Job 21:26

How foolish it is to think that anyone can teach God knowledge (v.22), since He judges those on high just as He does the lowest. The wicked differ so widely among themselves that it is folly to judge by what happens to them. Why? Because "one dies in his full vigor, being wholly at ease and secure" (v.23). He keeps his property and his health right up to his death (v.24). Another wicked man dies in bitterness, after a whole life of misery. Yet in the end "they lie down alike in the dust." The one finishes where the other finishes, though their lives on earth were opposites. Who can explain why? Zophar thought he had the answer to Job's troubles. But he had not faced this difference that Job set before him. The answer to all such questions must wait until after death.

Look at these two men, each with a full cup, one of happiness, the other of misery; both lying dead together. Appearances prove nothing but the haste and folly of those who judge before the time.

Both alike reach the same end in the grave. Since that is so, how wrong it is for his friends to lay down an unchanging rule — that trouble in this life is always a sign of sin, and prosperity always a sign of righteousness, in the people it falls on. Job himself had found no solution to his problem. Even so, he could at least urge his friends not to "pronounce judgment before the time."

You see, what Zophar and the others pressed was only half a truth. And half a truth never sanctifies. What you leave out may be just as important, or even more important. That was exactly the difference. For all his faults, Job really was holding on to the truth. He looked at it with a larger heart and with a conscience that had been tested. Some people talk morally, or, as you might say, they preach. But it did not come from their souls. It was only the correct thing to say by human standards. It was not really the language of faith at all.

"They lie down alike in the dust." And the careless world goes to their funeral and thinks they are both all right, that all is well with them both. That is what people call "judging with charity" — charitable judgment! They hope that everybody goes to heaven, unless they are too bad — openly wicked!

The friends judged too soon. They turned their eyes — blinded eyes, sadly — to the present, as the Christian world does, instead of waiting, as Job did, for the resurrection and the kingdom.

But there is the terrible end that waits for them — the waking up of the rich man in the Lord's story: "in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes." That was a solemn thing, and it was the Lord who gave us that picture. Nobody could speak with certainty about it until the Lord came. And this does not describe what happens after the resurrection. This is what happens right after death.