43. True Comforters Sought

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Hymns: RHC 240 Breathe on Me, Breath of God, 244 Fill Me Now, 227 Until Then O Glorious Day           

Job 16:1-5

1 Then Job answered and said, 2I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all. 3Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest? 4I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my soul’s stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you. 5But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should asswage your grief. (Job 16:1-5 KJV)

True Comforters Sought

OUTLINE

  • Job’s Response – Defending His Testimony (16:1-17:16)
    • When friends fail! – Miserable Comforters (16:1-5)
      • Tormentors not Encouragers (16:1-4)
      • Should do the opposite! (16:5)
    • Whence Comes Relieve? (16:6-17:1)
      • Lamenting in grief to himself (16:6) 
      • Lamenting his afflictions (16:7-16) 
      • Maintaining his innocence (16:17)
      • Seeking Vindication (16:18-22)
        • Asking God for justice (16:18-19)
        • Driven to tears by scorners (16:20)
        • Plea for a mediator from God (16:21-22 cf. 1 Tim. 2:5; 1 John 2:1-2)

INTRODUCTION

Job speaks words of true wisdom for our admonition. May we not be miserable comforters! Watch our words. Does it strengthen and edify? If it is to inflict grief and torment, better we keep quiet!

The Apostle Paul described the Christian comforter as one who has experienced God’s comfort during the times of his affliction equipping us to understand the affliction of others.

2 Corinthians 1:3-5 Blessed beGod, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.

God sent Titus to comfort the Apostle Paul. 

2 Corinthians 7:6-7 Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus; And not by his coming only, but by the consolation wherewith he was comforted in you, when he told us your earnest desire, your mourning, your fervent mind toward me; so that I rejoiced the more.

Our Lord Jesus comforts His disciples that He will send the Holy Spirit to aid them – John 14:16-18 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Eventhe Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

Job replies to Eliphaz, and through him to all his friends, who, instead of comforting him, had added to his misfortunes; and shows that, had they been in his circumstances, he would have treated them in a different manner. [Clarke]

  • Tormentors Not Encouragers (v1-4)

1 Then Job answered and said, 2I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all. 3Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest? 4I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my soul’s stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you. 

Matthew Henry observed well, “Job here reproves Eliphaz, for needless repetitions (v2): “I have heard many such things.You tell me nothing but what I knew before, nothing but what you yourselves have before said; you offer nothing new; it is the same thing over and over again.” 

This Job thinks as great a trial of his patience as almost any of his troubles. The inculcating of the same things thus by an adversary is indeed provoking and nauseous, but by a teacher it is often necessary, and must not be grievous to the learner, to whom precept must be upon precept, and line upon line.Many things we have heard which it is good for us to hear again, that we may understand and remember them better, and be more affected with them and influenced by them. 

For unskilful applications. They came with a design to comfort him, but they went about it very awkwardly, and, when they touched Job’s case, quite mistook it: “Miserable comforters are you all,who, instead of offering any thing to alleviate the affliction, add affliction to it, and make it yet more grievous.” The patient’s case is sad indeed when his medicines are poisons and his physicians his worst disease. What Job says here of his friends is true of all creatures, in comparison with God, and, one time or other, we shall be made to see it and own it, that miserable comforters are they all. When we are under convictions of sin, terrors of conscience, and the arrests of death, it is only the blessed Spirit that can comfort effectually; all others, without him, do it miserably, and sing songs to a heavy heart, to no purpose. 

For endless impertinence. Job wishes that vain words might have an end (v3). If vain, it were well that they were never begun, and the sooner they are ended the better. Those who are so wise as to speak to the purpose will be so wise as to know when they have said enough of a thing and when it is time to break off. 4. For causeless obstinacy. What emboldeneth thee, that thou answerest?It is a great piece of confidence, and unaccountable, to charge men with those crimes which we cannot prove upon them, to pass a judgment on men’s spiritual state upon the view of their outward condition, and to re-advance those objections which have been again and again answered, as Eliphaz did. 5. For the violation of the sacred laws of friendship, doing by his brother as he would not have been done by and as his brother would not have done by him. This is a cutting reproof, and very affecting (v4-5). 

He desires his friends, in imagination, for a little while, to change conditions with him, to put their souls in his soul’s stead, to suppose themselves in misery like him and him at ease like them. This was no absurd or foreign supposition, but what might quickly become true in fact. So strange, so sudden, frequently, are the vicissitudes of human affairs, and such the turns of the wheel, that the spokes soon change places. Whatever our brethren’s sorrows are, we ought by sympathy to make them our own, because we know not how soon they may be so. 

He represents the unkindness of their conduct towards him, by showing what he could do to them if they were in his condition: I could speak as you do.It is an easy thing to trample upon those that are down, and to find fault with what those say that are in extremity of pain and affliction: “I could heap up words against you,as you do against me; and how would you like it? how would you bear it?” 

  • Should Do the Opposite (v5)

5But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should asswage your grief. 

He shows them what they should do, by telling them what in that case he would do (v5):“I would strengthen you,and say all I could to assuage your grief, but nothing to aggravate it.” It is natural to sufferers to think what they would do if the tables were turned. But perhaps our hearts may deceive us; we know not what we should do. We find it easier to discern the reasonableness and importance of a command when we have occasion to claim the benefit of it than when we have occasion to do the duty of it. See what is the duty we owe to our brethren in their affliction. 

We should say and do all we can to strengthen them, suggesting to them such considerations as are proper to encourage their confidence in God and to support their sinking spirits. Faith and patience are the strength of the afflicted; whatever helps these graces confirms the feeble knees. 

To assuage their grief – the causes of their grief, if possible, or at least their resentment of those causes. Good words cost nothing; but they may be of good service to those that are in sorrow, not only as it is some comfort to them to see their friends concerned for them, but as they may be so reminded of that which, through the prevalency of grief, was forgotten. Though hard words (we say) break no bones, yet kind words may help to make broken bones rejoice; and those have the tongue of the learnedthat know how to speak a word in season to the weary. [Matthew Henry]

CONCLUSION

May the Lord help us to be true comforters for our brethren in their afflictions. Amen.