Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 22-28.

Eliphaz begins his reply to Job by saying something true: God does not need us, and nothing we do can benefit Him, even if we were righteous God would gain nothing from it.  Unfortunately, he immediately follows that by accusing Job of great wickedness.  Eliphaz lists a series of sins of which he is sure Job must be guilty.  Eliphaz goes on to espouse what closely resembles “prosperity Gospel” when he tells Job that he is suffering because of his sin and would be prosperous once more if he would just return to living a righteous life.  Job responds by saying that God should establish days when people can come before Him to request His judgement in the manner that many kings hold court.  If God would do that, Job would come before Him and establish his innocence.  Instead of such a system, Job proclaims, we have a world where no one is secure, where the poor suffer and even the powerful can suddenly become subject to misfortune.  Bildad replies to Job’s claim of innocence by making the point that no one is pure in God’s eyes.  A very true point, but not one which offers much comfort to someone suffering as Job was at this point.  Job replies to Bildad by pointing out that his point offers no comfort to one who is suffering.  Job then says one of the things for which God later calls him out: he declares that God has denied him justice.  Job then finishes today’s passage by telling us something of value: all wisdom comes from God.  No matter where we look, or how hard we search, we will never find wisdom until we turn to God.  There is no other source for wisdom than God.  If we wish to be wise, we must turn our face towards God and listen to what He tells us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 16-21.

The Book of Job is an interesting foreshadowing of many themes which are addressed in the New Testament.  In his suffering Job had begun to hope for death, but he tells us that if all we have to hope for is death, we have no hope.  Which sounds very similar to what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 where he says, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”  Job also goes on to say that his intercessor plead with God for him.  Which fits with what Paul says in Romans 8:34, “Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” And what John writes in 1 John 2:1, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.”  Finally, Job also expresses the hope for resurrection when he says, “I know that my Redeemer lives…in my flesh I will see God.”  I know that one day I will die, unless Christ returns before then, but I also know that in my flesh I will see God.  That is the great hope all those who put their trust in Jesus have, no matter what they may suffer in this life.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 11-15.

I often struggle with the Book of Job because the things Job’s friends say have a lot of truth to them, but God condemns them roundly at the end of the book.  However, today I noticed that when Zophar responds to Job, her responds to a straw man, he takes something Job said and paraphrases it to make it more extreme than what Job actually said.  Zophar claims that Job said that his beliefs were flawless, but that is not what Job said.  Job did say that he was blameless, and that is not true because the Bible makes clear that all have sinned.  However, in the context one might take Job’s statement as meaning that he was no more worthy of blame than his friends, who were not suffering as he was.  Zophar went on to insult Job by essentially calling him witless.  Zophar was there to offer Job comfort in his suffering, so he should not have misstated Job’s argument, and he most certainly should not have insulted him.  Job replies by pointing out that Zophar was speaking for God dishonestly, something we should never do.  Further, Job put his claims of innocent in context by asking his friends how they would fair if God were to examine them in detail, would they show any more innocent than Job?  When our friend, or anyone else for that matter, is suffering we should not condemn them,  Also, when we debate others, something which we should save for a time when they are not suffering, we should be careful to argue against positions they actually hold, not what we think they meant by what they said.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Job 6-10.

In today’s passage, Job expresses how great God is compared to us.  God’s power and wisdom are so vast that no human can resist Him and remain unscathed.  When He acts, no one can stop Him.  Even if we were innocent, being in His presence would cause us to declare our guilt because He is so much more than us.  We cannot even begin to imagine that we might answer any charges God might bring against us, even if such charges were not true.  All of this Job declares, and it is true.  Which leads Job to wish for a mediator, Someone who could listen to us as another mortal would yet who could stand before God as an equal.  Thank God that He has provided such a mediator in the form of Jesus Christ, Who is both God and man.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 1-5.

When Job received word that all of his herds and flocks had been destroyed immediately followed by the news that his children had all been killed, his response was to mourn and worship God.  He acknowledged that all that he had had had come from God (Okay, that is an awkward sentence structure with three hads in a row).  Then, when he was suffering with painful sores over his entire body, he still refused to turn from God, or hold Him to blame.  When his wife told him to curse God and will himself to death, he told her that such talk was that of those who foolishly lacked morals.  He took the position that we should accept both the good and the bad which God sends our way and continue to faithfully serve Him.  Finally, after his friends commiserated with him in silence for seven days, Job expressed his misery by wishing that he had never been born.  Even here he does not hold God at fault, he just expresses his despair over what has happened to him and the physical pain he was suffering by saying he would rather that he had never lived than experience what he was experiencing.  His friend Eliphaz responds to Job’s deep despair  by telling him that if he would just confess his sin and throw himself on God’s mercy things would get better.  When we face hardship, let us follow Job’s example.  And when our friends face hardship, let us understand that everyone has a limit to what they can take and pray to God that He give them relief rather than tell them that they should not talk like that.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 38-42.

