Dec 29, 2013
Sunday December 22nd
Job 4-7
Now that Job has spoken his words of grief, Eliphaz speaks up in
Chapters 4 & 5 with this advice for Job:
Would you mind if I said something to you?
You have done this plenty of times - encouraged those who were
about to quit.
Your words have put fresh hope in people.
But now you’re the
one in trouble!
You’ve been hit hard and you’re still reeling from the blow. But
think about it! Has a truly innocent man ever ended up on the ash
heap?
Do genuinely upright people ever lose out in the
end?
It’s my observation that those who sow evil reap evil.
The temper of a fool eventually kills him.
I’ve seen it myself - fools putting down roots,
and then, suddenly, their houses are cursed.
Their children are left out in the cold.
Don’t blame fate when things go wrong--
trouble doesn’t come from nowhere.
If I were in your shoes, I’d go straight to God,
I’d throw myself on the mercy of God.
What a blessing when God steps in and corrects
you!
Don’t despise the discipline of Almighty
God!
This is just the way things go!
Imagine how you would feel hearing this if you have been sitting on
an ash heap for a week covered in boils, in excruciating pain,
having just lost your family and everything you
owned?
In Chapters 6 & 7 Job answers Eliphaz:
If my misery could be weighed, it would be heavier than all the
sand of the sea!
Is it any wonder that I’m screaming like a caged
cat?
The arrows of God Almighty are in me,
poison arrows—and I’m poisoned all
through!
God has dumped the whole works on
me.
Donkeys bray and cows moo when they run out of pasture - so don’t
expect me to keep quiet.
All I want is an answer to one prayer, a last
request:
Let God step on me—squash me like a bug,
and be done with me for
good.
I’d at least have the satisfaction
of not having blasphemed
God,
before being pressed past the
limits.
What future do I have to keep me going?
Do you think I have nerves of steel?
Do you think I’m made of
iron?
Do you think I can pull myself up by my
bootstraps?
I don’t even have any boots!
When desperate people give up on God,
their friends, at least, should stick with
them.
But you, my so-called friends,
there’s nothing to
you!
It’s not as though I asked you for anything.
Confront me with the truth and I’ll shut up,
show me where I’ve gone off the
track.
Honest words never hurt anyone,
but what’s the point of all this pious
bluster?
You pretend to tell me what’s wrong with my life,
but treat my words of anguish as so much
hot air.
Look me in the eyes!
Do you think I’d lie to your
face?
Think it over.
Think carefully—my integrity is on the
line!
Can you detect anything false in what I say?
Don’t you trust me to discern good from
evil?”
Human life is a struggle, isn’t it?
It’s a life sentence to hard
labor.
I’m given a life that meanders and goes nowhere--
months of aimlessness, nights of
misery!
I go to bed and think, ‘How long till I can get
up?’
I toss and turn as the night drags on—and I’m fed
up!
I’m covered with maggots and scabs.
We’ve all probably heard the phrase, “with friends like these, who
needs enemies?”
Each of Job’s three friends originally came to bring him comfort in
the midst of his tragedy, but none of them will do a very good
job.
Eliphaz tells Job it’s time for a taste of his own medicine. After
all, Job had spoken words of comfort to many of his friends when
they were suffering. So why couldn’t Job accept a little help now
for his situation in restoring his relationship with
God?
Eliphaz says that Job has encouraged many people in the past and
now it’s his turn to be given an “encouraging” warning about his
obvious lack of integrity. After all, those who sow trouble reap
trouble and since Job is reaping plenty of trouble he is obviously
under God’s discipline. As far as Eliphaz is concerned Job is
suffering because he hasn’t been holy enough! Some hides sin has
caused all of this and Job just needs to admit it!
I call this approach “defending God”. Since Job’s circumstances
seem unexplainable if God is indeed fair, and since God’s fairness
can’t be called into question, then the only other possibility is
that God IS fair and therefore Job is getting exactly what he
deserves!
Maybe we can recognize this tendency in the words of Eliphaz and
Job’s other friends, but are we able to recognize it when similar
words come out of our own mouths?
Let me give you a few examples of statements that can sometimes be
made by Christians in a misguided attempt to “defend
God”:
A woman is sexually assaulted and we say “well that’s not
surprising considering how she dresses!”
A family’s teenager falls into drug use and we say “that’s what
happens when you send them to public school. They should’ve sent
her to Christian School!”
