Here comes Zophar!
"You have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials
so that your faith,
being of greater worth than gold
may be proved genuine."
—1 Peter 1:7
Zophar has obviously been chomping at the bit for a chance to put in his two-cents worth, and right off the bat he shows himself as the type who shoots first and asks questions later.
He very roughly and bluntly breaks out, "Should a man full of talk be justified?" His indignation has been growing as he listens to Job plead with God and say that he knows of no cause for his afflictions, but longs for an umpire to stand as judge between the Lord and himself. So Zophar feels it incumbent upon himself to be that judge.
Zophar is the third friend to counsel Job, and is the oldest of the three. This may account for his blunt language to a man of Job's position and character.
Eliphaz had only hinted to Job the conclusions they had come to and Bildad had gently echoed his words by saying, "if you were pure and upright" God would surely "awake for you." But Zophar doesn't mince his words. He is fed up! It is time Job was spoken to a little more plainly. Gentle dealing is evidently in vain, because he thinks Job is "full of talk" and "boasting." It is only mockery for him to appeal to God in the way he has done and to persist in saying his conscience is clear before Him.
I can almost picture these three men. I see Eliphaz slipping his thumbs into his suspenders, leaning back as he chews on a piece of straw, saying; "Well, as I see it Job . . ."
Bildad probably pats Job on the hands as he gently tries to comfort him with his shallow reasoning.
Zophar, on the other hand, probably throws his arms up in rage and disgust.
Zophar feels indignant on God's behalf; he wishes that God would open His lips against Job and show him that he was exacting even less that he deserved.
How a man could speak so boldly to God was beyond his comprehension. Did Job realize the greatness of the God he was appealing to so freely?
Is Job, as a man, able to fathom the mysteries of God? Can he probe the limits of El Shaddai? They are higher than the heavens, deeper than the depths of the grave, longer than this earth, and wider than the sea. But the Lord knows men; He can see iniquity even though a man does not.
What good does it do to talk to Job? "A witless man can no more become wise than a wild ass's colt can be born a man.
"Yet if you devote your heart to him and stretch out your hands to Him, if you put away the sin that is in your hand and allow no evil to dwell in your tent . . . certainly then . . ."
Here comes Job again
Sometimes a blunt friend is a blessing! Job had only winced under the reproachful sarcasm and assumed spiritual authority of Eliphaz. In answer, he expressed bitter disappointment at his lack of kindness and sympathy with him and then poured out a pathetic account of his pitiful condition, as a man drawing near to the grave.
With Bildad's gentle reasoning and evident desire to encourage him, Job almost sunk into deeper despair as he considered the omnipotence of God, and struggled with the question of "how" to be counted just before Him.
The rough language of Zophar jerks the slack out of Job and wakes up the faith that was buried under all his self-pity. He is stirred to a tenacious hold on the character of God that eventually carries him through his trial.
This "dying man" has a little more life in him than he knows. He answers Zophar as bluntly as Zophar had spoken to him.
"Yes, I realize you know everything! All wisdom will die with you! But I know a few things myself —I am not inferior to you!" Job cries. "Zophar, you're causing me to be a laughingstock to all my friends to talk to me like this. . . . I, who have in the past called upon God, and received his answer, the man that has walked with God and known that he was accepted by Him . . . is being laughed at by his neighbors.
"But men at ease have contempt for misfortune," says the stricken man.
Job is as blunt as Zophar when he says, "Ask the animals and they will teach you!" Who does not know that in the hand of the Lord is the life of every living thing?
Zophar had spoken of the greatness of God, but all nature bore witness to this. The ear could test words, the same way the palate tested meat, and Job could not discern an ounce of extraordinary light in Zophar's language.
"You think that wisdom is with aged men? But I say that wisdom and might is with God." The God he pleaded with was "the One who worked all things after the counsel of His Own will. It was He alone who had understanding."
