Job 1:5
Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned and renounced God in their hearts. (r. v.).

Times of festivity are always full of temptation. The loins are relaxed, the girdle of the soul is loosed. Amid the general hilarity and the passing of the merry joke, words are said and thoughts permitted which are not always consistent with the character of God and His glorious kingdom and service. Job was not wrong, therefore, in supposing that his children might have contracted some defiling stain.

It is necessary for some of us to move in society, and to attend festive gatherings. As the Lord went to the wedding feast, and accepted Simon’s invitation, so must we. The sphere of our life lies necessarily in the world. But when we are entering scenes of recreation and pleasure we should be more than ever careful to put on our armor, and by previous meditation and prayer prepare ourselves for the inevitable temptation; and when it is all over, and the lights are down, we should quietly review our behavior under the light that streams from the Word of God. If we then are made aware of frivolous or uncharitable words, of jealousy because others have outshone us, or of pride at the splendor of our dress and the brilliance of our talk, we must confess it, and obtain forgiveness and restoration.

What a beautiful example is furnished by job to Christian parents! When your girls are going among strangers, and your boys into the great ways of the world, and you are unable to impose your will upon them, as in the days of childhood, you can yet pray for them, casting over them the shield of intercession, with strong cryings and tears. They are beyond your reach; but by faith you can move the arm of God on their behalf.

Job 1:1-9
August 21 - THE CLUE TO LIFE'S MAZE
Our Daily Walk

"There was a man whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil....Satan said, Doth Job fear God for naught?"-- Job 1:1-9.

THIS MARVELLOUS poem, one of the profoundest studies in the Bible, deals with the great problem of evil. At some time or other in our lives, we come back to study it, as a clue to life's maze, the expression of our heart's out-cry, and the solution of life's mystery in the Will and Love of God.

From first to last, the supreme questions in this wonderful piece of literature are: "Can God make man love Him for Himself alone and apart from His gifts?" and "Why is Evil permitted, and what part does it play in the nurture of the soul of man?" These questions are always with us. In fact, the Book of Job may be said to be a compendium of the existence and history of our race.

The first chapter teems with helpful lessons. The anxiety of parents for their children should expend itself in ceaseless intercession on their behalf. The great Adversary of souls is always on the watch, considering our conduct so as to accuse us before God, not only for overt sins, but for unworthy motives. We cannot forget our Lord's words to Peter: "Satan asked to have you, but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not" (Luke 22:31, R.V.). Christ never underestimated the power of Satan, the "prince of this world," but He is our great Intercessor (Hebrews 4:14; 15; 16; Hebrews 7:25).

In circumstances of prosperity and happiness, we must never forget that it is God who plants a hedge about us, blesses our work and increases our substance. It is good to realize that whatever be the malignity of our foes, there is always the Divine restraint, and we are not tempted beyond what we are able to bear. It is not enough to endure our griefs sullenly or stoically. It should be our aim not only to hold fast to our integrity, but to trust God. There is a clue to the mystery of human life, which comes to the man who differentiates between the Real and the Unreal; the Seen and the Unseen.

PRAYER - My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. AMEN.

Job 2:3
A perfect and an upright man.

Even God spoke of Job as perfect. Not that he was absolutely so, as judged by the perfect standard of eternity, but as judged by the standard of his own light and knowledge. He was living up to all the requirements of God and man, so far as he understood them. His whole being was open and obedient to the Divine impulses. So far as he knew there was no cause of controversy in heart or life. Probably he could have adopted the words of the Apostle, “I know nothing against myself.” He exercised himself to have always a conscience void of offence toward God and man.

Satan suggested that his goodness was pure selfishness; that it paid him well to be as he was,, because God had hedged him around and blessed his substance. This malignant suggestion was at once dealt with by the Almighty Vindicator of the saints. It was as if God said, “I give thee permission to deprive him of all those favoring conditions, for the sake of which thou sayest he is bribed to goodness; and it shall be seen that his integrity is rooted deep down in the work of My grace upon his heart.”

But the book goes on to show that God desired to teach Job that there were flaws and blemishes in his character which could only be seen by comparing it with the more perfect glory of His own Divine nature. His friends sought to prove him faulty, and failed; God revealed Himself, and he cried, “Behold, I am vile, and abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

How often God takes away our consolations, that we may only love Him for Himself; and reveals our sinfulness, that we may better appreciate the completeness of His salvation!

Job 3:1
Job opened his mouth, and cursed his day.

That is the day of his birth. Probably there have been hours in the majority of lives in which men have wished that they had never been born. When they have stood beside the wreck of all earthly hope, or entered the garden of the grave, they have cried, “Why died I not from the birth!” The reason for this is, that the heart has been so occupied with the transient and earthly, that it has lost sight of the unseen and eternal; and in finding itself deprived of the former, it has thought that there was nothing left to live for.

One of the greatest tests of true religion is in bearing suffering. At such a time we are apt, if we are professing Christians, to exert a certain constraint over ourselves, and bear ourselves heroically. We have read of people in like circumstances who have not shed a tear or uttered a complaining word, because they have braced themselves to a Christian stoicism. “I am sure you cannot find fault with my behavior,” said one such to me. And yet beneath the correct exterior there may be the pride and haughtiness of an altogether unsubdued self.

There is a more excellent way: to humble oneself under the mighty hand of God; to search the heart for any dross that needs to be burned out; to resign oneself to the will of the Father; to endeavor to learn the lesson in the black-lettered book; to seek to manifest the specific grace for which the trial calls; to be very tender and thoughtful for others; to live deeper down.

“Nearer, my God to Thee! — Nearer to Thee E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me, Still all my song shall be — Nearer, my God, to Thee! Nearer to Thee!”

Job 4:5
But now it is come unto thee, and thou faintest. (r. v.)

It is much easier to counsel others in their trouble than to bear it ourselves. Full often the soul, which has poured floods of consolation on others, feels sadly in need of a touch, a voice, a sympathizing companion, as the chill waters begin to rise toward the knees, and the shadow of the great eclipse falls around. The fact of our having consoled so many others seems at such a moment to leave us the more solitary and lonesome. People have been so wont to be helped by us that they hardly dare approach us; besides, they suppose that all the fund of comfort from which we have succored others must be now available for us. What can they say that we have not said a hundred times? and if we have said it, of course we must know all about it; but they do not know how wistful the heart is to hear it said to us with the accent of a sympathetic voice and the touch of a ministering hand.

Ah, it will come unto thee at last. The pain and sorrow of life will find thee out. The arrow will at last fix itself quivering in thy heart. How wilt thou do then? Thou wilt faint unless thy words have sprung from a living experience of the love and presence of Jesus. Thou must have a better hope than “the integrity of thy ways,” as suggested by Eliphaz. But there awaits thee the personal fellowship of Jesus, a brother born for the hour of trial. He is the never-failing Friend, who sticketh closer than a brother. Put Him and His will and His choice between thee and thy sorrow, whatever it may be. Hide thee in His secret place, and under the shadow of His wings thou shalt enjoy sweet peace.

“Only heaven is better than a walk With Christ at midnight over moonlit seas.”

Job 5:18
He maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole.

Has this been your experience lately? Have you been made sore by the heavy scourge of pain, and wounded by the nails of the cross? Do not look at second causes. Men may have been the instruments, but God is the Agent. The cup has been presented by a Judas, but the Father permitted it; and it is therefore the cup that the Father bath given you to drink. Shall you not drink it? How much He must love you, to dare to inflict this awful discipline, which makes your love and trust, that He values so infinitely, tremble in the scale! “Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him; for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.”

But do not look back on what you have suffered; look on and up! As surely as He has made sore, He will bind up; as soon as He has wounded, His hands will begin to make whole. Consider the reparative processes of nature. So soon as the unsightly ruin or chasm yawns, nature begins to weave her rich festoons, to cover it with moss and lichen; let the flesh be punctured or lacerated, the blood begins to pour out the protoplastic matter to be woven into a new fabric. So when the heart seems bleeding its life away, God is at work binding up and healing. Think of those dear and tender hands, that fashioned the heavens, and touched the eyeballs of the blind, as laid upon you to make you whole. Trust Him; He loves infinitely, and will suffer none that trust in Him to be desolate.

We must be careful, however, that nothing on our part shall hinder the life of the Son of God from flowing through us, as the sap of the vine through every branch.

Job 6:15
As a brook, as the channel of brooks that pass away. (r. v.)

Job complains of his three friends. He was glad when they first came to his side, as likely to yield him comfort in his sore distress. Instead of this, however, they began probing his heart and searching his life, to find the secret sin on account of which his heavy troubles had befallen him. Their philosophy was at fault. They held that special misfortune is always the result of special sin; and since there was nothing in job’s outward conduct to account for his awful sufferings, they felt that he was hiding some secret defection, which they urged him to confess. Job felt that in all this they. cruelly misunderstood him, and compares them in these words to one of the desert streams that are choked with ice and snow in the time of the winter rains, but dwindle and dry up on the first approach of summer. And when the weary caravans come to their banks, lo, their bed is a mere heap of stones. “They come thither and are confounded.”

Is it not so with human friendships? We hoped that they would quench the raging thirst of our souls; this hope increases when they draw nigh us in days of sorrow; but how often they fail us — stones for bread, scorpions for fish, and scorching pebbles instead of water-brooks. How great a contrast to the love and friendship of Jesus! Not like a brook that dries in the time of drought, but like a well of water springing up within the heart forever. He does not merely give consolation and sympathy, but He is what He gives, He imparts Himself. His promise chases away our fears as His Spirit reminds us of the words, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” Nothing gives Him greater joy than to be the perfect circle of which earth’s friendships are broken arcs.

Job 7:18–19
What is man … that thou shouldest visit him every morning?

God visits us with mercy every morning. Before we are awake He is at work in the world, baptizing it with dew, feeding the birds and wild things, taking pleasure in the jasmine and heliotrope, the honeysuckle, and the rose; and with all His care for His world, He does not forget man, whom He has placed there to be its tenant. There is no life so mean and abject, so suffering and wretched, that He does not visit in order to comfort and relieve it. No heart so forlorn that He does not knock at the door: no window so selfishly curtained and shuttered, at which He does not tap. “Open to Me!” the heavenly visitor entreats, “my love, my dove, my spouse!” Alas for us! that we keep the doors and windows closed to Him — as the poor widow to a beneficent friend, who called to relieve her, but she mistook him for the rent-collector.

But probably job meant that God visits us in discipline, training, education. He is the watcher of men; not to detect their failures, but to discover opportunities of leading them on to richer, fuller experiences of His grace and life. Surely, as we consider all the time and pains which God has expended on us, we too may cry, with the patriarch, “What is man?” Man is more than we guess, else God would never take such time and pains with him. When a lapidary spends years over a single diamond, the most careless observer begins to appraise properly its intrinsic value.

Every morning God visits thee, with holy thoughts and warnings, with miracles and parables, with anticipations and forecasts — oh, realize how much thou art to Him: give Him love for love, thanks and loving recognition, a child’s welcome and trust.

