Elihu, a younger man, enters the discussion in Job 32, expressing frustration with both Job and his three friends for their inability to provide satisfactory answers and their self-righteous justifications. He emphasizes that true understanding comes from the Spirit of God, not just age or intellect, and highlights that God speaks to humanity through various means, including pain and divine intervention, but true conviction comes from the Holy Spirit. Elihu critiques human evaluation of God's actions and stresses that God's grace is sufficient, contrasting it with the flawed reasoning of Job and his friends who questioned God's justice. The sermon concludes by noting that Elihu's discourse sets the stage for God's direct address to Job, preparing him for a divine examination.
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Sometimes my wife comes home from shopping and, well, she always comes home from shopping. But when she gets home, sometimes she says, look what I bought. I saved fifty percent on this. And I, as a typical husband, I suppose, I say, well, if you hadn't bought it, we could have saved a hundred percent. But that doesn't seem to be logical for some reason or other. At any rate, the government says, keep it in circulation, folks, and They help us do it, don't they? And so it's nice to do it. Anyway, we come now, getting along towards the end of the book of Job.
We've worked our way up to chapter number thirty-two, and certainly we haven't read all the verses, and we haven't read all the chapters. I've skipped over the things I wasn't sure about. So we want to read Tonight, chapter number thirty-two, just the first fifteen verses. We're introduced to another one now, another man we haven't read about thus far, and he seemed to be a younger fellow than the other ones with whom we've been involved thus far in the week. Book of Job, chapter number thirty-two, beginning in verse number one. So these three men, that is, of course, the so-called friends of Job.
Now, the Bible does call them Job's friends, doesn't it? And Job in chapter sixteen of verse number one says, miserable comforters are you all? And the word there is troublesome, troublesome comforters. Now we've noted those things seem to cancel out each other. You see, if you're troublesome, you're not much of a comforter. And if you're a comforter, you're not going to be troublesome. But we often refer, and yet to this day and age yet, we've heard of here people referring to Job's comforters. He's a regular Job's comforter. Well, that's sort of a misnomer, I guess. But the Bible does call them Job's friends. And there's been three of them thus far. Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar, the Twitterer.
Now we are introduced in the section tonight to a fourth one who apparently is a much younger man than the other three. And his name is Elihu. And so verse one of chapter thirty-two says these three original ones cease to answer Job because he was righteous in his own eyes. Unless we miss it, You have it repeated in verse number two. Then was kindled the wrath of Elihu, the son of Barakul, the buzite of the kindred of ram against Job was his wrath kindled because he justified himself rather than God. I think they're missing the point of the thing. I'm not going to argue with anybody after this. I'd go off duty at eight thirty. So you can get a cup of coffee and argue amongst yourselves.
But you know, very often when you say to somebody who doesn't know the truth of God, I know that I am saved, they're going to think that you are justifying yourself or that you are filled with self-righteousness. Now there is a self-righteousness that people have with whom you and I deal, and that is, do you have a hope of heaven? They say, well, I go to church every Sunday or I try to do good and all this other sort of stuff, you know. Welcome Dutwiler used to ask people, he said, you know, I have cancer, which is true. And he says, can you tell me how to get to heaven? And he'd get answers like that. Well, I guess you go to church every Sunday and I guess you try to be good and pay your taxes on time and this sort of stuff.
And Welcome would say, you just told me how to go to hell. I want to know how to get to heaven. But the people you and I talk to have their own self-righteousness. But I don't think that's what we're talking about here. Now, Job has been adamant, you see, in saying, My trust is in the Lord. I know that my redeemer liveth, and all these other sorts of things. And he, I think, is righteous because he has been forgiven of his sins. And that's what you and I can boast about here in the age of the church, you see. We can boast on these things, and you'll upset people who don't know experientially the grace of God. And there, as we mentioned earlier, they're going to say, You're being presumptuous.
