Job 6:24 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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Job 6:24

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Job insists that he is not unwilling to be corrected if others can really show him his faults. Right words and honest counsel and insight into the behaviour and the sins of others is something to be valued highly. It is a kindness to faithfully admonish those who have gone astray. Admonition must be received and we must on occasion help each other to see where we have erred. That is exactly what Elihu will do later in the book. He will employ none of the simplistic explanation and easy solutions of the friends. They show their ignorance by these counsels, and how little they understand of Job’s case. ‘Show me my sin’, Jobs asks. ‘Tell me what I have done; prove what you say.’ Job has been accused by Eliphaz of hypocrisy and Eliphaz has blamed Job’s secret sin for this calamity. Job has held onto the testimony of his own conscience that he has not been a deceiver as is suggested. There are no secret sins which he is aware of, for which this suffering has come upon him. He therefore rejects Eliphaz words as useless and even deceitful. Eliphaz, encountering Job’s problem, instead of facing it in all its mystery, is quick to find some easy explanation which appears to justify God. His understanding is simplistic and it is unrealistic as well, for as Job goes on to show, the wicked are not always immediately punished for their sin in this life. Job senses that they are pursuing him with a kind of vindictiveness, and though they claim to be his friends who have come to comfort him, they real motive is to defend their view of God over against his. But although Job is right to find fault with their theology, he has been pushed off balance by his troubles. He says, ‘I would be all right if I understood this. But how can you expect me to bear up if I don’t know why this is happening to me? It is unreasonable.’ The flesh wants to apportion blame – but it is wrong for us to say, ‘I have every right to feel sorry for myself until someone explains this to me.’Outwardly his friends appear to be the ones who are far more concerned for God’s honour, and Job seems to be the one who is wrongly blaming God for his troubles, but the truth is that the friends have adopted a shallow theology of works and rewards, while Job in all his difficulties is refusing to let go of his evangelical doctrine, even though he cannot explain his situation. The three friends are superficial in their theology and in their assessment of Job, and they are only justifying a God of their own imagination. Satan has skilfully boxed Job in by this predicament and those around him.Job knows his words have been rash, but they have come out of the immense suffering he is experiencing which have made him desperate. But his friends are making no allowance for this and holding him to every word in a way that is unnecessarily strict. They are behaving like those who overwhelm the fatherless, that is, those who are already in a state of severe disadvantage and weakness, and are incapable of putting up any resistance. Is that to their credit? Is that any way to treat a friend who is in dire need of help and true comfort – to dig a hole for him to fall into?

Application

Job’s weaknesses would not have been known before the troubles. It was not as if troubles came because of them. It is the same with us: how we can give way under pressure, and our faith is found to be weak! Job lost hold of the sovereign plan and purpose of God.

We say, ‘If only I knew what was coming next! I am entitled to know. I can’t be expected to go on walking in darkness.’ Some guidance books speak as if we can be expected to know everything that will happen to us. Job was a philosopher, poet, businessman, planner, and so he does not like to be in the dark. If he can’t get an answer from God, he compromises himself, even turning to his unsaved friends. He criticises the God about whom he has been witnessing to them for years.

We see how useless to true believers is the counsel of those who claim to know God, but have never understood the Bible’s scheme of salvation. What can they say to us of any real substance when they have not found the Lord themselves? Any real help we are to receive from others starts with an understanding of free salvation through faith in Christ alone, for without they are like blind men offering to guide us. How can those who are outside the kingdom give real help and advice to those who are inside the kingdom? If you make unbelievers your closest friends, sooner or later they will turn on you.

We see that the child of God instinctively discerns false counsel when it is given him. This is true even though he may have fallen, and be suffering on account of his own foolishness and sin. Christ says, ‘My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me’, and ‘a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers’ (John 10:17, 5). There is real wisdom required on the part of those who take it upon themselves to counsel others, but wisdom begins with conversion. Without this they have nothing of value to say.

Was Job a little spoilt by his former wealth and success? We are all rather spoilt. So many problems we run into derive from this. How often parental spoiling of a child plays such a part in this. Don’t spoil your children, because even if they are converted, their biggest problems may be the legacy of parental spoiling.

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Job 6:24 Commentary and Bible Study