Saints in the Hands of Angry Counselors, Part 1

He didn't bring all his evidence. He didn't say, Eliphaz, you were wrong on seven points.

Here they are. No, he just says, I wish I could have an audience with God. He laments in verse three of chapter 23, Oh, that I knew where I might find them, that I might come to his seat.

You notice how he really doesn't even respond to Eliphaz. He just sort of starts this open air prayer, lamenting the fact that he just wished he could find God. When you're in a difficult time, you might find yourself receiving bad advice or unwise counsel. Has that ever happened to you? You really needed help, but the so-called help was actually unhelpful? Well, that's what happened to Job.

And in response, he wanted nothing more than to be in the presence of God. Today, we're going to look at some of the poor counsel that Job received. You'll learn what not to do when others need help, and you'll learn how to respond to bad counsel when you receive it.

Here's Stephen Davey with today's lesson. By the time you reach this third round, you discover that his counselors don't want to help him as much as they want to hurt him. And at this point, it strikes me that Job will become a saint in the hands of an angry counselor. But I want you to know that one of the most important things about this next encounter with this wise counselor, supposedly, who missed by a mile, is how Job responds to unfair, untrue, unkind criticism.

See, you're there right now. Your actions have been misinterpreted. Your words on that campus have been misquoted. Your heart at the job has been misunderstood. And some critic is having a field day at your place of work or on that campus or in the neighborhood or maybe in your family circle, maybe even in your church.

You're wondering what to do. This chapter in Job's life is especially for you. In Chuck Swindoll's commentary on the book of Job, which is a very wonderful practical study, he entitles his chapter that expounds on the text we're about to look at, he entitles it this way, How to Handle Criticism with Class.

It's a good title, and it's true. In fact, I want to read to you how he opens his chapter with an illustration from our own American history. He writes, Our nation's sixteenth president was a model of handling personal assaults on his character. Public criticism against him intensified in his final seven years of life. One of his biographers said that Abraham Lincoln was slandered, libeled, and hated perhaps more intensely than any man to hold the nation's highest office. He was publicly called just about every humiliating name imaginable by the press of his day, names like Baboon, a third-rate country lawyer, a vulgar jokester, a dictator, an ape, a buffoon, for starters. Severe and unjust criticism did not subside as his enemies increased, so did the criticism against him. But Lincoln, his biographer wrote, handled it all with a patience, forbearance, and determination uncommon in most men.

It's true, isn't it? In fact, history will later vindicate him as one of the greatest presidents we've ever had. He was indeed, as Swindoll ended his introduction, grace under pressure. Perhaps nowhere in the biography of Job will you see that kind of grace any more than in these next few chapters. Not only will we discover, by the way, how to respond to unjust harmful criticism, we're going to get another lesson on how to be a lousy counselor. Turn to Job chapter 22. Eliphaz, in his final speech, will deliver five blunders, five missteps.

And they can be our own, by the way, and so we want to learn from him too. As you're turning, I find it ironic, by the way, that this will be the last time Eliphaz speaks to Job before he is ultimately chastised by God and told to go ask Job to pray for him so that his sins will be forgiven. He will later be vindicated, Job will, by God himself.

Here's how to counsel the wrong way as well as respond the right way. The first blunder Eliphaz makes in this chapter, let me give it to you and then we'll look at the text, is this. Condemn someone without taking the time to identify the context. Look at verse 1. Then Eliphaz, the Temanite, responded, can a vigorous man be of use to God or a wise man be useful to himself? Is there any pleasure to the Almighty if you are righteous or profit if you make your ways perfect? These words, by the way, are dripping with condescension and pride and sarcasm.

Let me sort of rewrite it for you in our own contemporary vernacular. He's saying, Job, do you think you are any benefit to God? Do you think God cares about your claim to be a righteous man? Look around you, where is God's reassurance that you even matter to him?

Can you imagine how painful that would be to hear? What Eliphaz doesn't know is the context. He doesn't know, in fact Job doesn't either, that God and Satan and the hosts of heaven have never been more attentive as it were. In fact, God will intervene in a few chapters with assurances on Job's behalf. Eliphaz doesn't know that context from which Job's suffering has emanated.

