Job's Advice to Husbands and Friends, Part 2

Bill Meyer: Yesterday on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll opened his Bible to Job chapter 2 and began drawing practical counsel for husbands. First, we learned that a good husband listens well and always tells his wife the truth. And second, he takes his role as her spiritual encourager seriously, teaching her about God with gentleness and grace. Today, Chuck picks up where he left off with two more principles for husbands and then turns to a topic that may be even closer to home: how to be a good friend to someone who's suffering.
Chuck Swindoll: Model verbal purity. In all this, Job did not sin with his lips. He did not make a blasphemous statement. He didn't curse God. He does not curse her. I loved it when Anderson wrote that he didn't call her wicked; he called her foolish. There's a lot of difference. Be careful how you talk to your wife, men. I can recall a particular pastor who at the door of the church, when his wife simply said, "Shall we go by the restaurant or do you want to go so-and-so?" He turned and unloaded on her a piece of his mind he couldn't afford to lose. I've got to tell you, she took it like a champ, and my heart went out to her. We were all embarrassed as several of us witnessed this embarrassing statement made by this fairly well-known preacher. I learned a lot about that preacher that day. I don't care how well-known or how important or how much money you make or how big your company is, you don't have the right to talk to your wife like a dog. She is your partner, she is your equal, and she knows a lot of stuff on you. She too can write the unauthorized biography and not sign it. Number four: accept her completely, love her unconditionally. Those words are all important. Put them down just like I gave them. Accept her completely, love her unconditionally. I'll tell you, a wife thrives in that kind of context. She is who she is. God has made her into the woman she has become. She was the wife you chose. You chose. She has become the woman that God is making her into, and that requires, that calls for complete acceptance and unconditional love. What it leads to in the long haul is commitment. You're there for the long haul. You're there to stay. And no amount of hardship, difficulty, test, or trial will separate you. In fact, it will pull you closer together. Many a marriage is strung together by very thin, fragile threads. Tests come, either from the children or a difficult birth and birth defects in a child, or trials and tests in business or in the financial realm or in the emotional realm or whatever. You hang in there, guys. Hang in there. Tell her how much she means to you. Talk to her about the value she has in your life and she represents. Don't guys just look for ways to get out. I've got a good friend—we've been pretty serious here, so I've got to have a little fun with you. I had a friend send me a cute story. A woman awakes in the middle of the night and her husband's gone. He's left the bed by her and she puts on her robe and goes downstairs to look for him. He's sitting all by himself at the kitchen table with a hot cup of coffee, just kind of staring at the wall, blinking with tears. She said, "What's the matter, dear? Why are you down here at this time of night? What's going on?" He looks up from the cup of coffee and he says, "You remember 20 years ago when we were dating and you were only 16?" She says, "Yeah, of course I remember." He pauses. Words don't come easily. He says, "Remember when your father saw us in the car and we were smooching and boy, he stuck a pistol in my face and he said, 'Any boy who kisses my daughter like that's going to marry her. Either you marry her or I'm sending you to jail for 20 years.' Remember that?" She said, "Yeah, I remember that." He wipes another tear away and he says, "I would have gotten out today." That's not a good guy that'll do that. I would have gotten out today. All these years he'd been counting up to February 15th, 2026. My wife, who heard this sermon the first time, said, "Lose the joke, okay? Get your cut." I am not losing it. Well, I might listen to her, but... Now, it isn't long before the word gets out to Job's friends. And we all have friends. I hope we all have a few friends. I don't think he just had three or four; I think he had a number. But these particular friends got word that Job had come across a whole series of tragic events. I want you to stop and think about a couple or three good friends, okay? Just in your mind, name them in your mind. Okay, and let's say that all of you guys or all of you gals have been together from maybe from school it started and you've been cultivating this friendship over the years. And let's say one of them really hit bottom. And you got word. And the other buddies of yours or the other gals that were in the same sorority or maybe guys that were on the same ball team or whatever, and you all get the word that your friend has really gone through it. May not make it. What are you going to do? Well, just exactly what you're thinking is what these three friends did. What's interesting is we don't