Job 8:1-22 - When Truth Is Used Without Love (Session 12)

In this episode of Reasoning Through the Bible, Job 8 is examined verse by verse as Bildad enters the conversation with Job and speaks even more harshly than Eliphaz. This study explores Bildad’s rigid theology, his appeal to tradition, his cruel assumptions about Job’s children, and his belief that earthly prosperity always proves a person is right with God. The passage exposes the dangers of reducing God’s ways to simplistic formulas and shows how true statements can still be used in deeply unloving ways.

This Bible study is especially helpful for listeners searching for teaching on Job 8, Bildad and Job, prosperity theology, tradition vs Scripture, suffering and sin, misusing theology, and biblical wisdom in suffering. Job 8 provides a powerful warning against harsh religious certainty and points believers back to Scripture as the true standard of truth.

Transcript

How Tradition Should Shape Faith

Meeting Bildad In Job 8

Reading Job 8:1-7

SPEAKER_01 0:16

How much should tradition shape our lives today? How much should tradition shape our teaching and our beliefs inside the church? Well, surprisingly enough, way back in the book of Job in the Old Testament, we meet a man who thinks that he has a very high view of tradition, and we're going to see whether he uses it in a good way or not. Hi, my name's Glenn. I'm here with Steve. We are reasoning through the book of Job today. We trust that you will join along with us. Open your Bibles to the book of Job, chapter eight, and we're going to meet a man that is one of Job's so-called friends. He came along when he heard about Job's tragedies, sat with him for seven days in silence, and now has listened to a conversation that Job had with Eliphaz. But today, this new friend is going to be even more blunt and even more rude to Job. He cuts no corners and he is very direct in his thoughts to Job. He's quite insensitive. And we're going to see that as we continue with this conversation between Job and his friends. So, Steve, can you read the first seven verses of Job chapter 8?

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Then Bildad the Shuhite responded, How long will you say these things and the words of your mouth be a mighty wind? Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert what is right? If your sons sinned against him, then he turned them over to the power of their wrongdoing. If you will search for God and implore the compassion of the Almighty, if you are pure and upright, surely now he will stir himself for you and restore your righteous estate. Though your beginning was insignificant, yet your end will increase greatly.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

So we meet this man, Bildad, Bildad the Shoehite, he's one of the friends of Job. And Steve, I have a question. How do we know that Bildad is a really short man? We know because he's a shoe height. And if you're a shoe height, then you're really small. That's how we know. He's a shoehound. All shoe heights are really short. But we do know that he's more blunt and he's more insulting in his words. Verse two, he says that when Job speaks, he's just making wind. Today we might use the term, you're just a blowhard. He's just a lot of hot air. Bildad would be very popular today because of the snarky comments that people like to hear and get a lot of popular clicks on the internet. But if we really look at what he's actually saying, if we look at verse four, Steve, what is Bildad saying to Job in verse four?

SPEAKER_00 3:12

He's given a dogmatic statement. He's saying, if your sons sinned against him, meaning God, Yahweh, then he, Yahweh, turned them over to the power of their wrongdoing. In other words, he turned them over to themselves, much like what God would do with a person with a reprobate mind or something like that. He just gives up on them and turns them over to themselves. That's what he's saying in verse four.

Prosperity Logic And Blaming Victims

SPEAKER_01 3:37

That's a very callous and insensitive thing to say. Remember, Job just lost all of his children. Bildad comes up, says, Wow, they must have sinned. That's why they turn them over. And then the next verse, if you search for God, then maybe that won't happen to you. It's a very callous and insensitive thing to say. And it starts from a view of God that I think is just a very wrong place. He's assuming here that people that are right with God are always prosperous. So, Steve, is it true? Because there are people that still today run around the countryside that teach this, that say that if you're right with God, then you're going to be prosperous as far as earthly wealth and earthly health. Is that true or not?

SPEAKER_00 4:25

No, we're not always going to be healthy. And as I pointed out in my last session, we have earthly bodies. They're all going to be susceptible to diseases that come along. So, no, we're not going to be healthy all the time. Bildad's view of God is extremely legalistic. What he's basically saying there in verse four as well is that remember, his children were all killed. And what Bildod is basically saying there is that, well, they perished for a reason because they were guilty of something. Therefore, God took them out. We need to watch out for those who make rigid, simplistic statements about God. One plus one equals two type of theology. In other words, something that's very black and white, very legalistic, is almost always wrong. It's a wrong way to approach God.

