Saints in the Hands of Angry Counselors, Part 2

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. Now 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. When you face trials and you're going through a really difficult situation, you probably want to know the reason why.

In fact, you might become too quick to place the blame somewhere. The same might be true for those who are trying to counsel you. When Job faced a trial, the counselors in his life looked for a reason to blame Job, even though his trials had nothing to do with anything that he had done. Have you ever been in Job's position and received counsel that was unwise and unhelpful?

Stephen's going to help you today. This lesson is called Saints in the Hands of Angry Counselors. 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.

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. Even 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 fiance 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. Before we look at his response, most of us, if I can go back into history for a moment, have read the biographies of Abraham Lincoln.

I have read one in particular called The Forgotten Lincoln which is just amazing and filled with these hidden truths of his life. It was his refusal to retaliate, his determination to bear upon the strain which ultimately led history as you know to rewrite its opinion of him as a great president. His biographer said that Lincoln developed four ways of responding to criticism and I want to insert this here before we look at how Job in effect puts it into place.

Four ways. Number one, first and foremost, he would simply ignore it. He ignored much of it. He considered it, he said, too petty to deserve a response. Secondly, he answered back only if he felt it would make a difference. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't, but he would only respond if he felt it would truly make a difference. Third, he formed the habit of sitting down and writing lengthy letters in defense of his integrity and reputation, venting all his anger and emotions but then he would tear the letters up and throw them away. It's good practice, isn't it?

How many of you would like to have an email back but you hit send? Fourth, he chose to focus on the brighter side of life and kept about him a good sense of humor. 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. But he will now respond in verse 1 of chapter 23 to Eliphaz the Temanite. And I would have said, Eliphaz, you're a termite, just to kind of get it off my chest before I went any further.

Make me feel a little better but obviously I'm not Job. 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 doesn'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 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 8, 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, Russell, some leaf, do something. Prove that you care.

The heavens are silent. However, notice this profound statement of trust in verse 10. But he, God, knows the way I take. And when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.

Wow, there you have it in the middle of this long and rambling lament, this nugget. I don't know which way to turn. I don't know which way to take. I don't know which way he's taken. But I do believe he knows where I'm going. He knows the way that I take.

He knows, and I will trust his heart. When he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold. By the way, you can't miss the irony between Job's statement and the trivial promise of Eliphaz.

You remember? Eliphaz had promised, Job, if you submit to God, he will become gold to you. Job says, no, because I've surrendered to God, I believe when he's finished with me, I will become gold to him. He is purifying me for his own purpose and pleasure. There's another subtle thought as well that even though Job has lost all his possessions and all his gold, Job is declaring his faith when he says, God isn't going to necessarily give me back all my gold, but he is going to make me gold, which is far better.

Refined by the furnace, purified by the heat, it's better than gold and silver. This statement of faith can be divided into three separate statements. God knows what's happening to me, number one. God knows what's happening to me. He knows the way that I take. God has planned what's happening to me. He not only knows what's happening to me, but he's planned what's happening to me when he has tried me.

Third, God has a purpose for what's happening to me. I shall come forth refined and purified as gold. This text, by the way, was the inspiration behind John Rippon's great hymn, when through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie. My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply. The flame shall not hurt thee.

I only design thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine. The heavens are silent, but I will trust the heart of God. Number two, evil surrounds me, but I will trust the hand of God.

That is, that the hand of God is sovereign, even though surrounded by evil. What chapter 24, by the way, is, is a list of all of the sins of mankind, just the cataloging of sins that surround them. Greed and theft, verse two, oppression, verse three, murder, verse 14, adultery, verse 15, and more. This is, by the way, actually a subtle answer to Eliphaz who had said earlier that Job was obviously guilty of great sin because he was being punished. So Job, in effect, in chapter 24, in a very clever and kind way, says in effect here, if God always punishes people because of their great sin, then how come so many sinners are going unpunished?

Of course, Eliphaz doesn't want to struggle with the depth of that question. Even though it seems, though, that, that, that the sinner gets away with his sin and the sinner takes heart, he says, I don't know, God, I'll take heart in this. And, oh, but God is there in every deed recorded. The saint can lose heart because God doesn't seem to be anywhere near, but God is.

And he also takes note of everything. No matter what happens, no matter how difficult, God has not abandoned his sovereign post and beloved God has not, he has not abandoned you. William Frey was an undergraduate student at the University of Colorado in 1951. He would eventually go on into the ministry. He spent a couple of hours a week reading to a fellow student whose name was John and John was blind. One day, William Frey wrote, I asked him how he lost his sight. He told me of an accident that happened when he was a teenager and how at that point he had simply given up on life. He said, when the accident happened that I knew that I would never see again, I felt that life had ended. As far as I was concerned, I was bitter and angry with God for letting this happen. And I took my anger out on everyone around me. I felt that since I had no future, I would not lift a finger on my own behalf.

Let everyone else wait on me. I shut my bedroom door and refused to come out except for meals. William Frey writes, the young man I knew here was an eager student. So I had to ask what had changed his attitude. And he told me this story. One day, my father came into my room and started giving me a stern lecture. He said he was tired of my feeling sorry for myself. He said that winter was coming and it was always my job to put up the storm windows and that I was to go and get those windows up by suppertime tonight or else. And he shut the door on the way out.

Well, said John, that made me so angry that I resolved to do it. Muttering to myself, I groped my way out to the garage. I found the windows. I found the step ladder. I found the necessary tools and I went to work.

They'll be sorry when I fall off the ladder and break my neck. He muttered. But little by little, he said, I groped my way around the house and I actually got the job done. And John stopped as he told me and his sightless eyes misted up as he said. I would later discover that at no time during that afternoon had my father ever been more than five feet away from my side.

I didn't know it until later, but all the while I was climbing up and down on that letter ladder muttering to myself, fumbling with the tools and sweating my way through an impossible project in the dark. My father had been beside me every step of the way. John Rippon in his hymn text put it this way. Fear not. I am with thee. O be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will still give thee aid. I'll strengthen thee, help thee and cause thee to stand upheld by my gracious omnipotent hand. I love this, this verse, the soul that on Jesus has lean for repose.

I will not, I will not desert to his foes. God says that soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I'll never, no, never, no, never forsake. Even when the heavens are silent, you can trust the heart of God.

Even when the earth is filled with evil, you can trust the hand of God. Even when you're in the dark, even when you don't know which way to turn, even when you're in the hands of an angry counselor, you are still in the hands of your all wise, ever near, gracious Lord." That was Stephen Davey in a message he called Saints in the Hands of Angry Counselors. If it would help to listen again, please visit wisdomonline.org. You'll find this and all of Stephen's teaching on that site. Stephen is the pastor of the Shepherd's Church in Cary, North Carolina.

And while you're at our website, I invite you to take advantage of a free offer we have for you this month. During the month of April, we're sending a copy of Stephen's booklet, Resurrection Power, to anyone who wants it. Has it ever occurred to you that according to eyewitness accounts, Jesus never attended a funeral that he didn't entirely interrupt? The New Testament makes it clear, Jesus has the power over death. The exciting news is that Jesus offers his resurrection power to you.

Death is not the end of the story. Jesus has power over death. And Jesus offers his resurrection power to you. Stephen's resource, Resurrection Power, will deepen your appreciation for what Jesus has done for you in offering you eternal life. We're going to email you a free copy of that resource today. Sign up at wisdomonline.org forward slash resurrection. Go to wisdomonline.org forward slash resurrection. Then join us again next time for more Wisdom for the Heart.