know much about them. In fact, we know very little, even about where they lived originally. They're called three friends in verse 11, Job's three friends. And we're told that when they heard of all this adversity that had come upon him, they came each one from his own place. And they're named for us: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. It's interesting when you get to chapter 32, verses 2, 4, and 6, you'll read of another friend named Elihu. Elihu comes on the scene, but he says he's younger and he's shy. So he is allowed the unfolding. Three cycles of dialogue occur through Job from chapter 3 all the way to 32. Three cycles of dialogue occur and Elihu stays quiet as Eliphaz speaks and Job answers, and then Bildad speaks and Job answers, and then Zophar speaks and Job answers. And then Eliphaz speaks again and then Bildad, and so we're going to see that a little more closely when we analyze these chapters and sort of select our journey through the book. But Elihu waits till the end. Anyway, there were altogether four, though three are mentioned here. They were probably wealthy sheiks who had the time and the money to leave their place of living and their businesses, if we could call it that. Maybe they had met in the business world. Maybe they were part of the enterprise that had been Job's past. We're not told. You can link some of their locations to places like Edom and northern Arabia, but you can't locate exactly where they are. These are ancient places that scholars find debatable. So where they're from isn't important. The point is each one came from a different place in an agreement that they would come to be with their friend. And we're told, well, we're not told, but it's implied they spoke the same language, so they've got language in common. And they knew one another. They're called friends. And they planned a trip. Notice they, verse 11, made an appointment together to come to sympathize and to comfort. Always note the verbs when you're reading through the scriptures. The words of action, and they also tie in together the movement of what's going on. They decided to come, to sympathize, and to comfort. They agreed together. Now, there are a lot of things we're going to say about these friends that would certainly be unattractive and disappointing about how things wound up because the longer they stayed, the worse things got. And the more argumentative and the more judgmental, etcetera. But you've got to commend these men for coming. So I want to say right now, in the basis of the implications of verses 11 through 13, I want to give you five pieces of advice regarding friendships, okay? We talked to husbands about those three or four things. Now we're going to think about friends. And we'll click them off one by one. We're not going to be here till 2:30, but I realize what time it is, so let's move ahead. The first of the five: friends care enough to come without being invited to come. Friends care enough to come without being asked to come. No one sent a message saying to Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar, "Would you please come and bring a little sympathy and comfort for Job? The man is dying in this anguish, this crucible." No, didn't do that. They heard that he was going through it, and they came. Those people you thought of a few moments ago, if you were to hear that one of them was going through a terminal battle with a disease, I have the feeling you'd connect in some way. You wouldn't wait for an invitation. Please write me a letter of encouragement or help me through this. Remember John 11 where Lazarus takes ill and Martha and Mary, the sisters, write Jesus and say, "The one whom you love is sick," period. They don't even ask him to come. When he doesn't come, they're offended. But he could have said, "You never asked me to come." Wait, wait, you don't ask a friend. If a friend of yours has a coronary and you find out they're over at Presbyterian Hospital, it isn't long before you're by, you're nearby that friend of yours going through that heart attack. You don't wait for an invitation. No one's ever invited to a funeral. We say we go because we're paying our last respects. You go out of respect. So these men loved Job. Friends care enough to come without being asked to come. Here's the second: friends respond with sympathy and comfort. Friends respond with sympathy and comfort. Sympathy includes identifying with the sufferer. Friends do that. Entering into his or her crucible for the purpose of feeling the anguish and the pain. Comfort is attempting to ease the pain by helping any way to make the sorrow lighter. You run errands for them, you take care of the kids, you provide a meal, you assist wherever you need to assist because you want to comfort them. One man writes, "On learning of Job's affliction, three beloved friends agreed together to travel to Uz in order to console Job. The term for friends has a wide range of meaning, including intimate counselor, close friend, party in a legal dispute. Friends often solemnize their relationship with a covenant, promising to care for each other under all kinds of circumstances. The