Sermon: Job and Self-Evaluation (Part Three): Attitude
Pleasing God Is Top-Priority
#1644
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 26-Mar-22; 83 minutes
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transcript:
Those of you who are or have been in business or management occupations probably know what the term "change management" is. We can define it technically as "the application of a structured process and set of tools for leading the people side of change to achieve a desired outcome." That is a lot of gobbledygook that obviously is correct, but it is a little hard to understand. More simply, it entails the actions that its management takes to change in order to become profitable once again. Sometimes the company has to change certain processes to become more efficient or they have to get rid of certain employees that are pulling things down and hire more competent ones. Or even it has to switch its focus from one area to another.
A recent example of that has been the Nokia company, who we all knew way back when in the 90s as one of the premier cellphone companies. Now you cannot find a Nokia phone, they were bought out by Microsoft (the cellphone side of the company), and now they changed their focus to where they are doing infrastructure. They are underneath all that other stuff and they let Apple, Samsung, and the other companies do the people side of it, selling phones. But they are making money hand over fist doing the backbone of the cellular and network industries.
In any case, over time, businesses can become bloated, hidebound, self-satisfied, or just simply uninspired. Management can have tunnel vision, become inefficient. It can be very stiff and unyielding, unbending, or unresponsive to changes in the industry. They fail to keep up. The company can lose market share through lack of innovation, poor marketing, poor customer service, or underwhelming leadership. There are hundreds of ways for a company to become stalled in the doldrums of business, and when that happens, when no wind is filling the corporate sails, as it were, a change management expert is often called in to man the con and steer the company back to profitability.
For instance, back in the early 1980s, British Airways was in a quandary. The company was extremely inefficient, valuable resources were being wasted, the budget was a mess, and profitability was thin, if not non-existent. Then a new chairman was appointed, a man named John King, and he went about doing a thorough review and inspection of the entire corporation—the entire company—from top to bottom. Once he was finished with that, he decided that he would restructure the entire business from top to bottom because there were inefficiencies everywhere.
So he instituted a radical change management plan. And he listed out, made a document for everybody to see, all the reasons for what he was doing and the steps he would take to change British Airways. And these changes that he said he was going to make were substantial. Eventually he replaced half of the company's board of directors. He axed 22,000 jobs. He replaced all the older planes that they had and replaced them with modern jets. And he eliminated dozens, if not hundreds, of unprofitable routes that British Airways planes flew, and to boot, on top of all that, in 1987, he privatized the company because it was a quasi-national corporation. He transformed a weak state-owned carrier into a strong, well regarded, publicly traded airline.
The toy company Lego has a similar story. Between 1932 and 1998, 66 years, Lego had never posted a loss. But as the new millennium neared, it started seeing negative year end statements. By 2003 sales were down 30% annually and they, that year, had an $800 million dollar debt to deal with, in just five years. In addition, over the previous decade, that is most of the 1990s, Lego had not added anything substantial to its line of toys. It had become moribund. It had stagnated. Yet by 2015, over 12 years, its CEO, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, had reinvigorated Lego to become the world's most powerful brand, passing even the Italian car maker Ferrari.
What had he done? Well, realizing that its physical plastic toys (you know, the plastic building blocks that really hurt when you step on them), had limited interests even if there are millions of kids around the world, that is still a limited amount of people, something had to be done to make it more enjoyable for adults and teens. So what he decided to do is to go digital. He started animating Legos for the big and small screen, for movies and television and computer games, and now, after all this time, they are back on top of the toy industry.
These examples, I hope, illustrate to you that change is necessary to bring about profitability or improvement. People too, not just corporations, but corporations because people are involved. But people, individuals, get stuck in bad habits, they get stuck in inefficient ruts, they conduct themselves poorly, you could call that poor management. They become complacent and there are many other negative positions that people get into that they just do not grow anymore. They plateau, they become stagnant. Some backslide, we use that term a lot in a spiritual sense. Often a change agent of some sort must shake them up, must shake things up to return them to profitability.
Now, this is what God does to Job. God is the change agent for Job. What He did was He introduced a severe trial to help Job break through to a higher level of understanding and godliness. This then, is my concluding sermon on Job and self-evaluation, and we have got a lot to cover here today.
We left off after the three friends were finished and Job was finished talking to them, and they were just sitting there staring at each other because they did not have much more to say. But we are going to get into this and I think we should be able to finish it and come up with a conclusion that will be satisfying.
For those of you who may not have heard, I want to give you a little bit of a summary of the previous two sermons and this will help us get a running start. So what did we learn in the previous sermons?
In Part One, we saw that God, and the book itself in the portions that are narrated, consistently describe Job as blameless and upright. And I told you that this is literally that he was considered to be complete and straight. He was a good guy. He was not an unrighteous person. He was someone that God respected for how well he kept the law. How well he did just about everything. Job is not a sinner. This book does not approach Job as a sinner, per se. That is, he does not react with blatant sin. Job knew better. He maintains his integrity. It said frequently throughout the book of Job that he does this.