One of my neighbors says, you don't know now whether or not you're bound for heaven. You can't know. You have to wait till you get to the judgment day, you see, and your good deeds are weighed against your bad deeds. I said, Don, what if I get up there and I don't make it? Can I get saved up there? Oh, no, there's no salvation up there. You better make sure before you get up there. I said, I'd rather do it our way. And doesn't the word of God use a lot of times the word K-N-O-W? These things are written that you might know that you might know. I think in the epistles of John, he uses the little word some twenty-six times that you might know, that you might know that you're saved, that you might know that you're a child of God.
You might know your sins are forgiven. There's such assurance, isn't there, in the Word of God. I appreciate that so much. You can know that you are saved. Keep your finger here in Job thirty-two. We'll probably get back to it eventually. But over here in the Gospel by John, chapter number ten, That great shepherd sheep chapter, you remember. John chapter number ten. And the Lord mentioned some of these things. And then, you know, you get down towards, oh, verse twenty-six or twenty-seven. John ten, twenty-seven. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give unto them eternal life. Now, if you're saved only for twenty years, and then you lose your salvation, that's not eternal life.
That's twenty-year life, like an insurance policy. Now, does the Lord give you eternal life or does the Lord not give you eternal life? If He gives you eternal life, then it's eternal life. Over in the book of Hebrews, chapter ten, verse number ten, it speaks about those who are sanctified in Christ. And it's a permanent word. You don't read about getting unsanctified. And that's what the Lord has done for us. And in first John chapter three, in verse number one, it speaks about... the wonderful grace which has been given to us, you see, and so on and so forth. And the word there is that love and grace which has been bestowed upon us, and you don't read about it being unbestowed.
That, too, is a permanent word, to bestow, to put upon and to keep there. And that's what John ten is talking about. It's a permanent situation. I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Now that's strong. You really have to add, they shall never perish by any means whatsoever. You'd have to add that to get the full import of the word there. They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. And every once in a while you talk to somebody who thinks you can lose your salvation. And you can read them this verse. And they say, yeah, but you can take yourself out of the Lord's hand. I said, but the verse says no man can pluck them out of his hand.
And the part, well, you can take yourself out. No, aren't you one of those people? Aren't you a part of humankind, you see? Well, yeah. Well, then you can't do it, you see. You can't do it. But nobody ever reads to me the next verse. The next verse in John ten. My father, which gave them me, is greater than all. And no man is able to pluck them out of my father's hand. And nobody ever mentions that verse to him. Well, you can take yourself out of the hand of the Lord, you see. Yeah, but the next verse says, And my Father is greater than everybody. Are you telling me that you are greater than my Heavenly Father? You'd have to be to get unsaved, you see. And then, of course, then they come after, well, maybe he wasn't saved in the first place.
Well, I don't know. That's a whole different sort of a thing. Can so-and-so who goes to such and such a church be saved? And I said, well, the Bible says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Yeah, but what can I know about church truth? Well, that's another matter, you see. But as far as salvation goes, people trust the Lord Jesus Christ to see. And I love this passage here in John chapter ten, especially those times when you and I don't feel very saved. Don't point at anybody and don't develop a red face. But you know, there's days when you and I feel more spiritual than we do other days. But I'm grateful that that verse always holds. Same way with Romans chapter eight and verse number one, you see.
There's therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Those verbs are always in the present tense, and no matter what day you read them, they're always going to say the same thing. This is the day when that is true, you see. There's therefore now no condemnation. Now that being true, upon what basis could the Lord take your salvation away from you? The slate has been wiped clean. And I'm so grateful you can read over in First John, you see, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. I'm glad that's his responsibility and not mine, because I would have overlooked some sins. The older you get, the harder it is to remember things, isn't it? The more you write things down on pieces of paper, and then you forget what you did with a piece of paper.
A friend of ours had his seventieth birthday, and his wife bought him a nice little hat to wear, and on the brim of the hat it says, been there, done that, can't remember. And I would have overlooked some of the sins that were in my life if the Lord had said, all right, now salvation is possible. You make a list of all the sins that you have ever committed. I couldn't have remembered them all. Besides which, there would probably be some there that I wouldn't have accounted as being sins. Oh, no, that was a good thing that I did. The Lord might have said, yeah, but you did it out of a sense of pride, and so the whole thing is negated, you see. The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son cleanses us from all sin. I'm glad that's His responsibility.