Job 8:6
If thou wert pure and upright, surely now He would awake for thee.

So Bildad spoke, suggesting that job was not pure and upright, since God did not appear to deliver him. The premises from which he argued were that God always delivers and prospers pure and upright men, and that therefore, if a man were not delivered and prospered, he was proved to be neither pure nor upright. The fallacy lay in the premise. It is not universally true that God delivers His saints from adverse circumstances, or prospers them with outward good. There have been in all ages thousands of devoted servants of God who have been destitute, afflicted, and tormented; and there are thousands of such to-day in prisons, in hospital wards, in every condition of privation and trial; but in none of these cases can there be the least imputation on the love and righteousness of God, nor necessarily on their fidelity and goodness.

God’s arrangements for us are not governed by the superficial philosophy which would make material prosperity a sign of His favor, and adversity of His displeasure. There are many considerations beside. Our privations in the outward strengthen and ripen the inward. As the outward man decays, the inward is renewed day by day. We have to learn and manifest those passive virtues which can only mature in silence and sorrow. We must be taught to be largely independent of circumstances, and to find in God Himself the springs of unfailing supply. We must learn to carry the sentence of death in ourselves, that we may not trust in ourselves, but in the living God. We have to suffer with and for others. All these things worketh God with us to make us partakers of His holiness. But amid all our sorrows, He is always awake for us.

Job 9:31
Yet wilt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me.

We shall never get beyond the need of using daily the Lord’s prayer. He has bound by the conjunction and the prayer for forgiveness with that for daily bread, as though to teach us that we shall need the one as long as we need the other. At the end of the best day that we ever spent, when we are not aware of having consciously sinned in act, or speech, or thought, we shall still have need of the precious blood. We may know nothing against ourselves, yet we shall not be thereby justified; because He that judgeth us is our holy Lord, and the standard by which we are judged is His own perfect character. A piece of cambric looks extremely fine to the eye, but how coarse to the microscope! Sheep look white against the dark ground of the early spring; but how dark if there should be a fall of snow! Our characters seem stainless, only because we compare ourselves with ourselves, or with others.

But, when our eyes are opened to see God, to behold the whiteness of the great white throne, and we stand in the searching light of heaven, we are as those who have just emerged from a ditch. I heard the other day of a woman being proud of having lived without sin for ten years! So we deceive ourselves. No, at the best we are sinful men and women needing constant cleansing; even though we maybe kept from known sin by the grace of Christ. It was at an advanced period in the life of the great Apostle, and when he lived nearest God, that he realized himself to be the chief of sinners.

“I know not what I am, but only know I have had glimpses tongue may never speak: No more I balance human joy and woe, But think of my transgressions, and am meek.”

Job 10:21
The land of darkness and the shadow of death.

This represented the highest thinking of that age about the future. There were gleams now and again of something more; but they were fitful and uncertain, soon overtaken by dark and sad forebodings. How different to our happy condition, for whom death is abolished, whilst life and immortality have been brought to light! The patriarch called the present life Day, and the future Night. We know that in comparison the present is Night, and the future Day. “The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us put on the armor of light.”

For us, too, there is something better. We wait for His Son from heaven; we look for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. “As the waters of the sea are held between two mighty gravitations, the moon now drawing them toward itself, and the earth drawing them back again, thus giving the ebbing and flowing tide, by which our earth is kept clean and healthful, so must the tides of the soul’s affection move perpetually between the cross of Christ and the coming of Christ, influenced now by the power of memory and now by the power of hope.” It is said of the late Dr. Gordon: “Hardly a sermon was preached without allusion to the glorious appearing. Never a day passed in which he did not prepare himself for it, in which its hastening was not sought for with prayer.” “Yet a little while [Greek, how little! how little!] and He that shall come will come.” The attitude of every believer should be that of waiting: with loins girt and lamp burning, let us be ready to meet our Lord.

“The Best is yet to be, The Last for which the First was made.”

Job 11:7
Canst thou by searching find out God?

There is but one answer to that question. No one can. The very angels veil their faces before the insufferable glory of His face.

The firstborn sons of light Desire in vain His depths to see; They cannot reach the mystery, The length, and breadth, and height.

Do not be surprised, then, if there should be matters in the Bible, in your own life, and in the Providential government of the world, which baffle your thought. Remember you are only a little child in an infant class, and it is not likely that you can comprehend the whole system of your instructor. God would cease to be God to us, if we by searching could find Him out.

But though we cannot find out God by the searching of the intellect, we may know Him by love. “He that loveth, knoweth God; for God is Love.” There is a way of knowing God, which is hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed to babes. Seek to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man. Let Christ dwell deep in your heart by faith. Take care to obey all His commandments, and then the Holy God will come into you, and abide. He will give you Himself, and you will know Him as a little child knows its parent, whom it cannot grasp with its mind, but loves and trusts and knows with its heart. We cannot find out God by searching, but we can by loving.

We can also find Him in the character and life of Jesus. He that hath seen Him hath seen the Father; why then ask to be shown the Father? “What is Thy name, O mystery of strength and beauty?” “Shiloh, Rest-Giver,” is the deep response.

Job 12:11
Doth not the ear try words, even as the palate tasteth its meat. (r. v.)

There is no appeal from the verdict of our palate. We know in a moment whether a substance is sweet or bitter, palatable or disagreeable. Now, what the taste is to articles of diet, that the ear is to words, whether of God or man. More especially we can tell in a moment whether the fire of inspiration is burning in them. This is the test which job proposed to apply to the words of his friends; and it would be well for all of us to apply the same test to Holy Scripture.

The humble student of the Word of God is sometimes much perplexed and cast down by the assaults which are made on it by scholars and teachers, who do not scruple to question the authorship and authority of large tracts of Scripture. We cannot vie with these in scholarship, but the humblest may apply the test of the purged ear; and it will detect a certain quality in the Bible which is absent everywhere beside. There is a tone in the voice of Scripture, which the child of God must recognize. This is the interesting characteristic in the quotations made in the New Testament from the Old. All the writers in the later Revelation detect the voice of God in the Old; to them, it is the Divine utterance through holy lips. Hearken, they cry, “the Holy Ghost saith.” God is speaking in the prophets, as He spake in His Son.

It is one of the characteristics of Christ’s sheep that they know His voice, and follow Him, whilst they flee from the voice of strangers. Ask that the Lord may touch your ears, that they may discern by a swift intuition the voice of the Good Shepherd from that of strangers; and for grace to follow immediately He calls you.

Job 13:15
Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.

This was a noble expression, which has been appropriated by thousands in every subsequent age. In every friendship there is a probation, during which we narrowly watch the actions of another, as indicating the nature of his soul; but after awhile we get to such intimate knowledge and confidence, that we read and know his inner secret. We have passed from the outer court into the Holy Place of fellowship. We seem familiar with every nook and cranny of our friend’s nature. And then it is comparatively unimportant how he appears to act; we know him.

So it is in respect of God. At first we know Him through the testimony of others, and on the evidence of Scripture; but as time passes, with its ever-deepening experiences of what God is, with those opportunities of converse that arise during years of prayer and communion, we get to know Him as He is and to trust Him implicitly. And when that point has been reached and passed, nothing afterward can greatly move us. Instead of looking at God from the standpoint of His acts, we look at His dealings with us and all men from the standpoint of His heart. Though He put us on the altar, as Abraham did Isaac; and take the knife to slay us, we trust Him. If we die, it is to pass into a richer life. If He seem to forget and forsake us, it is only in appearance. His heart is yearning over us more than ever. God cannot do a thing which is not perfectly loving and wise and good. Oh to know Him thus!

“Leaving the final issue in His hands Whose goodness knows no change, whose love is sure, Who sees, foresees, who cannot judge amiss.”

Job 14:14
All the days of my warfare would I wait, till my release should come. (r. v.)

The Lord Jesus has chosen us to be His soldiers. We are in the midst of a great campaign let us endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, and strive above all things to please Him (2 Timothy 2:4 - note). Amongst other things, let us be sure not to entangle ourselves in the affairs of this life. What purpose could a soldier serve who insisted on taking all his household goods with him on the march!

There is no pause in the warfare. We can never, like Gideon’s soldiers, throw ourselves on the bank and quaff the water at our leisure. Every bush may hide a sharp-shooter; every brake an ambuscade. It becomes us to watch and pray; to keep on our harness of armor; to be on the alert for our Captain’s voice. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the hosts of wicked spirits in the heavenly places; we need to be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might, and to take unto ourselves the whole armor of God, that we may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand.

But the release will come at last. When the soldier has fought the good fight, the time of his departure will come, and he will go in to receive the crown which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give in that day. “Come,” said the dying Havelock to his son, “and see how a Christian can die.” Sometimes it demands more of a soldier’s courage to wait than to charge. Remember that long waiting on the field at Waterloo, when the day passed from morning to evening. If you can do nothing else, wait. Be steadfast, immovable: lying still to suffer, to bear, to endure. This is fighting of the noblest sort.

Job 15:4
Thou restrainest prayer before God.

Job’s friends were bent on discovering the cause of his sufferings in some secret failure and declension. This is why Eliphaz accused him so groundlessly. They did not know of those secret habits of intercession described in the first chapter. But this charge is eminently true of some professing Christians.

They restrain private prayer. — The closet door is too seldom shut behind them, or it is kept shut for too brief a period. They do not give themselves time to get into the mid-current of intercession and be borne forward by it whither it will. The voice of the Holy Spirit is barely able to assert itself amid the hubbub of voices within. They are so taken up with speaking of the Lord, or working for Him, that they slur over private audiences with Himself.

They restrain social prayer. — Their minister never sees them in the gatherings for intercession on behalf of the work of the Church and the salvation of the lost. They forsake the assembling of themselves with the saints. Like Thomas, they are absent from the gathering in the upper room, and miss the smile of the Lord.

They restrain family prayer. — Surely we ought to gather at least once a day around the family altar. Where Abraham pitched his tent he erected the altar. A prayerless home is apt to become a worldly and unhappy one. There is no such keystone to the arch of home-life and home-love, as the habit of family worship.

How foolish, how short-sighted, how sinful, it is to restrain prayer! What wonder that your soul is famished when you fail to feed it, or impoverished when you neglect intercourse with heaven!

Job 16:12
I was at ease, and He brake me asunder. (r. v.)

The other day, it was the Lord’s Day morning, two sparrows fell from the leads of my church into the vestry, which has a lofty glass skylight. As soon as they had recovered from their astonishment at finding themselves prisoners, they flew up against this skylight as though to break through it to the open heaven, and then round and round the room. They were desperately afraid of myself and the verger, whom I had called, not realizing that we were as anxious as they to get them out again into the air. The only thing we could do to help them was to keep them from alighting to rest; so with long brooms and soft missiles we constantly drove them from every cornice and picture-frame on which they alighted, till they fell exhausted, and with panting breasts, to the ground. Then we captured them and set them free. They might have said many a time, in the course of that encounter, “We were at ease, and they brake us asunder; they also set up for their mark.” But if they could review that episode now, they would doubtless see that it was love which forbade them to rest any where in the vestry, because it desired to give them their fullest liberty.