To God, He calls him several times "My servant Job." It is very complimentary. He says that Job is "one who fears God and shuns evil." That is, he rejects it. He is not one that is a sinner by any means. So, his problem is not sin, per se, and he correctly evaluated throughout the book of Job that his trial was not a result of sin. But then we have to factor in, especially as we get deeper and deeper into the debate between the three friends and Job, that he does accuse God of mistreating him. And he has a big problem with that. He wants to find out why God is doing this to a person who was complete and straight or blameless and upright.
The major takeaway from Part Two of the series is that, like Job and his three friends, we often make significant errors in judgment about people because of our preconceptions, our assumptions that we make, and false expectations that we have about situations and people. And in terms of self-evaluation then, we must teach ourselves to drop our assumptions and focus on what God tells us to focus on, which are the fruit. We have a much better chance of making a good determination of what is going on if we look at the fruits rather than assuming certain things about the situation we are in or somebody else happens to be in.
As hard it is as it is, we need to learn to see through the self-deceptions of human nature and see ourselves as we are—as we really are—and God as He is, rather than allow misconceptions and false comparisons to cloud our judgment. We need to try to see this (if you want to put this in a nutshell), as God sees it, as much as we can. I know that is difficult, it is almost impossible to do, but we have to strive to do that and try to filter out all the things that are skewing our perspective on things.
Let us start in I Corinthians 13. It may seem like a strange place to start, but the apostle Paul here gives us a couple of good illustrations and reminds us that we do not know everything.
I Corinthians 13:8-10 Love [he says] never fails. [This is right after he had gone through his definition of love, if you will, giving us all those things that love does or does not do.] But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. [here we go] For we know in part and we prophesy [or we preach] in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
When that perfect thing comes—perfect knowledge, perfect understanding—there will not be any parts. We will have the whole schmeer, as it were, in our understanding, we will understand how everything works. We will have the knowledge to be able to see things as God sees. So we have to understand that as long as we are in this flesh, we will know in part. We will not have all the information we need.
I Corinthians 13:11-13 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. [good definition of maturity there] For now [notice the adverbs here of time] we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. [now and then] Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
To me this is a really interesting passage. He starts with love here and he ends with love. And in the middle he goes on this slight excursion outside the bounds of things and he talks about knowledge "in part." We still know "in part," and only when Christ returns and we are changed, will our limited knowledge end. So this is something we have to do with now. Now we are handcuffed, if you will, because we do not know everything. In fact, we hardly know anything! So we have a severe problem and that is partial knowledge, partial understanding, partial perspective even, if you want to put it that way.
So, the apostle Paul provides the illustration of maturity to help us understand that, throughout this time of our lives in the flesh, we have to grow. If we want to change this partial knowledge into something that is more usable, we have to grow, we have to mature, we cannot stay a child with the first principles. We have to go on to perfection, as it were, so that we understand more and more as we get older, as we get deeper into the faith, so we can understand things better and make better decisions. We cannot remain children with very limited knowledge. We have to go on and try to gain as much as we can in this time so that we can deal with situations and even with ourselves in a proper way.
So, we grow in knowledge, we grow in understanding, and we should be growing in wisdom which puts those together and makes them into an action. And we do this throughout our lives, certainly over are converted lives. God is in this with us, we are in it with Him as a long term process. This is not something where you come up from the waters of baptism and now you know everything, you are as wise as Croesus was rich. It is not that way. You come out of the waters of baptism and you are still as dumb as you were when you went in. You do not know a lot and you have to learn a lot, but the graph should be going up from there so by the time you die you are very wise, and probably old, but have increased throughout your life to the point where God is satisfied with your maturity.
However, even though we may have learned so much, our knowledge, even at that point when God is finally satisfied with us, you are still going to be limited. We are not God, we are very finite creatures. Our understanding, even at that point, will not be any great shakes. It will be good for a human. But compared to God, it is not going to be all that much. There is so much more. I mean, Paul here calls that full knowledge, that full understanding, "that which is perfect." We are a long way from that point.
So, when it comes to the deep things of God and the perfection of His character in us, we will still see everything very imperfectly, very incompletely. And this is where love comes in. Cannot forget about love. Did I not say we have started with love and we ended with love? Love never fails, and the greatest of these is love. That is what all this information comes between, those are the two columns that are supporting all this.
Love is the greatest of virtues. It is the most constant of virtues, if you will. Love is one of those things that never lets you down. That is, the love of God. Human love does, but the love of God is a perfect virtue, if you will. And what Paul does here in this passage is that he suggests that if we concentrate on it, that is, godly love—learning it, growing in it, practicing it—our growth could be spectacular.
