Job 4
McGeeCHAPTERS 4 AND 5THEME: The first discourse of Eliphaz, the voice of experienceJob’s three friends had been sitting with him for seven days, and they have been wagging their heads as if to say, “Mmm, it finally caught up with you!” It seems that Job could take all his suffering, but he couldn’t take this attitude from his friends. He broke out in a monologue of complaint and whining. It is black pessimism and has no answer to the problem at all. Now his three friends will begin to talk to him. The first will be Eliphaz and then Bildad and finally Zophar. The names of these men actually give us just a little pen picture of them. Eliphaz means “God is strength” or “God is fine gold.” Bildad means “son of contention.” He is a mean one, by the way. He is actually brutal and blunt and crude in his method. Zophar means “a sparrow.” He twitters. He has a mean tongue and makes terrible insinuations to Job. The dialogue that takes place is a real contest. These friends are actually going to make an attack on Job, and he will respond. This is what we might call intellectual athletics. This type of thing was popular in that day. Today people go to a football game or a baseball, basketball, or hockey gamesomething athletic where the physical is demonstrated. In those days people gathered for intellectual contests. I think that by the time this dialogue was under way a great crowd had gathered, listening to what was taking place. We want to think that those people were not civilized; yet they put the emphasis on the intellectual. And we consider ourselves to be such civilized people who have advanced so far, but we put the emphasis on the physical. We are not as superior to these ancient people as we would like to think. Job has just broken out with a complaint. He is in the deepest, blackest pessimism that a man can be in. The Devil has stripped him of everything. He has nothing left to lean on, no place to turn. Even God seems very far removed from him at this particular time. Eliphaz is the first to speak. His is the voice of experience. He is a remarkable man, and he relates a strange and mysterious experience. The key to what he has to say is found in verse Job_4:8, “Even as I have seen.” Everything he has to say rests on that. He is the voice of experience. He has had a remarkable vision and has heard secrets that nobody else has ever heard.
Job 4:1
He begins in a diplomatic sort of way, but one gets the feeling he has his tongue in his cheek. This is a sort of false politeness. He says to Job, “Do you mind if I say something?” Then he adds, “Regardless of whether or not you mind my saying something, I’m going to say it.” And he does.
Job 4:3
He is saying to Job, “In the old days when you were in prosperity and plenty and in good health, you were a tower of strength to everybody else. You could advise them. You could speak to them and tell them what to do. You knew how to help those who were in trouble. But now something has happened to you, and you have folded up. You’re just a paper doll; you’re just a paper tiger. You were never real at all. The advice you gave to otherscan’t you follow it yourself?” I would say that that is the problem a great many of us have today. Isn’t it interesting that we can always tell the other person what he should do when troubles come to him? It is like the cartoon of two psychiatrists meeting one day. One looked at the other and said, “You are fine. How am I?” We are always analyzing the other fellow, telling him how he is. Eliphaz accuses Job of being an expert at that. In a very sarcastic manner he says, “Now it has happened to you, and what have you done? You folded up.”
Job 4:6
“Isn’t your own advice good enough for you? It helped others; now it ought to help you.” Now Eliphaz makes an insinuation to Job. But he does it in a polite way. We will find that Job’s other two friends are more blunt and crude, especially old Zophar.
Job 4:7
He accuses Job of having a chink in his armor, of having an Achilles’ heel. He says this would not have happened to Job if there hadn’t been something radically wrong in his life, something that he is keeping secret. This is the argument. He is making an insinuation, and it’s not true of Job. I hear this verse quoted even today, and it’s not interpreted accurately, my friend. Now we know this insinuation is wrong and is not true of Job, because at the beginning of the book God gave us that scene in heaven so that we might know Job and understand his character. These friends will be miserable comforters because they do not understand God, they do not understand Job, and they do not understand themselves. There are too many people who try to deal with spiritual matters who are not qualified to do so. Very candidly, that is one of the reasons I am reluctant to counsel folk. My feeling is that if a person is a child of Godunless it is a technical matter, a theological matter, or some physical difficultyit can be settled between the soul and God. We don’t need to go to the third person. After all, we have an Intercessor with God. Job cried out for a daysman, an intercessor, and today we know we have that. “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1Ti_2:5).
