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Job 5
- Summary - with help from Matthew Henry pages 529-531
This chapter continues the words of Job's friend, Eliphaz, who now challenges Job to find any saint that will not support Eliphaz's view that the sin of sinners is their own ruin - the foolish man is killed as a result of his anger and the silly or simple man as a result of envy.
Eliphaz says he has seen foolish men initially seem to do well but predicted their ruin, which was confirmed when their children, prosperity and health were all taken.
He then tells Job that if he were in Job's place he would turn to God, encouraging Job to remember how great and powerful God is.
He further encourages Job to reconcile himself to the will of God in this chastisement from a loving God. Although wounded, God will heal him, support him, comfort him. Although through life he will continue to have troubles, God will deliver him from famine, war, wild animals and harsh words. They shall not do him real harm - if God please - they can but kill the body, and they do not have power to do that unless given from God.
Although Job has lost all his children Eliphaz says that if Job turns to God he will give him many more and Job will live to a ripe old age.
These sayings Eliphaz is confident of, having carefully studied them, and recommends Job applies it to himself.
- Thoughts
Eliphaz confidently tells Job what he would do if he was in Job's place - he says, 'I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause' and then speaks of God's great power, deliverance, mercies and blessings.
Eliphaz was speaking from a place of complacency - he wasn't the one in trouble!
How easy it is to think how we will be strong in the Lord if we were in somebody else's shoes, but then when we are in trouble we realise that we are human - complicated humans, whose minds are full of thoughts which naturally seem to gravitate towards earth.
Our minds become bogged down by our circumstances and thoughts, and sometimes we even resent the ways of God. We don't want to have to exercise faith. We don't want to have to look again to him. We don't want to have to look to the promises. We want it all to be easy. We want God to visibly and obviously reveal himself to us - to make his will clear, to take away the hard thing. We listen to Satan whispering in our ear the thoughts of self-pity and how unkind God is being to us to allow certain things. It is as if we sometimes have to be made willing to again turn to him.
Why are we sometimes like this?! Why so slow to turn to him? Are we like the sulky child surrounded by broken toys - thrown away in frustration, who instead of taking them to a parent, has a tantrum. Maybe you do not experience this, and it is only those of us with a particularly rebellious nature?
But our heavenly Father, our loving Jesus, looks on us - and sees it all. All our frustration and tantrums.
What a blessing that he has compassion and again draws us to him with arms of love. Remember, dear reader, that when a child of God turns again to the Lord - it is because the Lord is stirring him/her up with his love. He is drawing you to him. He is inclining your heart towards him - he is making you willing.
Hear what Jonah said, '...all thy billows and thy waves passed over me. Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple'. Jonah was literally inside the large fish which God had prepared - think how disgusting and frightening it must have been! And, yet, in that situation with as far as he knew, certain death before him Jonah said, 'when my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple' (Jonah 2: 4,7).
Are you in a trouble today? Are you in your heart perhaps rejecting the Lord - angry, feeling how hard your lot is, frustrated and not believing it can change? Or are you just feeling low, and impossibilities weighing you down?
May the Lord in his mercy turn your thoughts and your heart towards him - either for the first time or again. May he be your strong tower, your refuge, your place that you run to, your place where you pour out all your troubles, your sinful thoughts and actions before him, your place of safety where you find forgiveness, strength, love and peace, your place where you are enabled to take your burden and trust that he will bear it with you - and perhaps take the care of it so completely off your shoulders that you are able to happily continue on your way, looking to him.
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