I was wondering how I was going to write this week's Monday follow-up, because just about everybody can be worldly wise, but few people know how to find a person who is a source of true, Godly wisdom. And so this morning as I was backtracking into some readings I had missed in our "Read the Bible in one year" reading plan, I hit a section of verses from the book of Job that I considered a gift from God.
Job 32:1-9
So these three men stopped answering Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes. 2 But Elihu son of Barakel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, became very angry with Job for justifying himself rather than God. 3 He was also angry with the three friends, because they had found no way to refute Job, and yet had condemned him. 4 Now Elihu had waited before speaking to Job because they were older than he. 5 But when he saw that the three men had nothing more to say, his anger was aroused.
6 So Elihu son of Barakel the Buzite said: "I am young in years, and you are old; that is why I was fearful, not daring to tell you what I know. 7 I thought, 'Age should speak; advanced years should teach wisdom.' 8 But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding. 9 It is not only the old who are wise, not only the aged who understand what is right.
Pay careful attention to two things:
1) Elihu has quietly stood just outside the spotlight throughout the entire conversation, giving his elders a chance to speak. He expected their wisdom to be greater than his own, and so did not speak. He expected to learn, so he listened. This immediately marks Elihu as a man of great humility and wisdom, for the wise are always thirsting for more wisdom. I suspect that when he speaks, he will be someone worth listening to.
2) When the time is ripe, Elihu speaks, and speaks boldly. For he recognizes that his words of wisdom are not really his at all, but they are the wisdom of God. Elihu puts no trust in himself nor in his ability to think and reason, but he leans upon God and His understanding. What Elihu's character suggested is now confirmed: This is a man of Godly wisdom and someone worth listening to.
Elihu's words in the following chapters are wise because they point Job not to himself and not to his circumstances, but to God. He speaks wise words that encourage Job to consider his proper place before God as being one that answers to Him and not the other way around. His Godly wisdom exhorts Job to have a repentant and humble heart, a heart that acknowledges God's great holiness and trusts in God's great forgiveness.
In short, Elihu speaks words of Godly wisdom that the world does not possess and that those in the world cannot understand. The older men--Job's so-called "friends"--probably considered his words foolishness. But to Job, perishing but longing for salvation, Elihu's message of repentance and faith is the power of God and the wisdom of God..
Genuine humility marks a person of Godly wisdom, and God's wisdom helps make a person humble. Find a person who has both of those traits, and that person will be someone worth listening to, for they will teach you the wisdom of the cross.
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." Proverbs 3:5
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