These words come from the mouth of the young inquisitor, Elihu, speaking against his older friends and the suffering patriarch, Job.
The inquisitors eventually are critiqued by the Lord for saying more than they know. Our brains are not big enough, and our hearts not clean enough to answer all the problems related to evil. And yet their words are not completely without value. I think it would be hard to miss the truth here, conveyed through irony.
“What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?” Who does He think He is, anyway? The Almighty? Or to put it differently, what other response could a person suppose than to “serve” the Almighty? What? Are you going to lord it over Him? Are you going to tell Him what to do? Are you going to accuse Him of being unfair, or unjust, when all standards of fairness and justice originate within His own being? We are but His creatures. What more could we do, but serve Him?
What does that mean? Well, to do His bidding; to come at His call; to be submissive and obedient; to put His agenda above your own. Unless, of course, we don’t really consider Him to be Almighty.
“And what profit do we get if we pray to him?” Get? Do we dare say or think, what do I get? When every good thing that we have to enjoy is from Him, do we say of prayer, “It’s not worth my time?”, or, “What’s in it for me?”
The statement is simple. The irony does not conceal, but rather, reveals the truth. The Almighty must be served, and we would do well to pray to Him, humbly. But that is not all.
Because the Almighty has actually done for us what we are bound to do for Him. God sent His Son as a servant, to walk in our shoes and die in our place. He served us in ways that go way beyond how we might ever serve Him. And having died for us, He rose again from the dead, and is at the right hand of the Father today as our great High Priest, our Intercessor. One of his pledges in that role - one of His promises to us, is that He will ever be praying for us. Yes, that’s right, the Almighty prays for you.
Now, does it seem unreasonable for us to serve Him, and to pray to Him?
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