Dear Lord, thank You for Your Word. We ask today that You would guide us into Your Truth. Open the scriptures to us and help us to apply them to our lives. Thank You Lord. In Jesus’ Name I pray. Amen
OK, Let's start on chapter 6. I'm going to take this chapter slowly because it may hit some tender nerves for some people. So we'll just look at the first 7 verses to start with.
Job 6:1–7 (NIV)
Job
6 Then Job replied:
Now Job is going to reply to Eliphaz as he's the only one who's spoken so far, but Job's really talking to all three as he could tell the other two agreed with all that Eliphaz had said. (Remember how Eliphaz had made statements like the last one that all three of them agreed on these things?) In this chapter, Job is begging his friends to be more understanding toward him.
2 “If only my anguish could be weighed
and all my misery be placed on the scales!
Job felt that even though his friends were sitting there with him physically, that none of them understood what he was feeling or why. In many instances we hear people today say that others can't understand how they're feeling unless they've been through that same thing. This is actually quite true. For example, unless one of your children has died, you simply cannot understand what a parent goes through when their child dies. If you've never had a premature baby born deathly ill, you can't understand what mothers of preemies go through. If you've never lost a spouse to death, you can't understand it, etc.
If you're saved and a compassionate person, you can certainly try to understand what they're going through, and you can offer them sympathy and a shoulder to cry on, which can be a great help; but you'll never really know what they're experiencing unless you too have been through it. This is actually yet another thing the Lord does with our trials. He uses them to mold us into people who can comfort others who have gone through something similar: 2 Corinthians 1:3–4 —Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, *who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. * See? He's saying that when we are going through a trial, God comforts us, and as He helps us get through that trial, He also then encourages us to turn around and comfort other people who are going through the same kind of trial. The Lord knows that to truly understand something, we have to first go through it ourselves.
This is the kind of understanding and comfort that Job desperately needed from his friends and wasn't getting. Even though they hadn't been through anything like this, they could have at least tried to be understanding and comfort him. Instead, they turned it all into an exercise of logic and theology. Instead of a hug, they wanted to debate!
This is actually the reaction of many people to grief or any strong emotion, especially men. They don't know how to deal with emotion so they either try to ignore the emotions or turn it into a debate or lecture, just like Job's friends are doing.
3 It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas—
no wonder my words have been impetuous.
Job is trying to get his friends to look at his emotions and stop lecturing him. He just wants some understanding. So he tries to tell them that if his anguish and misery could be weighed, they would outweigh all the sand of the seas. Job says, because his misery is so great, so intense, that it's normal for him to be speaking so forcefully and incautiously.
This too is quite true for all of us when we're under great stress. We tend to just blurt out whatever comes to mind, regardless of whether or not it's true or even whether or not we truly think that way. For example, when someone is feeling very hurt and betrayed, they might blurt out that they wish a certain person was dead or would die. While that is how they're feeling at that moment, they would never normally say such a thing and generally once the emotion of the moment is past, wouldn't even seriously think it. Job is saying that this is what he'd been doing - just saying whatever came to mind at that moment; and he's still doing it. He can't help it at this point because he's actually in shock right now.
Another common example of this is when a child wants something really badly and for whatever reason can't have it. They'll often yell "I hate you!" to their parents and storm out of the house or into their room. While it always hurts the parent to hear that, they know their child doesn't really mean it. They know the child is only speaking out of hurt and if the parent's saved, they may also understand that it's the child's sin nature speaking, not their heart.
4 The arrows of the Almighty are in me,
my spirit drinks in their poison;
God’s terrors are marshaled against me.
After trying to explain to his friends how badly he needed sympathy and understanding because his misery was so deep and heavy, Job now tries to explain how bitter this suffering felt to him. What Job says here about God isn't true and is being said out of hurt, sorrow and bitterness. This is about how he "feels" not about what's true and what's not true. We know that God is perfectly just in everything and that He's loving, and merciful to all.