So with Job. God would not allow him to rest in anything short of the best, and therefore He broke up his nest. Is not this the key to His dealings with you? Oh, believe that behind the perpetual change and displacement of your life God is leading you into the glorious liberty of His children!

“Therefore to whom turn I but Thee, the ineffable Name? Builder and Maker Thou of houses not made with hands! What? have fear of change from Thee who art ever the same? Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands? There shall never be one lost good.”

Job 17:9
Yet shall the righteous hold on his way. (r. v.)

When the real life of God enters the soul, it persists there. Genuine religion is shown by its power of persistence. Anything short of a Godgiven faith will sooner or later fail. It may run well for a time, but its pace will inevitably slacken till it comes to a stand. The youths faint and are weary, and the young men utterly fall. The seed sown on the rock springs up quickly, and as quickly dies down and perishes. But where there is the rooting and grounding in God, there is a perpetuity and persistence which outlives all storms and survives all resistance.

You shall hold on your way because Jesus holds you in His strong hand. He is your Shepherd; He has vanquished all your foes, and you shall never perish.

You shall hold on your way because the Father has designed through you to glorify His Son; and there must be no gaps in His crown where jewels ought to be.
You shall hold on your way because the Holy Spirit has deigned to make you His residence and home; and He is within you the perennial spring of a holy life.

It is said that there was once a debate in heaven, as to which kind of life needed most of God’s grace. That of a man who after a lifetime of gross sins was converted at the eleventh hour, or of a man that for his whole career had been kept from destruction. And finally the latter was agreed to be the most conspicuous miracle. And there is no doubt that this is so. Yet for this also shall God’s grace avail: and He shall enable thee to hold on thy way till heaven open to thee.

Job 18:14
The king of terrors.

So the ancients spoke of death. They were constantly pursued by the dread of the unknown. Every unpeopled or distant spot was the haunt and dwelling-place of evil and dreadful objects. But the grave, and the world beyond, were above all terrible, and death the King of Terrors. It is difficult for us, who inherit centuries of Christian teaching, to realize how dark and fearsome was all the realm that lay under the dominion of death and the grave. What a shiver in those words, King of Terrors!

But for us how vast the contrast! Jesus has abolished death, and brought life-and immortality to light. He has gone through the grave, and come again to assure us that it is the back door into our Father’s house, with its many mansions. At His girdle hang the keys of death and Hades; none can shut the door when He opens it, and none open when He keeps it shut. He was Himself dead; but He lives forevermore, and comes to the side of each dying saint to escort him through the valley to His own bright abode.

There is something better. In the case of immense numbers, who shall be alive and remain when He comes again, death will be entirely evaded. “He that liveth and believeth in Him shall never die.” They shall be caught away to meet the Lord in the air. Suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, this mortal shall put on immortality, this corruptible incorruption. At His coming the grave shall be despoiled of its treasures, and death shall miss its expected prey.

“O death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory! Thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Job 19:25
I know that my Redeemer liveth.

Those words express the deepest and most radiant conviction of believing hearts. “He lives, the great Redeemer lives!” Man did his worst; the nail, the cross, the spear, were bitter; but He liveth! Death stood over Him as a vanquished foe; but He liveth! Captain Sepulcher and his henchman Corruption held earnest colloquy together about the best method of detaining Him; but He liveth! He ever liveth and because He continueth ever He hath an unchangeable priesthood.

But it is not probable that His words meant all this to Job. The word translated “Redeemer” is Goel — the nearest kinsman, sworn to avenge the wrongs of blood relations. This conception of the kinsman avenger has been always in vogue in the East, where the populations are scattered and migratory, and our system of law impossible. Beyond the heavens job thought there lived a Kinsman, who saw all his sufferings, and pitied, and would one day appear on earth to vindicate his innocence and avenge his wrongs. He was content to leave the case with Him, sure that He would not fail, as his friends had done.

Beyond the sorrows and anguish of time he should yet see God; and he longed to see Him, that he might learn the secret purpose, which explained the sorrow of his lot. He had no dread of that momentous event, since his Goel would be there to stand beside him.

“Sudden the Worst turns the Best to the brave, The black minute’s at end! — And the Elements’ rage, the fiend voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become, — first a Peace out of Pain, Then a Light, then thy breast.”

Job 20:29
This is the portion of a wicked man from God.

Repeatedly in reading this book we are reminded of the strong convictions entertained by thoughtful men among these Eastern peoples, of the sure connection between wrongdoing and its bitter penalty. The friends of the sufferer express their opinions in cold-blooded and unfeeling words; but we can detect their intense convictions beneath all — that special suffering indicates the presence of special sin, and that all wickedness is sooner or later brought to light and punished.

We are less able to follow the track of God’s providences in these crowded, hurrying days; but there can be little doubt of the connection between wrongdoing and punishment. The law is immutable. As a man soweth, so shall he also reap. The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the godless but for a moment. He shall disgorge his wealth; he shall suck the poison of asps in the remorse and bitterness of his soul; the heavens shall reveal his iniquity; and his descendants shall seek favor of the poor. These things are still to be seen among us, in the rise and fall of proud men and their families.

Let us go into the sanctuary of God, and consider their latter end; and as we contrast it with that of the poorest of His children, we shall find no reason to envy them. Even though no human tribunal sentence them, they carry the harpoon in their heart, and sooner or later it will bring them to a certain and awful doom. It cannot be otherwise whilst God is God. The psalmist said:

“I have seen the wicked in great power, And spreading himself like a green bay tree, Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not.”

Job 21:22
Shall any teach God knowledge?

We cannot tell God anything He does not know already. The most fervent and full of our prayers simply unfold in word all that has been patent to His loving, pitying eye. This does not make prayer needless; on the contrary, it incites to prayer, since it is pleasant to talk with one who knows the whole case perfectly; and it is a relief to feel that God’s answers depend — not on the information we bring Him, or even on the specific requests we make, but-on His infinite and perfect acquaintance with circumstances and conditions of which we are altogether ignorant.

“Your Father knoweth.” Quicker than lightning is His notice of every transition in your inner life — of your downsittings and your uprisings; of every thought in your heart; every word on your tongue; of the fretting of that inward cross; of the anguish of that stake in your flesh; of the enemy that, like a sword in your bones, reproaches you with the derisive challenge. “Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether.” Yes, He knows it all, and loves you better than you know.

Do not presume to dictate to Him; do not dare to say that some other way would be better, some other lot more likely to develop your best self. He knows every track by which to bring sons to glory; and that He has chosen this one is a positive proof that it is the best, the one most adapted to your idiosyncrasies and needs. His ways are higher than your ways, and His thoughts than your thoughts. You could not teach Him knowledge, or increase His love — then trust both.

Job 22:23
If thou return to the Almighty.

These words introduce a most exquisite picture of the blessings consequent on return to God. They do not fit the case of job, to whom they were addressed, because he had not left God; and they sound strange as coming from the mouth of Eliphaz. Still they are full of sublime truth.

There are three conditions. — We must retrace the steps of our backsliding and wandering lives. We must put away unrighteousness from our home-life and business engagements, so that the tent may be free from idols. We must be content to lay our most treasured possessions in the dust at God’s feet for Him to deal with as He pleases.

There are four consequences. — Whatever we give up for God, we shall find again in Him; He shall become our treasure. Prayer shall have new zest, new success; be full of delight; become the interchange of face-to-face fellowship. There shall be more certainty and permanence in our decisions and achievements. Our decrees shall stand, our work shall last, our path shall be illumined with light. Trouble and trial shall depress us for only a brief space, like the passing of an Atlantic breaker over a lighthouse rock, whilst a glad relief shall always follow close on disaster.

Let us ask for all this in our daily prayer. O God, be my precious silver; give me delight in Thee; hear my prayers; may I decree what Thou canst establish; let Thy light shine on my ways; lift me up above all my depressions and fears — that I may stretch out a strong hand to those who are in trouble.

“Oh strengthen me, that while I stand

Firm on the Rock, and strong in Thee,

I may stretch out a loving hand

To wrestlers with the troubled sea.”

Job 23:3
Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to His seat!

Poor tempest-driven man, he knew not that God was intimately near, nearer than breathing. There was no need for him to go forward and backward, on the right hand or the left. The Lord his God was nigh him, even in his heart; for His throne was pitched, there on the sands of the desert, between job and his pitiless accusers.

Thou needest not speak like this. Thou knowest where to find Him; thou canst find the way to His seat. He is to be found in Jesus, seated on the mercy-seat; in that room where thou sittest reading these words; in that railway train or store. No need to ascend into heaven, or descend into the abyss. Thou couldst not be nearer God, if thou west in heaven. True, the obscuring wail shall be then removed.

“And without a screen,

At one burst shall be seen,

The Presence in which we have ever been”;

but the dropping of the scales from our eyes will not make us nearer God than we are at this moment.

Now go to His seat, just in front of thee. Order thy cause before Him, and argue it. Wait to know the words with which He shall answer thee, and understand His reply. Only be sure that He will not contend against thee with His great power. Sometimes we are so bewildered and perplexed that we lose the realizing sense of God’s presence; but there is no real difference. God is not really farther away; and nothing glorifies and pleases Him more than for us to go on speaking with Him as though we could see His face, and realize His embrace. Be still for a moment, and say, reverently and believingly: “Lo, God is in this place.”

Job 24:24
Yet a little while, and they are gone. (r. v.)

Job here describes the insecurity of the wicked. He may have raged against the poor and innocent; but in a moment he comes down to Sheol, is hurried to stand before his Maker to receive his sentence. As he had treated the poor, so he is treated. As he had devoured the houses of the innocent, so he is devoured. “How are they become a desolation in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors. As a dream when one awaketh; so, O Lord, when Thou awakest, Thou shalt despise their image.”

For those who fear God there is a greatly contrasted lot. They receive a kingdom that cannot be moved. Zion may be a desolation, and Jerusalem a wilderness; the holy and beautiful institutions in which their early religious impressions were made may crumble; but they are come to the heavenly Jerusalem. The removing of those things that are capable of being shaken only makes more apparent those which cannot be shaken.

Where do you build your nest? In the trees of this world, that sway in the tempest, or may be hewn down by the woodman’s axe; or have you learned to build in the clefts of the Rock of Ages? Is your treasure in human friendships, which may change or be cut in twain by the sharp shears of death; or is it in the love of God, the unchangeable and everlasting Lover of souls? Let us look off from ourselves; from that diseased introspection that so confuses and dims our life; from the old fears that made us tremble and the old matters of which we must speak no more. And let us look upward and forward to that near future, which is so much larger and better than the past has been, and where we shall attain more than the heights of our dreams.

Job 25:4
How then can man be just with God? (r. v.)

