Some Truth

  1. Job has three friends visit. Before we start talking about what they get wrong, let’s first acknowledge what they did right.
  2. In chapter two, the three friends arrange to come together to visit Job. They see his anguish and don’t even speak to him. They sit silently on the ground with him for a full week.
  3. That’s a good friend.
  4. They were trying to be good friends.
  5. Eliphaz is the first to speak. He thinks Job must have sinned.
  6. He says many things that we find in Scripture, which means they are true things.
  7. The problem is they aren’t the whole truth. God is really, really Big, and His ways unsearchable. There is truth we can know, but we can’t know all of the mind of God. He’s an infinite being!
  8. Let’s look at some of what the friend says.
  9. First he compliments Job on his wisdom and how he has helped others. He points out how Job encouraged and strengthened others in their hardships and now he’s being impatient and dismayed in his own distress.
  10. The truth is that it is a lot easier to know the right response and to encourage someone else in it then to respond that way yourself!
  11. Verse 6 says, “Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope?
  12. Is that Biblical? Listen to these other Scriptures.
  13. Proverbs 14:26 “In the fear of the Lord one has strong confidence, and his children will have refuge.”
  14. This proverb sounds just like Job’s friend.
  15. King David in Psalm 25:21 says, “May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you.”
  16. He’s expecting his integrity to count for something, to help protect and preserve him.
  17. The friend isn’t far off in what he’s saying.
  18. He even relates a supernatural experience where he sees something and hears a voice saying, “Can mortal man be in the right before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker?”
  19. This is also Biblical. We’re told that no one is good, no one righteous. Even Jesus says that no one is good but God.
  20. It’s not a stretch to say there must be some sin somewhere.
  21. But, even though that is all true, we have to remember that God calls Job blameless.
  22. We’ll explore all this more as we work through the book.