However, Job felt like he was a helpless target that God was shooting poison arrows at, and that the poison in the arrows were what was making him bitter. His friends were only making things worse with their words. He wanted them to understand how helpless he felt.
Here too Job says that He feels like God has become his enemy. He's used the arrows to signify the trials he was going through and said that the trials were so severe that they'd become like poison that was infecting his mind, so now both his body and mind were afflicted (stricken or sick).
Job is right in a way about that. Not that God is his enemy or doing that to him, but his mind HAS become poisoned and afflicted. Job blames God for it, just like we usually do too, but this wasn't God's fault or even Satan's. Job did this to himself. He's the one allowing these thoughts and he's the one who's dwelling on them instead of dwelling on God's love and goodness. While it's a normal reaction, it's normal because it's from our sin nature and we need to remember that. Often, we're our own worst enemy. It's one thing to have such thoughts but it's quite another thing to dwell on them and confirm them as though they were true..
5 Does a wild donkey bray when it has grass,
or an ox bellow when it has fodder?
Job asks his friends to consider that even animals will cry out when they're hungry. They don't cry out for no reason and neither does he. Job is hungry for love and understanding and he's not getting any.
6 Is tasteless food eaten without salt,
or is there flavor in the white of an egg
7 I refuse to touch it;
such food makes me ill.
Job is saying that just as food tastes better with salt and egg whites need flavoring, that flavoring and food goes together, so his trials and complaining go together and should be expected.
It looks like he's also saying literally that his food is tasteless to him so he won't eat. We'll see too that he becomes weak and this may very well be the cause of his weakness. If so, he's once again being his own worst enemy.
When we succumb (give in) to our feelings, we often wind up hurting ourselves emotionally and even physically. (by not eating etc). The Lord tells us that we are not to trust our feelings or be misled by them, yet that's exactly what Job is doing isn't it? Instead, the Lord tells us to stay alert and guard our minds and hearts (thoughts and feelings). I think we can see by what's happening to Job, why this is so important and just what our deceitful hearts can do to us when we don't take charge of them. Jeremiah 17:9 —The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? *
Let's continue to look at this in these two ways:
1. What Job is trying to tell his friends
2. How this is like what we tend to do and what God tells us to stop from feeling like this ourselves
Fearnot posted:
I just love how you help make some of the seemly (at first glance) 'tricky or hard to be sure what is being said or why....clear. As always thank you thank you, this is so helpful! And I sure understand what Job is doing, but even better, I have learn from you, how God says to take our thoughts captive instead.
Thanks for your encouragement Barbara!
Catt posted:
I had to laugh when I read his opinion of plain egg whites. I like my omelets yellow too.
Remember in the first chapter, Jobs disease, pamphigus,gives him bad breath.
The mouth is usually the first place for the blisters and subsequent
infections to start. That would certainly destroy any taste for food. And it would be
painful to chew or swallow.
This happened to my father, when he received chemo therapy for neck and throat cancer.
It was designed to kill epithelial cells. It just about killed him, he had such a bad reaction.
But God's hand was in it. He had a miraculous recovery even though he had less
than 20% of the recommended doses of radiation and chemo. Even the ENT Dr. called it
a miracle of God.
I'd like to add a bit more about the first part of Chapter 6, since no one else has brought it up except in general.
First, in the previous chapter, Eliphaz had really come down hard on Job and said some pretty awful things to him. He said things to Job that would be considered harsh to say to someone who wasn't going through a hard time, much less to a person that had just suffered so much tragedy! Job's reply to him (and to the other guys too) in this chapter, is basically saying that he can't believe his friend would say such things to him.
I want to especially address Job 6:4 —The arrows of the Almighty are in me, my spirit drinks in their poison; God’s terrors are marshaled against me. *though as this statement is both true and false. We already know that God isn't doing this to Job, but the part I want to focus on here is the part that says, "my spirit drinks in their poison". This is the part that can be true. It doesn't have to be true, but we often allow it to be so, and Job is now a good example of what happens to us when we do allow this to happen.
