Job 12:13 - 13:12 - When Suffering Clouds Your View of God (Session 17)

In this verse-by-verse Bible study of Job 12:13–25 and Job 13:1–12, Reasoning Through the Bible explores one of the biggest questions in Scripture and in life: if God is all-powerful and all-good, why does He allow suffering? Job wrestles with that same question as he describes God as powerful and wise, yet sees that power mostly through the lens of pain and loss. 

This session explains how suffering can bias a believer’s view of God, how Christians can wrongly read God through cultural assumptions, and why Romans 8:28 matters in seasons of grief and confusion. It also emphasizes that God is present in suffering, that He has purposes sufferers cannot always see, and that pain may draw some people closer to God while pushing others away. 

The second half of the study turns to Job 13, where Job rebukes his friends as “worthless physicians,” says they would be wiser if they stayed silent, and warns them not to speak deceitfully for God. This passage offers practical wisdom for pastoral care, friendship, and knowing when to speak and when to simply be present. 

Topics in this episode include:

•  Job 12:13–25 explained 
•  Job 13:1–12 explained 
•  why God allows suffering 
•  suffering and God’s goodness 
•  how pain clouds perspective 
•  Romans 8:28 and Job 
•  where God is in our suffering 
•  worthless physicians in Job 
•  when to speak and when to stay silent 

Reasoning Through the Bible is a verse-by-verse Bible teaching ministry committed to careful exposition, biblical context, and faithful application.

Transcript

The Problem Of Suffering

SPEAKER_00 0:16

If God is all powerful, he can stop suffering. If he's all good, he would stop suffering. So whence then does suffering come? That dilemma has plagued many a person. And today on Reasoning Through the Bible, we're going to explore that because Job had some of the same questions. All the way back many years before Christ, Job was wrestling through some of the very same issues that come to our lives today. Hi, my name's Glenn. I'm here with Steve. We are reasoning through the Bible. Today we are in the book of Job, and we're going to be exploring some of these questions about suffering and God's power and God's goodness. We're going to see that there are some people that have walked away from the faith because of the pain and suffering, while other people are drawn closer to God. That's a great truth that we see in our world around us. And we can learn a great deal about it from the book of Job. So if you have your copy of the Bible, turn to the book of Job, chapter 12. We're going to be starting in the middle of the chapter. And if you remember, Job has had three friends, all of which have had some degree of trying to blame Job's suffering on Job's behavior. He must have done something that caused all of this pain. So today we're in the midst of Job's response to that. And his response brings up many very profound questions that are relevant to us today. So Steve, can you start at Job 12, verse 13, and read down through verse 25?

When God Feels Like The One

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Wisdom and might are with him. Advice and understanding belong to him. Behold, he tears down and it cannot be rebuilt. He imprisons a person and there is no release. Behold, he restrains the waters and they dry up, and he sends them out and they inundate the earth. Strength and sound wisdom are with him. One who goes astray and one who leads astray belong to him. He makes advisors walk barefoot and makes fools of judges. He undoes the binding of kings and he ties a loincloth around their waist. He makes priests walk barefoot and overthrows the secure ones. He deprives the trusted ones of speech and takes away the discernment of the elders. He pours contempt on nobles and loosens the belt of the strong. He reveals mysteries from the darkness and brings the deep darkness into light. He makes nations great, then destroys them. He enlarges the nations, then leads them away.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

So the bulk of that is rather negative view of God, but we want to ask one question before we get into that. Verse 13 again says, Wisdom and might are with him, advice and understanding belong to him. And of course, that's God. So, Steve, does Job have a correct view of the ultimate source of wisdom and understanding?

SPEAKER_01 3:19

I think he does. Here he's attributing both of those characteristics directly to God. So I would say yes.

