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So, God has been giving Job the God-test. “Job, can you create a universe out of nothing, create a world of creatures and gift each one with its unique talents, create from dust a human mind, or hold the universe together by the power of your will? Are you eternal, Job (human race)?”

To this test Job must confess (as do we all) complete failure; we cannot pass a single test or even come close. That’s why Job has to put his hand on his mouth, as if to say by gesture, “I have misspoken!”

“Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty?…Will you really annul my judgment…?” And from here God’s discussion revolves around two of his most powerful creatures to illustrate his stregth and power — apparently what we’d call dinosaurs, Behemoth and Leviathan. Behemoth appears to be the large brontosaurus variety dinosaur, and Leviathan appears to be a more alligator-ish dinosaur — from the description, very much like a traditional dragon.

As an aside, the scientific world, in an effort to make a case for a very old earth have relegated dinosaurs to an era 150 million years ago. Yet there are evidences that point to the coexistence of men and dinosaurs, and this passage in Job along with the other worldwide references to dragons in human histories (in the form of stories, legends, myths, and pictographs) are part of that body of evidence.

But back to the main point, the reason God’s power is pointed out here is to underscore to Job and to us Who we are talking to, when we find fault with God’s judgment or plans. We’re not speaking to another flawed and weak human being. We are speaking the One who is all wise, all-powerful, and whose purpose cannot be thwarted (42:2).

Job’s response was that he had clearly declared what he didn’t understand — he had spoken with having a real clue — things too wonderful for him to understand. And here may be the real answer to all the questions that we have seen asked in this book and in our own hearts. There are many things that are simply way above our pay grade, as it were. We may not like that answer — we didn’t like that answer, when we were kids either, when our parents were making wise decisions for us that we didn’t like. But there are things that God does that we don’t and won’t understand in this lifetime, maybe ever. What we do need to know is this: God is wise and good and loving and acting in our best interests. And when troubles come our way, we need to realize that God disciplines those He loves (Heb. 12:6).

Job gets double back everything he lost. And the point here to us is not that we should expect a complete restoration of material things lost, but realize that faithfully enduring trial for us will obtain glory that is not worthy to be compared to the suffering we bore (Rom. 8:18) — see also Matt 19:29.

See you tomorrow, Lord willing.

Now we’re getting down to t he answer that we’ve all been waiting for.

And answer is… Well, you need to take the God-test first to make sure that you could understand the answer. OK, let’s take the test. “I will ask you, and you instruct Me.”

“Where were you, when I laid the foundations of the earth?” — Can you imagine God’s reply to your answer to this question? “Are you God-quality? You know, eternal, omnipotent and all? Oh, you weren’t there? Oh, then maybe you’re lacking the long range perspective to get the long range considerations that need to be factored into My decisions.” when I was a child, I used to wonder why Mom and Dad wouldn’t spend the money on something I wanted now — something about paying bills and keeping a roof over our heads. I thought it was just a lame excuse; I wasn’t thinking long term, or even middle term. I was thinking about a nanometer in front of my nose. Sometimes we question God thinking that we have it all figured out — how arrogant that a creature who has been existent a nano-second to God’s eternity believes that we know enough to call God on the carpet. And that’s the point here.

“Have you ever in your life commanded the morning and caused the dawn to know its place?” — “Oh you’ve never done that? You’ve never set the cycles of the universe that provide balance to all life? Then maybe you might lack the ability to gauge the necessary cycles of testing and recovery that strengthen men.”

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose th e cords of Orion?” — “No? Then maybe you’re lacking the wisdom to coordinate a whole universe in such a way as to have the right outcome?”

The bottom line here boils down to this: we fail the God-test. And no disrespect intended, because I’m human, too, but were just not smart enough to comprehend everything does. We can get some things; and sometimes in retrospect we are able to understand a little bit why we might have suffered in our lives, or why something happened, that we previously didn’t understand. But there may be reasons that we cannot imagine now as humans. Job probably never considered that his suffering would be a source of intense and deep solace to many millions down throughout the ages — and THAT may not have even been the prime reason that God allowed him to suffer.

