Job CCXLV

 Job 22:21-26, “Now acquaint yourself with Him, and be at peace; Thereby good will come to you. Receive, please, instruction from His mouth, and lay up His words in your heart. If you return to the Almighty, you will be built up; You will remove iniquity far from your tents. Then you will lay your gold in the dust, and the gold of Ophir among the stones of the brooks. Yes, the Almighty will be your gold and your precious silver; For then you will have your delight in the Almighty, and lift up your face to God.”

It’s as if Eliphaz had tuned out everything Job had said up until this point. Not willing to relent or give up his perception of intellectual and spiritual superiority, believing himself a physician of both soul and flesh, he begins to prescribe the steps Job must take in order to be at peace and for good to return to him.

It’s hard not to notice the spiritual elitism in Eliphaz’s words, because not only does he assume that Job had so far removed himself from the presence of God that he needed to reacquaint himself with the Almighty, but considered the words he spoke as divine, or at least of divine origin.

He did not tell Job to consider his words, but insinuated that the words were from God Himself and the instructions from His mouth. Assumption, presumption, and undeservedly appropriated spiritual authority are a heady mix, and though the words Eliphaz spoke may have been true when applied to another, they were not true of Job. He had not departed from the Almighty, so had no need to return to Him. He had not abandoned the knowledge of Him, so he had no need to reacquaint himself with God.

Everything Eliphaz said was based on the wrong assumption that Job was being punished, that he had committed wickedness, that he had turned his back on God, and had strayed from Him. Without spiritual insight, and purely from a physical point of view, it would be an easy conclusion to reach, and one that made the most logical sense.

There’s a meme floating about the interwebs of a man asking a faith healer to pray for his hearing, and the faith healer takes to his performative theatrics with gusto, sticking his fingers in the man’s ears, cupping his hands over them, and after some time the faith healer asks, how’s your hearing, to which the man answers, I don’t know, it’s next week.

We are either guided by the spirit or by the flesh. We either take everything we see with our physical eyes at face value and dismiss the unction of the Spirit, or allow for the Spirit of God to reveal the truth of a situation to us that goes beyond the mere physical.

Sometimes things are exactly as they seem; sometimes they are not. If we lean on our understanding and dismiss the possibility of something other than what we concluded occurred, sooner or later, we will fall into the same snare as Eliphaz did.

Again, the things Eliphaz said would have been sound advice for someone who had strayed from the presence of God. Yes, by all means, acquaint yourself with God, lay up His words in your heart, return to the Almighty, but what if you never left, never ceased crying out to Him, never stopped trusting Him, never wandered away from Him? Then the counsel, sound as it may be, generally speaking, wouldn’t make much sense for that particular individual.

Curse God and die hadn’t worked, stop clinging to your integrity hadn’t worked, and now, via Eliphaz, the enemy begins to employ a new tactic: make him doubt his relationship with God.

I’m sure you believe that you are well acquainted with the Almighty, but you’re really not. I’m sure you believe you’ve been faithful, but you haven’t. I’m sure you believe you’ve kept His words in your heart, but let’s face it, buddy, if you’d done all these things, you wouldn’t be in the predicament you find yourself in now, would you?

It’s a nefarious approach to be sure, but the devil was getting desperate. Coincidentally, it’s one he continues to employ to this day in various guises and differing nuances, but in the end, his purpose is the same. At first glance, the individuals who come across your path seem well-meaning enough. But then, once rapport has been established, they start throwing out those poisoned pellets that feel off, wrong, and less than the whole truth.

If you are not firmly established in the truth of Scripture, if you are not fully assured of your place in God’s kingdom, you start to teeter and miss a step; you start to doubt and second-guess the simplicity of the gospel, thinking there must be something you’re missing. Perhaps there are more hoops I need to jump through; perhaps the letter of the law does have supremacy over the spirit thereof.

You were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Well, that just won’t do. You have to do it again, this time just in the name of Jesus. Were you baptized in the name of Jesus? Unless it was done in His Hebrew name, the entire thing is null and void. Sure, your heart desired to know God; you made an outward expression of your inward faith; you’ve repented, crucified your flesh, picked up your cross, and diligently follow after Him. Sure, you declare that Christ is Lord of your life, the King that sits upon the throne of your heart, but is that enough? Sure, you asked Him for bread, and He promised He would not give you a stone, but are you sure bread is what you got?

