1 ¶
Elihu spake moreover, and said, 2
Thinkest thou this to be right, that thou saidst, My righteousness is
more than God’s? 3 For thou saidst, What
advantage will it be unto thee? and, What profit shall I have, if I be cleansed
from my sin? 4 I will answer thee, and
thy companions with thee. 5 Look unto
the heavens, and see; and behold the clouds which are higher than thou. 6 If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him?
or if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto him? 7 If thou be righteous, what givest thou him?
or what receiveth he of thine hand? 8
Thy wickedness may hurt a man as thou art; and thy righteousness may
profit the son of man.
Elihu has
accused Job of declaring himself more righteous than God. This is a common
sentiment of many political and theological liberals today. An atheist or a
liberal-minded person looks at suffering, war, disease, and death and accuses
God, whether he or she believes there is a real God in the heavens or whether
they believe God is a fictional construct of the human mind, of indecency,
negligence, brutality, and even senility or just being plain evil.
That person
calls the war the Jews waged on the incestuous, child-sacrificing,
idol-worshipping Canaanites as genocide. That person views God’s proscription
of homosexual relations, adultery, sex outside of an intention to lifelong commitment,
and self-abuse and neglect as being oppressive, unfair, and unreasonable. The
conservative will simply ignore God’s proscription of the love of violence in a
Christian and will mock the principle that is clearly apparent and understood
by the early church that even the love and passion for violent entertainments
is against God’s standard. The conservative will reject the notion taught by
early church leaders that if it is forbidden for you to do something it is also
forbidden for you to watch it as entertainment. The liberal then has his
tolerance for and even promotion of immoral behavior as much as the
conservative has his passion for war movies and blood sports.
Both are more
righteous, they think, than God. Neither sees any need to conform to God’s will
except, perhaps, in matters of a weak interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount
on the left and a zeal for outward displays of religious conformity on the far
right.
What is the
point, Job said, of not sinning? What does it profit me?
Job 9:22 ¶
This is one thing, therefore I said it, He destroyeth the perfect and
the wicked.
Job 10:15
If I be wicked, woe unto me; and if I be righteous, yet will I not lift
up my head. I am full of confusion; therefore see thou mine affliction;
Elihu says that
Job does not understand God’s sovereignty over him. God, who is greater and
higher than all things, is not affected adversely by Job’s sin nor is He
benefited by Job’s assumed perfection. Now, we love to say that God loves
mankind. We love to interpret God’s rules and His judgments as revolving around
us, teaching, and molding us. Many times people will speak of the Law given to
Moses as full of dietary rules that were principally designed for health
reasons. These attitudes completely fail to understand that God’s purposes and
will are for His glory, that He sought to carve out a unique people for Himself
different from those nations around them, and that God loved, past tense,
mankind at the Cross of Calvary and that He is furious with those who reject
His free gift of grace and eternal life now.
John 3:36
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that
believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.
We do not have
the capacity to hurt an infinitely powerful, eternal individual such as God.
Nor does our behavior benefit Him in any way. Christians have developed a
purely humanistic view of God and the Bible by focusing on themselves and their
“rights” to a relatively painless life rather than God’s absolute rights over
us. Christians think they’ve made a deal with God, as a sort of cosmic
benefactor.
God’s care for us and His kindness to us come through our relationship with Himself in the flesh,
the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word, the Logos, whose Spirit dwells inside each
believer, by whom all things were created and by whom all things are held
together, and function. It is Jesus who is our friend and our brother, our
compassionate attorney for the defense, and our righteous judge. We can come
boldly before the throne of grace because of His righteousness, the
righteousness of God, and not by any thing we have done. God is not lucky to
have you on His team. You are blessed to have been called and chosen by God.
This is
difficult for the Jobs in the churches to understand. Humble yourself before a
mighty God.
1Peter 5:5 ¶
Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you
be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the
proud, and giveth grace to the humble. 6
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may
exalt you in due time: 7 Casting all
your care upon him; for he careth for you.
Satan is not
some opposing god who goes around undoing God’s benevolent intentions toward
mankind while God desperately tries to stop what Satan is doing. God is not
standing at the window with the back of His hand over His forehead worried
about how He is going to come to our rescue and get us out of the Devil’s
clutches, like some B-movie plot.
All of
creation, every one of the countless variations of life on this earth, and you,
plus all of history’s events and struggles are about God’s glory, not your
immediate happiness, success, entertainment, or temporary health.
Belief and
trust in Christ is destroyed by people insisting on a humanistic approach to
the Bible and the events of history making man the measure of all things like
Protagoras. It is harmed because of taking verses completely out of their
context such as Jeremiah 29:11 about returning the Jews from Babylon to
Jerusalem and applying it to you not escaping a car wreck caused by you
fumbling with your CD player and not paying attention to your driving.
History is
His-story and the blessings you receive in eternity are because of His
righteousness and mercy and not your own and the sooner you understand God’s
sovereign authority over every moment of your life, every cell division, and
every beat of your heart the sooner you’ll stop asking the absurd question that
the book of Job answered nearly four thousand years ago, “why do bad things
happen to good people?”
You are not the
center of the universe. God is.
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