Job 8:13 “So are the paths of all that forget God; and the hypocrite’s hope shall perish:”

Job 8:14 “Whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider’s web.”

Hello readers, I noticed these couple of verses in the book of Job recently. It’s Bildad, Job’s “friend”, speaking to Job… and they’re very nice encouraging words as you can see! (yes I am being a little facetious!)

You know the “hypocrite” in verse 13 that Bildad is describing? … It’s Job! Well, at least that’s what Bildad is saying, or at the least strongly inferring, but we know that Job is not that hypocrite.

But Bildad is like we all can be, in that he’s got Job and Job’s life and God all figured out, and he’s got the angle on the truth, and he’s going to be the man and speak wisdom that nobody else has into the situation.

… Before we think we are the big Christian, we ought to get real low, because we are not as big as we think we are. We should never try to take the place of God, and we should be thinking grace and mercy first… which we all are equally in need of, Bildad included.

But here, Bildad invokes an image of a spider’s web when talking about the hypocrite’s hope and trust. It’s actually a helpful picture as well to think about. Because maybe the hope and trust that you have in your walk with God has been feeling much like a spider’s web of late!

We all have seen a spider web before. They’re things we want gone! They can be different depending on what spider, but what we know is that when we clean a room or something out that has spider webs in it… they are necessary to be removed, but are very easily brushed aside and removed… and when gone there is no trace that a spider web was ever there.

With that image in mind of the spider’s web, now liken that to the Christianity that we have, now think of the spider’s web in terms of our hope and trust in God!

… I really don’t want my faith, hope and trust in God to be like a spider’s web! I hope you don’t either. The Bible says that “the righteous shall never be removed”… so how can our hope and trust in God be so easily swept aside as if it were nothing, and in fact necessitating removal?

Have you ever felt that life has just taken a giant hand and swept straight through your little life, your little place, your little web in the corner of God’s house? Remember, it takes a spider a lot of work to make it, to set up and make its place… but what it makes can be removed without a trace in seconds. And that’s what our faith life can feel like, a lifetime of building only to be swept away by one event.

And that’s what was happening to Job…  or at least Bildad thought so. What Bildad didn’t know was that God was actually doing the exact opposite, and in fact, the greatest work in Job’s life! God wasn’t removing Job’s hope and trust as if it were a spider’s web, he was bringing forth Job’s hope and trust as gold!

Just think of all of Job’s life that he lived, and yet what we really only are told about, and what we really need to know, is his big trial… and how he wasn’t swept away like a spider’s web. Maybe your Christianity feels like God is just wiping it off… but maybe the exact opposite is happening. If you’re truly saved, what you have is not a spider’s web.

But maybe you’re in the midst of something, maybe something very bad, and it feels like your walk with God, all that hope and trust you’ve had in God, it’s just been wiped away as if it were a meaningless, pointless nuisance to the greater scheme of things. Hey… that’s my life that’s just being wiped away like a spider’s web!

The thing is, our hope and trust is so important to us, and to feel like it is irrelevant and worthless and only suitable for removing… that can be hard to take. Without hope, what do any of us have? Not much. And so here, Bildad definitely isn’t helping Job, particularly as it is not even true! So may we as Christians not be like Bildad. Remember, if you have trusted in Jesus Christ, if you have earnestly sought him and called upon him… that is not redundant, that is not meaningless, and it will not be swept aside, lost and forgotten.

There is true hope and trust in Jesus Christ. Yes, we do not trust in ourselves, we trust in Christ. He is the right place to commit our trust. He is a sure hope to anchor our soul to. And even when we are severely challenged, and even when it feels like our life, hopes, dreams, vision, trust is all being brushed aside like it’s nothing… yet in all that God abides yet faithful.

The Bible says in Jeremiah 17:7 “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.” See, both hope and trust are in this verse, just as they are in what Bildad was saying. Job’s hope and trust was in the Lord, and may ours also be. So he didn’t have spider web Christianity. May we not also. Trust in the Lord. Hope in the Lord. Even against all odds!

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