Every jot and tittle and every sort of a sin or mistake or whatever, it's all done away with. Well, then on what basis could he take your salvation from you? And you see, to come back then to Job thirty-two, you try to explain that to people and they think you're being very prideful or very super religious and that you are assuming things that are not so. But as we said earlier on in one of the lessons, if you can read it in the Word of God, it's so. And if God has said this is the condition and the position of those who are in Christ Jesus, then you can bank on that, you see. And it's nothing that you and I have made up. And if people want to argue with us, and you have quoted Scripture, they're really arguing with God, you see.
And I think that's the situation when we come back here to Job chapter number thirty-two. And the three original friends are kind of disgusted with Job because he maintains his righteousness. He says, I don't know why God is doing this. I am innocent. And they say, you can't be innocent because God doesn't punish innocent people. And now Elihu, as he stepped into the fray, and he gets disgusted too because Job is maintaining his righteousness. And I don't think Job is saying this is righteousness because I am perfect as a religious person. But I think he is saying, God has made me righteous. God has cleansed away my sin and righteousness has been placed upon me. Now remember, we're talking about the oldest book in the Bible, and you can go through the age of the church, and we have a lot more revelation than these men had here.
But I think Job is pursuing the right pathway here, you see. And there's a lot of verses that he couldn't lay hold on because they hadn't been given yet. But I think Job has the kernel of the truth and of the thought correct in this way. So anyway, all four men now are disgusted with Job when you come back here to Job chapter number thirty-two. Justified himself rather than God. And then also in Ihu, he doesn't play any favors. He doesn't like anybody. Verse three, also against his three friends was his wrath kindled because they had found no answer and yet had condemned Job. You said, Job, you're wrong. And he said, well, why am I wrong? You couldn't tell him why it was wrong, but you still said he was wrong.
And here I think we mentioned this morning, again, Matthew chapter seven of verse number one, judge not lest you be judged. You and I never know the whole picture. We never see the whole side of the thing. And we judge on the basis, you see, of what is available to us. But your Bible says not even the Lord Jesus Christ did that, you see. He shall not judge after the seeing of his eyes and so forth. And that's what we have here. And verse number four, now Elihu had waited till Job had spoken because they were older than he. When Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of these three men, then his wrath was kindled. And Elihu, the son of Barakal, the Bozite answered and said, I am young and you are very old, wherefore I was afraid and durst not show you my opinion.
I said they should speak. and multitude of years should teach wisdom. But there is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. Great men are not always wise. Neither do the aged understand judgment. Was that a true statement or not? Well, we're talking about men here, so all the ladies are saying, yeah, that's right. That's right. All right, go sign up on the list afterwards. Well, I think generally we would agree with that. Some man has a very high position in government, but he doesn't, well, I won't get into that. Verse ten, therefore I said, Elihu continues, therefore I said, hearken to me, I also will show my opinion.
Behold, I waited for your words. I gave ear to your reasons whilst you searched out what to say. Yea, I attended unto you, and behold, there was none of you that convinced Job or that answered his words. lest ye should say, we have found out wisdom. God thrusteth him down, not man. Now he hath not directed his words against me, neither will I answer him with your speeches. They were amazed. They answered no more. They left off speaking. We'll end our reading with that fifteen verse of Job chapter number thirty-two. So we have for the first time now our introduction to this younger fellow named Elihu. How much younger he was than the other ones or not?
I don't know. I can remember the years of my life when I thought somebody who was as old as twenty-one was a very elderly gentleman. And I was amazed that this person could eat anything he wanted to, and he didn't need to wear glasses, and he could go up and downstairs. And the older I have gotten, the farther away middle age has become. And someone said to me quite some time ago, Phil, do you consider yourself middle-aged? And I said, I don't know, you've got to wait and see how long you live. If you die when you're ten, you were middle-aged at five. I mean, how are you going to know when you're middle-aged, you see? But at any rate, this we can safely say that Elihu is younger than these men that he is now chastising.
