Job CCCXVI

 Job 36:1-4, “Elihu also proceeded and said: ‘Bear with me a little, and I will show you that there are yet words to speak on God’s behalf. I will fetch my knowledge from afar; I will ascribe righteousness to my Maker. For truly my words are not false; One who is perfect in knowledge is with you.”’

If you know what to look for, there is no shortage of red flags when it comes to Elihu’s speech. Once again, the way he frames it does not suggest that God sent him with a message or that God had spoken to him, but that he had taken it upon himself to speak on God’s behalf.

I’m not done, not by a long shot, and you’re going to hear everything I have to say on God’s behalf. On whose authority? By what authority? What permits you to speak on behalf of the Almighty? Could He not speak on His own behalf if He so chose? Surely, He could!

Men going without being sent and speaking on behalf of God, even though God never spoke to them, have become an epidemic in the contemporary church. It was such a common thing that the more astute among us concluded they needed to up the ante if they had any hope of standing out, because when everyone from Uncle Bob to Aunt Lucy takes it upon themselves to speak on behalf of God, it’s just not that special anymore.

And so we have the new breed of interdimensional travelers who teleport to heaven and back on the weekly, hanging out with God and watching old reruns of Little House on the Prairie, being used as a confidant and sounding board as to how God should rule the universe He spoke into being, because, you know, He second-guesses Himself so often, he needs some input from some spiky haired train wreck who discovered that a portapoti is the Star Trek equivalent of a transporter.   

Perhaps people are so hungry for some type of supernatural experience that they’re willing to swallow anything. Perhaps it’s the utter lack of Biblical literacy, but whatever the reason behind the rise of individuals who make greater, grander, and more bombastic claims regarding their own supposed experiences, it will not end well, not for them, and not for those who follow them.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul spoke of knowing a man who fourteen years hence had been caught up to the third heaven. There is a high probability that Paul was speaking of himself, but because he did not want to be seen as special or unique, he claimed it was some other individual. If it’s all about Jesus as some claim, then they’ll make it all about Jesus. If it’s all about themselves while claiming it’s about Jesus, they will be the ones standing in the spotlight, passing themselves off as superior in spirituality as well as experience, because they are the hero of their story, the star of their show, and there’s only room on the stage for one individual.

That Elihu would have the temerity to speak on God’s behalf was the first red flag, shortly followed by the second, which was elevating himself to the point that he deemed himself perfect in knowledge. One who is perfect in knowledge is with you! By whose qualification? By whose standard? By whose plumbline? My own, of course, silly. Who else can ascertain whether I am perfect in knowledge if not I? If anything, you should be grateful that one such as myself is taking the time to speak to you, rather than asking pesky questions like whether or not I have any evidence to back up my claims.

Trust me; I’m not lying; my words are not false. I am perfect in knowledge, and if you don’t see it, that’s on you. Anyone making audacious claims about interacting with the Almighty Himself and braiding His beard follows up their fanciful tale with trust me, I’m not lying; that’s a tell, and you should be aware of it.

What they are doing when they throw out the trust me line is attempting to short-circuit your rational thinking ability and guilt-trip you into thinking you’re too judgmental and unwilling to give the benefit of the doubt. It’s the same mind game confidence men like to play, where they pretend to be hurt and aggrieved when you call them out on their inconsistency.

You’re telling me that if I give you a hundred dollars today, you’ll give me five hundred in a week? But how can that be? What? Don’t you trust me? I’m not lying; my words are not false. And that’s when they have you on the back foot, no longer wondering why, if this individual could turn a hundred dollars into five hundred in a week, they need your hundred dollars, why they’re still driving a rusty Pinto, or why they smell like a cross between boiled head cheese and an outhouse.

Here they are, just trying to help me out, and I’m questioning their integrity. Shame on me.

Then the greed comes into play, and the question is no longer whether this person is lying or how this could possibly be real, but whether he can turn a thousand into five thousand rather than a measly hundred into five. Those playing the long con will even insist that you start out small, just to see that it works, and return in a week with five crisp hundreds, knowing that the next time it won’t be just a hundred bucks, but a thousand, or even ten.

If you don’t believe these are some of the same shenanigans being done in some churches, you’ve been sheltered, and I envy you for it. From the gold dust that never turns out to be real gold to people mysteriously finding fifty dollars in their Bibles after they threw five bucks in the offering plate, these are tricks intended to elicit a specific response.

Elihu was not motivated by justice, charity, love, or compassion. Elihu was motivated by Elihu and how others perceived him. His baseline was that he be seen as one who is perfect in knowledge and would accept nothing less. If that meant dragging Job through the mud and making him out to be a wicked man, so be it. You can’t have an omelet without breaking some eggs, after all, and it wasn’t like Job was long for this world regardless. Funny thing how, even to this day, people justify the most reprobate, vile, and evil things if they have a mind to.         

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCXV

 Be wary of anyone who insists they have the market cornered on wisdom, and if perchance you desire some, the only means to attain it is through them exclusively. If the person, whoever they might be, places themselves as the middle man between you and the Word of God, and tries to convince you that only via their interpretation of the text and not your own diligent study and immersion in Scripture can you attain the wisdom you desire, at best, they have an ulterior motive and do not have your best interest at heart, spiritually speaking.

At worst, they are attempting to appropriate the authority of Christ and present themselves as an alternative messianic figure who must be obeyed, if not outright worshipped, ceaselessly minimizing Jesus while magnifying themselves to the point of seeing themselves on equal footing, if not superior to the Son of God Himself.

Delusion feeds on itself. Hubris is self-perpetuating. If an individual has started on the path of deception, they’re not going to get better, more balanced, or wiser, but descend further into folly, becoming unhinged to the point of saying and doing things contrary to the Word of God, the words of Christ, and dragging those who would follow them further into the deep.

2 Peter 2:1-3, “But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber.”

Given that Jesus Himself warned of false teachers and false prophets rising up and deceiving many, the closer we get to the end of all things, the closer we get to His return, the more relevant His warning becomes because it will be in these last days that the enemy will go all out, doing his utmost to deceive, if possible even the elect. These warnings are there for a reason. They are not to be dismissed, ignored, or brushed off, nor are we to underestimate the power such individuals will display, even to the point of performing great signs and wonders. They are to be taken to heart, understood for what they are, so that when we see these things occurring, we will not be shaken, nor made to stumble, as many will.

We know that many will be deceived because that is the word Jesus used. It won’t be a handful, a few, or some negligible number, but many. What is deception? In simple terms, anything that attempts to replace the lordship, sovereignty, uniqueness, and indispensable need for Christ. The Word tells us there is one way, one truth, and one life, all encompassed in the person of Jesus, who was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died on a cross hanging between two thieves, rose again on the third day, and ascended to heaven forty days hence.

There is salvation in none other than in Jesus, nor is there any other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Anyone attempting to add to or take away from this principle, absolute, unequivocal truth, is sowing deception.

People love playing at being the gatekeepers to wisdom. They love insinuating there are alternatives to Jesus, or that something more than humbling ourselves, repenting of our sins, being born again, denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, and following after Him is required. It makes them feel special, spiritually superior, a cut above the rest, which feeds their insatiable pride. Sure, Jesus is all great and good, but you need a little something extra, a little extra spice, the secret to the secret sauce that only I have the recipe to, and if you want the full experience, you have to do this other thing I’m about to share with you in confidence.

