there's nothing that's addressed to God. Secondly, Job does not here talk about himself. This is another thing that's been, he does that just a little bit at the beginning, but by and large he doesn't talk about himself. He does that in all the speeches that precede this. and he complains about his suffering, and he pleads with his friends to have pity on him, and he talks to God about what God has done to him. There's an awful lot in those speeches of Job about himself, but here he doesn't talk about himself. What Job has to say here is very objective. He talks about the wicked, not about himself. Thirdly, we should notice, that Job does not, in this chapter, answer specifically the charge of Zophar that he has oppressed the poor in order to enrich himself. He doesn't talk about that specific charge. Actually, he has nothing to say about that specific charge until chapter 29, verse 12 and following. There Job says, I delivered the poor who cried out, the fatherless and the one who had no helper. The blessing of a perishing man came upon me and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. He goes on in that vein. So there he answers this charge of Zophar and the one of Eliphaz as well. But here, no, he doesn't talk that way. Here he's more interested in addressing Zophar's basic point. that the triumphing of the wicked is short, and really, therefore, also the argument of his friends, that the wicked suffer judgment, suffer adversity, and the righteous prosper. Job is disputing that claim of Zophar, that the triumphing of the wicked is short. Mainly, he's answered them prior to this, not by that argument, but by saying, look at me. By trying to persuade his friends of his righteousness and saying to them, look, I'm an example, counter to your theology. Here he abandons that line of argument. He doesn't say, look at me anymore. He says, look at your own examples. You've been talking about what God does to the wicked man. Well, let me show you what God does to the wicked man. It's not what you have been saying to me. Verses 2 to 6 then are the introduction to Job's speech here. Listen carefully to my speech and let this be your consolation. Now Job does not mean, let this be comfort for yourselves. He means, let this be the comfort you give to me. He's abandoned any hope of receiving comforting words from his friends. He says, give me at least this comfort that you listen to me. Bear with me that I may speak. And after I've spoken, after I've finished, then go on mocking, if you will. So that's verses two and three. Then in verse four, as for me, is my complaint against a man? And if it were, why should I not be impatient? And I think the idea there is this, that if Job were complaining about some injustice that men had done to him, his friends would not have any problem with his impatience, with his complaining. They would probably say to him, yeah, we see what your friends have done to you, and you're right to complain of that injustice. They've really treated you badly. But Job says here, that's not my complaint. It's not against man, it's against God. And because my complaint is against God, you can't understand my impatience. You can't understand why I'm so troubled. You question me because It's God and not man who's afflicting me. But he says then, verse 5, you should be looking at me. You should be astonished at what's happening to me. Consider how great my suffering is, what God has actually done to me. If God has done such terrible things to me, I must have been very wicked indeed. You should be astonished at what God has done. Put your hand over your mouth. in astonishment. Even when I remember, when I recall what God has done to me, He says, I'm terrified. I wonder if I have sinned. Trembling takes hold of my flesh. You can't understand my situation because you have not looked properly at me and my circumstances. It's in verses 7 and following then that Job takes up the main thrust of his argument. Verses 7 to 16 are the verses we want to look at first here. And the basic point of these verses is the wicked live and become old and prosper. You see that already in verse 7. Why do the wicked live and become old Yes, become mighty in power. That's a flat contradiction of what Zophar has just been saying. The triumphing of the wicked is short. Job says it's not true. The wicked live. They become old. They become mighty in power. They prosper in their wickedness. And he goes on then in that vein for the next verses. And these verses are very clear, I think. Their descendants are established with them in their sight, their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear. Neither is the rod of God upon them. God does not chasten them every morning. Their bull breeds without failure, their cow calves without miscarriage. They send forth their little ones like a flock and their children dance. They sing to the tambourine and harp and rejoice to the sound of the flute. They spend their days in wealth and in a moment go down to the grave. That last line of verse 13, I think means this. There are no pangs in their death, as Asaph says in Psalm 73. their death is easy. They don't have to suffer with horrible sicknesses or with