An Introduction to Wrong Counseling
Job • Sermon • Submitted
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· 8 viewsThough at times you might face days that are deeply troubling, hold fast to the words of God!
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Poor communication has caused endless misery throughout history. Towards the end of the 1700’s and into the 1800’s, Michigan and Ohio disputed what came to be called the Toledo Strip, with both claiming its area for their own. Apparently “poor geographical understanding” was at least part of the cause for the dispute. Eventually the matter was settled in what was called the “Frostbitten Convention.” Michigan received a portion of the Upper Peninsula and Ohio received the Toledo Strip. At the time, many believed Ohio got the better end of the deal, but since then, with copper and iron being found in the UP, and of course with the abundance of timber, MI faired pretty well.
And frankly, some things are doomed from the beginning. When Eliphaz began to
Now, that is what I learned from Wikipedia. Some of you natives can correct me on the details afterwards. It is interesting that one lady who lived in the Toledo Strip, after hearing the decision for her area to become officially part of Ohio, is reported to have said, “I never did like the Michigan weather anyway.”
Believe it or not, as we look to hear from Eliphaz and Job in today, part of the reason that the conversation goes so poorly seems to be poor communication and word choice from Eliphaz and poor interpretation from Job. In other words, Eliphaz says some things that were probably well-intentioned but nonetheless came across very poorly to Job. At other times a basic belief that Eliphaz held to was directly against something Job believed. It is our task this morning to understand Eliphaz and then Job as we continue our way through this book. To give a summary of these two chapters, Eliphaz tries to lead Job gently back to being in God’s good graces, but Job believes he is innocent despite being hurt by his friends and God. From this summary and really from these four chapters I draw the theme for this morning. Though at times you might face days that are deeply troubling, hold fast to the words of God!
Now, usually I like to read the text before we start digging into the Word, but this morning I plan to read each section as we go. So let’s turn to and I will read verses 1-11 to begin.
The two divisions of the passage are rather general but at least starting points for us: (1) Eliphaz Speaks and (2) Job Replies. How do we summarize Eliphaz in ? He is kindly trying to lead Job to accept God’s discipline for whatever iniquity he had done so that he can once again have God’s blessing. Again, how he goes about this is probably as a kind friend trying to help Job, but his unfortunate choice of terminology and basic disagreement with Job on the character of God and responsibilities of man set the scene for an explosive conversation. So here’s a brief outline of what he says in chapters 4-5: (a) The Delicate “Truth”, (b), The Delicate “Truth” Revealed, (c), The Delicate “Truth” Witnessed, (d), The Delicate “Truth” Affirmed, (e), The Closing Appeal.
Eliphaz Speaks —
There are all kinds of observations that I could make about this masterful text of Scripture, but I am going to try to walk us through Eliphaz’s speech before making some more observations and drawing conclusions at the end.
To get an overall map of what Eliphaz is about to say, let me read just a few select verses from . 4:2-3, 7; 5:1, 8, 17, 27.
The Delicate “Truth” — 4:1-11
There are all kinds of observations that I could make about this masterful text of Scripture, but I am going to try to walk us through Eliphaz’s speech before making some more observations and drawing conclusions at the end.
To get an overall map of what Eliphaz is about to say, let me read just a few select verses from . 4:2-3, 7; 5:1, 8, 17, 27.
In 4:1-11, it seems that Eliphaz was trying to be delicate because look at how he starts indirectly in verse 2. He uses questions instead of making only direct statements. And, he appeals to what Job has done in the past. From our perspective, it seems his approach makes sense. He is being careful. Yet, his terminology is rather unfortunate. Compare what he says in verses 6-7 with God’s description of Job in 1:8. Yet Eliphaz throws this out with what he says in 4:7-9.
As he illustrates in verses 10-11, even lions eventually answer for what they do, so that their strength is broken one day.
