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Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango, and I'm your host for the Bible Department podcast, powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. Welcome to day 322 here on the Bible Department podcast. I'm super excited to jump into job, chapter 32 and 33 today. Today we've got a brand new character who's just literally appearing out of nowhere. His name is Elihu. Elihu. And we don't really know much about Elihu. We know he's young. We know that he's been patiently waiting to kind of add his two cents to the conversation that's been happening between Job and his friends. And today we're just gonna dive into the first part of his speech to Job and the friends, or really the first speech that he's gonna give. That's what we got on the docket today for job, chapter 32 and 33. Hey, if you haven't read these two pretty short chapters out of the book of Job, how about you stop this video, pause the audio, go get the reading done for the day? I promise you, watching this episode is going to have so much more value if you actually come into the episode having done the reading for the day. So I want to just say that today and tomorrow, we'll be looking at Elihu's speech. So we'll be kind of be wrapping our minds around this one character for two days in a row. Okay. Today we're looking at job, chapter 32 to 33. So for anyone who needs context, I'll just kind of map out how this section of monologues works. We've got Job's monologue, which we looked at yesterday, which is job, chapter 29 and 31. And then chapters 32 to 37 is a monologue by a man named Elihu. And then after that, we're going to get a monologue from Yahweh. So let's just zoom in to Elihu's monologue because he's going to actually give three separate speeches. Okay? He's gonna give an introduction, a speech, another speech, another speech, then a conclusion. So I would say job, chapter 32 feels like an introduction. All right? He starts off in verse six. I'm young in years and you're old. That is why I was fearful not daring to tell you what I know. I thought age should speak. Advanced years should teach wisdom. But it is the spear in a person, the breath of the Almighty, that gives them understanding. I agree with that. There are a handful of people where I'm. Man, I know I'm only 38, and I know you may be 60, but I know that I have the wisdom to. To pastor you. I. I know that. I know that the Lord has spoken to me. So I'm. I'm with Elihu, man. I. I can rock with Elihu. It says to the friends, okay? And really, I. I would say his speech, in my opinion, doesn't really start until chapter 33, okay? Because he's responding to the friends for a while. He says, I, too, will tell you what I know. I waited while you spoke. I listened to your reasoning while you were searching for words. I gave you my full attention. But not one of you has proved Job wrong. None of you has answered his arguments. That's verse 12. Okay? Verse 13. Do not say we have found wisdom. Let God, not a man, refute him. But Job has not marshaled his words against me, and I will not answer him with your arguments. They are dismayed and have no more to say. Words have failed them. So Ellie, who's essentially basic claim to the three friends is like, just because you're old doesn't mean you're wise. Just because you're old doesn't mean you know what you're talking about. You're. You're older than me, but I'm a young buck. I got something to say. Okay, so, Joe, chapter 32 is an introduction slash response to these friends, Job's friends, Job's old friends. And then once we get in chapter 33, we get full blown. You know, we're. We're responding to Job. Elihu is responding to Job. And I would say. I would still say chapter 32 and 33 are speech one. It's just that some of speech one is directed to the friends, and some of speech one is directed to Job. And that portion where it's directed to friends kind of feels like a little bit of an introduction, but speech one nonetheless. Job, chapter 34, which we'll start looking at tomorrow, is speech number two. Okay? This is Elihu's second speech. And then Job, chapter 35, this is Elihu's third speech. So he's going to give three speeches total. And then Job, chapter 36 and 37 is Elihu's conclusion. All right, so that's just context. Okay? We don't know who Elihu is. He's a brand New character. He appears out of nowhere. He gives multiple speeches, obviously, then disappears, and nobody responds to him. Job doesn't respond to him. The Job's friends don't respond to him. Elihua is young and has been there all along. He's listened to everything that all the friends have had to say. So odd. I like this. The whole him as a character is just odd. Now, what he has to say is fascinating, and we're going to dive into that now as we transition into our nerdy nuggets for the day. All right, Essentially, Elihu's main argument to Job is like, you're claiming that God's not talking, but God's definitely talking. You're claiming that, like, you want God to answer you