This is the question of the ages. Man knows that he is as a worm, and worse. For no animal, however humble, has consciously and determinedly broken the law of God, and defiled its nature.

Our first effort is to go about to establish a righteousness of our own. Repeated failure only aggravates our misery and chagrin, till we fall helpless at the foot of Sinai. Our vows are broken, the law of God lies shivered around us, the thunders and lightnings make us afraid. Then God in the Person of Jesus comes to our help. First, He meets and satisfies the demands of the broken law, so that it can ask no more. With His own hands He works out, and brings in, everlasting righteousness. And finally, He produces in us that faith by which His finished work is applied to our conscience and heart.

By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight; for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But we are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God bath set forth to be a propitiation. God is Himself the Justifier of the ungodly. “Whom He called, them He also justified.” He takes oft the filthy garments, and clothes us in change of raiment.

But the condition is faith. We must believe in Him who justifieth the ungodly. They who believe are justified from all things. Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. We are not saved by believing about His work, but in Himself. The Greek of John 3:16 might be rendered, Whosoever even believeth into Him. The motion of faith is ever toward the heart of Him who died, and rose, and lives. Then through our faith the Spirit produces a holy character.

Job 26:14
How small a whisper do we hear of Him! (r. v.)

Job in thought passes through the universe. Sheol stands for the grave and the unseen world; Abaddon, for Satan, or for the great reservoirs in which the destructive agencies of creation have their home. With a marvellous anticipation of the conclusions of modern science, he speaks of the world as pendant in space. He passes to the confines of light and darkness, rides on the wings of the wind, discourses of the clouds, skims the mighty surface of the sea. All this, however, he deems as the outskirts of God’s ways. It is but a whisper compared to the mighty thunder of His glory and power. If this is a whisper, what must the thunder be! If this universe is but a flower on the meadows of God’s life, what must not God Himself be!

Perhaps we know something more of the thunder of His power than Job could, because we have stood beneath Calvary and seen Jesus die, and He is the wisdom and power of God; yea, we have witnessed the exceeding greatness of His power, according to the working of the strength of His might, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead.

Who of us can fathom or understand the power of God? But what a comfort to know that it is an attribute of His heart. God is not power, but He is love, and His love. throbs through and commands His power. Be reverent when you kneel before the great and mighty God; but believe that all His power is engaged on the side of His weakest, neediest child. And more cease not to wait upon God until He endue you with His mighty power, for service and for daily living. A Nasmyth hammer can break a nutshell without crushing or touching the kernel.

Job 27:6
My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go.

Job had an ideal and clung to it. Have you such? A vision of what you may be, and, by the grace of God, will aim at being. Bishop Westcott says:— “The vision of the ideal guards monotony of work from becoming monotony of life.” Bitter indeed is life for those who have not seen the heavenly vision, or heard the calling upward of the voice that says, Come up hither. Any life looks more interesting and attractive when the light of our ideal falls on it, and we realize that every yard leads somewhere, and every step is one nearer the goal. So some one has suggested that, “If we cannot realize our ideal, we may at least idealize our real.”

But there are many hindrances, many adverse influences to combat, many suggestions that we should let go our ideal. We have so often failed, slipped where we thought we should stand, limped where we thought to overcome by wrestling. The crags are so steep, the encouragement we receive from fellow climbers so scant, the dissuasions and misconstructions — like those job had from his friends — so many. But Jesus who inspired the ideal waits to realize it, if only you will open your heart and let Him enter. Do you hunger and thirst? then He, will satisfy. He does not tantalize and disappoint the seeking soul.

Have we not all, amid life’s petty strife, Some pure ideal of a noble life That once seemed possible? It was. And yet We lost it in this daily jar and fret, And now live idle in a vague regret. But still our place is kept, and it will wait, Ready for us to fill it, soon or late No star is ever lost we once have seen We always may be what we might have been.

Job 28:14
The deep saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me. (r. v.)

In this sublime chapter the holy soul goes in quest of wisdom, which is the perfect balance of the moral and intellectual attributes of the soul; that knowledge of God, and life, and truth, which is only possible when the eyes of the heart have been enlightened to know; that radiancy of spirit which is enlightened and illuminated with God who is Himself the Light.

In a marvellous description of mining operations, which would arrest any company of miners in the world, if read from the Revised Version, Job declares it is not to be found in the deep. From one quarter of the universe after another, he receives the intelligence that it is not there. God alone has the secret; He only can communicate it, or give the disposition to appreciate and receive.

We must deal with God. Looking away from every other source of illumination and satisfaction, we must have close and searching fellowship with Him. Dr. Gordon was wont to say that evangelical faith consists not in a glance alone, but in a gaze. “We live in a very busy, perspiring time, when a thousand clamant calls assail us on every side; but we must have more time for visions if we would be well equipped for our tasks.” Let us then turn from the quarters where we have been accustomed to draw our supplies — broken cisterns, with uncertain and brackish water — and let us come to God, the eternal source of life and peace. Love and rest we want. Thy love and rest, oh, give us! From men and things; from the mine, the deep, and the sea; from the murmur of human voices, and the cross-lights of human interests, we come back to Thee, our Home.

Job 29:2
Oh that I were as in the months of old! (r. v.)

We are irresistibly reminded of Cowper’s sad complaint:—

What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!

How sweet their memory still;

But they have left an aching void

The world can never fill.

We are all prone to think that the earliest days were the best; and it is quite possible they were. But we must carefully distinguish between the exchange of the freshness and novelty of our first love for a deepening and maturing love, and the loss of love. The streamlet may not babble so cheerily, but there may be more water in the river. We lose the green Spring, but is it not better to have the intense light of Autumn in which the fruits ripen? There may not be so much ecstasy, but there may be stronger, deeper experience. We should not reckon our position in God’s sight by our raptures, and count ourselves retrograding because they have gone; there is something better than rapture: the peace of a settled understanding and unvarying faith.

Still, if it be really so, that you have left the old place on the bosom or at the feet of Christ, that your love is cooling and your spirituality waning, I beseech thee, get back! Remember whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works. Jesus yearns to reinstate thee, and has permitted this restless longing for the past to come, that it may be with thee as in the months of old. Again His lamp shall shine above thy head, and the secret of the Lord shall be upon thy tent; thy steps shall be washed with butter, and the rock pour out rivers of oil; thy roots shall spread to the waters, and the dew shall lie all night upon thy branch.

Job 30:20
I cry unto Thee, and Thou dost not answer me. (r. v.)

It may have seemed so to the sufferer; but there is not a cry that goes from the anguished soul which does not ring a bell in the very heart of God, where the Man of Sorrows waits, touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

I have sometimes gone to a telephone office, and have rung the bell, asking to be put in connection with my friend, but it has seemed impossible to get at him; either he has been engaged or absent, and one has found oneself speaking to a stranger, and the voice which replied has been unfamiliar. Thoroughly disappointed, one turns away. But this is never the case with God. And the comfort is, that He is most quick to succor those whose cry is lowest. As a mother goes about her work, she is less sensitive to the trains that thunder past, and the heavy drays, and the laughter of boisterous health, than to the stifled cry of her little invalid; and if there could be one thing more sure than another of awakening God’s immediate response, it would be such broken cries as pain elicited from Job.

But the answer will come — nay, it is on its way, timed to arrive in the fourth watch of the night. Perhaps the delay is the answer, because the heart needs to be prepared to receive the great gift when it comes. Perhaps, like the Syrophenician woman, you have to give Christ His right place is Lord, and take yours amongst the dogs. Perhaps the answer is coming all the time by one door, whilst you are looking for it through another; but you cannot and must not say that God is not answering. All the time you are crying, the answer is to your hand, awaiting your appropriation. Go to the post office for the letter: hasten to the landing-stage for the ship — it is in.

Job 31:6
Mine integrity.

Integrity is from the Latin word integrita, wholeness. It means whole-heartedness. It is interesting in this chapter to see what, in Job’s estimation, it involved.

Job 31:1. Purity in the look.

Job 31:7. Cleanliness of the hands.

Job 31:13. Thoughtfulness for domestic servants and underlings.

Job 31:16. Justice to the poor and the widow.

Job 31:17. Willingness to share morsels, and to be a father to the fatherless.

Job 31:19–20. Clothing for the naked.

Job 31:21. The refusal to depute to others help which one might render.

Job 31:24. The heart weaned from the love of gold.

Job 31:26. Refusal to turn aside to idols.

Job 31:29. Inability to rejoice at the destruction of those who had derided and hated.

Job 31:33. The frank confession of wrongdoing.

It becomes us, prayerfully, to go over these items, and use them as the catechism of our soul, for if this was the standard of character for one who lived so many centuries before the full revelation of Christ, what should not our standard be! How impossible, however, it is to live like this from without! We must enshrine within us the blessed Spirit of God, who alone originates and maintains that perfect love to God and man which compared to job’s maxims is as the heart to the body. Law is given as the expression of God’s will for the regulation of life: but it is impossible to keep the law till we have the love; and it is impossible to have the love until we have the Lord Jesus Christ, through the Holy Ghost.

Job 32:8
There is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth understanding. (r. v.)

Elihu had waited whilst the three elder men said all that was in their hearts. He now excuses his youth and demands audience, because so conscious that the breath of inspiration had entered his soul. Wisdom is not with age; but wherever the heart is freely open to God, He will make it wise. We have received not the spirit which is of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we may know.

George Fox tells us that though he read the Scriptures which spoke of Christ and of God, yet he knew Him not till He who had the key did open. “Then the Lord gently led me along and let me see His love, which was endless and eternal, surpassing all the knowledge that men have in the natural state, or can get by history or books. I had not fellowship with any people, priests or professors, but with Christ, who hath the key, and opened the door of life and light unto me. His one message was the necessity of the Inner Light, the inward witness of the Spirit, His secret revelations of truth to the soul.”

This distinction needs to be deeply pondered. We have been trying to know God by the intellect, by reading the Bible intellectually, by endeavoring to apprehend human systems. There is, however, a deeper and truer method. “There is a spirit in man!” Open your spirit to the Divine Spirit as you open a window to the sunny air. Instantly God enters and fills. The Spirit witnesses with our spirit. The inbreathed life of God gives us light. We know by intuition, by fellowship with God, by direct vision, what the wise of this world could never discover.

Job 33:23
If there be with him a messenger, an interpreter.

God is greater than man, and by His love seeks to hold man back from his purpose. Sometimes He comes in the visions of the night; some times in pain and sickness. But we are too dull to understand the inner reason of God’s endeavors to deliver us from the brink of destruction, and therefore we need an interpreter, one among a thousand, to explain the meaning of His dealings, and to show us the way in which we should amend our ways. How often has the sick visitor, the minister, the friend, interpreted God’s purpose, enabling us to see light in His light. There are few higher offices in this world than to act in this way between God and our fellows.

To perform this function, however, we need to understand two languages; the one of the throne, obtained from deep and intimate converse with our Father, while the other is man’s native language of pain and sorrow. Each must be spoken perfectly before we can interpret:—

“And to the height of this great argument

Assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to man.”

