Job 19:1-14 “He Has Kindled His Wrath Against Me”

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Job 19:1-14 He Has Kindled His Wrath Against Me
Job 19:1  Then Job answered and said,
Job 19:2  How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?
Job 19:3  These ten times have ye reproached me: ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me.
Job 19:4  And be it indeed that I have erred, mine error remaineth with myself.
Job 19:5  If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach:
Job 19:6  Know now that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with his net.
Job 19:7  Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment.
Job 19:8  He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths.
Job 19:9  He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.
Job 19:10  He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and mine hope hath he removed like a tree.
Job 19:11  He hath also kindled his wrath against me, and he counteth me unto him as one of his enemies.
Job 19:12  His troops come together, and raise up their way against me, and encamp round about my tabernacle.
Job 19:13  He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me.
Job 19:14  My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me.

Introduction

Job is a type and shadow of those who have been given “the patience and faith of the saints”. Job is extolled by the holy spirit as such:

Jas 5:11  Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.

But none of us are born patient. We are immediately screaming at the top of our little helpless lungs to be given what we need. Patience is not an inherited virtue. Patience comes only through overcoming impatience.
It is the entire story of Job’s trials which demonstrates for us “the end of the Lord”. It is this book which demonstrates “that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy”. The message is that just as any loving father chastens his children for their own good, our heavenly Father was very patient in His dealings with Job’s reproofs, contending and condemnations against his own heavenly Father. In being patient with Job’s faults, we are told in this verse of Jas 5 that Job “endured”, and it was through his enduring the patient chastening and scourging of his heavenly Father that Job learned to be patient.
Job’s patience certainly will not be evident in Job as we go through today’s study. Patience is a virtue which by its very definition requires the endurance of trials which trials require the passing of time which one does not want to endure. So Job demonstrates for us that patience is learned only through first being impatient.
Do any of these words demonstrate “the patience of Job”?

Job 19:1  Then Job answered and said,
Job 19:2  How long will ye vex my soul, and break me in pieces with words?

Neither Job nor his “miserable comforters” display any patience with each other.

Job 19:3  These ten times have ye reproached me: ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me.
Job 19:4  And be it indeed that I have erred, mine error remaineth with myself.

“These ten times” is obviously an idiom conveying the sense of many or endless times. If we count the number of speakers we have only Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, and only Eliphaz and Bildad have spoken twice. So that form of calculation gives us only five attacks upon Job. If we consider every verse as an attack we have multiple tens of attacks against Job. As we know this number ’10’ is associated with the completion and perfection of the flesh, and we see this phrase used in this sense elsewhere in scripture:

Gen 31:7  And your father hath deceived me, and changed my wages ten times; but God suffered him not to hurt me.
Lev 26:25  And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant: and when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.
Lev 26:26  And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied.
Num 14:22  Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice;

Dan 1:17  As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom: and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.

Dan 1:20  And in all matters of wisdom and understanding, that the king enquired of them, he found them [ Daniel and Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego] ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm.

If we understand Jacob’s uncle Laban in Gen 31 to be a type of the lying false prophet, he certainly lied more than ‘ten times’.  
If we understand these women in Lev 26 to be a type of the church and her daughters, there are far more than a literal ‘ten’ false churches feeding us with ‘bread’ which does not satisfy our hunger for God’s Truth.
While there are efforts to make Israel’s rebellions against God a mere literal ten times until the rebellion at the spying out of the land here in Num 14, the Truth is that we, as Israel, are always in rebellion against our own Savior until we are crushed to powder and given His faith and His mind.
Since “God gave [ Daniel and his three friends] knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom”, it is obvious that they were far more than a mere literal “ten times better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all [ the] realm [ of Babylon]”.
… Ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me.”
The Hebrew word translated ‘strange’ is ‘hakar’, and according to Strong’s, it means to injure. ‘You are not ashamed to injure me when you said you were my friends and that you were coming to comfort me in my severe suffering. How can you do this?’ That is the sense of what Job is saying. Yet that is exactly what we all just naturally do to all who we see suffering severe trials in this world.
We are all guilty of doing this, but when we do so we do so unto Christ Himself:

Mat 25:40  And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

What we are unwittingly doing is ‘magnifying ourselves’ against Christ Himself, and we do so by pleading the fact that it is after all He who is hanging there with known thieves upon that reproachful cross.

Job 19:5  If indeed ye will magnify yourselves against me, and plead against me my reproach:
Job 19:6  Know now that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with his net.