Tradition Versus Scripture As Authority

SPEAKER_01 5:18

This is exactly a wrong thing to teach. It comes from a viewpoint that says that if life is good, it's because you're right with God and life is bad, it's because somehow you sinned. Bill Dadden was the original prosperity preacher, the original health and wealth doctrine. These people are still here today. They teach that if you just have enough faith, then things are going to go your way. And if things are not going your way, it's because you don't have enough faith. Well, we know for a fact, it's not opinion, we know for a fact that's not correct, simply because three times in the beginning of the book, God himself says that Job was blameless, upright, and God-fearing. So Bildad wrongly says that Job can get wealthy if he turns to God, he can get healthy if he turns to God. It's a horrible teaching, simply because many times we just don't know why things happened. We don't know God's counsel. Even in Job, we don't know why God allows these things. Many times he has a grander purpose than we realize. The idea that God's purposes can be reduced down to physical money and physical health is frankly insulting to God. And the entire book of Job screams against it. That's why this friend, so-called friend, is saying it just very callous, insensitive, and horrible teachings, just like the prosperity preachers do today. In the next verses, Bildad continues with his ideas. I'm going to start in verse eight saying this please inquire of past generations and consider these things searched out by their fathers. For we are only of yesterday and know nothing, because our days on earth are as a shadow. Will they not teach you and tell you and bring forth words from their minds? So with this, Steve, he's saying we should look to the fathers for truth. We've only been here since yesterday. He wants to appeal to the ancients and say, well, what they passed down was really the valuable thing. What we think today is not very important unless we've gotten it from many generations ago. So what's your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 7:36

That's what's done many times today. Whenever you get into some sort of a theological discussion with many people, is they'll point to what they call the church fathers and they'll give reasons for their argument that they're making with you. Well, the church fathers believe this, and really they're doing the same thing of what Bildod is doing here. He's saying if the teaching was accepted by the ancients, by the ones that went before us, then that must be correct. Well, I can tell you that the church fathers also made many mistakes. And so once again, Bildod is looking at it in a black and white type of a situation. He's not giving any sort of mercy there for gray area or anything else. Our standard must be scripture itself, not what others have said about it. Tradition can crystallize error as much as it can truth. So we need to bounce not only what other people say in our modern times against the scripture, but we also need to bounce our former church fathers and our former people that went before us. Scripture is the plumb bob of truth, not necessarily what other people think about it or what they have commented on it.

Papyrus Images And Calling Job Godless

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Many groups hold church tradition on an equal footing with Holy Scripture. And we know this is incorrect for several reasons. One of the passages they hold up to hold to that church tradition position, there's a place in the New Testament where Paul tells people, follow the traditions that I gave you. Well, that same author, Paul, he appointed elders at Ephesus. He appointed the church leaders. And then he later told them in Acts, from among you will come false teachers. So think of it, he was telling them, from among the people that I passed their traditions on to, from among the people that I helped appoint, those people will bring in false teaching. Many places in the New Testament we're told that they're false teachers that come from inside the church. So as you said, Steve, the only objective place we have for truth is not infallible human beings. And it's not infallible human beings' interpretation of the scriptures. It's in the scriptures themselves. Therefore, we should do our absolute best to follow what the scriptures tell us, and the Holy Spirit Himself will guide us in this. That's the promise. Guide us as individuals. The fathers and tradition can bring about an equal amount of error as people in Job's day and the people in Paul's day and the people in our day. The scriptures are the only true sense of truth that we have. In the next section, Bildad suggests that Job has forgotten God and tells what happens to such people. Steve, can you start at verse 11 and read down to verse 18?

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Can papyrus grow tall without a marsh? And the rushes grow without water, while it is still green and not cut down, yet it withers before any other plant. So are the paths of all who forget God, and the hope of the godless will perish. His confidence is fragile, and his trust is a spider's web. He depends on his house, but it does not stand. He holds on to it, but it does not endure. He flourishes before the sun, and his shoots spread out over his garden. His roots wrap around a rock pile, he grass a house of stones. If he is removed from his place, then it will deny him, saying, I never saw you.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

In verse 11, he talks about papyrus. It's a plant that grows along the waterline. Russius is another plant there. Bildad is saying that just like papyrus can't grow without water, people can't live without God. So that's a true statement. But what in verse 13, Steve, what does he then accuse Job of doing?

SPEAKER_00 11:54

In verse 13, he accuses Job of forgetting God and the hope of the godless will perish. Again, Bildod is just really coming down hard on Job and giving him very dogmatic black and white theology. It's just not good theology at all.

