“When Helping Hurts” (Part 2)

We pick up our look at Eliphaz’s first address again today, found in Job chapters 4-5. The friends are truly attempting to help Job, but the problem is their helping hurts.

It has been discovered that if one helps a monarch butterfly emerge from its cocoon, the butterfly will be hampered for the rest of its life, it will not grow properly.

Although it seems like an act of kindness, breaking open the cocoon for the butterfly actually hurts it.

Eliphaz began breaking open Job’s cocoon, attempting to help, but ultimately hurting. We learned that one of the ways Eliphaz’s helping hurt was that he assumed he knew the situation.

We learned that, in order to avoid this damaging assumption, we should check our theology, ask good questions of the one suffering, seek to understand the heart of the sufferer before attempting to apply the truth of Scripture to the sufferer.

We will see a second way that Eliphaz’s desire to help actually hurt Job. And unfortunately, all too often, we make the same mistake.

We evaluate people from our experiences. Perhaps an illustration will be helpful to start our time this morning.

Take two ladies, both attending the same church. One lady has raised children. She raised them many years ago, and her children are long grown and gone out of the house.

There is also a young mother with children. The mother who is done raising children observes the younger mother and witnesses her struggling with the kids every Sunday.

She begins to think, “How can I help this young mother?” And slowly she begins to offer advice. “You know, if you would just pop them when they don’t listen, everything would be fine. That’s what I did when I was raising my children.”

The younger mother listens, all the while struggling to hold on to one of the younger boys.

A few Sundays pass and the older mother again feels it necessary to help the younger mother. “You know, if they do not fear you they won’t respect you and will not listen to you,” she says with a little more boldness than her previous attempt to help. She is remembering her children sitting nice and quiet, as all children are to be seen and not heard.

The younger mother listens, thanks the older mother, and then rushes to the hall to get her children.

Yet a few more Sundays pass, and now the older mother feels responsible, as if God has place on her a call to teach this younger mother how to raise children. She offers similar advice to the younger mother, and while conveying this, in her mind wonderful advice, she fails to notice the tears building up in the younger mother’s eyes.

What the older mother failed to know is that the younger mother did not have a supportive husband at home. The older mother had a supportive husband who was involved in the lives of their children. The younger mother did not. And the older mother’s helping hurt this young mother.

It discouraged her, for she felt a burden to have her kids behave like the older mother’s kids did. She felt depressed, because behind every piece of advice the older mother offered, she was reminded that she was practically alone on this journey, and rather than extending her hands to help this young mother in a way appropriate to her situation, the older mother loaded her down with guilt.

Helping hurts when we evaluate from our experiences rather than through God’s Word.

II. Helping hurts when we evaluate from our experiences rather than through God’s Word- 4:7-11

We noted in our very first sermon on the book of Job, delivered on the 18th of May, that Job and his friends view the world in a mechanical way, and by that I mean that if A is true, then B follows.

The theological term is divine retribution. If someone does evil, they will face judgment. If someone does good, they will enjoy reward. There are, in this warped view of a general truth of Scripture, no exceptions. Let’s pick up Eliphaz’s speech yet again and see what help we can discern.

A. Eliphaz asks a short-sighted question- 4:7

In Eliphaz’s mind, it makes perfect sense. God only punishes evil, and if someone appears to be being punished, they must have sinned.

It is precisely the same type of question that the disciples ask Jesus about the man born blind in John 9:2 “2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?””

Why is it a short-sighted question? Because it simply moves from observation to judgment without any investigation. We discussed this last week, and so we will simply remind you that Scripture teaches us not to do this.

We will pick this up in just a moment. Let us consider the rest of this section.

B. Eliphaz evaluates Job’s experience by his own- 4:8-11

Verse 8 is the key verse that is then developed and illustrated by verses 9–11. This is the essential aspects of this view of divine retribution.

Divine Retribution- the view that evil is punished and good is rewarded by God.

This is indeed a biblical principle, we see in the Old Testament, primarily in Deuteronomy 28. We see this reiterated in the New Testament in Galatians 6:8-9.