Make sure that what you believe is in harmony with the Word of God. If it isn’t, then no matter how much you might want to believe it, no matter how good it makes you feel, no matter how much you might want it to be true, it isn’t, and that’s just a plain fact. The way I feel about the reality of something does not change the reality of the thing. I may feel like I’m in my twenties, but the reality is that I’m well past fifty, and no matter how hard I might try to talk myself into believing I’m twenty, the creaking bones, achy joints, and wrinkly skin say otherwise.

God does not negotiate terms and conditions. Any man who insists they are exempt from the guardrails the Bible sets forth is either lying to themselves or lying to you. There are no backdoors into heaven; there are no secret passages that only a select few are given to know, and if you follow after someone who claims as much, they aren’t leading you to the promised land but to a place of sorrow, grief, resentment, bitterness, and disillusionment.

It doesn’t matter how often this scenario plays out; it seems as though we never learn our lesson. Every time a wolf is proven a wolf, another steps up to fill the vacuum, insisting that though they act as a wolf, growl as a wolf, consume and devour as a wolf, they are not a wolf. And so, the way of truth is blasphemed anew, and a fresh crop of souls gets shipwrecked, because they allowed themselves to believe something that the Word did not confirm or agree with.

What does this have to do with Job, you might ask? Job knew God, and God knew Job. He did not allow external pressures to dictate his relationship with the Almighty, nor did he allow himself to be swayed by his friends and family into abandoning his integrity. If your relationship with God is anchored in truth, it will abide. If the foundation of your spiritual house is built upon the Word of God, it will weather the storm. Men might call you stunted, backward, antiquated, a relic of a bygone era when people were satisfied with serving God, worshipping Him, knowing Him, and being in fellowship with Him because they didn’t know any different.

I mean, people were happy with the radio before television came along, content with AM FM before satellite, shifting into gear and using the steering wheel before autonomous driving, but now that these things exist, they’re more exciting and cutting-edge. All of that may be true, but where we err is in equating the eternal God and Creator of all that is with technological advancement, concluding that if one has changed, the other must as well. God changes not, from age to age, and generation to generation. There is no improving on God because there is no improving on perfection. Likewise, there is nothing that can be added to a genuine, sincere, and consistent relationship with Him that can make it more satisfying.

Those who seek something other than knowing Him and being known by Him never knew Him to begin with, for had they known Him, they would have realized He is sufficient.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.  

Job CCCXIV

 Job 35:9-16, “Because of the multitude of oppressions they cry out; they cry out for help because of the arm of the mighty. But no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night, who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth, and makes us wiser than the birds of heaven?’ There they cry out, but He does not answer, because of the pride of evil men. Surely God will not listen to empty talk, nor will the Almighty regard it. Although you say you do not see Him, yet justice is before Him, and you must wait for Him. And now, because He has not punished in His anger, nor taken much notice of folly, therefore Job opens his mouth in vain; he multiplies words without knowledge.”

The only thing more off-putting than condescending, sanctimonious self-importance is when you couple them with an inflated ego that thinks it not only knows everything, but the reason for everything. Sprinkle in the name of God liberally, not because you are deferring to Him in the matter at hand, but using His name as validation of the rightness of your position, and it becomes difficult, if not outright impossible, to see the individual as likable.

My dad was one of the most gracious people I’ve ever known. He would extend the benefit of the doubt and try to see the good in someone even when scraping the bottom of the barrel and finding little, if any, redeeming qualities. Even the man who once commented that an individual trying to pass himself off as a Bible scholar who obviously knew nothing of what Scripture says, at least had straight teeth, had his limits.

That moment came shortly after my dad became pastor of the Messiah church, the church built next to the orphanage so the children would have a place to attend regular services, since there was no such church in that part of the city. Believers still gather, fellowship, and worship to this day, and it has grown over the years, but back then, it was only a couple of hundred people, plus the children and the orphanage staff.

One day, my dad got a call from another pastor in a different region of the country asking if we would host an evangelist from England and let him speak in our church. The pastor, whom my dad knew well enough, vouched for the preacher, and my dad agreed, slotting him to speak at a Sunday morning service.

My dad was informed that the evangelist would be in touch to hammer out the details, and a few days later, true to his word, he called. Anyone who knew my dad can attest that he was a jovial and gregarious man. He was always smiling, always had something nice to say, was always polite to a fault, and never went out of his way to drone on about his bona fides. Not so with this individual. After giving his name and asking if this was the pastor of the church he was to minister at the following month, he proceeded to regale my dad with all the places he’d preached, and once that was done, he went on to itemize his list of demands.

He needed three hotel rooms for himself and his entourage, nothing primitive, preferably something with at least three stars, a car to shuttle them from the hotel to the church and back since they would be arriving by train, and if the church was planning on any sort of post-service meal, there were a handful of dietary restrictions we should make the cooks aware of. By dietary restrictions, he did not mean allergies, but rather trivial things like a fresh fruit plate instead of a fruit salad, individual rolls instead of sliced bread, and so on.

My dad had planned to put him up in a hotel, although finding one with multiple stars in the area is a big ask, so that didn’t bother him overly much. He likewise understood that people have their preferences. Even though one could question why you would insist on being an unnecessary burden on a church body you were supposedly coming to serve by demanding things that were not, culturally speaking, normal fare as far as food goes, that didn’t push him over the edge either; what did it was the man’s insistence on being addressed by his title, rather than his name, if any of the congregants wanted to engage him in conversation.

“If any of the people want to approach me after my talk, please have them address me as Evangelist Rick,” were his exact words. Not brother Rick, but specifically evangelist Rick, as though that carried a greater weight than being called a brother.

That was when my dad’s inscrutable niceness cracked. Although he was never quite as barbed or acidic as yours truly can be, and often is, my dad was no lightweight. In the calmest voice he could muster, in his heavily accented English, my dad said, “Let me stop you there. I get the feeling we lowly folk are not deserving of being graced with your presence, sir. Perhaps you need a bigger venue to prove that you can walk on water. Have a good day.”

As I was reading Elihu’s words to Job, the same smug, condescending, entitled spirit stood out, reminding me of this event. If all one ever does is look down on everyone else, demanding respect without earning it, demanding to be heard even though what they have to say is banal and lacking in insight, it’s not because they are spiritually superior; they just think themselves to be.

It wasn’t Job and Elihu that God looked upon and deemed blameless and upright. There was only one whom God singled out: Job. Yet Elihu, in his hubris, saw himself as more righteous by far than Job, insisting that he knew the mind of God, His purpose, and His reason behind why Job was in the state he was in.

If you have to tear someone down to build yourself up, that tells me everything I need to know both about your character and your level of spiritual maturity.     

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCXIII

 Job 35:1-8, “Moreover Elihu answered and said: ‘Do you think this is right? Do you say, ‘my righteousness is more than God’s’? For you say, ‘What advantage will it be to You? What profit shall I have, more than if I had sinned?’ I will answer you, and your companions with you. Look to the heavens and see; and behold the clouds – they are higher than you. If you sin, what do you accomplish against Him? Or, if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to Him? If you are righteous, what do you give to Him? Or what does He receive from your hand? Your wickedness affects a man such as you, and your righteousness a son of man.”

The older I get, the fewer the words necessary for me to get my point across in any given situation. Not so with the young. They have the energy and stamina to prattle on, and do it with an almost infectious enthusiasm. I have two daughters, and they are both natural-born storytellers. A point they could have made in less than thirty seconds turns into a fifteen-minute dissertation about how the dog got off its leash, and they had to chase it through the neighborhood, and by the time the story is well and truly over, they’ve also sprinkled in ample excuses for why her harness wasn’t fastened properly.   