See you tomorrow, Lord willing.

First of all, let me apologize to my readers for having skipped yesterday. Sometimes there aren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done. I’ll try to make sure they don’t happen very often.

The argument between Job and his friends is crescendoing into its peak and in it are a lot of interesting things being said. Here we are introduced to one more “friend”, Elihu, who claims to speak for God, and like some preachers we might know is a little lengthy in his sermon — wrong as it ultimately is. But he speaks up because Job has fairly effectively shut down the other guys (32:1,2) by (chapt. 31) specifying his righteous behavior and challenging his “friends” to prove him guilty in any of the things he lists. Elihu is younger than the other men and brasher and full of vinegar in his attempt to “break” Job. Let’s begin today by looking at some of the things that Job can teach us in his list of his righteousness.

Have I eaten my morsel alone? — Job understood real stewardship. Righteousness is not just about giving to the poor; it is about generosity. I know people, perhaps you do, too, who believe that good stewardship is all about preservation. They believe that good stewardship, for example is primarily about large bank accounts for the church, a pristine church building, and being very careful with the budget. And certainly wild spending, deliberate abuse of things God has given, and failing to budget at all is ungodly. But good stewardship is hardly at all about preservation; it’s about using what God has given in ways that God approves! The whole point of the parable of the talents is about how poor a steward the preservationist 1 talent man really was, because he simply preserved rather than properly used. Generosity toward the poor is part of using the gifts God has placed into our hands in way a way that He would approve of. Job wasn’t a miser, hoarding the good that God had given into His hand just for himself. His opponents knew what a good steward, what a generous man, what a giver Job was and they couldn’t mount an argument against him. And God will see us as righteous if we move beyond preservationism and on toward true generosity and proper use of the good things God has given us.

Have I put my confidence in gold? — This verse is part of a larger passage in which Job was really talking about idolatry — did you notice? And he is lumping materialism in with throwing a kiss to the sun or moon (gods in the Mesopotamian world: Shamash and Sin). Why? Because materialism puts its trust in riches — a denial of God above (31:28). It’s an Old Testament version of Colossians 3:5, “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.” Even though Job had been rich, he had never trusted in those riches; that’s why he was able to say, “The has given and the Lord has taken away”; he knew they were transient and limited in power. God on the other hand, is immutable and unlimited — it’s the nature of who He is! Where is your confidence, where is your time spent, where are your energies focused, where is your trust?

Have I rejoiced in the extinction of my enemy? — Here’s one we all had a little trouble with recently at the death of OBL. On the one hand, it was good to see justice served; but on the other hand, he was a soul heading for a terrible eternity. God says about His enemies, “Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord GOD, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?’” Ezekiel 33:11, NAS95. Righteousness may be satisfied with justice, but it doesn’t rejoice at the demise of a soul that is destined for Hell.

Have I covered my transgressions like Adam? — This is the very thing that Job’s friends were suggesting that he must be doing, hiding his sin. It might be useful to think a moment about how Adam tried to hide his sin. Was it really in the physical hiding that Adam did? Was it in the loin coverings of fig leaves that he used? Or was it really in the blame shifting that he attempted? Maybe all three, but given the accusations that Job’s friends had been making, I’m thinking that perhaps what Job is talking about here is the blame shifting attempts. Of course, sometimes we try to hide what we’ve done wrong from the attention of anyone, but when the deed comes to light, we often retreat to blame shifting. Think of Rep Wiener lately, when he sexted and when caught tried to claim that he’d been hacked and he couldn’t tell if the explicit pictures were really of him. That prompted a number of guffaws from almost all of us — blame shifting. Job couldn’t even be convicted (successfully) of blame shifting.