And he includes Job in this as well, you see. And he says, I listened for a long, long time, and we went back and forth with this thing three different times, and I haven't learned anything yet. And I said, wisdom ought to be associated with those who are elderly and so on and so forth. So this is our introduction to Elihu. Now, is he a mediator or is he a meddler? You'd have to make up your mind about Elihu. Is he somebody that these older men can learn from? Does he have a fresh approach to the whole idea? Or is he simply a Budinsky? Is he simply... impatient that sometimes characterizes youth, you know.
Let's hurry up and do this one thing. And why do we have to keep discussing it? Let's do something about it. Let's do something even if it's wrong, you see. So here he is. He's been introduced to us in the Word of God. And is he a mediator? Is he going to solve some problems, or is he just going to muddy the water some more, you see? Is he a mediator or is he a meddler? Well, make up your mind about that. He does have some good thoughts, though. Come back here to chapter thirty-two again. And in verse two, we mentioned this. He justified himself rather than God. Well, thank the Lord for the justification we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. And as I said, you can say things based upon the truth of the word of God which has been given to you.
I know I'm justified before the Lord, and if I should go home to be with him right this minute, I know I'd go to heaven, you see. And you base that not upon your thinking, but upon the teachings of the Word of God. And this is what anybody can do. I know this is true because God has said it. God has said it. And yet sometimes we're more reticent to trust God than we are to trust a human being. And this is a shame to us, you see. So he says some good things in verse number two. He says something good in verse number three about the same sort of thing. They had no answer and yet had condemned Job. They didn't have any reason to.
There was no concrete reason why they should chastise Job and yet they had. They'd written them off already. You say, but why did you chastise Job? Why did you write them off? Well, we thought he had it coming, you see. And that was a good thing. Tell Elihu comes out with some good stuff. That's verse two and that's verse three. And then you go down to verse number eight. And he says, there is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. Well, that's true, isn't it? That sounds like New Testament teaching. There is a spirit. We would say today that's the Holy Spirit. And he reveals things to the believers that you can't grasp with your own intellect and your own reasoning and your own rationale, you see.
That's what we call revelations. And you're in some sort of a quandary, and you're facing some sort of a problem, and you get advice here, and you get advice here. Nothing seems to quite harmonize or click. And the Holy Spirit reveals something to you. And you operate upon that. I believe this is what God wants me to do. And sometimes even your Christian friends will try to talk you out of it. Why? That can't be true because of us and so, and this, that, and the other thing, you see. The fellow we were quite well acquainted with, he's with the Lord now. You know the You know, the rule, you don't talk about anybody that's still living because then they can sue you. But once the Lord takes them home, then they're fair game. But this fellow, great missionary giver, before he went home to be with the Lord, he calculated, he told me he'd given about four million dollars to missions since the time he'd been saved.
And he prayed about it, and buying on the stock market was a spiritual thing with him. And he says, Lord, I want to buy those stocks which are going to produce good because the return I get from these stocks, I'm going to reinvest in the mission work. Well, the Lord can trust a fellow like that, you see. And way back in the early forties, he started buying plastic stock. And he had a brother who was on Wall Street, and his brother tried to talk him out of it. He said, nobody's buying plastic. Plastic's not going anywhere. And then the Lord led him by the Spirit to buy Xerox. Xerox, nobody even heard of Xerox. Nobody buy Xerox.
Well, you know what Xerox did, you see. And that's what he did. And then along came the temporary depression, and the Lord led him to sell a lot of his stocks. And his brother says, oh, you're stupid. You depend on heaven to tell you what stocks to buy. And he got rid of a lot of the stocks, and he didn't suffer. And his brother suffered. His brother says, I've lost three quarters of a million dollars. There goes my retirement. I got to work now on Wall Street till the day that I dropped dead. And this fellow made it a spiritual exercise, you see. And he was guided by the Holy Spirit as to what stocks to buy and what stocks to sell. And yet most everybody else would say, well, that's ridiculous.