Elihu was young, admittedly so, and he had no qualms about speaking his mind, being repetitive for effect, and saying the same thing in a slightly different way, in the hope that he could wear Job down to the point of finally admitting that he had sinned. I have no problem with lengthy conversations as long as they are necessary. Some things need to be discussed for longer than two sentences; others not so much.

Even assuming that Elihu was sincere in his discourse, and he wasn’t looking to elevate himself, stroke his ego, or prove his self-evaluated wisdom, the continued attempt to put words in Job’s mouth, words that he never spoke, simply to come out on top or prove that he was right about his judgment of Job, is wrong, and casts a shadow on the intent with which he addressed him.

Job never said that his righteousness was more than God’s, never even hinted at it, nor did he ever query whether pursuing holiness was a pointless endeavor since there seemed to be no profit in it. Job wasn’t looking to work an angle or gain some profit from being a blameless and upright man; he was compelled to pursue these things by his proximity to God and his desire for God’s presence in His life.

The presence of God molds, the presence of God transforms, the presence of God purifies and sanctifies an individual. If the desire of the individual in question is more of God’s presence in his life, he will naturally gravitate toward the good, the noble, the ideal, and the virtuous. He will shun evil, reject the temptations of the world, and the fear of the Lord that is present in his heart will direct him toward a life of obedience to God’s will.

Your pursuit of God is not based on a speculative transaction wherein you hope to get more than you put in, but a sincere and overarching desire to have an abiding relationship with Him, to know true fellowship with the Almighty, and feel His presence throughout.

That’s the one thing Elihu and Job’s three friends didn’t understand: the one constant in his life, the presence of God, was missing from him. God was silent; His presence seemed a far and distant thing, and that’s the one thing Job couldn’t live without.

If you’ve ever asked someone why they are a believer and their answer was because they didn’t want to go to hell, the foundation upon which their spiritual house is built is not love but fear. It is not out of a pure desire to have fellowship with God, to know Him, worship Him, praise Him, serve Him, and love Him, but to avoid eternal judgment.

When man is motivated by fear, all that he does in the attempt to allay it is done grudgingly, with the smallest task seeming like a burden threatening to crush him beneath its weight. The worship is performative, the declarations of fealty insincere, and if one were to come along and make them a better offer, or assure them that they can avoid eternal judgment without serving God, they would jump at the chance in a heartbeat.

When love for God is the motivation and the driving force, we set about doing the work of the Kingdom joyfully, without grumbling or thinking it beneath us, because whatever it is God would have us do, whether preaching from a pulpit or vacuuming the sanctuary, is deemed an honor and a privilege. Love carries you farther than fear ever will, and those with sincere, abiding, and unflinching love for God can endure when those motivated by something other than love have long given up the fight.

One needs only read the letter to the angel of the church of Ephesus to understand the importance of love as the driving force and motivating factor in their worship and devotion. Unlike the church of Laodicea, the church of Ephesus was hitting the mark in every area save one. They labored, they were patient, they could not bear those who are evil, they tested those who say they were apostles and were not, they persevered, had patience, and labored for His name’s sake without becoming weary, yet there was charge against them that Christ Himself insisted must be remedied lest He come and remove their lampstand from its place: they had left their first love!

They were doing all the right things, commendable and worthy of mention, yet the love that once burned bright was now but a flicker, and the warning they received was dire indeed if they did not take steps to repent and remember from where they had fallen. It wasn’t a slap on the wrist; it wasn’t a timeout; it was a warning that, lest they returned to their first love, their lampstand would be removed from its place. A lampstand holds the lamp that provides the light. Without it, they would be in darkness, lest they repent and return to that glorious, all-consuming first love that left room for nothing else in their hearts.

Boast as he might about his own wisdom, Elihu did not understand the type of love that motivated Job, a love that wasn’t a means to an end, but the end itself. All Job desired was God’s presence, without guile, artifice, or ulterior motive. Because he could not fathom such a love, Elihu believed Job to be a proud, arrogant, and self-righteous man who had rightly been brought low, which couldn’t have been further from the truth.       

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCXII

 Job 34:31-37, “For has anyone said to God, ‘I have borne chastening; I will offend no more; teach me what I do not see; if I have done iniquity, I will do no more’? Should He repay it according to your terms, just because you disavow it? You must choose, and not I; therefore speak what you know. Men of understanding say to me, wise men who listen to me: ‘Job speaks without knowledge, his words are without wisdom. Oh, that Job were tried to the utmost, because his answers are like those of wicked men! For he adds rebellion to his sin; he claps his hands among us, and multiplies his words against God.’”

Look, it’s not just me thinking this way, lest you think I have a bone to pick with you, or anything of the sort. Men of understanding and wise men who listen to me have also approached me and complained about some of the things you’ve said. Some have even gone so far as to say that your answers are like those of wicked men. So why don’t you just get with the program, acknowledge that we were right, submit to our feigned authority, and perhaps the Almighty will have mercy on you? Otherwise, there isn’t much hope save for you to continue to suffer in perpetuity until you go to the grave.

Think of it this way: could all these people be wrong? You have what amounts to an army arrayed against you, from your friends to your wife to men of understanding who know the situation you’re in, and let’s not forget, myself. We’ve all come to the same conclusion; in our own way we’ve all said, basically, the same thing, and for you to continue insisting upon your innocence, for you to say that you’ve done nothing wrong and there is no wickedness to be found in you, just adds rebellion to your sin.

When you juxtapose Elihu’s words with what the Word declares, confirming that in all this Job did not sin with his lips, nor charged God with wrong, you come away with one fundamental understanding of men’s natures that has remained consistent throughout the history of mankind: men hear what they want to hear, and interpret what they hear in such a fashion as to confirm their biases, and undergird their conclusions.

For the most part, men don’t want their minds changed; they do not want to weigh the merits of a differing opinion; they just want to exist in an echo chamber where everyone says exactly what they say, thinks exactly as they think, and any deviation from the monolith of thought in that particular clique is dealt with quickly and viciously.

Likewise, any idea at the core of a group or clique of people, no matter how illogical or outside the realm of possibility, becomes self-perpetuating; not only does it become the one thing that defines and unites them, but also becomes the purity test by which all others who want to enter their sphere are measured.

It’s no longer about declaring the whole counsel of God, but about being in lockstep with a singular tertiary doctrine, and amplifying that one thing above everything else, even above Christ Himself. Paul addressed this readily enough when writing to the Corinthians, after discovering that rancor had arisen within the household of faith because, rather than declaring themselves to be of Jesus, they bickered among themselves, due to some being of Paul and some of Apollos.

1 Corinthians 3:4-9, “For when one says, ‘I am of Paul,’ and another, ‘I am of Apollos,’ are you not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one? I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor.”

If a tertiary issue becomes a salvific doctrine and the litmus test by which others determine whether or not someone is saved and sanctified, it is no longer about Jesus, but about the issue which then becomes an idol of sorts which men elevate above what should be its rightful place.

Take your pick; there are plenty to choose from, whether the timing of Christ’s return, referring to Him by His Hebrew name exclusively, insisting that the Pauline epistles were the devil’s way of infiltrating Scripture, the frequency of communion, water baptism and whether one is baptized in the name of Jesus, or the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the availability of spiritual gifts, and the list goes on.