Be careful what you speak in God’s name — Finally, Elihu had some chutzpah to suggest that he was speaking for God (33:4), but then again that’s a common story among false prophets. How would you feel if someone came up to your husband or wife and said, “(Fill in your name here) wanted me to tell you that he/she didn’t love you anymore.” We’d sort of freak out, right? How dare that person say such a thing!! Or have you ever been misquoted by someone (possibly in, say, gossip?), offending someone by what you never really said? “Hey, get it straight!” we might say, “I never said that!” We need to gather a lesson from such blunders. Elihu may have thought himself to really be right, really be speaking for God; but as God is about to make clear, starting in chapter 38, he was not speaking for Him at all. The scariest sort of command that I read as a preacher are those passages, and there are several of them, that warn of the high standard that anyone who teaches or preaches will be held to. I’m sometimes caught a little off-guard, when someone challenges something that I’ve said, but in retrospect I am always grateful for everyone who’s ever questioned my teachings. They keep me honest, they make me really do my homework, and more to the point here, they help me stay true to the word. It’s true for all of us who teach, when we lay claim to speak a word in God’s behalf, we need to make sure that we really are.

See you tomorrow, Lord willing.

The passions are rising in the accusations and defenses being made in Job in our reading now. Job “friends” are far more pointed in their call for repentance, and Job is far more pointed in his rebuke to their sorry comfort. Of the many things that we can read about there are a few really interesting passages

He hangs the earth on nothing — Despite the common concepts of ancient men about how the earth could “stand” (e.g., on the shoulder of Atlas), the Bible here asserts something that ancient men would have had a difficult time with: the earth suspended on nothing (26:7). And perhaps a little less clear, Job seems to indicate that the earth is round (26:10), when the common idea was that it was flat. Such scientific knowledge, predating later discoveries by hundreds of years, is often cited among other evidences for the inspiration of the Bible.

 Where can wisdom be found? — Chapter 28 is great chapter in Job. The riches of the world are listed and where they can be found — except wisdom! Wisdom isn’t something you can mine or grow or manufacture, yet its value far exceeds the natural riches of the world. Its source is God and its root is counter-intuitive (at least for our culture), “the fear of the LORD.” (v. 28).

See you tomorrow, Lord willing.

Job’s “friends” escalate their help in dialing up the intensity of their accusations. Their strategy and “wisdom” seems to be that if a little argumentation doesn’t work that more and more intense argument will. Throughout these exchanges Job’s “friends” seem to have absolute confidence that they and their position are absolutely correct — so much so that they really don’t seem to be listening to what Job is saying.

Now, it is true that sometimes “the accused” will stiffen their resistance by shouting louder and longer that they really are innocent — witness a number of politicians that have made the news over the past several years who got caught with their pants down (literally and figuratively), who denied for some time that they were actually guilty, that they were the victims of a witch-hunt or a hacking attack or a terrible misunderstanding. And sometimes the only way to get to the truth is to continue to be relentless. But those who accuse also need to be very careful that they don’t convict innocence, and that can be done by merely listening. Sometimes we get so caught up in defending our “position” that we don’t listen to the other participant in the conversation. Job’s “friends” comment a lot in a generic way on his responses, but they really don’t answer them apart from further accusations that he must think that he’s smarter than the ancient observers (elders or philosophers) of their culture. And listening can be good for more than simply learning something that we didn’t knew before (as in Job’s “friends” case); sometimes its the best to truly and forcefully answer the questions and errors of others.

I know that my Redeemer lives — This wonderful verse expresses Job’s ultimate hope that God will exonerate him and vindicate his innocence. And hope is priceless, especially in circumstances like Job’s. Job is not only a wonderful philosophic, theological tour de force on the question of the problem of evil, but it is also a wonderful example of godly faith in the fires of suffering. It hopes, it looks to God for vindication, and never despairs. Like Job, we often don’t know why we suffer, why we’re being tested or tempted. So much seems so pointless and random and without rhyme or reason. Job’s “friends” were trying to find the rhyme and reason to suffering, concluding that it was because of sin. The truth is that life and and God’s will are more complicated than that. Job’s “friends” would doubtlessly have had a faith crisis, had Job’s catastrophes befallen them. But Job held on to his integrity, his faith, and his hope.

