Job 4:1

Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said: "If one attempts a word with you, will you become weary? But who can withhold himself from speaking? Surely you have instructed many, and you have strengthened weak hands. Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have strengthened the feeble knees; but now it comes upon you, and you are weary; it touches you, and you are troubled. Is not your reverence your confidence? And the integrity of your ways your hope? Remember now, whoever perished being innocent? Or where were the upright ever cut off? Even as I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same." (Job 4:1–8)

The book of Job does not tidily answer why God allows suffering—it strips away our false assumptions and points us to the mediator we truly need.

A Conversation That Captures Job's Question

This last month at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa there was a moderated discussion—originally intended as a debate—between political commentator Dave Rubin, who previously considered himself an atheist and grew up in a Jewish family, and Christian apologist John Lennox, a professor of pure mathematics at Oxford. It was hosted by Justin Brierley of Unbelievable on Premier Christian Radio. The video came out just yesterday, and it touches directly on what we've been considering in Job.

Rubin told of a young couple who came up to him before a show, both visibly distraught. The husband had just learned he had stage-four cancer and little time to live. The wife had discovered she was pregnant, but the baby had died and had to be removed the next day. Unimaginably horrific circumstances. Rubin said the only words he could find were, "God bless you." There was nothing else he could say.

Lennox responded that this is the hardest question any of us face. "The problem of moral evil and pain... is the hardest question any of us face." He noted that the atheist says it's just the way the world is—there is no God—but if you abolish God, you can actually make the problem worse, because now there is no hope. From the Christian perspective there is the hope of the resurrection. Lennox offered two things, not as tidy answers, but as windows into possibility: first, if that really is God incarnate on the cross, then God has not remained distant from human suffering—He has become part of it. Second, the resurrection of Jesus means there is ultimately real hope, because the resurrection guaranteed a final, utterly fair judgment. Nobody escapes this problem; no philosophy or worldview escapes it.

What the Book of Job Actually Does

When you read Job chapters one and two and see Job's collapse, you might assume the next forty chapters will answer why God allows suffering. But as you come to chapter four and get into the meat of the book, you discover it isn't really doing that.

I'm not going to teach every single verse, and some have expressed frustration over that. I'd encourage you to read Job 3–37 yourself—preferably in the New Living Translation or NIV, because the heavy poetic language takes work to break apart. You'll quickly see why I won't go verse by verse: it's largely the same things said over and over in each discourse. When I mentioned this to my friend David Guzik, he said, "I think that's a great idea, because by the end of it you're just sick of Job's friends." So I have it on good authority.

Still, the book does some important things. First, it reveals that the issue Lennox raised—a good God in a harsh world filled with suffering and malevolence—is something humanity has wrestled with as far back as we can look. This is one of the oldest books of literature. When modern skeptics raise it as though no one ever thought of it before, that's simply ignorant of history. People have struggled with this for thousands of years.

Job and his friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and later the young man Elihu, who arrives with all the bluster of someone who thinks he has it all figured out—held a strong worldview about these issues, even if it couldn't adequately explain Job's suffering. We all construct worldviews: the core beliefs and values through which we filter and process every experience. When your worldview can't account for what's happening, you have an existential crisis. That's exactly what Job is experiencing—his suffering conflicts with his worldview.

We Expect Right Behavior from the Judge

Second, Job addresses questions of justice, fairness, and whether God operates according to justice. Every parent knows even the youngest children grasp this quickly—"That's not fair!" We carry a sense of justice from a very young age.

This very question appears early in Scripture, in Abraham. In Genesis 18, God reveals He will destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness. Abraham intercedes: Suppose there are fifty righteous? You won't destroy the righteous with the wicked, will you? God agrees to relent for fifty. You can almost feel Abraham calculating—there aren't fifty—so he keeps going down: forty-five, thirty, lower and lower, knowing his nephew Lot lives there. The understructure of the whole conversation surfaces in Genesis 18:25: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"

That's a vital question. If it is true that it is appointed for men to die once and then comes judgment, and there is a Judge who will judge, then we expect Him to be just. Interestingly, God does not verbally answer Abraham. The question is left lingering for the reader. He answers it in how He acts.