And most of the problem will stem from the fact that Eliphaz has his heels dug in. He's convinced that Job has sinned greatly and thus God is judging him greatly. The truth is Eliphaz, at this point, really doesn't care about Job. Job doesn't matter to him. What matters is that Eliphaz is right. It leads me to the second blunder.

The counsel is based entirely on outward appearances. Look at verse 5. Is not your wickedness great and your iniquities without end? In other words, Job, the list of your sins is endless.

How do I know? Because the obvious judgment of God is endless. Look at you, your hidden sins are great and so the outward expression of God's punishment is great as well. It's clear from your diseases, from your losses, from your failures, you are not the wisest man in the east.

You are the greatest sinner in the east. Isn't it easy, ladies and gentlemen, to view losses and diseases and failures as proofs of God's discipline? But back in chapter 1, God has actually said to Satan, do you want to test a blameless man? Do you want to test a righteous man who fears me and refuses to do evil things?

Test my servant Job. The trials of Job were not produced because he was a sinner, but because he was not. He wasn't perfect, no one is, but he passionately hated sin and he passionately loved God. The text in chapter 1 says he feared God and turned continually away from evil. His trials were not proof he was in trouble with God, his trials were proof he could be trusted by God. Eliphaz is condemning, he's lashing out in anger because of the outward appearances of what looked like God's displeasure.

Job will become, not only to God and to Satan and the hosts of heaven and to all of us for all these years who have read his story for every generation, proof that it is possible to be in the midst of great suffering and bring praise to God and also be the object of God's pleasure. People who look on the surface of things will never seize that deeper truth. Their view of God depends on the weather, the stock market, the doctors report whether or not all four tires on the car can hold air. That's their view of God.

That's Eliphaz the Temanite. He appears to be wise, but in the end he's shallow. He does not yet know what Job is learning, that this God is the God who rides upon the winds of the storm as well as whispers cool breezes to heavy hearts. He doesn't stop blundering with that. In fact, he's already done all that before. At this point he does something new.

This is his third blunder. Number three, he took on the role of omniscient God. In our day we would say he began to play the Holy Spirit. He's literally going to start making up sins. He's going to start accusing Job of sins Job has not committed. But he's so angry he can't keep it any longer. He's going to prove Job an unrepentant sinner. It doesn't matter to him if he destroys the integrity of Job in the meantime.

The first thing he does is accuse Job of unbridled greed. Look at verse 6. You have taken pledges of your brothers without cause. You've stripped men naked.

Now this was a serious accusation. In Job's day, common decency dictated that if a man were forced to give up his cloak as a pledge to paying off his debt to a creditor, the creditor would normally return the cloak when it got cold because the cloak served not only his coats in the day, but covers at night. Eliphaz is effectively saying to Job, you're telling a man he owes you something you really don't know, and then you're taking his cloak, but then when it gets cold you're not giving it back. In fact, more than that he said, look there again, you are stripping men naked. In other words, you are utterly heartless and greedy.

You're not only taking their coats, but the rest of their clothing so that they have no covering or warmth in the harsh elements. Job, you are a heartless, crass, greedy man. That's your problem.

Job does not interrupt. Eliphaz next condemns Job for heartless unconcern for the needy. Look at verse 7, to the weary you've given no water to drink and from the hungry you've withheld bread. Job, you've let people starve. What he means in verse 8, which drips with sarcasm is that even though the whole earth belonged to you, you rich man, you haven't given any of it back to anybody because you're heartless. And at that point, verse 9 says, Job stood and said, I've got plenty of people to testify for me. You're lying.

No, that's not in there again either. No word from this saint in the hands of an angry counselor. No vindication, no defense. Next, Eliphaz condemns him for committing the lowest crime of all. Even in our day, James says, this is the epitome of being a fake and a fraud following false religion.

What is it? You refuse to care for widows and orphans. Verse 9, you've sent widows away empty. I mean, they came to you hungry and needy and you sent them away. And also you crushed the strength, the health of the orphans. You didn't care about them. You didn't give them the help they needed. They had no medical attention. You were so calloused.

These orphans had no help even though you could have given them crumbs. Where did Eliphaz come up with all this stuff? Had he heard it from others? Were enemies of Job delivering little bits and pieces of rumors from people who perhaps had envied Job or resented his purity or felt convicted by his walk?