Zophar had wished that God would open His lips against Job, but Job was not afraid of this. He desired with all his heart to speak with God. Like he said, he doesn't feel inferior to Zophar in his knowledge of the Lord. His friends supposedly came to help him, but they were worthless physicians who smeared him with lies because they were charging him with things that were utterly untrue. What good is a physician who cannot diagnose the case? Sure, they charge you for the office call, but you still go away sick. It would show more wisdom if they would just acknowledge their ignorance and be altogether silent. (That is a polite way to say, "shut up").
His friends tried to reason with Job. Now they can listen to his reasoning. They had tried to contend for God. What mockery! "The Lord never once said the things that you are putting in His mouth! Does God want your help if you are going to twist the truth for him? Hey, guys, how would you stand under examination?"
They never would have spoken to Job back when he was a big shot the way they have spoken to him on the ash heap. Weren't they afraid of treating a fellow servant of God this way?" These tremendous statements you have made have about as much value as ashes. Your defense of God is fragile as a clay vase! Why don't you just shut up and leave me alone, so that I can speak. I'm willing to face the consequences, whatever they are."
Stepping out in faith
Zophar's harshness puts a fire under Job and drives him to a desperate venture of faith. Whatever the cost, he will take his life in his hands and cast himself on the character of God. He will trust God no matter what happens! He still feels that as Almighty and majestic as the Lord is, he can still argue his case with Him and that it might actually work toward his deliverance.
He knows that a hypocrite or a godless man could never enter His presence but he will "argue his case" before Him, even with his friends listening on. Maybe he cannot tell you how a man is counted just before God, but he knows that he somehow will be justified.
Looking at his would-be helpers, Job asks if there is anyone that still wants to argue with him about it because he's in such a state that he just can't hold his peace. Job just does not know of any sin that he has committed and certainly does not know why he is suffering. He can only think God is dealing with him arbitrarily and he cannot comprehend that.
Job's appeal to God
Since Job's friends are charging him with reaping what he has sown, and that he is suffering less than his iniquity deserves, he turns to the Lord and cries out, "What have I done? Point out my sin to me, don't hide from me and turn me over to my enemy. Would you blame a leaf that is blown about by the wind? Will you chase dry stubble?"
Job starts searching his heart again and wondering "are you making me pay for the foolishness of my youth? I feel like I've been locked up in a prison without a trial, like a fallen, rotting tree or a moth-eaten coat, only fit to be thrown aside." Yet, he still doesn't know of any definite iniquity to cause all of this.
Powerlessness
Have you noticed that when life is good, we tend to have no questions, but when life is bad, we have no answers? Job says, "Men at ease have contempt for misfortune" because the secret of successful living seems, in happy times, so perfectly obvious, so clear and easy, that anyone who happens to be struggling with life appears ignorant and foolish. "Poor wretch!" we think to ourselves. "Why can’t he see the stupid mistakes he is making? If only he would do this or that, things would turn out well for him." No matter how wise and good a person may have been in the past, when misfortune strikes we tend to see it as exposing the victim's hidden faults. If a man has a heart attack, then he was probably working too hard. If our neighbor goes bankrupt, then he probably had it coming to him. Whatever our theology might be, in any tragedy there is just something in our finite minds that immediately looks to human causes.
The problem is that if human beings are going to be held responsible for everything bad that happens to them, then the plain corollary is that we also have the power to effect our own good. The problem is, such a watertight system of cause and effect, leaves no room for dependent faith, no room for the gospel. Error replaces sin, and divine mercy is represented as human virtue. Job defines this humanistic idolatry as, "those who carry their god in their hands." The god of these people is only as strong as their own strength, only as wise as their own intellect and only as good as the tangible blessings they acquire.
