The Helpless Helpers

Job 26:2–4 (ESV) “How you have helped him who has no power! How you have saved the arm that has no strength! 3 How you have counseled him who has no wisdom, and plentifully declared sound knowledge! 4 With whose help have you uttered words, and whose breath has come out from you?

Job responds to the last of the friends' speeches with an intriguing question - where is this coming from? And what a question that is because all their voices have spoken is condemnation and guilt. Who is the author of that? The devil himself. 

Here's the thing about the devil. He will first use our desires against us and lead us to sin and then loudly condemn us when it's over suggesting we could NEVER be forgiven. He is indeed the voice of damnation and one day his own damnation will be well deserved.

Now there is a question as to whether or not it is actually Job or the continuation of Bildad's final speech from Job 26:5 to the end of the chapter. As I read it, it could be either but I pick Job. I believe Job is picking up on the theme of Bildad's speech - extolling the power and glory of God in the face of man's abasement - against Bildad. If so, we pick up some subtle sarcasm at the end from Job himself:

Job 26:12–14 (ESV) By his power he stilled the sea; by his understanding he shattered Rahab. 13 By his wind the heavens were made fair; his hand pierced the fleeing serpent. 14 Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?”

Job takes Bildad's ideas and uses them against him. God is so far above us that we cannot understand him as the worms we are. And yet, here is Bildad claiming to speak for God about God at Job's expense. Is Bildad not also a man-worm? 

The speech from Job is wise and cutting at the same time. The reason doctrine without grace and love can damage people is that we forget that only by grace and through God's love can we know Him and truly experience Him. And all who claim to speak FOR the Lord must first and foremost accept that reality. Otherwise, they are blind guides who care only for religious procedures and prominence instead of people who need help.

Job rightly exposes the final speech of his "comforters" here by using their own claims against them. God is indeed beyond our understanding and mankind is before him as a maggot or worm. YET God does love and gracefully reveal Himself in the Words of scripture and through the prophets and finally in the person of Jesus Christ His Son. 

Hebrews 1:1–2 (ESV) Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

It is to this reality that Job brings us. We need God's mercy so that we can know God's mind over the matters of our lives. Even here Job begins to lead us to the final act - that we will acknowledge God is beyond our understanding and the events of our lives, though confusing, are often hidden from us in the counsel of His will. Our job is to trust His wisdom above our own and so speak less to listen more on what troubles the world around us so that we can help. 

And the number one way we help is by telling that world the God beyond us became one of us and suffered and died for us so that we could be with Him.