How Pain Skews Our View

SPEAKER_00 3:25

So Job has at least some view of God here that's correct. And that yes, God is the ultimate source of wisdom and understanding. He then follows that with a rather long list of things that God does. And like previously in the book, Job is now seeing God as being, on one hand, in control of all things, but mainly tearing things down and causing pain. If you look at this list, everything in there is God tearing down or causing some sort of suffering. Job correctly realizes that God is in control, but it's difficult for him to understand that God would allow pain and suffering. If we look at that list that he just gave, God is tearing things down. He imprisons people, Job says. God causes droughts and then causes floods. He controls people who go astray. Verse 24, quote, he deprives the leaders of the earth of intelligence and makes them wander in a pathless wasteland, unquote. So, Steve, it seems here that Job's suffering has clouded his viewpoint, or at least biased his view of God. He, on one hand, realizes, yes, God is powerful and God is the source of wisdom, but then everything he lists about seems to be very negative. Do you think that Job's suffering has clouded his viewpoint or negatively impacted his view of God?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Suffering and pain will definitely skew someone's outlook on life, outlook on the world, and I think sometimes outlook on God. And it's just because they don't know what is going to happen in the future. If they knew what was going to happen in the future for sure, it helps us as human beings be able to adjust to the situation and know what the outcome is. But even whenever we do get some sort of a prognosis from a doctor and it doesn't look very good, we have a tendency as human beings to always want to look towards some type of a solution that's going to keep us connected to this world. We're tied to this world. This world is the only thing that we know and understand. We're attached to it. And I think it's built into us for us to want to stay here with it. If we only knew what our glorified bodies are going to be and what it's going to feel like, and what it feels like to be in the other side of this dimension and to be worshiping God all day, those type of things, then I think we would be more welcoming to what's going to happen. And as we mentioned in the last session and other sessions throughout this whole series, this is not our permanent home. This is a temporary home. We are transient through this world. And it's a very, very short time that we have here in these bodies in this fallen world compared to eternity. So it's sometimes an adjustment of our mindset and our worldview, so to speak, that we're going over to the other side and there's life after this. I think what somebody really has to answer is that if you're a believer, then you know that you're going to have eternity with God. You have that relationship. You're not a believer, then you don't know exactly what's going to happen to you as far as any type of pain or suffering, but you do know that there's going to be separation from God. Some people on this side say, that's fine. I don't want to have anything to do with God, but they might not think the same thing whenever they get to the other side and find out what it's like. For those that don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ today, today is a day of salvation. Become a believer in him. Get that security of eternal life. Get the security of having a glorified body and become a believer in him. Talk to somebody, if you haven't already, about becoming a believer in Jesus Christ. You'll have that assurance of knowing where you're going, which will have a better outlook than what Job is having here at the moment, as he is stuck, I think, in this world, stuck in the suffering that he's going through.

Cultural Bias And Bible Reading

Can We Accept God Allows It

Romans 8:28 And Real Hope

SPEAKER_00 7:51

I think you're right. He is stuck from a viewpoint of suffering and he views God from this viewpoint of suffering. The suffering, his situation has biased his viewpoint of God. He sees God as imprisoning people, causing droughts, causing floods, and depriving leaders of intelligence. It always amazes me that we too can be and have been guilty of some of the same thing as viewing Christianity, viewing God, viewing the Bible from our cultural biases. We have seen in our day wealthy countries view God as causing wealth. And that if we're in a wealthy country, then oh, we come up with a doctrine of prosperity that God rains down money and good health on people. We've also seen people from poor nations that are struggling against rich oppressors view Christianity as a struggle over the poor over the rich. It's called liberation theology. So we see here our cultural bias tends to change our view of God and change our interpretation of the scriptures. That's why we need to be so careful to read the entire word of God and not just view it from a system. We need to go verse by verse and exegete what the text says, and it will change us and not us change it the other way around. Yes, Job's suffering has negatively impacted and biased his view of God. It brings up several questions, especially in suffering, because all cultures have some degree of suffering. When we're going through some sort of suffering, some sort of painful, awful situation, do we find it difficult as Christians to accept that God allows that? We as Christians hopefully not going to fall into some of the same traps that Job's three friends are. But what we can do is say that we know God's all-powerful, we know he's good, but I know I'm in this painful suffering. So I've seen people conclude, well, God either doesn't care or he's not all-powerful, or he's somehow gets some sort of cruel enjoyment out of causing pain and they walk away. Can we as Christians accept the fact that God is in control, he's all powerful, and he could stop this suffering, but he's allowing it anyway. Can we accept that?

