Who Has Wisdom? Job 12:16-24.

Who is wise? To whom should a young person listen for advice? Whose opinion do people respect? Pastors? Deacons? Judges? Kings? Teachers? Lawyers? Doctors? Authors? Professors? Psychiatrists?

A better question might be to whom does God attribute wisdom?

Job, “the greatest man among all the peoples of the east,” was a man who was accustomed to being listened to. When he spoke in the city square everyone else fell silent. “City officials stopped talking and covered their mouths with their hands … Men listened to me with expectation, waiting silently for my advice.” Job 29:9,21. According to chapter 29, Job was a “rock star” at the time, but one highly respected for his wisdom. And yet Job is unimpressed with human wisdom. Job knows God is not impressed with human wisdom either. God can reduce every seemingly wise person to shame:

“God leads counselors away barefoot, and makes judges go mad. He … puts a belt around the waists of kings. He leads priests away barefoot and overthrows established leaders. He deprives trusted advisors of speech and takes away elders’ good judgment. He pours out shame on nobles.… He deprives the world’s leaders of reason, and makes them wander in a trackless wasteland. They grope around in darkness without light; He makes them stagger like drunken men” Job 12:17-21,24.

God is so much greater than the world’s wisest of wise men. Look at the nine types of wise men that God controls and humbles:

  1. Counselors
  2. Judges
  3. Kings
  4. Priests
  5. Leaders
  6. Trusted Advisors
  7. Elders
  8. Nobles
  9. World Leaders

Is there anyone left? Is there anyone so great and so wise that God cannot humble him? No. The point is, all wisdom comes from God, not from other people. Job says it himself:

True wisdom and power belong to Him. Job 12:16.

Proverbs 1:7—written by King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived—sums it up: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” If you were to review the list of people our culture considers wise, education is the one thing they have in common. But God does not equate a good education with wisdom. You can have a PhD and remain what the Bible calls a “fool.” There are plenty.

It is not “book learnin” alone that makes you wise. “The FEAR OF THE LORD is the beginning of wisdom” Proverbs 9:10. Without the fear of the Lord, your education—even if you were to read all the books in the world—can never make you wise.

I want you to have a fantastic education, to read thousands of good books, and to be able to provide wise counsel to those around you. It begins with your walk with Christ. Apart from that, your education is of little value.

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The Most Amazing Worship Experience. Job 13:15.

Have you had an amazing worship experience?  Were you alone in the mountains, or at a camp or retreat? Or in a quiet cathedral? Or perhaps an arena with spotlights, smoke machines, and thrilling music performed by rocking musicians?

Job lost more than most of us will ever own.  In a single day he lost 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 1,000 oxen, 500 female donkeys, an unknown number of servants, 7 adult sons, and 3 adult daughters.  Job understood suffering. 

On top of that, Job had spent years in business, government, and the law; he had watched God humble the powerful:

“True wisdom and power belong to Him… He leads counselors away stripped of their power and makes judges go mad. He releases the shackles put on by kings and fastens chains around kings’ waists. He leads priests away in shame and overthrows established leaders. He deprives trusted advisers of speech and takes away elders’ good judgment. He pours out contempt on nobles and disarms the strong…  He makes nations great, then destroys them… He deprives the world’s leaders of reason … they grope in darkness without a light” Job 12:16-25.

Over and over, Job has seen God humble powerful men.  And now God has humbled Job.  In fact, God has taken everything from him, including his ten children. Job is HURTING.  This man of ‘perfect integrity’ stares into the face of savage loss and what does he do? Does he reject God?  No.  He WORSHIPS.

“Though He SLAY ME, yet will I trust Him” Job 13:15.

Your worship will never be sweeter than when you worship IN SPITE of suffering. The best praise you will ever give God will be when you are staring into the face of evil.  If you can praise God when you are at the bottom, then your faith is so pure.  Few worship experiences will ever top simply praising God through your own tears.

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Can You File a Lawsuit and Drag God into Court?

Have you ever been mad at God? Job actually wants to file a lawsuit against God!

“If one wanted to take Him to court, he could not answer God once in a thousand times.  God is wise and all-powerful… I could only beg my Judge for mercy. If I summoned Him [to court] and He answered me, I do not believe He would pay attention to what I said… For He is not a man like me, that I can answer Him, that we can take each other to court. There is no one to judge between us…. I am on my own.” Job 9:3-4,15-16,32-33,35.

