But
The Greatest Of These Is Love
Lesson
#8
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE
Intro
1. Read Job 1:1,6-8.
2. God allowed Job’s suffering--not to tempt Job to do wrong, but to demonstrate Job’s
integrity.
God wanted to prove to Satan and to us that we can take the worst hits life can
throw at us and still keep our integrity.
So Satan left God’s presence and is determined to inflict the ultimate hurt upon
Job and his family.
3. In one day Job lost everything:
a) 500 yoke of oxen
b) 500 donkeys
c) 3,000 camels stolen
d) 7,000 sheep
e) 10 children, 7 sons & 3 daughters
f) all but 4 of Job’s servants were killed
4. What would Job do? All of heaven is watching...
...read Job 1:20-22.
5. Later Satan comes back and challenges God. “Let me touch his body with sickness and
then Job will curse You.”
God allows it, but Satan is restricted in that he cannot kill Job.
6. Job was so bad off that even his friends didn’t recognize him, so mutilated by his illness.
7. How much help was Job’s wife?
a) Read Job 2:9.
b) But Job responds in verse 10.
8. Today we want to look at the wrong ways to encourage and let’s go to Job’s friends
for the lesson from Scripture.
*******
I. THE THREE UNWISE
MEN
• Job’s friends heard and they came to talk to him.
A. What They Did Correctly:
#1. They came to Job when he was
in trouble.
1. Friends are easy to have when they are afar off.
2. These friends were committed to Job.
#2. They had hearts of
compassion.
1. When they saw Job, they wept for him.
2. Tears from others for us, move our hearts greatly.
#3. They kept quiet for seven
days.
1. This may be the wisest thing they did.
2. Many commentators say that they made up for it later, and that
is very true.
Read Job 16:1-5:
1. They were lousy encouragers.
2. “Suppose you were me and I said these things that you’ve said;
how would you feel?”
B. Eliphaz’s Error
1. Eliphaz is the first speaker and he is the oldest.
a) He basis all of his speeches on personal observation.
b) Over and over he says, “I have seen...”.
“Job, let me tell you what I’ve learned about life.”
c) One of the elements in Eliphaz’s counsel was a terrible dream
that he had. (4:12-21)
2. This is the idea that we can experience something and transfer our
personal experience to someone else’s problem.
3. We can read Eliphaz’s analysis of Job’s problem in 4:7-8:
a) Eliphaz is saying, “Job, I’ve been through life some myself and
if there’s anything I’ve come to understand it is this:
people who suffer like you are suffering are not innocent
people. God never punishes the righteous. You are
somehow reaping that which you have sown.”
b) This leaves Job one possible explanation: Go back and find out
what you did that was so wrong.
4. Point: Well-meaning Christians can heap False Guilt upon those who
are suffering.
a) Too often we don’t understand the whole story.
b) Job was NOT suffering because he was bad; he was suffering
because he was good!
c) Eliphaz was totally off-base in his counsel.
C. Bildad’s Blunder
1. Job 2:11 indicates that these three friends of Job got together before
they went to see Job. Most likely, they discussed why all this might
have happened to him.
So there is some similarity in their analyses.
2. Bildad was a Legalist.
He had the same wrong ideas as Eliphaz.
3. Read his summary statement in 8:20.
“You’re
in this mess because of your sin.”
4. Bildad seems to indicate that Job’s suffering was linked to the
sins of his children. (8:4)
5. What a great encourager!
D. Zophar’s Misfire
1. Zophar is like the young preacher who has never pastored a church,
never preached a sermon--- he has all the answers.
He is like the young man who has no wife, no children, but he can
tell you all about child-rearing.
2. Zophar always began his important speeches to Job with a little
expression, a favorite line:
“Know this.”
a) You’ve heard people like this.
b) You say within yourself, “Oh, man. I don’t want to hear this.”
3. Of the three friends, this one is the worse.
a)
Here it is paraphrased, “Know this, Job.
If you think you are
hurting, you ought to just contemplate how mad you’d
feel if you really got what was coming to you.”
b) Job has lost everything, except the breath in his body and now
he has to endure this?
c) “Job, be thankful that you’re not getting what you really deserve.”
*******
II. ENCOURAGEMENT ERRORS
#1. Do Not Give Words Without
Empathy.
1. These men were silent for a week, but when they opened their mouths
to offer counsel, they did the exact opposite from what they set out
to do.
There’s no encouragement for Job to be found in their words.
2. They offered words, but failed to feel Job’s pain.
Follow the pattern. Job speaks in pain. Then the friends respond
to the words that Job has spoken. They hear his words, but they
do not feel his pain.
Point: They are not really listening.
3. I’ve talked with people about a problem before, and at some point
noticed that they are thinking about something other than what
I’m trying to convey to them. They are thinking about how they
are going to respond.
4. Many times when people are deeply hurt, there is no prescribed pattern
for just the right words we want to say. We are people who like
to find the answers to life’s problems; we simply want to fix the
problem.
