Page 130 - Job

and he has a very graphic way of describing things. He said, “Every
Christian will learn to kiss the wave that dashes him on the Rock of
Ages.” What a picture! And then he went on to say, “There is a sweetness
with Christ in bitterness, not found in honey. There is a calm with Christ
in a storm, that is not found in peace.” Did you ever experience anything
like that? You see, these are the ways of God. That is what he is saying in
chapter 34:26-28. God brings and allows these things in your life because
it makes you cry to Him. And anything that makes you seek Him is
wonderful. 35:10-11,
“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 the heavens?’”

Elihu cannot imagine listening to all this conversation and no one asks,
“Where is God who teaches us?” No one is looking for a lesson. No one is
saying, “Why did God bring this? What am I to learn? What am I to be
taught?” I like that expression, “Songs in the night.” Notice Job wanted
songs from the night. He did not want songs in the night. He wanted to
be delivered from the night. Elihu says in chapter 35:15,

“He delivers the afflicted in their affliction.”
Not from their affliction. “He delivers the afflicted (in) their affliction.”
Recently, I was studying Psalm 119, and I was greatly blessed by verse
62. It says, “At midnight I will rise and give thanks to Thee.” At first I
did not understand what he was saying. I thought midnight was the hour
after 11 p.m. and before 1 a.m. That seemed logical to me; that is what
midnight was. But I do not think David was saying I set my alarm clock
for 12, and at 12 o’clock I rose up and had a little prayer meeting and said
thank you. In the context, night was used as a figure of speech. The
mystics always spoke of “The dark night of the soul”. You know,
sometime we have used it that way. Boy, this has been quite a night. God
has allowed me all this darkness and I am confused. Night was an
experience of affliction and trouble. David says, “I will rise at midnight
and give thanks to Thee.” Right in the middle of my trouble I will rise up
and give thanks to Thee. That is what Elihu is emphasizing. Who is the
one who seeks God, who gives songs in the night? That is what you need
to learn, Job.
The great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther struggled mightily with a
sense of his own sinfulness and inability to please God. The darkness he
often experience he called in German “Anfechtungen”. Say that out loud
and it has the feel of dark hopeless suffering. What is remarkable but

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