You pray standing up? Everyone knows that God only hears prayers if you're kneeling or prostrate before Him. You read your Bible daily? I guess that’s okay, but what you really need is for me to mentor you in the secret mysteries that only I can reveal.

I’m sure by now you get the point. Let’s keep this on the brass tacks: anyone insisting that Jesus is not sufficient, and that you need something more, or other, is a liar, and the truth is not found in them. Anyone attempting to sow doubt in your heart regarding your relationship with God, when you know, as Job did, that you’ve been faithful, obedient, and humble, is being used of the enemy to dispirit you. Anyone who insists that they alone hold the keys to unlocking the mysteries of Scripture, prophecy, the future, or the ancient past is a conceited liar, bloated with pride, arrogant beyond measure, attempting to elevate their status in your eyes as though they were on equal footing with God. It’s nothing new. Eliphaz tried it, and as we will see further in, God Himself rebuked him for his hubris.          

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCXLIV

 Job 22:19-20, “The righteous see it and are glad, and the innocent laugh at them: ‘Surely our adversaries are cut down, and the fire consumes their remnant.’”

If you don’t know what to look for, these two verses may seem innocuous enough. They could readily be glossed over and thought to be the bookend of a longer thread, the conclusion of Eliphaz’s verbal processing as to why he knew Job was suffering, but as is always the case, details matter, and given that more often than not those whose hobby is to carpet bomb anyone they deem worthy with baseless accusations, have the tendency to do likewise it’s worth pausing and seeing the whole sordid picture for what it is.

Not only did Eliphaz accuse Job of things he’d never done, horrendous, heartless, and needlessly cruel practices that would make any sensible person cringe, but he also placed himself among the righteous, since seeing the fate of the wicked, the righteous see it and are glad, and the innocent laugh at them.

It wasn’t enough for Job to be seen as a wicked man; Eliphaz insisted that he himself must be viewed as righteous, a noble man doing a noble deed as he kicked at the almost-corpse of his friend and made him out to be a monster when all he’d ever done was fear God and shun evil. If an individual is attempting to elevate themselves by tearing someone down, it’s suspect, and you should be wary of getting on the bandwagon, grabbing a handful of stones, and joining in the fun.

The madness of the crowd is a real and well-documented thing. One stone thrower turns into two, two turns into five, five into twenty, and eventually everyone’s throwing stones, but only a handful know exactly why the stones are being thrown.

God had not called Eliphaz a blameless and upright man, so he took it upon himself to allude to it, insisting upon his own righteousness as evidenced by his reaction to Job’s suffering. Learned as he thought himself to be, one’s reaction to another’s suffering does not a righteous man make.

There are situations where confrontation is unavoidable, when something must be dealt with lest it metastasizes and threatens an entire body, but that ought never be done in the hope of elevating one’s status by standing on the corpses of the accused, especially if the accused are innocent both in the sight of God and in the sight of man. The tragedy of it all is that the wolves surround themselves with yes men who have a vested interest in seeing them retain their authority because they’re usually on staff, cashing checks every other week, they insulate themselves, and aggregate power to the point that, lest something truly vile gets leaked or the authorities get involved, they are viewed as untouchable. The entire leadership structure and their livelihood depend on one individual, and rather than defend the truth, their entire purpose becomes the protection of the man, even at the expense of justice.

A true shepherd doesn’t think about concentrating power or about the position he holds as his, and when a wolf makes its way into his congregation, he is much easier to undermine than one whose entire existence is predicated upon his dominance and retaining his office.

We’ve all seen situations where a pastor gets run out of town, not because he committed sin but because a handful of people deemed him too direct, or not loving enough, only to see the person who headed up the mob take his place and be placed in the position of authority. Their first move out of the gate is absurd loyalty tests, not to Christ, but to himself, followed by the signing of non-disclosure agreements, and the purging of anyone who dares to point out that it's not his kingdom but God’s kingdom that we must be laboring for.