“I was at ease, but He shattered me; He seized me by the scruff of the neck and smashed me to pieces. He set me up as His target… He has made me an object of scorn to the people. I have become a man people spit at.” Job 16:12-13; 17:6.

Job has plenty to complain about. He lost 10 children. But how can you take the King and Judge of the universe to court? What judge can hear that case? Only God himself.

But Job—writing the first and oldest book of the Bible—realizes what he needs, what we all need, and prophecies of the Messiah:

“I wish that someone might arbitrate between a man and God… Even now my witness is in heaven, and my advocate [attorney] is in the heights!… I know that my Redeemer lives and that in the end, He will stand upon the earth.” Job 16:21,19; 19:25.

What do we need when we are mad at God? We need Jesus, “our advocate with the Father” (1 John 2:1) who “ever-liveth to make intercession for us” Heb. 7:25.

Take your complaints to Jesus. He is your attorney and Redeemer, who spends his time arguing your case, interceding for you! Jesus understands your situation and constantly asks God the Father for mercy on your behalf.

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Integrity Builds Courage & Wisdom.

Nothing builds COURAGE and WISDOM faster than integrity.

Integrity builds courage because it requires people to do things they find frightening. Integrity builds wisdom because the good decisions it requires draw a person out of darkness and into the light.

Both Job and his friends are men of integrity.  (But only Job is a man of “perfect integrity.”)  Job’s friends worship the true God, but when Job’s friends consider the absolute destruction of his life, they abandon whatever wisdom their own integrity might have given them and fall back on simplistic logic: God is just, so if you are suffering, you must have sinned. 

Job’s integrity gives him a deeper wisdom, but who would listen to a ruined man?  No one listens to life’s “losers.”  Yet integrity requires Job to argue what he knows:

  1. Job has maintained his integrity and God expects that to continue, Job 7:20. 
  2. Destruction like he experienced is not normal—he knows it is supernatural; God is behind this somehow. (“Surely the arrows of the Almighty have pierced me” 6:4.)
  3. The point of his experience is somehow connected to his integrity.  (“Reconsider; my righteousness is still the issue” 6:29.)
  4. God is still on His throne but Job is in no position to take God to court and accuse Him—there is no one to mediate between the parties (a role Jesus would one day fill) 9:32-33.
  5. Finally, though he curses his own birth and begs for the relief of death, He KNOWS that God will deliver him in the future:  

“I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end, He will stand upon the earth, and, though my skin be destroyed, yet in my flesh I WILL see God. With my own eyes, I will see Him.” Job 19:25-27.

Job has lost EVERYTHING.  Yet, integrity gives him the wisdom to perceive what is going on—and the courage to defend his position though he looks like the “loser” in this story.

God, give us the integrity of Job.

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Good News! The Bible is Not All Good News. Job 5:7

Some Christians greatly dislike Ecclesiastes–preachers, included. I think they don’t understand it. Ecclesiastes is a gut-check. If you are optimistic, if every message you speak is “turn that frown upside-down,” you are missing the gut of the Bible. THE BIBLE IS FOR PEOPLE WITH PROBLEMS—REAL problems, that can’t be fixed by clichés and bumper-sticker theology. When you stand staring into the grave of your best friend, or when your child is dying of leukemia, or you are jobless for months and about to lose everything, you need reality and truth, not sugary-sweet but hollow answers. 

God’s word speaks the hard truth. When you are grieving and depressed, everyone tries to cheer you up, and you get sick of it. What you need is someone to agree with you, to validate your feelings, to admit it: life is HARD. IT HURTS like a broken bone. Of course, you are in pain. You should be. Jesus said, “In this world, you WILL have trouble.” You WILL! Ignore the “cheer up” messages of those who have forgotten the feeling of real pain. God KNOWS what you’re going through.

Job said, “Man was born for adversity as sparks fly upward” 5:7. LIFE HURTS.

But Job’s friends said: “good guys always win, bad guys lose, life is fair—so if you’re suffering, you need to repent because you are obviously one of the bad guys.” FALSE. God showed up and told THEM to repent. Life is hard, and sometimes the GOOD GUYS suffer! And sometimes bad guys seem to have it so easy! THAT is the dose of reality that hurting people are desperate to hear! And that is the message of Job and Ecclesiastes. Job says ‘you will suffer, but God is sovereign, and He will redeem your life,’ and “though He slay me, yet will I praise Him” 13:15. Jesus said, “In this world, you WILL have trouble, but be encouraged, because I have OVERCOME the world.”

God, your truth gives us courage & faith. Thank you!

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Job Had Great Friends. Job 2:12-13.