This brings us to point one: we expect right behavior from the Judge of all things. And rightly so. But here's the fascinating thing—where does that sense of justice come from? When the atheist accuses the God he doesn't believe in of being unfair, he betrays his own worldview, because he's revealing an expectation of rightness and wrongness his worldview cannot support. If there is no God, there is no moral law-giver, no moral law, no objective standard for right and wrong. Yet skeptics cast their aspersions against God for His unfairness day in and day out. You have to say to them: you have a problem, because I thought you didn't believe in Him, and you have no basis for right or wrong—you can't extract values from bare facts.

So when someone asks the question of fairness, they're asking Abraham's question. And as in Genesis, God doesn't answer it verbally in Job; He answers it in how things ultimately play out.

The Structure of the Debate

Job's world has completely collapsed. From Job 7:3 it appears he had been in this condition for months. His friends likely came months after the catastrophe, sat with him seven days and nights in silence, and then Job broke the silence in chapter three—not addressing them, just venting his frustration and wishing he could die: just crush me, just kill me.

Then his friends begin to speak, and this sets the structure of the book: Job speaks, a friend responds; Job speaks, the next friend responds; Job speaks, the third friend responds. They do this three times. As they speak, they reveal their worldview and their expectations about how the world should work. Then Elihu, the young buck, comes in to clear it all up.

This is the best thinking of the ancient Near East 3,500 years ago, trying to address justice and fairness. The big question Job faces is: Is God just? Does He function in this world according to justice? And if so, what does that say about Job and how he should respond to his suffering?

The Law of Retribution

They filter everything through a foundational assumption theologians call the law of retribution—a basic cause-and-effect worldview. It's very similar to the New Testament concept of sowing and reaping, which we even read here in Job 4: you reap what you sow. Go to the Far East and you find the karmic principles of Hinduism and Buddhism. This idea appears across cultures throughout human history.

Their worldview runs like this: if you're wise, good, and honor God, you'll be rewarded with blessing; if you're sinful and wicked, you'll get justice and punishment. So Job's friends look at him and say, "We know you appear righteous, but it's just an appearance. You're getting what you deserve."

This brings us to point two: we expect all things to work the way we expect them to work. It's circular, but it's true—we carry assumptions about how the world should work and expect it to work that way. When it doesn't, we have a crisis. And when we watch someone respond the "wrong" way according to our worldview, we do exactly what Job's friends do—we start counseling them about how they ought to respond.

Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar

Eliphaz speaks first, which signals he's the oldest—the gray head, the wisest of them all. He's aghast at Job's outburst: "Who can withhold himself from speaking?" I can't keep quiet any longer. "Surely you have instructed many"—you were the wise man everyone looked to because you were wealthy and pious, the one who comforted others in trouble, and now that it touches you, you buckle. "Is not your reverence your confidence?" You boasted in your piety and integrity, expecting blessing, and now you break. "Whoever perished being innocent?" He tips his hand: if you were innocent, you wouldn't be suffering. "Those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same." Clearly, Job, you're getting what you deserve. People don't suffer like this if they're good.

Then Bildad in chapter eight—"How long will you speak these things, and the words of your mouth be like a strong wind?" You're blowing hot air. "Does God subvert judgment? Or does the Almighty pervert justice?" Of course not. Your sons sinned against God—that's why they died. "If you would earnestly seek God... if you were pure and upright, surely now He would awake for you." But clearly you're not.

Then Zophar in chapter eleven—after Job again defends his righteousness. "Should not the multitude of your words be answered? Should a man full of talk be vindicated?" Here you go spouting off again. "Oh, that God would speak"—if only He would open His lips and reveal who you really are. "Know therefore that God exacts from you less than your iniquity deserves." Job, this hardship is nothing compared to what you actually deserve.

We Do Not Understand the Ways and Works of God

Point three: we expect that we understand the ways and works of God—and we don't. Through Isaiah, God says His ways are above our ways, beyond our finding out (Isaiah 55:8). Job's friends thought they knew exactly what God was doing and what it revealed about Job: if God is just, then Job must be a wicked sinner deserving everything he suffers. That was, to them, the only logical explanation.