So to summarize, what is the delicate truth that Eliphaz gives to his friend? “Don’t be confident in your innocence. You are reaping trouble. Somewhere in your life you sowed trouble as well. You are guilty somehow of something.”
The Delicate “Truth” Revealed — 4:12-21
Then we get to a section of Eliphaz’s speech that is a bit eery and disconcerting. He appeals to “a word” that came as a vision of the night. The primary message communicated through this vision is in verses 17-21. Even God’s angels are guilty of error at times, so he says, so humanity, which has come from the dust, is certainly below God and guilty of error at times. So that Job would have errors that he has committed really is a normal human problem that he should accept.
Humanity is weak, so that someone can be crushed as easily as a moth and die without others caring.
The Delicate “Truth” Witnessed — 5:1-7
By “holy ones” Eliphaz is probably referring to the angels. But he warns him here—has he seen the end of a fool, one who persists in his iniquity. The end is not pretty. Such people are crushed at the city gate—the location of the city where justice is maintained. And in the end, as a general principle, man is born to trouble. Facing trouble is part of being a person.
Again, don’t see this as Eliphaz attempting to make Job feel as low as possible. He is trying to build a case here of showing Job that iniquity and vulnerability are part of life. It is in the next section that we see what he starts to call Job to do.
The Delicate “Truth” Affirmed — 5:8-16
Now Eliphaz appeals to the character of God. And based on what he is about to say of God, he urges Job in verse 8 to seek God and commit his cause to him. However, in his reference to God’s character and actions, there is no room for righteous suffering. Instead, we see that he sees God as one who is unsearchable and yet in many ways predictable. Those who act rightly he treats well and those who act poorly he justly and appropriately responds to.
So verse 16 is a fitting conclusion—but also see that Eliphaz is not calling Job to repent specifically. He merely calls him to seek God and commit his cause to him. This is still a soft approach.
But we cannot miss Eliphaz’s wrong view of God here. Serving God is not merely a matter of doing right and being rewarded in this life and doing wrong and facing correction. Job will have some basic disagreement with what his friend says here.
The Closing Appeal —5:17-27
And so Eliphaz ends his first speech by urging his friend to accept God’s discipline and reproof. Though God wounds, he also heals and brings peace. Job can expect peace, many descendants, and a long life. As he concludes his speech, he is confident that what he has said is true and for Job’s good (v. 27).
In terms of the wisdom of his day, Eliphaz has given a masterful speech. He has delivered the best of mankind’s wisdom to his friend. Who could argue with his case? He knows the typical way of humanity—no one is truly innocent. He knows the place of humanity—we are but dust, easily killed and forgotten. He knows the weakness of humanity—we are born to trouble. And he knows the justice of God (so he thinks). God rewards those who seek him and punishes those who go against him. So the wise man will accept God’s discipline and thereafter enjoy God’s blessing once again.
Review of Eliphaz
There is something rather appealing about this advice from Eliphaz. It isn’t too confrontational, for one. He carefully implies that Job is a sinner like everyone else. He accepts that they might not be able to find what Job did to anger God (5:9), so he advises that Job simply accept God’s discipline and get on with life. Let’s sweep that bad experience under the rug and go on with life, for surely God has a better ending to your life in place, Job. Just leave this up to him and move on. It’s improve, I promise!
What do you think Job will say? What would you say?
Job Replies —
You’re my friends? — .
Last week we considered Job’s miserable state as he cursed the day of his birth and longed for the rest of the grave, as he saw it. This week, as we look at his speech that is stretched out over chapters 6-7, his words are not quite as dark, but don’t expect too bright of a message from him yet. In chapter 6 we see that he still longs for God to crush him, and he adds now that his friends are failing him, based on Eliphaz’s speech. Yet we will also see that, as far as he knows, he continues in faithfulness to the words of God. The desire to obey God, and the belief that he has walked in obedience before God to this point, begin to come through.