Are you a true friend? Do you have true friends? Proverbs 17:17 says, “A brother was made for adversity.” But sometimes a true friend is the one you can really rely on.

Job had true friends. Yes, that’s right—Job. Everyone criticizes and mocks his friends. We judge them harshly because they saw all that Job endured and they told him the only answer they had: repent and beg God to forgive you. We charge them with judging Job and accusing him falsely. But we do the same thing. When we see tragedy, we too have thoughts like, I wonder what he did?, or it looks like God’s trying to get someone’s attention. But Job was innocent and God came and confronted Job’s friends with their error. The moral of the story is, bad things happen to good people–and sometimes inconceivably horrible things happen to the best people, even one God describes as “a perfect man.”

But I want to focus on something else about Job’s friends. The story begins as they arrive together:

“And when they lifted up their eyes and did not recognize him… they WEPT and TORE their clothes, and put DUST on their heads, and they SAT with him on the ground SEVEN DAYS and nights, and SPOKE NOT a word, for they saw that his grief was very great.” Job 2:12-13.

Can you imagine friends who would sit with you for seven days? Men who would weep with you? And tear their clothes? Put ashes in their hair? And—most incredible—say NOTHING for seven days? Can you imagine EVER going seven days without talking? That is truly AMAZING. These are incredible, godly, serious, true friends. Sure, their advice may have been mistaken. But they earned the right to speak by sitting with Job in silence for SEVEN DAYS. I can’t get over how incredible that is.

Tragedy has a way of showing you who your friends are. I experienced a three-car accident in 1997 that was an example. The people who visited me in the hospital arrived almost perfectly in order of importance. Family first. Then closest friends. Then others… 

Dear God, make us true friends. Show us when to show up for people, and when to speak and when to be silent. Use us to spread mercy and love.

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Perfect Integrity. Job 1:1.

“There was a man in the land of Uz named Job. He was a man of perfect integrity who feared God and turned away from evil.”  Job 1:1.

What is meant by “perfect integrity”?  Integrity means “wholeness,” so perfect integrity means being whole—there are no empty places inside you, no bricks missing in your wall.  “Perfect integrity” means Job was honest and held himself to the highest standard. 

But after Job loses everything (sheep, donkeys, oxen, camels, servants, children, and health), his wife questions him: “Do you still maintain your integrity? Why not curse God and die?” Job 2:9.  Job tells her she’s foolish.  Nevertheless, Job had lost everything; he could not have been more hurt. He wanted to curse something.  But first, he praised God:

“Naked I came into this world, and naked shall I leave it. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord” Job 1:21.

Then Job is silent for days. When he finally complains about his incomprehensible losses, does he curse God? No. Does he curse his enemies? No. Does he curse his wife or his friends (whom he calls “miserable comforters”)? No. Job curses the day of his birth.  He spends all of chapter 3 elaborating on how awful the day of his birth was and saying he wishes he’d never been born. 

–And that may sound cynical and negative, but remember: 1) he had lost EVERYTHING, including ten children, and 2) he NEVER questioned the goodness of God.  He maintained his “perfect integrity” and stayed pure in thoughts and words.

Application? BE CREATIVE.  When you are upset, you can “vent” without sinning against God. Curse the day you were born, if you must.  Don’t curse God.  If you have anger to release, do it the right way. Be careful what you say and whom you attack. It is possible to express overwhelming pain WITHOUT turning your back on God.  Find ways to vent your feelings without doing harm to others or being unfaithful to God.

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Job: A Great Father. Job 1:5.

What do think of when you think of dads? A man tossing his baby in the air? A daddy-daughter dance? Little league? Learning to ride a bike, use tools, do chores?

What about Biblical fatherhood? Joseph adopted Jesus as his own, Abraham took Isaac to the altar and put God first. Jacob moved to Egypt—with 69 family members—to be taken care of by Joseph…. There are so many stories. One that’s easy to overlook, falling as it does in the opening lines of a report of overwhelming suffering, is the story of Job. You hear a lot of talk about “the patience of Job.” And he did endure. But he was also an exceptional, extraordinary father. 

“When the days of [his kids’] feasting were over, Job sent and sanctified them, and rose in the morning and offered burnt offerings for each of them…. Thus did Job continually.” Job 1:5

That’s amazing. Why did he do that? TEN burnt sacrifices? Regularly? But this is a BUSY, BUSY man, with 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 1,000 oxen, 500 donkeys, and hundreds of servants to manage it all. Job is a KING with an EMPIRE to run, yet he takes the time to make sacrifices for each child—”continually”?