God doesn't know the stock market, but God doesn't know the stock market. especially when this man was saying, not saying, Lord, I want divine guidance and direction so I can become very wealthy. He says, Lord, the return I get from these is going right into mission work. And he depended upon the Holy Spirit to tell him what to buy and when to buy and what to sell and when to sell. And isn't that what Elihu, this young man, is saying here in this particular place? He says, the Spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty, He giveth them understanding. We're so grateful for that. That's verse eight. Then he says some good things in verse twelve and verse thirteen. Verse twelve, yea, I attended unto you, and behold, there was none of you that convinced Job or that answered his words lest you should say.
We have found out wisdom. God thrusteth him down, not man. He said, even if you had discovered the reason for it, you couldn't have taken credit because it's the ministry of the Holy Spirit, you see, to convince of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. I think when you and I talk to people, I think we can convince their minds that they need to know Christ. We can talk to a person who say, you see, now you made these decisions, you entered into sin, you see what it's cost you? It's cost you your health. It's cost you your family. It's cost you your job. You can see the wrong decisions. Can you see what sin does in your life? And they'll say yes. But we studied earlier, that's not godly sorrow, you see.
That's the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And only the Holy Spirit can convince a man's heart that he needs to be saved. For out of the heart are the issues of life, your Bible says. And so Elihu has this down pretty good too. And he says God has to do the work of regeneration and God has to do the work of repentance and God has to do the work of straightening out a life if indeed a life has gone astray somewhere. He says some good things in this sort of a thing. Well, now Elihu, with his generalities, he sort of puts those aside. And in chapter thirty-three in this book of Job, Elihu turns and addresses Job. in chapter thirty three and he says God literally God speaks to man and that's found in verses fourteen through nineteen fourteen through nineteen of Job thirty three God speak of once ye twice yet man perceiveth it not now here's the first time in verse fifteen sometimes God speaks in a dream in a vision of the night when deep sleep falleth upon men in slumberings upon the bed now you have to take this rather carefully Because you and I live in an age when people are seeing and experiencing strange things that are either non-biblical
or anti-biblical. We have a lot of people now that have out-of-body experiences, don't we? And they see a great light. None of the accounts that I've ever read do they ever see the Lord Jesus. At some great light, at some heavenly choir singing, at birds singing, as beautiful flowers, you see. And this sort of a thing, you remember the devil can transform himself into an angel of light, and a lot of it can be very mystifying and very deceiving. So that the person says, I don't have to worry about heaven when I die. I've already been there. Well, if this really happens, the fact of the matter is that person didn't die in finality. But you read about a lot of these things.
And there's a lot of the mystifying occult around about us. And some Christians are very interested in the occult. And personally, I shy away from it. Paul says we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and so on. That's all I want to know about it. I don't want to know anything else about it, you see. And yet, in this age in which we live, there's this mystifying occult and all the rest of it. And somebody says the whole thing is a trick of the devil. to explain away what happens when the rapture takes place. That suddenly millions of people are instantaneously gone. How are you going to explain all these people suddenly gone? And so somebody is going to come along and explain, well, a great UFO landed.
And you can see the birth spots in the farmer's field, you see. And this UFO just gathered up everybody and they're going to use the brain experiments on these folks and snatch them all away. And somebody says the stage is being set today for that particular phenomenon when the rapture takes place, to explain the ways all these people suddenly go on. So at any rate, it says God speaks to man in visions and revelations and so on and so forth. And dear friends, be careful about this. Be very, very careful. Be very skeptical. Be very suspicious when some young man came to our house about two weeks ago and said he'd heard a fellow saying that angels minister to him. And I said to the young fellow, well, what do you think about?
And he says, I think we have enough revelation right in the Word of God. I don't need any extra-biblical revelations. I said, good, I'm glad to hear you think in that way, you see. And I said, well, what about this fellow who has these visitations of angels? What do they do? Well, the angels tell him things that aren't in the book. I said, I'd be very, very, very careful. Don't we have the completed revelation of God? Isn't there a danger in the closing of the revelation about anybody that adds to or takes away from? But you and I live in an age that's very interested in all these extra sorts of things. Somebody came to me and they said, isn't it nice those miracles that Jesus did when he was a boy? And I said, what miracles? Haven't you heard?