True Words Used In Cruel Ways

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Not only is it not good theology, he's taking half-truths and mixing them with some presuppositions that he really just doesn't know about Job personally. He's accusing Job of forgetting God. He's calling Job godless. Bildad is saying to Job, what you're leaning on for support is like a spider's web. You're not leaning on God, you're leaning on a spider's web, and it just gives way. He's accusing him of having his roots not in good soil, but in a pile of rocks. If a plant puts their roots in a rock pile, they're not going to get good soil there. There's no good nutrients there. Bildad is making a direct accusation that Job's problems are because he forgot God. Bildad is saying, Job, you've left God behind. You're depending on something else. You're not remembering the truths that were passed down to us by past generations. And if you were to ask Bildad, he would say, you know, it doesn't look good not to tell the truth. So I should look at Job and look him in the eye and tell him the truth. And the truth is he forgot God, and that's why he's having all of these painful circumstances. But in reality, Bildad is taking half-truths and using them in a way that is not loving towards God. Bildad may have had some good theology. He's true there. God does indeed bless people. And if we forget God, we're going to have troubles. But he doesn't know what Job is really leaning on. He's making this assumption. Bildad took some good theology and used a very bad method to accuse Job of things that he really just doesn't know. So, Steve, are there people today who have perhaps a good Christian teaching, but they apply it in a very hurtful way?

SPEAKER_00 14:14

The analogy of the papyrus and the reed is being applongly, and it collapses whenever you start thinking about what he's actually saying. Why? Because unlike plants, humans possess moral agency, and we're all created in the image of God. That's completely different than what nature is created, plants and other things. Sometimes the righteous suffer, sometimes the wicked prosper. This is what happens in God's economy. So nature's patterns don't exhaust God's purposes that he has to bring about his will. Now, that all being said, we're in nowhere saying that what Job is going through is God's will for him to go through it. We know the reasons why he's going through it. That's lined out in chapters one and two. But the point being is just what you mentioned. He's taking something and he's misapplying it. We should be cautious, not only people that do that, but also be cautious of us ourselves to make sure that we are really thinking through the analogies that we give and that we build strong arguments based on scripture and not based off of emotion or based off of things that we think that maybe scripture says.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

There are people today who start from a place of good Christian teaching and they have good beliefs, but they go out and they apply, usually it's some moral failure of someone else, someone has sinned. So these people take a Christian teaching that yes, that activity is indeed a sin, but they go apply it in a very callous, hurtful way. By contrast, Jesus, yes, he would always tell people, go and sin no more. He never winked at sin, but he always applied it in a loving way. What Jesus got the most angry at were the Pharisees who were going around starting from a place of true teachings, but they applied it in a very unloving, cruel way. And there are people today that are doing the same thing. They go around and they call people names. They start from what may be a good Christian teaching, but they're very cruel, very hurtful. And my friend, that is not the biblical way. To be a bildad and go accuse Job of something that we really don't know what is going on inside of his head. Or Bildad wasn't there when these tragedies happened. If Job were to ask a question, he might give the correct answer, but Bildad is being very cruel and very hurtful.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

One thing that we should keep in mind as we go through here, Glenn, is that we're not just learning from Job and taking in what he is saying and how he is relating to God and his emotions and his feelings. What we're also learning is from his friends and their responses to him. Keep this in mind as we continue to go through Job. This is a multidimensional teaching and learnings that we're going to get out of the book of Job. It's not just focused on Job himself.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

Bildad continues with his accusations and his charges against Job. He says this, starting in verse 19: Behold, this is the joy of his way, and out of the dust others will spring. Behold, God will not reject a person of integrity, nor will he help evildoers. He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with joyful shouting. Those who hate you will be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked will no longer exist. Dildad says here in verse 20, especially, that God will always help the person of integrity and will never help evildoers. Steve, is that true or not?

