14. Let Elihu speak

Let Elihu speak

Now, if Job could not be just before God, how can you? Let memory glance back along the track of life. What sins before God? — are your words ended? — are you dead beaten? — do you say, I cannot tell what to make of it? Then let Elihu speak. This Elihu is a wonderful person — the very one that Job had desired (the daysman), a type of our Great High Priest. The false charges had brought out the self-righteousness of Job; and against him was the wrath of Elihu kindled. Why? ’Because he justified himself rather than God’.

You will find the last desperate effort to justify himself occupied five chapters. And how many chapters of a Christian’s life are also spent in the vain endeavour to justify himself, instead of owning himself a lost sinner, and justifying God, in justifying him, though a sinner, consistently with His own holiness and glory. This is the grand mistake — the cause of all the believer’s darkness and confusion. Let me put it plainly before you, my reader. Have you not been occupied with the thought how you could be just before God? Has not the discovery of the impossibility of this being done, seeing that you are still a sinner, filled you with confusion and doubt?

Sometimes you may have forgotten yourself and been happy in the love of God, when thinking of the work of your Redeemer, as Job did for a moment. But then, the thought has come, with a pang, I am not what I ought to be, and how am to be? I am not fit to stand before God, the Holy Judge. I am not just!

It is all in vain to look over five chapters of your past experience, even if it were as good as Job’s. And you have tried so often, and been no better for trying that you have lost all heart and all hope of being really what you ought to be — of being just before God.

Now what is all this but your best endeavour to justify yourself? God says that you are a sinner. You are doing your utmost to prove it is not so; and the discovery that you are a real sinner fills you with confusion. It is most certain you cannot stand before God as a Holy Judge, and be even innocent, much more just. Of all the millions that have trod this earth, only One could stand before God the Judge; that One was the blessed Lord Jesus. The fire of God’s holiness might search Him through, and there was no sin found in Him. This only One, this Holy One, did stand before God the Judge, as the Substitute of His people. The divine judgment of the Holy God has been passed upon Him for our sins. And now God, in divine righteousness, is calling poor sinners, not to stand before Him as the Judge, but as the Justifier. Oh, blessed, Holy, Holy, Holy God, this makes all the difference! I cannot stand before Thee and justify myself, but Thou canst, Thou hast justified me, through the precious blood of Jesus. Oh, what a home is Thy presence now for me.