SPEAKER_01 10:19

If we took Glenn Romans 8.28 to heart, I think that we could accept such a position. Let me read it. It says, and we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. Now, Paul isn't saying here that God causes all the bad things that happen to us or the situations that we might find ourselves in. Sometimes those situations are consequences of the things that we've done. But what Paul is saying is that God will take all of those types of situations and he will cause those situations that we're in to work together for the good for those who love God. So if we have Romans 8.28 in a proper perspective, Glenn, then yes, I think we can have that position of knowing that God allows certain things to happen sometimes. But along with that, the other side of it is God is going to take all those situations and work it to some sort of good on the other side of the situation that we're in.

Where God Is In Our Suffering

SPEAKER_00 11:30

And I think you're right. And Job's a perfect example of Romans 8.28. Job couldn't see the blessing that would come from his suffering, but his life has been documented here and has helped countless numbers of people over the generations because of what he did. Not only did his life get blessed in the end, but his story, his suffering and his ultimate encounter with God in the end of the book has helped many people get through many circumstances. So God can use this to help bring benefit and blessing to others. He does indeed work all things towards the good to them that are called according to his purpose. Notice that verse doesn't say he's going to make everything feel good. He says it's going to work it for a blessing. I think we can take great comfort in that. The next question that I think is very similar to that. If we have pain and suffering, where is God in that? Does he care about our suffering? If we know that he allows that, then where is he? How could a God allow so much pain to enter our lives? Where is God in our suffering?

SPEAKER_01 12:45

God is there with us. And we should keep that perspective of where he is. He's always with us. He hasn't left us. The scriptures that we see people that are distant from God are people that have walked away from God. It's not God walking away from them. In fact, there are other parts, especially in the Old Testament, when God is speaking to the nation of Israel. He tells them, Return to me. He says that in Joel. He longs to have a relationship with people and specifically with his people and with his believing people. He is always calling them and beckoning them. Jesus said, If I be lifted up, I will call all men to myself. That is what God wants to have as a relationship. And the believers in Jesus Christ, we do have a relationship with God. And therefore, God never leaves us. He's always there in the valleys as well as the mountaintops.

Joseph And Jesus As Examples

Job Calls Out Bad Counsel

SPEAKER_00 13:43

Job is a perfect example of this. His friends were incorrect. Job's suffering was not caused by some sin or some hidden fault in Job's part. He was not sinless, but he was righteous. He still suffered anyway. He was blameless before God and he suffered anyway. So Job's friends were incorrect. And if we ask the question, does God care about our suffering? Well, yes, he does. And he has a purpose. He has a grand purpose for it. Job would have been just another forgotten person if he hadn't gone through the suffering. But now, not only did he get a greater blessing, but he was able to get closer to God. And all of the rest of us had a great lesson taught to us. Job was brought closer to God in the end than he would have if he hadn't have gone through the suffering. And I found that to be true with people. Suffering, as we said earlier, causes some people to get closer to God and it causes other people to get away from God. So are we there because of who God is? Are we following the Lord because of who he is? Or are we following him because he makes us feel good? So I submit that a love relationship, we're going to be there because of him and not because of the human earthly circumstances that I find myself in. Next, similar question. If we look at the Old Testament and ask the same questions, can we accept that God was powerful enough to stop suffering but allows it anyway? He must have had some good purpose for it. And again, many examples from the Old Testament. In Genesis, Joseph's brothers committed sin by beating him, throwing him in a hole, threatening to kill him, and ultimately selling him off to slavery. And he had a very difficult life ahead of him. He was falsely accused by Potiphar's wife and thrown in prison and made a slave. Yet by the time his brothers get to Egypt, Joseph told them, quote, You sent me here to his brothers, you sent me here, but God sent me before you to preserve life in Genesis 45, 5. So the brothers beat him, sold him into slavery, and Joseph could say, You sent me here, but God sent me here to preserve life. God had a blessing in it. God's hand was in it, even though there was suffering involved. Peter, in a sermon in Acts, said something quite similar. He was speaking to the Jewish leaders, and he said that Herod and Pilate gathered to, quote, do whatever God's hand and purpose determined beforehand to be done, unquote. That's in Acts 4, verse 27 and 28. So Herod and Pilate, what did they do? They were pagans, didn't care about God, made a free will decision to kill an innocent Jesus. But when they did so, his suffering was, yes, caused by Herod and Pilate, but he was doing what? Doing what God had predetermined beforehand to be done. So God's blessing was carried through Jesus' suffering. The New Testament tells us, quote, all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose. We just talked about in Romans 8.28. God is in control. He can use free acts of others to achieve his good purpose. And I think that's a lesson. The suffering causes some people to draw close to God and some people to go away from God. The same sun that will melt wax will harden clay. And so the real question is: what is the condition of our heart? Are we going to let God's bright light melt our heart so that we will go towards him? Are we going to have a heart of clay and get hard and move away from him? I submit that the only right way is to move towards God. That gets us to chapter 13. Job continues to respond to Zophar. Job must be getting frustrated with his friends because chapter 13, he gets increasingly blunt. Job in this section is increasingly pointed towards his friends. Steve, can you read the first 12 verses of Job chapter 13?