The truth is, in our own strength and power, there is nothing we can do about suffering. We can't reason our way out of it, run away from it, or do anything whatsoever to relieve our circumstances on our own. Yea, I know we try to do it all through drugs, suicide, alcohol, adultery, and a myriad of other evil things. Some try to overcome the situation with their "holy" pursuits. We figure that if we can pray enough, have a positive-confession and do many other "righteous" things, we will come out of it. I am very much in favor of a positive confession, an affirmative attitude, prayer at all times, and the absolute authority of the Name of Jesus. That being said, there are times we are powerless to help ourselves, it is up to God to help us. When we adopt this kind of stance under conditions of trauma, we will discover the highest kind of faith.
Obviously, this kind of passive strategy can be abused. We are required to "put on the full armor of God," and "To pray without ceasing." The point is that no amount of discipline, positive thinking, or holy worry can in itself, adds a single hour to our life or an ounce of happiness to our heart. The admission of personal powerlessness is fundamental to faith, and this is where the difference lies between Job and his friends. His friends believe that not only is Job able to help himself, but that they too can help him. This is the primary flaw with our modern day "counseling." In the words of Psalm 60:11-12, "The help of man is worthless. With God we will gain the victory." As Job puts it, "To God belongs wisdom and power; counsel and understanding are his" (Job
Whatever power we appear to exercise is only for a season and within a very limited sphere. The President of the country is President only for a term, and in his own home, he may have no authority at all. In our recent history, we have seen that they may not even have authority over their own behavior. The general who commands thousands of troops might be totally powerless to command enough discipline to reduce his waistline, and he might end his days in a hospital bed being ordered by women in white. Some may believe I have a way with words (although some believe too many words), but when it comes to dealing with my own kids, I may at times be quite inept. As Thomas Millar writes in his book Biochemistry Explained, "Man has a will to power, but he has no real power. Any one of us could get leukemia tomorrow. How's that for being captain of your fate? We are all just children trying to grow up. We think that means getting power. What it really means is learning to accept the powerless nature of the human condition."
The First Gospel
It is refreshing to see Job turn the discussion away from the claustrophobic arguments between him and his friends. "Ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?" (Job 12:7-9)
Job points to the animals, the birds, the fish, and the very earth itself as conspicuous and trustworthy beacons of wisdom. When God finally speaks at the end of the story, even He does not bring any abstract arguments. Instead, the Lord's entire appeal is to the wonders of nature. The result seems to move the whole-convoluted debate between Job and his friends into the fresh air of the real world.
Job's primary argument to support his theology looks to the real world. Job's faith grabs hold of all the strangeness and wildness of reality itself, while the faith of his friends does not. If you want to know the ways of the Lord, just look around you. If your theories and your theologizing do not mesh with the "real" world, then what good are they? Even a dog has more knowledge of God than you do!
The Apostle Paul writes, "Since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Rom. 1:20). Nature, Paul implies, was God's original word to man, His original revelation. It was only when people rejected this perfectly obvious and adequate display of His glory that the Lord was obliged to change tactics. He then began to deal with sin through the special revelations of Scripture, and ultimately through the message of the cross. Nevertheless, nature still stands as His first and sufficient revelation, His first gospel. Mother nature is theology's subconscious. She is our Father's mother tongue.
This can be a difficult concept for Christians. We tend to undervalue the role of creation as a revelation of God's love and care, as a revelation of God's glory. However, while it is important that the Christian faith be book-centered, it is just as important that it not be bookish. What Job does in this passage is to urge his friends to get their noses out of their books, out of their scholarly religious treatises, and to take a good look around them at the real world. As David wrote in Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands."