If any one issue becomes the defining marker of your faith and it’s not the risen Christ, humbling yourself at the foot of the cross and receiving forgiveness, being washed, made clean, reborn and sanctified by Him, through Him, and in Him, it’s idolatry, pure and simple.

We brush off the things the Word tells us we ought to be doing like praying, fasting, studying Scripture, and building up our most holy faith, and instead choose to bicker endlessly, throw mud at each other, and evict others from the Kingdom as though we were the landlords rather than God.

I get that believing we have the authority to declare who enters the Kingdom and who will be left on the outside looking in is an ego boost that few other things can match, but there will come a day when we will be called to account for presuming God’s judgments and our own are interchangeable.

The greatest of all the people of the East had been brought low, and now everyone was piling on. That neither changed who Job was, nor how God viewed him. The words of Elihu did not change God’s opinion of Job, nor did He concur with the assessment of those who approached Elihu in confidence and shared what they thought of the man.

If your relationship with God is grounded in Biblical truth, and the desire of your heart is His presence, then it matters not what men say about you, or how many array themselves against you. If God is on your side, everything’s going to be all right.    

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCXI

 Job 34:21-30, “For His eyes are on the ways of man, and He sees all his steps. There is no darkness nor shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves. For He need not further consider a man that he should go before God in judgment. He breaks in pieces mighty men without inquiry, and sets others in their place. Therefore He knows their works; He overthrows them in the night, and they are crushed. He strikes them as wicked men, in the open sight of others, because they turned their back from Him, and would not consider any of His ways, so that they caused the cry of the poor to come to Him; for He hears the cry of the afflicted. When He gives quietness, who then can make trouble? And when He hides His face, who then can see Him, whether it is against a nation or a man alone? – That the hypocrite should not reign, lest the people be ensnared.”

If God’s eyes are on the ways of man and He sees all his steps, it is God and God alone that can determine the rightness of his way, for only God knows all, the things both open and secret, the things done in the shadows and the brightness of the day. It is the logical destination Elihu never arrived at, because he was too busy puffing himself up and insisting that men wiser than he lend him their ears to realize that he was attempting to appropriate God’s authority and pass judgment regarding Job.

Men can couch a lie in the truth often enough, but what they fail to realize is that the lie at the center of the truth in which it is encased pollutes it, and twists it into something other than the truth it began as. Factually, there was nothing wrong about what Elihu said. God’s eyes are indeed on the ways of man; He does see all his steps, and there is no darkness nor shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves. All true, save for the presupposition that because Job had been brought low he must have been one such worker of iniquity.   

I have exceedingly more respect for someone who says they don’t know something, whether regarding spiritual matters or otherwise, than one who assumes, presumes, or tries to make out like they know the intricate details of a thing when they are wholly ignorant of it. In an attempt to save face, or keep their pride intact, men will double down on insisting they know something they clearly don’t until their ignorance is so evident as to be undeniable, or they are called out by someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Given that most people don’t like confrontation and they go out of their way to avoid it, the shameless among us who insist upon things that are clearly untrue usually get far before they are rebuffed, called out, or run out of steam.

When there is no pushback, when there is no resistance, they become more emboldened and, as such, become louder, to the point that they begin to believe their lies, passing them off as the truth. I’m sure you can think of a handful of things off the top of your head that are demonstrably false, that have, nevertheless, been passed off as the truth, and because few, if any, stood against them, they are now regarded as unimpeachable truth.

Elihu continues building his narrative, sprinkling in what God does with the wicked and the workers of iniquity, inferring that Job himself must be one such man since that is precisely what God does to them. Because God strikes wicked men, and Job himself had been stricken, then Job must be a wicked man.

Not only does Elihu detail what God does to the wicked, but he also insists he knows why, which is because they turned their back from Him, and would not consider any of His ways, and so Job must have, likewise, done these things since he had been stricken.

Generally speaking, Elihu is not wrong about God’s justice, or that He hears the cry of the afflicted. These are both true and factual statements, yet he applied them to Job, insisting this was the only viable explanation for why Job had lost and endured so much.

Elihu had already gone beyond judging Job, to condemning him for perceived wickedness he had no evidence of, not because he was a warrior for truth, or because justice flowed through his veins, but because he saw an opportunity to elevate himself by demeaning another. Before jumping on any bandwagon and adding to the chorus, perhaps it would be wise to determine why one individual has it out for another, and whether the intent behind their accusation is justice or their own self-aggrandizement.

Guilt or innocence are determined by whether someone actually did what they’ve been accused of doing, and not whether or not you like the way they come off, present themselves, or what denomination they belong to. To deem a man guilty when you know him to be innocent just because you don’t like his attitude or the manner in which he speaks is sinful. It is equally sinful to deem a man sinful when you know him to be guilty just because they’re likable or they belong to your particular clique.

God is not a respecter of persons. He will not judge you by your pedigree, lineage, level of education, or what continent you were born on. What impresses men does not impress God, and what disappoints and frustrates them isn’t what disappoints and frustrates Him. He knows you as you are; He sees beyond projection, façade, or image, to the heart of you, and when He looked upon Job, He saw a blameless and upright man, one who feared the Lord and shunned evil. Can the same be said about you or me? If not, then why not? It is not an impossible feat, after all. Job proved as much.     

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCX

 Job 34:16-20, “If you have understanding, hear this; listen to the sound of my words: should one who hates justice govern? Will you condemn Him who is most just? Is it fitting to say to a king, ‘You are worthless,’ and to nobles, ‘You are wicked’? Yet He is not partial to princes, nor does He regard the rich more than the poor; for they are all the work of His hands. In a moment they die, in the middle of the night; the people are shaken and pass away; the mighty are taken away without a hand.”

If you cannot convince someone of your position by the soundness of your argument, your next best bet is to wear them down with the multitude of your words. I envy people who can tell the same banal story a thousand times with the same enthusiasm and fervor. Unfortunately, I am not one gifted in this area of oratory, and to the dismay of those who hear me preach, teach, or drone on for the hour or so on the radio program every week, there isn’t much repetition.

In what seems like another life, I was an interpreter for my grandfather. When we traveled, and it was often, those who came to hear him wanted to hear his testimony, and he told it not because he wanted to elevate himself in any way but because it was a springboard to the real message of repentance and holiness unto God lest judgment be visited upon this nation.

I never found that dull or tedious, because it was his testimony, and he was, after all, my grandfather whom I loved and had great fondness for. What I do find dreary and lackluster, however, is when out of the entirety of the Bible, sixty-six books in all, some preachers choose one favorite passage from which they preach the same message to the point that the audience can quote it verbatim, and they never seem to tire of it.

It’s the reason I’m reticent in retelling my grandfather’s testimony: it’s his testimony, and as far as the message for America goes, it’s available for free, on multiple platforms, whether in written form or audio, so for me to retread already tilled soil seems like an ill use of the time I’ve been given.

It would be no hard thing for me to endlessly hopscotch down rabbit trails, and regurgitate my grandfather’s testimony ad nauseam, but to what end? There must be a purpose to what we do beyond endless self-promotion, or the attempt at riding someone else’s coat tails for the sake of clout. The time I spent traveling with my grandfather wasn’t always easy; oftentimes it was brutal, but they are all fond memories because I got to spend a solid decade and change with the man who taught me how to ride a bike, made me my first slingshot, and was a consistent example of servanthood and obedience. There are far worse ways to spend your teenage years, but I am a teenager no longer, and the calling to which I have been called differs from that of my grandfather, perhaps not substantively but in the granular details.

