Job 11:4: “For you [Job] have said, / `My doctrine is pure, / And I am clean in your eyes.'”

December 6th, 2023 by Pastor Ed in devotional

The last “counselor,” Zophar the Naamathite, stepped up to interrogate Job, bringing the same condemning counsel as the others. Zophar was irritated by Job’s claims of innocence and basically demanded that Job repent. He started out by calling Job a man full of talk, a windbag, much like Bildad had in Job 8:2: “How long will you speak these things, and the words of your mouth be like a strong wind?” Zophar viewed Job’s so-called blamelessness as a “mock,” an insult, both to Job’s friends and God. He accused Job of claiming complete innocence, but that was not true. Job never claimed sinlessness. In fact, he said to God, “Why then do You not pardon my transgression, and take away my iniquity?” (Job 7:21).

Job could have defend himself if he had only known about the earlier scene in heaven between God and Satan, but at this point Job didn’t know the compliment God had given Job: “Have you considered my servant Job . . . a blameless and upright man?” (1:8). Job kept short accounts with God, repenting quickly of any known sin. We must do the same if we too would be “blameless and upright.”

Pastor Henry Ward Beecher said it this way:

When a man undertakes to repent toward his fellowmen, it is repenting straight up a precipice; when he repents toward law, it is repenting into the crocodile’s jaws; when he repents toward public sentiment, it is throwing himself into a thicket of brambles and thorns; but when he repents toward God, he repents toward all love and delicacy. God receives the soul as the sea the bather, to return it again, purer and whiter than he took it.

“LORD, we humbly repent again of our sins before You, the most holy God. Forgive us we pray and use us again we ask in Jesus’ name.”