We don't know. But he's convinced Job, there's no need to hide, fess up. There was a fourth blunder and it remains a temptation to all who will counsel another. It's this, Eliphaz tried to pressure out of Job a quick confession.

Just confess something. Now these charges are trumped up. They're fabricated. They're exaggerated.

They're not true. Eliphaz is actually working here for whom? The enemy, Satan himself, not for God. Revelation chapter 12 tells us that one of the chief attributes of the enemy is that he loves to accuse the brethren. He delights in bringing the believer under the cloud of guilt and sense of displeasure from God.

Why? Because ultimately he wants you to throw in the towel and withhold worship from the God he despises. So he wants you to quit and join him in accusing God of not being worth worship. Stephen Lawson in his commentary on Job wrote these perceptive words regarding the scene between Eliphaz and Job.

It makes some interesting application. He says, we must carefully distinguish between the conviction of the Spirit and the accusations of Satan. There is a difference. The Holy Spirit convicts us of a specific sin and he will do so until we confess it. Then he will no longer convict us about that specific sin because it is forgiven.

On the other hand, Satan is a grave digger. He uncovers all kinds of dirt from our past, delights in throwing a barrage of sin at us. Sin we may have committed but not confessed to be sure. But sins we have committed but already confessed. Even sins we haven't even committed. Anything to heap guilt upon our heads. He majors on sin that does not need our attention. And after we confess our sin, Satan still haunts us with guilt. He's like a dishonest car mechanic. Even if he can't find something that needs fixing, he'll tell us something does.

So we end up paying for things to be fixed in our lives that aren't even broken. Follow this. He goes one paragraph further. Learn the difference between the Holy Spirit's conviction and satanic accusation.

It is the difference between a rifle and a shotgun. The Spirit directly targets areas that need confessing. He is clear, specific, and true. Satan uses a shotgun approach, firing buckshot at anything and everything that moves.

He's vague, generic, and false. Good counsel. The truth is we all have an Eliphaz in our lives. Either the unseen enemy or maybe somebody we can see who reminds us of everything we're not but should be who piles it on and buries us under the law. As spouses, we can do that, can't we? We know the weak spots. We know the buttons to push, to heap on the guilt. We can do that as parents where we refuse to add grace to our leadership. We can do that as teachers and colleagues.

We can do that as business partners and classmates. We can refuse to dispense approval and consistently point out the fault. In fact, we can become like Eliphaz.

We can be more concerned about being right than bringing hope. Well, these are the blunders of Eliphaz. Number one, he condemned without identifying the context. Number two, he based his counsel on outward evidences. Third, he played the role of the Holy Spirit. That is, he acted as if he were omniscient and knew Job's life and heart. Fourth, he tried to pressure Job into a quick confession. Now, the fifth blunder of Eliphaz will follow through the end of the chapter, verses 23 to the end of chapter 22, and it's this. Let me summarize for the sake of time.

Use quick solutions to the problem and ignore the deeper issues at hand. Now, you'd think that a switch had been thrown somehow in Eliphaz's demeanor. Suddenly, he's nice, although his pleasantness still drips with condescension. He says to Job in verse 23, look there, if you return to the Almighty, you will be restored. If you remove unrighteousness far from your tent, that is, Job, I know you're hiding it in there, get rid of it. Look, verse 24, place your gold in the dust. That is, get rid of the rest of your wealth. You probably got it stashed away.

Dump it. And here's what will happen. The Almighty, verse 25, will be your gold and choice silver to you, for then you will delight in the Almighty and lift up your face to God.

You'll pray to him and he will hear you and you will pay your vows and, note this, you will decree a thing and it will be established for you. That is, Job, you can state whatever you want and it'll be yours. I know. You can name it and claim it.

Wow, it went back that far, all the way back to Job. You do this. Oh, you've got your ticket. He says, light will just be bathed across your path. It'll never be dark again. You'll have everything you can want or dream.

Isn't that great? Never mind 10 graves. Never mind physical effects that are going to dog Job to the grave. Never mind rebuilding your business or your home all over again from scratch. Never mind the memories. Never mind the questions. Never mind the tears.

Just name it, claim it, and look for the sunshine. Unwise counsel is filled with superficial promises. It will not provide the steel you need to brace yourself for the future.