You can tell a lot about a person by the things they say and what they choose to focus on. Elihu was so wrapped up in himself, so eager to prove his mettle and unveil his genius, that he demanded anyone within earshot stop what they were doing and listen to the sound of his words. It is, after all, the only way you will see how wise I am, how brilliant, how compelling, and you will walk away knowing how unique and special I am. By the end of his oratory, they may have walked away thinking him special, but not in the way he would have liked.

There are some nuggets of truth buried in Elihu’s self-honoring, self-promoting speech that deserve to be unearthed and pondered, chief among them the reality that God is not partial to princes, nor does He regard the rich more than the poor. It is men who judge other men based on their appearance, their wealth, their position, or their prominence. None of the things men judge others by are what God judges men by. We are all the work of His hands, fashioned from the same clay, and the only things that set men apart and are noticed by the Almighty are the selfsame things that made Job stand out: being blameless, upright, and fearing the Lord.

Do you belong to Him not just in word but in deed? In modern parlance, are you merely talking the talk, or walking the walk? Is Jesus on the throne of your heart? Is His presence the overarching desire of your heart? These are all questions we can answer for ourselves as individuals, and if the answer is no, then no amount of influence, authority, or prominence will make Him regard you in a better light.

The rigidity with which Elihu viewed God and the implacable, unbending conclusion that there are no exceptions to the rules he established is what made him so myopic. This is the way God must operate, and no other. This is the way God must do things, and no other possibility exists. You, who was once the greatest of all the people of the East, are now a wretch, a pitiable thing covered in boils, and this can only mean one thing: you have sinned, committed wickedness, such wickedness that cannot be expressed given the extent of your troubles. Proof? No, there is no proof. There is no evidence, but your present condition is all the evidence I require.

The failure to understand that God does as He wills, and is not subject to the preconceptions of His creation, is one of the quickest ways to run afoul of God Himself. Creation will never be in a position to dictate what the Creator can and cannot do, and to claim such is to place oneself above His sovereignty.

You can declare and proclaim until you’re blue in the face, and if God does not will it, it’s for naught. When we pray “Your will be done,” it is in all things, not just the ones that benefit or profit us in some form or fashion. Often, God’s will humbles us and brings us low, but even in such instances, His purpose is to draw us ever closer to Him. While Job was honest enough to acknowledge that he did not, as yet, understand God’s purpose in his suffering, Elihu was supremely assured that he did. The only problem is that Elihu was wrong.      

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCIX

 Job 34:10-15, “Therefore listen to me, you men of understanding: Far be it from God to do wickedness, and from the Almighty to commit iniquity. For He repays man according to his work, and makes man to find a reward according to his way. Surely God will never do wickedly, nor will the Almighty pervert justice. Who gave Him charge over the earth? Or who appointed Him over the whole world? If He should set His heart on it, if He should gather to Himself His Spirit and His breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.”

There’s nothing like a man’s own words demonstrating his ignorance that clarifies the situation beyond any doubt, or the ever-present, “that’s just your opinion, I think he’s really smart”. Granted, some people have a blind spot for certain individuals, and no matter the inane word salad that spills from their lips, no matter how incoherent, banal, illogical, or counterintuitive, they’ll still swoon and heap praise upon them as though wisdom itself had at last found a permanent home.

If ever Elihu’s wisdom was in question, uncertain as to whether he had the wherewithal to follow through with his claims, we now have a definitive answer and definitive proof. After endlessly puffing himself up and extoling his own wisdom, Elihu’s argument boils down to karma.

If you do good, good will come to you; if you do evil, evil will be visited upon you. Perhaps when all is said and done, the flesh is no more, and we stand before God, there was truth in Elihu’s words, that God repays man according to his work, and makes man find a reward according to his way, but what happens between now and then, between the moment a man is born and a man goes the way of all things has nothing to do with karmic justice, or karmic reward. Bad things happen to good people, the wicked prosper, and the righteous hang on by the skin of their teeth, and that has nothing to do with whether God is showing one favor over the other, or blesses one above the other, unless you boil everything down to how much is in a person’s bank account and equate that number with their level of righteousness.

If prosperity were the plumb line by which holiness were measured, then Elon Musk is the holiest man walking the earth today. If Elihu’s banal conclusion of karmic justice and reciprocity held any truth, then there is no man walking the earth that has done more good than the world’s first trillionaire.

It’s always tempting to wax poetic on things and topics we have no clue about, but it is a temptation we must resist lest we do as Elihu did, and go on a protracted rant regarding the nature, character, purpose, and sovereignty of God without having a clue as to what they entail.

Elihu might have known certain aspects about God, but he did not know God, at least nowhere near the level Job did. There is a different level of understanding between knowing about someone from what others have told you and knowing them personally, having had fellowship, broken bread, and spent countless hours together. Job knew God personally. Elihu, it seems, had heard about God, learned about Him, but as far as having a relationship with Him goes, knowing Him personally and intimately, it seems unlikely.

That didn’t stop Elihu from demanding that everyone listen to him, because although ignorance may not be a virtue, it is a warm blanket that shields against self-awareness, or objective introspection. We’ve seen it often enough in our day and age wherein everyone is an instant expert on the most niche of topics, and once they’ve made up their mind, once they’ve decided that they’re right, no amount of evidence to the contrary will sway them.

To add to the growing list of things we shouldn’t do, Elihu goes on to presume the mind of God, and establish what God can and cannot do based on his underlying belief that karmic justice is the only true and viable explanation for Job’s suffering. This type of hubris is becoming commonplace in the contemporary church, with men declaring, in full authority, that there are limits to what God can do, or that, because they’ve decided it is so, there are things He no longer does.

They come to their conclusions not based on what the Bible says, not based on Scripture, but based on their individual, intellectual reasoning, and the most relevant thing of all, it isn’t happening to them, or they’re not personally experiencing it. It is flawed logic at best. It presupposes that if they never learned to swim, then everyone else is incapable of swimming by the sheer fact that they can’t.

Have you tried, though? Why would I bother? It’s impossible! But other people have experienced it, so it can’t be impossible. They’re just lying, that’s all, because if it were a possibility, then I would be doing it!

When we presume to declare what God can and cannot do, we are, in essence, limiting His omnipotence, appropriating His authority, and speaking on His behalf when He said nothing of the sort.

Although Elihu had the right of it when he declared that God would never do wickedly nor pervert justice, what he failed to acknowledge was the reality of the enemy of all that is upright, blameless, and pure, as well as God’s ability to test one’s faith by allowing the enemy to buffet and harass the righteous.

Yes, Job was a unique case, but if the enemy were given free rein to do as he wills, we would all be as Job, lying in an ash pile and scratching at our boils. There are no limits to the enemy’s hatred of God’s children. It is a hatred so overarching and all-consuming that only by God’s mercy and protection and the limitations he places on the devil as to what he can and cannot do to come against us can we still be about the work of the Kingdom.    

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCVIII

 Job 34:1-9, “Elihu further answered and said: ‘Hear my words, you wise men; give ear to me, you who have knowledge. For the ear tests words as the palate tastes food. Let us choose justice for ourselves; let us know among ourselves what is good. For Job has said, ‘I am righteous, but God has taken away my justice; should I lie concerning my right? My wound is incurable, though I am without transgression.’ What man is like Job, who drinks scorn like water, who goes in company with the workers of iniquity, and walks with wicked men? For he has said, ‘It profits man nothing that he should delight in God.’”