Now why is that? Why is it if we focus on godly love that our growth will be spectacular? The reason is very simple: because godly love is the essence of what God is, and how God acts, and how God makes decisions. He is telling us here that all godliness springs from love. And if we always act in love, always think in terms of godly love, we will make right decisions, we will do things that are right, and we will be putting on the character of God. And so our understanding and our wisdom will be wonderful because we are always acting as God would act and this accretes to us as character.
Remember Jesus said, the first great commandment is "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your might, with all your soul." And then the second is like it, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." We often think of the love of God backwards. We often think the love of God is doing loving things toward other people. But Jesus says, no, we have to think of the love of God first in terms of pleasing God, of showing love towards Him in every action, and then we show love towards people.
If you think about this in terms of Job, this is where he gets off the track. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Job loved himself. And he was so upset about what God was doing to him that he did not first glorify God. That was one of his major problems. And it is something we all do because we are all stuck with ourselves and our problems, and we want our problems to be solved. We want them gone right now. We do not want to suffer. And so we do not give God the glory like we should because we are so worried about ourselves. We have got to have to turn that over, that bad way of looking at love, and always put God first.
James put this another way. Let us go to James the first chapter. We will read the famous looking in a mirror section.
James 1:21-25 Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow [or surplus or abundance] of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
The apostle James here comes at it from a different angle. He speaks about God's Word and how it is able to help us. He cautions us that just knowing it, just receiving it, rather passive, is not enough. There has to be more to the reception. It must be acted upon. It has to be practiced. It has to be made real by what we do with it.
Now the gaining of knowledge, that is what he puts in the metaphor of looking in a mirror, must be accompanied by putting it into practice so that it sticks. That practice helps us remember, or in the metaphor here it helps the man looking in the mirror remember what kind of man he was. It is showing that the knowledge sticks. Remember, the one who did not remember forgot what kind of man he was. But if he practices it, if he becomes a doer of the work, it sticks in his mind and he remembers what kind of man he was.
So, in practicing God's Word, we interact with practical applications, we interact with other principles, perspectives, we learn to prioritize, we learn different attitudes, and all these things force us to think deeply and consider what God wants us to do in any given situation. And putting this together with what I said about I Corinthians 13:13, is that what we do in any practical situation is that first we figure out how we can please and glorify God. That is always the first step. Not how am I going to get out of this? Or not how am I going to profit from this? Or how will I make it my own or anything like that. It is always, first think about God. That is a hard thing to do when you are with yourself 24/7. To think of God first, before yourself.
We must learn to make judgments and decisions that either grow or diminish our character. Hopefully we are growing it rather than diminishing it in our relationship with God and others on down the line. But we always have to put God first, we always have to figure on how is this situation going to work for the glory of God? And then, after that, how is this going to help me? How is this going to affect me? What must I do?
Now, Job had done fine in most respects. We should never forget that God says he is "My servant" and that "he fears God and shuns evil." He had a very healthy respect for Job. But over the course of his suffering, we see his spiritual life beginning to turn inward. It very much began to focus on himself and not God. What he had done was developed, over that time, a severe attitude problem. This is what I mean by saying that it was not sin, per se, that tripped him up. It was his attitude. The attitude itself was unrighteous. I do not want to say that it was not, not by any means, but it was not simply the breaking of the law. Job was good at keeping laws, of being upright in terms of keeping laws, doing what is right as it has been written that he should do.
But he had an attitude problem that focused on himself. I mean, he got to the point where he was accusing God of not treating him fairly. It was God's fault. God was doing evil to him. And in doing this, he began to think of God as an equal, that he was on God's level, or that God had come down to his level. Either one, which is bad. Because you can see in the speeches of Job that he thought of God as one whom he could question, that he could demand an answer from. It was a seriously unrighteous mindset.
As we go through the speeches of Elihu (we are not going to go through them very completely, just take a few samples from it), Elihu will call Job's problem, "not righteous" in chapter 33, verse 12. He says in chapter 34, verses 36 and 37 that his answers, that is, his speech, are like those of "wicked men." And he, speaking of Job, adds rebellion to his sins. Elihu does not cut Job any slack. He tells it like it is. I mean, truly, you do not call an equal out on the carpet, much less a superior, and that is what Job was doing. He was taking God to task telling Him to account for Himself and for His actions. Like I said, a very serious attitude problem, very unrighteous.
Now the last quarter of the dialogue section, which is chapters 32 through 41, is made up of the speeches of Elihu in chapters 32 through 37 and the speeches of God in chapters 38 through 41. There is also a brief comment from a chastened Job in chapter 40, verses 3-5.
The name Elihu contains two names of God: El and Yahuah or Yahweh, and it means the "Lord is my God." Now let us contrast this to the name of Job. Remember, Eyob we said it was in Hebrew. His name means, "where is my father" or "where is my divine father." You see, Job's name is a question and I said it could be taken either positively or negatively. Like "where is God now in all this?" That is a negative one. But the other one is "where is my God" as if he knows where He is. That is the more positive way of looking at it.
