September 16

Job 36

A five sentence summary of Elihu’s talk:
1. God is sovereign and he can do whatever he purposes.
2. God is always good, he cannot do evil.
3. We are morally responsible for all of our actions and attitudes.
4. We frequently sin and having a bad attitude is sin.
5. God uses pain and suffering to plant the flag of reality in our rebel hearts. He does this to spare of a greater eternal evil.

Elihu is the fourth and last speaker to Job. Apparently he was a bystander and much younger than the others but he offers a fresh perspective that will ultimately be judged by God as accurate. A summary of all the discourses up to this point would be .... Job you must have sinned in the past to bring this suffering on yourself. Elihu maintains that Job wasn’t suffering because of past sin but because of his present sin, which was his arrogant attitude that he is totally innocent. Elihu sheds light on the truth that not all suffering is punitive. Suffering can also be preventative to make sure we stay on the right path. One area where Elihu misses the mark... he wrongly assumed that a correct response to suffering always brings healing and restoration (Job 33:23-30) and that suffering is always connected to sin (Job 34:11).

Two applications for us:

1. Continue to trust and believe in the goodness of God when the lights go out in the class room. Satan loves to whisper in our ears, “God doesn’t care about you, God is not good, he is not fair, and you are the biggest fool on earth to continue to trust in him.” The moment we give into the lie of the evil one, we lose the battle.

2. We aren’t going to figure out the plan of God this side of heaven. God is so wise, so incomprehensible; we cannot know him completely. We can have some knowledge about him, for the Bible is full of details about who God is, how we can know him, and how we can have an eternal relationship with him. But we can never know enough to answer all of life’s questions, to predict our own future, or to manipulate God for our own ends. Life always creates more questions than we have answers.

So in the end we must have faith in God’s goodness and in God’s purposes.

A though to consider ... in exactly one month we are going to start reading the New Testament. For everyone who has failed to keep up with the reading it is a great time to restart the journey. But here is an even greater challenge. Would you consider asking someone to read through the NT with you this Fall? Start praying now for God’s guidance in who you should ask. Then approach the person and challenge them to read through the NT from Oct 18 – Dec 31st. They would have to purchase their copy of the Daily Bible. We would welcome them to the Bible reading blog.
DARE to follow Christ!!