9 ¶
By reason of the multitude of oppressions they make the oppressed to
cry: they cry out by reason of the arm of the mighty. 10 But none saith, Where is God my maker, who
giveth songs in the night; 11 Who
teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the
fowls of heaven? 12 There they cry, but
none giveth answer, because of the pride of evil men. 13 Surely God will not hear vanity, neither will
the Almighty regard it.
Elihu, in
seeming to answer Job in 24:12 says that the oppressed cry because of the many
oppressions placed on them by powerful men. They want justice and mercy. But,
they will not get it because they do not seek God’s assistance in it. They do
not honor God or beg His help. This is the God who comforts us and as many
Bible-believing Christians know, gives us songs of praise and thanksgiving in
the early hours of the morning as we lay half-asleep, if our minds are focused
on Him at other times.
Isaiah 26:3
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee:
because he trusteth in thee.
The beasts of
the earth don’t have the wisdom and understanding of human beings. He has given
us more awareness. Each person has the capacity to know God through the,
“express image of his person,” (Hebrews 1:3) who is the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the beasts of the earth cannot see in their minds what is going on. Their
attentions are simple and basic. Only man, as far as we know, considers
eternity, and is held accountable for the result of that consideration.
Evolutionary
scientists, who do not believe either in God, or in Jesus Christ as being God,
have studied the psychology of belief in God. There are several interesting
books on the subject, such as Why God
Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief and How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough
Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist by Dr. Andrew Newberg and his associates.
Newberg, a researcher at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania, has studied
how religious faith and belief are healthful and positive influences in the
mind no matter what you believe or what religion. He seems to say that mankind
has the capacity and built-in need to believe in the spiritual, but lacks the
ability to determine what is true or not. I would say that we have the capacity
to receive what God wants us to have but usually choose not to accept it. We
will prefer to follow a man in a cult-type setting and to be spoonfed our
chosen “truth,” a doctrine that suits our personality and feeds our fears and
bigotry, and that justifies our complacency and intellectual sloth.
Most
Christians, as most Muslims, most Hindus, or any other faith you can imagine
don’t really know why they believe what they believe or have any practical
application of faith in their lives. They’ve been told what to think by a
preacher of some kind and are not willing to search it out. Christians, in
particular, resist being taught by the Holy Ghost through the Scriptures. It is
not usual to find a Christian who has read the Bible through even once in their
lifetime, and if you pressured them about why they believe a certain doctrine,
for instance, why they should dress modestly, they would not be able to give
you a Bible reason in context without help. In fact, many good and faithful
Christians sitting in the pews of fundamentalist churches today would make good
and faithful Muslims and Hindus if they lived in Saudi Arabia or India, as long
as their faith isn’t challenged, as Job’s has been.
Newberg bases
his findings on the evolutionary success of religious belief which I find, is
preposterous. If evolution were true not only would man not need or want a
brain that consumed 60% of his body’s available energy but he would be
successful only by just being the strongest animal, the most clever hunter, etc.
and therefore, shouldn’t even exist in the numbers and varied environments that
he does. Population bottlenecks where humanity was reduced to a small number by
disaster or disease should have killed him long ago, rendered him extinct.
Wouldn’t what actually happened be survival of the luckiest rather than the
fittest? There is no accounting for human history without God.
We have more
wisdom than the beasts of the earth and therefore, more responsibility. The
oppressed who cry out but not to God, who do not exchange their natural human
wickedness for Christ’s righteousness, hear nothing and get nothing from God as
help in their oppression unless it is part of His greater will in which they
are unknowing participants.
While our
culture tends to glorify the oppressed and the poor by virtue of their state of
being oppressed or poor God still does not regard their cry if they are none of
His, if they reject Him and do not consider him. If you are oppressed by virtue
of your social status, your race or ethnicity, or for any other cause the very
first thing you must do is to place yourself under God’s protection and
providence, receive Jesus Christ as your Saviour, and look to Him as your
defense. Then, you can take action based on Biblical principles to have the injustice
alleviated. There is nothing more desperately pathetic than a person who is
oppressed, beset upon, and poor who is also wicked and evil.