But it is interesting that the names of these two characters are so different. Elihu is very positively, "the Lord is my God." Whereas Job's is more of a doubt, "where is my divine father." Elihu is also the only character in the book that is given a genealogy and normally that is a sign of favor. It says there at the beginning of chapter 32 that he is "Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram." And these names are also very interesting. Elihu, as we have said, "the Lord is my God." Barachel, his father's name, is "God blesses," and Ram, his family name means, "high one." So all of the names associated with the Elihu are very positive. But we should not think of this too much, try to read too much into it.
Some have gone so far as to say that Elihu was actually another iteration of Melchizedek, which would be Jesus Christ, but God here is the one who became Jesus Christ. Elihu is a man but he is a very favored man and he seems to have that right attitude where he puts God first, seen in his name, "the Lord is my God."
God does not make any comment at all about Elihu's speeches or his argument or his theology, which seems to suggest that Elihu spoke the truth about Him, that is, about God. You could go back to chapter 42 and look at the reasons why He rebuked the three friends. It says very clearly there that they did not speak well, what right about Him, meaning God. But Elihu does not have to be atoned for in any way by Job. He does not have to give a sacrifice for Elihu because evidently God thought that what Elihu had said was right.
Job 32:1-3 So these three men [his supposed friends] ceased answering Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes. Then the wrath of Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, was aroused against Job. His wrath was aroused because he justified himself rather than God. Also against his three friends his wrath was aroused, because they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job.
It is very interesting here that in the course of two verses that his wrath is mentioned three times. You have to read the speeches of Elihu like an angry man. That will help you understand where he is coming from. He is not pulling any punches. He is mad! He is mad because these people, these old men and Job who thought they were so wise, were so off the mark and it is so concentrated on themselves and on Job and on sin that they had really left what God was doing out of the picture and they were not glorifying God. So he was angry at them for not doing the first thing, which was giving God glory.
The question about whether Elihu figured out Job's problem completely is something that scholars and commentators and preachers argue about. I am sure he did not get everything completely right. Remember, he was a human being. His perspective was narrow. He had only partial knowledge. But he could see some things very clearly and what he saw was that the things that Job were saying were not right. The things that the three friends were saying was not right. They were not giving God any glory. So he is correct that Job tried to justify or vindicate himself rather than God. He was doing the second part—showing love for himself rather than showing love for God. So he was self-righteous in that way, self-vindicating, and all of us tend to fall into that sin every time because we do not like to point the finger at ourselves. We all tend to want to blame others for our problems.
But self-righteousness was only part of the problem. It was not his main problem. It was what could easily be seen as Job's problem. But Elihu, even though he may have seen this only in part, was on the right track. Because Job had said some very, very unchristian things.
Let us see a few of those. Let us go back to chapter 9. I am going to read a long section here and hopefully I can give you the flavor of what he was saying by how I read this.
Job 9:32-35 "For God is not a man, as I am, that I may answer Him, and that we should go to court together. Nor is there any mediator between us, who may lay his hand on us both. Let Him take His rod away from me, and do not let dread of Him terrify me. Then I would speak and not fear Him, but it is not so with me."
Job 10:1-22 "My soul loathes my life; I will give free course to my complaint, I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. I will say to God, 'Do not condemn me; show me why You contend with me. Does it seem good to You that You should oppress, that You should despise the work of Your hands, and smile on the counsel of the wicked? Do You have eyes of flesh? Or do You see as a man sees? Are Your days like the days of a mortal man? Are Your years like the days of a mighty man, that You should seek for my iniquity and search out my sin, although You know that I am not wicked, and there is no one who can deliver from Your hand? Your hands have made me and fashioned me, an intricate unity; yet You would destroy me. Remember, I pray, that You have made me like clay, and will You turn me into dust again? Did You not pour me out like milk, and curdle me like cheese, clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews?
You have granted me life and favor, and Your care has preserved my spirit, and these things You have hidden in Your heart; I know that this was with You: If I sin, then You mark me, and will not acquit me of my iniquity. If I am wicked, woe to me; even if I am righteous, I cannot lift up my head. I am full of disgrace; see my misery! If my head is exalted, You hunt me like a fierce lion, and again You show Yourself awesome against me, You renew Your witness against me, and increase your indignation toward me; changes and war are ever with me. Why then have You brought me out of the womb? Oh, that I had perished and no eye had seen me! I would have been as though I had not been. I would have been carried away from the womb to the grave. Are not my days few? Cease! Leave me alone, that I may take a little comfort before I go to the place from which I shall not return, to the land of darkness and the shadow of death. A land as dark as darkness itself, as the shadow of death, without any order, where even the light is like darkness.'"
