Insight for Living

Bill Meyer: Today from Chuck Swindoll. Not all advice is good advice, not even when the person who gives the advice thinks that it's the right advice. Sometime it can be given in all sincerity, but it is faulty.

Everybody's got an opinion, right? And when you're going through the hardest stretch of your life, it seems like people can't wait to share theirs. Some of it's helpful, some of it really isn't. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll continues his biographical series on the life of Job.

In this study, we'll discover that Job's misery had company. Three friends showed up to comfort him. They mean well, but meaning well and doing well are two very different things. Chuck titled today's message, Responding to Bad Counsel.

Chuck Swindoll: We're looking into Job chapters four, five, six, and seven. Let me read just a little part of each section, and you'll kind of get the drift of it.

Job 4:1. Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered, "If one ventures a word with you, will you become impatient? But who can refrain from speaking? Behold, you have admonished many, and you have strengthened weak hands. Your words have helped the tottering to stand, and you have strengthened feeble knees. But now, now it has come to you, and you are impatient. It touches you, and you are dismayed. Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope? Remember now, who ever perished being innocent? Or where were the upright destroyed? According to what I have seen, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble harvest it."

Chapter 5:8. "But as for me, I would seek God, and I would place my cause before God, who does great and unsearchable things, wonders without number. He gives rain on the earth and sends water on the fields, so that He sets on high those who are lowly, and those who mourn are lifted to safety. He frustrates the plotting of the shrewd so that their hands cannot attain success."

Chapter 6:1. Then Job answered, "Oh, that my grief were actually weighed and laid in the balances together with my calamity! For then it would be heavier than the sand of the seas; therefore my words have been rash. For the arrows of the Almighty are within me; their poison my spirit drinks. The terrors of God are arrayed against me."

Chapter 7:20. "Have I sinned? What have I done to you, oh watcher of men? Why have you set me as your target so that I am a burden to myself? Why then do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I will lie down in the dust, and you will seek me, but I will not be."

Not all advice is good advice, not even when the person giving the advice thinks that it's good advice and says it in all sincerity. Not all advice is bad advice. Every person listening right now has experienced getting bad advice. Someone gave it to you and you followed it, and you suffered the consequences. But on the other hand, we have all benefited from someone telling us good things, and they've counseled us, and we've followed their advice and the benefits have been many.

Matter of fact, this ancient book of Proverbs, which is a couple of books beyond Job, seems to be full of comments about the wisdom of following good counsel. Turn, for example, to Proverbs chapter 12:15. "The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel." You and I have known the experience of that. We have been foolish in our ways, and we have had someone—early on a parent or a teacher, maybe a coach, maybe a band conductor or some friend—replace our foolishness with wise counsel and we benefited from it.

Proverbs 16:24 says, "Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones." I love that. Words given at the right time, Proverbs says elsewhere, are like apples of gold in pictures of silver. As an earring of gold and an ornament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover upon an obedient ear. Good counsel, wise reproof, obedient response. Benefit, win, win, win.

There's another one in 19:20. "Listen to counsel and accept discipline, that you may be wise the rest of your days." 27:17. "Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." We men know the benefit of a good friend who sharpens us with his presence or with his counsel. His model sharpens our lives. 27:19. "As in water face reflects a face, so the heart of a man reflects a man." Have you had that experience? You've had something deep down in the well of your heart and you've been near someone who loves you and knows you and has the ability to drop that bucket in the well and to pull it out, and to splash it out for both of you to read what's there and to see, "I see it now."

Sometimes it's a reproof. 27:6 says, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy." The Hebrew uses an interesting causative stem in the early part of the verse, and it could read, "Faithful are the bruises caused by the wounding of one who loves you." Faithful is the bruise that comes after the blow of one who cares enough to tell you the truth. He hits you with the truth, alone, in private, confronts something that needs to be confronted, and a bruise forms that remains there and it's trustworthy. So much more trustworthy than the hug and kisses of a flatterer called an enemy.

Good counsel is a good thing. On the other hand, there's bad advice. Some one-liners would run like this in bad counsel: "Look, why don't you go ahead and marry him? He'll change after the marriage." Most of those laughing were women, interesting.

Here's another: "You know, in my experience in this field of finances, this feels good. I really think it's worth that $10,000 investment in Enron stock." Bad counsel. Didn't mean it to be bad, but it turned out bad.

"Hey, don't bother about finishing school. Do you have any idea how many millionaires there are today who never even got out of high school?" Bad counsel. Every dropout teenager loves to hear words like that because it's what they want to hear when school gets tough.

Well, this brings us to dear old Job. Remember Job. We left him in what we called black pessimism. He was in the hole of depression, chapter three. He despised the day he was born, he hated the thought that having been born that he lived. The silence of God was driving him mad, and he did not hold back. He said it all.