relationship between Job and his three friends gives every evidence of being based on a covenant." Isn't that intriguing? Maybe while you were in school you sort of had a pact with each other. You guys got close, you said to each other, "No matter what, wherever we find ourselves in the future, we want each of you to know we're going to be there, especially when you're in need." When I was going through seminary, there were two guys that I studied with for every major exam and we were inseparable when test time came. To this day, they play a special part in Cynthia's and my mind. Both of them happened to have been single. I was married. They would come to our place, we'd have coffee, we'd have a light meal or whatever, and we'd study into the night to bone up for the exam together, and it was kind of like a pact among us to stay close. We never wrote it out, but it's true. Now these men had that kind of closeness and they came to give sympathy and comfort. Here's a third: friends openly express the depth of their feelings. Friends openly express the depth of their feelings. Friends do that, don't they? It's not uncommon to see a friend standing nearby in the room fighting back the tears. It's not uncommon for the friend to express his or her feelings. Acquaintances don't do that. A nurse who comes to take care of you in the hospital, I mean, is she going to say, "How are you, really? Tell me, I want to feel deeply with you." Are you kidding? She says, "Bend over," or whatever. She wakes you up to see if you're asleep, she gives you a shot. "Okay, time for another one!" That's not a close friend that will do that. Friends don't give each other shots. They were aghast when they saw what they saw. They didn't even recognize him. They probably went to the homestead where they had been before and the place didn't even look the same. Everything is destroyed. They could only see the grave sites. And somebody nearby says, "Oh, Job, well, he left some time ago. I think he's at the city dump." And they breathed deeply and they went down there and before they ever got there, they got close enough to see him. And his has no hair and his robe is torn and he's sitting there with dung burning near him and dogs nearby and the garbage around. And they wept. They wept. Man, look at this. And it says they threw dust over their heads toward the sky, an ancient expression of grief. That means they were down near the dust. In fact, it says they sat down on the ground, verse 13. It's what friends do. Don't worry about getting dirty or bloody. They don't worry about the mess. Which brings me to my fourth: friends aren't turned off by distasteful sights. Rather, they come alongside and they stay as long as is appropriate. You're not turned off because a room doesn't smell good. You're not turned off because your friend weighs half of what he used to weigh. You see beyond all of that. You're not turned off because they're laying there in a hospital gown or because the bottom has dropped out of their life and they're at wits' end. That doesn't turn you off and make you turn around and leave. That draws you in. These guys raised their voices and sat down on the ground with him. They demonstrated their anguish and they stayed seven days and seven nights without a word. Fifth: friends understand so they say very little. I love the way Warren Wiersbe treats this. "The best way to help people who are hurting is just to be with them, saying little or nothing, letting them know you care. Don't try to explain everything. Now listen. Explanations never heal a broken heart." If his friends had listened to him, accepted his feelings, and not argued with him, they would have helped greatly. But they chose to be prosecuting attorneys instead of witnesses. Let me tell you about a really good friend. The good friend doesn't attempt to give you God's message and certainly doesn't preach. They know the value of suffering presence. Isn't that a good way to put it? I read that; that's not mine. Suffering presence. You look up and you look into the eyes of somebody you've known over the years and their eyes reflect compassion. There's no judgment. They're just there. And they don't stay too long. You know what drives you crazy? The guy that comes in with a big fat Bible, and he's got notes in it, and he's going to read to you these chapters. And then he's going to teach you. And you're laying there, barely able to belch, and he's reading from Second Chronicles 13 to 27. "Furthermore, there's and then God taught me this when I was struggling with measles back when I was 12." Please. Don't stay too long. These guys stayed because they had every reason to be near. The kind of anguish this man is going through, he may have died any moment for all they knew. But they didn't stay and preach; they stayed with their lips sealed. One of my friends toward the latter part of his life, a man named Joe Bayly, fellow author, I loved Joe because of his realism. I loved it that he was never interested in impressing people. If you ever read Bayly, you know *Psalms of My Life* is just a profound book that Joe left in his legacy. And he and Mary Lou, his wife, had