A child dies tragically and we say “God took him because you loved
him too much, and God doesn’t want us to make an idol out of
anything, even our own children!”
Or how about this other horrendous mistruth “God took her because
He needed one more angel in heaven!”
Do you see what I’m getting at?
We don’t know how to explain a world where rape and drugs and
tragic death exist, so we make up ridiculous statements to try to
make sense of how such horrible things could possibly be allowed to
happen when a loving God is supposed to be sovereign over all
things.
We don’t want to blame God for allowing the tragedy, so we
inadvertently blame the victim.
That’s what Job’s friends ended up doing to him. They all spoke
from a belief that a good God couldn’t possibly have allowed such a
catastrophe to happen to a righteous, innocent man. Therefore Job
must not be so righteous and innocent after all!
The fact of the matter is this: Job WAS righteous and innocent and
God DID allow Satan to attack him – not just once but
TWICE!
The facts of the matter are these: Rape happens to innocent
victims, teenagers raised in good families can fall into drug
addiction, and children die every day from fatal diseases and
tragic accidents. And a good, loving God ALLOWS these things to
happen. WHY?
Because He has given men and women free will; free will to do what
is right and free will to do what is wrong. And throughout the
course of history, our misuse of the precious gift of free will has
caused immeasurable pain to our own lives and the lives of
others.
And yes, I’m defending God! But I’m simply speaking the biblical
truth that through sin, death entered the world and the wages of
sin still are, and always will be… death.
The difference between that biblical understanding and what Job’s
friends were doing is that we have to acknowledge in each and every
situation that, although sin is the root cause of ALL pain, it is
not necessarily the sin of the person who is SUFFERING that has
caused the pain.
Jesus clearly addressed this in John 9:1-3
As He passed by, He saw a man blind from
birth. 2 And
His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or
his parents, that he would be born
blind?” 3 Jesus
answered, “It
was neither that this
man sinned, nor his parents; but it
was so that
the works of God might be displayed in him.”
If we really want to learn to speak true words of biblical comfort
to those that are hurting, we need to base our comments on these
three truths:
1. Life can be very hard
sometimes
2. Very bad things can happen to very good people
through no fault of their own
3. God shows His power and love by redeeming us
from those horrible circumstances. That’s exactly what will happen
in Job’s life, although Job doesn’t know it yet.
This understanding about our words should also be kept in mind
regarding words of prophecy. 1st Corinthians
14:3 says that the purpose of prophecy is
for “strengthening, encouraging and
comfort.”
However, sometimes “supposed” prophetic words are given which are
anything BUT comforting!
As I said a few moments ago, Job still has no idea where all of
this is going to end up. He only knows that he’s still in a whole
lot of pain and that his supposed friend didn’t have much to offer
in the way of comfort, so in the remaining part of Chapter 7, Job
doesn’t even bother arguing with Eliphaz anymore. He directs his
conversation back to God:
God, don’t forget that I’m only a puff of air!
These eyes have had their last look at
goodness.
And your eyes have seen the last of me;
even while you’re looking, there’ll be
nothing left to look at.
When a cloud evaporates, it’s gone for good;
those who go to the grave never come
back.
They don’t return to visit their families;
never again will friends drop in for
coffee.
So I’m not keeping one bit of this quiet,
I’m laying it all out on the
table;
my complaining is bitter, but
honest.
Are you going to put a muzzle on me?
I hate this life! Who needs any more of
this?
Let me alone! There’s nothing to my
life—it’s nothing but smoke.
What are mortals anyway, that you bother with
them,
that you even give them the time of
day?
That you check up on them every morning,
looking in on them to see how they’re
doing?
Even suppose I had sinned—how would that hurt you?
Don’t you have better things to do than pick on
me?
Why don’t you just forgive my sins
and start me off with a clean
slate?
Before this story ends, Job will have a powerful personal encounter
with God which will cause him to learn that there IS life beyond
the grave and that God DOES forgive sins and give us a clean
slate.
One thing we should remember from all of this is that we are likely
to meet people who, like Job at this point in the story, haven’t
had an encounter with God, so they don’t know anything about
eternal life or forgiveness or the goodness of God. They only know
the pain that their circumstances in life have brought
about.
Those people don’t need us to defend God to them. They don’t need
to be told that their misery is a result of their own poor
choices.
They need to be gently and lovingly led to a personal relationship
with the greatest friend a person could ever meet; a person who can
wipe away every tear from their eyes and give them a fresh, brand
new start.
They need to be introduced to Jesus!