"Who Ever Perished Being Innocent?"

I'm in Job Chapter 4-7 today and it's a doosie to contemplate. It's full of so many layers it makes me want to stop in my chronological reading and fine tune study it for a while. I'm so thankful for my John MacArthur study bible at this point as a starter to sifting through the confusing poetry phrased words in these chapters. Yet, it's so important because it's so profound! This passage of scripture just blows the prosperity gospel out of the water entirely.

Before I start though I have to take note of what I find to the most profound thing. Job never states that these afflictions are from the enemy. He acknowledges right off that they are from God. He is completely unaware of the scene in heaven where God instigates the misery brought upon Job and yet, he never seems to assume wrongly where they come from. This astounds me. I'm not even able to absorb the complete significance of why it astounds me. It has taken me many years to understand the concept (and much through the book by Jerry Bridges called "Trusting God") that EVERYTHING is sifted through and therefore from the very hand of God. We silly Christians even use the phrase "the devil's on my back" to understand why we are suffering or being tried. Job never mentions the devil and yet he is thrown into a pit I could never attempt to understand.
His friends are with him in this understanding but their perspective is way different. They credit God with these afflictions as well but from the standpoint of them being judgement for sin. More on that coming.

The very title of Chapter 4 in my bible startled me before I read anything: "Eliphaz: Innocent Do Not Suffer". I know even from my own experience of my father dying so young with cancer that this was not true. I want to walk step by step though what he says:

• He breaks his 7 day silence (can you see that scene? they arrive as his friends are just speechless for a week at the level of his suffering) by affirming that Job is wise and has had the strength to encourage and uplift many who have suffered before him but now that bad has come to him, Eliphaz concludes that he is impatient and dismayed. My first reaction to Eliphaz is "you just don't get it do you!?", but then, even I would not get it. Still, how insensitive! How dare he be impatient in his suffering! How he should bear it better and more nobly! How can he let his pain bring dismay? Are you kidding me? I like what John MacArthur says in my study commentary "Unfortunately, with the opening of their mouths for the first speech, all the wisdom of their silence departed."
• HERE is the verse that irritated me the most: vs. 7 "Remember now, who ever perished being innocent?" MacArthur states: "Eliphaz, recognizing Job's 'fear of God' and 'integrity' was likely encouraging Job at the outset by saying he wouldn't die because he was innocent of any deadly iniquity, but must be guilty of some serious sin because he was reaping such anger from God. ...He had oversimplified God's pattern of retribution. This simple axiom, 'the righteous will prosper and the wicked will suffer,' does not always hold up in human experience. It is true that plowing and sowing iniquity reaps judgment, so Eliphaz was partially right, but not everything we reap in life is the result of something we have sown. Eliphaz was replacing theology with simplistic logic. To say that wherever there is suffering, it is the result of sowing sin is wrong. (Ex 4:11, Jn 9:1-3)"
• He states that the wicked may be strong but they are defeated. In this he is right but he is using this experience to explain another which does not always work.
• Eliphaz claims to have had some vision or dream where a messenger brought him divine revelation to back up his thoughts here.
• The next section of verses I'd like to research more (vs. 17-21) but John MacArthur's conclusions are: "vs 17- here is the conclusion of Eliphaz's revelation- that Job suffered because he was not holy enough, not righteous enough. vs17-21 This is the content of the message which is, in effect that God judges sin and sinners among men as He did among angles (vs.18 cf. Rev 12:3,4)
• From here Eliphaz, I feel, kind of insults Job's theological intelligence. He tells him in summary to not be foolish and forget that sin will be punished and that every man is sinful inevitably. Eliphaz felt the solution was a needed repentance on the part of Job before God. Eliphaz emphasizes God's greatness and goodness to show his moral perfection and man's lack of righteousness. What's amazing here is that everything Eliphaz says is true! Yet, he has not judged the situation wisely. He has assumed God's motives and Job's heart condition (boy, doesn't this sound recently familiar in the news? Though I think our Eliphaz could be called Pat) He goes so far as to say that if Job would just do this, he would be happy again. "You know Job, God works like this: you did A, God does B, you repent for A and that will equal C" I just love that God does not like to be predictable, but He is ALWAYS good. He really does not like us to shrink him to formulas.
• Eliphaz tops it all with a very biblical cherry on top. He parallels Lv 26 by lamenting on how the faithful will prosper. He tells Job he will be secure, happy and rich again if he does this repenting. Again Job, if you just would follow the formula! Again, the concept is a correct one but, again Eliphaz is assuming this is the only way God could bring such pain. There had to be a just reason such as unfaithfulness and the solution had to be as easy as restoration. This thinking Eliphaz here I think is dangerous and is the basis of the prosperity gospel of today. If we belong to God, we are sure to prosper. But, that is another blog for another day.
• I'll finish this off with again what John McArthur says because I love it: "On top of his physical misery and his tempting wife, he had to respond to ignorance and insensitivity from his friend, by expressing his frustration" . That is what followed in Ch 6.

Job's response in Ch 6 is indeed grumpy. Or at least that is how we read it. I wonder if his friends had not been even more of a burden, if it would have been any more calm. Probably not. I actually do see these friends words to him as being what we would call "insult to injury" for Job though and part of his trails. Just as it was to specifically take his loving children but LEAVE him his awful wife! Not only have you lost all, been placed in beyond bearable pain and infirmity, but now your friends are telling you that you have a sin problem. Oh, man, Job. His response is to just wish for God to finish what he has started and get it over with. Yet, I find it amazing that he vents that without an ounce of anger toward God for what he has done to him. That is one of the most challenging thing to get in this! In a sense I think Job felt that God knew why he was doing what he did so he better just get it done because the doing didn't feel good at all! Job was beyond social propriety and trying to put on a happy face. He probably had no resolve left to be polite to their arrogant judgements. We are reminded in vs. 10 that his faith in God is still firm and steady. He was confused why this was happening to him since he had kept the commands of the Lord and they were precious to him. He admonishes his friends for not being more kind to him even if he HAD forsaken God. He points out that he was not even asking to be delivered (which they are trying to tell him the solution so he can be thus delivered) but to have some sympathy and since they did not give him that he says they are no help.

Job is an incredibly profound book. It has a lot to say to our theology. It takes us to the place many people don't want to go. The place in heaven when the God you love and serve faithfully would indeed present the idea of your testing in such insufferable ways. When my dad slowly faded away physically I was impacted with this and what Job later says "though he slay me, yet I serve Him". Do you know what Job points to because of this? The very foundation of our human existence. God created us with a desire for Him. NOTHING can take that away from us, not even what He may choose to let be done to us. We are created to be reconciled to Him and the book of Job proves that our faith in that is bigger than ANYTHING else. It is all set up at the beginning. Satan felt that Job's faith was only because God did good things for him. God was not about to let humanity forever think that way either. It's much deeper than that, it's about our need that can only be filled by Him. Him taking us in, Him restoring us to himself. No prosperity can fill that need and when Job was stripped of every thing a man could hold, save his very life (which, mind you, and notice, Job was willing to give that up to and quite anxious for it knowing God was beyond that), THAT was still his fulfillment. THAT was what God wanted to prove to Satan....BECAUSE IT'S POWERFUL....BECAUSE IT'S UNSHAKABLE...BECAUSE IT'S WHAT WE CANNOT PROCURE FROM OURSELVES.

There are so many lessons here.