Finally, the writer presents God’s response to Job.  After all of Job’s complaints about not being able to go before God to make his case, God comes to him and speaks.  First God comes before Job and asks him to demonstrate that he has the knowledge necessary to judge God’s actions.  Job immediately realizes that he does not, that mortals do not have the capacity to know enough to understand God’s actions. Then, Job having admitted that he lacked the knowledge to judge God’s actions, God asks Job to demonstrate that he has the power to pass judgement on God’s action.  Once again Job realizes that he is completely inadequate to judge God.  In reaction to his realization of God’s power and knowledge, Job despises himself for challenging God and repents of doing so.   And this is the lesson of Job: when we encounter God we repent of considering our suffering gives us a reason to complain.  The lesson of Job explains how the martyrs were able to sing  for joy as they faced painful deaths,

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 34-37.

This passage really troubles me because so much of what Elihu says in it is very good, but the part he gets wrong, he gets VERY wrong.  So, what did Elihu get right?  Well, he was right to point out that Job was in the wrong to declare his innocence of all wrongdoing, for all have sinned.  Second, Elihu was correct in saying that our sin does not cause any harm to God, nor does our good behavior benefit Him.  Elihu tells us that there is no place where we can perform our actions in hiding from God.  He tells us that for all God’s power He despises no one, all are welcome before Him, if they turn from their sin and accept His grace.  Elihu reminds us that God does not do evil or any kind of wrongdoing.  However, Elihu accuses Job of keeping company with the wicked and with evil-doers, despite having no direct evidence that this is true.  Elihu was correct to chide Job for claiming to be innocent of all sin, since he witnessed Job make exactly that claim, but he was wrong to condemn him for associating with the wicked because he had not seen this to be true.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 29-33.

I am always struck by Job’s friend Elihu.  He is not mentioned earlier in the Book, when the other three were first introduced, and he is not mentioned at the end when God tells the other three to ask Job to pray for them.  In today’s passage we are told that Elihu was angry with Job for justifying himself rather than God, and that he was angry with the other three friends because they condemned Job, but could not refute his arguments.  Now I want to consider what Elihu had to say.  He acknowledges that it was right that he wait and listen while the others, his elders, spoke, but now that they have had their say (and failed to prove Job wrong), he would speak.  In his speech Elihu makes two statements which show greater wisdom than anything said by Job’s other friends.  Elihu declares that he is no better than Job.  He is as much of a flawed, limited mortal as Job.  Then he challenges Job’s complaint that God does not respond when mortals cry out to Him.  Elihu contends that God does indeed speak to us, but we, all too often, fail to hear when He does so.  Elihu makes the claim that God’s apparent silence is our fault for not listening, not God’s fault for failing to speak.  This should remind us of the still, small voice with which God spoke to Elijah, but Elihu does go on to list some of the ways in which God speaks to some of us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 22-28.

Job’s friend, Eliphaz, starts off today’s passage with a statement with important meaning.  No human can be of benefit to God, He gains nothing from our righteousness and loses nothing if we sin.  Unfortunately, Eliphaz concludes that Job must have committed some, or multiple, horrible sins.  And while Eliphaz makes a terrible mistake by judging in this manner, he does give us a good list of sins we should not commit.  Eliphaz then ends his monologue by taking a truth and turning it into a falsehood.  He reveals a truth when he says that if we submit to God, lay up His words in our hearts, and treat material wealth as of little value, we will gain the much greater wealth of serving God.  However, Eliphaz takes this truth to an unwarranted conclusion: he concludes that if Job would just turn back to God, he would acquire material wealth and power that dwarfed what he had before the calamity had struck him.  So, while seeking God and following His commands will not, in and of itself, bring us material wealth, what we gain from doing so will be of greater value than anything money can buy.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 16-21.

One of the things I have written about the Book of Job in the past is that I am unsure if we are intended to understand it as events which actually happened, or if it is a story which God inspired someone to write in order to teach us important lessons.  However, even though I am unsure which is correct, I have always written about the Book of Job as if each of those mentioned were real people who carried on the conversation recorded here,  I realized today that there is some value in reading, and thinking about, the Book of Job as if each of the characters mentioned represent different ways of thinking about God and how He interacts with people.  The best part about this latter approach is that it does not require that the people mentioned not be actual people who said the things written here.

Having said that, in today’s passage Job discusses two of the things which are uniquely his viewpoint.  First, he represents those who seek God, even though they are suffering.  He realizes that in order for any mortal to approach God they will need someone to speak on their behalf (as he had expressed in yesterday’s passage).  Further, he tells us that he does indeed have such an intercessor, One who truly cares about him.  Our Intercessor will plead with God on our behalf and request that God exercise His power in our lives.  A request we can be sure will be granted, since our Intercessor is God Himself in the form of Jesus Christ.

Second, Job complains that the wicked do not suffer for their wickedness.  He says this in contrast to the claim by his friends that the wicked always suffer (they imply that if one suffers it must be because they are wicked),  Job goes on to say that not only do the wicked commit sins, the openly defy God and suffer no consequences.  Job has a point, but one which  we must think carefully about.  Yes, it often appears that the wicked suffer no consequences for their wickedness, but we must consider whether this is actually true.  If we truly believe that God has our best interests in mind (which I do), then we know that there is greater happiness and joy to be had by following His commands then by seeking pleasure through sin.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.