Day 10: Job 32-37 - God is just

Job is done. The three protagonists fall silent. Elihu then enters the stage in Chapter 32.

Job has delivered a compelling defense, revealing things they never knew about him. They are stunned to silence and say nothing more.

However, for 30 odd chapters Elihu, being younger, has listened. His assumption was that they were all wise enough. What could he add? Yet he is disquieted by Job’s defiance.

He accepts that the other three got a lot wrong and over simplified or over generalized. They got what they deserved. But in the process, Job is found out.

Job faces a very tough lesson

Jesus overcame the first two temptations, which were to take bread and eat, to which he replied, “not by bread alone” and to bow to Satan as a trade for all the world and its souls, to which Jesus replied, “The Lord our God is one and Him alone will we serve”.

The third took Him to the pinnacle of the temple, a vulnerable, slippery, steep place where He was denied the solid ground from which He normally engaged.

There He was appropriately tempted to yield to the supremacy of the previous temptations, by getting ahead of Himself. He saw the subtlety of it all through tears. He was weary, having faced a battery of psychological trials. He was at His most vulnerable.

No wonder that Satan chose then to hit Him with what was as subtle for Job. After all, Job had done really well. He had not cursed God, nor railed against His throne and He revealed a righteousness that extended to his everyday lifestyle.

The man is unworthy of any accusation and his defiance suggests that he feels a degree of smugness or supremacy in having seen off a brutal examination.

However, in so doing he is lured into the subtlety of the third temptation. He gets ahead of himself. Elihu sees it all and rebukes him.

God is just

Elihu says so in many ways, but the essence of his argument goes to the heart of our relationship with God. As such, his point of departure is that God is inscrutably just.

God’s response to Satan reflects that justice. He refused to be accused of bias or unfairness. To understand that you need to see the context of scripture.

There is a reason why God delegated Jesus to create the world and set Him aside from its foundations and refined His lineage. The same reason lay behind the independent examination of Jesus in the Wilderness, the Sanhedrin and the courts of Rome.

It is why Jesus shouted, “why have you forsaken me”, because God could not be subjective in the validation of the cross. Justice had to be blind or fail.

Behind all of that was a righteous judge who knew that His role in our salvation would be compromised if in any way He was found to have been less than objectively righteous.

Satan would have recused Him as swiftly as He would have invalidated Jesus as a worthy sacrifice for sin, if Jesus had done but one thing worthy of His own death.

None of our salvation would be possible without a righteous court above us, but having gone to such lengths to make it so, Jesus assured us in the lead-up to the cross, that the long-outstanding case against the presumed innocence of Satan, was thus judged.

That justice serves the heirs of salvation

Now, the fact that God’s court is so integrous, provides the irrefutable defense of every promise in scripture, our rights to be heard by God and the efficacy of the cross.

Elihu treated the justness of God as a given, a fundamental proviso. Thus, a crisis cannot be explained by a whim of God. After all, if God made a single exception to His principles, as in say doing Job in  because He could, He did so at the risk of everything else.

To explain. When they believed the earth was the center of the universe, nothing fitted the logic. All observations failed the assumption. They then took as a fundamental proviso, that the sun is the center of our solar system, and a string of logic flowed from that. Well, similarly, if God justice and righteousness is a given, then that informs our crises.

Elihu looked beyond his own youth (32:3-4) and defended his right to speak because the Spirit of God counselled him. Experience can often be subjective, but words arising from God’s spirit are untainted by our personal perspectives.

In vs 8-11, he restated Job’s position and then dealt with it. It is all very legal. In 35:14, he referred to Job’s “case”. He spiced all his language with legal terms, as in: God denies me justice (34:5); Can the unjust govern (34:17); Is this just (35:1); He gives the afflicted their rights (36:6-7); In His justice and righteousness He does not oppress (37:23); and more.

He even implied that God has nothing to gain by the way he treats either the righteous or the unrighteous. It does not affect Him personally and thus can only be explained on objective and just terms (see chapter 36).

As such, God woos us from the jaws of distress (36:15) and teaches us (36:22), but our stubbornness and pride inevitably get in the way.

Conclusion

There is so much more to be said, but I will close with my response. For many years I have felt held back, hemmed in and frustrated, and I presumed that God did it for some reason. Today I repented of things in my life that have frustrated His purpose in me.

Some of those offences predate me, but God’s judges cultures, so I share in the guilt of my past. Many, many other offences were relived in me, regardless of past influences. All were my sins. I needed to clear them and stop presuming my own innocence.

God has amply provided us with a way out, through the cross and Christ’s shed blood. Staying proud and defying Him, is a mug’s game. If we want to move on, start with the assumption that God is righteous and just. Then let that light reveal your offence. 

(c) Peter Missing at Bethelstone.com