The more Elihu speaks, the worse off he comes. There are a plethora of things to unpack in these nine verses, but in the hope of keeping the word count of this second volume under the benchmark of War and Peace, I will only focus on three.

First, Elihu continued to make it all about himself. It wasn’t about hearing the word of the Lord, but about hearing his words. It wasn’t about seeking an answer from outside of himself, but about those present giving ear to him. There’s a difference between being wise and being wise in one’s own eyes. The wisdom to which I am referring is not book knowledge, or the attaining of degrees and diplomas, but the wisdom that comes from God, which only He can give to whom He chooses, at a time He has appointed.

In reading the words Job spoke, and the depth of wisdom he possessed, it is undeniable that he wasn’t the source of his wisdom. He spoke of things he had no way of knowing, or discerning with human reason, and one could readily tell that it was of divine origin.

Young as he was, perhaps Elihu had some head knowledge; perhaps he’d read a parchment or two, he’d happened upon a dusty scroll and perused it, sat in the counsel of those older than him and gleaned some measure of understanding, but he wasn’t anywhere near as wise as he believed himself to be, yet that in no way kept him from declaring his wisdom to any who would hear.

Hear my words, and give ear to me is what Elihu declared to those present. There was no mention of the Lord, or hearing the voice of the Lord, or giving heed to His counsel. We’ve got it from here, and we will determine whether Job is guilty or innocent. Whatever the Lord’s input, whatever the Lord’s judgment, whatever He might have to say on the matter is now moot, for I, Elihu, have come to pass judgment.

Elihu’s second blunder was assuming he had the right or authority to determine what justice looked like, or that he had the wherewithal to know what is good based on the partial information he possessed regarding Job.

“Let us choose justice for ourselves; let us know among ourselves what is good.” And who exactly gave you the authority to do this? Who appointed you judge, jury, and executioner of a man God Himself deemed blameless and upright? If the Lord has spoken, if the Lord has sent, if the Lord has appointed, then by all means speak what the Lord has spoken and go where He has sent you, walk in His authority as you go about His work, but to claim and appropriate an office, a position, or an authority that He has not given you is a recipe for disaster on a grand scale.

The difference between walking in His authority and yours is the difference between victory and defeat. The difference between speaking His words and your own in His name is that one will be rewarded due to the obedience required to go and speak a difficult message to someone reticent to hear it, and the other punished for appropriating God’s authority and speaking in His name when He never spoke. Be absolutely certain that when you speak in His name, they are His words, for all men will be held to account for the words they speak and whose name they speak them in.

Every time I speak, whether on the radio or before an audience, I go out of my way to delineate between personal opinion and revelation, between the word of the Lord and my own words. Although asked to do so on multiple occasions by various individuals, I refuse to take a word from the Lord, a prophecy, or some revelatory insight, and interpret it, flesh it out, or give my opinion on what I think it means, because that’s not my place. I do not have the authority to do it.

If God gives a message, deliver it verbatim and be done with it. If you want to wax poetic on why you should include tofu in your diet for better gut biome health, do your worst, but never claim it was something the Lord commanded His children to do.

As an aside, if God gives you, personally, a specific instruction to either abstain from something or do something, it does not automatically become general doctrine for everyone else. When Samson’s head was shaved, he lost his strength. This does not mean that everyone with long hair will have Samson's strength. He neither went around demanding everyone grow out their hair, nor did he insist that the reason they did not have his strength was that their hair wasn’t long.

The third and most egregious thing Elihu did was that he put words in Job’s mouth that Job never uttered just to make his point and position more credible. Although Elihu claimed Job had said that it profits man nothing that he should delight in God, those words never passed his lips.

If you are so inclined, go back through the previous thirty-two chapters, and see for yourself. Job never said that! What he said was the opposite of what Elihu claimed he’d said, insisting that God was the only thing worth pursuing in this life, and whether prince or pauper, whether rich or poor, if the presence of God abided, it was more than enough and the only thing his heart desired.

Whether he’d misheard Job’s words, or he did so knowingly, Elihu lied. Given that his lie served to bolster his assessment of Job’s situation, I tend to lean toward him knowingly insisting Job had said something he never did just to get a win. If saving face, or keeping your pride intact, is worth besmirching and lying about what another has said, there is something very wrong in your heart that must be dealt with before any claim of wisdom, or being on a mission from God, can be made.         

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCVII

 Job 33:29-33, “Behold, God works all things, twice, in fact, three times with a man, to bring his soul from the Pit, that he may be enlightened with the light of life. Give ear, Job, listen to me; hold your peace and I will speak. If you have anything to say, answer me; speak, for I desire to justify you. If not, listen to me; hold your peace, and I will teach you wisdom.”

In all of his self-serving diatribe and repeated attempts to elevate himself to a position of authority he had no right to appropriate, Elihu did happen upon a nugget of wisdom that cannot be dismissed or readily brushed off. In an admittedly roundabout way, Elihu hit upon the grace and mercy of God, wherein He will endeavor to bring a man’s soul from the Pit not once, but twice, in fact three times as Elihu states, and for some even more than that.

I’ve never been a fan of modern technology, and with the increase in spam calls, or individuals trying to sell me extended warranties for a car that isn’t worth the monthly premium of said warranty, the ringer on my phone is permanently on silent. I don’t like distractions, especially when I’m spending alone time with God, and wouldn’t you know it, that hour or two in the morning that I carve out as both intentional and exclusive to get into the Word and spend time in prayer is when everyone decides to reach out.

I often find three or four missed calls when I finally get around to checking my phone after I’m done with my quiet time, and they're always spam, potential spam, or an unknown caller who picked that specific time to dial my number.

I learned early on that one of the most often used and undeniably effective tools of the enemy is distraction. You commit yourself to a time of prayer, or study, you purpose in your heart that this thirty minutes, an hour, or two hours will be used exclusively for that pursuit, and suddenly everyone wants a piece of you, a moment of your time, something that can’t be put off or delayed, because if the enemy can keep you from spending time with God one day, he will attempt to rinse and repeat the rest of the week, then the month, then the year.

It never ends up being the emergency it was presented as being, and you find yourself having missed that window of being alone with God, because once the day gets started, it never stops. Between rushing the kids to school, packing their lunches, going to work, or the hundred other things we need to do to keep our head above water, the moment has passed.

The point is that a relationship must be reciprocal. If you want to know God on a deeper level, you must make the time to spend with Him. If you want understanding about a given biblical topic, you must make the time to study it. Yes, God works all things twice, in fact three times, to bring a man’s soul from the Pit, that he may be enlightened with the light of life, but it requires the individual’s consent and participation insofar as he does not resist the spirit of grace, nor turn his back on the proffered love.

God doesn’t take hostages. He will not keep you in His kingdom at gunpoint. Jesus Himself said if anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. This is the way, walk in it.

Jesus did the heavy lifting. His purpose on earth was to reconcile us to the Father, something He alone could accomplish, and by His sacrifice made a way for us to be with Him in paradise, saved from the Pit, born anew, sanctified, and cleansed of what we once were, to be transformed into an image of Himself. In His own right, God extends grace, mercy, and forgiveness to all who humble themselves, but He will not force Himself on anyone. He knocks, and we open. He calls, and we answer. He molds, and we submit, not growing brittle or stiff-necked, but remaining malleable.