What a bitter man. Accusing God right and left of not caring for him, of marking his sins, of not acquitting him, of doing all these things that are totally unlike God. Let us read some more in chapter 30. This gets to the to the end of his speeches here and he had not changed.
Job 30:19-21 "He has cast me into the mire [speaking of God], and I have become like dust and ashes. I cry out to You, but You do not answer me; I stand up, and You regard me. But You have become cruel to me; with the strength of Your hand You oppose me."
Job 31:35-37 "Oh, that I had one to hear me! Here is my mark. Oh, that the Almighty would answer me, that my Prosecutor had written a book! Surely I would carry it on my shoulder, and bind it on me like a crown; I would declare to Him the number of my steps; like a prince I would approach Him."
Oh boy, can you imagine saying such things to God? Those were the things that Elihu heard when he was sitting there waiting for those three friends and Job to quit talking. And that is what made him mad. He tells Job what he heard him say:
Job 33:8-13 "Surely you have spoken in my hearing, and I have heard the sound of your words, saying, 'I am pure, without transgression; I am innocent, and there is no iniquity in me. Yet He finds occasions against me, He counts me as His enemy; He puts my feet in the stocks, He watches all my paths.' Look [says Elihu], in this you are not righteous. I will answer you, for God is greater than man. Why do you contend with Him? For He does not give an accounting of any of His words."
He does not have to. He is God! No man is able to question Him. Remember, we talked about love. That is how God acts. He does everything in love so He needs give no accounting because He always does things for the best of everyone. And here Job, though, thinks that he is so righteous and he is on par with God that He could make Him stand before the courts and give an accounting of why He had done this. Then Elihu explains why God does not have to answer him face to face. Let us go to verse 19 here.
Job 33:19 [He says] "Man is also chastened with pain on his bed, . . .
Remember that is the state Job was in. He was suffering, he was still scraping his sores on the ash heap, and is also chastened with pain on his bed. He is telling him right at the beginning here that it is a disciplinary thing, a chastening. Remember it says, "do not despise the chastening of the Lord." This was something God was doing to help him.
Job 33:19-24 . . . and with strong pain in many of his bones, so that his life abhors bread, and his soul succulent [or delicious food]. His flesh wastes away from sight, his bones stick out which once were not seen. Yes, his soul draws near the Pit, and his life to the executioners. [So God will take somebody right to the edge of death here to teach him a good lesson.] If there is a messenger for him, a mediator, one among a thousand to show man his uprightness, then He is gracious to him [that is, God is gracious to the person], and says, 'Deliver him from going down to the Pit; . . .
I just should explain here. The mediator's job is to help the person understand that there is trouble in his life and that he needs to repent, that he needs to change. That there is a reason for this trial that he is going through and the mediator helps him in this case. In our case it is Christ Himself who helps us to understand what we are going through and hopefully we make the change. So then he says, He is gracious to him, and says, deliver him from going down to the Pit.
Job 33:24-28 . . . I have found a ransom [Our ransom is Jesus Christ, He is our Redeemer, He is the atonement for our sins. And so when we make use of the Mediator, when we make use of the ransom that was given for us, then God is gracious to raise us up.]'; his flesh shall be young like a child's, he shall return to the days of his youth. He shall pray to God, and He will delight in him, he shall see His face with joy, for He restores to man His righteousness. Then he looks at men and says, 'I have sinned, and perverted what was right [this is the sinner who has now repented making a witness of what happened], and it did not profit me.' He will redeem his soul from going down to the Pit, and his life shall see the light [which is a metaphor for eternal life, not just increased knowledge, which it also includes].
So, Elihu says God does not have to answer you because you know how it works. You know that God leads us through various sufferings and trials and whatnot because He is working with us. He is working with righteous men in various ways. Even with hard things like chastening and sickness and suffering because He wants to, as he says here in the last line, enlighten them with the light of life. He wants them to repent and bear fruit toward eternal life. That is the only thing that God is doing this for. He is not doing it as a severe punishment. He is not doing it to kill us. He is not doing it for any bad reasons. He is doing it so that we can become more complete, so that we know less "in part" than we did before. That we grow in our knowledge and understanding.
Job had displayed sheer vanity throughout this. He was proud. He was looking inward and it is seen with his demands for God to show Himself and give an accounting for what He had done. Because Job had become self-important. Everything that was happening to him was more important than anything else. He was fixated on himself, on his problem, and on all the reasons why it was happening. And Elihu cuts right to the heart of the problem and says your problem is you are thinking too much of yourself and not enough about God.
So Elihu follows all this with four speeches in which he preaches on three aspects of God's nature: His justice and goodness and majesty. Or we could say His excellence or greatness, His glory. We could even say he talks about His holiness. But in chapter 35, between the one about His justice and the one about God's goodness, he inserts a condemnation of elevating one's righteousness above God's. I would like to read a lot of this because this is very, very important to understanding how he understood what Job was saying here.