Chapter 7 then records a lament or his mourning to God. So you can break down this speech of Job into two parts, with Job speaking to his friends in chapter 6 and to God in chapter 7.
Eliphaz failed to see the heaviness of life upon Job—at least, Job seems to think he failed. Verses 2-3 point to this at least. He recognizes that his “words have been rash,” yet his friends really couldn’t feel the weight of his calamity. These 13 verses divide into two sections (1-7, 8-13) with verses 4 and 10 being core to these two sections. “…the terrors of God are arrayed against me,” and “...I have not denied the words of the Holy One.”
God has wounded me, though I am innocent — 6:1-13. So Job says
God has wounded me, though I am innocent — 6:1-13.
Eliphaz warned in 5:2 that “…vexation kills the fool...” Job, however, says that his “vexation” is unbearable and really the cause of his rash words, which seems to show how he views his speech in chapter 3. But really, the heart of the matter is shown in verse 4. His vexation is the result of “the arrows of the Almighty” and the “terrors of God.” Similar language can be found in .
Your wrath has swept over me; your dreadful assaults destroy me.
But I, O Lord, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you. O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me? Afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors; I am helpless. Your wrath has swept over me; your dreadful assaults destroy me. They surround me like a flood all day long; they close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.
The illustrations that Job gives in verses 5-6 communicate this: a donkey doesn’t bray when it has the food it needs, nor does an ox low when food is before it. His former speech was for good reason, just as an animal might make noise because it is hungry. His spirit was drinking the poison of God’s arrows. The cause of his cursing the day of his birth was the affliction and trouble he had received from God.
Yet you, my friends, fail me — 6:14-27
As tasteless food is more palatable with salt and the milk of a weed (possible interpretation of the end of verse 6) is repulsive, so, as verse 7 shows, the terrors of God are repulsive to Job—his appetite refuses to touch them. He does not want to accept the bitter poison of trouble and calamity from God.
Now keep in mind that we are dealing with poetry and with men who thought differently than the Western mind—than our way of thinking. So, 6:1-7 is really Job’s response to Eliphaz’s words in 5:2-7. Now as we come to the next bit of this passage, 6:8-13, this is Job’s response to Eliphaz’s words in 4:2-7.
In his words in 4:2-7, Eliphaz accuses Job of being impatient. Even though Job himself had strengthened the weak hands of others in the past, he was not accepting his suffering as he should. He then states in 4:7 these two important questions: “Remember: who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off?”
Job’s answer is that he has “not denied the words of the Holy One” — he is innocent — yet he longs for God to cut him off anyway! He wants God to crush him as he goes on to ask “that he would let loose his hand and cut me off!” Now, do you remember this term that we encountered earlier in the book? “Hand” was used in chapters 1-2 to show that God’s hand was ultimately in control, and he chose to place Job and all he had into Satan’s hand. Ignorant of that conversation, Job longs for God to let loose his hand and kill him. Its almost as if Job is turning to God and saying, “Just finish the job! Hold nothing back! End my life!”
Part of Job’s motivation for this death-wish is that he has, in his opinion, been faithful to God so far—verse 10 shows that. Yet, as verses 11-13 explain, Job does not have much confidence that he can continue to endure as he has so far. His strength is limited, and he does not have the help he needs. Part of the reason that he does not have the needed help is because of the shameful failure of his friends—and that leads us to the next section of the chapter.
Yet you, my friends, fail me — 6:14-27
Verses 14-15, 21, and 27 show us what Job essentially says against his so-called friends. To illustrate how much they have failed him, Job compares them to a stream that had been full of cool water yet was found completely dried up by a thirsty caravan in their time of need. As such a caravan turns away from the stream’s previous location sorely disappointed, so now they are of no help to him. They have, according verse 14, withheld “kindness” or “covenant-love” from him, even though, as he poses questions in verses 22-23, he has not asked them for any great help.