Any goodwill Elihu may have fostered by his mention of God’s grace gets canceled out when he once again attempts to bring the spotlight back on himself and insists that Job should listen to him, hold his peace, and allow him to teach him wisdom. A person who thinks they know more than they do is a danger not only to others but also to themselves. There was no humility in Elihu, no allowance for the possibility that things weren’t as they seemed at first glance, and like a bull intent on goring whatever stands before him, Elihu pushed ever onward, insisting that anything he had to say was wisdom personified.

Elihu was the quintessential armchair quarterback, the man who not only knew everything but believed he would have acted and reacted to a specific situation better than the individual in question. He never bothered to consider all that Job had lost, all that he had been through, or all that he’d endured thus far. His narrative was firmly established, and he would not be swayed from his position. He was wise in his own eyes, and he was sure to let everyone know it, for after all, if you don’t point out your wisdom, who’s going to do it?

You see this happening in churches and ministries often enough: a soon-to-retire pastor or head of a ministry brings on a young, unseasoned individual to take the helm, only to have them reimagine the ministry's mission statement and transform it into something unrecognizable within a matter of months. Never mind the hostile takeovers taking place in the corporatized Christian landscape, wherein someone believes they can do a better job than the individual who spent decades building up the work. The one question that’s rarely asked, and one that should be asked more often, is if you’re so star-spangled awesome and you have the vision to grow something exponentially, why covet another’s ministry rather than starting your own?

As was the case with Elihu, the sad reality is that some men’s hubris exceeds their intellectual ability, and when it comes to ministry, many go without being sent, doing more harm than good in their single-minded pursuit of something that was never theirs to begin with.   

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCVI

 Job 33:23-28, “If there is a messenger for him, a mediator, one among a thousand, to show man His uprightness, then He is gracious to him, and says, ‘deliver him from going down to the Pit; I have found a ransom’; His flesh shall be young like a child’s, he shall return to the days of his youth. He shall pray to God, and He will delight in him, he shall see His face with joy, for He restores to man His righteousness. Then he looks at men and says, ‘I have sinned and perverted what was right, and it did not profit me.’ He will redeem his soul from going to the Pit, and his life shall see the light.”

If you get the sneaky feeling that you’ve met Elihu before, you’re not alone. The reason for this is that you’ve likely run across an Elihu type in your life, as I have, because they are more common than one might think. Elihu was the type of individual who, no matter the situation or circumstance, had the ability to make it all about himself. He was the star of his own show, and everyone around him was an extra.

If a typhoon devastates an entire region, the Elihu type will bemoan the fact that their flight might get delayed or diverted. Never mind that thousands of people are missing and presumed dead, or that an entire nation is without power for going on two weeks; your plans got ruined, you were inconvenienced by having to wait in an airport for two extra hours, and that was the real tragedy.

Elihu took what was happening to Job, and you guessed it, made it all about himself, and how Job was lucky, or at least should feel lucky, because God had sent him along to act as mediator, and by Elihu’s very presence, his selfless act of standing in for Job, he would be spared from the Pit if he would only confess and admit to having sinned and perverted what was right.

In his hubris, Elihu saw himself as one in a thousand, and if he’d had a say in the matter, the book would have been called the Book of Elihu rather than the Book of Job. Job was auxiliary, as far as Elihu was concerned, and the real story here was the selflessness Elihu exhibited by being willing to mediate between Job and God.

Even at the pinnacle of his success, Job never made it about himself. He didn’t go fishing for accolades or seek the praise of men; he didn’t see himself above the need to have a true and abiding relationship with God, nor did he forego the time he spent in God’s presence.

By the time the story of Job begins to unfold, his children were already grown, each in their own houses, yet, even then, Job would send and sanctify his children once the days of feasting had run their course, and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all.

He understood that everything was dependent on God, His good pleasure, and His sovereign will. For some, once they “make it,” whatever that entails and however that plays out in their minds, God becomes less relevant, less necessary, less important, because their desire was never to have intimacy with God but to succeed, to outshine their competition, and to reach their earthly goals. Not so with Job. By any metric, he’d made it. He was the greatest of all the people of the East, yet that did not dampen his desire to be in God’s presence and walk uprightly.

It’s not as though Job was secretive about his desire for God, nor about his relationship with the Almighty. By his own admission, Elihu had overheard the back-and-forth between Job and his three friends, had witnessed Job’s repeated insistence that he had not done wickedness and that God remained his singular priority and pursuit, but Elihu refused to believe him.

If Job had lived his life incongruent with the will and plan of God up until that point, not only would God not have singled him out as blameless and upright, but there would have been enough evidence to point to and rightly call him a liar to his face when he claimed innocence. He was well known enough that, had he done something wicked, it would have been discovered no matter how hard he tried to hide it.

Job wasn’t trying to save face or claim innocence when he knew himself to be guilty; he wasn’t trying to get off on a technicality, asking what the definition of wickedness was; he knew that he knew himself to be one who feared the Lord, and was not reticent in saying it.

Anyone who seeks to judge others before they judge themselves is not acting out of love, kindness, or righteous indignation, but a desire to elevate themselves and highlight their own perceived righteousness.

There are a few things that are offputting about Elihu and his approach of Job, but for me, worse than any other, it is the prism through which he saw Job, from an elevated position, thinking himself righteous and within his rights to pass judgment on a man who had, up until this time, denied all the accusations leveled against him, and conducted himself in such a manner as to make those who had been arguing with him have no retort or counterargument.

Elihu might have been a fresh face on the scene; he may have seen himself as superior since Job’s friends were, in his words, very old, but when he opened his mouth to speak, we soon realize he was the worst of the lot. Say what you will about Job’s three friends, but none of them had the temerity to appoint themselves as mediators between Job and God as Elihu had.

As the adage goes, respect isn’t given; it’s earned, and although Job’s friends had earned his respect by traveling to him in his time of need, Elihu had done no such thing. He saw an opportunity to exalt himself, and he took it, thinking it would be an easy thing given Job’s state. What Elihu hadn’t counted on was that it wasn’t any man who was Job’s defender but God, and when God is your defender, no matter what men might say, you will continue to stand firm and resolute.         

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCV

Job 33:19-22, “Man is also chastened with pain on his bed, and with strong pain in many of his bones, so that his life abhors bread, and his soul succulent food. His flesh wastes away from sight, and his bones stick out which once were not seen. Yet his soul draws near the Pit, and his life to the executioners.”

If Elihu ever failed at being Job’s self-appointed spokesman before God, he could readily try his hand at being an utterer of personal prophecy in our modern era. He would likely get more traction than some of the new brood of internet prophets, who have measurably less insight and awareness than Elihu. What Elihu was saying wasn’t revelatory by any means; it was the conclusion to which he’d come based on Job’s suffering, because if a man suffers from pain in his bones to the point of abhorring bread, surely he must be under God’s chastening.

It’s funny how the faces change, but the means by which those who claim revelatory insight use the same deductive reasoning to reach their conclusions. It’s also the reason that focusing on the mechanisms and contrivances that such individuals use, rather than on the individuals themselves, is a better use of one’s time.

The false prophets, teachers, evangelists, and those pretending to be sheep but are inwardly ravenous wolves are like the hydra of legend, wherein if one head is lopped off, two others grow in their place. Different face, same scheme, time and again, but if you are able to articulate and properly define the scheme, the face won’t matter because you will know them by their fruit.

