Job 33:29–30

Job 33:15-22. He shows God using the plough — of a dream, of a striking providence, of bodily pain or sickness — to break up that hard, unbroken ground. And that is still the work today. Job 33:23-24. The sower comes after the ploughman. The seed is the Gospel. God provides the ransom, and deliverance comes to the sinner… Job 33:29-30. Elihu tells Job these are samples of God's way in saving souls.

Nor does God speak only once to a man, but "twice, in fact three times," for we are poor listeners, and God is concerned deeply that souls should be brought back from the Pit — delivered from the negative horror of being without God, and instead given the positive blessing of being "enlightened with the light of life."

Look! God does all this twice, three times, with man, to bring back his soul from corruption, that he may be enlightened with the light of life.

shachath, "a pit, a pitfall to entrap animals," place of doom and corruption. Job 33:18, 24, 28, 30.

We are the objects of His deep, tender, and unchanging love; but we are also the subjects of His wise moral government. His dealings with us are varied. They are sometimes preventive; sometimes corrective; always instructive. We may be set on some course of our own that would end in moral ruin. He steps in and turns us back from it. He smashes our castles in the air, scatters our golden dreams, and breaks into many a favourite plan we had set our hearts on — a plan that would have destroyed us. "Behold, God does all these things, twice, three times, with a man, to bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living."

This is not a doctrine of how grace wakes sinners from the sleep of death. It is a lifelike sketch of His detailed ways. He uses sickness and sorrow, and dreams or visions. Above all, He uses people who come with the light of God to deal with a man's conscience. All this comes out vividly, and so does the effect it produces — "to bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living." It speaks to the point so powerfully that we know how often preachers still make it a favourite theme when they bring the gospel to those who are not converted.

Elihu said this before God gave the law through Moses, yet even then he assures Job that God worked these things often with man. Therefore the gospel of God's grace has always been the way God meets man's need. The simplicity of this is beautiful, and Job could have no objection to it.

This is not a doctrine of how grace wakes sinners from the sleep of death. It is a sketch drawn from life of His detailed ways. He uses sickness and sorrow, and dreams or visions. Above all, He uses those who come with the light of God to deal with the conscience of man. All this stands out vividly, and so does the effect it produces: "To bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living." It speaks to the point so forcibly that preachers of the gospel still make it a favourite theme today. Elihu's words are not the fullest material or the deepest ground to preach from. Still, it is striking how much living power clings to this earliest record of God's way with a waking sinner, written hundreds — indeed two thousand — years before the gospel of God's grace went out.

shachath, 'a pit, a pitfall to entrap animals,' place of doom and corruption. Job 33:18, 24, 28, 30; Ps. 9:15; Ps. 30:9; Ps. 35:7; Ezek. 28:8; etc.

God does not speak only once to a man, but "twice, in fact three times," because we listen so poorly. God cares deeply that souls be brought back from the Pit. There is the negative side: He delivers them from the horror of being without God. There is the positive side: He gives them the blessing of being enlightened with the light of life.

The comparison of the light of life in the Old Testament and the New has something remarkable in it. In the Old it means coming into the outward light of this world, as if born into it… But for the New, "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men," and then, "Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." This is not the light of nature — life in this world. In the Old sense, "seeing the light" means being born: having light in this world, having life in it. Now the Light of life is having Christ, and seeing by the power of that life which is in Him. He is at the same time the Light itself.

You may take that place without any fear of being a hypocrite. In owning what you are, as a sinner, before God, there is no fear of deceiving yourself, much less of deceiving God. If this is your confessed state, God will deliver your soul from going into the pit. You will be enlightened with the light of the living. Do not rest until you know this for certain: "God has justified you freely through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

These are God's frequent ways: dreams, painful discipline, and messengers. By them He wakes a man to a right sense of himself before God. By them He rescues him from corruption, so that he may be enlightened with the light of life… The everlasting gospel had its witness in Elihu, as surely as Noah preached righteousness to the ungodly before the flood.