“God hath overthrown me…” The one thing which Job and his friends realize, which we often do not realize, is that God is sovereign even over the evil that is in this world. Neither Job nor his friends had yet come to see that God uses evil to produce good, but they all realized that what had happened to Job was what God alone had caused to be done to Job.
This book of Job is a Biblical demonstration of the function of the work of grace within the lives of all of God’s elect.

Tit 2:11  For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,
Tit 2:12  Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;

The Greek word for ‘teaching’ in Tit 2:11 is ‘paideuo’. ‘Paideuo’ is most often translated as ‘chasten’, and that is the function of God’s grace. “Who the Lord loves He chastens [ Greek – paideuo]”.

Heb 12:6  For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth [ Greek – paideuo], and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

This 12th chapter of Hebrews ends with these words:

Heb 12:29  For our God is a consuming fire.

“Our God” is our God’s Word, and it is His fiery Word which consumes and condemns our unrighteous and ungodly ways (Jer 5:14).
But the law and the prophets knew nothing of the work of “grace through faith”, and we are all under the law “until the time appointed of the Father”.

Gal 3:23  But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
Gal 3:24  Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
Gal 3:25  But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
Gal 3:26  For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
Gal 3:27  For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
Gal 3:28  There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
Gal 3:29  And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Gal 4:1  Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all;
Gal 4:2  But is under tutors and governors [ the ‘schoolmaster’ law] until the time appointed of the father.

Paul has just informed us that the ‘faith’ that justifies us and which brings us out from under the law which is our “schoolmaster to bring us to Christ”, is “the faith of Jesus Christ which is “given to them that believe”.

Gal 3:22  But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.

It is obvious that Paul considered being “under the law” and being “under sin” as one and the same. So our faith is not ‘our faith’ at all. It is the “faith of Jesus Christ”.
But Job and his friends are types of us while we are still in Babylon and while we are still under the law of Babylon.

1Ti 1:9  Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,
1Ti 1:10  For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;

As such we all act and react just as Job and his friends who, we are seeing in every verse, have neither love nor patience with each other
or with God and His ways.
It is while we are still “under the law” that Christ warns us all never to condemn others as greater sinners than ourselves just because He is performing His work of grace in the lives of those others whose old man He is in the process of destroying.

Luk 13:1  There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
Luk 13:2  And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things?
Luk 13:3  I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
Luk 13:4  Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?
Luk 13:5  I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

What God is saying to us as we are typified by Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, is “Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? Those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish”.
But as typified by Job and his friends, we cannot see this, so we just naturally condemn those whom God uses to cause us our pain, and in so doing we are doing nothing less than condemning our own Lord who is working all things after the counsel of His own will (Eph 1:11).

Job 19:7  Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment.

“There is no judgment”? No, that is not the case. What is the case is that we simply do not want to be judged. We resent God’s destructive judgment upon the kingdom of our beast.
“I cry out of wrong”? Job knows who has brought all of this upon Him. He tells us exactly who is doing it all:

Job 1:20  Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,
Job 1:21  And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.

Is the Lord really “taking away” all that we have in this world? Is He truly intent upon destroying our “first man Adam”? Is His wrath really being poured out upon us for what He has made us to be? Does God truly count our ‘old man, the  first man Adam’ “as one of His enemies”? Job and King David as types of God’s elect tell us this:

Job 19:8  He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and he hath set darkness in my paths.
Job 19:9  He hath stripped me of my glory, and taken the crown from my head.
Job 19:10  He hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone: and mine hope hath he removed like a tree.
Job 19:11  He hath also kindled his wrath against me, and he counteth me unto him as one of his enemies.

Psa 90:3  Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.

Why does God “turn man to destruction”? It is right here in this same 90th Psalm:

Psa 90:5  Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
Psa 90:6  In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
Psa 90:7  For we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled.
Psa 90:8  Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
Psa 90:9  For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.
Psa 90:10  The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
Psa 90:11  Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.

Is not King David a type of Christ and His elect? Did not God pour out His wrath upon King David as he did upon Job?

Psa 88:6  Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps.
Psa 88:7  Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Selah.
Psa 88:8  Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me an abomination unto them: I am shut up, and I cannot come forth.

Both Job and King David are made to be an abomination to their acquaintances just as we all are made to be when our old man is being destroyed by God’s wrath. 

Job 19:12  His troops come together, and raise up their way against me, and encamp round about my tabernacle.

