Last week, we heard Job say that if all that matters is this life, then there is no point in being righteous. The wicked, he says, “spend their days in prosperity, and in peace they go down to Sheol.
They say to God, ‘Depart from us! We do not desire the knowledge of your ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit do we get if we pray to him?”
I suspect that many of you were wondering, “So what's the point of being righteous?” Haven't we always heard that ‘doing the right thing' really does pay off, because God created the world to operate a certain way, and so when you operate God's way you are more likely to do well?
In other words, we really don't want Job to be right! We want the moral, upstanding man to triumph.
And so Eliphaz is our hero! Eliphaz would vindicate us against Job. Job has launched an all-out assault on the traditional wisdom theology of his friends. Job says that all of your obsessions with your career, your family, your life – will end in death.
Whether you are righteous or whether you are wicked doesn't matter. You will still end up dead.
Now, this does not mean that Job has decided to become wicked! Rather, what it means is that Job has realized that your reason for doing what is right cannot be “what's in it for me”! Certainly, it cannot be “what you are going to get in this life.”
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