No Profit

What man is like Job, who drinks up scoffing like water, who travels in company with evildoers and walks with wicked men? For he has said, ‘It profits a man nothing that he should take delight in God.’
Job 34:7–9
+
No Profit
Elihu here accuses Job of saying that it doesn’t do any good for a person to be on God’s good side. He sees this as scoffing at God.  Yet Job never actually says these words.  Job does make the point earlier that both the good and the wicked suffer (9:22-24).  This is not the same as saying it does no good to be on God’s good side.  We can see how easy it is for us to twist others' words to suit our own purposes.  The devil has been teaching us this deception since the beginning, when he asked Eve, “Did God actually say…?” (Genesis 3:1). Job, by God own admission, is “a blameless and upright” man (1:1). He knows that the good do suffer and the wicked do prosper in this life.  Yet Elihu would convince him he said something different.  Where the real profitlessness lies is in twisting God’s Word to serve ourselves. We are all guilty of this. We use His Words to point out others flaws and condemn them yet are unable to see our own sin.  We profit no one when we engage in the devil’s trickery.  The profit lies in Christ and His crucifixion.  When we understand through faith that even though the devil attacks us and hardships and calamities befall us, Christ in His love rescues us with the shedding of His own blood.  We rest secured in the truth that our sin was completely atoned for as it was nailed to the cross. We need not burden ourselves with it for Christ has wiped it away in His perfect life, death, and resurrection.  Our profit lies in Christ.