Instead, the friends reprove him, though he doesn’t even know yet what they are approving. If they are reproving his words from chapter 3, do they not have enough discernment to see that “the speech of a despairing man is wind?”
Can you find what I have said wrongly? — 6:28-30
Can you find what I have said wrongly? — 6:28-30
In the closing of this chapter, in quite the dramatic reversal, Job calls his friends to repent, saying in verse 29, “Please turn....Turn now...” He believes he is fully able to analyze his speech. He is not lying, and he sees no injustice—or perhaps better, “deceit”—on his tongue, or in his speech. To summarize, he has a basic, real disagreement with Eliphaz. He is innocent. They need to accept that and start being a help to him, for continuing in such a way through his calamity is not easy, especially with them making it more difficult.
Soon I will be gone —
We can divide into three sections. 7:1-8 focuses on earth, 7:9-16 focuses on Sheol, or the grave or the realm of the dead, and in 7:17-21, though the word “heavens” is not used, God’s realm is certainly in mind, so we could consider that a focus on God’s realm or the heavens. Rather than desiring most to be in the heavens with God and least to be in the grace, Job’s desires are reversed. Life on earth is difficult, the grave is better than life on earth, and being observed by the “watcher of mankind” is what he desires the least.
One observation that we shouldn’t miss is what Job says at the conclusion of each of these sections. So, verses 8, 16, and 21 end with, “…I shall be gone....” “...my days are a breath....” “…I shall not be.” Though his language has improved from , he still longs for the solace and comfort of the grave, and he still does not understand why, as he sees it, God’s hand is against him. So, this is a lament, a mourning or grieving over the life that he has. Now let’s look a little more fully at each of these sections.
Life on earth is hard and short — 7:1-8
Life on earth includes “hard service,” “months of emptiness,” “nights of misery” that are “full of tossing,” and days that are swift and end without hope. Job sees his life as a mere breath, and he does not believe that he will experience good again during his lifetime. Even the life that he has is plagued by worm-infested skin that does not heal.
When verse 8 says, “The eye of him who sees me will behold me no more,” Job is probably referring to God, but this only shows once again Job’s loss of hope. Though God sees him, he remains in this condition. Perhaps Job takes some type of morbid comfort, then, in believing that one day, even while God’s eyes are on him, he will die, so that he will be gone.
Going to Sheol must be better — 7:9-16
Going to Sheol must be better — 7:9-16
We should not be surprised, then, that down in verse 15, Job says, “…I would chose strangling and death rather than my bones.” He does not want to live.
He knows that death is final, as he says in verses 9-10, yet he is in such anguish that he chooses not to restrain his words. He speaks to give voice to the bitterness that his soul is experiencing. So, for example, he wonders aloud if God considers him something that is dangerous and must be guarded, like the sea or a sea monster. It seems that one question weighing upon his soul is whether God sees him as an enemy!
He finds no comfort in sleep, for even there dreams and visions scare and terrify him. Life is but a breath, but for Job, it seems it cannot end soon enough.
Let God look away from me — 7:17-21
So in this final section of his lament he wonders why man is so important that God visits him every morning and tests him every moment. He longs to be out of God’s sight and no longer under God’s care. The end of verse 19 probably seems confusing — “…nor leave me alone till I swallow my spit?” — yet some believe that this is similar to a modern-day Arabic saying of “let me swallow my spittle,” which basically means, “wait a minute.” (Hartley, 152). The point seems to be that Job want a brief break from God’s attention. This highlights how at odds he feels with God.
The last two verses also need some careful explanation. Is Job here admitting that he needs forgiveness from God? Is he doing what Eliphaz suggested? No.
It is important to see that this is a hypothetical situation: “If I sin...” is how verse 20 begins. Does whatever Job has done really warrant such suffering? Surely God can take care of whatever way Job, this poor dying man, has offended him. He is going to die soon anyway, so let God pass over whatever it was that Job had done.
