Job’s Friends And The Blood of Yeshua

by:  Lonnie Lane

Q. “Could you please tell me where in the
Bible it says that what you fear comes upon you?”

A.  This email question stirred up an interesting search for more
information.  It is not a Biblical doctrine that what
you fear will somehow automatically come into your life. The
thought comes from what Job said in the midst of his troubles:  “For
my sighing comes before I eat, And my groanings pour out like water. For the
thing I greatly feared has come upon me. And what I dreaded has happened to me.
I am not at ease, nor am I quiet. I have no rest for trouble comes” (Job
3: 24-26). 

Job’s sons seemed to do a lot of partying, and invited his
daughters to join them. So Job was continually “…rising up early in the morning and offering burnt offerings according to the number of them all for
Job said, “Perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did
continually. (Job
1:5).  Job seemed so concerned for the
spiritual condition of his sons and daughters that he offered burnt offerings
for their forgiveness continually, fearing God’s wrath upon them. (Hebrew for
both sons and daughters would take the masculine form for children which would
read like “sons”; it’s not necessarily that he’s not sacrificing for the
daughter’s too.) “Continually” is a
lot of burn offerings. Must have been a lot of partying going on. It almost
sounds a bit neurotic on Job’s part. We might wonder why he didn’t correct or rebuke
them or discipline them and teach them to know better years before they grew up.
But whatever the reason, Job evidently had cause to be concerned. As
God-fearing as Job appears to be, he evidently wasn’t able to impart it to his
kids. Fear is faith in reverse, as we know. Job’s fear was a continual dread of
what might happen to his kids but he seems not to have faith in God to change
them. Which makes you wonder since he was so godly as to not curse God with all
that happened to him why his children would be so ungodly.

Looking into who Job’s friends were, or at least one of them,
may give us a bigger picture of the spiritual climate in which Job and his
children lived. One of Job’s so called “friends” (who needs friends like
that?), is Eliphaz the
Temanite, was actually Esau’s first born son. Esau, as we know, was
deliberately rebellious, taking wives that were distinctly displeasing to his
parents. This would place Job as living around the same time as Jacob. What’s a
Temanite? Eliphaz’ own son is identified as chief Teman:  “These
are the names of Esau’s sons: Eliphaz the son of Esau’s wife Adah… These are the chiefs of the sons of Esau. The sons of Eliphaz, the firstborn of
Esau, are chief Teman, chief Omar, chief Zepho, chief Kenaz,  chief Korah, chief Gatam, chief Amalek. These are the chiefs descended from Eliphaz in the land of
Edom; these are the sons of Adah (Genesis 36:10, 15, 16, my emphasis).

Notice that the youngest son is chief Amalek. We certainly
know that the sons of Amalek caused Israel a great deal of pain and
suffering. If you recall, it was God’s order to King Saul to completely destroy
the Amalekites and all they owned, so evil were they, but Saul spared the king
and the best of their sheep and oxen, which resulted in God taking His Spirit
from Saul and his anointing as king (see 1 Samuel 15). And as we see here,
Amalek was the son of Eliphaz, Job’s friend. This does not speak well of
Eliphaz, not that a kid can’t go wrong when his parents are good folks. It
happens.  There
are no references for the names of the two other friends or their tribes, so
all we can know about them is that Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite
were buddies with Esau’s son Eliphaz.  But, “birds of a
feather, stick together,” as they say.

We begin to get an idea of why Job was so concerned,
especially if Eliphaz’s kids hung out with his own kids. To give even further
insight, Eliphaz’s wife Adah had the same name as a wife of Lamech years before
who was one of Cain’s great-great grandsons. Listen to the boasting of Lamech: “Lamech said to his
wives, “Adah and Zillah, Listen
to my voice, you wives of Lamech, give heed to my speech, for I have killed a man for wounding me; and a boy for striking me.  If Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold”
(Genesis 4:23, 24). Well, how’s that for prideful boasting of evil? What kind
of character do you think this guy had? So I ask you, why would anyone name
their daughter, knowing that names carry significance, after the wife of such a
man? Unless, of course, they admired Lamech and wanted their daughter to marry
someone equally as… uh, boasting? Whatever the reason, or maybe none at all,
but another Adah becomes the mother of Esau’s son Eliphaz, whose own name,
incidentally, means “god of gold.” 

Well, come to think of it, Adah’s
name means “ornament” with the sense of being led by or led out by the
ornament. Perhaps love of gold used in ornaments or jewelry was something else
to boast about which this couple shared. Perhaps the love of gold had led them
to more evil since we know that the love of money is the root of all evil. Gold
had been around since Genesis 2:11. Could they have been gold- or money-hungry?
If so, this would apply: “Those who want to get rich fall into
temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge
men into ruin and destruction. For the love of
money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have
wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (1 Timothy 6:9, 10).

Well, we’ve wandered quite a distance from the original
question, but it does give us some insight into Job’s predicament. Job is thought
to be the earliest book of the Bible that was written, which gives us some understanding
of how God was viewed, shortly after Abraham, but of Esau, not Jacob. To the
woman who asked the question I say, be at peace. There
is no doctrinal statement that fear will automatically bring upon you what you
fear. On the other hand, there is Romans 14:23, which has to do with food but
applies: “Whatsoever is not of faith is
sin.”  So, what is the remedy for
fear? Faith! Trust and faith! Change what you think is true. Find Scriptures
that counter whatever you fear.  Declare
the Scripture AND BELIEVE IT, even if it is to tell the Lord you trust in Him
and declare you and your family are off limits to the devil because of the
blood of Jesus. If your fear is about things over which you have no control,
whatever comes, “put your trust in the LORD your God and you
will be established” (2 Chronicles 20:20). King David, who knew
a lot about fear and troubles, boasts of the Lord (the only legitimate kind of
boasting) and tells Him, “And those who
know Your name will put their trust in You, for
You, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek You” (Psalm 9:10).
The truest evidence of faith and
trust is rest!   