Sometimes it is not our place to fix everyone’s problem. So you
reason, “What good am I doing them?”
Just listen to them.
5. And don’t forget to pray for them.
#2. Recognize that God’s plan
for us includes suffering.
1. Many modern-day theologians believe that there can be no godly
reason for suffering, for hurting, or for pain.
This was the same mistake Job’s friends made.
2. Mark it down: Sometimes God’s plan for us includes trials and suffering.
It is a refiner’s fire that draws us closer to God,
purging from our lives the sins and weights that
so easily distract and beset us.
3. We know that Job was a better man at the end of the Book than at the
beginning.
It is a mistake to believe that Christians should not grieve.
The Book of Psalms is too full of grieving for us to condemn
it. We can see the psalmist grieves, looks inward, looks
outward, and finally looks upward. It is a spiritual and emotional
process of glorifying God.
4. We must be honest and admit that when we are in pain, real pain,
we have a difficult time looking at the purpose. Just look at how
we pray when someone is hurting; we ask God to relieve the pain, and are almost fearful of mentioning He may have a purpose in
going through this trial of suffering.
5. Consider the words of Florence
Bulle in her book, God Wants You
Rich, and Other Enticing Doctrines:
The
deception in the success-prosperity doctrine is subtle. It sounds so spiritual
to assert that we cannot be sick or fail if we trust God, and that He will
reward us for faith and giving and being good, by making us rich in material
things. But this was not the message of the men and women of faith who
throughout history set church and nation aflame with revival.
The
more we pursue such poppycock, the more likely we will end up like pampered
children. Getting everything we want won’t turn us into soldiers for Christ.
We may wear a tailored suit with gold buttons and hash marks, but we will be no
more soldiers than the six-year-old with his feet shoved in his dad’s old
combat boots and carrying a wooden gun. Unchecked, the success-prosperity
syndrome will not see Christians developing together into a vigorous,
stouthearted, indomitable church. Rather it will reduce the body of Christ to
spiritual flabbiness.
6. Illustration: Never having been a Jim Bakker fan, even in the 1980’s
when he rose to such heights of fame among Christians,
nevertheless, I did find his book I Was Wrong interesting
reading.
He says,
I
asked all who sat under my ministry to forgive me for preaching a gospel
emphasizing earthly prosperity. Many today believe that the evidence of God’s
blessing on them is a new car or a new house, a good job. If that be the case,
then gambling casino owners, drug kingpins and movie stars are blessed of God.
there is no way, if you take the whole counsel of God’s Word that you can
equate riches or material things as a sign of God’s blessing, or even health.
If we equate earthly possessions with God’s favor, what do we tell the
billions of those living in poverty, or what do you do if depression hits, or
what do you say to those who lose a loved one? Many in-name only Christians
would curse God if they lost all of their material possessions and their health.
Jesus said, “don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth.” He wants us
to love Him, not the things that He gives us.
Only God knows the purposes behind our pain.
#3. Do not try to relate all of
suffering to sin in one’s life.
1. Technically, all suffering is due to sin.
Had Adam not sinned in the Garden, we would not suffer today.
In that sense all suffering can be traced back to sin.
2. Don’t take this to the next level of determining that people always suffer
because of a particular sin in their lives.
This is what Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar did with Job.
3. It is a part of life that circumstances can leave us feeling depressed and
discouraged.
That does NOT mean that we are out-of-fellowship with God, nor
does it mean that there is sin in our lives.
Bible examples:
a) Moses - wandering in the desert, old, forgotten and
discouraged.
b) Hannah - downhearted and unable to eat, a victim of
cheap remarks because she couldn’t have
children.
c) Elijah - fearful of his life, fleeing into the desert.
4. Modern Job “encouragers” [should be called “discouragers”] still
work on people like this. It is an attempt to link their problems
with some “unknown” personal and spiritual failure.
#4. Understand that all suffering
is not the same.
1. Job’s friends rejected that Job’s suffering could be unique.
They came to Job with packaged answers, trite answers.
2. I Corinthians 1:4 does indicate that as we suffer, we are to help others
who may suffer in the same ways we have.
HOWEVER, we must be careful not to assume we know what
others are feeling.
Every experience of suffering is totally unique to the person who is
experiencing it. Even if we have had similar circumstances affect
us, our reaction and feelings will not exactly match-up to another
person’s responses.
3. Here’s what we are inclined to say:
“I know what you are going through.”
a) And out we roll Romans 8:28.... “All things work...”
b) Be with enough people when they are hurting and someone is
going to ask you, “How can my father dying possibly be
termed ‘good?’”
Your answer will be like mine, “I don’t know.”
But you can add, “I do know that God is good.”
*******
CONCLUSION:
1. Close by reading Philippians 1:12-14.
a) Paul is in prison.
b) Why? For doing right...spreading the Gospel.
c) We can see that God has greater purposes than just what we can see sometimes
in our own four-wall-cell.
2. Loving God means loving God’s people.
And “love” is an action word. Let’s just be sure that we are encouragers, not
discouragers.