Worthless Physicians: The Great Debate
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Job 4-31
Job 4-31
The Great Debate
This morning we are considering the great debate that takes place between Job and his three friends which takes up most of the book.
The debate is broken down into three cycles. In each cycle Job’s friends give their counsel and then Job responds. The first cycle of the debate runs from chapter 4-14, the second from chapter 15-21 and then the final cycle from chapter 22-31.
As the debate progresses Job’s friend’s counsel gets progressively shorter and aggressive. While Job’s responses get longer and more desperate.
I’m not going to attempt to do a detailed breakdown of every chapter as we’d be here until next week, I intend to give a summary of the main contentions of the debate as they arise.
There is one thing that all parties agree on from the outset; that God was sovereign over Job’s suffering
Job 1:21 (ESV)
21 The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Job 2:10 (ESV)
10 Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
Job 6:4 (ESV)
4 For the arrows of the Almighty are in me;
my spirit drinks their poison;
the terrors of God are arrayed against me.
Job 42:11 (ESV)
11 Then came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house. And they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him.
Even though we know it was Satan who made Job sick, and Satan who took away his livestock and his children, it was God who gave Job into his hand. Satan was merely the instrumental cause of Job’s suffering, and he could only do as much damage as he was permitted to do by God.
So this modern idea that God would never have reason to allow any suffering, of any kind in the lives of His people is completely alien to the book of Job and indeed to the whole of scripture.
Job and his friends believed in a sovereign God, a God who is strong, a God who rules and reigns in the heavens and the earth, a God who governs the affairs of all that He has created; not in some weak and distant figure who is unable to fulfil his purposes without the aid of his creatures.
So for Job and his friends, the question wasn’t over the source of his suffering; they all agreed on that. The question was; what was the reason for his suffering.
ELIPHAZ, BILDAD & ZOPHAR
Eliphaz the Temanite is the first to speak, as he is the eldest of the friends and therefore considered to be the wisest.
And of the three friends there’s no doubt that Eliphaz’s words are the words that carry the most weight. He starts off in quite a conciliatory tone; “if one ventures a word with you, will you be impatient?” and “Behold you have instructed many, you have strengthened weak hands, you have upheld him who was stumbling.”
And then in verses 7 and 8 he arrives at his assessment of Job’s plight;
7 “Remember: who that was innocent ever perished?
Or where were the upright cut off?
8 As I have seen, those who plow iniquity
and sow trouble reap the same.
9 By the breath of God they perish,
and by the blast of his anger they are consumed.
Eliphaz’s position was this; “Job is suffering, therefore Job must be concealing sin of some kind.” It’s an ‘if A, then B’ kind of theology. Very wooden with no room for nuance.
The righteous never suffer. The wicked never prosper. That was it in essence.
Bildad and Zophar share the same theology as Eliphaz; although they communicate it somewhat less graciously!
“These three friends only have one song and they sing it to death.” - John Calvin
For them - Job’s suffering was the proof that he was sinning. They press him and press him to confess his sin and make himself right with God so that his suffering can be taken away.
Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar make a lot of true statements; those who sow trouble do reap trouble! We wouldn’t want to deny that, we can affirm the truth of it. The problem is, they applied these truths incorrectly to Job’s situation.
We know from chapter 1 that Job was not suffering as a result of sin but as a result of his uprightness!
8 And the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?”
Job persists in maintaining his innocence throughout, which only serves to arouse anger amongst his companions to the point where Eliphaz completely contradicts his earlier statements about Job’s uprightness and makes completely unfounded claims of Job’s wrongdoing!
5 Is not your evil abundant?
There is no end to your iniquities.
6 For you have exacted pledges of your brothers for nothing
and stripped the naked of their clothing.
7 You have given no water to the weary to drink,
and you have withheld bread from the hungry.
8 The man with power possessed the land,
and the favored man lived in it.
9 You have sent widows away empty,
and the arms of the fatherless were crushed.
What else can we call this but bearing false witness?!