But, as Bunyan truly says, the best Interpreter is the Holy Spirit. As soon as the Pilgrim has passed the Wicket-gate, he is conducted through the Interpreter’s House by the Interpreter Himself. Are you perplexed as to the meaning of God’s Word, the dealings of God’s providence, the mystery of God’s moral government? Ask the Holy Spirit to lead you through chamber after chamber, unfolding to you the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. They are for babes — for the childlike and pure in heart. He will show you wondrous things out of His law.

Job 34:29
He giveth quietness.

Quietness amid the accusations of Satan. — The great accuser points to the stains of our past lives, by which we have defiled our robes and those of others; he says that we shall fall again and again; he imputes evil motives to our holiest actions, and detects flaws in our most sacred services; he raises so great a hubbub that we can hardly hear another voice within our souls. Then the great Intercessor arises and saith, “The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan, the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee; I have loved with an everlasting love, I have paid the ransom.” So “He giveth quietness.”

Quietness amid the dash of the storm. — We sail the lake with Him still, and as we reach its middle waters, far from land, under, midnight skies, suddenly a great storm sweeps down. Earth and hell seem arrayed against us, and each billow threatens to overwhelm. Then He arises from His sleep, and rebukes the winds and the waves; His hand waves benediction and repose over the rage of the tempestuous elements. His voice is heard above the scream of the wind in the cord age and the conflict of the billows. Peace, be still! Can you not hear it? And there is instantly a great calm. “He giveth quietness.”

Quietness amid the loss of inward consolations. — He sometimes withdraws these, because we make too much of them. We are tempted to look at our joy, our ecstasies, our transports, or our visions, with too great complacency. Then love, for love’s sake, withdraws them. But, by His grace, He leads us to distinguish between them and Himself. He draws nigh, and whispers the assurance of His presence. Thus an infinite calm comes to keep our heart and mind. “He giveth quietness.”

Job 35:10
None saith, Where is God my Maker, who giveth songs in the night?

Do you have sleepless nights, tossing on the hot pillow, and watching for the first glint of dawn? Ask the Divine Spirit to enable you to fix your thoughts on God, your Maker, and believe that He can fill those lonely, dreary hours with song.

Is yours the night of doubt? — A holy man tells us that once as he was sitting by the fire, a great cloud came over him, and a temptation beset him to think that all things came by nature; and as he sat still under it, and let it alone, a living hope arose in him, and a true voice said, “There is a living God who made all things.” And immediately the cloud and temptation vanished away, and life rose over it all. His heart was glad, and he praised the living God. Was not this a song in the night?

Is yours the night of bereavement? — Is it not often to such God draws near, and assures the mourner that the Lord had need of its beloved, and called “the eager, earnest spirit to stand in the bright throng of the invisible, liberated, radiant, active, intent on some high mission”; and as the thought enters, is there not the beginning of a song?

Is yours the night of discouragement and fancied or actual failure? — No one understands you, your friends reproach; but your Maker draws nigh, and gives you a song-the song of hope, the song which is harmonious with the strong, deep music of His providence. Be ready to sing the songs that your Maker gives.

“What then? Shall we sit idly down and say ’The night hath come; it is no longer day’? … … Yet as the evening twilight fades away, The sky is filled with stars, invisible to day.”

Job 36:5
Behold, God is mighty, and despiseth not any.

What entrancing assurances are contained in this and the preceding sentence! To think that in all our wayfarings through this world One that is perfect in knowledge is always with us, and One that is mighty is pledged to bring us through! Nothing could be desired beside. This makes prayer new. It is a child’s confidential whisper to the One who is attent to the lowest murmur, who cannot forget, who will not relinquish a purpose which He has formed though years pass, and who is able to do exceeding abundantly.

It is because God is so great that He despises none. If He were less than infinite, He might overlook. The boundlessness of His being has no ebb, fails of no soul He has made, and is as much at any one point as if He had no care or thought beside. In fact, those that man despises stand the best chance with God. Just because no one else cares for them, He must; just because no one else will help them, He will. This is necessary to His nature.

When a philanthropist adopts a certain lapsed section of the community, he does so because no one else will. It becomes a matter of honor with him that none of these, outcast by all else, should miss his help. And God has constituted Himself Champion, Guardian, and Savior, of all who have no help from their fellows. Friendless, forlorn, helpless, despised, He recognizes and meets the claim of their urgent necessity. Bruised reeds, bits of smoking tow, half-consumed firebrands, lost sheep, prodigal sons, waifs and strays, homeless, destitute, neglected-these have a first claim on the Almightiness of the living God.

Job 37:21
Men see not the bright light which is in the clouds.

The world owes much of its beauty to cloudland. The unchanging blue of the Italian sky hardly compensates for the changefulness and glory of the clouds. Clouds also are the cisterns of the rain. Earth would become a wilderness apart from their ministry. There are clouds in human life, shadowing, refreshing, and sometimes draping it in blackness of night; but there is never a cloud without its bright light. “I do set my bow in the cloud!”

If only we could see the clouds from the other side where they lie in billowy glory, bathed in the light they intercept, like heaped ranges of Alps, we should be amazed at their splendid magnificence. We look at their under side; but who shall describe the bright light that bathes their summits, and searches their valleys, and is reflected from every pinnacle of their expanse? Is not every drop drinking in health-giving qualities, which it will carry to the earth?

O child of God! If you could see your sorrows and troubles from the other side; if instead of looking up at them from earth, you would look down on them from the heavenly places where you sit with Christ; if you knew how they are reflecting in prismatic beauty before the gaze of heaven, the bright light of Christ’s face — you would be content that they should cast their deep shadows over the mountain slopes of existence. Only remember that clouds are always moving, and passing before God’s cleansing wind.

“Green pastures are before me, which yet I have not seen; Bright skies will soon be o’er me, where the dark clouds have been: My hope I cannot measure, my path of life is free; My Savior hath my treasure, and He will walk with me.”

Job 38:31
Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades? (r. v.)

The seven stars of the Pleiades always stand for the sweet influences of spring; Orion for the storm and tempest. In this sublime catechism, Jehovah asks job if he has any control over the one or the other. As it is with the year, so with our life.

There are times when the Pleiades are in the ascendant. The winter is over and gone, the time of the singing of birds is come. Doves coo their love notes in the trees, and the flowers gem the soil. Days of hope, of radiant light, of ecstatic joy! Days in which God seems to be making a new heaven and a new earth within us! Days when our Beloved shows Himself through the lattice-work, and says, “Come, my beloved!” Oh, tender influences of the Pleiades, we would that ye might ever stay, filling us with immortal youth! When God bids them shine, no one can bind them. When He gives joy, none can give sorrow. No mortal man can restrain the outburst of Nature’s spring. You might as well stay the resurrection of the Son of God and His saints!

But Orion has his work as well. Storms come; the drenching rain veils the landscape; the mighty billows are lashed to fury. But all works for good. The blast in the forest snaps off dead wood. The rain fills up the wells. Frost pulverizes the earth. When God binds Orion, man cannot unloose him; “no weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper.” But when the Almighty Unlooses Orion, like another Samson, he does his work of devastation, before which we must find refuge in the cleft of the Rock.

“God sendeth sun,

He sendeth shower,

Alike they’re needful for the flower.”

Job 38:4
April 12 - GOD'S CHALLENGE TO MAN
Our Daily Walk

"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast understanding."-- Job 38:4.

IN This mighty chapter, God seems to draw near to the perplexed and stricken soul, who sits brooding over the problems of human life, and points out that mysteries equally insoluble are above his head and under his feet; that he lives and moves amongst them. Man frets and despairs over a mystery forced upon him by sorrow and loss. He cannot interpret it, and is shaken to the heart; but the whole universe teems with mystery. Man cannot explain the creation of the world, the separation of sky and earth, the reflex influences of the one on the other. Light and darkness, wind and rain, snow and ice, storm and sunshine; the instincts of the animal creation these defy man's absolute understanding.

But who frets at the inscrutable mystery which enshrouds these natural phenomena! We use all of them, and make them serve our purpose.

We cannot be surprised, therefore, if we discover similar mysteries in God's dealings with ourselves. He does not answer our questions by always telling us His secret reasonings. His thoughts and ways are as much higher than ours, as the heavens are higher than the earth, and we could not more understand His reasons than tiny children can the mysteries of human life. But behind all mystery the Father's heart is beating, and a Father's voice is pleading, that we should trust Him. Little children, you cannot understand, but you are infinitely dear to Me; I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; "what I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.'" Trust me, and "let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

PRAYER- O God, there are so many mysteries in the world, and in human life, and our eyes grow tired with straining into the darkness. Help us to believe in Thy unchanging love, and to trust where we cannot see or understand. AMEN.

Job 39:1
Knowest thou?

The catechism of this chapter is designed to convince man of his ignorance. How little he knows of nature! Even though centuries of investigation and research have passed, there are still many questions which baffle us. And if we know so little of the Creator’s handiwork, how much less do we know of Himself, or the principles on which He acts!

The knowledge of God is not intellectual, but moral and spiritual. Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, are made known to Love and Obedience. Let the Love of God be shed through the heart, and the will of God be the ruling principle of life, and there will be given a knowledge of God which the research of the investigator could never gain. “We have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given us of God … they are spiritually discerned.” Knowest thou?

Dost thou know the exceeding greatness of His power, which He wrought in the Resurrection of thy Lord — that it is all around thee waiting to do as much for thee also; lifting thee, dead weight as thou art, to sit in the heavenlies?

Dost thou know the hope of His calling to a life within the vail, with the vail behind thee, and the light of the Shekinah ever on thy face?

Dost thou know the riches of His glorious indwelling, that He is prepared so to infill thee, that thou shalt partake of the very life wherewith He liveth and reigneth evermore?

Dost thou know the length, and breadth, and depth, and height, of the love that passeth knowledge; and Christ Jesus the Lord?

Job 40:4
I am of small account, what shalt I answer Thee? I lay mine hand upon my mouth.

What a different tone is here! This is he who so vehemently protested his innocence, and defended himself against the attacks of his accusers. The Master is come, and the servant who had contended with his fellows takes a lowly place of humility and silence.

The first step in the noblest life, possible to any of us, is to learn and say that we are of small account. We may learn it by successive and perpetual failures which abash and confound us. It is better to learn it by seeing the light of God rise in majesty above the loftiest of earth’s mountains. “When I was young,” said Gounod to a friend, “I used to talk of ‘I and Mozart.’ Later I said, ‘Mozart and I.’ But now I only say Mozart.’” Substitute God, and you have the true story of many a soul.

The next step is to choke back words, and lay the hand on the mouth. Silence and meditation! Not arguing or contending! Not complaining or murmuring! Not caviling or criticizing! But just being still — still, that you may feel God near; still, that you may hear Him speak. “Take heed of many words,” said George Fox; “keep down, keep low, that nothing may reign in you but life itself.”