I love Job's response after the third friend finishes. Job 12:2: "No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you!" You've got it all figured out, and when you die the world will suffer a great loss. According to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, good people are rewarded and wicked people are judged—so a person enjoying success and health is righteous, and a person down and out is wicked. What an easy worldview. But it doesn't work.

Job is not silent through this. How could he be? They accuse him of sins he hasn't committed—by chapter 22 they even start inventing possible sins. In his opening response (Job 6), he says, "Oh, that my grief were fully weighed... it would be heavier than the sand of the sea. Therefore my words have been rash." Yes, I spoke impulsively, but if you actually weighed my burden, you would respond no differently. "Teach me, and I will hold my tongue; cause me to understand wherein I have erred." Show me what I've done wrong—I can't see it. Do you think I haven't examined everything I've ever done? "Look at me; would I lie to your face?"

Because Job shared his friends' worldview, point four: Job expected his friends' support and God's vindication. Having examined himself, he concluded he should be vindicated if the law of retribution held. Yet he received neither support nor vindication, and must have felt entirely alone for months. Things were not unfolding the way he expected.

Other Righteous Sufferers

That should remind us of other righteous sufferers in Scripture. Consider John the Baptist, who rightly proclaimed Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus said of him that among those born of women none was greater. Yet John spoke against the king's wickedness, was thrown in jail, and awaited execution. Things weren't going as he expected—the Messiah was supposed to destroy enemies and establish an everlasting kingdom, and John assumed he'd be sprung from prison. So he sent two disciples to ask Jesus, "Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?" Jesus answered (Matthew 11:2–6): the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the gospel preached to them—"and blessed is he who is not offended because of Me." Blessings to you, John, if you don't get upset when I don't work the way you expect. Some believe John was beheaded before that word ever reached him. It would have been a hard word to wrestle with.

And consider one more righteous sufferer—Jesus, far more righteous than Job or John. His friends deserted Him, His countrymen betrayed Him, and His Father forsook Him: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" It could have appeared that God was completely inactive and uncaring. But because we have the rest of the story, we know God was doing something. Things don't always work out the way we assume or expect. The book of Job doesn't explain why so well, but in Job's case, John's case, and Jesus' case, God was working in ways that weren't entirely clear—and we can trust He was not unaware of the suffering, not indifferent, not uncaring. He was working.

The Mediator We Need

For thirty-four chapters Job and his friends go back and forth, Job maintaining his innocence while they push him to confess secret sins. Eventually Job stops defending himself to his friends and appeals his case to a higher authority: I want to talk to God. He realizes the absurdity, yet in Job 16 he says, "O earth, do not cover my blood... Surely even now my witness is in heaven, and my evidence is on high. My friends scorn me; my eyes pour out tears to God." Then the point, verse 21: "Oh, that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleads for his neighbor!"

Point five: Job desired a mediator to intercede with God on his behalf. That is exactly what we sinners living in a broken, fallen world really need—a mediator between God and man. And what does the New Testament reveal? There is one mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus. The friend we truly need is that mediator.

Fittingly, that same Man had a conversation (Luke 13) with people who came to clue Him in on suffering—those crushed by a falling tower, and zealous worshipers killed unjustly at the temple. Jesus answered, "Do you suppose they were worse sinners than you? Unless you repent you will all likewise perish." We can get upset at the injustice of this broken world, or we can let it drive us to say: we need a mediator to bring us before God. The very thing Job hoped for, wished for, and ultimately needed is what we need as well.

Closing Prayer

God, I thank You for the story of Job, even though it presents challenging questions that feel unanswered. I pray You would help us learn from Job's situation and experience. Just as James said, consider the patience of Job. Help us to think on that this week, and to consider how his life might speak to ours—because ultimately what Job needed, what we all need, is You, Jesus, the one mediator between us and God, who makes it possible for us to experience relationship with God and come into His presence, the one who brings to light life and immortality through the gospel, the very thing Job was hoping for. I pray we would know that truth and share it, and not be so quick to make Bildad, Eliphaz, Zophar, and Elihu assessments of situations. God, work in us, we pray. We ask this in Jesus' name, and all those that agreed said, Amen.