Eliphaz was using Job’s situation to elevate and highlight his own righteousness by juxtaposing his situation with Job’s and concluding that one was being punished for his wickedness while the other was walking in righteousness by being glad of it. It wasn’t to take over Job’s household, or replace him, but to save face before their mutual friends, and position himself as the chief elder and wise man among them.

Eliphaz was growing exceedingly confrontational and accusatory, not because new evidence had come to light, not because witnesses had come forward to accuse Job of wrongdoing, but because his attacks weren’t working, he was not making any headway, and his pride would not allow him to lose. Eliphaz was likely the one man among the three who was always deferred to, who was always acknowledged as being right, who won every argument, and to whom the others acquiesced, yet this man on the verge of death scratching at himself with a potsherd, covered in boils, and laying in the dust had the temerity to push back, and contradict his well thought out thesis. How dare he?

Vanity, hubris, the pride of life, and the constant feeding of one’s ego become as de facto gods to some men, and when this occurs, their only concern, their only purpose, that for which they struggle, claw, and tear, is the man in the mirror and the perception of those whom he surrounds himself with.

Anyone willing to sacrifice truth for the sake of their ego is not a righteous man, no matter how much they might insist upon it. Anyone willing to accuse the innocent, just to win an argument, is not a noble man, no matter how many times he tells you he is. It’s not up to me to gauge or assess my righteousness, nor is it up to you to measure yours. My duty is to pick up my cross and follow Jesus. God is the one who determines the level of righteousness one rises to. Whether a man or a nation, it is God who weighs and has the final say as to whether they are found wanting. A man calling another man righteous means nothing. Man’s praise and a two-dollar bill will get you a gas station grilled cheese and nothing more. God calling a man righteous, however, means everything, and when God deems him upright and blameless, though the whole world may call him wicked, he is what God said he was.    

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCXLIII

 The problem with rationalism is that it is limited to the understanding of the individual and takes into account only what the person can see with his physical eyes and reason out with his physical mind. It does not allow for the unknown, it rejects the notion of the supernatural, and there are no such things as mysteries or exceptions to their predetermined rules. For Eliphaz, it was a simple matter of causality, and in order to rationalize Job’s situation, to make it make sense in his own mind, the only conclusion he could logically come to was that Job was a wicked man, so much so as to eclipse any other wicked man he’d ever come across. If you have no facts or evidence, you just make it up out of whole cloth, start lobbing accusations, and see what sticks.

Even though all evidence pointed to the contrary and refuted Eliphaz’s accusations, this was now a crusade for him, for to admit otherwise would be to shake the foundation of his entire belief system. If Job were innocent, as he claimed to be, then he would have to rethink his entire worldview. What else could he have been wrong about if he was wrong about this? Better to conclude that his lifelong friend was heartless and cruel. Better to conclude that he would turn away the hungry and watch someone die of thirst than to acknowledge that he might be in the wrong about this.

Pride is a many-tentacled beast, and once it wraps itself around one’s heart, it constricts their ability to consider any other plausible explanation than that which they’ve already come to. It makes one myopic and stiff-necked, to the point that they will insist that water isn’t wet, fire doesn’t burn, and the sun does not shine, all to undergird their preconceptions.

No matter how elevated human wisdom, no matter how well learned one might be in the ways of the world, only God can know the why of a thing with certainty. Eliphaz thought he knew, was even certain he knew, why Job was suffering as he was, but he didn’t. He was guessing and drawing conclusions based on incomplete data and anecdotal accounts he’d heard or read about.

The need to rationalize and discover the cause of a thing is not exclusive to Eliphaz. He wasn’t special or unique; he was human, and as such, had the typical instincts of those who came before him and those who would come after him.

One day, as Jesus passed by, he saw a man who was blind from birth. The first instinct of His disciples was to inquire as to the cause of his blindness. “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” To them, it was a binary question that required one of two answers. Either the man had sinned, or the parents had sinned. Their worldview was such that it did not allow for the possibility of a third option. In their minds, there were only two plausible answers, and one must have been the right one. That someone had sinned was a given to them. Their only concern was to discover who it was.

John 9:3-6, “Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ When He said these things, He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva; and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And He said to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which is translated, Sent). So he went and washed, and came back seeing.”