loss of all their goods or with all kinds of troubles that men have to face as they're going down to the grave. They go down in a moment without any pangs. And all of this prospering in life, which he describes in verses 8 to 13. He says they do while they are openly defying God. They say to God, depart from us. We don't want anything to do with you. We don't desire the knowledge of your ways. Don't speak to us by your prophets, by your revelation. Don't tell us that you are revealing yourself to us in your creation. We don't want to hear anything about you or about your ways. Who is the Almighty that we should serve him? He says in his heart, there is no God and therefore I owe him no service. And if there were a God and I would, I were expected to serve him, well, I would want something in return. What profit do we have if we pray to him? In other words, if you want us to worship God, then show us what benefit we're gonna get out of it. And if you can't show us that we're gonna get anything good out of it, forget it. We're not interested. It's very much like the words of some of the people of Israel after the return from captivity in Malachi 3 verses 14 and 15. They said, it is useless to serve God. What profit is it that we have kept his ordinance and that we have walked as mourners before the Lord of hosts? So now we call the proud blessed. For those who do wickedness are raised up. They even tempt God and go free. So he says they're openly defiant of God and nothing happens. No judgment comes. They live all their lives in prosperity and die at their ease. Now, this same kind of language is in a way, I think, found in Psalm 73 also. Psalm 73, verses 13 and 14, you remember what Asaph says there about his own circumstances. He says, surely I have cleansed my heart in vain and washed my hands in innocence. For all day long I have been plagued and chastened every morning." So he looks at the prosperity of the wicked, described in the earlier part of the psalm, and he looks at his own circumstances and he says, it's been no profit to me to live in the service of God. And you find a similar thing in Jeremiah chapter 12, verses 1 and following Jeremiah. 12 verses 1 and following. This is the prophet Jeremiah speaking to God. He says, They are righteous are you, O Lord, when I plead with you. Yet let me talk with you about your judgments. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are those happy who deal so treacherously? You have planted them. Yes, they have taken root. They grow. Yes, they bear fruit. You are near in their mouth, but far from their mind. But there's a significant difference between Asaph and Jeremiah and these wicked men that Job is describing, or the Israelites mentioned in Malachi chapter 3. And the difference is that Asaph and Jeremiah are approaching this whole problem of the prosperity of the wicked and the suffering of the righteous from the perspective of faith. And they're not saying, we will not serve God, we will not fear God, we don't want anything to do with God. They're simply expressing to God Himself, another important point, they're expressing to God Himself the trouble that they have when they look at this. Their trouble was basically the same as Job's. Job looked at this and he said, look, the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer. This is my problem. His friend's answer to the problem is, your theology is bad. You don't understand. God judges the wicked and he blesses the righteous. You're wicked. But Job said, no, that's not the case. These wicked men prosper. And they prosper in the practice of their defiance against God. Who is the almighty that we should serve him? Now, verse 16 is very difficult. And what I want to do here is simply read you a short paragraph from Christopher Ashe's commentary on that verse to show you what various commentators have done with it. He says, the meaning of verse 16a is unclear. It may mean that they are claiming their prosperity to be their own doing and under their own control. That is, they're saying, indeed, their prosperity is not in their hand. Or, to put it as a question, like the ESV does, indeed, is not their prosperity in their hand? That is, it's under their control. That's one interpretation. Or it may be and that they do not need God to become rich, therefore. Our happiness is certainly not His doing. Or it may be Job's critical judgment that the wicked are being foolish in thinking their prosperity is under their control, because it isn't. So the other possibility then is to take this not as a question, like the ESV, but as a statement. Their prosperity is not in their hand. Job is saying to his friends, look, I know the wicked prosper, I'm arguing that, but I know that that prosperity is not under their own control. And I know that ultimately God's going to deprive them of it, and that's why the counsel of the wicked is far from me. That's why I won't have anything to do with their ways." So in that case, that's kind of the interpretation I prefer, but again I think it's very difficult to be certain. In that case, what Job is doing here is he's kind of inserting a parenthetical remark into his comments about the prosperity of the