The Squeaky Wheel
Amazingly, Job really believes that if he calls on God, God will appear and answer him. This is astounding. He seems obstinately determined to talk to God face to face and to hear answers from God's own lips, and he will not settle for anything less. Indeed the very essence of Job's faith is this insistence on having a personal encounter—more than that, a personal relationship—with the Lord God Almighty. It is as if he knew and took absolutely literally the promise of Jesus, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you" (Luke 11:9)
It is significant to understand that this verse in Luke comes after the parable of a man who needed bread in the middle of the night and so went pounding on the door of his sleeping friend. "I tell you," Jesus concludes the story, "though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's persistence and boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs." Is it wrong to be stubbornly determined to have a speaking-terms relationship with God? No, on the contrary it is wrong not to be determined enough. "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door," Jesus warned, "because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, 'Sir, open the door for us.' But he will answer, 'I don't know you or where you come from'" (Luke
There is a similar moral behind the parable Jesus told about the persistent widow in Luke 18. She kept going back to the judge with the same plea, "Grant me justice against my adversary!" The judge kept refusing her, and then finally the judge said to himself, "Because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her constant pleas." That is what Job is doing. He is also asking for justice and does it in the stubborn hope that somehow, in the final analysis, justice will prevail. It is amazing! This very stubbornness God accepts as faith. Here is another example, the prophet Habakkuk's book begins, "How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?" (Hab. 1:2). The fact that God seems to be ignoring this prayer does not deter the prophet from continuing to call. Some of you consider this proof of the silliness of faith in God to begin with. Not Habakkuk, he is resolved to "stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts. I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint" (Hab. 2:1). How long the prophet had to wait for his answer we are not told. Apparently, the wait was well worth his while, because the next verse in the book declares, "Then the Lord replied." Two verses later appear the famous words, "The righteous will live by his faith"—a statement so much admired by the New Testament apostles that they quote it no less than three times (see Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:1; Heb. 10:38).
We all have questions for God. But hardly anyone is willing to hold out and wait (let alone to wheedle and pester the Lord) for an answer. Most people will not wait on God even for one minute. Why not? Frankly, I believe it is because we truly do not expect an answer. Job's friends are scandalized (as many religious people would be today) by the very thought of bringing God directly and personally involved in their lives. "Just imagine!" the must have thought; "What kind of a kook does this Job think he is, calling on God as though He were a person like you or I, and actually expecting an answer? Hey, this is a serious theological discussion we're having, don't go dragging any of this charismatic nonsense into it!" But the message of Job, Habakkuk, Jesus' parables on prayer and the lives of all serious believers over the centuries is the same: the word of the Lord comes without fail to those whose faith takes a peculiar form—the form of despair honestly and passionately expressed, combined with stubborn persistence in holding out for an answer. If just a few people in a dead church would get down on their knees and rattle the gates of Heaven, refusing to be comforted until the Lord brought revival, then, I believe with my whole being, God would respond and "rend the heavens and come down" (Isa. 64:1)! In the economy of the Holy Spirit, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Holy Zeal
When I think of the reality of God and the current condition within most of our lives, I am continually driven to look at the 18th chapter of I Kings. This is the episode where Elijah meets the enemies of God on
So then, Elijah fixed up his altar, puts the sacrifice on it, arranges it nice and pretty and even pours water on it to make it harder for his God to light the fire. (Go read the story, it's great!).
Unfortunately, in our individual lives, we lay out the altar and divide the sacrifice, arrange it real pretty, just as Elijah did on
There are all kinds of Bible teachers out there. I am just one of millions. Each of us tries to set forth correct doctrine, but too many seem satisfied to teach the fundamentals of faith and remain totally unaware there is no manifest Presence in our ministry or anything unusual in our personal lives.
We minister constantly to believers who feel within their hearts a longing, which our teaching simply does not satisfy. It is horrendous to realize that God's children are starving while actually seated at the Father's table. A. W. Tozer pointed out, "it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself."
I encourage you to read Tozer's classic work The Pursuit of God. It is writing that will stir your heart and challenge you to a holy pursuit. Listen to his words of wisdom, desire, and passion:
". . . there are to be found increasing numbers of persons whose religious lives are marked by a growing hunger after God Himself. They are eager for spiritual realities and will not be put off with words, nor will they be content with correct `interpretations' of truth. They are athirst for God, and they will not be satisfied til they have drunk deep at the Fountain of Living Water . . ."