And I said, no, I don't think so. Maybe it's time for me to buy a new Bible. What miracles? Well, he was out playing with his little friends you see and there's a bird there with a broken wing and he reached out and touched the wing with his finger and the wing was restored and a bird flew off you know and he was working with some playing with some poverty stricken kids and they were making mud pies and the Lord Jesus Christ touched them and turned them into chocolate chip cookies now what he knew about chocolate chip cookies I have no idea but we read all this extra stuff and you can buy well I shouldn't tell you the title of it and I won't do it Well, anyway, it has to do with extra-biblical stuff.
Extra-biblical stuff. So he says, sometimes God ministers to man in that way, but you put a big question mark over anybody who says, I have a revelation that's out in the Word. Now, that's the first one. I think the second one is down in verse nineteen. Because Elihu has said there's two ways God speaks to man. Verse nineteen, he is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones was strong pain so that his life of whoreth bread and his soul dainty meat and so forth. And sometimes God does speak to us this way, doesn't he? Sometimes through some experience that you and I would not have chosen if the choosing had been left up to us, God can work through that experience to draw us closer to himself.
Sometimes we haven't been praying enough. Sometimes we haven't been reading the word enough. And so God just brings everything to a halt, and we have to give up all of our activities because we are deathly ill in order so that we may spend more time with the Lord Jesus Christ. And I think this happens rather periodically. So the Lord speaks this way, and he speaks the second way in verse nineteen. And that's what Elihu has said. God speaks to man. Now, he also says man speaks to God. And that's found in verses twenty-three through thirty. Same chapter, verses twenty-three through thirty. If there be a messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to show unto man his uprightness, then he is gracious unto him, and sayeth, Deliver him from going down to the pit.
I have found a ransom. Isn't that nice phrase? And he gave his life a ransom for many. I have found a ransom. This one can be delivered now from going down to the pit. because a ransom has been found. Oh, marvelous word, mighty word, majestic word. His flesh shall be fresher than a child. He shall return to the days of his youth. He shall pray unto God, and he will be favorable unto him, and he shall see his face with joy. For he will render unto man his righteousness. He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned. and perverted that which was right, and a prophet of Me not, he will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light.
Lo, all these things worketh God oftentimes with man. So in this one chapter, chapter thirty-three, Leihu says there's a way that God speaks to man, and there's a way also that man can speak to God. And this it has to do with repentance and salvation, and God will grant that particular desire. So he mentions these particular things. He reminds us of First Timothy chapter two. There's one God and one mediator between God and man, the man, and man is emphasized there, the man Christ Jesus, the man Christ Jesus. Now, in chapter thirty-four, going right along, chapter thirty-four, Elihu now speaks to his friends. He has spoken in generalities, and then he has directed some of his thoughts to Job in particular, and now he turns around and addresses some of these other fellows, and that gives us chapter number thirty-four.
chapter number thirty four and verses three and four of that chapter he says let the ear try for the ear trieth words as the mouth tasteeth meat let us choose to us judgment let us know among ourselves what is good and that's what the Lord does doesn't he and even sometimes when you can't understand it fully or you can't explain it the Holy Spirit witnesses with our spirit that this is true and this is correct And I think that's what this knowledgeable young man is talking about, you see, in this particular way. Consider these words. Consider, well, I'll say more about that, but I'm going to go along.
Now, the same chapter, verses nine through thirteen, he speaks about God's goodness. Verse nine, for he has said that propheteth the man nothing, that he should delight himself with God. This is the dejected one, the depressed one says, Therefore hearken unto me, ye men of understanding, far be it from God. that he should do wickedness, and from the Almighty that he should commit iniquity. For the work of a man shall he render unto him, and cause every man to find according to his ways. Now that sounds like something we've had earlier from the sixth chapter of the book of Galatians. Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. And here it comes out of the oldest book in the Bible.