Job 34:31-33 "For has anyone said to God [this anyone, Job's three friends, Job, anyone here in this hearing], 'I have borne chastening; I will offend no more; teach me what I do not see; if I have done iniquity, I will do no more'? [Has anybody said that in all of this?] Should He repay it according to your terms, just because you disavow it?"
You are saying you are righteous, you are innocent, you have not done anything wrong. Does God have to take that at face value? He is saying, Are you saying that you have nothing to improve? That you are so perfect, so righteous, that you do not need any more maturing in that area? He is being really sarcastic.
Job 34:33-37 "You must choose, and not I; therefore speak what you know. Men of understanding say to me, wise men who listen to me [say this]: 'Job speaks without knowledge, his words are without wisdom.' Oh, that Job were tried to the utmost, because his answers are like those of wicked men! For he adds rebellion to his sin; he claps his hands among us, and multiplies his words against God."
Job 35:1-7 Moreover Elihu answered and said: "Do you think this is right? Do you say, 'My righteousness is more than God's?' For you say, 'What advantage will it be to you? What profit shall I have more than if I had sinned?' I will answer you and your companions with you. Look to the heavens [He said, "Look up. That's where God lives."] and see; and behold the clouds—which are higher than you. If you sin, what do you accomplish against Him? Or, if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to Him? If you are righteous, what do you give Him? Or what does He receive from your hands?"
He is saying here that everything you do has really no effect on God. If you sin and sin and sin, that does not change God. If you are righteous, oh, He will be pleased, yes. But that does not affect Him either. He is still going to be God. What we do does not change God, it does not change His mind, does not change His character. So he says,
Job 35:8 "Your wickedness affects a man such as you, . . .
Who does it affect? Us! Himself and other men. That is where wickedness or righteousness makes changes, causes harm or good. It is in the realm of human beings.
Job 35:8-16 "Your wickedness affects a man such as you, and your righteousness a son of man. Because of the multitude of oppressions they cry out; they cry out for help because of the arm of the mighty. [He is saying, look in the world. You see that sin has caused a lot of problems.] But no one says, 'Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night, who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth, and makes us wiser than the birds of heaven?' There they cry out, but He does not answer, because of the pride of evil men. [This is in that realm. He does not answer them. He has given them the spirit of man, but nothing more than that. So He is not required to answer to them about all these oppressions of other men.]
Surely God will not listen to empty talk, nor will the Almighty regard it. Although you say you do not see Him, yet justice is before Him, and you must wait for Him. [He says, "Look, Job, you're getting things backwards. God is not required to answer you about anything. His justice will happen. But you have to be patient."] And now, because He has not punished in His anger, nor taken much notice of folly, therefore Job opens his mouth in vain; he multiplies words without knowledge."
Because God is not required to give an answer to him, Job took it on himself to speak and he was speaking foolishly, out of the emotion of the experience, and saying things he should not have. Now it is interesting, just as an aside, in verse 16 where he says, "he multiplies words without knowledge." That is where God begins when God comes on the scene.
This is kind of a summary of Elihu and his speeches: they serve as a transition from the errors of Job and his three friends in their dialogue to the perfection of God in His response. So Elihu is kind of the middle ground. Job and his friends, when we listen to their speeches, we see wrongheaded thinking. Then Elihu comes on the scene and he has better insight of what is actually going on, but he is still human, it is still incomplete. It is not thoroughly correct. There are things that he overdoes, he makes accusations that are probably a little bit over the top.
But then, by the time we get into chapter 38 when God comes on the scene, we get the true perspective. It is the perspective of God. Elihu's better theology attacks Job's unrighteous statements in the dialog and that is important to make a distinction here. He does not attack Job himself. He attacks the words that came out of his mouth when he was speaking with the three friends. He does not say that Job is a sinner, that he had some secret sin in his life beforehand and that is why God had given him the great trial. He does not talk about that. He stays on the mark of, this is what you said, Job, to your friends. This is what we heard. And so since he makes no false accusations like the three friends did, God does not rebuke him in the epilogue. Elihu shows a solid, humble fear of the Lord. Let us just see that in chapter 37.
Job 37:1-2 "At this also my heart trembles, and leaps from its place. Hear attentively the thunder of His voice, and the rumbling that comes from His mouth."
That is how he looked at God, as a great, fearsome, awesome Being that he trembled at. He had a correct fear of the Lord. Unlike Job, at least in this situation, because Job challenged his Maker and brought God down to his level, which is not an aspect of the fear of the Lord. Elihu says that God reveals both His correction and his mercy. That is the word hesed, the covenant love, in His sovereign providence, so the wise of heart should worship Him.
Job 37:13 [He is talking about snow and ice and rain and that sort of thing.] "He causes it to come, whether for correction, or for His land, or for mercy [for covenant love]."