wicked. And he's saying, yes, yes, prosperity's not in their hands and that's why their counsel's far from me, but my point is that the wicked do prosper in this world. And he returns to that in verses 17 and following then. How often is the lamp of the wicked put out? Look around you, he says. How often does it happen that their destruction comes upon them and the sorrows God distributes in his anger? And then verse 18, I think ought to be questions too. Some of the translations transform this into questions. Are they not like straw, or are they like straw before the wind, and like chaff that a storm carries away?" In other words, no, these wicked are not like straw before the wind, and like chaff that a storm carries away. Their destruction doesn't come to them. And then in verse 19, Job anticipates an objection from his friends. They say, Or you might say, God lays up one's iniquity for his children. You say, well, in answer to your problem that the wicked are prosperous in this life, God will judge their children then. He will bring their iniquity upon their children. You might say that to respond to me. And Job recognizes that that's an unbiblical idea. God does not punish the children for the sins of their fathers. But he also says, verse 19, let him, that is God, recompense him, that is the wicked man himself. Let him not recompense the wicked man's children, let him recompense the wicked man. That he, the wicked man, may know it. Let his, the wicked man's eyes, see his own destruction. and let him, the wicked man, drink of the wrath of the Almighty, not his children. Because, verse 21, what does he care about his household after? Once he's gone to the grave, is he going to care about what God does to his children? He's not going to be the least bit interested in that. That's no punishment for him then. Therefore, let God bring the recompense of the wicked man on his own head. And then the last part of verse 21 should be, when the number of his months is cut off, probably, instead of cut in half. Job is not arguing that the wicked man's life is cut short, simply that it's cut off, ultimately. For what does he care about his household after him when the number of his months is cut off? So you see there that all fits together then. Job is still arguing this point that the wicked prosper in their wickedness. And he concludes then in verse 22 by saying, God knows and sees all of this. All of this that I've been saying about the wicked. He's the one who actually brings these judgments on the wicked. Do you think, therefore, that you can teach God? Can anyone teach God knowledge since he judges those on high? He brings his judgment on the wicked, ultimately. But he also knows that he spares the wicked, sometimes for a long time in this life, giving them prosperity and ease and an easy death and all these good gifts. He knows that. And you're trying to teach him, as it were, contrary to what he himself practices and not just knows. In verses 23 and following, 23 to 26 really, Job takes a slightly different tack. He talks about two different kinds of men. One man who dies in his full strength. He's wholly at ease and secure. His pails are full of milk and the marrow of his bones is moist. So he dies in his prosperity. But then there's another man who dies in the bitterness of his soul, never having eaten with pleasure. That is, this is a man who struggled for food even all his life long, and he dies in the bitterness of his soul. both wicked men. Well, what happens when they die? The very same thing happens to both. The wicked man who lived in prosperity doesn't suffer anything worse than the man who never ate with pleasure and dies in the bitterness of his soul. They lie down alike in the dust and words cover them." Where is the justice in that? That's the point that Job is making there. There seems to be no justice in this. And then in verses 27 and following, he He says, now look, this is not just my own idea, but you can learn this from others. So let's look at those verses. Look, he says, he begins, I know your thoughts and the schemes with which you would wrong me. I understand now what you've been saying to me all along. He ought to, of course, by now they've been repeating it often enough. I know your thoughts. And you're going to say to me, because this is what you've been saying all along, where is the house of the prince? And where is the tent, the dwelling place of the wicked? You're going to say to me, look around you and tell me, where is the house of the prince? Where is this prosperity of the wicked man whom you've been describing? And Job's answer to that is verse 29, have you not asked those who travel on the road In other words, go talk to those who have more experience than you, who have broad experience of the world, who've wandered around from country to country and from place to place and observed men in all their different states and conditions and in their wickedness and in their righteousness and everything, and ask them, is it true that the triumphing of the wicked is short? And they'll tell you, no, the triumphing of the wicked is not short. Verse 30 is another difficult verse. You might take that as, well, the