Thursday, October
18, 2018
Elihu, Job’s friend is speaking,
attempting to show Job where he slipped off the road and got so derailed that
God had to use drastic misery measures to straighten him out:
“Let me go on, and I will show you the truth. For I have not finished defending God! I will present profound arguments for the righteousness of my Creator. I am telling you nothing but the truth, for I am a man of great knowledge. “God is mighty, but he does not despise anyone! He is mighty in both power and understanding. He does not let the wicked live but gives justice to the afflicted. He never takes his eyes off the innocent, but he sets them on thrones with kings and exalts them forever. If they are bound in chains and caught up in a web of trouble, he shows them the reason. He shows them their sins of pride. He gets their attention and commands that they turn from evil. “If they listen and obey God, they will be blessed with prosperity throughout their lives. All their years will be pleasant. But if they refuse to listen to him, they will cross over the river of death, dying from lack of understanding. For the godless are full of resentment. Even when he punishes them, they refuse to cry out to him for help. They die when they are young, after wasting their lives in immoral living. But by means of their suffering, he rescues those who suffer. For he gets their attention through adversity. “God is leading you away from danger, Job, to a place free from distress. He is setting your table with the best food. Job 36:2-16(NLT)
With each statement Elihu throws
out, God is “defended” just as this wise man proclaimed he would do…and yet, each
statement becomes a target. While his
words are true in one sense, they fall apart elsewhere…at least from the human
perspective.
For instance, being blessed
with prosperity throughout their lives will be wildly applauded in
Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church, but does that mean everyone living under the
poverty line is a big-time sinner? Or if
Joel’s words are accurate, meaning prosperity will be measured with financial
gain, that God somehow has lied, and keeps poor people from His blessing?
Twisting Scripture or using circular
logic because God’s Word says one thing, and you want it to mean
something else, is just plain wrong. God’s
Word is a stand-alone reality, needing nothing of human wisdom to complete what
God wants to say.
(That being said, I must be out of my mind to comment daily on God’s
Word in this devotional…right?)
The whole point of what I want to
say today is what I say often to the congregations who listen to my sermons
every week: Don’t just listen to what I say;
check everything I say against God’s Word. Hold me accountable to God’s Word!
In the same way, don’t fall into
the trap of Elihu. He said some wise
things to Job, but when you check out the first chapter of this book and hear
the conversation in Heaven between Lucifer and God, you find out Job was not
the problem; he hadn’t walked away from God, sinning so badly God had to pour
adversity on him to get his attention.
Job was a poster child of obedience and worship. In fact, he was so good God held him up as a
challenge to Lucifer so that Job’s troubles could be a blessing to you and
me. God wanted us to witness the unfolding
of God allowing bad stuff to happen to good people.
Elihu, as wise as he was, had not
heard the dialogue, nor read the transcript of the Heavenly plans that God was
working out. And so, he made the rookie
counselling error of pushing his pet and pat theology on Job’s misery. It was unrighteous salt in a righteous wound
supervised in Heaven’s surgery center.
For You Today
If you’ve got a friend going through some deep water that doesn’t
seem to make any sense, resist Elihu’s error, running off the at the mouth,
giving all sorts of godly-sounding reasons for their misery. Just do what Elihu started out with; sit with
your friend – and sit silently. God
will speak when God is ready.
