A Spurgeon Snapshot
One of my favorite study Bibles is The Spurgeon Study Bible, available from Lifeway, Christianbook.com, and Amazon. All of the study notes are quotes from Charles Spurgeon’s sermons and writing. For more on Charles Spurgeon, click here.
Most of the time when I read Job, Elihu comes across as a long-winded, arrogant punk, bragging about his perfect knowledge (36:4) and how he knows so much more than those three old coots Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar (32:9-14).
But there are some things Elihu gets right; if not about Job specifically, then at least about human nature generally. At one point in his speech, he says,
9 People cry out because of severe oppression;
Job 35:9-11, CSB
they shout for help because of the power of the mighty.
10 But no one asks, “Where is God my Maker,
who provides us with songs in the night,
11 who gives us more understanding than the animals of the earth
and makes us wiser than the birds of the sky?”
People face severe oppression all the time. It can come in the form of economic hardship, family crises, disease, depression, social upheaval, you name it. They “beg for help because of the power of the mighty.” (By the way, this isn’t saying they acknowledge the power of the Almighty God. Here, “the power of the mighty” refers to the power of the things that oppress, or possibly the power of human oppressors. An alternate translation is the “power of the many.”).
However, Elihu notes that in their cries for help, they don’t seek God. The unbeliever doesn’t think about God at all, and the believer doesn’t remember that God “provides us with songs in the night.”
Spurgeon wrote:
[Elihu] said to himself, “Surely if men are greatly tried and troubled, it is because while they think about their troubles and distress themselves with their fears, they do not say, “Where is God my Maker, who provides us with songs in the night?”
Spurgeon considered nighttime a gift from God. “The sweet calm stillness of night permits us to rest on the bed of ease and forget, for awhile, our cares.”
This is consistent with scripture. In Psalm 4:8, the Psalmist says, “In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, LORD, make me dwell in safety.” Psalm 127:2 adds, “God gives to his beloved sleep.” In Proverbs 3:24, Solomon assured us that when the wise lay down, they will not be afraid, and their sleep will be sweet.
So Spurgeon goes on to say,
Night is one of the greatest blessings men enjoy–we have many reasons to thank God for it. Yet night is to many a gloomy time. We have nights of sorrow, nights of persecution, nights of doubt, nights of bewilderment, nights of affliction, nights of anxiety, nights of ignorance, nights of all kinds that oppress our spirits and terrify our souls. But blessed be God, the Christian can say, “My God gives me songs in the night.”
Beloved, there are two ways to cry out “Where is God my Maker?” It can be in despair, wondering if God has abandoned you, or if He was ever really there in the first place.
Or, it can be in sincerity, seeking God’s hand in your present circumstance. Trusting that God is at work for good in every situaton, predestining His saints to be formed to be formed more and more into the image of His son (Romans 8:28-29).
The despairing cries out, “Is God even there?” The trusting cries out, “God, help me find you.”
God, give me songs in the night. When I find my voice, let me see Your face.
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