". . . They desire God above all. They are athirst to taste for themselves the `piercing sweetness' of the love of Christ about Whom all the holy prophets did write and the psalmists did sing . . ."
". . . unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience, they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God . . ."
". . . The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world; we Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His Word . . . the whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego . . . The man is `saved,' but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God . . . we have almost forgotten that God is a Person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can . . . but full knowledge of one personality by another cannot be achieved in one encounter. It is only after long and loving . . . intercourse that the full possibilities of both can be explored.
". . . God is a Person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys feels, loves, desires and suffers . . .
" You and I are in little (our sins excepted) what God is in large. Being made in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him. In our sins we lack only the power. The moment the Spirit has quickened us to life in regeneration our whole being senses its kinship to God and leaps up in joyous recognition. That is the heavenly birth without which we cannot see the
". . . come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better. `Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight'; and from there he rose to make the daring request, `I beseech thee, show me thy glory.' God was frankly pleased by this display of ardour, and the next day called Moses into the mount, and there in solemn procession made all His glory pass before him . . ."
"David's life was a torrent of spiritual desire, and his psalms ring with the cry of the seeker and the glad shout oft he finder. Paul confessed the mainspring of his life to be his burning desire after Christ. `That I may know Him,' was the goal of his heart, and to this he sacrificed everything. `Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I may win Christ' (Phil 3:8).
". . . How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of `accepting' Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more seek Him."
". . . every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our inner experience, the hollowness of our worship, and the servile imitation of the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at all . . ."
". . . If we would find God amid all the religious externals we must first determine to find Him, and then proceed in the way of simplicity . . ."
". . . When religion has said its last word, there is little that we need other than God Himself . . ."
If you are not excited about spending time with Jesus here on earth, what makes you think things will change in heaven?
Yes!
Here's Job complaining and carrying on when he finally states, "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him; I will surely defend my ways to his face" (Job
Remember the Devil's initial taunt, "Does Job fear God for nothing?" (Job 1:9). Without realizing what he is doing, Job now delivers a direct answer to that taunt, and his answer is a resounding yes! YES! —Job's trust in God is unconditional. YES! —This man is not just out for himself. YES! —There is such a thing as faith that carries absolutely no ulterior motive—in other words, there is such a thing as love! And YES! —Job possesses this entirely disinterested faith and love towards God. Even if God Himself should strike him dead, Job declares he will not cease to trust Him.
Here is the kind of faith against which the Devil has nothing to say. Here is the faith of a man in which neither death nor hell has any hold. I can think of only two other places in the Bible in which such faith is so purely and intensely expressed. The first occasion is in the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac, and secondly, in the willing death of the Son of God on a cross.
What is the secret of such faith? Maybe the secret lies in the second part of Job's statement. "I will surely defend my ways to his face." We need to accept without questioning, without hesitation and without equivocation our gift of righteousness. Even when the reality of that righteousness is what seems most in question. The time we need to cling the hardest to the promised and inalienable truth of our righteousness, is when we feel most overwhelmed and defeated by the onslaughts of the Devil. When we are tormented by the pressures of the world, the weight of our own sin, and by the threat of death itself. This is the hope of the gospel. This is the time we cannot afford to fail to defend our way to God's face. What is our way? Our way is Jesus Christ.
The Legal Metaphor
Job states emphatically, "Now that I have prepared my case, I know I will be vindicated. Can anyone bring charges against me?" (Job 13:18-19). Then Isaiah seems to quote Job when he says, "He who vindicates me is near. Who then will bring charges against me?" (Isa 50:8). Even Paul seems to cite both of them in the familiar passage in his letter to the Roman church, when he wrote, "Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns?" (
Job's confidence in his innocence and his yearning to have his name cleared take the form of an earnest plea to have his case tried in court—and not just any court, but before the judgment-seat of God Himself. Job seemed to understand that the God of the universe must ultimately be a God of justice, and that if only Job's case could be tried before the highest courts his innocence will be affirmed.
