Good Morning!
On today’s Tuesday prayer and worship help we are going to look into something that most of us are not particular good at…listening. In the Sabbath School lesson last Lord’s Day we took a bird’s eye view of the interactions between Elihu and Job beginning in Job 32, and if you were there you remember that Job did not actually “interact” with Elihu. Elihu did all the talking, and Job all the taking.
For five chapters Elihu runs his mouth, and exhibits quite a bit of ignorance in doing so. He’d started off well by waiting his turn, as should have been the case for his being the youngest of Job’s inquisitors. Yet it becomes evident that Elihu wasn’t paying any attention to what Job was saying in response to the other three friend’s questions. Elihu was still operating under a faulty understanding of who God is and what this dark providence meant for Job. It was also evident that Elihu had no intention of having Job change his mind on the subject. This comes largely because he was not listening to what Job was saying. Instead of contemplating the meat of Job’s message, Elihu was instead waiting for an opportunity to pounce and get his two cents in. He’d loaded the gun of his tongue and couldn’t wait to pull the trigger.
Now, if we are honest with ourselves this is far too often how we engage in conversation with people. Especially if we are heatedly arguing or even if we are in some kind of informal debate, whether it be on a matter that means something or a trivial esoteric point.
Pride wells up and becomes the focus of the conversation on our end.
We often only care about being right and then gaining the victory rather than face the abominable consequence of just admitting to being flat out wrong. So we look for weakness and probe for a crack to exploit like a lioness circling a wounded zebra. Then when opportunity comes…BOOM! We gain the laurels of first place. However, once we do a little after-action report in our mind it doesn’t always seem like receiving the trophy came with the blessings of the winner’s circle. There is regret, shame, though you are not going to let someone else see that this is the case.
Unfortunately for Elihu, maybe eternally, by the time Job 38 rolls around it isn’t Job who had enough, it was Jehovah. He responds with, “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” As we went over God’s words here on Sunday morning I noted that there are two damnable sword thrusts from the Lord to Elihu. First of all He challenges him by saying he was “darkening counsel”, that is Elihu was bringing confusion and anguish to Job via his many words. Not only is there a warning against having diarrhea of the mouth, but we see the damage which comes from darkness. The Bible often associates darkness with sin. Elihu’s sin here goes back to the fact he was not listening to anything that Job had said, and so when it came time for him to talk all he did was defame. He may thought in his haughty arrogance that his words would come and save the day, but all Elihu did was cause pain.
Time to do a little meddling.
In this first case how often can we be charged with “darkening counsel” in conversation? We may not mean to, and I have to admit as a preacher and counselor this is something that is always on my mind when people ask me advice. Have I been listening to what’s actually going on or do I have a pre-packaged response that like a doctor I’m going to throw like spaghetti against the wall and hope it sticks? Every situation and every person is different and the medicine is going to have be formulated differently for each situation. But I can’t know that unless I unplug my response mechanism and just open my ears to the concerns of whomever is before me.
I’d venture to say that I’m not alone in needing to learn how to do this, and to do this better.
So how do we go about that?
Well, take a look at the second jab the Lord gives to Elihu. He accuses him of having “words without knowledge”. This is basically a kind of way of calling Elihu an ignoramus. A guy who has no more clue than the man on the moon about what is actually going on. We noted above that this was because he had a misguided, and wrong, idea of who God was and what He was doing. Elihu also had no interest in learning from what Job was saying. He knew the answer before the question was asked. The problem begins way before the conversation starts. So what could have Elihu done to be a help Job? It begins with putting himself out of the way. In humility seeing Job not as a problem to be fixed, but a fellow human being who needs help from a friend. His focus then becomes not on what he’s going to say, but what Job is saying. This change occurs because he values Job as an equal, not as an object to be judged by the all wise and powerful Elihu.
This of course isn’t just about listening to what other human beings have to say. A pretty short line could be drawn from Elihu’s experience with Job to Elihu’s experience with God. His misunderstanding began because he had not paid attention in class when the teacher was talking about God’s sovereignty over the universe. Likewise with us our own problems in life largely come from the fact that we do not listen when Christ speaks. Whether it is coming to the Bible with an agenda to find what we want to hear or dismissing the word when it isn’t saying what we want it say we end up in trouble because we refused to be still in soul and mind and listen to what our loving Heavenly Father was saying to us in the moment, especially if, to paraphrase Paul, God wasn’t tickling our ears and building us up in vanity. Sometimes God challenges us in our “darkening counsel” and “words without knowledge” and we better listen to what He is saying, because He loves us and knows what we need.
For today’s reading here is a short devotional from Burk Parsons on the wisdom of listening:
https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/wisdom-of-listening/
As always if there is anything you need or anything you have questions about please feel free to give me a holler, either by DM or email at: pastor.glaser@bethanyarp.org
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church