or to respond, but he's responded. Okay, it says this in verse 14, Job, chapter 33. And again, if you take these verses out of context, they are so good. Oh, man, it's just. He's just freaking wrong. But, like, this is such an odd place where, like, most of the time verses taken out of context are, like, terrible, right? That makes no sense out of context. It only makes sense in context. These passages from Elihu, but also Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophara are all, like, out of context. These sound amazing. Like, this makes so much sense if. If I didn't know that. Context proves that you guys are freaking idiots and you're wrong. Okay, so let's. Let's look at chapter 33, verse 14 together. It says this, Job, chapter 33, verse 14. Let's look at it together. For God does speak. Now, one way, now another. Okay? Hey, Job, I know you're saying God's not talking to you, but God does speak. Okay, now, one way, now another, though no one perceives it says, hey, you've got a perception problem. You got a hearing problem, not a talking problem. God's talking. God speaking. You don't perceive it, and that's the actual issue. And then it says, he may speak in the ears and terrify them with warnings to turn them from wrongdoing, to keep them from pride, to prevent them from the pit, their lives from perishing by the sword. Or someone may be chastened on a bed of pain with constant distress in their bones, so that their body finds food repulsive in their soul loathes the choices meal, their flesh wastes away to nothing, and their bones, once hidden, now stick out. They draw near to the pit and their life to the messengers of death. Yet if there is an angel at their side, a messenger, one out Of a thousand. Send to them. Send to them how to be upright. Okay, so what is Elihu saying? He's saying God does speak. He just doesn't speak the way that you want him to speak. God speaks through dreams, in visions of the night when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber on their beds. And he may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings. So God speaks in ways that are not comfortable. And not only does God speaks in, you know, bad dreams and nightmares, not only does God speak in a way that terrifies people while they're in the middle of the night, while they're sleeping, but he also chastened people. He also disciplines people. He also sends suffering. And in the middle of suffering, guess what happens? We begin to hear God's voice. And when you think about it, Elihu ain't wrong. My brother is not wrong. Okay? This is the tension with the book of Job, period. But it's also the tension of just the friends or characters. I don't know if Elihu would be considered a friend, but he's a character that is responding to Job. Okay? Elihu then seems to be arguing that God is speaking, but Job isn't listening. Job has had nightmares. We know this in Job 7:14. Job has been sick. These were both God speaking, but Job wasn't listening. The nightmares and the boils, the sickness, this was God speaking. According to Elihu, sometimes God speaks through an angel or messenger. So God speaks, sometimes God speaks through other people. Elihu is saying that God is speaking to Job through what is happening to him. But Job isn't listening. Job must observe his life and learn what God is saying so that God can redeem him. Man, that's fascinating. Now here's the tension. Generally speaking, what Elihu's saying is pretty spot on. I would add a caveat, though. There's a caveat. I think that God can redeem suffering. But I don't think God causes suffering to happen just so that he can get people's attention. So I've heard this in church a lot. Like, man, God sent me a wake up call, man, my mama got cancer. That was God sending me a wake up call. I don't know if that was God sending you a wake up call. I think life sucks. The enemy attacks people with cancer. I think your mom got cancer, okay? God used that to serve as a wake up call, okay? And as long as we've got that nuance, I'm cool. But the moment we start getting down the road of like, God did this on Purpose. He actively did this so that I could get a wake up call. Woo. That is. That's hard. That's going to be a tough pill for, for me to swallow. I know there's other people, maybe that's fine with you, but man, that says a lot about God. Like, at least it does to me. And I know everybody's not gonna agree. And my goal on this podcast is not to just get a bunch of people to agree with me. I actually would love nothing more than for people to disagree with me because that means we're wrestling with ideas, which is the point. So, man, God sent me a wake up call. My mom got. Got cancer. I. I think that God can speak through hard things, but I don't think it's like God is sending the hard thing on purpose to get people's attention. But that's Elihu's stance. He's saying, look, he may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings to turn them from wrongdoing, to keep them from pride, to preserve them from the pit, their