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Eliphaz's First Speech

August 30, 2015 Preacher: Series: Job: Suffering and the Sovereignty of God

Scripture: Job 4:1–5:27

Key Truth: Biblical truth can be offered with the wrong implications and application such that it becomes damaging to the hearer and to the advisor.

 

Introduction:

 

Q: Has the prolonged suffering of others ever compelled you to speak and offer wisdom?

“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver. Like a gold ring or an ornament of gold is a wise reprove to a listening ear. Like the cold of snow in the time of harvest is a faithful messenger to those who send him; he refreshes the soul of his masters. Like clouds and wind without rain is a man who boasts of a gift he does not give.”

Proverbs 25:11-14

 

Eliphaz Opens Gently: Of Impatience and Integrity

Job 4:1-6

“(Eliphaz challenges Job’s complaint) reluctantly. He does not want to discourage Job, but he feels compelled to do so….Job’s words threaten Eliphaz’s fundamental understanding of who God is and how he acts in the world. Thus he cannot keep himself from speaking.”

Tremper Longman III, Job: Baker Commentary on the Old Testament

Q: How easy is it to tell others to have patience amid their prolonged suffering? How does our own experience of suffering shape what we would say?

 

Eliphaz Leans In: Of Dreams and Retribution Theology:

Job 4:7-21

“(Job’s friend’s) first premise that we reap what we sow is valid. Their second premise, however, that we reap only what we sow is false. All suffering, as Job’s experience validates, is not due to sin. They rightly assert that God is all powerful, righteous, and wise, but they deny his freedom by not allowing God the freedom to use evil to accomplish his sovereign purposes.”

Bruce Waltke with Charles Yu, An Old Testament Theology

Q: Have you ever appealed to something similar to affirm your wisdom? Is this Biblical?

 

Eliphaz Advises: Of Fools and God-Seekers:

Job 5:1-27

“…the basic error of Job’s friends is that they overestimate their grasp of truth, misapply the truth they know, and close their minds to any facts that contradict what they assume….the book (of Job) shows (by its context, the opening scene in heaven) how small a part of any situation is the fragment of what we see; how much of what we do see we ignore or distort through preconceptions; and how unwise it is to extrapolate from our elementary grasp of the truth.”

Derek Kidner, The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes: An Introduction to Wisdom Literature

Q: What is often our true motivation for the resolution of the suffering of others?

 

Application:

Job 4-5 teaches us that biblical truth can be:

-offered with the best of intentions

-harmful when miss applied as in retribution theology

-harmful with false implications as in assuming guilt

“Christ never promises peace in the sense of no more struggle and suffering. Instead, he helps us to struggle and suffer as he did, in love, for one another. Christ does not give us security in the sense of something in this world, some cause, some principle, some value, which is forever. Instead, he tells us that there is nothing in this world that is forever, all flesh is grass. He does not promise us unlonely lives. His own life speaks loud of how, in a world where there is little love, love is always lonely. Instead of all these, the answer that he gives, I think, is himself….If we go to him for himself, I believe that we go away always with this deepest of all hungers filled.”

Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat

 

Communion

 

Benediction:

Romans 5:1-5

 

More in Job: Suffering and the Sovereignty of God

November 15, 2015

Redemption and Restoration in Job

November 8, 2015

God Speaks (Part 2)

November 1, 2015

God Speaks (Part 1)