His Mercies in Disguise (A Divine Vending Machine) Job 35

Upon hearing Chuck Swindoll announce yet another sermon on Job, a young daughter asked her father, “Daddy was I five or six when Pastor Chuck started preaching on Job?”


We started these “Conversations from the Ash Heap” in the last decade (November of 2009); we should be done by the end of this decade.


Just kidding.


Sort of.


It’s good for us to take a trip back to the beginning for a few moments to remind ourselves of the awful plight of this man and the display of his enduring faith through all of the hellish nights of pain and loneliness. Warren Wiersbe paints the scene for us, “There the city garbage was deposited and burned, and there the city’s rejects lived, begging alms from whomever passed by. At the ash heap, dogs fought over something to eat, and the city’s dung was brought and burned. The city’s leading citizen was now living in abject poverty and shame. All that he humanly had left were his wife and three friends, and even they turned against him.”


Throughout the book Job has forcefully defended his integrity. But in so doing he has also questioned God as to why he should be treated so harshly. Hearing this, Elihu interprets Job’s avowals of innocence as him saying, “I am more righteous than God!” Hartley writes, “…while Job has not uttered those exact words (I am more righteous than God), he has so fervently defended his innocence and so vigorously accused God of treating him unjustly that he seems to have claimed for himself a righteousness that surpasses God's.” (Page 463)


35:1 Then Elihu continued and said, 2 “Do you think this is according to justice? Do you say, ’My righteousness is more than God’s’? 3 For you say, ’What advantage will it be to You? What profit will I have, more than if I had sinned?’”


The New Living Translation renders verse 3 this way, “For you also ask, ’What’s in it for me? What’s the use of living a righteous life?’” Elihu’s misrepresentation of Job’s words comes strikingly close to the charges of Satan from chapter one: “Job only serves You God because of what he can get out of it.”


And The Message puts verse three this way, “And then you say, ‘It doesn’t make a bit of difference whether I’ve sinned or not.’” Elihu seems to be saying that Job believes, “What is the point of sinning or not sinning?” Mason writes, “Once again Elihu puts words into Job’s mouth, and in the process not only misquotes him but grossly misrepresents his position.”


35:4 “I will answer you, and your friends with you. 5 Look at the heavens and see; and behold the clouds—they are higher than you. 6 If you have sinned, what do you accomplish against Him? And if your transgressions are many, what do you do to Him? 7 If you are righteous, what do you give to Him, or what does He receive from your hand? 8 Your wickedness is for a man like yourself, and your righteousness is for a son of man.”


Bradley writes, “If it is true that because God is so great and so high, the innocence or guilt of a petty human being is a matter of profound indifference to his Maker, on the ground that it can bring Him neither gain nor loss, we are landed, we see at once, on a very gloomy shore…”


Professor Elihu in effect says, “Job if you can't affect the nearest cloud for good or evil, how can you affect God? If we can't reach the visible heavens, how can we reach to the invisible?”


Read again this passage from The Message: 35:4 “Well, I’m going to show you that you don’t know what you’re talking about, neither you nor your friends. 5 Look up at the sky. Take a long hard look. See those clouds towering above you? 6 If you sin, what difference could that make to God? No matter how much you sin, will it matter to him? 7 Even if you’re good, what would God get out of that? Do you think he’s dependent on your accomplishments? 8 The only ones who care whether you’re good or bad are your family and friends and neighbors. God’s not dependent on your behavior.”


It seems to me that Elihu, in wanting to call attention to the impartiality of God, has instead drifted toward a theology of indifference on the part of El-Shaddai.


Is God impartial? Yes. Is God indifferent? Absolutely not! I think Elihu would be surprised to meet the Jesus of Luke 19:41, “When He saw the city He wept over it.” Francis I Anderson writes, “Elihu doesn't have a sufficiently personal understanding of God to believe that God can be delighted with a good man, and grieved by sin.”


35:9 “Because of the multitude of oppressions they cry out; they cry for help because of the arm of the mighty. 10 But no one says, ’Where is God my Maker, Who gives songs in the night, 11 Who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds of the heavens?’ 12 There they cry out, but He does not answer because of the pride of evil men.”


The progression of thought seems to be this:
1. People cry out and complain because bad things are happening to them
2. But, unlike the beasts and the birds, they don't necessarily cry out to God
3. Our Maker has given us more wisdom and knowledge than the beasts and birds, but it doesn’t seemed to have helped
4. And when they do pray, their prayers are not answered because of the pride, not of the oppressor, but of those being oppressed


And did you catch that portion of verse 12? “…He does not answer, because…” We’ll come back to that.


35:13 “Surely God will not listen to an empty cry, nor will the Almighty regard it. 14 “How much less when you say you do not behold Him, The case is before Him, and you must wait for Him! 15 “And now, because He has not visited in His anger, nor has He acknowledged transgression well, 16 so Job opens his mouth emptily; He multiplies words without knowledge."


“An empty cry” (verse 13) is how Elihu characterizes all of the praying of Job, and is obviously (according to Elihu) the reason why Job has not been healed! David Guzik writes, “Elihu saw that God had not yet answered Job, at least not in any way that Job had hoped. Therefore he said ‘Job opens his mouth in vain.’ The idea was, ‘Job, if you were really a godly man, then God would have answered you by now. The fact that He hasn’t shows your ungodliness.’”


(In actuality God was regarding the prayer of Job and regarding it with great concern!)


"He does not answer, because…"


Elihu’s theology of prayer is reduced to a simple mechanical formula. To him, God is no more majestic than the vending machine in the company break room. Your bag of Doritos didn’t fall out the chute when you hit D-8? Well the Vending Machine did not answer because you obviously didn’t put in the right amount of money or you didn’t push the right buttons. Or perhaps you didn’t shake the machine correctly. It’s as simple as that.


There is no mystery, there is no majesty; all is scrutable and all is fathomable.


“He does not answer, because…”


Elihu would have been much wiser to say, “Hey Job I don’t know why the answers haven’t come, but I want you and your wife to know that my friends and I are interceding for you. Oh, and can I maybe help out by changing your bandages? Or maybe me and my buddies could take some food to a few of the families that lost loved ones on that horrible day…”

At Ash Heap Seminary God only “seemed” to be distant. Just over the horizon and just beyond the view of the students a supernatural storm cloud was beginning to take shape.

In the struggle to understand it is so easy to lose sight of the love of God. Job’s ash heap existence had swallowed up any evidence of the mercy of God. But what if the ash heap was only the mercies of God in disguise?  What if His healing comes through tears?  What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know He's near?  These last few lines are the lyrics from the song "Blessings" by Laura Story.  Perhaps this YouTube video/song will minister to your heart: "Blessings" by Laura Story