Job despairs of his friend’s counsel
4 As for you, you whitewash with lies;
worthless physicians are you all.
15 My brothers are treacherous as a torrent-bed,
as torrential streams that pass away,
12 Your maxims are proverbs of ashes;
your defenses are defenses of clay.
Job cries out to argue his case with God instead of his friends and despairs that there is no mediator between man and God.
32 For he is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him,
that we should come to trial together.
33 There is no arbiter between us,
who might lay his hand on us both.
Throughout the argument it’s as though Job’s friends kind of run out of steam, their arguments get shorter and less persuasive, whereas Job rises up and becomes more and more confident. It’s almost as though the author wants to say look! See how bad theology runs out of steam? It runs out of answers in the end in the face of suffering.
Despite Job’s pain, his confusion, his doubt, he never fully let go his trust in God:
Job 13:15 (ESV)
15 Though he slay me, I will hope in him;
Job 19:25 (ESV)
25 For I know that my Redeemer lives,
SO HERE ARE SOME POINTS IN CONCLUSION
Bad theology hurts people
Theology - “Study of/knowledge of God”
Job’s friends had bad theology. They made a lot of true statements but they misapplied them.
“Wisdom isn’t simply knowing the truth, wisdom is rightly applying the truth.”
Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar were exactly like modern day prosperity gospel preachers; “are you suffering? Then it’s your fault!”
Andrew Wommack: “If you are reaping sickness it’s because you’ve thought sickness.” “If you’re poor, it’s because your thinking is poor.”
Because of this wrongheaded theology Job’s friends failed to extend love and kindness to their friend bringing him more pain and anguish.
14 “He who withholds kindness from a friend
forsakes the fear of the Almighty.
2. Bad theology Angers God
7 After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.
What we believe ABOUT God, matters TO God. We cannot afford to be trivial about doctrine, to be slapdash and haphazard with what we believe about The Lord. Our understanding of Him must be shaped by the whole counsel of God and held within the bounds of the great catholic creeds and confessions of the faith.
People doing dot to dot drawings without the numbers.
3. Bad theology leads to dishonesty
In an attempt to justify his position Eliphaz lied about Job and charged him with wrongdoing. Bad theology leads to dishonesty because it is inconsistent, it is indefensible and so the only way to hold to bad theology is to be dishonest!
When anyone questions your bad theology ‘oh they’re just bitter, jealous heresy hunters...’
4. Bad theology drains you
Job’s friends just got angrier and angrier and their answers got shorter and shorter. The prosperity gospel runs out of answers in the face of suffering, and it drains you as a result. Bad theology either drives you to pride or to despair.
5. Sometimes, the wicked prosper, and sometimes the righteous suffer
3 For I was envious of the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
4 For they have no pangs until death;
their bodies are fat and sleek.
5 They are not in trouble as others are;
they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.
“It is not what enemies will, nor what they are resolved upon, but what God will, and what God appoints; that shall be done…No enemy can bring suffering upon a man when the will of God is otherwise, so no man can save himself out of their hands when God will deliver him up for his glory.” - John Bunyan
Health and wealth are not necesarily signs of God’s blessing, any more than sickness and poverty are necessarily signs of God’s displeasure. Story of Lazarus and the Rich man - Luke 16.
6. We all need a mediator before God
Job knew that he needed a mediator, someone who could stand in the gap between him and almighty God to plead his case. But who could do this? Surely a mere man couldn’t do this, and neither could some angel or spiritual being do this. Such a mediator would need to be both man and God to effectively stand and mediate between man and God.
All of the men agreed - no man can stand before God in their own power. No one will be able to prove themselves blameless before God, who is altogether perfect. We need a mediator who is both God and man, and who can represent us before God, not pleading our own righteousness, but a perfect righteousness.
This mediator, who Job so desired, has since come into the world, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin, lived a life of total perfection, and submitted himself to suffer and die for the sins of God’s chosen people. He now stands before the Father on our behalf, holding up his nail pierced hands before him pleading his own perfect righteousness as if it were our own.