Yet, from my flesh I shall see God — Although there are those who would argue that the concept of the resurrection is one that comes at a considerably later time than Job’s era, here we see a clear reference to a verse that seems to be interpretable only by the resurrection. It’s a passage of hope that God would indeed vindicate Job, even if it were after Job’s death. And indeed that is the great and unassailable hope of every Christian. Life will not be fair; bad things will happen to us in spite of the good we may be and do; people will falsely accuse us; perhaps even society will revile us; but those who are faithfully following the Lord will in the final result be vindicated. Hold on to that: do what’s right in love, and let the pieces fall where they will; God will vindicate in the end.

See you tomorrow, Lord willing.

Today’s reading (and several tomorrow’s worth of readings) will feature more of Job’s heavy conversations with his friends. Despite the heaviness of the topic and the occasional repetition of accusation / defense cycles, there are some some practical things to see and think about here

Do you hear the secret counsel of God? — Ol’ Eliphaz, good friend that he is, is trying to humble Job into repentance. As part of his effort to bring Job around, he asks Job if he heard the secret counsel of God. Obviously, neither Job nor any of us are privy to God’s “secret things” (Deut. 29:29); but clearly Job did know more than his friends, because he knew himself and he obviously knew God better. With the Scriptures, we have advantages that Job never had; we can know God, His will, His ways, and His “track record”. And when we may be confronted by folks who make confident but false assertions about God, ala Eliphaz and company, we need never cower or compromise. God is right and will always be right. And when we’re with Him, we’re right, too.

Veiled hearts — But about this secret counsel of God, is most of it really that secret? Not so much. More often than not, it’s a matter of what Paul called a veil on the heart (2 Cor. 3:14), or “wisdom of the world” (1 Cor. 2), or as Job says, “For You have kept their heart from understanding” (17:4). What causes these things to happen? Multiple reasons, really. Sometimes, we don’t want to know what God’s will is, and so we make up what pleases us. Sometimes, someone makes up a really slick argument to persuade us to believe what is false. Sometimes we like staying ignorant about God’s will, because it is inconvenient to our tastes, our life-style, our preferred view of the world. That was sort of Job’s friends’ veil — they wanted to believe the fantasy that they could avert the disaster that had befallen Job by keeping their noses clean: do good things, get good things. What happened to Job — catastrophe to a righteous man — was just too scary to contemplate! So we wear the veils. What God offers is to take the veils off.

God, we’ve got questions — I don’t know how many conversations I’ve had with others over the years when some difficult topic comes up — often having to do with a version of the very puzzle that Job is struggling with — and we have to conclude the discussion with something like, “I’d love to ask God…”, just like Job (16:21). We’ll always have questions; humans have curious minds. Now, we must be sure to understand this important truth: there are just things that we’d like to know about that we can’t comprehend (we’ll talk more about this topic in the last chapters of Job) and other things that we really don’t want to know about (even if we think we do). But that’s not to say that there might not be answers to some of questions that we wonder about now found right in the Bible in plain sight — if only we’d read it and put the pieces together. Sadly, we usually try to get by on the Cliff Notes — sermons, Bible class lessons, or man-written commentaries (including even this blog). You won’t get your answers that way; there aren’t any short cuts for the good answers.

When I was younger, I used to ask questions of my Bible teachers. Unfortunately, they didn’t always understand what I was asking and sometimes they answered a different question or just shrugged their shoulders. I walked away thinking that there weren’t any answers. It wasn’t until I got considerably more serious about Bible study that I began to find the answers — and still find answers to life’s questions, answers I didn’t know were there, right there, “hiding” in plain sight. Wouldn’t it be a little embarrassing to get to Heaven and ask God your “grand question”, only for Him to take you to Scripture and point to a simple verse you’d read before, but you’d never stopped to really think about? Of course, there are the “secret things” and “mysteries”, but they may be fewer than we imagine.

