Coming up next on Renewing Your Mind, the painful reality of trials in our life. On right now, you can probably relate to what Dr. Derek Thomas is describing there. Trials break us down.
They make us feel utterly helpless. That's certainly how Job felt in the midst of incredible suffering and pain. But Job learned one essential truth that brought him through his trials, a truth that we can apply to our circumstances here and now. We are in chapters 32 to 37 of the book of Job, and we're introduced to a brand new character, Elihu. Some people say Elihu. I think I say Elihu.
Some of you are talking about the same person. The three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, have exited stage left and a brand new younger man enters. He has been there. He's obviously been listening to the contribution of the three friends. We're told in chapter 32 that the three men, the three friends, ceased to answer Job because he was righteous in his own eyes. And then Elihu, the son of Baruch El, the Buzite of the family of Ram, burned with anger. He burned with anger at Job because he justified himself rather than God. And he burned with anger also at Job's three friends because they had found no answer. There's a lot of anger here. And anger is probably not the best place to be in counseling somebody like Job.
So there is that issue to bear in mind. Now, what does Elihu have to say? Commentators have been deeply divided about Elihu. Some have dismissed him altogether. Some have said that it's same old, same old. There's a lot of bluster.
He comes in accusing the three friends of having failed to say anything and he fails to say anything himself. It's just a repetition of the same point of view that suffering is punishment, that suffering is reaping what you have sown no more and no less. Other commentators have come in and said Elihu is in fact saying something brand new.
There are those. John Calvin would be an example, I think. John Calvin saw in Elihu the answer to the problem of suffering. We could put it like this, that John Calvin was Elihu in the way that he understood the book of Job. He understood it through the perspective of Elihu. Others have kind of held a middle position that Elihu begins well and ends badly.
And I think that's where I am. I think he begins well. I think he ends badly. I think he ends by repeating the same old point of view of Job's three friends. These six chapters, chapters 32 to 37, contain four speeches that Elihu makes. And they are in a sense a summary of Elihu's contribution to the problem of Job's suffering. And I want us to think through what it is that Elihu has to say.
There's a key verse or two in it and if I were to single out one particular verse from Elihu's contribution, it would be chapter 34 and verse 12 where he says over truth, God will not do wickedly and the Almighty will not pervert justice. Whatever the answer to the problem of pain and suffering is, it cannot be an answer at the expense of the character of God. It cannot be at the expense of the justice of God, of the integrity of God, of the righteousness of God. He's not going to bend the universe, or for that matter himself, out of shape just to comply with Job's particular case. Job must fit into the character of God. So this is a truth. It's an uncompromised truth.
It's a truth that cannot in any shape, way or form be altered in order to understand what's happening to Job. Of a truth God will not do wickedly. So there's the character of God, but there's also the love of God here within that character. God will not do wickedly. The answer to the problem of suffering is not the Islamic answer. God is sovereign but not good, not necessarily good.
That's at the heart of Islam. God is sovereign, the will of Allah and so on, but goodness is a commodity that is subservient to that sovereignty. He is sovereign, but he's not necessarily good. No, God will not do wickedly. God cannot sin. Everything that God does, he does out of a principle of the character of his goodness, but he will also do justly. The Almighty will not pervert justice.
Everything he does is just. Now, if we were to ask ourselves the question, what is it that Elihu contributes to the problem of suffering, the problem of pain? And I would suggest he does two things, and both of them are subsumed under a principle thing, namely, Elihu sees suffering as instructive, educative.
But part of the reason for suffering, part of the reason why God permits pain in our lives is because he wants to teach us something. Now, we've already been given by God an assessment of Job's character. He was a godly man. He shunned evil.
He was in every way a model believer. God has said that. And we can't undo that. We can't halfway through the narrative, as it were, cave in to the argument of Job's three friends that the reason for Job's suffering is because, well, frankly, he deserved it. He's reaping what he has sown.
It is an expression of the justice and judgment and wrath of God because of sin. We can't cave in to that argument. We've got to maintain that argument all the way through because God says so in the prologue. But that doesn't mean to say that Job has been sinless throughout the course of the book.
We have sympathy with Job when we read him in the opening chapters, but halfway through the book, we may be losing sympathy with Job. Ophelia in Hamlet, Shakespeare's Hamlet, thou dost protest too much. You know, there's a protest that people make. They justify themselves, and then after a while, enough already, you protest too much. And maybe there's an element in Job in which he is protesting just a little bit too much.
And it's not the argument that's wrong, it's the way that he's doing it. And he's begun to question. He's begun to assert his rights. He has an expectation that God should answer his every question. And his expectations are beyond the limit of that which a disciple of Christ should expect.
