Job has sin, even though God counts him righteous. Because "all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God." Only Jesus was sinless. However, God considered Job righteous due to his sacrifices for sin and his fear of God and his love for God. A progression happens. First, God accepts Job as righteous. Then God allows everything to be taken from him. Then, Job's friends accuse him, telling him he is not righteous. Job at first defends himself. Then he starts questioning God and saying he might as well have sinned the whole time for all it's gotten him. Elihu, a fourth friend, corrects everyone else, including Job. Elihu declares the majesty of God. He talks about how His ways are higher than ours, even unsearchable. In the end, God comes in a whirlwind and asks Job if he can answer how the stars were formed or how the waters were corraled into the sea. Job repents, and declares that the ways of God are unsearchable. Then, God says Job has spoken correctly about him, and the three accusing friends have not. Elihu is not mentioned.
First, it's good to explain why God says Job spoke correctly about Him. It wasn't the complaining and doubting that He was talking about throughout the chapter, it's what he says at the very beginning and the very end: that God is righteous and His ways are too wonderful for us to understand. About his complaining, Job said, "Therefore I have uttered what I do not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know." It's better to endure testing with a heart open to the Lord's goodness and love than to become bitter and question His goodness, but God will still wipe every tear from our eyes when we repent, even if we think this way, so that's important to understand.
Similarly, God corrects Job's friends. But why? Because they did not acknowledge that they too did not understand God's ways, as Job did when he says that he was speaking of things "too wonderful for" him. Instead, they condemned Job for his sins and assumed he must be suffering as punishment for being a wicked man in the eyes of God, who actually proclaimed Job to be righteous. It reminds me of the narrative of the Pharisees, who believed that every poor, lame, or crippled person was being punished for their own sin or their ancestors' sin. Even the disciples took this attitude, and they asked Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him (John 9:2-3 ESV)."
So people are not always disadvantaged because of sin, but that so the righteousness of God may be displayed in them! Again, on the same token, Job was not being punished for sin, but refined so that the works of God might be displayed through him!!! He received twice as much of everything that he ever had before, nothing broken, nothing missing.
Lastly, there's Elihu. Elihu is the only one of Job's friends who God does not correct! He was less advanced in years than the other three. He held his tongue during the whole discourse up until the end, then declared God's majesty and righteousness, and rebukes Job for thinking he can know better than God. This young man was blessed with wisdom beyond his years. Elihu then says, "He (God) does not withdraw His eyes from the righteous, but with kings on the throne he sets them forever, and they are exalted." (Job 36:7) Sounds a lot like being seated enthroned with Jesus Christ in heaven as described in Revelation. This is God speaking through Elihu, because only God can be this wise. Let's be like Elihu: when we see suffering, let's praise and worship God anyway. Even if we don't understand what happened, God uses all things for the good of those who love Him. Not all things that happen on earth are His will, but He will use even the evil done to us for our good if we cling to Him. Let's speak life to those who suffer. Life is only found in Yahweh and His Son Jesus Christ, who is enthroned in heaven and one day will come to judge the world. Let's give life: let's give Jesus.
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So how can we give Jesus in this day and age? We proclaim the truth in love and avoid being sucked in by false teachings and modern attitudes toward scripture being outdated. I don't know about you, but the only way I understand scripture is by studying it. I was studying it in preparation for this talk, and I feel God pointed out the book of Jude toward me. I feel Jude is describing the attitudes of worldly Christians toward scripture, and the world at large. They fall into "Balaam's error, as he calls it: So Jude writes,
"Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt,"
And I just want to take a second there to explain something, isn't it awesome that Jesus' time helping us humans was more than just 33 years while He was walking the Earth? It's easy to think that He only did things for 33 years, but Paul says all things were created through Him and for Him. The Gospel of John says He is the Word made flesh. So He is the "creative action" of God in the original Greek - God spoke the to create the universe, and Jesus, His Words, Created it. And not only did He create it, He now rules it with an iron scepter, as the Scriptures say. I just think that's awesome.
But coming back to Jude, after Jesus saved His people out of Egypt, He "destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.
I want to take a second to talk about these three things that Jude says these worldly people do: they defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. He's been talking a lot about sexual immorality so far, and that is what this world in this age is captured by. Sexual immorality is even in the church, but I pray the Lord rebukes those practicing it instead of destroying them. We need to understand that friendship with the world is enmity with God, and seeking the pleasures of this life only causes us to eat dust. Jesus wants us to walk with Him. He wants us to obey not out of fleshly desire for profit. Let me say that in another way: the profit He wants for us is not gold, but hearts. Hearts that we lead to God, which is profit in the spiritual world. Gain from wisdom is better than gain from silver and from gold, and the wisdom of God is to live for what is eternal, and not for what is carnal. The flesh and the desires of it are carnal, everything from sexual immorality to the love of money.
But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.” But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion. These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever."
Jude 1:5-13 ESV
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