See you tomorrow, Lord willing.

There is a larger lesson to be found in Job that I hope that you’re seeing as we read through — apart from the verse by verse things that I’ve been commenting on. Job’s friends, as misguided as they are with their misunderstanding of the meaning of trial and troubles, are at least doing right in confronting Job. Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, the friends were indeed wrongly concluding that Job had sinned, because so much disaster had befallen him; but at least they cared enough to try to help by calling him to repentance — even if they were seriously mistaken.

Today’s world is so fearful of “judgment” that it often simply turns a blind eye to sin and even denies that the obvious consequences of sin could possibly be any sort of judgment from God — a God who is so much a loving, grandfatherly being that He couldn’t possibly punish anyone. What a false notion of God! What a cowardly and uncaring friendship! God is most definitely interested in bringing wrong-doers to justice; and a “friend” who would allow another friend to continue down a path of sin and destruction is really more an enemy than a friend.

The proper balance between Job’s friends who were too quick to assume the worst and accuse him wrongly of sin and modern notions of non-judgmental friendship is found in having a biblically informed understanding 1) God, 2) God’s nature, 3) the role of trial and trouble in God’s scheme of things, and 4) what true friends will do to protect one another. So don’t read the book of Job and conclude that confrontation of someone else is wrong; the Scripture teaches us elsewhere:

“But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.” Galatians 2:11, NAS95.

“Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted.” Galatians 6:1, NAS95.

“Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.” 2 Thessalonians 3:15, NAS95.

“My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” James 5:19, 20, NAS95.

Those things having been said, then, let’s look at a few other verses and their lessons.

The power of God — For most of us reading the Bible, there is no doubt that God is indeed powerful — He’s the creator of the universe! But 12:13-25 contains a distilled tour de force of what God can and does do. And God’s actions of the sort described by Job are not confined to the ancient world; He’s alive and well and intervening in affairs of men even today. No, He’s not doing miracles today, by His own choice (we’ll take more about this in a future post); but He still makes nations great, then destroys them (v. 23a), answers prayers of His people, and also brings His promises and prophecies into fulfillment. God is not the God of the Deist, who has merely wound up the world like a clock and watches it unwind as it will; He is active and engaged and must never be factored out of the equation of history and current events.

I know that I will be vindicated — Is it possible to know that you stand innocent before God? Job certainly seemed to think so, although he does seem to open the possibility of some unknown thing he might have done: “How many are my iniquities and sins? Make known to me my rebellion and my sin.” Job 13:23, NAS95. He even entertains the possibility that he was paying for something done in his you: “For You write bitter things against me And make me to inherit the iniquities of my youth.” Job 13:26, NAS95. But nevertheless, Job is confident that he will be vindicated. This probably has everything to do with Job’s confidence in God’s real forgiveness and his deliberate efforts at being obedient to the LORD. Job, as the earlier chapters showed, was very conscientious about making sacrifices for himself and his children, lest any of them might have offended God. Sometimes we, however, carry about an uncertainty about our forgiveness and our spiritual condition before God. But if Job could be so correctly confident — a Gentile, living before Christ, operating on limited information gained from the innate knowledge of God and moral knowledge (see Romans 1 and 2) — can’t we correctly find confidence in having the one truly effective sacrifice for all time (Jesus on the cross), the guidance of inspired Scripture, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit?

Short-lived and full of turmoil — Now, isn’t that the truth?! Job in his misery and looming mortality is considering the ultimate questions of life. The wise writer of Ecclesiastes said, “It is better to go to a house of mourning Than to go to a house of feasting, Because that is the end of every man, And the living takes it to heart.” Ecclesiastes 7:2, NAS95. Those ultimate questions are all too seldom asked, but Job did in Job 14 as he tried to plead with God to have mercy on his frail human frame. Consider it yourself; it’s sobering.

