Wrestling with Suffering: Good and Bad Counsel

Text: Job 2:11–13 and Job 13:4–12  ESV

Good morning. My name is Don Straka. I'm on staff here at Table Rock. And perhaps you have heard some rumors. And I'm here to tell you, in fact, the rumor is true! My wife had our second baby on Thursday night—Elias James came into the world at 9:05pm. And It has been a sweet joy! Baby, mom, and dad are doing well.

You may be wondering how I am here on a Sunday morning and not home? Well, my wife is actually excited that I'm here because being here means that my two year is also here. So she has a couple hours of reprieve around the house this morning. 

As I thought about preaching through this passage this morning (and now having a second baby), I thought about how as parents, you are always getting counsel—different advice from different people. Some is good counsel; some is poor counsel. And that's certainly not a unique thing to parenting. This happens in every area of our life. As we look at the Scripture texts for today, we're going to see good and bad counsel as it relates to suffering.

Job's friends are actually going to display both of these. And I think Scripture is calling us to learn from these examples. Otherwise, why would we have chapter after chapter recording their words? The Scripture is calling us to learn how to be good and wise counselors and not bad counsel. 

Right now we are in a section of Job where we are focusing on wrestling with suffering. Last week Ryan focused on encountering God in our suffering, and this week we are going to focus on encountering people in suffering. 

This morning, as we look at the text, I think you will see that we can comfort with silence and a few timely words. Because God is God, we don't have to be. So my sermon is broken down into two sections—

1. First, we're going to look at the significance of silence.

2. Second, we are going to see the wisdom in watching your words.   

The significance of silence

First, let’s look at the significance of silence when it comes to comforting others. This is how Job’s friends begin their time with Job—in silence. Look at Job 2:13:

“And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him” (Job 2:13 ESV)

But let’s back up and see the significance of their silence. They are not just silent; the significance of silence is that when done right, it allows us to enter into other people’s suffering. 

Look with me at Job 2:11 to set the scene: 

“Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him.” (Job 2:11 ESV)

Job is an internationally known man, and we find out that these friends come from all over the world to sympathize and comfort him. When they arrive, they finally begin to understand the gravity of the suffering going on here. Look at the beginning of verse 12: 

“And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him.” (Job 2:12 ESV)

Imagine, here are these friends who have traveled days, if not weeks, to see Job. Finally, they walk into this country where they know Job lives. Maybe they ask for directions to Job's estate, which would have been huge. Job was a rich man. And they go there, and the place is in shambles—no kids running around, no wife, no Job.

Instead, they find him on the pile of trash, the city dump. He is sitting on top of this trash, with a bald head, torn rob, body stained with ash and dust. And he is littered with boils. He’s got one companion with him—it's a broken piece of clay that he is using to scrape the itching wounds. 

What do you do when you walk up into that scene? Well, Job’s friends start out with the proper response. They don't comment. They don't dictate. They don't start by explaining. They start with silence. They start by entering into his suffering. Let me explain what I mean. 

Look first at the second half of verse 12: 

“And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven.” (Job 2:12 ESV)

It says that they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. This dust points to mortality and death. As they rip their robe and put this dust on themselves, they are identifying with the death and brokenness that Job has experienced in losing everything. 

Verse 13 begins by saying: 

“And they sat with him on the ground” (Job 2:13 ESV)

They don't sit on cushions or a chair but on the ground. Again, they identify with Job’s brokenness. The ground is a place of dust—of death. It's the closest you can get to Sheol. 

Then, we read of the seven days of silence, verse 13: 

“And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.” (Job 2:13 ESV) 

This was, in that culture, the amount of days given to mourn death. Joseph, for example, mourned seven days at the death of his father, Jacob. So they sat with him on the ground showing that his suffering was great, that it has left him almost as good as dead. 

Verse 13 makes it clear that they weren’t doing this out of show or because they had nothing to say. Oh, they had plenty to say, as we will see! No, they acted this way because, look at the second half of verse 13: 

“For they saw that his suffering was very great.” (Job 2:13 ESV)

The significance of silence is that it takes the depths of suffering seriously. And Job’s friends knew that. These friends began, not with words, but with silence and silent actions to show Job that they wanted to enter into the suffering with him and bear the burden with him. 

We, of course, don’t have these same cultural actions, but we have appropriate ways to enter into people’s suffering before even opening our mouths. 

I heard the story of a little girl who has cancer. She needed to go to another town for the chemo treatments. When she came back home and was getting ready to go back to school, she was thinking about how this would be her first day back to see her friends, but now her head was bald from the treatment. But when she showed up to school that day and walked into the classroom, instead of feeling out of place and ashamed, she looked around and saw a classroom full of bald heads. The entire class had shaved their heads to join her in her suffering.