The same thing. God doesn't change his mind, does he? Now, some people today think he does, and I've had Christians come to me and say, Phil, do you know, do you realize that if God was giving us the Bible today, he wouldn't give us the Bible we have? And I said, he wouldn't. And I said, no. I said, what's wrong with the Bible we have? It's a little too harsh. Oh. And if God was giving us a new Bible, the new Bible wouldn't be as harsh? No. I said, what harsh things would he take out of it? Well, things like the soul that sin us. It shall die. That's pretty harsh. I said, but it's true. Yeah, but it's pretty harsh, you see. Or those who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. That's pretty harsh, yes. That's not right. We found a way, the person says, for the church to go hand in hand with the world.
I said, well, I believe you, but it's not the church that's doing it. It's the religion that's doing it. But you see, I believe that if this old Bible was obsolete and passe and archaic and old-fashioned and out of date, the Lord would have called some modern-day Moses up into some modern-day Mount Sinai and say, here's the Bible part two. But he didn't. So I assume with my simplicity that this book is as good as ever it was to meeting the needs of man, you see. And so this is what Elihu was speaking about. speaks about God's goodness there in verses nine through thirteen. And he speaks also not only about God's goodness, but he speaks about God's gaze.
You get down to verse number twenty-one. God's eyes are upon the ways of man, and he seeth all his goings. Now maybe he picked this up from one of Job's friends. You remember they said to Job, you do what you do, whatever it is that you do, because we don't know, but it's some sin because God's punishing you. You do what you do because you think that God is hiding in a dark cloud. Remember when they said that to him? Or you think that God is way off somewhere in the circle of the earth. And maybe this is rung a bell in the mind of this young man, and he sort of expands on it. His eyes are upon the ways of man, and he seeeth all his goings. And this is true.
There is no darkness nor shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves, he says. For he will not lay upon man more than right, that he should enter into judgment with God. Now that sounds like I Corinthians ten, twenty-three. He will not place upon you more than you can bear, you see. And these sorts of things. He will not place upon man more than he can bear. So Elihu speaks to his friends. Now in verses thirty-five, thirty-six and thirty-seven, Elihu turns and starts to talk to Job again. Chapters thirty-five, thirty-six, and thirty-seven. In chapter thirty-five, verses two and three, here's the danger of human evaluation.
Chapter thirty-five, verses two and three. Thinkest thou this to be right, that thou shouldest say, my righteousness is more than God's. And you stop there, and you say, well, was Job guilty of that? No, not that we know. And then this afternoon I asked myself, am I guilty of that? And I had to say, yes, sometimes I am. Because you see, every time we sort of disagree with God, when He does something to us that we don't like, we say, I know more about it than God does. And He is being unfair to me, He is being unrighteous to me. And you see, that's what I am doing when I say, I don't mouth it, of course, I don't verbalize it.
But when I object to the will of God in my life, about something that I don't appreciate. I'm saying I know more about the situation than God knows. And that's what this young man's talking about. And everyone says, why are you bump into somebody that says that, you see? How can you say there's a loving God in heaven when little babies die? When we don't know what the answer to the epidemic of age is, you see? Why there's tidal waves? Why there's some of these other sorts of things? And that's what Elihu speaks about. My righteousness is more than God, he says. Verse three, For thou saidest, What advantage will it be unto thee, and what profit shall I have if I be cleansed from my sin?
I'm telling somebody this morning about a man I was talking to, and he says, Well, I'll tell you, Phil, I got a good job. I've got my health. I've got a marvelous wife. I've got great kids. I've got three houses that I can live in. I've got a great big boat. I've got, I forgot how many cars, but it was more than two. I have this. I have a good health plan. I have a good retirement plan. I've got this thing in the bank and that thing in the bank. And he said, if I got saved, what more could God do for me? All material stuff, wasn't it? All material stuff. And this, you see, is what Elihu was saying here. You could write in this passage, you see. This is what he is saying here. The danger of human evaluation that I serve God, God ought to pay me better than he does.