See you tomorrow, Lord willing.

There’s nothing like misery and an approaching mortality to energize the philosophic side of mankind. The questions that Job wrestles with in today’s reading seek answers to fundamental questions like: “Why am I here and what makes me important to God?”, “Why is there something so fundamentally wrong with life here on the earth?”, and “Why won’t God rescue me — now?” Not that those questions are answered in today’s reading; for now we have to simply be satisfied with the fact that they have been asked.

Ask deeply — Which, however, is something to comment on here. I’ve occasionally gotten into conversations with atheists and sometimes agnostics who with not just a little intellectual pride offer up the question of suffering and evil in the world, as if I’d never considered it and as it the Bible never addressed it. Quite to the contrary, however, the Bible brings up this thorny set of questions here in Job and in other places (though not in quite as much depth as Job). The Bible doesn’t shy away from difficult questions; and adult believers have usually wrestled with these tough questions themselves personally and come out on the other side still believers and much more appreciative of God’s nature. If you have a hard question, please don’t assume that there is no answer, just because you haven’t found it yet. Ask deeply, think deeply, look deeply into God’s word.

What is man? — Job asks this question (7:17-19), and it’s a good one. What’s so special about us; why does God pay such attention to us; why does it matter to Him about the outcomes of our trials or temptations? Man is not like the rest of the natural creation, who were given mere life and instinct. Man was given (Gen. 1) the image of God — not with two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth — we are essentially spirit beings given material bodies to inhabit and manipulate; and there’s something about bearing His image which causes God to take a special interest in us. There’s much more to contemplate here including what bearing God’s image may imply and what bearing the image of God might help us understand about God Himself.

Trusting spider webs — Although Job’s misguided friends are often wrong about both Job and God, there are certainly grains of truth among the many clumps of error. And one of those truths is what the godless trust in, spider webs. Now, you may have a touch (or maybe a heaping portion) of arachnophobia, so you might avoid webs like the plague, but even spider haters will have notice that their webs are pretty insubstantial — they were made for catching flies and other light-weight insects, not human beings. And the point here is that relying on things that the godless rely on — wealth, beauty, intelligence, and athleticism, for example — have as much ability to help in times of God’s judgment as a spider web has to stop a freight train. What spider webs do you rely on?

Where’s an umpire, when you need one? — By Job’s own admission he is giving full vent to his grief and because he feels he is feeling unfairly treated, Job is simply saying that he wishes that there were someone he could appeal to. In saying all this, he knows that there is no one greater than the LORD (Job 9:1ff); he is simply venting in frustration because there is no higher court to which one may appeal and perhaps get a different verdict. And you’ve probably felt this way before, most of us do, “If only I could get another opinion, I’m sure they’d agree with me that God’s made a mistake, and God would change His mind.” One of the most common ways to justify our not-so-proper actions has always been to point out that others, maybe the majority would agree with us. Morality by polls, right and wrong by survey, religion by democracy, and the answer to “my unfair circumstances” can be reversed by experts, psychologists, and popular opinion. If you don’t like what God’s doing or saying or allowing, you just out-vote him. Do you try to out-vote God? God is the majority by Himself, we do well to remember this.

See you tomorrow, Lord willing.

Job is one of the all time heavy books of the Bible. It deals with the prickly question of suffering, and after all is said and done, gives us an absolutely legitimate answer to the question of suffering, but one that we are usually not satisfied with. Today’s reading starts things off with the circumstances of Job’s suffering and his first complaint to his friends who have come to comfort him.

