Day 154 (Saturday) - Job 42:10-17; Psalms 1:1-5:7

What did Job learn? He learned that God is God and trying to speak into his mysteries is foolish work. Humility marks the second half of his life and God blesses him through it. Following God or sacrificing for him does not always end with you receiving everything back again, but blessings will always be there. I need to trust God because of who he is and not only on what I can understand.

The Psalms are going to be a similar discipline. We will see despair, frustration and God’s active work in the midst of it all.

Day 153 (Friday) - Job 39:13-42:9

What happened to all of Job’s words? After the lecture he gets all he responds with are two short verses and his response is that he should not have spoken and will not say any more. I think Job got the message. But as any good parent will do, God continues the lecture to make sure Job really does get it.

There is an interesting reference to some giant and powerful animals in chapter 41 verses 1 and 15. Some see these as dinosaurs and others see this as God borrowing the belief in mythological creature to communicate his power over all. Your guess is as good as any…what do you think?

Day 152 (Thursday) - Job 36:1-39:12

Chapter 38 takes us a bit by surprise. In the book of Job, we get caught up in the speeches. We evaluate what this friend said and that friend said. We weight the validity of the claims and we feel like the whole process is coming to a logical conclusion. Then God jumps in and interjects his power. It startles us and brings us back to the stark reality that God is God and he is over all of this. He is not bound by what we think, say or feel. The speech of God is like the coffee after a stupor, it brings clarity and a new foundation to build on. The ways of man are not the ways of God, even if we do not understand.

Day 151 (Wednesday) - Job 32:11-35:16

Elihu is a powerful speaker. You don’t know whether to cheer him on or question his intentions. The advice seems sound but he is insistent that job must have done something to warrant God’s actions. He claims that Job is arrogant against God. I can remember a time when Jenny (my wife) was dealing with an illness. A friend of ours forced her into a healing experience as he said it was the only way she would be healed. Neither Jenny nor I felt very good about this offer but didn’t want to be seen as people of little faith. After the laying on of hands and prayer, he asked her if she were healed. When she said no, he told her it must be because of unconfessed sin. His prayer would have worked if she were not such a sinner. Wow!

Day 150 (Tuesday) - Job 29:14-32:10

It has been said by many bible teacher that Jesus taught a new and deeper theology about sin than what was originally taught in the Old Testament when he preached the Sermon on the Mount. The idea that lust = adultery and hate = murder are not new to Jesus’ teaching. Job had the same understanding and communicates it many times throughout this book and especially in chapter 31. Just because the teachers of religious law (Pharisees) taught differently, does not make it right. Jesus was pointing to the same truth Job knew thousands of years earlier with not one word of Scripture available to him.

Day 149 (Monday) - Job 24:13-29:13

Remembering things gives us a context for the present and the future. It has been said that you cannot properly see the future if you have a poor understanding of the past. Job is no different. He remembers his former life, a life he remembers as blessing. The problem with our remembering is that we remember different things built upon perception and not reality. Blessing never comes through a life without trial. A life of ease is a life that never needs God. America is Job’s former life. We live in great comfort, never needing God for anything. Why do we need heaven when we can just go and buy it at Best Buy? I wonder what we will remember when we look back on our lives of ease when the trials come our way…are they already here?

Day 148 (Sunday) - Job 20:12-24:12

The question of why those that do evil seem to prosper is obviously an age old question as Job addresses it in his eight speech. Psalm 73 is one of my favorite Psalms and addresses the same question. As we said a few days ago, your theological perspective on suffering and this temporary life will help answer the question. It is true that people who oppose God and go after the lusts of this world will have an easier life filled with more temporal pleasures that those that follow in Christ’s steps. The time will come when both will receive their just reward. We should not worry about the sufferings of the day or the ease of the wicked for our redeemer lives.