He may be sinless in the sense that he has an argument of innocence that holds up. And he does. God has told us that. But in the course of the suffering itself, something has emerged. Something of Job's sinful character has emerged. He's capable of saying things that perhaps at the beginning of the book he wouldn't have even thought were possible. He's capable of thinking things. He's capable of reactions and responses to pain that have brought out Job's character in a way that isn't flattering to him. Suffering can lead us to see something of ourselves. Let's have a look at Elihu for a minute.
Suffering can lead us to appreciate God's mercy. Let's pick up in chapter 33. Chapter 32 is just a long-winded introduction on the part of Elihu and the justification for why he is saying the things that he's saying and a swipe or two at the three friends. But let's begin in chapter 3. But now hear my speech, O Job, and listen to all my words. Behold, I open my mouth. The tongue in my mouth speaks. The words declare the uprightness of my heart. And what my lips know, they speak sincerely. The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
You know, he's long-winded too. Answer me if you can. Set your words in order before me. Take your stand. Behold, I am toward God as you are. I too was pinched off from a piece of clay. Behold, no fear of me need terrify you. My pressure will not be heavy upon you. Surely you have spoken in my ears. I have heard the sound of your words. You say I am pure. Without transgression, I am clean. There is no iniquity in me. Behold, he finds occasions against me. He counts me as his enemy.
He puts my feet in the stocks and watches all my paths. Behold, in this you are not right. I will answer you. For God is greater than man. Why do you contend against him, saying, He will answer none of man's words? For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it, in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men while they slumber on their beds. Then he opens the ears of men and terrifies them with warnings that he may turn them, man aside from his deed, and conceal pride from a man, and so on. Now, if you quickly go over to chapter 36 and verse 15, he repeats this thought, and he talks about he delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity.
Imagine verse 16 of chapter 33, he opens the ears of men, and chapter 36 and verse 15, he opens their ear by adversity. Now, what is Elihu's point? Well, to be sure, he takes a long time to make it. He's very long-winded. He's a man who is a little too sure about himself. He doesn't come across to me as a humble man. He's full of himself. He's young. He's brash.
He's aggressive in what he is saying. But pulling all that aside for a second, what does he say? He's saying that suffering can open your ears, can teach you things about yourself, can teach you things about, well, what you really are, what you're capable of. There may be no immediate connection between sin and suffering as to the cause of this suffering in Job's case. The innocent case that Job is making may be valid.
I'm not sure if Elihu believes that, but let's take that for granted for a second. What he is saying is that in the course of the trial, in your response to suffering, it can bring out, it can manifest, well, things about you that you didn't know, that you didn't believe were possible. You're capable of saying things. You're capable of drawing certain conclusions that you would have perhaps denied before the trial came. Sin can manifest itself in the course of the trial, even if they weren't the cause of the trial.
Well, we know that, don't we? When trouble comes, when difficulty comes, and our response isn't always a good one, we respond with perhaps an unjust anger. We respond with accusations. We question God's goodness. We question God's right. We believe we have rights.
We expect to be treated in a certain way. We forget that we are His creatures to mold and shape and do as pleases Him. We are to take up a cross and to follow the Lord Jesus.
Isn't that what He said at Caesarea Philippi? You take up a cross and you follow Him. You take up an instrument of execution.
What does that mean? What does it mean to take up a cross? To deny yourself, to deny yourself your rights, to deny yourself your privileges, to deny yourself your status, if that is God's will, and to follow Christ, to follow Him. Well, I think that's what Elihu is hinting at here, that trials teach you, trials bring to light lessons that you otherwise would not have learned. You remember in Hebrews chapter 12, for example, the author talks about the discipline aspect of trials. Consider verse three of Hebrews 12, consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself so that you may not grow weary or faint hearted in your struggle against sin.
You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. Have you forgotten the exhortation that dresses you as sons? And then there's a quotation, verse seven, it is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. God isn't punishing you as though you were unbelievers, as though, as though you were mere pawns in a vast machine of the cosmos where there's no rhyme, no reason, where there's, there's, there's no sense. God is treating you like sons.
Yes, it is. It is painful. It hurts, but God is disciplining you because you are children. You're his children because he loves you. Well, I think that something of that is being brought out here by Elihu. God is leading us perhaps to appreciate something of his mercy. Verse 16 of chapter 34.
If you have understanding, hear this, listen to what I say. Shall one who hates justice govern? Will you condemn him who is righteous and mighty, who says to a king, worthless one, and to nobles, wicked man, who shows no partiality to princes, nor regards the rich more than the poor, for they are all the work of his hands.
In a moment they die at midnight. The people are shaken and pass away and the mighty are taken away by no human hand. For his eyes are on the ways of a man and he sees all his steps. There is no gloom or deep darkness where evil doers may hide themselves. For God has no need to consider a man further that he should go before God in judgment. He shatters the mighty without investigation and sets others in their place. Thus knowing their works, he overturns them in the night and they are crushed and so on. Well, this is more, what is this? This is more teaching of the sovereignty and the power of God. What is Elihu suggesting here?