lives from perishing by the sword. So Elihu is claiming that even if night terrors or, you know, physical suffering and pain results in that person not going down to the pit to sheol, like, dying and losing out on the pleasure and the privileges of afterlife, God essentially goes, yes, it's worth it. It's worth it to send some pain now so that this person doesn't have to experience eternal separation from me. And I think theologically that is, that's gonna be a hard position for me to like, to take. But I do, I do get that it's a position. And I'm not even saying that people who hold that position are wrong, but I am saying it's not the position that I would hold. Okay, so that's that. All right, now let's kind of ease into our timeless truth for the day family. The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is, is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble, or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of Scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the Chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. In a real way, in a very, very, very real way, Elihu is saying something that's very true. And I'm going to quote C.S. lewis because Elihu's not that far off from saying the same thing that, like, C.S. lewis like, said. Okay. In the Problem of Pain. Incredible writing, by the way. Like, if you haven't read the Problem of Pain, you should read it. It says this. This is just a quote taken straight out of the Brahma pain. It says, God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Again, the problem of pain. And I agree with CS Lewis that a lot of times pain and suffering can become a wake up call. But I would still just be at. Hey, we're at. God has allowed said pain and suffering to happen. Not God has authored this pain and suffering to happen. And I'm cool with God allowing it to happen and then using it and not letting anything be a waste, but making sure that if there's gonna be pain or suffering, that he is helping to redeem it and get the most good out of it as humanly possible. I'm completely comfortable with that. So now here's the, the, the. The big thing. And this is what Elihu's speech is really setting us up for. Okay? Whether Yahweh has or hasn't spoken to Job through his, you know, nightmares or through his physical suffering, we don't know. We have no idea. But what we do know is that God is about to speak in a couple of chapters. And, man, Job could have heard what Yahweh has to say with or without all of the physical and emotional and financial pain that Job has gone through. So whether Yahweh has or hasn't spoken to Job, we don't know. What we know, though, as a fact, is that God is certainly about to talk to Job. So is it true? Like, has God been trying to speak to Job through all this drama? Maybe. We don't know. There's no way to know that for sure. But is God about to speak? Oh, yes, he is. And I just want to use that as an encouragement for you today. Maybe you're going through something very, very difficult, and up until this point, you don't think God has spoken. But can I tell you something? He can. And he wants to. And Elihu is right about the fact that God is always communicating. The real question is, are we in a position to hear him, to communicate back, not just to communicate with him, but have him communicate with us. And my challenge for anybody who's walking through a really, really, really hard season is to really hunker down on hearing the voice of, of the Lord. Because hearing the voice of the Lord can, can honestly sustain you for years while you're going through a really, really, really difficult time or difficult trial or difficult season. So I would admonish anyone who's heard, who's heard like this episode today and is. And it's just like, man, I don't know if I agree. Like, I've gone through a lot of pain and I just don't know if God's speaking to me in it. Whether or not he has does not determine whether or not he can and will. And so I'm believing that you will hear God's voice in the middle of pain, even if you haven't already. Because God does use pain to really, really, really communicate with us. But you gotta be intentional about going through pain and finding not as the silver lining, but finding what God wants to reveal to you in the middle of pain. And that's not just true for Job and his friends. That's true for you and I. Tomorrow we've got day three, 23. We're going to be looking at the rest of Elihu's speech or speeches. We got job chapters 34 to 37. Tomorrow. I'm super, super excited. I feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. After tomorrow, we only got two days left, so we're flying through these. Love you guys. If you're on a streak, I'm so, so, so, so, so proud of you. If you're not on a streak, I love you. There's no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus. I'll see you right here tomorrow, same time, same place. God bless you. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show@thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.