The answer Jesus gave His disciples could readily be applied to Job. He had not sinned, he was not being punished for his wickedness, but he was enduring all this that the works of God should be revealed in him. It was an answer Eliphaz had not bothered to consider, one he was not willing to entertain, because he’d already made up his mind.

Sometimes things are not as they appear. Sometimes the answer isn’t binary. Sometimes what you think you know with absolute certainty turns out to be less than certain, so rather than jump to conclusions and insist that I have the right of it on any matter at any time, the best course of action is to humbly acknowledge that I know in part, and understand in part, but God knows it all and I will trust Him even when I cannot see clearly.

Sure, we can get petulant and demand answers, but God is not obligated to give them. When He chooses not to, your duty is to submit to His sovereignty rather than try to come up with answers on your own. If You won’t tell me why, if You won’t show me the roadmap to the end of my existence, if You won’t tell me why I’m hurting, why I’m in the valley, why I’m being buffeted, I’ll just make up my own story, and draw my own map. That type of mindset never ends well. It never bears good fruit, and more often than not, men talk themselves into walking further away from God than toward Him when they take it upon themselves to blaze their own trail.

I understand that it may grate against our sensibilities, or deflate our ego a bit, but we know in part, and we prophesy in part, and it will ever be thus until that which is perfect has come, and that which is in part will be done away with. These words were not penned by a naïve, but by the selfsame man responsible for writing two-thirds of the New Testament. If he could acknowledge the reality that he understood in part, it should be no hard thing for us to acknowledge likewise.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCXLII

Job 22:12-18, “Is not God in the height of heaven? And see the highest stars, how lofty they are! And you say, ‘What does God know? Can He judge through the deep darkness? Thick clouds cover Him, so that He cannot see, and He walks above the circle of heaven.’ Will you keep to the old way which wicked men have trod, who were cut down before their time, whose foundations were swept away by a flood? They said to God, ‘Depart from us! What can the Almighty do to them?’ Yet He filled their houses with good things; but the counsel of the wicked is far from me.”

Although who said it first remains a mystery, none of the individuals to whom the following quote is attributed are wholesome, noble, virtuous, or upright individuals. The quote in question is “accuse your enemy of what you are doing, as you are doing it, to create confusion.”

While I do not believe Eliphaz saw Job as his enemy, the projection is undeniable. Here was a man who refused to allow for the possibility that anything beyond his understanding was taking place, accusing Job of insinuating that he thought God to be ignorant, that He did not see, know, or understand.

You’re wicked because I say you are. I am innocent because God says I am. God would never say that, and your suffering is proof that He never would. God must see it my way, otherwise His omniscience will be in doubt as far as I’m concerned, for surely, an innocent man would not suffer the things you have.

Convoluted? Yes, most assuredly, but this sort of circular logic that eliminates the possibility of any other explanation than that which we’ve determined to be the truth is prevalent, especially within certain denominations and church circles. They choose a tertiary hill they’re willing to die on, and will not acknowledge the possibility that they can be wrong. Newsflash: I can be wrong. You can be wrong. Everyone on the face of the earth can be wrong. The only one that cannot be wrong is God.

This is why, at the first sign of uncertainty, when something isn’t clear, we must run to His Word and allow it to be the final arbiter. We don’t poll to see what the majority thinks; we don’t ask for the opinions of friends or family; we go to the Word and allow it to shed light, elucidate, and clarify, allowing for a change of heart, a change of mind if the Word deems it warranted.

The worst thing we can do to our spiritual man is to go to the Word and reject what it says because it contradicts our own biases. Then what was the point of going to the Word in the first place? You weren’t planning on letting it change your mind; you just wanted confirmation of your conclusions, and when that didn’t happen, you rejected the Word.

We’ve gone from this is the way, walk in it, to questioning every bend in the road, every hill, every valley, and every uneven patch, thinking ourselves wise in our own eyes from doing so. Because the Bible says so should be all the answer a believer needs.

Another tactic of the enemy that Eliphaz attempted to employ was to lump Job in with his contemporaries and conclude that the prototype was identical from generation to generation. The old way that the wicked men who came before you have trodden is clear enough. Will you likewise continue to follow in their footsteps? They rejected God yet seemed to have it all, their houses being filled with good things, but I know better. I’m not going to fall for that old bait and switch, no, sir.