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Behold, my eye has seen all this, my ear has heard and understood it. What you know, I also know. I am not inferior to you. But I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue with God. But you smear me with lies. You are all worthless physicians. Oh, that you would be completely silent, and that it would become your wisdom. Please hear my argument and give your attention to the contentions of my lips. Will you speak what is unjust for God and speak what is deceitful for him? Will you show partiality for him? Will you contend for God? Will it go well when he examines you? Or will you deceive him as one deceives a man? He will certainly punish you if you secretly show partiality. Will his majesty not terrify you and the dread of him fall upon you? Your memorable sayings are proverbs of ashes, your defenses are defenses of clay.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Like chapter 12, this chapter 13 opens with Job saying he is not inferior to Zophar and is as smart as he is. In verse 3, Job says, I desire to argue my case with God. Job has said similar things already previously in the book. Well, by the end of the book, Job's going to get his chance. God shows up and says, Okay, here's your chance to argue your case. And Job ends up so overwhelmed by God that he is afraid to speak. That is oftentimes how we are. We can stand out in the middle of a field and shake our fist at God and criticize him and say, God, I should know better. I should know how to run the universe. But when God actually shows up, he is so overwhelmingly majestic and overwhelmingly powerful. We really have nothing to say. And Job will be cowering in fear when he finally gets his chance to argue his case before God. In verse four, Job calls his friends liars. He says that they're worthless at helping him get any better. Verse five, Job says they would be wiser if they kept silent. Steve, we saw that before. This should be a strong hint to the three friends to stop and stop trying to give advice to Job, don't you think?

When To Speak And When To Stop

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Job is pushed back on them, I think, very effectively. And he's told them in the last chapter and pretty much the same thing here. I'm intelligent just like you are. You don't have any superior intelligence than I do, and I'm not inferior to you. I can figure things out just like you can. The only situation is that I'm the one that actually knows that I'm innocent. Therefore, he's pushing back on them and saying, you're really to the point of being arrogant because God will deal with your being arrogant. You need to watch out what you're saying and accusing people of.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

How do we know when it's a good time to give advice to friends? And when is a good time to be silent and mind our own business?

SPEAKER_01 21:15

I think for sure a good time to give advice to friends is whenever they ask for it. They come to you and say, I want to get some advice from you. Then the first thing that you should do is listen to what the situation is. Listen to it, honor it, and then give them the advice. And sometimes the advice might not be right there at the time that they're asking you for it. You might need to tell them, I need to think about this a little bit. I need to go and look up some scriptures if that's the situation of the advice that you're going to give or that they're asking for. So listen to them. That's a key thing. Give the advice whenever they ask for it. If they don't ask for advice, sometimes we should always not miss an opportunity to keep. Our mouths shut. Giving advice whenever it's not needed or whenever it's not warranted is a virtue, I think. Just listen to them, listen to their situation, and read the room, as the saying goes. And if advice isn't needed to give to them, then don't give them advice. But I would say always be ready to give advice if somebody then asks for your opinion or what you think about something or what you would do in a particular situation. I would always be ready to give advice, but there's not always times whenever we should give advice.

You Cannot Hide From God

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Most of the time, it's much better if we just merely mind our own business and approach the friend and say, How can I help? I think the friendships and the help would be much better off. Job's friends here are actually hurting the situation and not helping. In verse seven, Job accuses his friends of lying about God, a very serious accusation. The next verse, he tells them that they should not try to speak for God. And then in verse nine, he reminds them that they can't fool God. That raises a question. This idea that we can't fool God in our minds to ourselves, we probably know that we can't deceive God. However, sometimes we're guilty of trying to do it anyway. Can we hide things from God? Can we be less than fully open with God and get away with it?

