The Wishes of Men

Can you, like him, spread out the skies, hard as a cast metal mirror? Teach us what we shall say to him; we cannot draw up our case because of darkness. Shall it be told him that I would speak? Did a man ever wish that he would be swallowed up?
Job 37:18–20
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The Wishes of Men
Elihu continues to have Job consider God’s glory and might compared to his. He begs Job to reconsider his wish to confront God. Elihu knows that to stand before God would be disastrous because we do not stand as equals.  God is far superior to us, and we do well to remember this. To ask to defend ourselves based on our own merits before God is to “wish that [we] would be swallowed up.” Yet this is the presumption that many of us have. We feel that our actions speak for themselves and that we are innocent and deserve God’s richest rewards.  We cannot imagine that we are not worthy of heaven. Yet God warns us, “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Hebrew 3:19-20). Thanks be to God, though, that He has made it possible for us to stand before Him. For we have an Advocate before the Father in Christ Jesus. And He has cleared our debts and declared us righteous. So we can stand before God not based on our works but on the work of Christ on our behalf. His atonement on the cross gives us a place before God. His righteousness makes us worthy. His blood makes us clean.