God Almighty
will not hear vanity, empty words, and cries of frustration based on worship of
the god, Self, nor will He regard it.
14 ¶ Although thou sayest thou
shalt not see him, yet judgment is before him; therefore trust thou in him.
15 But now, because it is not so, he
hath visited in his anger; yet he knoweth it not in great extremity: 16 Therefore doth Job open his mouth in vain; he
multiplieth words without knowledge.
Job has said
that he can’t see God nor does he understand what God is doing to him or why.
See chapter 23:8, 9. Not being able to see God, who will reveal Himself only at
His will and discretion, and who has revealed Himself by the Lord Jesus Christ
and through His words in the Bible, is no hindrance from believing in Him. Even
atheists believe in many things they cannot see with the naked eye. No one has
ever seen an atom, an electron, a proton, or any one of the other subatomic
particles including a wave or particle of light. No one has ever seen something
that happened without a witness eons ago. So, no atheist can ever see their
“Big Bang” happening, their Abiogenesis or life occurring from inanimate
matter, or any other of the things they guess and postulate about a Godless
eternity extending limitless ages behind us.
But, they
believe in these things anyway because they are the best way to explain reality
without God and this justifies their world view. They believe them
experientially based on effects produced by something which they cannot see.
They are able to make theories and put those theories into practical
application so that the theories seem to be justified. This happens until they
hit a roadblock and then another theory arises. The fundamental point of the
theories is that they cannot include God. In order to justify himself and to
keep from thinking about a just God judging mankind he is compelled to assert a
theory that will exclude the possibility of God.
These people
are so religiously zealous, like the medieval Roman church, that they will
figuratively burn heretics at the stake by insisting they be fired from
colleges and universities, for even suggesting that life was created by an
intelligent force, perhaps even an alien civilization. They will permit those
who entertain ideas like Panspermia, where
the seeds of life travel to earth from a stellar cloud, because that doesn’t
imply a reason for it, a purpose to it, or any intelligent design behind it.
Yet, there is no explanation that more suits the evidence of biological life
and its beginnings and existence as a rare thing, for all we know, than
Almighty God.
So, not being
able to see something does not inhibit belief in it if the effect it causes can
be explained by it. Any Bible-believer who has experienced the power of God on
their lives in changing and molding their opinions and viewpoints and behavior
as well as the circumstances of their lives knows that God is real. He has the
confirmation of the oldest primary source in history, the Bible, God’s
testimony of Himself, and he has the faith given to him by God once he believed
and was saved. He also has tremendous evidence from answered prayer; answers of
yes, no, and wait which he can measure by the Scripture’s clear words and
promises and the example set in Biblical times.
God is real and
the Bible-believer knows it and has many infallible reasons, proofs, to
believe. As the scientist, Newberg, showed, believing in God even affects your
brain chemistry and changes you in positive ways, just by virtue of that
belief. I am not doubting that atoms or other sub-atomic particles exist. I am
just pointing out that rational, intelligent belief is not based on sight
alone.
Elihu points
out that judgment is with God and to trust in Him. The three Hebrews that were
subjects of the Babylonian king insisted that they would trust God whether or
not He delivered them from certain death in the fiery furnace, acknowledging
that trust goes beyond just getting what you prayed for as the focus is on the
one trusted for eternity, not on the person engaged in belief. You must
acknowledge God’s authority and power over your life and over the universe to
trust in Him. You also have to believe in eternity with Him as Daniel even
spoke of a resurrection. Read Daniel, chapter 3, and also see Daniel 12:2.
Rather than
trust God and humble himself before God, Job has devoted himself to proclaiming
his own righteousness and the injustice done to him. We would do well, in the
extremity of any affliction or terrible circumstance, not to stand back, head
up, screaming about how we have been wronged by God, but to humble ourselves
before Him and seek His mercy. Elihu has not accused Job of hypocrisy as Job’s
friends did, claiming he must have been guilty of some horrible sins to have done
what was done to him, but Elihu has pointed out the foolishness and sin of Job’s
proclamations of self-righteousness and the wrong attitude toward suffering.
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