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Well, it might be true in something that we would want to think is always true. But again, we see that rain falls on both the blessed and the wicked as well. His argument there that God does not reject innocent men and he doesn't give strength to those who are evil, it's maybe theologically true, but pastorally cruel. In other words, is it something that we actually need to say to something that's somebody else, especially whenever it's directed at somebody that's innocent? Keep in mind that Job is innocent and he's suffering under what's happening to him. And it implies that the current suffering proves current guilt. So it's something that might be true applied in a wrong way, because we don't know as human beings what the actual perspective of that person is or whether or not that person is guilty or not. It's much like being fruit inspectors and going around and saying, oh, that person is saved and that person is not saved. Well, how do you know that? Well, because that person's bearing fruit, this person is not bearing fruit. Well, no, it might be at a time whenever that person is going through a period where they're not maybe walking as close to God as they once were. It doesn't mean that at some point in time they won't come back, restore that relationship with God, and become fruit bearing. Again, we're not told to be fruit inspectors. We're told to stick to what the scripture says, and we're told to encourage people to come into a relationship with Jesus Christ. So again, Bildod is very much of a black and white, very harsh, very cruel, very open. His response to Job is unfiltered. And I think that if there was a modern-day Bildod, the advice I would give him is you need to go read the book of James and you need to take it to heart as far as what James says the tongue can do. It can start a forest fire, but yet you need to control it because, like a rudder of a ship, it can control the ship even though it's going through bad times. Bildod is somebody definitely in modern times needs to go and study the book of James.

Pruning Pain And God Helping Sinners

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Again, just to remind our listeners, verse 20, Bildad says, God will not reject a person of integrity, nor will he help evildoers. While that is a true statement theologically, what it does not mean is that God is always going to do things that feel good to people of integrity, and he's always going to do things that feel painful to evildoers. That's not what it says, and that's not what it means. Oftentimes, God will do things to us that we find very uncomfortable, but it is for our own good. Many times he'll hands off to an evildoer, and it'll seem like the evildoer is prospering until the end when it finds out he's really collapsing of his own weight. I'll give you a very human example. I met a man once that told me that he got on a sports team and he was fairly good. The coach came in one day and was really pressing this guy very hard. He was demanding a lot more of him, and he was expecting a lot more of them. He was almost very rude to him. And the coach was just leaning on this man, making his life very difficult, trying to play his position. On the team. It wasn't until later he realized that the coach was doing that because this man had much more potential in him than he realized. And the coach was using the pressure to bring out his talent. And he turned that player into really a superior player. He was really a superstar. Why? Because the coach had to lean on him and expect a lot out of him in order to bring out that talent. The coach had to be hard on him in order to make him succeed and achieve his best. The coach could have backed off and been soft on him, and it would have felt good for a little while, but he never would have been successful on the team. Same way with God and us. Sometimes he prunes us, it tells us in the New Testament. Those he loves, he prunes. I remember having grapevines, and you had to prune the grapevines in order to make more fruit. Well, the grapevine would bleed sap sometimes for days or weeks until it finally healed. But you had to do that to make more fruit because this vine has more potential. So while it is true that God does not help evildoers, it is not true that he always does painful things to people that are sinners, and he always does comfortable things to those that are his children. So, Steve, one of the things in here, Bill Dad says he will not help evildoers. That's a sinner. So, Steve, from a New Testament salvation sense, will God help sinners today?

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Yeah, the ones who change their mind about God, who he is, and Jesus Christ, and believe that he died, was buried, raised on the third day, and believe in the promises of eternal life that he has given to them. Yes, those sinners are then given eternal life based upon New Testament scriptures. If you confess with your mouth, believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you shall be saved. And we've taught that in Romans chapter 10. So yeah, God definitely helps and gives eternal life to people who are sinners.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

So we have here this man, Bildad, saying that in the end, he looks at Job. Again, Job is in the midst of this grand suffering, and Bildad says, He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with joyful shouting. Those who hate you will be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked will no longer exist. So it's true, and we can take the book of Job, we've read the ending. God is going to bless those who love him, but we cannot look at people today and say that God's blessings are always going to result in more money and never being sick. It's just not how God works. And it's not how Job worked. Job ultimately was blessed, but we know for a fact it wasn't his fault that he got into this situation in the first place. It wasn't a lack of faith. Nothing Job could do to, there's no candles he could light or prayers he could say that would change his circumstances. It's all because God had a grand purpose that God was directing from heaven. And Job's job was to do his part and endure. That's the great lesson that all of us are getting a benefit from Job. For literally dozens of centuries, people have been blessed by what God did through Job.

Wrap Up And Job Responds Next

SPEAKER_00 25:41

And we're also getting a benefit out of Bildod from the standpoint that you might be correct theologically in some of the things that you have, but it might not be the right time to tell somebody whatever that is. One number one, number two is it might not be as black and white as what you think because Job is innocent. Bildod does not know that he's innocent. Bildod just automatically thinks that Job is guilty. Therefore, he's giving him wrong advice.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

That brings us thankfully to the end of Bildad's first speech. If you come back with us next time, we're going to see Job's response. Job is still in the midst of suffering, but he's still going to have great things that we can reason through next time.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Thank you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.