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Welcome to Five Minute Bible, your daily guide for your daily reading. Today is
January the 12th, and we'll be looking at Job 32 through 34. Now today's reading introduces a new voice into the book of Job.
Job 32 through 34 marks a transition from the exhausted debate that's been going on between Job and his friends to the final human attempt at explanation before God himself will speak.
We remain, as you remember, in the patriarchal world without law or priesthood, but in these chapters, the tone is shifting.
Elihu enters the conversation younger and sharper and more confident than his elders.
He's convinced that clarity, precision, and energy can succeed where age and experience and maybe passivity have failed.
In chapter 32, Elihu explains why he has waited to speak until the very end and why he now believes it is time for him to offer his case.
He's younger than the others, yet he's certain that wisdom comes from God rather than age alone.
His restraint quickly gives way to urgency. In chapters 33 through 34, Elihu rebukes both sides of this debate.
He corrects Job's friends for condemning Job unjustly, and he also corrects Job for questioning
God's righteousness. Elihu presents suffering as divine discipline, meant to instruct, to correct, and to rescue us rather than merely punish us.
His theology is much tighter. His categories are much more careful, and his confidence is unmistakable.
Now, as you read today, I want you to ask the following question. Can clarity and accuracy and passion for theology substitute for humility before God?
Elihu believes that he can say what the others could not. He speaks with conviction and precision where the others failed, yet the deeper question presses in.
Does knowing more about God mean that we are qualified to speak for God?
See, the central tension in Job 32 through 34 is youthful confidence resting in human ability.
Elihu says many things that are wonderful and true. He affirms God's justice. He rejects the shallow condemnation of Job's friends.
He understands that suffering can instruct rather than simply punish, and yet beneath his accuracy lies a familiar human instinct, the belief that we have that clearer thinking, stronger arguments, and better theology can finally at last resolve the mystery of human suffering.
Elihu's weakness is not ignorance, but his misplaced confidence. He trusts in his insight and his vigor, his certainty and his correctness quietly, and yet this is the danger of strength without restraint, the assumption that understanding entitles us to explanation.
Elihu's presence exposes humanity's need for more than just improved theology.
We need incarnation. Elihu speaks with better thinking than all the others, but yet he still speaks from a human vantage point, and Jesus Christ fulfills what
Elihu cannot, because Christ doesn't come merely to interpret God's ways.
He is God's way. He doesn't explain suffering at a distance. He enters into it.
Where Elihu believes discipline explains suffering, Christ bears judgment in order to redeem it.
Where Elihu trusts in his clarity, Christ trusts in the Father completely, even unto death.
Job teaches us, and Elihu teaches us that wisdom cannot arise from youthful strength or seasoned experience or from what books you've read or doctrines you've studied.
It must come from God himself. It must be a gift, and in Christ, God speaks with the gift of wisdom, not with speculation, but with authority and perfect grace.
As you read Job 32 through 34, I want you to listen carefully. Elihu sounds compelling.
Much of what he says is true, and yet there's still something missing in his points. The conversation has not reached its goal.
Human wisdom, young and old, has spoken, but now the moment arrives that Job has long awaited.
God himself is about to answer and to tell us where true wisdom is found, true wisdom especially in the midst of suffering.
And with that, read your Bible carefully, devotionally and joyfully, and may the Lord use his word to sanctify you completely, and we will continue our journey tomorrow.