The greatest saints avoided, when they could, the society of men, and did rather choose to live to God, in secret. A certain one said, “As oft as I have been among men I returned home less a man than I was before. Shut thy door upon thee, and call unto Jesus, thy Beloved. Stay with Him in thy closet; for thou shalt not find elsewhere so great peace.” How good it would be to lay our hands on our mouths rather oftener, whether in silence with our fellows, or in the hour of secret prayer!

Job 41:10
Who then is he that can stand before Me? (r. v.)

The first catechism had been on Job’s knowledge; now it turns on his power. The pivot of the one was, Knowest thou? of the other, Canst thou? If a man cannot stand before one of God’s creatures, how much less before the Creator! If we dread the wrath of the enraged crocodile, what should not be our dread before the wrath of the Eternal? Canst thou stand before Him? Canst thou strive against Him, with any hope of success? Canst thou force thyself, unbidden and unfit, into the presence of the Most Holy? Thou couldst not intrude on an earthly sovereign; how much less on Him, in whose sight the heavens are not clean?

Eternal light! eternal light! How pure the soul must be, When placed within thy searching light, It shrinks not, but with calm delight Can live, and look on Thee!

But Jesus can make it possible. Through Him we draw nigh to God. We have boldness to enter into the Holiest of All by His Blood. We may, through Him, be able to say, with Elijah, “Thus saith Jehovah, before whom I stand.” Jesus is the minister of the heavenly sanctuary, and in virtue of His office He is able to bring us into, and maintain us within, the Most Holy Place. He comes out to take us by the hand; and then, having fulfilled in us the good pleasure of His will, He brings us in and places us before the face of God forever. Like Solomon’s servants, we evermore stand before the king, see His face and hear His words.

The sons of ignorance and night May dwell in the Eternal Light, Through the Eternal Love.

Job 42:6
Now mine eye seeth Thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.

This is the clue to the entire book. Here is a man, who was universally known as perfect and upright, one that feared God, and eschewed evil; who abounded in beneficent and loving ministries to all who were in need; to whom respect and love flowed in a full tide. He was not conscious of any failure in perfect obedience, or of secret sin; indeed, when his friends endeavored to account for his unparalleled calamities by suggesting that there was some discrepancy between his outward reputation and inward consistency, he indignantly repelled the charge, and repudiated the impeachment.

My Sunday school class has been studying one book of the Bible each week. Beginning with Genesis, we are looking at the theme, structure, and uniqueness of each book. Little did I realize that two women in my class were eager to get to the book of Job. They are nurses who daily confront the problem of human suffering, and they are often asked hard questions about God's role in it.

All too often the explanation for suffering is similar to that expressed by Job's three friends who came to sit with him. One after another, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar told Job that he deserved the suffering because of his sin. The young observer Elihu came along and told Job the same thing.

The real reason Job was suffering was that Satan, the leader of the fallen angels, was trying to get him to turn from God. Because Satan cannot dethrone the Lord, he opposes Him by attacking His followers (see note 1 Peter 5:8). He strikes at God by tempting us to sin.

One reason for suffering, therefore, is that it's part of a larger, cosmic struggle. During hard times, we face the choice to trust God or to turn from Him. If we endure suffering with our trust in the Lord unshaken, we will thwart Satan's efforts and glorify our God. — David C. Egner

How oft in the conflict, when pressed by the foe,
I have fled to my Refuge and breathed out my woe;
How often, when trials like sea billows roll,
Have I hidden in Thee, O Thou Rock of my soul. —Cushing

When your world is shaking, run to the Rock.

><><><>><>

Job 1:1-12 JUST ASKING A QUESTION?

"Do not speak evil of one another." - James 4:11

Slanderers slaughter reputations. Sometimes they attack with the bold strokes of a butcher. At
other times they do their evil work with the finesse of a surgeon.

Satan is an expert in subtle slander. Knowing the power of a well-placed question to destroy a reputation, he simply asked, "Does Job fear God for nothing?" (Job 1:9).

Satan's question is shrewd because it evades the dangers of an outright lie. An accusation flirts with the embarrassment of being proven wrong. But no one can call you a liar or a slanderer if you merely ask a question.

A question also avoids punishment. It's difficult for someone to attack you if you have simply asked a question. It's unlikely that you can be sued or pulled into court. Yet, Satan's query savaged a good man's motives by implying that all of the good Job did was a coverup for selfishness.

When we are inclined to ask a malicious question, let's stop and remind ourselves that we will be playing the devil's game. Our tongues were not given to us to rip people apart; they were given to us to build people up. We ought to speak well of others not only to their face but also behind their back. -- H W Robinson

The tongue can be a blessing
Or the tongue can be a curse;
Say, friend, how are you using yours:
For better or for worse?

Our words have the power to build up or to tear down.

><><><>><>

Job 1:6-12
Satan's Logic
READ: Job 1:6-12

Satan answered the Lord and said, "Does Job fear God for nothing?" --Job 1:9

What happens if you rewrite the story of The Three Little Pigs from the wolf's point of view? Teacher and author Jon Scieszka thought children would be fascinated by such a revision. He was right. His book The True Story of the Three Little Pigs quickly went through several printings and made the list of bestselling children's books.

In the story, the wolf claims he wasn't intent on having pork for dinner but was tricked by three selfish pigs. He was just out to borrow a cup of sugar for his grandma's birthday cake. He was sneezing, not huffing and puffing, when the straw house just happened to collapse.

We can see through the wolf's twisted reasoning in this children's tale because we know the story so well. But are we as able to see through Satan's logic? His conversation with God about Job illustrates the problem. He charged that Job had selfish motives for serving God. Satan's strategy is often similar in our lives. He tries to convince us that evil motives are good and that good motives are evil.

Lord, we admit that we are often intrigued with Satan's subtle reasoning, especially when it feeds our own selfish desires. Help us to see through Satan's twisted logic and agree with Your point of view. — Mart De Haan

Job 1:1-22
O God, Why?
READ: Job 1:1-22

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. --Proverbs 3:5

Several years ago, the growing season had been unusually good in eastern Michigan. Farmers were elated at the thought of their potential profits. Then, just before harvest, the rains came--and stayed.

Potatoes rotted in the ground; beans molded in their pods. The entire harvest season remained wet. Anticipation of a record yield quickly faded. One discouraged farmer was quoted as saying, "You ask yourself, 'Why? What have we done wrong?'"

People have always asked why when faced with reversal and hardship. Their question is significant because it reflects the fact that nothing happens by chance. God is in control. Neither Satan nor man can go any further than is allowed by the Almighty.

The story of Job, however, makes it clear that we should not become too preoccupied with the question why. God's reasons are often kept to Himself. He may hold them high above our understanding and far beyond our natural field of vision in order to develop our faith. Our response to trouble should be like that of Job at the beginning and at the end of his problems (Job 2:10; 42:1-6).

Obediently trust God in your circumstances--even when you can't understand what He's doing. — Mart De Haan

When through life's darkened maze I go
And troubles overwhelm my soul,
O grant me, Lord, Your grace to know
That You are surely in control. --DJD

When God conceals His purposes,
He consoles with His promises

><><><>><>

Job 1:13-22 WHEN TRUST IS TESTED

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. - Job 1:21

In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew ravaged South Florida, destroying homes, businesses, and lives. The cost of that terrible disaster cannot be estimated only in terms of millions upon millions of dollars. What about the incalculable human suffering - physical, emotional, and spiritual? If people lost faith in God and prayer, they sustained the worst loss of all.

In the spring of 1993, some pastors who had churches in that area gathered to share their experiences and reactions. They all agreed that everyone who had encountered the terrifying power of that hurricane had come to realize how helpless and vulnerable we human beings really are. Proud as we
may be of our technological achievements, there are times when we are compelled to confess humbly, "We are not in charge." Some of the people whose trust was tested were able to say in the words of Job, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21).

Is your trust in God so complete that no matter what takes place you will humbly rely on His wisdom, goodness, and mercy? Trusting in God will enable you to endure trials without despair. -V C Grounds

My times are in Thy hand;
Why should I doubt or fear?
My Father's hand will never cause
His child a needless tear. - Lloyd

God doesn't promise security from life's storms
but security in life's storms.

><><><>><>

Job 1:20
Wind And Worship
READ: Job 1:6-12

Job arose, tore his robe, and shaved his head; and he fell to the ground and worshiped. --Job 1:20

Job's calamities were enormous. His oxen and donkeys were stolen. Fire consumed his sheep. Raiders took his camels. But that was just the beginning. A great wind destroyed the house where his sons and daughters were feasting, and they all perished. His loss seemed unbearable! But notice Job's response. He humbled himself and worshiped God (Job 1:20).

On April 2, 1977, the sky north of Olivet, Michigan, grew black and ominous. Just another severe thunderstorm, thought Norm Heddon. But when pressure began building in his ears, he instinctively rushed down the basement stairs—which took about 5 seconds. Then it happened—his house exploded into thousands of pieces from a killer tornado. Minutes later when Norm emerged, he couldn't believe his eyes. All his earthly goods had been swept away, but miraculously his family was unhurt. Bowing in prayer, they thanked God for His goodness. Heddon said, "He has a hand in everything that happens to us."

How can anyone worship while caught up in the fierce winds of adversity? The answer is clear: By anchoring our faith in the love and wisdom of God, we can say through our tears, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (v.21). — Dennis J. De Haan

Thinking It Over
Do you feel abandoned by God, as Job did? Tell Him how you feel. Then ask Him to help you believe the truth about His love for you.

When you are swept off your feet,
land on your knees.

><><><>><>

Job 1:21
Unfaltering Faith
READ: Job 2:1-10

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. --Job 1:21

Scottish author Sir Walter Scott faced financial disaster when his publisher went bankrupt in 1826. He was heavily invested in the firm, and it appeared that he would lose everything, including Abbotsford, his castle-like home. A Christian of unwavering faith, he wrote in his journal, "Things are so much worse than I apprehended that I shall neither save Abbotsford nor anything else. Naked we entered the world and naked we leave it. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

A life that doesn't undergo heartbreaking adversity is rare. Job was not overstating our common experience when he lamented, "Man who is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble" (Job 14:1).

Many of us talk about loss and suffering and argue about why evil things happen to good people. But it's quite different to deal victoriously with the painful experiences that happen to us personally. What we really need in the teeth of affliction is not a plausible explanation but the ability to endure without emotional collapse or spiritual bitterness. We need the sustaining confidence that enables us to believe in God's love and wisdom (Job 1:21; 2:10).

Pray for an unfaltering faith that stands strong under life's greatest pressures. — Vernon C. Grounds

In the fall of 1982, Deborah Kiley set out with three other young people to deliver the 58-foot yacht Trashman from Maine to Florida. Off the coast of North Carolina, they encountered gale winds and mountainous seas that sank their boat. Enduring 4 grueling days at sea without food or fresh water, the crew clung to life in a rubber dinghy in shark-infested waters.