Who are God’s “troops” who “raise up their way against” Christ’s elect? Job reproves, contends with and condemns His own Savior, but, as the type and shadow of God’s elect, he is brought to repentance in advance of his critics, and through Job’s prayer for his detractors they are saved. This same prophetic event will all be repeated later in the story of Joseph who is God’s instrument of salvation for his brothers who hate and reject and persecute him just as Job’s friends treat Job with such little regard.

Gen 37:4  And when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, t hey hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.

Job’s rejection by his friends is the type and shadow of those upon whom “judgment must… first begin…” (1Pe 4:17).
So who are God’s “troops” whom He uses to “raise up their way against [ God’s elect]”? Who did he raise up against His own Son, our Savior?

Act 4:26  The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ.
Act 4:27  For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together,
Act 4:28  For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.

Yes, it was His own people who delivered our Lord up to the Gentile Romans to be crucified. But it was all do by “Thy hand and Thy counsel”.
Here is another verse which tells us who are God’s “troops” who accomplish what ‘God’s hand and God’s counsel have determined before to be done’.

Psa 17:13  Arise, O LORD, disappoint him, cast him down: deliver my soul from the wicked, which is thy sword:
Psa 17:14  From men which are thy hand, O LORD, from men of the world, which have their portion in this life, and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treasure: they are full of children, and leave the rest of their substance to their babes.

Before we can become worthy of being delivered as “the apple of [ God’s] eye” (Psa 19:8), we must first come to see ourselves as “the wicked which is thy sword”.

Job 19:13  He hath put my brethren far from me, and mine acquaintance are verily estranged from me.
Job 19:14  My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me.

The body of our Lord hanging upon the cross is the type of us as His elect while we are in this world. His ‘brethren’ were made to be “far from [ Him]”.

Joh 3:14  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
Joh 3:15  That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
Joh 3:16  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

We are as that serpent on a pole at which all men dying in their sins must gawk before they can be saved:

1Co 4:9  For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.
Luk 23:35  And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided him, saying, He saved others; let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God.

We too, are to be “crucified with Christ”. We too, are rejected of all men and forsaken by our closest acquaintances. After all, Christ is our example, and He too, was rejected of all men and was betrayed by his own disciple:

Rom 12:1  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
Rom 12:2  And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Gal 2:20  I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

When we are granted to see ourselves as all that is in “the first man Adam”, including Judas and all the other disciples who forsook their Savior to save their own skins, we will be granted to understand how this verse is a verse we all “live by”.

Joh 13:18  I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.

“I speak not of you all” refers to the fact that not all will continue to deny our Lord to the time of being cast into the lake of fire after the millennium. It does not refer to any of Christ’s disciples being innocent of denying our Lord. We are all guilty of that sin.

Mar 14:50  And they all forsook him, and fled.
Mar 14:51  And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him:
Mar 14:52  And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.

“They all forsook Him”, means we all forsake Him, and we all flee from Him naked when we do so.
“That the scripture may be fulfilled” refers to King David’s experience, which the holy spirit through the apostle John, without explanation, appropriates to Christ’s sad experience with Judas:

Psa 41:9  Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.

Again in Psa 55:

Psa 55:12  For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him:
Psa 55:13  But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance.
Psa 55:14  We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company.

If we think that Judas or David’s ‘guide and his acquaintance’ is not within our own flesh as the type of our own ‘old man, the first man Adam’ within us, then these words will be falling on deaf ears and will be being read by blinded eyes. “It was you…” means what it says. We are that man!
Next week, if the Lord wills, we will see that Job, in type, comes to “see God”:

Job 19:15  They that dwell in mine house, and my maids, count me for a stranger: I am an alien in their sight.
Job 19:16  I called my servant, and he gave me no answer; I intreated him with my mouth.
Job 19:17  My breath is strange to my wife, though I intreated for the children’s sake of mine own body.
Job 19:18  Yea, young children despised me; I arose, and they spake against me.
Job 19:19  All my inward friends abhorred me: and they whom I loved are turned against me.
Job 19:20  My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
Job 19:21  Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me.
Job 19:22  Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?
Job 19:23  Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
Job 19:24  That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!
Job 19:25  For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
Job 19:26  And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:
Job 19:27  Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.
Job 19:28  But ye should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me?
Job 19:29  Be ye afraid of the sword: for wrath bringeth the punishments of the sword, that ye may know there is a judgment.

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