That is a simple example of the significance of the silence—an example of entering into someone’s suffering. This class did not have an explanation for why this girl had cancer. They didn’t try to insist that she was going to be healed or how it was going to end. Instead, they just said, “we're joining you, not with words, but by entering into the suffering with you.” 

This is not just wise council but what Scripture calls us to do. Look at Galatian 6:2:

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2 ESV)

It doesn’t say explain other’s burdens. It says bear. When we study the book of Job, or any narrative book, we have to ask if the example we are reading is a good example. Well, the way Job’s friends start out comforting Job is a good thing. This is exactly what God calls us to do in Galatians. We are to bear one another’s burdens. And the reality is, many times that burden carrying begins in silence. Just in case you are still wondering if silence is the best first approach, here is James: 

“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;” (James 1:19 ESV)

We are called to be quick to hear. Quick to be those who enter in. Not quick to be those who speak.

These friends were being good friends by coming to love Job even in this hard season. Look at Proverbs 17:17—

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” (Proverbs 17:17 ESV)

Friends, brothers, they are born for this moment of adversity. They are called to enter into the suffering. 

Now this is all well and good, but anyone, even a secular counselor, can say that it is wise to start comforting someone by silence. But I would call our silence a blood-bought silence. 

We are not silent because we are lost and don’t know what to say. We are not silent because there is no comfort for the broken. Instead, we are silent because it says, “I can see that your suffering is great. And it's far greater than I can comfort. You need the great comfort.”

For Christians, the reason that we can be silent is because we don’t need to have the answers. We have a God, who is their refuge, who is their comfort, who is their hope! We can just enter into their suffering, and don't need to be those who supply the hope because the hope is in God. 

That's what I mean by saying that we can comfort with silence because our God is God. And we don't need to be our God. Those who don’t know Christ don’t have that. But we can be silent because our God is the one who comforts. Here is 2 Cor 1:3–4—

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4 ESV)

God is the great comfort. So our silence is a blood-bought silence that says, “I am entering into your suffering and turning with you to the only one who can really comfort someone with this brokenness—God.”  

Now, our comfort does not need to end with silence. At some point when we are comforting others, we need to speak. In our text today, Job breaks the silence. But then his friends join in. This is where it starts to go downhill. Everything was going well, until they started to speak. The problem wasn’t that they started talking. The problem was that they didn’t choose their words wisely.

So, we just talked about the significance of silence. Now we are going to talk about the wisdom in watching your words. Let’s begin by looking at the negative example of Job’s friends. 

Wisdom in Watching your Words 

Turn with me to Job 13:4–7.

“As for you, you whitewash with lies; worthless physicians are you all.

 Oh that you would keep silent, and it would be your wisdom!

 Hear now my argument and listen to the pleadings of my lips.

 Will you speak falsely for God and speak deceitfully for him?” (Job 13:4–7 ESV)

Job goes on to talk about how his friends are such poor counselors. Here's God's verdict on these friends from Job 42:7.

“After the LORD had spoken these words to Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” (Job 42:7 ESV)

Whatever these friends said, God directly addresses them and says, “you misspoke.” And what we want to learn from them this morning is what not to say. So what did they do wrong?

They took it upon themselves to introduce their own wisdom, to try to explain things in the best way they could. They went beyond God’s word and God’s revealed wisdom, and tried to explain what was happening to Job, even when they had no authority to do so. 

Let me explain. When you read these chapters of these friends talking to Job, it's very clear that they have a worldview. But quickly we see that their worldview is mistaken. 

But what’s tricky about bad counsel is that it is intermixed with good counsel. Very rarely do we come across counsel that is 100% heresy. Often what is being said is some truth that is mixed with some incorrect ideas. And that is what we see here. Job’s friends have some right theology, but it is intermixed with bad theology. Here is what they got right:

• They understand that God is in control of everything.

• They also understand that God is just and fair.

But then they make a false assumption. They say, “Therefore, God always punishes wickedness and always blesses righteousness right now.” They conclude that since Job is suffering that he must have done something wrong. But we know that is not true, and Job knows that as well. Here is some of their council—

“If your children have sinned against him, he has delivered them into the hand of their transgression.” (Job 8:4 ESV)

Here's their comfort. “Oh, you know what, I'm guessing your kids are dead because they did something wrong. They sinned. So God took them away.”

 They conclude things like Job 4:7:

“Remember: who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off?” (Job 4:7 ESV)

They are saying that the innocent never perish and that the upright never get cut off. And they're just wrong. We especially know they are wrong in light of Jesus. That is bad counsel. So when we think about good counsel, what we need to learn from this bad example is to not do that.

What was their mistake? They spoke beyond God’s truth. They tried to explain things only God can explain. We don’t want to make that error when we are counseling others, and when people make that mistake with you, you need to dismiss their counsel. 

