Job 27

There is a long pause between the last chapter and this one. It is as if Job waits to see if his “friends” have anything else to say. Once he realizes that they don’t, he goes on to explain 3 things:

1. He is innocent, and will never concede that they are right.

2. He is very aware of the fate of the hypocrite, and dreads being one… he is making it clear that hypocrisy is not something that exists in him.

3. He expresses that he DOES believe that the wicked will be judged… but he focuses on how the wicked will be EVENTUALLY brought low.

As we look at what Job says here in this passage, it brings up the concept of righteousness. We know that according to the scriptures “all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory”, and “there is none righteous, no not one”. Is Job claiming sinlessness? Is he claiming to be righteous as God is righteous?

I don’t think this is what Job is saying. We need to remember what it was that Job’s friends were accusing him of. They were saying he was a WICKED man. We are all sinners, but do we all fall under the category of the wicked? Before Jesus came, men and women would live BY the law (at this point not even the Mosaic law, just the moral law written on their hearts, passed down over the generations) looking forward to a God who could save them. Job was a man of INTEGRITY. With Job, he had a “what you see is what you get” reputation. He wasn’t fake. He wasn’t phony. Job was not a hypocrite. According to the Lord he was BLAMELESS. This means that you could not accuse him of anything… nothing men threw at him would stick.

Imagine today that you fall ill with some crazy disease. Your friends start saying “maybe God is judging you for a hidden sin”. They say, “Maybe you stole a lot of money, maybe you killed someone, maybe you are an adulterer…” If you knew those things weren’t true then you could say, “What are you talking about! If you could talk to God you would know that these things are FALSE! I am blameless in these areas!”

The problem with Job is this: He is getting so adamant about these false accusations, that he is forgetting the fact that though he may be the most righteous man in the world, he is still a sinner. The way Job thinks things will go when he gets a chance to have a face to face with God are just plain wrong. Job, though he can express how holy God is, (like in the last chapter) has forgotten some of those things in practice.

Realize this: we don’t need to defend ourselves. Even if people come and levy all sorts of false accusations against us, we don’t have to respond. Why? Because the Lord is our defender. He will set the record straight. Just wait and see... God does just that between Job and his friends.