The one thing Eliphaz failed to acknowledge is that, while the wicked said to God, “Depart from us,” Job continued to cry out to God throughout his testing. Job didn’t run away from God; he ran toward Him during his time of hardship. He did not shake his fist at God, but encouraged those of his household to receive the good things at the hands of God just as readily as those deemed less than optimal.

Job had not done these things in secret, yet in his quest to be proven right, Eliphaz failed to acknowledge any of them. Sometimes people only see what they want to see from the angle and through the prism they choose to see it. If they’ve made up their minds about the situation ahead of time, then anything that contradicts their preconception is summarily dismissed, ignored, or downplayed, and anything that hints at supporting their thesis is magnified and blown up. That’s when you end up with a world where a sequoia looks like scrub brush and a blade of grass looks like a mighty oak. An ant looks like an elephant, and a mountain looks like a molehill, not because it’s reality but because it’s been reshaped to form a narrative.

This gives way to selective outrage so pronounced as to be stripped of any reason or logic. We’ve all seen it a time or five where people fly off the handle and start acting in a manner more akin to an animal than to a human being. They say things that are so far removed from anything logical as to make one wonder if they were having an episode, all the while thinking themselves entitled, justified, and within their right to beat the snot out of the pimply-faced kid at the drive-through because they asked for three dipping sauces for their nuggets and they only got two.

The surefire way to avoid a warped reality is to filter everything through the prism of God’s Word. Be intellectually honest, and neither discard the evidence that contradicts your stated position, nor make up scenarios as Eliphaz did and pass them off as the truth. If the evidence is there, then it’s there, plain for all to see. If it’s not, then you wanting the preacher that hurt your feelings to be the villain is not enough to accuse him of wickedness deserving of death and eternal darkness.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CCXLI

 Cogito, ergo sum, is how Descartes defined his existence. I think, therefore I am was the summation of the first principle of his philosophy, although it doesn’t sound nearly as cool in French. Perhaps that’s why he decided to go the Latin route, because, let’s face it, few things sound robust and masculine in French. 

Eliphaz had come to the same conclusion about Job, insisting that he had committed wickedness; therefore, he was justly suffering as punishment for those sins. You suffer, therefore you’ve sinned. To him, it was a simple premise of cause and effect. What has befallen you is a direct result and consequence of what you did, and there could be no other explanation for it. Therefore, snares are all around you, and sudden fear troubles you, or darkness so that you cannot see, and an abundance of water covers you.

Job wasn’t in a court of law; he wasn’t being tried by a jury of his peers, but it sure felt like it by this point. What’s worse, the prosecution had no evidence, no witnesses, no tangible proof that their accusations had any teeth or legs upon which to stand. There wasn’t even the pretense of a kangaroo court. The jury wouldn’t be locked away for deliberation; there would be no appeal. As far as Job’s friends were concerned, it was a done deal. Job’s suffering was proof of his wrongdoing and wickedness. The guilt as well as the sentence was predetermined, baked in the cake, regardless of the evidence or lack thereof. Guilt had already been pronounced, and all that was left was for the accused to admit to it. Just say you did the things we’re accusing you of, and we can move on from this!

An accusation without proof is, by definition, a false accusation: groundless, unfounded, and unsubstantiated. When the Word tells us that Satan is the accuser of the brethren, who accused them before God day and night, we can infer that his accusations were as baseless as the accusations Eliphaz was making against Job.

There is a difference between exposing sin in the camp and making false accusations. One is biblical, right, and noble, and should be done if the underlying purpose is to have a healthy, vibrant body of believers, while the other is something the devil would do. I’m coming up on forty years of ministry. I started out as my grandfather’s interpreter at the age of twelve, and over the course of four decades, I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen people who, under the guise of exposing wickedness, were just trying to tear someone down so they could take their place, I’ve seen true and actionable evidence brought forth for the purpose of exposing wickedness, and everything in between.