Job 37:23-24 "As for the Almighty, we cannot find Him; He is excellent in power, in judgment and abundant justice; He does not oppress [which Job was accusing Him of]. Therefore men fear Him; He shows no partiality to any who are wise of heart."
That is how Elihu looked at God and it is a very good attitude that he had.
Now, here is God then in the very next verse of chapter 38 and it is God's time to step in and set things right.
Job 38:1-3 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, "Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me."
God immediately steps in and sets things straight. "Look, we are not equals. Who are you?"
What does this mean when God says that Job "darkens counsel by words without knowledge"? The Christian Standard Bible translates this as "obscures My counsel with ignorant words" and the Good News translation, which is more of a paraphrase, renders the same thing as "questions my wisdom with your ignorant, empty words."
He was really upset about this. He is saying, "Your words are from knowledge in part and your knowledge in part is obscuring what I do, why I do things. It's making a mockery of My works." So, in essence, God accuses Job of twisting or fuzzing God's superior wisdom through his rash, emotional outbursts. He was making a very poor witness to those people around him about God and why He does things.
Job, to give him at least this, did not know God's specific reasons for his trial, for all his pain and suffering. But he should have known God's revealed character and from that Job should have been able to correctly figure out that God was acting in his best interests. He was acting for Job's good. But he took it all so personally and twisted it about, and a accused God of oppressing him, of treating him badly, of of trying to kill him.
So Job failed to see this correctly because of a singular flaw and it is something we have already mentioned. He had raised himself to be on equal terms with God. He had gotten what we call the big head. He had begun to see himself—the upright one, God's servant, the one who withheld his integrity—as more than he actually was. So he began to make demands of God. He wanted God to give an accounting of Himself, as I have said before. He accused God of being his enemy.
Now, had we stopped at the ash heap and said, "Hey, Job. Is God superior to you?", he would have replied, "Of course." He knew that, that was part of his knowledge. He understood that intellectually and would have argued with us if we had said anything to the contrary. But in his unfettered emotional speech where he was seeking answers to, "Why am I suffering? Why am I scraping myself with this pot sherd? Why am I in pain?", his attitude had changed. He was actually putting on airs in this lowly ash heap vis-à-vis God, thinking he had a right to question God for His actions against him. Rather than humbling him, the trial had actually made him more vain because he took it all inward and began to see himself as more important than he actually was.
It was this self-elevating attitude that was Job's problem. He had a terrible problem with vanity, a kind of egotism, thinking that he was better and more important than he was. He was even approaching the standpoint of being like God! He thought that his righteousness made exceptions for him. He thought he had it made. He thought he was already complete. Because is that not one of the things, blameless and upright? Does that not mean complete and straight? He did not think he had any more to learn and to grow.
In God though, in chapters 38 through 41, Job had his comeuppance. He had to be humbled by a theophany, a direct appearance of God in all His power. C.S. Lewis once wrote something to this point, "In God, you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that and therefore know yourself as nothing in comparison, you do not know God at all." So God tells Job, "You have obscured what I'm really like by your thoughtless words that well up from your pride." Pride and presumption.
God's speeches then are designed to crush Job's bad attitude, his pride and vanity, so that he could begin to see God as He really is. And perhaps more importantly, so that he could understand how puny and insignificant Job was—he was. So, God had to take him down to size so that he could grow spiritually, because he had reached a point where his self-importance was stalling him out, where he had become stagnant in his spiritual growth. So that he would reconsider the idea that he had that he had arrived. Because was not he more more righteous than all the people around him? If he just looked at people, yes, he had arrived. He was a great man in terms of righteousness.
But he was leaving God completely out of the picture. When you put Job into the picture with God, Job was nothing and less than nothing. His knowledge and understanding and wisdom, in part, as it is for even a righteous fleshly man, was absolutely insignificant compared to God's fullness. Job needed to learn that. Let us look at some of what God says here in Job 40.
Job 40:1-5 Moreover the Lord answered Job and said: "Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? He who rebukes God, let him answer it." [Okay, what do you have to say now Job, after He just beaten him down quite thoroughly in chapters 38 and 39.] Then Job answered the Lord and said: "Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer You? I lay my hand over my mouth. Once I have spoken [that is back when he was talking to his three friends, yeah, he had spoken], but I will not answer. [not now] Yes, twice, but I will proceed no further."
"God, I've got nothing. You're absolutely right." That is what he says here. I mean, he was chastened here. He feels thoroughly chastened. But God determines, here at verse 6, that is not enough. Job needed to learn this hard truth to his core. So He says,
Job 40:6-14 The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said: "Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you and you shall answer Me: Would you indeed annul My judgment? Would you condemn Me that you may be justified? Have you an arm like God? Or can you thunder with a voice like His? Then adorn yourself with majesty and splendor, and array yourself with glory and beauty. Disperse the rage of your wrath; look on everyone who is proud, and humble him. [That is exactly what God was doing to Job.] Look on everyone who is proud, and bring him low; tread down the wicked in their place. Hide them in the dust together, bind their faces in hidden darkness. [then if you can manage this] Then I will also confess to you that your own right hand can save you."