Apparently, Eliphaz has only seen evil people judged, and even if that is true, it does not mean that evil people are always judged immediately and to our knowledge. He was using a biblical principle, and adding his experience to it, and then evaluating from it.

In Eliphaz’s mind, after hearing about Job’s suffering and then seeing it, the only conclusion he could draw was that Job had sinned, and obviously very greatly considering the depth and breadth of Job’s suffering.

And in so doing, Eliphaz hurt Job deeply, as we see in his reply, Job 6:8–10 “8 “Oh that I might have my request, and that God would fulfill my hope, 9 that it would please God to crush me, that he would let loose his hand and cut me off! 10 This would be my comfort; I would even exult in pain unsparing, for I have not denied the words of the Holy One.”

When we evaluate others based on our experiences in an effort to help them, we can inadvertently hurt them and cause more damage to them.

C. The Dangers of Over-Dependence on Experience

We will now examine Eliphaz’s use of experience to evaluate and help Job.

1. There is no room for a “not yet” view of divine retribution

Sometimes the wicked, from our perspective, get away with it. That is the perspective of the psalmist Asaph in Psalm 73. In verses 1-9, he provides an overview of both the individuals wickedness and their apparent blessings. They are not getting sick, they are not enduring judgments, they are enjoying life.

If someone is not suffering, in Eliphaz’s understanding, they are not sinful. “Who ever perished being innocent” he asks. There are some in this life, as we see in the sacred Scriptures and in life generally, that appear to “get away with it.” In fact, the book of Revelation (6:10) seems to present such a case in the majority of the book. The saints are butchered left and right, and in anguish they ask the Lord, “How long, O Lord!?”

From Eliphaz’s perspective, these butcherers of the saints must not be sinning, else they would face God’s wrath.

As Christians we need to keep a “now and not yet” view of life, every aspect of it. One of the many reasons we need to do so is that sometimes, from our perspective, evil doers get away with it. That is the problem Asaph had. (Just think about all the politicians that get away with sin)

If we held to Eliphaz’s mechanistic view of divine retribution, we would either have to conclude that God is not really righteous, which is not an option, or we would have to include that the actions of these individuals is not wicked, which is also not an option. In the now, they may appear to be getting away with it, but there is a not yet that is coming.

We will treat the other perspective, that is, those who are righteous who appear to be punished now.

2. There is no room for innocent suffering in Eliphaz’s divine retribution

“Remember now, who ever perished being innocent?” The answer to this rhetorical question is, “No one!”

The other perspective, then, is that sometimes good people do suffer. Good people do endure great trials. And if we were to take Eliphaz’s mechanistic view of life, we would include that they were not good people (it is, after all, how helping hurts).

However, if we are to be quite blunt, this is satanic. It is the opposite of God’s Word and God’s salvific plan. “Remember now, who ever perished being innocent?” Christ did!

1 Peter 3:18 NASB95

18 For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit;

2 Corinthians 5:21 NASB95

21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

If there is no room for innocent suffering, there is no room for Christ. And if there is no room for Christ, we are, to quote the Apostle Paul, of all men most miserable. Job gives us a taste of what is to come in his innocent suffering, and his friends could not understand it. It was foolishness to them (cf. 1 Cor. 1:18).

D. The Antidote to Experience-Based Help- Psalm 119

I would love to read the entire psalm, but for the sake of time, let’s just see how this psalm (among a host of other passages) provides a balance to the experience-based help that far too often hurts.

Psalm 119:13 “13 With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth.”

Psalm 119:69–70 “69 The insolent smear me with lies, but with my whole heart I keep your precepts; 70 their heart is unfeeling like fat, but I delight in your law.”

Psalm 119:78 “78 Let the insolent be put to shame, because they have wronged me with falsehood; as for me, I will meditate on your precepts.”

The psalm is loaded with verse after verse that properly situates experience underneath God’s Word. If we want to help people, truly help, master the Word of God, and then help others from the life-giving Scriptures.