You learn to tell which is which, even when the individual who is letting you into their confidence is a good actor. If it comes in the form of gossip, if what they’re inferring is second and third-hand innuendo, your duty isn’t to entertain it or give it credence, but ask for evidence, witnesses, or something that will make the situation more than an attempted smear campaign. I heard it from a friend, who heard it from a friend, isn’t evidence; it’s gossip. If no such witnesses or evidence exists, shut it down, do not entertain it, because the purpose of the interaction isn’t truth but rather the planting of seeds in the hope of making you pick a side, get into a clique, and adopt a narrative.

Monsters exist, but not everyone who is labeled a monster is one. Evil exists, but not everyone you may disagree with on some tertiary issue is evil. Just because I like pineapple on my pizza and you don’t, it doesn’t make me Ichabod.

Two things can be true at the same time: there is sin in the camp that must be exposed and excised, but the enemy is also doing his utmost to sow division, cause chaos, and bring on a barrage of baseless accusations in the hopes of creating a rift among the household of faith. If we’re busy with the infighting, chances are, we won’t be fighting Satan, and the enemy knows this.

Just because someone takes offense at the way a message was delivered, if it was biblically sound and the individual who delivered it is above reproach, it does not mean they are disqualified from ministry because feelings were bruised. Just because some individuals don’t like what the Bible says, it doesn’t mean we must change the Bible in order to suit their worldview. It is man who must submit to the authority of Scripture, and not Scripture to the authority of man.

The sad reality is that if the unrepentant can’t attack God in person, they’ll seek to undermine, defame, and destroy His representative. To them, it’s nothing personal; it’s a way of validating their unrepentant nature by tearing down the individual who had the temerity to preach the unadulterated truth that convicted them in the moment.

That there are sheep, goats, true shepherds, and hirelings among church-going folk is undeniable. The secret is to be a sheep and not a goat, to find a shepherd and not a hireling, and make certain that what you are being fed is the meat of God’s Word and not just the milk. A true shepherd’s duty is not to accommodate or cater to your flesh but feed your spiritual man. It’s why the consumer-based model of Christianity can never produce true warriors of the faith. The devil knows that, too, so he’s more than happy to prop up, promote, and advance anyone whose mainstay is the superficial, earthly, and fleeting.

The enemy is tenacious. He won’t give up after the first time he fails, nor after the fifth. Satan knows God is omniscient. He knows God knows the end from the beginning of all things, yet that didn’t stop him from repeatedly attempting the same failed tactics. If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again is the enemy’s motto, and this is why we are instructed to be on guard, vigilant, and aware of the enemy’s devices.

Eliphaz had allowed himself to be used by Satan to level soul-crushing accusations against Job without a shred of evidence. If anything, this should be a teachable moment for all: do not be an Eliphaz.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCXL

 Sometimes you wish there were a few more adverbs scattered throughout scripture, not because the Word itself or its meaning is difficult to understand, but because they would add a whole new layer of comprehension as to what the individual was feeling at the moment. It would make the heart of certain dialogues and monologues a lot easier to appreciate. Eliphaz’s words to Job were just such a case, where an adverb at the end of his question of whether it was because Job feared God that He corrected him and entered into judgment with him would reveal whether he was getting close to seeing the heart of the matter or was still miles away from recognizing what was happening.

Whether asked sarcastically, condescendingly, introspectively, or inquiringly, we will never know, but given that his follow-up question was “is not your wickedness great, and your iniquity without end”, it’s unlikely that Eliphaz had experienced a moment of epiphany and discernment.

That’s the thing about the Bible: it’s not a novel, and it shouldn’t be read like one. It is the Word of the living God, and as such, adverbs are in short supply because rarely does knowing that someone was sulking, sad, angry, joyful, boisterous, or sarcastic add to the narrative.

Nowadays, we elevate feelings and emotions to such lofty heights as to conclude that they outweigh what the Word of God has to say on a particular topic. The Word of God will always be superior, regardless of the situation or issue. Our duty is obedience and adherence to the Word of God, not trying to explain to the Almighty why we feel what He is asking of us isn’t fair, or that we have a different angle we would encourage Him to pursue. You’re not that smart; I’m not that smart, not by a long shot, and if God has made the way clear, if His Word declares a thing, then whatever it declares is absolute.