Now on to the next question. Actually several of them in one
email.

Q. …Was Jesus’ blood
tainted with sin that was shed on the cross? Was it left here on earth and not
taken to heaven for a reason? The
“cup” we are to drink of now is not tainted, but of living water? His
heart had to be punctured by a spear, to pour out the blood; the cruxifiction
(sic) would not have done that, so was the spear the truth of Yahweh, piercing
our heart to purge it of sin?”

A. There
is certainly no “fiction” about the crucifixion. (“sic” for those of you who do
not know, indicates the misspelling was in the original quote. I left it in as
I thought it a wonderful opportunity to state there is no fiction in the crucifixion
story.)  While Yeshua took upon Himself
the wrath of God for the sin of mankind, I do not believe His blood was altered
to become sin-tinged or death would have been able to hold Him. Nor would His
blood have been sufficient to pay the ransom for mankind. It had to be sin-less
in order to atone for sin.

There are several ways to answer the question about His blood
left on the ground. One fascinating story is of how a particular archaeologist
is reported to have dug through the tunnels under the temple to where he supposedly
located a barricaded area. Upon digging through, as the story goes, he found
the Ark of the Covenant, hidden right under where Yeshua would have been
crucified. When the earthquake happened at His death, a crack in the earth occurred
at the right place causing His blood to drip through the crack and actually
land on the mercy seat which is hidden in the temple tunnels. Pretty wild
story. Some have refuted it, but I wouldn’t put it past God.  On the other hand, Scripture says, “When Messiah appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater
and more perfect tabernacle, not made with
hands, that is to say, not of this creation; Not through the blood of
goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the
holy place once for all, having
obtained eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12). However that took place, it appears that Yeshua entered
through His own blood to it now being in the Perfect Tabernacle in heaven where
it ever makes intercession for us.

The cup we drink now is a symbol to remind us to remember His
death just as He said “This is My body, which is for you; do
this in remembrance of Me” (1 Corinthians 11:24) when you drink it.
In this sense, it is living water, as we recall all Yeshua died to give to us.
This cup is not ‘transubstantiation” which term is used to describe the
supposed change from bread and wine to the body and blood of Jesus. For a bit
of history, the earliest known use of the term transubstantiation was in the
eleventh century by the Archbishop of Tours and by the end of the twelfth
century the concept was in widespread use. In 1215, the Fourth Council of the Lateran made it rather official stating, “His body and blood are
truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine
having been transubstantiated,
by God’s power, into his body and blood.” 
The Protestant Reformation
refuted the doctrine in favor of the Eucharist as a memorial, just as Yeshua
had said. When He said, “This is My Body” He didn’t’ mean literally any more
than He is a real lamb or a real Lion (of Judah), etc. The
Bible is full of symbolism; we have to learn the way the Holy Spirit “thinks”
and gives revelation through metaphors and symbols. It is in our relationship
with Jesus through the Holy Spirit that we partake of (Spiritual) Living Water.
That may or may not include taking communion. It’s meaningful to some; less so
for others who may take it mechanically without revelation into its real meaning
as to the finished work of the Risen Lord.   

The spear released blood and water, meaning that his heart cavity
was filled with fluid due to the damage done to his heart by the violent abuse
and by the stress of it all leading to congestive heart failure which causes
fluid to build up around the heart. It is likely that by the time the spear
pierced His body, there was very little blood in His body because of the horrendous
beatings, the slashing of the metal whip tips, from the thorns in his  head (a lot of blood can flow from one’s head
when pierced) and the spikes in His wrists (like slitting ones’ wrists). As The Sacrifice, He would have bled out just as every
sacrifice for sin was primarily a blood sacrifice. I believe the spear was to
prove that He was already dead, not to release His blood. We might feel by the
Spirit something He is doing in our own hearts when we read of the spear piercing
His heart, but we are cleansed of our sin only by faith in His dying in our
place. It is by faith in His death that we are “purged” of sin, not by that
sword event. Our hearts are made clean by faith in the atonement and that His
blood was perfect and sinless and it paid the full price for our redemption. The sword was incidental to that, though a real part
of what took place.

Q. Pleading the
Blood. While we’re on the subject of Yeshua’s blood, this was another
question that came up recently in my Hebrew Roots Bible study. Is “pleading the
blood” Scriptural?

A. We often hear the phrase used in Christian circles. But it
is not a Scriptural term. The word
plead here means “argument” and it suggests begging or beseeching.
And that is a defensive mode. We need to be more assured than that. We are
warriors — blood-bought, blood-saved, and more than conquerors through Messiah
Yeshua! We are not in a courtroom with the devil, pleading a case, and hoping
to win. Through Yeshua we have already won. He’s made us victorious and “more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37 KJV).
The NASB says it this way: “…in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer
through Him who loved us.” 
Yeshua has won the victory for us; His blood has overcome all evil and
sin. To quote David Wilkerson, “Our battle cry should be, rather than
“pleading” the blood, ‘I proclaim the victory of the blood of Yeshua! I am
blood-washed, blood-bought, blood-justified, blood-safe, and blood-ransomed.
And I proclaim the victory of the blood of Jesus!’”  And everyone said….Amen!! 

Reprint of this article is permitted as long as you use the following; Use by permission by Messianic Vision, www.sidroth.org, 2011. 

Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible Copyright ©1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Calif.  All rights reserved. Used by permission.