Job 33

Job 33:1

THE CREATOR INSTRUCTS THROUGH DISCIPLINENow Elihu has something to say. He is going to insist on several great truths.

Job 33:3

My friend, this is a great truth. God is my Creator. Elihu is going to speak by the spirit of God. He says that the other men haven’t been able to answer Job, and now he is going to try. Peter, in his epistle, wrote, “If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God …” (1Pe_4:11). I would like to write these words in the chapels of every seminary in this country. If a minister is not speaking for God (I don’t mean to be crude, but I am going to say it anyway), he should shut up! He has no business talking. After I had been speaking in the San Francisco Bay area, a man said to me, “You sound very dogmatic.” I said, “Yes, I’m glad it got through to you that I am dogmatic.” “Well,” he said, “there are other ways of looking at the Bible.” I discovered that he was a legalist. He said, “Have you ever thought that there might be another explanation?” I told him, “Yes.

There was a time when I thought there were several ways a man could come to God. But after many years of study I have come to the conclusion that the way God saves is by grace, and I am dogmatic about it. I am dogmatic about quite a few things in the Word of Godbecause the Word of God is dogmatic. I am dogmatic about the deity of Jesus Christ, that He is the Son of God. I am dogmatic about the fact that He is virgin born, that He performed miracles, that He died a substitutionary death, that He rose bodily from the grave, that He ascended to heaven, that He is seated today at God’s right hand, that He is the living Christ right now, and that He is coming back someday. Brother, I am dogmatic!” The fellow looked at me and said, “Then I guess there is no use in my talking with you.” I said, “If you have a different viewpoint, you would be wasting your time, I can assure you.” My friend, let me say it as Peter said it, “If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God.” Of course there is such a thing as dogmatic ignorance.

But the point I am making is that when you are quoting the Bible, if you are not sure it is the Word of God, then you have nothing to say at all. Unbelief is always dumb. It has nothing to say. I don’t mean that it doesn’t talkit talks a great deal. But any ministry is powerless, valueless, and fruitless unless a man is speaking as the oracles of God.

Job 33:5

Job has been wanting a man to represent him before God. This young fellow, Elihu, is willing to do that. He says, “I’m made of the same clay you are made of.” He wants to stand as a mediator between Job and God. Obviously, he is not the man, but it reveals the great need for the incarnation of our Lord. He must be a Mediator so He must be God, but He must also be of the same clay as we are.

Job 33:7

Elihu had been listening to all the preceding conversation and had heard that Job considered himself innocent and that he found fault with God. Now Elihu tells Job that God is greater than man and not responsible to man.

Job 33:10

He makes the great statement that God is greater than man. It is a simple statement; yet it is great because so many folk take the place of God. Many Christians propose to tell you why certain things happen. Some Christians speak as if they have a private line into heaventhey get the latest right off the wire. I doubt that sincerely. There is a great deal that none of us know.

Job 33:13

Job needs to understand that God didn’t need to report back to any board. He is not responsible to any group, nor is He subject to public opinion. My friend, God is not responsible to either you or me. He doesn’t have to give an answer to us. He is not accountable to us. Some people say, “Oh, why does God let this happen to me?” I don’t know why, my friend; all I know is that God is not accountable to you. He doesn’t have to tell you the reason why. He doesn’t have to tell me the reason why. He has asked me to trust Him. He has never promised that He would take me out of the darkness, but He says, “Put your hand in My hand and I will lead you through the darkness.” He has not promised to explain everything to us. He has asked us to trust Him!

Job 33:14

We must recognize that since we have the completed Bible, we do not need to trust any dream that we have had. However, way out on the frontier where the gospel has not gone, I think you will find that God still uses this method.

Job 33:16

The problem with Job was that he had an awful diseaseit was cancer of the spirit: pride. Oh, the proud heart of man! And I see it in my own life. Do you see it in yours? How we need to grovel in the dust and put on sackcloth and ashes because of the kind of folk we are. Elihu says here that God instructs men through discipline. Job’s false reasoning is a very simple thing. He did not understand the character of God; so he did not understand God’s dealings with him. But God was dealing with Job, and He wanted to “hide pride” from him. He wanted to take pride out of that man’s life. Job was a good man; he was a great man. But he was a low-down sinner just like you are and just like I am. Because we are sinners, pride creeps into our lives. For example, we get angry with individuals who dare criticize us. God “withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous …” (Job_36:7). We are in His hands, and we are under His eye continually. We are the objects of His deep and tender and unchanging love, but we are also the subject of His wise and moral government. He doesn’t want spoiled brats as His children!

Job 33:29

God often instructs men through discipline. God uses it to deliver his soul from going into “the pit.”

Job 33:31

God still wants to do the same thing for believers today. We need to consider the exhortation given us in Hebrews: “For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him” (Heb_12:3-5). Then drop down to verse Heb_12:11: “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Heb_12:11). There are three distinct ways in which we may meet the chastening of our Heavenly Father: (1) We can despise it as though His hand and His voice were not in it.

We can ignore God. (2) We may faint under it. When we do that, it is real defeat. Job had had both these reactions, by the way. But what are we to do? (3) We are to be exercised by it so that it will produce the fruit of righteousness in our lives. God does permit trouble to come to His own, and He chastens every son whom He receives. That is the great purpose that is behind all that has been happening to Job.

God is going to bring it to a tremendous consummation.