Matthew 7:15-20, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”

One of the biggest scandals within the prophetic movement in recent years was self-titled prophets using Facebook to mine data about individuals, then passing it off as authentic prophetic utterance. People were wowed and impressed as though they were there for a magic show rather than a church service, smiling and clapping like trained seals when they were told the street they lived on, or the name of their pet poodle, not bothering to think it through and conclude everything they’d heard was public knowledge, but receiving it as words from on high.

Those who understand how such individuals operate and can identify the mechanisms they employ know that the street number or the name of their recently deceased grandmother is just a springboard to what they’re really after. It never ends with “Your cat’s name is Mr. Whiskers, very original”; it begins with it. Sooner rather than later, also under the guise of prophetic utterance, the manipulation will begin in earnest, and whether it’s sowing a faith seed for the new parsonage that will allow for greater spiritual interactions with the Almighty, or coming under their mentorship which they then use to exploit toward nefarious ends, the victims go along with it because he knew my pet hamster’s name offhand, so he must be what he claims to be.

As an aside, when did the purpose of prophecy become to confirm to you something banal and spiritually irrelevant that you already knew, or could readily discover by looking at your driver’s license? When did we lower the bar to the point that we equate prophecy with a variety show put on by the local high school to raise money for its summer camp outing? What we are seeing today is what happens when desire to witness the supernatural meets unwillingness to live lives worthy of the name Jesus. We want the experience without the repentance; we want the words of knowledge without sanctification; we want the power without the indwelling presence because the indwelling presence demands a clean vessel, and that, in turn, demands that we mortify the flesh and deny ourselves daily.

You can’t have one without the other, but you can pretend to. It may work for a while; the crowds may be wowed, and the gullible may swoon, but the end will be worse than the beginning, and eventually the truth will out.  

If by some miracle we run across someone with true prophetic gifting and they speak a word that challenges us, calls us to repentance, chastens us, or isn’t what we expected to hear, we brush it off and go prophecy hunting until we hear the one we want to hear, because it was never about what the Lord would say but about confirming our biases and hearing a word that is little more than an echo of our own machinations.

I really didn’t like the word about humbling myself and striving for righteousness because it challenged me and made me feel some kind of way, but that one about being highly favored and God having a plan for my life where I would reach millions with my gift - that one hit home. It bore witness, don’t you know, so it must be God’s honest truth. Never mind that I know I’m not where I’m supposed to be in my walk with God. Never mind that although by now I should be on a steady diet of meat, I’m still on milk, and even that only enough to subsist; the man on stage said that I too would be a prophet to the nations.

Elihu didn’t go so far as to prophesy or claim he was prophesying, but he allowed his worldview to determine Job’s guilt and then created a narrative to support his conclusion. It’s like insisting you know the answer to a math equation before you’ve heard the equation itself. It’s four; I know it’s four; I don’t care if the equation is seventy divided by two; the answer is still four.

Such people are impossible to reason with because they will not allow for a different answer, no matter how much evidence exists that they were wrong.  

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Job CCCIV

 Job 33:8-12, “Surely you have spoken in my hearing, and I have heard the sound of your words, saying, ‘I am pure, without transgression; I am innocent, and there is no iniquity in me. Yet He finds occasions against me, He counts me as His enemy; He puts my feet in the stocks, He watches all my paths.’ Look, in this you are not righteous. I will answer you, for God is greater than man.”

Though he believed himself to be the possessor of pure knowledge, one from whose lips nothing else could flow, Elihu’s first action was to fall into the logic trap Job’s friends had likewise fallen into, not allowing for the possibility that there was something beyond what they understood taking place.

I’ve heard you say you were pure, without transgression, and that there is no iniquity in you, but if that were the case, why would God find occasion against you? If you were an innocent man, then God would not count you as His enemy; ergo, you are not an innocent man!

With all the build-up, with all the bloviating words Elihu used to introduce himself, one would think his first address to Job would have contained a tad more wisdom than it did. After talking himself up to the point of appointing himself as Job’s spokesman before God, his hot take was basic and banal. There is nothing new. There is no epiphany, no nugget of wisdom that would make one believe Elihu was as profound and intellectually gifted as he thought himself to be, but that’s the thing about hubris: it always makes the individual suffering from it think more highly of himself than he has any right to.

One thing Elihu said was true: God is greater than man, but given the subtext of his words, he also concluded that even though God is greater than man, God must see Job’s situation as he did, thereby making God beholden to him in His thinking.

I have judged you guilty; therefore, God will judge you guilty as well. It matters not that you insist upon your innocence or that there is no evidence of sin or wrongdoing; I am Elihu, and I have judged you thusly.

Presumptive human reasoning based on one’s own prejudices and the mind of God don’t mix. To assume that the two are in harmony, and appropriate the authority of God in one’s assertions isn’t merely dangerous; it’s sinful. God will not share His glory with another, nor will He allow His authority to be misappropriated and abused.

When one comes in the name of the Lord, they are there to speak His words, do His bidding, deliver His message, and nothing more. He must have been sent by the Lord in order to come in His name, and everything he does in his duty toward the Lord must be within the boundaries of what the Lord declared. You neither have the authority to wing it nor interpret the words that God spoke and assume that it’s what God meant. Your duty is to repeat the words God spoke verbatim, meaning in exactly the same words as were used originally.

Elihu had not been sent; he had no message; he had no word from the Lord for Job, yet he presumed to know the mind of God and placed himself as the sole mediator between Job and God.

Job 33:13-18, “Why do you contend with Him? For He does not give an accounting of any of His words. For God may speak in one way, or in another, yet man does not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, while slumbering on their beds, then He opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction. In order to turn man from his deed, and conceal pride from man, He keeps back his soul from the Pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.”

As I read Elihu’s words, the one analogy that comes to mind is of someone trying to teach a fully grown, adult Shakespeare the alphabet, insisting that he needs to know the basics of language before he can hope to read a sentence, never mind write one. Job was a man who was so accustomed to the presence of God that his singular terror was His absence, yet Elihu was going on about the varied ways He can speak to mankind, yet mankind, being obtuse, does not perceive His message.

Job’s greatest lament was God’s silence. Not that God had spoken and he’d missed it, or that he did not understand the message he’d received in a dream or a vision of the night, but cry out as he might, God remained silent to him.

Job had made this clear enough in his discourse, but Elihu heard what he wanted to hear, and had formulated his conclusions based on the premise that God was punishing Job for something he had yet to admit to, and what’s worse, in Elihu’s estimation, God had been speaking to Job all this time, but Job was too dense to perceive it.

He hasn’t gone quite so far yet, but at some point it would be no surprise if Elihu went with the standard, “If I were in your shoes, this issue would have been resolved a long time ago. I would have perceived what God was telling me and would have acted accordingly, but you refuse to do so. God has tried to turn you from your deeds, but you did not turn.”

It’s evident that although Elihu thought pure knowledge flowed from his lips, he had no clue what he was talking about regarding Job and his relationship with God. He judged the situation for what it was without spiritual insight or allowing for the possibility that something more was happening, just as Job’s friends had done.

We’ve all been guilty of getting caught up in thinking we were right about something to the point that it becomes all important to prove just how right we were. When it turns out we weren’t, that we’d misjudged a situation or a person, one of the hardest things is to admit as much, to acknowledge that we’d judged wrongly, and that we need to repent of it.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.