And, by the way, they’re NOT children! They are grown, living in ten houses of their own, with their own adult responsibilities. Can’t they worship God on their own? 

But this is between the Lord and Job. He loves God, and loves his children, so he intercedes on their behalf following every party thrown by the rich young men and women. He knows they were drinking and thinks, “It may be that they have sinned and cursed God in their hearts” v.5. He has no evidence, of course, but just in case, Job goes before the Lord and presents a sacrifice on behalf of each adult child.

That strikes me as incredible fatherhood: this super-busy man makes time to regularly come to God on behalf of his adult children. Job truly embodies the phrase “high priest of the home.”

May we all take our faith and the spiritual health of our loved ones that seriously.

Pray for the energy and passion to serve God & your family with all your heart!

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Do We Blame God When Bad Things Happen?

Job was the wealthiest man of his time, “the greatest man among all the people of the east.” He had 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, and thousands of other animals, servants without number, and ten grown children he adored. Then in a single moment he lost it all—including his children. Did he blame God? Here’s the way the Bible reports his reaction:

Then Job stood up, tore his robe, and shaved his head. He fell to the ground and worshipped, saying, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Through it all, Job did not sin or blame God for anything. Job 1:20-22.

JOB DID NOT BLAME GOD.

That’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? Why do we blame God? Because He is God—so we figure He could have stopped the thing from happening, right? A failure? An illness? A death? A betrayal? God chose not to intervene, so we blame Him for that, right? But Job, a “man of perfect integrity” did NOT blame God, and he lost more than we will ever own. Throughout the book, God offers Job as a role model. We are to follow his example. Thus, we are to WORSHIP God in our trials, not curse God. We need to praise God, NOT blame Him.

What do you blame God for? Ask Him to show you—are you carrying a grudge? Are you allowing a hurt from the past to keep you from God? Can you talk to God and confess your bitterness? Until you do, you will STOP growing in your faith.


Is it your nature to blame God? Job’s wife was a God-blamer. When tragedy struck, she said to him, “Why do you still maintain your integrity? Why not curse God and die?!”
Job answered, “SHALL WE INDEED ACCEPT GOOD FROM THE LORD AND NOT ACCEPT ADVERSITY?” Job 2:9-10.


We must accept the good and the bad. When tragedy strikes, we must WORSHIP the way Job did. We must “forgive” God for hurts in the past. Confess them. Confess the pride that allows you to dare to blame the God of the universe. Worship Him and thank Him and ask Him to change your heart and help you trust Him with even the worst tragedies.


Dear God, we confess our pride and the bitterness that tells us it is okay to blame you for tragedies. Help us trust your wisdom, and worship you when bad things happen.

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Report Cards.

What if God offered a report card on the state of your heart? In Revelation 2 and 3, Jesus evaluates seven churches, praising them when He can, but also pointing out weaknesses: “You have lost your first love… You are lukewarm….”  Job likewise received a “report card” but he got perfect grades.  Twice God says the same thing about Job: “He is a man of perfect integrity, who fears God and turns away from evil” Job 1:8; 2:3.

I want perfect integrity.  But do I fear God and turn from evil?  The internet and cell phones have made turning from evil harder than ever. Most believers do turn away.  But we turn away EVENTUALLY.  Right?  Sometimes I read an article, I find out about the new movie or the song with the filthy lyrics that won some award—and I read the lyrics and have a conversation, and complain about the state of pop culture and what we are doing to the children.  Then eventually, maybe after the topic has become boring, I finally TURN AWAY FROM EVIL. 

Do you struggle to balance the desire to know what’s going on in the world with the desire to keep your mind and heart pure?  Finding that balance can be a struggle, particularly for parents and teachers, because we invest so much energy in caring for children while so many aspects of youth culture seem harmful to children.

Let’s take a tip from the words God used to praise Job:

“HE IS A MAN OF PERFECT INTEGRITY, WHO FEARS GOD AND TURNS AWAY FROM EVIL” Job 1:8. 

God commended this man who turned away from evil.  Paul adds, “It is shameful TO EVEN MENTION what the disobedient do in secret….”  Ephesians 5:12.  We should EXPOSE the deeds of darkness (5:11).  But we must watch ourselves.  Are we turning away?  Can we expose wrong while having NOTHING TO DO with the darkness?  Most importantly, are we being led by the fear of God?

Let’s be like Job: fear God and turn away. 

Let’s spend less time “researching” evil and more time turning away from evil.

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