In her book Albatross, Deborah recalls how one of the crew shouted curses at God for their dilemma. Despite her fatigue, Deborah silently recited The Lord’s Prayer and asked God to teach her through this crisis. Later, the same young man drank seawater, became delirious, jumped overboard, and was eaten by sharks. Eventually, the survivors were rescued by a Russian freighter.

Each of us responds in different ways to a crisis. Centuries ago, Job was hit by one wave of bad news after another. At one point his wife told him to curse God and die. Job’s response was profound:

“Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” (Job 2:10)

The next time a crisis hits, recognize God’s sovereignty and do as Deborah Kiley did—ask God to teach you something through it. — Dennis Fisher

O Lord, I would not ask You why
These trials come my way
But what there is for me to learn
Of Your great love, I pray. —D. De Haan

The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord. —Job

><><><>><>

Job 2:10
An Age-Old Question
READ: Job 2:1-10

Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity? —Job 2:10

When Jeremy was 17, he struggled with a question that theologians have wrestled with for centuries. For him the problem was not theoretical but practical. He was trying to understand why his mother had to have brain surgery. He asked, “Why do good people suffer, Mom?”

She told him, “Suffering is part of living in a sin-cursed world, and good people suffer like anybody else. That’s why I’m glad we have Jesus. If I die, I’ll go to a better place, and I’ll long for the day when I can see you again.” She then said that she could understand his frustration, but she told him not to put the blame on God.

If you and I are baffled by the suffering of good people, we can put the question squarely before God, argue with Him if we must, and struggle with our doubts. But let’s not blame Him.
God didn’t explain to Job what He was doing but said that He could be trusted to do what is right (Job 38-42). And He has assured us in His Word that Jesus suffered on our behalf, rose from the dead, and is now preparing a suffering-free place for us.

These may not be the answers we want, but they are the answers we need to help us live with that age-old and often unanswerable question of suffering. — Dennis J. De Haan

Why must I bear this pain? I cannot tell;
I only know my Lord does all things well.
And so I trust in God, my all in all,
For He will bring me through, whate’er befall. —Smith

God is not obligated to give us answers,
but He promises us His grace.

><><><>><>

Job 2:13
Mandy Just Listened
READ: Job 2:11-13

They sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him. --Job 2:13

Marty had gotten an unexpected "thank you" for service to the company—a terse note that concluded, "Your position has been terminated."

After Marty had spent months fruitlessly searching for a job, his frustration finally got to him. Angrily, he screamed at God, "Why did You do this to me? Don't You care?" He continued his tirade until he noticed his dog Mandy cowering by a chair. Composing himself, he said, "Come here, pup. You should be glad you're a dog. At least you can't get fired from being man's best friend." As he poured out his woes and talked to Mandy, his bitterness disappeared.

David Biebel, the author who told the story, wrote: "You might think the relief came from all the things he said to God, and certainly that was part of it. But Mandy played a big part too. . . . [She] didn't argue or offer solutions or advice. She just listened, wagging her tail and licking her master's hand."

When Job's three friends saw his misery, they just sat with him, wept, and said nothing for 7 days. But then they abandoned the wisdom of their silence.

Sometimes we need to just "weep with those who weep" (Rom. 12:15). Our listening ear may be what they need, so they can hear what God is saying to them. — Dennis J. De Haan

When our friends encounter suffering,
We can help them if we're near;
Some may need a word of comfort,
Others just a listening ear. —Sper

Listening may be the most important thing you do today.

><><><>><>

Job 3:3
Beginning From The End
READ: Job 3:20-26

May the day perish on which I was born. —Job 3:3

At age 30 she was ready to give up. She wrote in her diary, "My God, what will become of me? I have no desire but to die." But the dark clouds of despair gave way to the light, and in time she discovered a new purpose for living. When she died at age 90, she had left her mark on history. Some believe that she and those who introduced antiseptics and chloroform to medicine did more than anyone to relieve human suffering in the 19th century. Her name was Florence Nightingale, founder of the nursing profession.

Job went so far as to wish he had never been born (3:1-3). But thank God, he didn't end his life. Just as Florence Nightingale came out of her depression and found ways to help others, so too Job lived through his grief, and his experience has become a source of endless comfort to suffering souls.

Maybe you're at the point of not wanting to go on. Being God's child intensifies your desperation, for you wonder how a believer could feel so alone and forsaken. Don't give up. Coming to the end of yourself emotionally could be the most painful experience you've ever encountered. But take courage. Cling to the Lord in faith and start all over. God can use this kind of "beginning from the end." — Mart De Haan

Come, ye disconsolate, where'er ye languish—
Come to the mercy-seat, fervently kneel;
Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish:
Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal. —Moore

In Christ, the hopeless find hope.

><><><>><>

Job 3:25
Job’s Birthday
The thing I greatly feared has come upon me. —Job 3:25

Death, divorce, and disease could be called the three Ds of misery. They slice through life like a tsunami of sorrow, raising doubts and destroying dreams.

Recently, a friend and I agreed that the previous year was one that we both would just as soon forget. Each of us had suffered one of the three.

Our conversation brought Job to mind. In a short period of time, he lost his children, his health, his wealth, and his wife’s respect. Job’s distress was so great that he pleaded, “May the day perish on which I was born” (Job 3:3). Job wanted God to erase not just a year, but all memory of his existence! He had enjoyed years of success and respect. Now, he questioned the purpose of living (3:20).

Job wanted to die and be forgotten, but instead God made sure his name and story would be remembered forever. Rather than give Job what he asked for, God gave future generations what they would need—an inside look at the spiritual battle between God and Satan. The result is a God-inspired document about suffering that has comforted countless people.

When what we fear actually happens, we know, thanks to Job, that God can use it for good. — Julie Ackerman Link

For Further Study
Why does God allow us to experience the “fires of life”?
Read Knowing God Through Job

Our highest good may come from our deepest suffering.

><><><>><>

Job 4:1-4
Encouraging Words

Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have strengthened the feeble knees. --Job 4:4

In his autobiography, L. O. Dawson told about a minister who died. At his memorial service, the church was filled to overflowing. Various speakers praised the virtues of their deceased pastor and friend.

When it was Mr. Dawson's turn to address the congregation, he affirmed the truthfulness of the gracious words that had already been spoken. But then he told the audience that if as many of them had been in attendance at the regular services of the church as were there at the funeral service, their pastor would still be alive.

Dawson made this shocking observation to the grieving parishioners: "Empty pews broke your pastor's heart. He did not know of your love. He died for lack of the things you have today so beautifully said and done." The story in Dawson's book concluded with this convicting remark: "More preachers die from broken hearts than from swelled heads."

May it be said of us as it was of Job: "Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have strengthened the feeble knees" (Job 4:4).

Don't wait until somebody dies to express your love and respect. Do it today! And remember--pastors need encouragement too. — Richard De Haan

It was only a kindly word,
And a word that was lightly spoken,
Yet not in vain, for it stilled the pain
Of a heart that was nearly broken. --Anon.

Praise loudly--blame softly.

><><><>><>

Job 4:4
Strength & Support
READ: Job 4:1-11
Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have strengthened the feeble knees. —Job 4:4

The local newspaper reported that a mother is devastated because her 21-year-old son, who had always seemed like an upright young man, had been arrested for dealing drugs.

Also in our community, the parents and siblings of a 15-year-old are grieving because he was killed in a gun accident.

An aged friend is heartbroken because her only daughter, the person she depended on more than all others, died from cancer.

People who are hurting have a common need: the comfort that comes from trusting God. They need to be assured that tragedy and grief are not a mark of God’s disfavor but that He weeps with them, He loves them, and He will never leave those who are His.

Eliphaz said to Job: “Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have strengthened feeble knees” (Job 4:4). Job earned this tribute despite his own deep suffering. And when we offer comfort to sorrowing and suffering people, we not only emulate Job—we emulate Jesus.

In the midst of a host of hurting people, each one of us can reach out to become a comforter like Job. Let’s ask God to make our hearts tender enough to support and strengthen those who are hurting. — Herbert Vander Lugt

Reach out and give your love to the loveless,
Reach out and make a home for the homeless;
Reach out and shed God’s light in the darkness—
Reach out and let the smile of God touch through you. —Brown
© 1971 Word, Inc

God doesn’t comfort us to make us comfortable,
but to make us comforters.

><><><>><>

Job 6:1-14
When We Don’t Know What To Say
READ: Job 6:1-14

To him who is afflicted, kindness should be shown by his friend. —Job 6:14

Roy Clark and his father sat in the family car in the funeral home parking lot for several minutes. As a teenager, he wasn’t sure how to respond when his dad put his head in his hands and moaned, "I don’t know what to say!"

A friend from their church had been in a car accident. She had survived, but her three daughters had all died when a truck hit their vehicle. What could they say to their friend at a time like this?

In the Bible we are told that during Job’s time of grieving, his three friends came to mourn with him and to comfort him. For the first 7 days they sat and wept with him because he was in deep sorrow (Job 2:11-13). "No one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great" (Job 2:13). Their presence alone was a comfort to him.

But then they began to lecture. They told Job he must have sinned and that God was punishing him (Job 4:7-9).

When Job was finally able to respond, he told his friends what he needed from them. He asked for reasons to continue hoping (Job 6:11), for kindness (v.14), and for words that did not presume guilt (vv.29-30).

Remembering the story of Job and his friends may help us when we don’t know what to say. — Anne Cetas

Lord, give me sensitivity
To people in their grief and pain,
To weep with them and show Your love
In ways mere words cannot attain. —Sper

When someone’s grieving—listen, don’t lecture.

><><><>><>

Job 6:14
A Helping Hand
READ: Luke 5:17-26

To him who is afflicted, kindness should be shown by his friend. —Job 6:14

A college student named Kelly shattered her arm in the first volleyball game of the season. This meant she couldn't work at her part-time job. Then her car stopped running. To top it all off, the young man she had been dating stopped calling. Kelly felt so low that she began spending hours alone in her room crying.

Laura, a Christian friend on the volleyball team, became concerned about Kelly and decided to help her. So she planned a party. She and some friends collected money, and a couple of guys got Kelly's car running again. They found a temporary job she could do, using just one hand. And they gave her tickets to see her basketball hero when his team came to town. Before long, Kelly was herself again. When she asked why they did all this for her, Laura was able to tell her about the love of Jesus.

Kelly's story reminds me of the paralyzed man who was healed by Jesus. The afflicted man's friends cared enough about him to bring him to the Savior (Luke 5:17-26).

Do you have a friend in need? Think of some ways you can help. Show the love of Christ and then share the gospel. You never know what might happen when you lend a helping hand. — David C. Egner

Reach out in Jesus' name
With hands of love and care
To those who are in need
And caught in life's despair. —Sper

Real love puts actions to good intentions.

><><><>><>

Job 7:6
Where Are We Going So Fast?
READ: Psalm 90:1-12

My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without hope. --Job 7:6

Scientific measurements indicate that we are moving even when we are standing still. The surface of the earth at the equator rotates at about 1,000 miles per hour. The earth is orbiting the sun at about 67,000 miles per hour. Our solar system whirls around the center of our galaxy at 490,000 miles per hour, and it zooms along at 43,000 miles per hour in the direction of the star Vega in the constellation Lyra. But that's not all. Our Milky Way galaxy is hurtling through space at 1.3 million miles per hour.