But it cannot. That is the the rhetorical answer. The answer that is not there. So He lays it on him that he has no standing, no judgment, no majesty, no power to stand toe-to-toe with God. He cannot even save himself. He needs a Redeemer, for that he needs someone else to stand in the gap. Beside God, Job is weak and insignificant.
We do not have time to get into it but what follows from the end of chapter 40 and 42 is God's boasting, if you will, that He alone can deal with man's greatest foes, both natural and supernatural.
So, at this point, Job is completely cowed and humble. Would you not be if God spoke to you out of a whirlwind and told you your sins, and what you have done wrong, and challenged you to a contest of power and might, majesty and righteousness?
Job 42:1-6 Then Job answered the Lord and said: "I know that You can do everything, and that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. You asked, 'Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?' Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand. [he finally says that he knew in part, he understood in part, he was ignorant as the day is long, and he was stupid], things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Listen, please, and let me speak; You said, 'I will question you, and you shall answer Me.' I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
Finally, he got it. The final two verses are the most important here. God's hammering speeches gave Job a new perspective. He illustrates it here by comparing or contrasting perception by ear with perception by sight, by participation, by a real eyewitness. He implies that through what God had told him, his perspective shifted—and it did. You could look at it and say his perspective shifted from looking at himself to looking at God.
But in the metaphor here he speaks that his perception shifted from what others had told him about God—the hearing of the ears. It is the mixture of truth and tradition and human speculation and a lot of error, to what he himself had witnessed through a relationship with God and now understood more completely. We say, "seeing is believing." If we see it with our own eyes, and it holds up, we are much more likely to believe then. And he said his belief before was just through the ear, things he had heard, but now he had a face-to-face encounter with God and now he really knew, now he really understood, now he really believed.
God had corrected Job's understanding and the man repudiated his ignorant verbal vomitus, if you will. He confessed his sinfulness. He repented. Remember metanoia, changing the orientation of his mind. He changed it from looking at himself to looking to God, and he placed himself at God's mercy and God graciously provided it with forgiveness.
Now, after this encounter with God, he had a proper fear of God, like Elihu had been encouraging him to have.
We have come through the book of Job, but I want to conclude in the book of Jesus, in Matthew the fifth chapter, in the first part of the Beatitudes. I would like to leave you here with my conclusion on what God ultimately taught Job.
Matthew 5:1 And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him.
Let us understand the context here. He had been teaching the multitudes, there were a lot of people trying to listen to His words, but He went up on the mountain and spoke privately with His disciples. This was for them and we should get the picture here. This is for us. This is not for the general world, even though they could understand some of the stuff that He gave them here. But the Sermon on the Mount, as Matthew presents it, is a sermon directly to God's people—to the chosen.
Matthew 5:2-3 Then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
The first thing out of His mouth in this private conversation, private teaching to His disciples is, if you want to be in the Kingdom of God, you had better be poor in spirit.
Job was arrogant enough to believe that he could contend on an equal basis with God. He thought, like the Laodiceans in Revelation 3:17, that he was spiritually rich, just like he was physically rich and known as the richest man around. But God burst his pride and showed him that he was actually pretty spiritually deficient, even though he was upright and blameless. He was, actually, in comparison to God, nothing and a nobody and very carnal even still. Because he was fixated on his carnal body, it was his flesh that he was thinking about.
We could say that Job was a really good law keeper. You put the Ten Commandments up there and he aced them. But he had an attitude problem. That was something a little bit further, more principled than just the keeping of various laws and that is exactly what Jesus gets into in the Sermon on the Mount. He says there is a higher purpose to the law. It is not just keeping them physically. There is a spirit of the law that you have to understand. And Jesus begins by saying that a poor in spirit attitude is what every Christian needs to enter the kingdom of heaven.
No matter how much we understand, no matter how well we keep the commandments, we are still spiritually poor and needy. We have to acknowledge this fact, that we know in part and that part is very small. Like He said, we cannot save ourselves, we need help. We need God and Christ to assist us in everything. Did my dad not hammer away, "Without Me you can do nothing." That is what being poor in spirit is acknowledging. That you cannot do anything on your own in spiritual matters. Each step along the way to the Kingdom of God, we need Christ to hold our hands. We cannot take steps toward the Kingdom of God without Him.
So, as we examine ourselves in preparation for Passover, please focus on how much we need God, how much we need Christ. And like Job, finally realize how insignificant we are in comparison to Him. We may have been in the church for 30, 40, 50, 60 years, but we are still babes in comparison to Christ. We need to keep that in mind at all times—that we are very poor spiritually and we need help. So realize how insignificant we are in comparison to Him and learn the vital lesson of spiritual poverty because then, paradoxically, you can be spiritually rich.
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