Before we launch off into there are some details that you might find useful as you read through and try to understand these first chapters. First, where is Uz? There are two plausible locations that have been suggested. The first is in what is in modern day Golan Heights or possibly nearer Damascus. The other is possibly in ancient Edom, modern NW Arabia. Personally, I favor the Golan Heights possibility most, because it could be raided by both the Chaldeans and the Sabeans (men from Sheba, modern Yemen), it has adequate grazing lands for a wealthy man like Job, and it has sizable cities at which Job could sit at the city gates.

Second, Job is not a Jew. This may not be news to you regular Bible readers, but there might be others you have never noticed this detail. Job is the greatest “man of the east” (1:3). And yet he is a worshipper of God. You may not have known this, but God (El or Elohim) was in fact worshipped across the Fertile Crescent — it’s just that He wasn’t often worshipped as the only God. He was usually worshipped as one among many other gods, though possibly as the king of the gods, which is why Nebuchadnezzar had no problem calling Him “the Most High God”. Even Jethro (aka Reuel), Moses’ father-in-law, was a priest of God (El or Elohim).

Third, the name Satan means “Accuser” or “Slanderer”, and it is used of the Devil here in the book of Job 11 of the 15 times that it is used in the entire Old Testament, and all within the first two chapters of Job! Why? Because that is exactly what Satan is doing in this book, slandering Job to the LORD — something he does against us, too. And, by the way, he slanders God in our ears a lot, too.

And fourth, Satan’s slander is the chief theme and pursuit of the whole book: “Then Satan answered the LORD, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing?’” Job 1:9, NAS95. The meaning of the book revolves around and stems from this question.

OK, so I assume you’ve read the first three chapters; what lessons are there here for us.

Do you fear God for nothing? — Satan’s slanderous accusation actually asked a legitimate question that may, in fact, need to be answered in the life of each Christian man and woman. Especially we who are flooded with material blessing, do we fear God only because He blesses us? If God were to allow Satan take away your home, your job, your car, your wardrobe, your family, would you still serve Him? If not, what does this say about our loyalty to Him? Perhaps that we’re only loyal as long as the good times roll? If our loyalty to God is really tied to our blessings, are we not merely “bought friends”? Would you want that sort of loyalty in your friends? In your spouse? In your family? In the end, Job passed the test; would you? Would I? The last couple of lines from the hymn, O Sacred Head, go like this…

O, make me Thine forever;
And should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never
Outlive my love for Thee.

Naked I came…naked I shall return — Job is mourning how much he had lost in one fell swoop, but takes a philosophical approach by noting that it was all a gift from God who has the perfect right to take it away at His pleasure. He repeats a version of this wisdom in the second round of Satan’s evil work, when he reasons with his wife, “Shall we accept good from God and not accept adversity?” These various material things and even our health aren’t owed to us, they don’t become our actual possessions over which God has no rights; yet look at how we howl and speak of the unfairness of it all, when these things are taken away! Job had it right!

Seven days of silent comfort — As a minister I spend more time than most folks with people in mourning over a deceased loved one. When I was new in ministry, I used to search and grope to choke out a few words of comfort to people who were beside themselves in grief. I observed as my words fell on polite but deaf ears, and wondered if I would ever come up with the right scripture, the right words, the right tone of voice to make some difference to those suffering deep grief. And then I began noticing how my silent presence was often better than anything I might have said. Although we rightfully chide Job’s friends for blaming the victim by telling Job that he needed to repent, when he’d done nothing wrong; they at least did something right, when they came to Job and sat silently with him for 7 days and nights! It’s only when they opened their mouths that they started sticking their foot in.

Despair in suffering — Suffering causes us to want to escape the source of the suffering, and in many cases that suggests suicide. Job, in his deep suffering, spoke about how he wished he’d never been born and how good death was seeming to him. But suicide was not the answer, even though Job’s wife seems to have suggested it. Through all of his suffering, Job knew that in God there was still hope (that’s why he continues to ask God to “review his case” and reverse this situation). Where there is God, there is always hope! Always!

See you tomorrow, Lord willing