wicked live for a long time and they're reserved then for the day of doom. Their day of doom is put off for a long time. They shall be brought out on the day of wrath. But until then, nothing happens to them. Though there are some who take that to mean that this is something that Job's friends will also say to him. the wicked are reserved for the day of doom, they shall be brought out on the day of wrath, and Job's rejecting that whole idea. I suspect that the first is the correct interpretation, that he's simply saying their judgment is put off for many, many years. Who condemns then, in verse 31 and so on, who condemns his way to his face? That is, who talks to the wicked man about his sins? Who repays him for what he has done? He does all this wickedness and he gets away with it. Nothing happens. He shall be brought to the grave, surely. Yeah, all of us are brought to the grave. But when he's brought to the grave, he will be honored. A vigil will be kept over the tomb. The clods of the valley where he's buried will be sweet to him because he'll have followers. Everyone will follow him as countless have gone before him. And so Job ends in verse 34, how then can you comfort me with empty words, since falsehood remains in your answers? Your answers are false, and you expect me to get comfort from false answers. So, on the one hand, we have Zophar, whose basic message is the same as before, but who now, implicitly anyway, accuses Job of the specific sin of oppressing the poor. And then describing the shortness of the wicked's triumph, and Job contradicting him, answering him by saying, no, it's simply not true that the triumphing of the wicked is short. You don't know what you're talking about. But you see, Job is taking a different approach, isn't he? Before, his approach has been a much more personal approach. It's been mainly focused on this idea, look, you men, my friends, or you who claim to be my friends, look at me. Look at my life, if you will, and what you know of my life, and look at my sufferings, and ask yourself, are my sufferings proportionate to the wickedness you see in me? That's been his basic approach to them. But now, Job backs off from that personal approach and he tries a different approach, a much more objective approach. He tries to reason with them about their own theology and about the error in their own theology. And he says, look, you're saying something that's just not true. So it's not an appeal for their pity. It's not a complaint about how they're treating him. It's not even a complaint about how God's treating him. Not directly, anyway. It's simply a refutation of the theology of his friends. That doesn't mean that Job is getting over those feelings of terror and dismay that had come on him because of God's judgment, but I think what he's doing here is he's just suppressing that for the moment, and he's saying, let's try to be objective for a few minutes and talk about this theology which you've been presenting to me. It's all wrong. One of the errors in that theology, and that is, I think, something that we should talk about for a few minutes by way of closing here. is that his friends have gotten the idea in their heads that blessing is in things. And blessing is to be found in an easy life here in the world. Those who have prosperity, those who have an easy life, they are blessed. And those who don't are out of favor with God for one reason or another. And that's a very insidious theology, a very insidious idea. I think that that idea kind of gets into our own heads sometimes. We talk about the blessing of God as if it consists primarily or even only of the things we have and of the prosperity and ease of our lives. And when trouble comes, then we think that we're out of favor with God. That God is not blessing us anymore. And we even sometimes go to the length of praying for God to restore his favor because by giving us these things back again. And so we get sick and our primary concern is, God make us well. Or we lose money and our primary concern is that we may not have enough for the future. Or we have some trouble with friends or something like that and we pray that God will restore good relations. Any kind of trouble, we want the trouble to be fixed and we want it to be fixed here in this life. We seek things that are on earth rather than the things of the kingdom of heaven. and its righteousness. You hear it very often in prayer, don't you? Somebody's sick, let's pray for healing. Somebody's in trouble, let's pray for the trouble to be taken away. We have all these earthly concerns and we're all bound up with these earthly concerns as if That's where the blessing of God resides. And that was basically the teaching of Job's friends. Look, if you were doing good, God would give you all these good things. But you're sinning, and so he withholds them or takes them away. And Job says, no, your theology is wrong. It's a bad idea. God blesses the righteous and God curses the wicked and he may curse the wicked with good things and he may bless the righteous with affliction. It's good for me. Psalm 119 says, when I have been afflicted that I may learn your righteous judgments. May God bless us with his word.