A heart not wholly surrendered will always look for wiggle room, exemptions, or worst of all, feel entitled to taking liberties with sin because they hold a certain office or position. To whom much is given, much is required; it’s what the Book says. To allow the flesh to twist it to the point that one comes to believe that the more they are given, the less is required of them isn’t just foolhardy and dangerous, it’s treasonous and criminal.

Eliphaz had not changed his mind on why he believed Job was suffering. He had not been swayed by his friend’s words, nor was he allowing for a different explanation. He was doubling down, and what’s worse, he was making up an entire backstory to justify his position and explain why Job was getting exactly what he deserved.

Job 22:6-11, “For you have taken pledges from your brother for no reason, and stripped the naked of their clothing. You have not given the weary water to drink, and you have withheld bread from the hungry. But the mighty man possessed the land, and the honorable man dwelt in it. You have sent widows away empty, and the strength of the fatherless was crushed. Therefore snares are all around you, and sudden fear troubles you, or darkness so that you cannot see; and an abundance of water covers you.”

If any of the accusations Eliphaz leveled against Job were true, then he was neither blameless nor upright, nor did he fear God and shun evil. What Eliphaz was describing was a man with a heart of stone who would not give the weary water to drink, who would withhold bread from the hungry, who would send widows away empty, and crush the strength of the fatherless.

At this juncture, we must determine that only one of the two could be right in their assessment of Job. Either God was wrong in calling him a blameless and upright man, or Eliphaz was wrong in accusing Job of being what amounts to a monster in human flesh who stripped the naked of their clothing, and sent the hungry away while his larders were full.

Given that man can often be wrong but God never is, I know whose report I would believe, and it’s not Eliphaz’s.

This is what happens when we get into our own heads and don’t allow for spiritual discernment to deter us from following the rabbit trail we’ve happened upon to its rightful end. Three men traveled a long way to comfort their friend in his time of trial, and ended up accusing him of cruelty, sin, and wickedness. If anything Eliphaz had said about Job was true, then Job was a tyrant, and there was no fear of God in him. All three men had known Job long enough to call him a friend, to see his character and devotion to God, yet their preconceptions and reasoning about why they believed he was suffering had brought them to this place of utter callousness.

You know me. You know I would never turn away the hungry or refuse to give water to the thirsty. You know I’ve always helped the poor and have comforted those who were hurting!

We thought we did, we thought we knew you, but then again, would you be in this predicament if you were truly the righteous man you pretended to be?

If their back and forth had ever been about getting to the truth, by this point, it ceased to be. Eliphaz needed to be right, even if he had to make up falsehoods regarding Job’s character to do so. In his heart of hearts, he likely knew Job was not the man he portrayed him to be; he knew Job had never shunned the hungry or the thirsty, or exploited the widow and the orphan, but the all-consuming desire to be right made all of those things irrelevant.

If being right comes at the expense of the truth, if the truth must be left to bleed in the street to satisfy your ego, you’re already in the wrong. You’ve already lost. Whatever victory you think may be had by sacrificing the truth will be a pyrrhic one at best. Truth must be the ideal, the purpose, the goal, even if it requires admitting and acknowledging that we were wrong. For some, that’s one bridge too far, and so they begin to unravel in real time, making up stories in their own heads which they eventually verbalize and insist upon as truth.     

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCXXXIX

 Job 22:1-5, “Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said: “Can a man be profitable to God, though he who is wise may be profitable to himself? Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that you are righteous? Or is it gain to Him that you make your ways blameless? Is it because of your fear of Him that He corrects you, and enters into judgment with you? Is not your wickedness great, and your iniquity without end?”

A man can wax poetic about his deep wisdom for hours on end, then one slip of the tongue upturns the apple cart. It’s usually when they’re frustrated, vexed, or defensive about some untenable position that the mask slips, and the handful of words they say exposes the reality that they were only wise in their own eyes. The knowledge they claimed to have was nonexistent, and although utterly ignorant regarding the nature and character of the God they took it upon themselves to speak on, their pride will convince them they are in the right.

Something Job had said had gotten under Eliphaz’s skin to the extent that whatever façade of wisdom he was trying to project collapsed, and in its stead, we see a man grasping at straws, insisting that God doesn’t care either way. Is it any pleasure to the Almighty that you are righteous? Or is it a gain to Him that you make your ways blameless? Even if you were the innocent, upright man you claim to be, do you really think God notices or even cares?