SPEAKER_01 23:26

No, because God knows everything. He knows everything that's going on with our hearts and what we're thinking. He even knows what we're going to do in the future. So, no, you're not going to be able to deceive God. And I think Job is really hitting home here in verse nine when he says what you just got through saying, Will it go well when God examines you? Or will you try and deceive God like you do, man? You can't deceive God. He knows everything. So it's not going to go well, really, whenever God examines us, if we have that type of heart.

Recovering Awe For God’s Majesty

SPEAKER_00 24:02

I submit that if we ask most people, they're going to give the right answer and they're going to say, Oh, yeah, there's no way to fool God. He knows everything. But then all of us turn around and when we commit sin, what we're really doing is saying, Well, I can do something and get away with it. God's not going to know this. God's not going to care. Or I've told myself a lie about God and what he knows and what he's going to do. Whenever we sin, we lie to ourselves about God. I think that it's much better just to be open with him, confess our sins, and he'll cleanse us from all unrighteousness. In verse 10, it says, God will surely rebuke you if in secret you show partiality, unquote. The book of James speaks very openly and very plainly against partiality. The idea here is that we should treat all people fairly and not be partial to some and partial to others. We should treat everyone fairly and respectfully, especially the Christian. We should always strive to be fairer and not for or against anyone. Verse 11 will not his majesty terrify you? What is ironic is that when God finally shows up, his majesty terrifies Job. Here, Job is telling his friends, oh, God's majesty, when he shows up, is going to terrify you. Well, what actually happens is God's majesty terrifies Job. That brings us to one of the attributes of God that I think is rarely talked about in our churches today. God is indeed immense and majestic, more so than we could realize. He is infinite and therefore infinitely immense and infinitely majestic. God says of himself, heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool in Isaiah 66.1. Psalm 18, 15 says that the foundation of the world were laid bare by a blast of his nostrils. When Moses asked God what his name was, he said, I am. He is the self-existent one, the eternal one. Psalm 29 says the voice of God will break the cedars and shake the wilderness. Isaiah tells us that the train of his robe fills the temple, and his glory is so bright that the angels have to cover their faces in Isaiah 6, 1 and 2. When God shows up to speak with Job at the end of this book, he speaks from a whirlwind, and his voice is full of thunder and lightning in Job 37 and 38. Steve, is God majestic and a wonder to behold?

SPEAKER_01 26:41

I don't think we can fathom God. Whenever we went through Ezekiel, as it starts off, we see the description that Ezekiel tried to give of the wonderment that was there. And we just really came to the conclusion of not trying to describe all the different visions that Ezekiel was having. We just simply said it's just a vision of God showing up. Whenever we see people encountering God going to heaven and seeing visions, their immediate reaction, most of the time, if not all the time, is to bow down, is to fear that they're going to be struck dead because they have spoken with or been in the presence of God. So we just don't appreciate the majesty of God until we actually experience it. And then we see the people that do have an encounter with God that way, they're completely changed and they're very firmly convinced and it bolsters their faith. We get a firm conviction out of the things that follow from their encounters with God. I think in some sort of way, because we don't always have the same type of encounters with God that some of these people of scripture have had, it hurts us because we lose his majesty, but at the same time, we see that whenever he does show up, it does shake people to their core.

Though He Slay Me Closing

SPEAKER_00 28:06

And that's gonna happen at the end of the book. God's gonna show up, it's gonna shake Job to his core. He's gonna get what he asked for, only he's not really gonna be ready for it. And I think that's the same with us. We think we get to God, but we're gonna ask him all these questions and ask him why he ran his world the way he does, we're gonna have the same problem that Job does. We're gonna try to fall at his feet and worship him. We'll stop there for today because of time, but Job's gonna continue next time. He's gonna be telling us why he will continue to worship God. He says, Though he may slay me, I will hope in him. Hopefully that's with all of us, that no matter what we go through, we will still follow God. Thank you so much for watching and listening.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

May God bless you.