Audio Transcript
Good Monday morning. We begin this new week deep in Job, in case you are studying the Navigators Bible Studying Plan with us. If that’s the case, you’re in Job 36:1–15 immediately, which features a line that raised two perplexing questions within the thoughts of Chloé, a listener.
“Pastor John, good day and thanks for APJ. It’s an exquisite useful resource,” she writes. Thanks, Chloé. “My query for you is a few verse in Job from the mouth of eloquent Elihu. I do know you belief what he says, primarily based on what I heard you say in APJs 1488 and 1867.” Sure, and I’ll insert what you simply stated final month in APJ 2099. “My questions for you’re about Elihu’s declare in Job 36:15: ‘He [God] delivers the bothered by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity.’
“Two questions for you. First, how does God ship us from our affliction by affliction? And second, what sorts of struggling would God use in our personal lives to get our consideration immediately? For the believer, will there be any mistaking it when it comes into our lives, when God is attempting to ‘open our ears’ by it? Is it potential for us to overlook it?”
At any time when I communicate or write about affliction and struggling and ache, I do know that I’m treading very delicate floor, as a result of what tens of millions of individuals expertise of their ache is worse than something I’ve ever recognized. And I have to be so cautious to not be lighthearted or breezy or facile or simplistic.
I recall one time being within the hospital after a surgical procedure — my very own surgical procedure — when the nurses instructed me, “Now, inform us when the ache turns into unmanageable, and we’ll provide you with one thing that can assist you with it.” So, I made a decision late one evening that I used to be going to see how far this goes. I’m going to see how far I can take it earlier than I ask for any painkiller. And I lay there for a number of hours simply watching it mount. You recognize, they are saying, “Give me a 1 to 10.” It’s transferring from 3 to five to six. And there got here a degree the place I pushed a button and I requested the nurse for reduction, and he or she gave me one thing, and inside fifteen or twenty minutes it was over.
And I’m simply so conscious that tens of millions and tens of millions of individuals all over the world don’t have any button to push, they usually dwell they usually die with out reduction. So, I hope that victims who’re listening to me now will really feel just a bit little bit of empathy and sympathy for what I do know I can’t totally think about.
Now, Chloé asks three questions on Elihu’s phrases in Job 36:15: “[God] delivers the bothered by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity.” She requested, primary, how does God do that? Quantity two, what sorts of struggling does he use to do it? And quantity three, can we ever miss out on what he’s doing? Will we fail to know this ear-opening work of God?
1. How God Delivers with Affliction
So, first, how does God do that? It is perhaps one thing as simple as a good friend of mine who was in a automotive accident in her early twenties and broke her leg. That affliction, as they set the bone, enabled them to identify a most cancers in her left calf. It was lower out deeply — she has the scar to today. She’s alive in her seventies and can be useless had she not damaged her leg they usually noticed the most cancers. So, the affliction of a damaged leg saves her life. She was delivered from affliction by affliction. It could possibly be that straightforward.
A biblical instance is 1 Samuel 29:1–11, the place Achish, the king of the Philistines, bear in mind, refused to let David go along with him as a result of his common didn’t like the concept of David combating with the Philistine military, as a result of he’s going to activate them. And so, the king gained’t let David and his males go. He doesn’t belief them. David is livid. His males are ashamed. However they returned to Ziklag, their city, simply in time to search out that the entire city has been sacked by the Amalekites, and all of his possessions and all of his household have been taken away. And since they acquired there early, they have been in a position to observe them down, rescue all the products and all of the household, and save them. So, there they’re. The affliction of shaming saved his household. Now, I feel issues like which might be occurring in our lives on a regular basis.
“Typically God makes use of affliction to chop us off from a harmful path and set us again on the way in which of obedience and life.”
Listed here are three extra examples of how the Bible describes the deliverance of the bothered by their affliction. Psalm 119:67: “Earlier than I used to be bothered I went astray, however now I maintain your phrase.” So, generally God makes use of affliction to chop us off from a harmful path and set us again on the way in which of obedience and life. Hundreds of individuals have had a terrifying expertise of hallucinogenic medication that scared them so badly — you may actually say scared the hell (actually hell) out of them — that they stopped utilizing medication. They discovered a extra hopeful method ahead, and that affliction of terror saved their lives.
Psalm 119:71: “It’s good for me that I used to be bothered, that I would be taught your statutes.” Now, Martin Luther liked this textual content and stated that this was a key to biblical interpretation that almost all books on biblical interpretation don’t embody — specifically, struggling as a key. He stated there are two standard strategies of Bible interpretation. He known as them, in Latin, oratio (prayer) and meditatio (meditation). However he stated there’s a third key to rightly understanding the Bible — specifically, affliction or struggling: tentatio (trial). “It’s good for me that I used to be bothered, that I would be taught your statutes.” Struggling is a instructor of the Bible. God delivers us from faulty, superficial interpretations of Scripture by affliction.
Another, 2 Corinthians 1:9: Paul says that his affliction in Ephesus introduced him to the purpose of demise, after which he provides this: “That was to make us rely not on ourselves however on God who raises the useless.” So, generally God delivers us from self-reliance by knocking all of the props out from underneath our life in order that there’s just one reliance left: God and resurrection.
2. What Sufferings God Makes use of
Chloé’s second query is “What sorts of struggling does God use to ship us?” And the biblical reply actually is all kinds wanting last destruction. Paul makes use of that very phrase in 2 Corinthians 4:8: “We’re bothered in each method” — each method — “however not crushed.” That would come with even demise. Right here’s Isaiah 57:1: “The righteous man perishes, and nobody lays it to coronary heart. . . . For the righteous man is taken away from calamity.” So, by the calamity of demise, a righteous man could also be delivered from a calamity worse than demise.
3. How We Perceive God’s Designs
Chloé’s last query, third, is “Will we ever miss out on and perceive this ear-opening work of God in our lives?” She says, “Will there be any mistaking it when it comes into our lives?” And the reply is sure, we do miss it. And sure, there’s a mistaking of it.
“By the calamity of demise, a righteous man could also be delivered from a calamity worse than demise.”
Job missed it. He missed it. That’s one of many factors of the e-book. He accused God of being his enemy. He stated, “God is performing like he hates me” (see Job 16:9). He was fallacious about that. This is without doubt one of the details of the e-book: “I had heard of you by the listening to of the ear, however now my eye sees you; due to this fact I despise myself, and repent in mud and ashes” (Job 42:5–6). What did he repent from? He regretted that he had not seen extra clearly what God was doing. He didn’t see, and he accused God of heartlessness. So, sure, we will miss it and fail to submit with belief.
One of many essential causes Christians generally don’t undergo what God is doing of their struggling is that they’ve by no means been taught a biblical understanding of God’s sovereignty, his windfall, and the place of struggling within the Christian life. They only don’t know what the Bible says. They will scarcely think about themselves saying with the psalmist, “It’s good for me that I used to be bothered, that I would be taught your statutes” (Psalm 119:71). That’s simply international language. They haven’t been taught that that’s within the Bible or how to consider it.
So, all of us — dad and mom, pals, pastors, lecturers — want to show this stuff. That’s one of many causes the e-book of Job is within the Bible.