In the Gospels, we often hear Jesus speak to the Pharisees as though He was giving formal testimony in a court of law. He often prefaced his statements with "I tell you the truth" (or in the King Jim version, "Verily, verily, I say unto you")—almost as if He was swearing on a stack of Bibles. That seemed to irritate the Pharisees. They preferred to keep things on the level of a straightforward theological debate. Jesus, on the other hand, could see what to their eyes was invisible: the heavenly courtroom, with God the Father presiding on the bench. The Pharisees tried to discredit this by saying, "Here your are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid" (John
Job does the same thing. Now he obviously has never actually seen the supreme court of God, like Jesus had, but he assumes its existence and calls on it to convene. He even addresses himself to it in advance, filing what today we would call a formal deposition. This is the context in which Job, with unshakable conviction, asserts, "Now that I have prepared my case, I know I will be vindicated."
In a sense, to be a Christian is to spend our life preparing our case for Judgment Day—carefully and patiently gathering evidence to parade before the Devil whenever he accuses us, and before the Lord when He comes to judge the earth. It is to our benefit to be as certain as we possibly can, of the strength of our defense. The only way to do this is to make very sure that our stand is squarely on the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and not on any merits of our own. Jesus is the divine defense counsel appointed to all who believe, and unlike Perry Mason and Matlock, He doesn't lose His cases. For those He defends there is really only one question, and that is whether we are prepared to accept and to trust in the divine fiat of our righteousness in Christ. This righteousness is a carte blanche, a final and unappealable verdict of Not Guilty that places us beyond the law. It is a condition entirely uncomplicated by fine print, loopholes, liens, riders, or codicils. "If God is for us," declares Paul, "who can be against us?" (Rom.
God is my Witness
"Only grant me these two things, O God," Job asks, "and then I will not hide from you: Withdraw your hand far from me, and stop frightening me with your terrors" (Job
These two prayer requests of Job's happen to be the very conditions that God in fact grants to anyone that accepts the message of the gospel. By faith in Jesus Christ, believers are, first, "saved from God's wrath" (Rom. 5:9), and secondly we are "enabled to serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days" (Luke 1:74-75).
As we just saw above, Job understands that spiritual truth is like legal truth. In both areas, a case may appear hopelessly complicated on the surface, and yet underneath the confusion there is always a hard kernel of truth. The defendant is guilty as charged or he is not; either the sinner is saved or he is not. This present life may be clouded with gray, but the job of the legal system is to make everything black and white. It brings all the facts out into the open to weight them and pass judgement. While human law accomplishes this goal imperfectly, God's law will accomplish it perfectly in the end.
Now, let’s ponder that a moment. We all know that in our earthly legal system there are inequities and injustice. Just as outlaws of society can get off scot-free, so blatant offenders against God can go on living as though they are innocent, when the fact is they are guilty as sin. By the same token, righteous believers who have been acquitted of their sins can, through unrelenting pressures of the world and the flesh and the Devil, turn around and live their daily lives just as though they are still under condemnation.
This is the very corner Job's friends are trying to back him into, but he will have none of it. Job knows in his heart that his God is a God of love and forgiveness. He seems to understand the message of I John 4:10, "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." Job is certainly aware that he himself does not love God as he should; but he also knows that his love for God is not the basis of his faith. The basis of his faith is God's love for him. The fact that he is not feeling a peaceful, joyful trust and love towards his God is not what is on the top of his mind. What is, however, is the fact that God loves him, In his crying out to God to bring his case to court, Job is not being unduly demanding; he is simply asking his legal rights from a just God.
When the position of the Apostle Paul was called into question, he went so far as to say, "I call God as my witness" (II Cor.