Now He’s the One to whom a great many Christians ought to be going instead of a minister or a psychologist. And if the problem is physical, go to the doctorand with that go to God also. As Eliphaz could speak from experience, I can also speak from experience and say that God does hear and answer prayer relative to our physical condition and relative to our spiritual condition. It is wonderful to see the way God will deal with Job before He is through with him. Eliphaz is not going to be very helpful to Job.
Job 4:8
Eliphaz is speaking from a very high pulpit and is looking down at Job when he says this. He insists there is something hidden in his life which he has not revealed. He is saying that Job is reaping what he sowed.
Job 4:9
This man is wrong. God disciplines His children, but He never destroys them. Eliphaz is like so many of us who give advice. We can tell someone else how he ought to do things, in a nice way, phrased in very attractive language, but what we say may not be accurate.
Job 4:10
He is saying that those who sow evil seed are going to reap a harvest of evil, and they are going to perish like the young lions that have broken teeth and like the old lions that can no longer stalk their prey. Now Eliphaz will say that this was impressed on him because he had a vision. He really tries to make your hair stand on end while he tells of this dream.
Job 4:12
Draw closer now. Cup your ear and don’t miss a thing of what is happening.
Job 4:13
Doesn’t this sound mysterious? Isn’t it bloodcurdling? The vision took place at night, in the dark.
Job 4:15
My, how Eliphaz builds this up! It sounds so scary. It sounds so frightening. This is going to be something nobody’s ever heard before. This is something nobody ever knew before, because this man has had a vision. He has seen things. He has had a dream. It was dark and a spirit passed before him. What did it say?
Job 4:17
Now I don’t know about you, but I must say I am disappointed. I thought that if a man had had such an experience he was really going to come up with something profound, something that none of us had ever heard before. This is nothing new. I think he really exercised himself a little bit too much to come up with so little. It is like the old saying about the mountain that conceived and travailed and brought forth a mouse! I think that is what Eliphaz did. He’s in great travail here, and you expect him to give birth to a great statement, a profound truth. He comes up with this: “Shall a mortal man be more just than God?” Of course not. Any of us knows that, and we didn’t need a dream or a frightening nightmare to learn it. I don’t think it was worth missing a night’s sleep to come up with something so trite, so evident. There is really nothing profound here at all. Yet this is the voice of experience, and there are a lot of folks with the voice of experience today. I’m in that very difficult spot myself as a retired preacher. Retired preachers can become a nuisance by giving adviceespecially to young preachers. When I was young, I can remember how retired preachers would come up, put their arm around me and say, “Son, this is the way you should be doing it.” The interesting thing was that they had not done it that way themselves. I find myself doing the same thing now. This very morning I met a young man who is candidating in a church I recommended to him. Before I could even think, I found myself telling him how he ought to do it. Finally I bit my tongue, got back in my car, told him that I would pray for him, and left it there. My, there is a danger in the voice of experience. May I say that Eliphaz was not being helpful to Job. Let me hasten to say that I don’t want to give the impression that Eliphaz and these other men are not stating profound, wonderful truths. The point is that they are not helping Job.
Job 4:18
Even God’s angels act rather foolishly. How much more foolish are we who live in houses of clay. There is not a better description of our bodies than that. We live in houses of clay. In 2 Corinthians 5 Paul called our bodies a tent, a feeble, frail tent which the wind will blow over. We live in houses of clay, and before long our houses fall in on us.
Job 4:20
No matter how strong or beautiful our bodies may be, they are of brief duration. Eliphaz is stating truths that are remarkable coming from a period so early in history, but they are not helpful to Job. You see, it is easy to give out truth that is not pertinent, that is not geared into life. We don’t need just any truth, but the truth that meets our need. All of these friends will say some true things, some wonderful things. I enjoy reading this, and I hope you enjoy it. But it doesn’t meet the need of Job. One feels like stopping these men and saying, “Don’t talk any further because you’re going down the wrong road. What you say is not helping this man.”