With Friends Like These (Part 1): Eliphaz

Notes
Transcript
This past week if you’ve been reading, watching or listening to the news you have no doubt been learning more and more about the devastation left by Hurricane Helene. This morning I heard that yet another storm is forming in the gulf and aiming for Florida. Sadly, in the midst of all of this I read this week that some are seeing this as God’s judgment.
In our worldly framework we often fall back to our very simple understanding that if we are doing the right thing, if we’re doing good, then the blessings of God will rain down on us from above; yet if we’re doing wrong, if we’re pursuing evil, then God’s judgment will wreak havoc in our lives. It only makes sense right?
When I was in seminary the AIDS epidemic was running rampant. Many, especially in hyper conservative branches of Christendom made similar comments. They saw it as a judgment on the (quote) evil (unquote) of sexual promiscuity of the day and especially on the homosexual community.
I hope, I sincerely hope, that we have learned from our grievous errant ways of thinking. It was during that time in the early 90’s I met a friend I’ll call Fernando (Not his real name). Fernando was new to his Christian faith, and he was gay. He had contracted AIDS, in those days it was a death sentence.
I remember Fernando being admitted to the hospital for what he and the doctors believed was likely the last time. He was dying. Yet two weeks later he was released. He came over to visit my roommate and I and poured out the pain of rejection he was feeling. In his eyes, God didn’t want him. He believed he had knocked on heaven’s doors and God shut them in his face. He wasn’t “good” enough. He believed he was condemned to hell because of he was gay.
That is where this simplified theology of “do good be blessed; do bad be punished,” leads. A little more than a month ago we finished our study of the New Testament book of Hebrews. The author there writes the repetitive phrase in chapter 11,
By faith…
By faith…
The author then spoke of men and women from all the way back to Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Rahab and just about every key figure we read about in the Old Testament. He names them and says…
Hebrews 11:33–35 (ESV)
who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection.
We read these words and this is the carrot that we often dangle in front of people as we seek to encourage them to turn to God.
But as we studied them, we know that then the other shoe drops:
Hebrews 11:35–38 (ESV)
Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
Um…that’s not a carrot. If anything that would seem to be a deterrent for anyone to want to seek after God.
This is the part that Eliphaz clearly doesn’t understand. And too often neither do we. God is not transactional.
The author of Hebrews:
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
The author of Hebrews reminded us of two things:
This world in this time is not all there is. We must have an eternal perspective.
Christ makes all the difference.
Back to Job - I promised we’d look at some of Job’s responses to Eliphaz.
“Oh that my vexation were weighed, and all my calamity laid in the balances! For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea; therefore my words have been rash. For the arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me.
He admits that his words have been rash against God. Yet he holds that his sufferings are not right. He laments:
“Oh that I might have my request, and that God would fulfill my hope, that it would please God to crush me, that he would let loose his hand and cut me off! This would be my comfort; I would even exult in pain unsparing, for I have not denied the words of the Holy One.
This is where people who think good = blessing, and bad = suffering get perplexed.
We read as our call to worship last week, Psalm 1 where it speaks of the blessing poured out on the man who does not follow the wicked, it says:
He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.
What about Job! He is righteous! On this God and the accuser, known as the Satan, agree. Yet we know of the calamity that has beset Job. He and his wife have lost their wealth, their children, and Job has lost his health.
Eliphaz sees this as a result somehow, somewhere of Job’s iniquity. Some place, Eliphaz is confident, that Job has defied God. Yet Eliphaz also reveals something odd about his view of God that doesn’t seem to fit, and it comes out more than once:
When he was sharing his dream with Job last week we read this: Job 4:18-19
Even in his servants he puts no trust, and his angels he charges with error; how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed like the moth.
Wait, God doesn’t trust his servants? God charges his angels with error? The only ones we know that he charged with error are those that fell.
Then in chapter 15 we read: Job 15:15-16
Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight; how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks injustice like water!
Eliphaz seems to see God’s very court as somehow corrupt where God doesn’t trust the holy ones? That’s a contradiction in terms. How can they be holy and corrupt? How can God’s heavens not be pure?
In other words, Eliphaz seems to see God Himself as less that pure, holy, righteous, and all the ways that we might find to describe our Creator God. Eliphaz’ view is skewed, and based upon his own pride.
And yet ironically, Job teaches us something profound:
Job 2:10 (ESV)
“Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.
That for me is profound, and good for us to see, because it doesn’t mean that Job was happy with all that was happening around him. He’d lost his oxen, his donkeys, his sheep, his camels, his 10 children and many servants, and his health. Yet, he doesn’t curse God.
In chapter 3 he laments his birth, but he doesn’t curse God. He is angry with God, but he doesn’t deny God. He tells God that his losses are unfair and unfounded - something God would agree with as we saw when we peaked behind the curtain.
But… remember what follows will contradict those feelings…but he does not turn from God.
I think there are questions here for all of us:
We’ve already considered the question
Is God fair?
Is God fair?
Now, we can add that a more personal question, we can ask ourselves -
Why do I worship God?
Why do I worship God?
That sounds like a dangerous question. We think, is it okay to doubt? I love that verse from Mark when the father brings his son to Jesus and says, “if you can do anything.” To which Jesus responds, “If I can! All things are possible for one who believes.” The father then cries out: Mark 9:24
Mark 9:24 (ESV)
“I believe; help my unbelief!”
We’re all somewhere on that spectrum aren’t we.
Don’t be afraid to examine your faith. Don’t be afraid to ask God the tough questions. Don’t be afraid to ask God, “Why?”
God meets us where we are.
Job’s friends, though we often judge them very negatively, reveal many of the flaws that we ourselves have in our ways of thinking about God. They reveal a very simplified theology that in our own life experience doesn’t work and yet we still use as our fall back position.
Next week, we will hear from another one of Job’s friends, Bildad. You can read about Bildad in chapters 8, 18, and 25.
Bildad
Job 8, 18, and 25
Bildad
Job 8, 18, and 25