One thing the world tells us is that "we can't help it". That sometimes things happen to us that are simply beyond our ability to deal with. That is absolutely not true because the Bible tells us that God never allows more then we can bear. However, there's something about that statement that most of us tend to forget. We tend to think that it means God won't allow more then we can bear on our own, and that's not what it means. God wants us to rely on Him, not on ourselves. So our next thought is that when things get to heavy for us to deal with that we should lean on Him. Well, that's certainly better than nothing, but it's still not really what God wants. He wants us to be relying on Him and His strength ALL the time, not just when things get tough.
What I'm saying then is that nothing can happen to us in our life that God is not completely aware of and able to deal with completely too. Therefore since we're to rely on Him and His strength, there is literally no situation that we can't deal with. Regardless of what the world will tell us, God says that His strength, His power, is made perfect in our weakness. The weaker we are, the less able we are to handle something or cope with something, the more obvious it will be to us and others that He is handling it through us when we rely on Him.....IF we rely on Him. This brings Him glory, and increases our faith, among other things.
So, when the world tells you that you can't handle something, just let them know that you're fully aware of your limitations and so is the Lord, but that you're also fully aware of God's power and might and that He is perfectly capable of dealing with the situation through you.
Now, to address the poison in the arrows, the poison is of course our thoughts about what we're going through, have been through, or whatever. Again, Job's a great example of how we turn events in our lives into poison that infects us and spreads and continues to multiply itself in our thoughts, feelings and imaginations. Look at what happened to Job: he lost his wealth and means of support and his children and then his health. There was and is nothing wrong with grieving over our loss (within reason - as long as we're not blaming God or forgetting that we don't grieve the way the world does because we have hope they don't. ) But Job's not doing that anymore. Sometime, probably as he listened to his friend put him down, he began allowing his feelings of loss to dictate his thoughts instead of the other way around, and at the same time he began to quit looking for anything good. He literally focused on each bad thing that had happened, and in trying to put his feelings into words, started making them bigger then life. Consequently his thoughts grew darker and darker, which caused his feelings to get darker, which caused his thoughts to get darker, which caused.... see what I mean? It's a vicious circle.
Notice that I spoke of the thoughts and feelings as being "dark". I did that on purpose, not only because it truthfully describes them but also so we could more quickly recognize who/what is behind those kind of thoughts and feelings. Who is the prince of darkness? That's right, Satan is! Our Lord brings us into the Light and wants us to stay there. When we're in the dark, it causes our hearts, minds, and bodies to get sick, it makes us depressed, causes us to avoid other believers who could help us, we become isolated, we want to be alone, which of course is only going to make us worse. In the dark, those bad thoughts and feelings keep growing like some kind of fungus or infection and really, that's what they are. When we bring them out into the Light of the Lord though, they begin to shrink back to normal size, to the size they really were to start with. Then, the more we focus on the Lord and His Word, like we're supposed to, they get smaller and smaller because now, compared to Him, they're nothing! Greater is He who is in us, then he who is in the world! (I'll leave some scriptures about this at the end for us.)
Any kind of thought or feeling that we want to be alone, or hide something, or causes feelings of fear, anxiety, stress, confusion, etc, is not of God or from God. God is a God of love, mercy, forgiveness, peace, order, righteousness, etc. He doesn't want us to hurt, He weeps with us.
Job didn't know God the way we do. He knew that God loved him and didn't think that He had forsaken him, but couldn't understand why God had allowed these things to happen to him when he'd been obedient to Him all his life. It sounds a lot like us at times doesn't it? Job wanted to know "why?". His friends were sure it was because he'd sinned but that just made Job angry and more hurt because he knew he hadn't sinned. He wasn't claiming to be sinless by any means, but simply that he wasn't living in any known unrepented sin.
We can finish this with the rest of the chapter tomorrow.
Acts 26:17–18 —I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them *to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’ *
John 3:19–21 —This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. *Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. *But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.” *
John 8:12 —When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” *
John 12:35 —Then Jesus told them, “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going. *
John 12:46 —I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness. *
Colossians 1:13 —For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, *
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