Job 36

The grieving soul needs to find God. This is not an easy thing to do, even for people who have believed in and known the Lord for as long as they can remember. It does not normally help for someone to come to mourners in that condition of permanent life-altering loss and to begin talking to them about God or instructing them that they need to find God and lean upon Him, even though that is a fact. There is one person you listen to more than anyone else on the planet, yourself. It is best to hear instruction directly from your own soul. You can talk to your soul, and you can also listen to your soul. Say something like this to yourself when the time is right: “Why so downcast O my soul? Put your hope in God!” (Psalm 42:5)

There is one voice that is even more powerful than the voice of a person's own soul; the voice of God. At times throughout the history of God's speech He has spoken through prophets, as here with Elihu speaking to Job. Job is not interrupting Elihu. He is listening, How do we distinguish this speech from that of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar? That is a very mysterious question. Even if the content were entirely the same, which it is not, there is something different with Elihu. He really is a messenger from God. The other men were not speaking for God. God promises that His own Word will not return empty to Him. There is no such promise for the vast crowd of overly spiritual advisers to the grieving who talk too much when they should just admit that they do not understand what God is doing.

The voice of God through Elihu is powerfully reorienting the soul of this great man Job to the God that he has never stopped believing in and never stopped loving. Bear with Elihu now, for he really is God's messenger until the Lord Himself will speak. Job was the best messenger of God earlier in the book, and now Elihu speaks with a great prophetic spirit and Job listens. Soon God Himself will speak without any prophet, and everyone else will have to fear, listen, and obey. Inasmuch as Job and Elihu have accurately spoken the Lord's Word, God has truly spoken through them. Yet who can help but be taken aback when the Almighty One comes directly from heaven to talk to His beloved servant Job? But for now, Elihu redirects well the heart of this grieving lover of God.

His message? What a mighty God is the Lord! His glory is not only in physical force. He has the power of perfect understanding and faultless accomplishment. His purpose will stand, and His timing is unquestionably right. He sees His afflicted one. He even knows who will be His eternal King, and He will exalt that One above all the nations forever. For those to whom He grants some measure of authority on earth, He watches their works, and disciplines their arrogance in His own perfect way. He can make anyone willingly hear, believe, and obey. Some respond to His outward entreaty according to an inward effectual call that men cannot see. Others harden themselves to His instruction, and are left in the disastrous pride that will lay them low and hurt those around them.

Here is something amazing to consider: God is free to draw the righteous near to Him through affliction that would normally come to the ungodly. This treatment that seems so unjust to us, is not a good excuse to heap ignorant accusations upon the Lord or to scoff at Him as if we knew anything. The misery that we feel is part of the pathway of a powerful ransom for the elect of God, an expression of His love for us, and not a sign of our special sinfulness or of His unusual displeasure. Do not mock at powerful mysteries, but receive what you cannot possibly understand. There is no way to avoid His providence anyway, and through the worst of time, God is still unchanging in His goodness.

Embrace the affliction somehow, and embrace God. How can anyone do that? Can a person like Job be expected to be happy about what has happened to his family, all of them gone in a moment? Let's not say too much, just receive what we can never change, and marvel at God. As you grow in your recovery, stop wishing for your own death. That is not the attitude of a child who trusts his father. Let the Lord be exalted and let Him teach you as He sees fit according to His own eternal counsel. Take in the affliction, though you hate it, rather than trying to go around it.

This was the pathway of Jesus, the sinless Servant of the Lord. Of course He despised the cross for the evil thing that it was, yet He embraced it for the glorious thing that it became. He extolled His Father, and gave Himself entirely into His hand. The church still singing about this centuries after it has been accomplished: One Man suffered well, and He emerged perfectly victorious for our sake. Therefore, we agree with the Son of God that God is great. We do not understand His eternal nature and His infinite and unchangeable wisdom as He touches our own lives with present sorrow. We see the lightning, and we hear the thunder. It seems too close. We know that the Lord has brought water up into the clouds, and that He is pouring forth His gift of rain upon the earth. And we know that the seed that has been planted in death, will yet be harvested in the fruitfulness of life, and that requires not only sunshine, but also rain. Not all rain is gentle. To feel affliction rightly is to find the greatness of God in the storm, and to trust Him in the eternal quietness of His own divine love, receiving and giving back, appreciating and putting to good use whatever He ordains for us in this place of tears and hope.