Here's how Ecclesiastes 5:2 puts it

“Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few.” (Ecclesiastes 5:2 ESV)

Let me read that again. Because it just nails this truth that we must be people of  few words.

“Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few.” (Ecclesiastes 5:2 ESV)

God is God; God is in heaven. We are on Earth. God is sovereign. God knows why he is doing things. God understands why all of these things are taking place. And we almost never understand exactly why something is happening. 

When we try to explain all that, that’s when we get in trouble. Job's friends tried to diagnose why this suffering was happening. They tried to explain what God was doing. Their explanation was that Job did something wrong. And that counsel was wrong. That was not true. 

Let me try to hit this home with an observation I heard from Ryan. Put yourself in these friends’ scenario. If you’re one of Job’s friends, and you were given the chance to try and explain why all this was happening, I think almost zero of us would have come up with the answer: 

“Job, you’ve done nothing wrong. In fact, the opposite. Because you are a righteous man, Satan and God had a conversation. And Satan thought he could persuade even the most righteous to turn from God. And God decided to put you through suffering to show that this wasn’t true.” 

None of us would have spit out that answer.  

So when it comes to good counsel in suffering, we must be people of few words because that is our place. We are not God.

And when we do speak, we should speak God’s words. And we must be careful to make them God’s words. We don’t have authority to say anything else. We almost never know why suffering is taking place. So we shouldn’t speculate. 

Yes, there are times when there are natural consequences for sin. Sure. So that's why you're suffering. You got a speeding ticket because you were speeding.

But when the cancer strikes, an earthquake takes out your home, miscarriage, infertility, whatever it is, when we get into the game of trying to explain exactly why something happened, we fall into the same folly that Job’s friends fell into. 

Here’s Proverb’s warning: 

“When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.” (Proverbs 10:19 ESV)

When we let our mouths run, we get ourselves in trouble. This is certainly the case from these so-called counselors. Instead, for the sake of others and for our own right standing before God, let us be a people of few words in these moments. 

Don't veer off and say things that you can't say on God's authority. Choose your words wisely. Stick to God's words. Stick to what God has made clear in his word. 

And you may think that's fairly easy. But we can quickly slip into saying things that go beyond God’s word. 

• “Don't worry. It'll be fine.”

• “I’m sure you’ll recover.” 

• “This cancer will not get the best of you.” 

• “God will answer your prayers for healing.” 

We have no authority to say these things. We don’t know if God is going to heal them. We don’t know if God is going to bring rest soon. We don’t know. 

We fall into these common errors because we assume that the person would be better off if the suffering were to end quickly. God may think otherwise. We also mistakenly think that God would be more glorified today in a healing rather than the suffering getting the upper hand. God may think otherwise. 

As counselors, we don't want to be speculating. So what should we say? God’s words. Stick to what you know, and make your words few.  

We don’t need to speculate. We can be those of few words, who just point people to the words God has already said. Point them to who God is, not what we think God is doing. Here are some pointers. Notice how short these truths are: 

• God is a comforter. Matthew 5:4.

• God is sovereign over all things. Psalm 115:3.

• God is near to the broken. Psalm 34:18.

Speaking God’s words and Christ, the perfect example 

In case you are still on the fence about being a people of few words, let me share with you an observation that I read this week: 

God spoke the world into existence. In fact, God holds the world by words, by speaking. And this God, when he wanted to give his people the complete instructions for life and godliness, he spoke words to them. And he didn’t speak that many words—only 750,000 words. Our God, who wanted to give his infallible instructions, spoke only 750,000. Think of the words of Jesus. Here is the word made flesh. This is God in the flesh, and he has times when he doesn’t speak. In fact, we have relatively few words from him. But what we have are the words of God. And every word packs a punch, every word matters. Every word is going in a direction, every word is founded on God. And so when Jesus spoke, he spoke only the word of the Father. And, therefore, our Bible is not super long because oftentimes Jesus would not speak. Look at John 8:38: 

“I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.” (John 8:38 ESV)

So let me conclude by saying this, by focusing even more on Christ. Scripture is calling us this morning to comfort with silence and a few timely words. And when you look at Jesus, you see, he was a man of few words. He spoke only what the Father gave him to speak. He's the only person to never speak an unguarded, self indulgent word. He never opened his lips in a wrong way. He never spoke when silence was better. He spoke so perfectly that, in John 7:46, it’s recorded that his enemies said: 

“No one ever spoke like this man!” (John 7:46 ESV)

His words were few because every one of them was grounded in the Father. 

And, he's the perfect example of what we saw Job's friends model in the beginning. He is the perfect example of someone who entered into our suffering. 

“But emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” (Philippians 2:7 ESV)

He entered perfectly into our suffering. And in fact, he takes it on himself. And so when we model silence and entering into someone's suffering, and when we as good counselors speak only the words of our Father, we are modeling Jesus.