Job 5

“Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects; therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty. For He bruises, but He binds up; He wounds, but His hands make whole. He shall deliver you in six troubles, yes, in seven no evil shall touch you.” Job 5:17-19 (NKJV)

When my older children were still very young, my wife and I determined that we would keep our kids as close to church as possible. We toted the kids to every program the church offered. When the kids got a bit older, we decided to enroll them in Christian schools. This was all because we were trying to protect our children from worldliness and its influence within the public school system.  

For the most part, our plan worked, but as time progressed, we began noticing that not all “Christian” families have the same rules and standards as us. We soon came to understand that it was not enough to protect our children from worldliness by shielding them from the World. We also must shield our kids from worldly Christians. That is, Christians whose worldview is based more on their knowledge of the World than their knowledge and faithful belief in the Bible.

This scenario is precisely what Job is facing in today’s passage. His “friends” have a form of godliness but a wrong understanding of God. When people depart from God’s Word, the Bible, they immediately lose track of the spiritual “true North” and cannot be trusted as a moral compass. That means their counsel may contain “religious-sounding” terms, be filled with sincerity, and be passionately presented…but it will probably not be consistent with God’s standard. When filtered through the lens of Scripture, what may appear to be common spiritual “horse sense” may actually be good, old-fashioned heresy!

Listen to how sincere Elifaz’s “tough love” encouragement sounds: How happy the person whom God corrects! Don’t despise Shaddai’s discipline.  

The problem was that the Lord was doing a whole other thing in Job’s life. Job was not undergoing the Lord’s rebuke. Job’s friend had misdiagnosed Job’s condition in a self-righteous rush to judgment, fueled by his Biblical ignorance. The source of Eilphaz’s spiritual pride was his lack of understanding of God, and this lack of understanding came from heeding the ungodly counsel of Satan himself.  (Job 4:12-21)

Once a person departs from God’s Word yet seeks to follow Him through some other means, not only is that person deceived, but any counsel they give has potentially eternal adverse effects on the lives of others. Notice how Elifaz prophesies, drawing wrong predictions of Job’s future based on an incorrect understanding of the Lord. This condition is rampant within the Church-at-large because so few professing believers read the Bible. We should discern all teaching and advice, just as the Bereans did.  

“Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” Acts 17:11 (NIV)