Friday, February 2, 2018
Elihu continued speaking: “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. Job 36:1-15(NLT)
Elihu was one of Job’s three “friends” who came to see him in
his great distress. In the space of a
few sentences in chapter 1 Job went from rich, respected, and blessed to children
all dead, and Job is left sitting on the ash-heap covered with boils, with his
wife whispering in his ear that he ought to commit suicide. The judging, condemning “comfort” of his
so-called friends may have been the foundation for the old saying:
With friends
like that, who needs enemies?
Elihu claimed to be a man of great knowledge. But his knowledge was as thin as his black
and white, cut and dried so-called understanding of God’s ways.
Elihu did understand the basic attributes of God,
lovingkindness, merciful, sovereign, and certainly judging justly. What he failed to understand is that you
cannot evaluate God based upon outward appearances of another human being –
particularly one like Job, whose fortunes turned on a dime. Elihu’s whole demeanor during these 38
chapters of conversation between the friends and Job is that of arrogance and
judging. Elihu essentially holds onto
his position like a tiger with its kill, that Job must have done something
pretty bad to tick God off this much. He
saw Job’s misfortune as an expression of Job’s character – he was a bad man
inside, so God gave him a whipping.
The problem with Elihu’s understanding – and his theology –
is that it is thin. He has not
opened his heart wide enough, nor has he lived long enough with pain or God, to
know that not every difficulty or adversity is due to some secret sin. If that were the case, would we not judge
Jesus to be sinful because he died a criminal’s death? Would not Nelson Mandela’s decades in prison
mean God was really mad at him? Could we
not draw the conclusion that Jeremiah had no faith because he was shamed by
Israel’s king, put in jail, and ultimately died in exile?
For such issues as human pain and suffering we have to start
with what God has said about his ways:
For just as
the heavens are higher than
the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9(NLT)
For You Today
If pain and suffering are your closest companions lately, and
you’re getting just a little annoyed with God, it doesn’t mean God is punishing
you; it means your understanding of God’s ways are a bit thin.
Talk to Him about it all; He’s waiting and wants to listen to
you.
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a
blessed day!
