95. Songs In the Night (2)

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Hymns: RHC 173 There Is a Fountain, 201 According to Thy Gracious Word, 273 Jesus, I Come

Job 35:12-16

12 There they cry, but none giveth answer, because of the pride of evil men. 13 Surely God will not hear vanity, neither will the Almighty regard it.

14 Although thou sayest thou shalt not see him, yet judgment is before him; therefore trust thou in him. 15 But now, because it is not so, he hath visited in his anger; yet he knoweth it not in great extremity: 16 Therefore doth Job open his mouth in vain; he multiplieth words without knowledge.

Songs in the Night (2)

OUTLINE

  • Shouldn’t We Look to God in Times of Affliction? (v9-11)
  • Surely We will Find Help in Him! (v12-13)
  • Are We Looking to Him? (v14-16)

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  • Surely We will Find Help in Him! (v12-13)

12 There they cry, but none giveth answer, because of the pride of evil men. 13 Surely God will not hear vanity, neither will the Almighty regard it.

They are proud and unhumbled under their afflictions, which were sent to mortify them and to hide pride from them (v12): There they cry – there they lie exclaiming against their oppressors, and filling the ears of all about them with their complaints, not sparing to reflect upon God Himself and His providence–but none gives answer. God does not work deliverance for them, and perhaps men do not much regard them; and why so? [Matthew Henry]

Barnes observed well, “The pride of men so rebellious, and so disposed to complain of God, is the reason why they do not appeal to Him to sustain them and give them relief. This is still as true as it was in the time of Elihu. The pride of the heart, even in affliction, is the true reason with multitudes why they do not appeal to God, and why they do not pray. They have valued themselves on their independence of spirit. They have been accustomed to rely on their own resources. They have been unwilling to recognize their dependence on any being whatever. Even in their trials, the heart is too wicked to acknowledge God, and they would be ashamed to be known to do what they regard as so weak a thing as “to pray.” 

Hence, they complain in their afflictions; they linger on in their sufferings without consolation, and then die without hope. However inapplicable, therefore, this solution of the difficulty may have been to the case of Job, it is “not” inapplicable to the case of multitudes of sufferers. “Many of the afflicted have no peace or consolation in their trials – no ‘songs in the night’ – because they are too proud to pray!””

How sad it is for men to reject God to their own destruction. It is sad to see the gospel of life rejected and a man struggling in vain with sickness that will eventually lead to eternal death. It pains the heart to see this, especially if it’s a loved one.

Alas, the hardness of man’s heart. Elihu attributed it to pride. The oldest sin and most destructive to the soul.

They are not sincere, and upright, and inward with God, in their supplications to Him, and therefore He does not hear and answer them (v13): God will not hear vanity, that is, the hypocritical prayer, which is a vain prayer, coming out of feigned lips. It is a vanity to think that God should hear it, who searches the heart and requires truth in the inward part. [Matthew Henry]

  • Are We Looking to Him? (v14-16)

14 Although thou sayest thou shalt not see him, yet judgment is before him; therefore trust thou in him. 15 But now, because it is not so, he hath visited in his anger; yet he knoweth it not in great extremity: 16 Therefore doth Job open his mouth in vain; he multiplieth words without knowledge.

Christopher Ash said insightfully, “Elihu is not saying there are no people on earth who cry out in faith, pictured by the widow in Jesus’ story in Luke 18. That would contradict many Biblical counterexamples. 

But he is saying that there are people many people whose cry is not a prayer. The point of this becomes evident when, in verses 14–16, he homes in on Job himself. 

Job has complained that he cannot “see” God, that his “case is before” God, and he is just waiting and waiting for God to hear his case (v14). 

He is perplexed that God does not punish evildoers and seems not to notice transgression (v. 15). 

But his problem is that his talk about God is “empty” (v16), just like the “empty cry” of the people described in verses 9–13. 

In a phrase echoed by the Lord in 38:2, Elihu describes Job as speaking “words without knowledge” (v16).

So what is Elihu saying to Job? He is telling Job that as long as he keeps saying these outrageous and impious things about God, he cannot expect God to answer him. God will not answer his cries any more than He can be expected to answer the cries of other sufferers who do not cry to Him from faith. 

Elihu is giving Job “the wounds of a . . . faithful . . . friend” (Proverbs 27:6); he is telling Job what he needs to hear. In his rough and uncompromising way, he is doing Job far more good than the soppy sympathy of one who dares compromise with the name of God. 

He is challenging head-on our natural and instinctive but sinful expectation that by our virtue we can put God in our debt and that in our painful cries we have a right to have God listen to us. Neither is true, for God is above and beyond us, unchangeable in His nature and consistent in His determination to listen only to the prayers of those who seek Him because he is God, and not because of what they hope to gain from Him.”

CONCLUSION

For the people of God suffering in a trial, let us go to Him and look to Him and seek Him in faith, knowing that He will not try us more than we can bear. Amen.