Rather than a genuine plea for forgiveness, these two verses show how bitter Job’s soul has become and how bold he has grown to voice his frustration and pain to the God whose actions Job does not currently understand. His words then end with, “…you will seek me, but I shall not be.” This is not a pleasant ending, and the conversation between Job and his friends will go on from here. Yet it is at this point that we would be wise to stop and consider the place of these four chapters within the book of Job and their significance for us today.
Conclusion:
We are interpreters. We are not merely content with seeing things around us and what happens to us and leaving it at that. No, we want to know the significance of events and people in our lives. We desire to know why God allows things or doesn’t allow things. And without fail, at some point, we are going to be drawing conclusions from—interpreting—life. This is certainly evident both in Eliphaz’s speech and in Job’s reply.
But though we are all interpreters, we are not all interpreters who are right in what we conclude. In fact, it is very difficult to be right—and there are right conclusions that we can draw from life and wrong conclusions! To make this more practical, Eliphaz thought that surely Job had failed God in some way—nobody experienced that amount of calamity and trouble without offending God. So the right way to proceed included seeking God and accepting his discipline. By doing such things, Job could experience blessing from God once again. Yet this is terribly bad advice. In fact, it is exactly what Satan wanted to prove, if Job had accepted it. For its basic premise is this: to enjoy blessing in life, do what you need to in order to appease God—in order to make him happy with you once again. In such advice we can still hear the echo of Satan’s question: “Does Job fear God for no reason?”
Eliphaz evidently had experience in counseling. His tactics were careful. He asked questions and approached a difficult conversation with care. He gave examples or illustrations and offered hope to his friend. Yet he was terribly wrong in his view of God and how God works among us. He did not allow for the possibility that God chose to afflict Job for his own reasons and not because of any sin Job had committed. Nor did he point Job to God for the right reason. We do not serve God merely so that this life goes well. In fact, this life might go very poorly if we choose to follow after Jesus Christ. We serve and seek to honor God because he is God—he is our creator who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light. Let us worship God because he alone is worthy of worship! This must be the reason above all reasons for us turning to God day after day.
Now of course, man’s problem, sin, should drive us to God. Our need of forgiveness through the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ should also drive us to God. Yet believing that we must turn to God, placing our faith in Jesus Christ as Savior merely for the forgiveness of sins falls far short of fulfilling your purpose before God. We must never be the ultimate focus. That is God’s place alone. If you are here because you want God to be happy with you or to turn your life around, please hear this: you need to adjust your focus. Yes, we desire God’s love and not his condemnation. Yes, we want to live victorious lives. But there is something greater, and that is the pursuit of God’s glory. We should be here, ultimately, because God alone is worthy of worship.
Before closing, let us not miss one more thing, going back to the theme that I mentioned at the beginning. Though at times you might face days that are deeply troubling, hold fast to the words of God! Job is hurting here. Life is terrible. Yet he cannot and must not deny the words of God. He must not go against his God, even though he believes, based on his current experience, that his God is against him. Oh for such faith! Oh for such endurance! Job is wrong to believe that God is against him. God is not against him, though God has brought deep suffering to him. Yes, those can both be true. God loves his people. God at times brings great suffering to his people. Whatever God brings into our lives, we can learn much from Job’s example here. He knew that he must never deny these precious words of God. We, believers, must never deny these precious words of God. They are life! They are truth! Cling to them! Do not let the events of life cause you to reject God’s truth. That must never be a road that we take.
Job’s strength is almost gone. He feels betrayed by his friends and attacked by his God. Are you there, brother? Are you there, sister? I have not gone to other passages much this morning at all, but I will read short selections from two NT passages to encourage you, hurting believer, to resist the tempting lie that God does not like you and is casting you aside. and .
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Cling to these promises, believer! And you who do not yet profess faith in Jesus Christ, consider the precious gift of God here—those who turn to him find a God from whose love they will never be separated.