Job 22:1-30
Eliphaz
1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite replied:
2 “Can a man be of benefit to God?
Can even a wise person benefit him?
3 What pleasure would it give the Almighty if you were righteous?
What would he gain if your ways were blameless?
4 “Is it for your piety that he rebukes you
and brings charges against you?
5 Is not your wickedness great?
Are not your sins endless?
6 You demanded security from your relatives for no reason;
you stripped people of their clothing, leaving them naked.
7 You gave no water to the weary
and you withheld food from the hungry,
8 though you were a powerful man, owning land—
an honored man, living on it.
9 And you sent widows away empty-handed
and broke the strength of the fatherless.
10 That is why snares are all around you,
why sudden peril terrifies you,
11 why it is so dark you cannot see,
and why a flood of water covers you.
12 “Is not God in the heights of heaven?
And see how lofty are the highest stars!
13 Yet you say, ‘What does God know?
Does he judge through such darkness?
14 Thick clouds veil him, so he does not see us
as he goes about in the vaulted heavens.’
15 Will you keep to the old path
that the wicked have trod?
16 They were carried off before their time,
their foundations washed away by a flood.
17 They said to God, ‘Leave us alone!
What can the Almighty do to us?’
18 Yet it was he who filled their houses with good things,
so I stand aloof from the plans of the wicked.
19 The righteous see their ruin and rejoice;
the innocent mock them, saying,
20 ‘Surely our foes are destroyed,
and fire devours their wealth.’
21 “Submit to God and be at peace with him;
in this way prosperity will come to you.
22 Accept instruction from his mouth
and lay up his words in your heart.
23 If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored:
If you remove wickedness far from your tent
24 and assign your nuggets to the dust,
your gold of Ophir to the rocks in the ravines,
25 then the Almighty will be your gold,
the choicest silver for you.
26 Surely then you will find delight in the Almighty
and will lift up your face to God.
27 You will pray to him, and he will hear you,
and you will fulfill your vows.
28 What you decide on will be done,
and light will shine on your ways.
29 When people are brought low and you say, ‘Lift them up!’
then he will save the downcast.
30 He will deliver even one who is not innocent,
who will be delivered through the cleanness of your hands.”
Throughout the Book of Job great questions are ask...Job is suffering greatly and asks God many questions...And Job's three friends Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite also ask some good questions about God and about faith...Questions like there come up (it seems to me), especially when things go wrong in our lives or when we have a friend or a family member who is suffering...Eliphaz asks if man can benefit God?...He also asks if a wise man can benefit God?...What does God gain, if Job and others are blameless?...
These are good questions...And since God created man how can we as mortal men benefit our LORD and Savior?...How can even the wisest man on earth benefit Him?...After all if God is Almighty and always in control, how does Job and others being blameless help Him or give Him gain?...And Eliphaz maybe paraphrasing Job when he asks "You say, what does God know?"...Doesn't God know everything?...Questions of suffering and they are relating them to God and faith...
These are all questions of faith...I believe the bigger and the more we believe that God is infinite and eternal, the more faith we have...If man can benefit God, or a wise man can benefit Him, then how Almighty is God and how much faith do we have...So the more we believe God is Almighty, Infinite, and Eternal the larger our faith can be...
God is our God of Hope, not only in times of good times and good health, but also in times of tragedy and bad health...Job understands this, but remembering it all the while he is suffering, brings on many questions to God...Is Job questioning God, or is he questioning his faith...Or is he questioning both?...After all God is all about faith...
If we put faith in a life and death situation, then maybe mature faith in God can be better understood...I can question both the purpose of life and death, but death seems a more confusing subject...We do not have a number of men and women who have died for three days and then have come back...Only Jesus' friend Lazarus, and Jesus Himself are the two, that we really know about the lengths of their death, and then they did come back to life...Death brings up many questions, because only these two were able to overcome death over a period of days, and then make it back to life...And Lazarus would have never done it, without Jesus and His help...And we do not get any discussion in the gospels about how Lazarus felt about death, and what the experience was like, or anything...We get really no information on whether Lazarus was ready and wanting to die again, because of the great experience he had with death...We just do not get a lot of detail about death and how returning to life really works...
So for me, this brings up other questions...Should our faith be easier at one time over another?...And another question can or should our faith be easier in one place over another?...For me, the answer is yes...When I feel good and have my Bible in my home reading it, faith is easier...So, I believe there are places where faith comes easier and there are different times where faith seems easier...
It seems for me, that nursing homes and hospitals can bring out different things in my faith...These places often test my faith...These places can make me mad at God, or often make me question Him (like Job and his friends were doing), or they can strengthen my belief...And the reasons these places do that, is that I often see in the different rooms, that death is near...If I believe that God can only help us when we are alive, then my faith cannot be that strong...But if we believe God can overcome death, then we believe that He is more powerful than any man and our faith can mature and grow, and maybe we can understand death a little better...This is because believers believe in the resurrection...The most important historical fact in our history, and the most important fact, I believe for our faith -is the resurrection...The fact, that God raised His Son from His suffering and death on the cross, and He made Him alive again...If God can create man, have man live a life, then have man pass on and die, and then resurrect him -then that is an All Powerful God!!!...God is a God of Hope, not only in our comfortable places, but also in our uncomfortable places...He is a God of Hope, when we believe that death is not our ultimate purpose, and that being at home with Him in heaven is...