Or how could God allow this to happen in my life, considering all I've done for him? And every once in a while, dear friends, you'll find somebody who's gotten a little mad with God. And what did you do? I gave up my Sunday school class. I told God, I'm going to teach God. Somebody said to me, I'm going to teach God that too can play that game. I said, you are going to win that game. Let me tell you right now, you see. But you see, God better do what I want him to do or he's going to suffer the consequences. And you sort of shudder when you hear people. You back up a little bit unless you should be struck with a lightning bolt that's going to zap this guy out into eternity, you see. This sort of a thing. God doesn't answer my prayers the way I want, so I don't pray anymore, people have told me.
And that comes from the book of Job. That's what this young man is saying, you see. I'm going to hold God accountable unless he does what I want him to do. And I tell you, friends, This is a popular theme of modern evangelicalism. It's popular. And I've heard a promoter who says, to say, do you have enough money? Of course you don't. Nobody thinks he has enough money, you see. And the person went on to say, God operates on the tithing principle. And if you need a thousand dollars, you give God a hundred. And God is no man's debtor. Well, we know that. And you give God a hundred dollars and God will give you a thousand. That's the tithing principle. It's heavily preached these days.
Then the fellow went on to say, now you're saying, well, God is invisible. He's omnipresent, but he's invisible. How can I give him a hundred dollars? And the preacher said, you give it to me. I'll see that he gets it. I said to my wife, that's where the rubber hits the road right there. I'll see that he gets it, you see. But that sort of thing appeals to the human spirit. And if you want God to do the things that you want him to do, Then you sort of have to hold God accountable, and you shudder when you hear some of these things, you see. But it comes to you from the book of Job. Danger of human evaluation. Then also you have the blessings of divine intervention. That's chapter thirty-five in verses ten, eleven, and twelve.
None sayeth, where is God my maker who give us songs in the night? Praise God for that. Songs in the night. Who teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven. There they cry, but none giveth answer because of the pride of evil men. And you can read back in Genesis chapter one, verse twenty six, let us make man in our image. And pity the poor folks today that think that they are no better than the mammals of the field, that they're just animals, that they're just creatures before God. And when they die, they die. They have no They have no eternal life. They have no existence after death.
They go into some sort of celestial oblivion, you see. And that's not the testimony of the believer, is it? To be made in the image of God, to be an heir of God and a joint heir with Jesus Christ. It's a marvelous privilege to be made in the image of God, but it's a frightful responsibility because we have the power of choice. We have the desire or the choice to be saved or not to be saved. We have the choice to follow the Lord and to serve him or to live for ourselves. Marvelous thing to be made in the image of God that entails frightful responsibility. It comes to you from the book of Job. Blessings of divine intervention. Then come over to chapter number thirty-six in verses nine, ten, eleven, and twelve.
You have man's response to God's grace. That's in in chapter thirty-six verses nine, ten, eleven, and twelve. I won't read it because you can do it. And I think by the time you get over to chapter thirty-seven and here we leave it, I think this is the preparation for the exam that God is going to give Job tomorrow morning, if the Lord gives it. We'll study it then. And I think the whole thing is preparatory up to this next chapter. When the Lord steps into the picture, And these four fellows, the four friends of Job, they just disappear into the shadows. And God's going to say to Job, I've got some things I want to talk to you about.
And I delight in reading that. I'm glad Job got asked the questions, not me. But I think it's a marvelous thing. And what the men can do to bring Job down, God can do it so effectively, you know. And we'll get into that, Lord willing, tomorrow morning at the nine-thirty hour. The preparation for God's exam of Job. And that'll start, Lord willing, at our meeting tomorrow morning. Now let's bow together in prayer. Our Father and our God, we give you thanks again for your word. And Father, we would not simply store it away in our minds and simply desire to learn something new. But Father, we would be like those in the upper room who said, Lord, is it I?
Lord, is it I. And Father, we pray the Holy Spirit might continue to be our teacher in and through and on the Word of God To refresh us in the things of Christ. We thank you, Father, that you have provided us with such great blessings. We thank you, Father, for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, past, present, and future. And, Father, we thank you for saving us. Father, we pray that we might be caused to continue to rejoice in your eternal salvation. May we have a great desire to share it with others. Lead us, Father, and guide us in this direction, we pray, as we ask for your blessing and benediction upon us.