It doesn't provide the strength of the Spirit of God so that you can hold your head up and walk into the challenges of tomorrow. Added to that is the pain of these unfounded accusations and now the trivialization of this pain with these silly promises that are so fleshly and so temporal. But did you notice? I pointed it out twice. Job never once interrupted Eliphaz. Not once. Isn't that amazing?

Isn't that remarkable to sit through that? Not once does Job say, who do you think you are? Let me pull out my witnesses. Let me give you my testimony.

Let me set the record straight. Let me justify my character. Let me defend myself against these new sensational sins, Eliphaz.

You are convinced I've committed. Not once does Job strike back. It's a lesson for us all. I don't know why it is, but in the most difficult times, they may be the times when these kinds of people show up most. It's because the enemy's at work, so be careful. Be on guard. The enemy, like a roaring lion, roams about seeking someone to discredit.

You could literally translate that word destroy. One revered Scottish Bible scholar, I have every book he's written. He died in the middle of the last century. In his spiritual autobiography, he told the tragedy of losing his 21-year-old daughter and her fiancée in a boating accident. They were both drowned. It was a tragedy heard around the civilized world.

How tragic it was indeed. In the midst of his grief, he actually received a letter, and it said, if you can imagine it, and I quote, I know why God killed your daughter. It was to keep her from the corruption of your heresy, end quote.

This is the counsel of Eliphaz. He would later write this scholar, God did not stop that accident at sea, but he did still the storm in my own heart so that somehow my wife and I came through that terrible time, still standing on our own two feet. I have always admired men like the Apostle Paul, who stayed the course even near the end of his ministry. You read his epistles, and in between the lines, you discover that the accusers had largely won the day. Paul was virtually alone. They accused him of false motives, of ineffective ministry, of lacking skill, of manufacturing his office as an apostle, of loafing, of living off handouts, all these untrue.

Listen, up until this last week, I would have said that Paul was a leading model for facing ridicule and accusation with grace, with Nehemiah probably coming in a close second until I studied this text in Job. I have a brand new hero for us all. He has endured the most horrific suffering and agony. He is now virtually deserted. He doesn't even know what he's building anymore. He hardly knows the purpose.

He's grasping at it. His friends turn against him. And now in this encounter he is accused of lacking the kinds of things he had spent his whole life pursuing, like character and integrity and purity, but he presses on in faith. One of the things that marks me about Job is as his biography unfolds, it is in how he responds to his counselor. Here he is in the hands of an angry counselor, this saint of God.

He has endured accusations that we cannot imagine all within sight of 10 brand new graves. What makes him even more heroic is not that he's slandered though in this condition, but that he refuses to retaliate. Now, the next two chapters, which we don't have time to hardly do anything more than reference, chapter 23 and chapter 24, you find his response.

I recommend you read it slowly. I'll refer to just a few texts out of his response. Let me just categorize his response with two statements. First, he will say effectively this, the heavens are silent, but I will trust the heart of God. He laments in verse 3 of chapter 23, oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come to his seat. You notice how he really doesn't even respond to Eliphaz. He just sort of starts this open air prayer, lamenting the fact that he just wished he could find God. He didn't bring all his evidence. He didn't say, Eliphaz, you were wrong on seven points.

Here they are. No, he just says, oh, I wish I could have an audience with God. I wish I could bring my evidence before him. Verse 4, he says, I wish I could present my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments.

That's legal terminology for for evidence. I've got all the evidence I need. I don't want to lay it out before you, Eliphaz.

You don't care. I want to lay it out before God. If I look ahead of me, verse eight, he's not there. I look backward. I cannot perceive him when he acts on the left. I cannot behold him when he turns on the right.

I cannot see him. You ever feel like that? You're looking everywhere for God. Some sign, rustle some leaf. Do something. Prove that you care. The heavens are silent. If you've ever felt the way that Stephen was just describing, you know that God does care.

He may seem to be silent, but he is at work. We're going to stop here and resume this message on our next broadcast. Our Bible teacher, Stephen Davey, pastors the Shepherd's Church in Cary, North Carolina. If your travel plans ever bring you through this area, I hope you'll join us for a worship service. If that's not possible, there are other ways you can interact with us. You can send us an email at info at wisdomonline.org. You can also call us at 866-48-Bible. We'd love to hear from you. For Stephen and all of us here, thanks for listening. Join us again for more wisdom for the heart. We'll see you next time.