Which is it, sir? You can’t have it both ways; you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either Job was the wicked, unrepentant man you painted him to be, or a righteous man whose righteousness did not move the heart of God, nor affected the way God viewed him. A proverbial ocean separates the righteous from the wicked, the upright from the evil, those who fear the Lord, and those who are indifferent toward Him, and a man can’t be both simultaneously. You have to pick a lane. Either Job was wicked or righteous, but to insist that God didn’t care either way is something so intellectually dishonest as to make us look at Eliphaz in a whole new light.

Perhaps it was due to his status as the eldest among his three friends, the most respected, since he always the first to speak from among them, or the perceived superior wisdom he thought himself to possess over the others, but it seems as though Eliphaz has something to prove, and this last and final speech of his differs in tone and content from all the others we’ve studied thus far.

While the first half of the chapter is brutal in its accusations, assumptions, and innuendos, the second half is far more conciliatory, almost poetic, as though two different streams of thought are vying for control. There is an undeniable duality in Eliphaz. He is a man at odds with himself, struggling between leaning on his own understanding and allowing for the possibility of seeing the situation from a different angle.

Eliphaz is not unique in his struggle between what he can see, touch, intuit, or perceive with his human intellect, and what is beyond his understanding, or ability to reason out on his own. Whatever the situation, whenever we start out believing we know everything there is to know, and there is no new information or evidence that can sway us from this knowledge, or the conclusions we’ve come to in our minds, we’ve shut ourselves off from the possibility that things aren’t as they seem, or that we are not as wise as we thought ourselves to be in our own eyes. I have declared it thusly, and it must be so because I have declared it! And you would be?

Although humility is not a popular virtue nowadays, it is a necessary one for the children of God, because when we walk in humility, we acknowledge that only God is all-knowing, only He is omniscient, and defer to Him on matters that aren’t as clear as we once thought.

Job’s predicament was obvious to everyone. What wasn’t as obvious was why he was in the predicament he was in. Based on what they could see, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar had concluded that the reason for his suffering could be none other than wickedness on his part, some sin heretofore unconfessed that spurned the wrath of God against him.

It’s human nature to try to make sense of what we see and process it in a way that fits neatly into our understanding of the world around us. If I see a bedraggled man on the street, clothes torn and grimy, my first thought is that he must be homeless. If I took a closer look and processed what I was seeing without the filter of my preconception that unkempt, grimy, disheveled individuals are likely homeless, I would have noticed certain details that would contradict my previous conclusions, such as the shoes the man was wearing were higher-end wing tips, the torn suit seemed finely tailored, and based on the new evidence I would have to conclude he’d likely been robbed, beaten bloody, and left in an alley until he came to.

Man judges based on what he can see. God judges based on what is seen, unseen, and what can only be seen by Him. When we appropriate the authority and omniscience of God, and go beyond what we rightly understand, passing judgment on individuals or situations regarding which we do not have complete knowledge, it isn’t a quest for truth that’s egging us on, but our own pride and arrogance.

It’s no sin to abstain from passing judgment. It’s not your place to judge anyway. We cannot infer causality based on probability, then conclude that someone lost a child, a spouse, a parent, or a loved one because they were wicked, or that they’re bedridden because God was punishing them. We’re not talking about sin or wickedness, which, biblically speaking, we have a duty to call out, but rather about assigning guilt for sin or wickedness to someone based on a hardship or trial they are going through.

You are suffering, therefore you have sinned. But I’ve searched my heart, I’ve cried out to God, I’ve asked Him to show me if there is any wickedness in me, and there is nothing. I’m not hiding anything; there is nothing I would not be willing to repent of if He showed me it was contrary to His will because my singular desire is to be pleasing in His sight. Well, that just won’t cut it, because if you hadn’t committed great wickedness, you wouldn’t be suffering; therefore, you must have!

Do not assign purpose to someone’s suffering when no purpose is clear. Only God knows the purpose, and it may be that what we see as punishment for sin is a testing of one’s faith that, once they have endured, will bring about the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.