Page 129 - Job

is not problem centered, and he is not solution centered. He is God
centered. He is more concerned with how they approach the thing than
with the solution itself. He suggests another possibility. Here is his new
information. Job, you are not necessarily suffering for sin. He did not rule
it out. You are suffering for your own good. You see, Job’s friends said
all suffering is punitive – punishment. Elihu said, no, it is not. Some of it
is designed to purify, to make you holy, like pruning in the New
Testament (John 15). This is not the full answer, as we will see, but it is a
tremendous forward step. Let me illustrate in chapters 32-37 – how he
gives this answer that suffering is to teach and to instruct you. Look at
33:17 and 18,
“That He may turn aside from his conduct, and keep man from pride;
He keeps back his soul from the pit, and his life from passing over
into Sheol.”

Suffering is to deliver you from pride and to bring your soul back, he said.
In other words, if I never had trials in my life I would be headed for the
pit, but God brings trials to bring me back from the pit. David had that
same idea when he wrote Psalm 119:67, “Before I was afflicted I went
astray, but now I have kept Thy word.” Affliction is designed to keep
you on the path. Chapter 33:29 and 30,

“Behold, God does all these oftentimes with men, to bring back his
soul from the pit, that he may be enlightened with the light of life.”
Again not punitive – remedial. God has a greater purpose in all of this.
Look at chapter 34, verse 26,

“He strikes them like the wicked in a public place, because they
turned aside from following Him, and had no regard for any of His
ways so that they caused the cry of the poor to come to Him, that He
might hear the cry of the afflicted.”
In other words, he lets the wicked oppress the righteous because it makes
the righteous cry to Him, and He likes that. We read this in Exodus when
Israel is captive in Egypt –. The Bible says the Egyptians made their lives
bitter. Exodus 2:23 says:

“And the sons of Israel sighed because of their bondage, and they
cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to
God. So God heard their groaning.”
God allows us to be crushed because that drives us to Him. Anything that
drives us to Him is redemptive. I read a sermon one time by Spurgeon,

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