The Combined Reasoning Power of Job’s Three Friends
- the Mystery of Suffering and Glory
JOB 2:11-13
11 ¶ Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him.
12 And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven.
13 So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great. (This word “grief” means pain - mental and physical, sorrow)
JOB 3:1-4
1 ¶ After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day.
2 And Job spake, and said,
3 Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived.
4 Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.
Job wished that he had never been born into this world; in all the wisdom that he has accumulated, he has no understanding of his pre-existence in the thoughts of God billions of years before he came to earth, nor does he know about the continuation of life after death. This has been a great mystery and question of man for many millennia.
The Combined Reasoning Power of Job’s Three Friends
- the Mystery of Suffering and Glory
When you have a group of people who have the same reasoning ideas and then combine their reasoning power together, then that can become a very powerful form of argument that can catch on and spread to many other people – this is generally how new religions are formed; from what seems right to a man’s thinking. We see all the crazy ideas that are in the world today that are often propagated by very intelligent people - and these ideas spread to others because intelligent people can make almost any idea sound reasonable.
PROVERBS 14:12
12 ¶ There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
*So when these wise men of Job’s three friends combined their reasoning power together and came up with the same conclusion about Job and the reason as to why all these disasters had befallen upon him – then that became a very strong reasoning argument that sounded so correct in their own minds so that even the people who were a part of Job’s community would come to be convinced that these men were right in their conclusion, but we know from the beginning of the story that their reasoning was wrong concerning Job because the book of Job is giving us both sides of the story at the same time.
But this combined reasoning power of Job’s three friends, we can be fairly certain had a great influence on his family and community that were associated with Job of how they thought about him – in that they were convinced that he had brought all this trouble upon himself and upon them by some secret sin he had committed.
So this was the mental suffering of being falsely accused and rejected that Job was suffering on top of the first two blows that Satan had given him in CH:1 and CH:2 of Job. We see how the life story of Joseph was very similar – and so it should not be a strange thing if our lives follow a similar path.
JOB 1:6-21
6 ¶ Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.
(This reference to “the sons of God” is generally understood of as being the holy angels of God; and among these holy angels can also be fallen angels like when we saw the lying spirit come up and offer his services to God in order to deceive Ahab in 1st Kings 22:22)
7 And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. (This is Satan’s standard (“go to”) reply to God – because we notice that he never confesses to God the details of his evil deeds – because this was the same reply he gave to God in Job CH:2-2 just after he had wreaked havoc on Job’s life in Chapter 1)
8 And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? (God knows how that Satan will study your life in order to try to exploit your weakness to his advantage – but a boundary has been set by God upon Satan concerning you)
9 Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?
10 Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? (Notice a hedge of protection was about Job, and his house, and his possessions – 3 areas of his life. And this hedge was actually a boundary that God had set on the access that Satan had to be able to wreak havoc in Job’s life and family and business. So this is showing us that each one of us have a hedge around us of the protection of God that limits Satan’s access) thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. (God will bless you to in all these areas – but it is important that you put God first in your life, and we see that all through the bible when people put the Lord first then all these things will be added because God knows that humans like having a certain amount of stuff around them. In fact God likes having material things too, as is evident in the fact that He created the world and all the things that are in it – and said that it was good)
11 But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath (Man doesn’t like losing his stuff), and he will curse thee to thy face. (Satan knows how to best hurt a man – just destroy his ability to be a provider for his family. From last week we talked about the face as being the person fully revealed, showing us that this was the revelation level that Job had of God.)
12 And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand (So the hedge of God’s protection was removed from around Job’s possessions and household, but the hedge around Job himself was not removed until the second request of Satan was granted in Job 2:4-5) . So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD.
13 ¶ And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house:
**We notice verse 13 is place in here because this is important in that – “there was a certain day”.
*Satan is a very experienced and gifted strategist, and so he knew that he had to be very careful in the way he planned the events of these disasters in Job’s life so that it would have the maximum overwhelming effect possible on Job. So the timing and order of these events had to be planned very carefully.
*And so Satan knew that Job’s children always celebrated their birthday parties together, and so he had set the date of carrying out all of his evil plans against Job for the very next coming birthday party date – this was to be “the day” (verse 13 tells us this), and so you can imagine that Satan had a lot to organise before this day arrived.