Well, Elihu is suggesting that Job is protesting too much. What has his ear been opened to? Self-justification. We are, as it were, hard-wired, you and I, to self-justification, to justify ourselves. It is in us by nature.
It is an Adamic strain that dwells within each one of us. And Elihu is saying, maybe that is what this trial is about, to teach you afresh who God is and what God is like, to teach you afresh of what your human heart is capable of. Do trials actually do that? Does suffering actually do that? Reveal, you know, trials break us down.
They break us down completely. Make us feel utterly helpless without any rights, without any privileges, that we are but dust in the hands of a sovereign, omnipotent, almighty God. Look at chapter 36 and verse 26. Behold, God is great, and we know him not.
The number of his years is unsearchable. He draws up the drops of water. They distill his mist in rain, which the skies pour down and drop on mankind abundantly. Can anyone understand the spreading of the clouds, the thunderings of his pavilion? Behold, he scatters his lightning about him and covers the roots of the sea.
What's he doing here? It'll go on into chapter 37, and he'll talk about thunderstorms and so on, snow, and it's like a lesson in meteorology. I remember one time in Belfast, we were planning a Sunday school party for the summer for the children to the beach, which is Northern Ireland, in the summer. The temperatures could be unpredictable. You know, any given week in the summer, you might have two sunny days and five rainy days, and you could equally have seven rainy days. So whenever you made a plan to go on a trip somewhere, you'd have to have two plans. One, if it was fine, and one, if it rained. You would have to have a hall booked just in case it rained, because what were you going to do with these children if it was pouring down with rain?
So you'd have to book a hall somewhere, Plan B. And it was the midweek meeting, and we were praying for the Sunday school lighting, which would be that weekend, that Saturday. And the weather forecast had predicted rain.
And there was a retired minister, and it was given to being a little eccentric. And in the prayer, he began to pray for the Sunday school outing, that God would provide good weather and so on. And then he suddenly remembers the forecast, and he blurts out in the middle of his prayer, who do these weather forecasters think that they are? Well, of course, they were merely engaging in the world of science.
We work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that it is God who works in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure. So there's a perfectly laudable science of weather forecasting, and they're increasingly more and more accurate and so on. But this minister just lost the plot entirely and decided that the weather comes from God.
And who is this weather forecaster to predict anything other than the fine weather that he wished? Well, God is sovereign. God is sovereign. God is powerful. Now, did Job believe that?
Of course, Job believed that. But what are the implications of sovereignty? It means that you don't have a right to have all of the answers. He is sovereign in his disposition of knowledge, in his granting of knowledge to you.
There are things that happen that, well, that you may not understand, that you may not fathom. I think Elihu begins well, I think, in the course of his interjection. He's blustering. I find him brash.
I find him a little too much. But he does teach us something, something new, I think, that pain can be educative, that pain can instruct. Pain can bring a fresh realization of who God is, a fresh realization of what life is. You remember in the previous lesson in Job chapter 28, the question that Job asked, where can wisdom be found? Wisdom can be found in God, in submitting to God, in submitting to his ways.
So what can trials teach us? That his ways are not our ways, that his thoughts are not our thoughts. It's not the profoundest lesson in the book of Job. And Elihu doesn't express it, perhaps, I think, in the profoundest of ways. What he does is it will bring us to the turning point in the book of Job.
A turning point, where Job begins to submit to God's ways. And his story helps us realize that we don't have to understand why we suffer. We just need to understand that in God's perfect plan, our suffering is not without purpose. James tells us that our trials produce endurance and that endurance makes us complete, lacking nothing. God sovereignly and kindly works on our behalf through our pain. We're glad you've joined us today for Renewing Your Mind as we wrap up our highlights of a series by Dr. Derek Thomas. He is one of our Ligonier teaching fellows, and his series on the book of Job provides us with great insight into God's good purposes for suffering.
We'd like to send you this full 12-part series. You can request the 2-DVD set for your donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. There are a couple of ways you can reach us.
One is by phone at 800-435-4343, but you can also make a request online at renewingyourmind.org. We are always quick to say here at Ligonier Ministries that we are not here to replace the local church. Our desire is to come alongside the church, even undergird the church with the kinds of resources that we produce and publish. With that in mind, if you are going through a challenging time in life, maybe you've received a devastating diagnosis or you've lost a loved one, we hope and trust that you're part of a local congregation there where you live. It is there where we find the support needed to go through the trials of life, and we trust that even now here on Friday as we approach the Lord's Day, I trust that you're preparing your heart for worship. Again, thank you for being with us for Renewing Your Mind today, and I hope you'll join us next week for a series from our founder, Dr. R.C. Sproul. He'll take a practical pastoral look at the most intimate of human relationships, marriage, and he'll show us if we follow God's principles marriage can be one of life's great delights. So please join us Monday for Renewing Your Mind.
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