We now come to the final of Elihu's speeches.
Elihu is full of confidence in what he speaks.
Verse 5-12 is straightforward simple prosperity teaching. God looks after the righteous, if we obey Him we will prosper, if we aren't then it must be because we have sinned. Now we need to think about this carefully. At one level this is absolutely right and Biblical. Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 state this clearly, but all this overlooks one simple fact. We have all sinned and we live in a sinful world. The Law can never be a way of life for it is a curse that stands against us (Col 2:14). If we are going to judge things purely by the Law then I am destined for hell and so are you. So was Job and so was Elihu.
We live in a sinful world, but also in one where God has intervened through the Lord Jesus Christ to bring salvation through faith and through grace into the world. We live in a time when that grace is working on our lives to clean up the mess within us. And neither Elihu nor Job's friends give an inkling of realising that this is the case.
The rest of chapter 36 and the start of 37 is good stuff about the greatness of God, but without the realisation of how grace works it just adds further to the torment.
Elihu closes by calling on Job to remember how much greater than he the Lord is. This is essentially what God says to Job in the final chapters.
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