*All of his angels had to be assigned to different tasks of what each one was good at doing, and no doubt they had been carefully discussing every detail of their attack and preparing for weeks before the big day arrived because first there was the Sabean raiders to mobilise maybe weeks beforehand so that they would arrive and execute their raid on the exact day of the big event.
*Then there was the supernatural fire of God that had to be arranged to come down from heaven and burned up and consumed all the sheep and the servants, but they had to be very careful to make sure to leave one servant alive so that he could tell Job.
All these details had been discussed to a level of great precision well before the day of Job’s troubles came upon him.
Then there was the Chaldeans of three bands that Satan and his fallen angels had to organise for that same day to steal all of Job’s camels and slay the servants with the edge of the sword - but again they had to be very careful to let just one servant escape to tell Job.
*Then lastly there was the great wind from the wilderness that had to be arranged to smote the house where all his children were and it had to make the house fall in such a way as to kill all of his children in one go – but again, make sure to leave one servant alive so that he can tell Job.
*So we begin to realise that the best military organisation in the world today would probably almost certainly fail to pull this operation off with this level of precision and success, but this was no problem for the Devil and his fallen angels, because this was the sort of thing they did all the time and they were all very good at achieving their goals.
***And so this is showing us something of the incredible organisation skills of what Satan and his angels are capable of accomplishing, and that was because these angels were created by God, and it was God who had given them these great abilities in order to serve behind the scenes to be a blessing to man, but what we see here is that instead of Satan and his angels using their God given talents to be a blessing to man, they were using their talents to try to destroy man’s relationship with God by doing all they could in their power to get Job to curse God to his Face and break off his fellowship with God because it was fellowship with man that God wanted from the beginning.
**So we can see how that Satan has exceptional organisation skills. This is why when Satan’s spirit gets onto religious people, they immediately turn to organising the church of God in what seems to be a much better way than how God was running it, so that it makes God look like the way He leads His church is greatly inferior to Satan’s organisation skills way of doing things – but God’s ways of doing things is always a million times greater than Satan’s, but because God’s ways goes against the reasoning of man, then man misunderstands God and thinks that he can take over and do it much better by organisation than God can through leading the individual by the Holy Spirit.
14 And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them:
15 And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. (The Sabeans were supposedly the principal people of Arabia in ancient times, and the name seems to be used sometimes in the general sense of "Arabs" of whose plundering habits at the time were well known)
16 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
17 While he was yet speaking (we are talking about the precision timing here of how well the Devil had organised this whole battle strategy against Job right down to the very minute), there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. (Just remember that all of these servants would have had wives and children and loved ones that would have grieved for their loss – so these events affected many people in Job’s community, and this is why when the rumours were spread around that these 3 friends of Job had decided that it was God who had punished Job because of some secret sin that Job had been doing, then you can imagine the negative attitudes of all these people in the community that had lost their sons and fathers that used to work for Job as his herdsman – this was the dark and heavy coat of false accusation and disgrace that Job had to bear even though he was completely innocent)
18 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house:
19 And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
20 ¶ Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,
21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
There was a deep in Job that was squeezed out under this level of immense pressure – this was what God could see that was in deep down on the inside of Job of what Satan could not see.
**Look at how Satan had very successfully executed these great disasters upon Job with such precision timing in order to maximise his grief to the greatest limit.
I.KNOW_ JEFF.IN EASTER.MESSAGE.BOOK SUNDAY_ 60-0417S
36 It's those crucial hours that press us on to those sacred sands. It was in the Bible. And remember, no matter how great the distress is, Satan cannot take your life until God has finished with you. There is nothing can happen to you unless God permits it. There is no evil can come unless God permits it. And it's for your good He's working that.
Let's think, there when the floods came to destroy the world, it could not destroy Noah. Noah could not be destroyed, because that God had a work for him to do.
41 Satan could not take them. He could not drown Noah in the flood, until the purpose of God had been finished. He could not burn up the Hebrew children until the purpose of God had been finished. He could not kill Job with boils and troubles until the purpose of God had been finished. Neither could the lions eat Daniel until God's purpose had been finished. Neither could death and old age take Abraham until the purpose of God had been finished. And neither can it take you, or can it take me until the purpose of God of our life is finished. So we gather from their consolation.
43 And why does God let troubles come? God harnesses trouble, puts bits in its mouth, and makes it obey Him, and those troubles bring us into a closer fellowship with God.