a house full of kids, but they lost three. Three. They lost one at 18 days following surgery. They lost one at five because of leukemia. And they lost one at 18 years after a sledding accident because of a mild hemophilia. Joe writes in a wonderful book, *The View from a Hearse*, which has been changed in title to *The Last Thing We Talk About*. He wrote this: "I was sitting torn by grief. Someone came and talked to me of God, of God's dealings, of why it happened, of hope beyond the grave. He talked constantly. He said things I knew were true. I was unmoved except I wish he'd go away. He finally did. Another came and sat beside me. He didn't talk. He didn't ask leading questions. He just sat beside me an hour or more, listened when I said something, answered briefly, prayed simply, left. I was moved, I was comforted, I hated to see him go." You've done it right when they hate to see you go. They'll usually not tell you, but you'll know when it's time to leave. Let me tell you, you come up alongside a Job, don't even think of saying, "I know how you feel." You don't. You can hardly imagine, nor can I. But your suffering presence will be like a balm around them, and they'll never forget it. Would to God these dear guys had just never started talking. It messed everything up. Let's bow together. Interesting after all these years of walking with and knowing the Lord, we've never heard him say a word. Talk about a model of appropriate silence. Oh, he's talked to us in his Word for sure, but he hasn't filled the air with verbiage. He's just been a comforting presence. He understands fully. He lost his son too, remember? Oh, he didn't lose him; just that we killed him. And he died for those who drove spikes in his hands and feet. The Lord Jesus even said as he hung there, "Father, forgive them. They don't even know what they're doing." If you've never met the Lord Jesus, you're really missing out on the best part of life. I would plead with you to put that off no longer. Just come to him today. Just come like you are. Thanks for being so good to us, our Father, though there have been times of our lives we really weren't very good to you. We ran from you when you were seeking us. We rejected you when you reached out. We resented you when you didn't relieve the pressure or answer yes to our pleadings. Some may have even cursed you. But because you are faithful and consistent God, you have never stopped loving us unconditionally. Thank you for that. We pray, Lord, that you will use these words in a very special way in the lives especially of husbands and the lives of friends. I pray, Father, that the deeper we get into this book, the deeper will be our walk with you. Now, Lord, whatever this week may hold, I pray that we will have learned some truth that will go with us and stay near us and become a part of us, for these truths are eternal. Thank you for them. Dismiss us now with the hope of sins forgiven and life rearranged because we've spent time with you in the lovely name of Jesus. And everyone said, Amen.
Bill Meyer: This is Insight for Living, and Chuck Swindoll is teaching from the Old Testament book of Job. We're inspired by this man of faith, aren't we? Job's heroic endurance provides a model for every husband listening today: to speak with purity and to love without condition. And Job's friends have left us with a picture of friendship we won't soon forget: the quiet, steady gift of simply showing up and staying. No sermon, no agenda, just our presence. Maybe you're in the middle of a battle against discouragement today. You can't seem to rise above it as Job did. Well, we want you to know that Chuck Swindoll and the entire team here at Insight for Living care deeply about you. It's our prayer that today's message and this complete series on Job will provide a daily reassurance that God knows your story. Insight for Living has produced a variety of resources to help you. First, Chuck wrote a full-length book on Job. It's written in narrative fashion, so it carefully follows his life story. Second, the brand new *Searching the Scriptures* Bible study workbook for Job is ready, and it's perfect for personal or group settings. And third, all 22 of Chuck's full-length sermons are available on CD or MP3. You can find all the details regarding this bundle of resources on the life of Job at insight.org/offer or call us at 800-772-8888. Finally, a heads-up on something special that's coming this fall. Behind the scenes, Chuck has been working on a personal memoir, and we'd like to send you a copy as soon as it comes out. The title is *Awakened by Grace*. If you'd like to be one of the first to learn about its release, we invite you to sign up to receive a notification by going to insight.org/memoir. That's insight.org/memoir. I'm Bill Meyer. Chuck Swindoll describes what he calls the mournful wail of a miserable man, Friday on Insight for Living. The preceding message, "Job's Advice to Husbands and Friends," was copyrighted in 2002, 2004, and 2026, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2026 by Charles R. Swindoll, Incorporated. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.