Three friends sitting nearby sat and listened through it. They'd been there seven days and seven nights in silence, staring at him. First trying to believe it was really their friend Job. Of course, he looks so different. His face is swollen and scabbed over with these running sores. And if you look closely, there's worms in some of them. It's an ugly scene. And he's comfortable in no position. He doesn't feel comfortable lying down, and so his nights are restless and they're spent slowly and agonizingly as he tries to get into a position that isn't just painful beyond words. And then the sun rises and bakes itself on him as he sits in the trash heap of the city. Dear wife, unable to help. Friends, stunned in disbelief.

And then when the comforters, so-called, begin to talk, they bring no comfort. It was bad enough just to have them sit and stare, but it was horrible when they began to give bad counsel. Oh, they didn't mean bad, not at first. Maybe never. They just lost sight of their purpose.

And what was that? Chapter 2:11 tells us why they came. They came to sympathize with him and they came to comfort him. Good for them. At least they came. The man who was the greatest man in the East should have been surrounded by a roomful of friends, but three at least came. And they came for the right reason. They came as you go to the hospital to visit the terminally ill loved one. You don't know what to say, and often you stand and say very little. And sometimes, interestingly, when you do say something, you leave thinking, "Why did I say that?" "I know how you feel," when you don't know. "You know, I've thought about this and I think at least you've got this to be thankful for." Why did I say that? But these men go so much further. They mix blame, shame, condemnation, judgment, and legalism. They preach a little, and there's no comfort.

Job is a big book. Forty-two chapters of this. I may be there with him if I endure these 42 chapters. So let me give you a little hope. First of all, we're not going to do it verse by verse. Otherwise, we would all need real help.

The first two chapters and the last 11 verses of chapter 42 are narrative, called prose. Just like the novel you're finishing or the newspaper article you read this morning, or perhaps some note someone gave you. They wrote it in prose and you read it, and it's history. It's factual. You can understand it. There isn't a lot of mystery. You have questions, of course, with these two chapters and you're thrilled at the end because it all turns out well and he gets double everything except children. That probably wouldn't have been a blessing to have twice the number of children, so he gets the same number of kids and twice the other things he had to start with. Terrific, we all like it when they live happily ever after.

But in between, we have poetry. In fact, the book of Job falls in the category of poetry, like Psalms, like Proverbs. And if you were to read it in the Hebrew, you would notice a change in the meter. It reads like poetry. So there are repetitious phrases, a lot of colorful word pictures. Some things are beyond our capacity to understand, and so we'll just say we're not sure what that means, because it's poetry. Beautiful, but a little bit mysterious, a little mystical at times.

The poetry is philosophy. History we can get, but philosophy. I had a mentor tell me years ago that a philosopher is a person who talks about things he doesn't understand, but he makes it sound like it's your fault. That's not bad. And these men write, or these men say, and Job no doubt journaled a lot of these things—maybe all of it—and maybe he wondered at times what it meant fully.

This poetic section, which is the largest part of the book, chapters 3 through 42:6, begins as a rather mild discussion, it turns into a rather intense debate, and it ends in a heated dispute. You're going to see Eliphaz begins with sort of his hat in his hand as he begins to speak to Job, and toward the end, there's no hat in his hand. He's got an index finger jammed into this man's sternum and he is setting him straight. So it begins rather mildly and it ends in a dispute.

The three friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—these men speak in cycles. Three cycles. First Eliphaz and then Job answers, then Bildad and Job answers, then Zophar and Job answers, and round one ends. And then Eliphaz comes back on the scene. He's apparently the oldest of the group. In those days, the oldest were given priority. So Eliphaz speaks, Job answers. Bildad speaks, Job answers. Zophar speaks, Job answers. Then you get to the third cycle, Zophar's out of the picture. Maybe he got tired or he just thought, "I'm out of here. This is going nowhere." When you get to chapter 32 to 37, a fourth man appears. That's the youngest of the group. He comes out of nowhere. His name is Elihu, and Elihu just does a monologue and Job never answers. Maybe by now Job is exhausted, or maybe he doesn't have any answer by now. He's done a lot of talking so far.

Each time, be sure you check the beginning of the chapter so you'll know who's speaking and you know why he's answering. Eliphaz bases his words on experience. He says more than once, "I have seen, I have seen." So in light of what I have seen, I make these statements about your situation, Job.

Now, Bildad bases his on tradition. He says in chapter 8:8, "Inquire of past generations." And he appeals to Job to go back into the annals of history and recall what had happened there. And in light of that, tradition teaches us this.

When you get to Zophar, who is the harshest of the three, he throws tact to the winds and he comes right at Job with both fists. His words are based on assumptions. It's like a verbal fistfight. So that happens in the first cycle. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Then Job responds. We'll do our best to draw some sense out of this.

Bill Meyer: When someone you love is suffering deeply, what do you say? Hear Pastor Chuck Swindoll's compassionate answer next time on Insight for Living.

The preceding message, Responding to Bad Counsel, was copyrighted in 2002, 2004, and 2026, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2026 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.