A New Song

For a while now, I have been studying Job. It began with my daily reading last year, but I kept being drawn back to it, and when it came time for a new study with the women on Tuesday nights this spring, I suggested this. Yes, they groaned realizing that I tend to dwell quite a while wherever we land, and small books tend to take months, but I promised to move quickly (for me at least) through these books, and they agreed (while groaning on the inside), but we are learning so much through Job’s sufferings about how to live in this world. 

We are nearing the section now where Elihu speaks. He is the young man who has watched the arguments of his older, wiser friends provide no answers for Job—instead making Job angry in his defense of his own righteousness and a desire for an audience before God. Elihu, after listening to the insanity of his friends “wisdom” and Job’s defense of his righteousness, finally rebukes Job. After chapters of his own “wisdom” being spewed forth, God’s first spoken words in the book follow: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?”

Like his “friends” before him, Elihu has moments of wisdom and insight about God that are astounding considering the time period and a culture obsessed with wisdom and proverbs; unlike the other three “friends,” God’s wrath isn’t kindled against Elihu.  Elihu acknowledges, “God is greater than man,” and in the next breath condemns Job for complaining that God wouldn’t give an account of all His doings. He spouts such things as “the ear tests words as the palate tastes food,” and in the next breath he says, “Let us choose for ourselves what is right; let us know among ourselves what is good.” On one hand, this sounds much like the Shema, from Deuteronomy 6:4, which would be the first verse a Jewish child would learn: “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!” But on the other hand, Elihu’s words lack something. It is as if he is mixing wisdom about God with the world’s wisdom regarding God.

There is sometimes a vast difference between God’s truth and what we perceive it to be.

And that brings me to my moment of understanding this morning. Some may wonder why in the world God would put a book full of human logic and its failings in his gift to us—a book seemingly about a man in a pagan nation (possibly an Edomite). Regardless of whether or not Job was proverbial and created by Moses as an allegorical lesson, or whether he was real and Jewish, or real and an Edomite, my God placed this book in his Word as a gift to his children, and I refuse to question the validity of this book.

Many lessons abound in Job, such as seeing how a man can lose everything and still fall on his face in worship of his creator (1:20) and seeing how to gracefully accept health issues without sinning or cursing God in a wish to escape the reality of present sufferings (2:10). We learn how Job, regardless of the magnitude of his situation didn’t blame God for his suffering, but instead sought an audience with the only One who had the answers. We learn of Job’s patience with people when they vainly offered platitudes and answers that didn’t apply to his situation. We learn of man’s propensity to gossip about tragedy and to try to make sense of it when there is none to be made this side of heaven (34:34), and so much more.

These lessons I had gleaned before, but this morning I saw something else. Look at these verses, and I think you’ll see it, too:

Look at the heavens and see; and behold the clouds—they are higher than you. If you have sinned, what do you accomplish against Him? And if your transgressions are many, what do you do to Him? If you are righteous, what do you give to Him, or what does He receive from your hand?” (35:5-7)

First, I saw the verse from Psalms 8: “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” I am totally insignificant.

 Then I looked again and saw again that He is God, and that is significant. There is nothing I can do to shake the King of the Heavens from the foundation of His rightful throne. There is no sin I can commit to make him more OR less the God He is, or me more or less saved by his gift of salvation, Jesus Christ. 

And if my transgressions or sins pile up, it doesn’t affect His position; it just affects mine before the God of the universe. Even if I am righteous, which I seek to be, it adds nothing to His position. It gives the One who created everything and holds all power nothing but what He already deserves—all the glory and praise for His position.

            What I am saying this morning is that God gave me a reminder of my position before Him, which instead of being degrading and lowly actually reassures me and encourages me. I am nothing before Him, yet He is everything. He can raise me up after I, through my own actions (unlike Job) have brought myself low, and if (like Job) I am ever falsely accused when actually righteous (unlikely . . .), I learn from reading Job how I should react to persecution, false accusations, and worst of all, friends who try to “help.” I learn that regardless of my circumstances, He is God, and that is enough.

            My heart is full of song this morning from reading God’s word. I hope you hear it, too.