A man lying on his back in a quiet park on a cloudless summer day may feel as though all time and movement have stopped under the hot rays of a noonday sun. But the scientist and the godly person know otherwise. Just as we are hurtling through the heavens at unimaginable speeds, so too we are moving from here to eternity. Our days and opportunities to live for the Lord pass so rapidly that we cannot afford to waste any of them.

The psalmist prayed, "Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:12). May that be our prayer today. Lord, help us to live without desperation or futility as we travel so quickly from our home here on earth to our heavenly home above. — Mart De Haan

Lord, help us to redeem the time
You give us every day—
To take each opportunity
To follow and obey. —Sper

To make your life count, number your days.

><><><>><>

Job 9:10
Countless Wonders
READ: Job 9:1-10

[God] does great things past finding out, yes, wonders without number. —Job 9:10

When writer Aletha Lindstrom needs a lift for her spirits, she thinks of her favorite poetry book called Who Tells The Crocuses It's Spring? That prompts her to ask other questions like, "Who makes the trees turn all those beautiful colors in the autumn? Who splashes rain in shining puddles? Who makes the stars shimmer in the night?"

Such questions ought to stimulate our own grateful meditation. Centuries ago, Job exclaimed that it is God who "does great things past finding out, yes, wonders without number" (Job 9:10).

It is God who reminds the sun to rise at its appointed time every morning. It is God who keeps the earth steadily rotating at tremendous speed. It is God who feeds the sparrow and dresses the lilies in their splendor. It is God who guides the feathered flocks southward in the autumn and then brings them north again in the spring.

Argue if you like that all these wonders are simply the operation of the laws of nature. But just as civil law is the expression of human will, so also natural law is the expression of God's will and wisdom.

As we see the wonders of creation all around us, let's worship the One who designed them.— Vernon C. Grounds

This is my Father's world—
The birds their carols raise;
The morning light, the lily white
Declare their Maker's praise. —Babcock

In the wonders of creation we see God at work.

><><><>><>

Job 11:7
Divine Mystery
READ: Psalm 93:1-6

The Lord reigns, He is clothed with majesty. . . . You are from everlasting. --Psalm 93:1-2

At one point along the Saguenay River in southeastern Canada, the water flows through a chasm between two rugged rock formations. Their pinnacles tower over 1,600 feet into the sky. Early pioneers were so awestruck by these majestic crags that they named them Trinity and Eternity.

The two great truths expressed by these words create a sense of awe in the heart of every Christian. The Bible tells us of God's eternity—His timeless existence (Psalm 93:2), and His triune nature—the threefold expression of Himself as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19).

Both of these affirmations baffle our minds. If we try to comprehend either of them, the question asked by Job's friend comes to mind: "Can you search out the deep things of God?" (Job 11:7). The answer is obvious. When we try to behold the triune God, we feel like someone who gazes up into the midday sun to study it.

At the heart of the Christian faith is mystery, because at the heart of our faith is the eternal, triune God. We have the Father who loves us, the Savior who died for us, and the Spirit who helps us to be holy. This divine mystery gives us reason to bow down and worship our eternal God. — Haddon W. Robinson

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;
Holy, Holy, Holy! Merciful and Mighty!
God in three persons, blessed Trinity! —Heber

To understand God is impossible;
to worship Him is imperative.

"Though He slay me, I will trust Him,"
Said the sainted Job of old;
"Though He try me in the furnace,
I shall then come forth as gold."

"Though the 'worms of deep affliction'
Cause this body to decay,
In my flesh I shall behold Him --
My Redeemer -- some glad day."

"Though He slay me" -- can I say it
When I feel the searing fire,
When my fondest dreams lie shattered --
Gone my hope and fond desire?

"Though He slay me, I will trust Him,"
For He knows just how to mold,
How to melt and shape my spirit --
I shall then come forth as gold.!

A weak faith may appear to be strong when friends are true, the body is healthy, and the business is profitable. But a truly strong faith clings to the Lord's promises and relies on His faithfulness when loved ones leave, health departs, and dark clouds obscure the future.

Evangelist D. L. Moody once said, "Trust in yourself and you are doomed to disappointment; trust in your friends, and they will die and leave you; but trust in God, and you will never be confounded in time or eternity."

Don't murmur and rebel in your hour of adversity. Learn to trust God in every trial. -- H G Bosch

Oh, that you would be silent, and it would be your wisdom! —Job 13:5

It is about 9 in the evening. My wife Ginny and I are sitting in our living room. I'm reading a book. Suddenly she says, "Honey, I want to talk with you for a few minutes." She begins to talk—then she abruptly asks, "Are you listening?"

I'm tempted to reply, "Of course I am. I'm only 2 feet away from you." But actually my mind is still on what I'm reading. I need to close the book and give my full attention to what Ginny is saying. She deserves that from me.

Job too was frustrated because his friends weren't paying attention to what he was saying to them. He sensed that while he was talking they were planning their next response. They were bent on trying to convince him that his suffering was punishment for sin in his life. They were not listening to the deep cry of Job's heart.

Many of us are poor listeners too. Teenagers can be frustrated because their parents always have a quick answer, when actually they just want someone to listen to their struggles and accept them. One teen said, "Sometimes I would just like to talk until I know what I want to say."

Deep relationships are built on acceptance, understanding, and being a good listener.— Herbert Vander Lugt

When our friends encounter suffering,
We can help them if we're near;
Some may need a word of comfort,
Others just a listening ear. —Sper

Listening may be the most loving thing you do today.

><><><>><>

Job 13:5
Better Than Words
READ: Job 13:1-19

Oh, that you would be silent, and it would be your wisdom. --Job 13:5

When we are with people who are grieving or suffering, we may feel a need to fill the awkwardness of the occasion with words. Not to say something, we fear, is to let them down. We may even find ourselves avoiding the bereaved because we're afraid we won't know what to say.

Author Joe Bayly, who lost three sons through death, described two examples of comfort he had received during his deepest grief: "Someone came and talked to me of God's dealings, of why it happened, of hope beyond the grave. He talked constantly [and] said things I knew were true. I was unmoved, except to wish he'd go away. He finally did.

"Another came and sat beside me. He didn't talk. He didn't ask leading questions. He just sat beside me for an hour and more, listened when I said something, answered briefly, prayed simply, [and] left. I was moved. I was comforted. I hated to see him go."

Job experienced similar emotions. In his grief, he too had craved silent support from his friends. He cried out, "Oh, that you would be silent, and it would be your wisdom!" (13:5). Instead, he was worn down by their many words.

The next time you're with people who are grieving, allow your presence to be their comfort. — Joanie Yoder

Words of insight, gems of guidance
Help when someone's in a test;
But when comfort is what's needed,
Silent presence may be best. --Sper

A well-timed silence is more eloquent than words.

><><><>><>

Job 13:13-28 Pressed Close to God
 
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him". -Job 13:15

The vines that sometimes grow up the side of oak trees cling to them during the fiercest storms. Although the wind beats upon them, the tendrils hold tightly to the tree's bark. If the vine is on the side opposite the wind, the great oak is its protection; if it's on the exposed side, the wind presses the vine more closely to it.

As Christians, we are sometimes sheltered by God, while other times He allows us to be exposed so we will be pressed more closely to Him. After years of faithfulness, some Christians suddenly find themselves greatly tested and in deep distress--seemingly without reason. They are subjected to terrific battles with doubts, fears, and unbelief. Doesn't God care how much they suffer? Of course He does. But He has a special purpose in withholding immediate relief.

When God spoke to Satan about Job, He described him as "blameless and upright," one who "holds fast to his integrity" (Job 1:8; 2:3). God knew He could trust Job to cling to Him no matter what. Job's persevering faith in the midst of overwhelming trials would refute Satan's argument that he served God only because God blessed him.

The Lord may have a similar purpose in your trial. Remember Job's example. Hold fast to God. --H G Bosch

The Christian's hope is in the Lord,
He rests secure in his sure word;
And when he's tempted to despair,
He'll choose to trust God's love and care.-- DJD

To live without God means to die without hope.

><><><>><>

Job 14:1
Suffering: How Do We Respond?
READ: Job 16:6-17
Man who is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. —Job 14:1

Why is there suffering? You might ask that question when you hear of hurricanes, mudslides, earthquakes, and other disasters taking people's lives. Job asked that question too.

Why is there so much pain in God's world? Consider these reasons:

We can't escape the laws that govern our universe. We need such things as gravity, weather, and fire to survive, but they can lead to tragedy (Matt. 5:45). Fire is good in your stove, but an out-of-control fire can kill.

We are a social race. Our lives are intertwined, so we sometimes suffer when the sin or foolishness of others spreads trouble (1 Cor. 12:26).

Sin brought a curse on the earth and its people. This curse includes disease and death (Gen. 3:15-24).

Suffering awakens compassion. Jesus told us to care for those who suffer in poverty. We are His partners in helping others (Luke 10:33-35).
As Job discovered, God's world is a fallen place. When we see suffering, we can use it as an opportunity to serve God by helping others, to trust Him in spite of the difficulty, and to grow in our faith in Him.

When trouble hits, let our first reaction be to trust the Lord and care for the needs of others. — Dave Branon

For Further Study
Wondering about the reason for your trials?
Read the online booklet Why Would A Good God Allow Suffering?

Our response to suffering can either make us or break us.

><><><>><>

Job 14:1
Sizing Up Our Troubles
READ: Job 14:1-22

Man who is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. --Job 14:1

A soldier on the battlefield hadn't received any mail for weeks. During a break in the fighting, he was handed an envelope. Inside was a bill for $3.52. A note read: "If this bill isn't paid in 5 days, you will be in serious trouble!" I wonder if that soldier smiled over the irony.

Troubles come in all sizes, from small irritants to life-threatening crises, from the loss of a $20 bill to the loss of a loved one, from the breakdown of our car to the breakdown of our health. When troubles begin to add up, they can push us to the breaking point.

So it was with Job. He said, "If now I hold my tongue, I perish" (Job 13:19). Job felt he was a righteous man. Why did he lose all his oxen, donkeys, sheep, and camels? Why were his servants and 10 children killed? Why was he afflicted with excruciating pain?

Job began to contend with God. He accused Him of destroying man's hope (Job 14:18-22). When God finally answered him, He didn't give the reason for Job's suffering. Instead, the Lord challenged him to provide explanations for the mysteries of nature. Job quickly got the point and reached the humble conclusion that he must let God be God (Job 38-42). In all our troubles, may God help us to do the same. — Dennis J. De Haan

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate
And has shed His own blood for my soul. --Spafford

God may not always give us answers,
but He always gives us grace.

><><><>><>

Job 14:14
A Mystery Solved
READ: 1 Corinthians 15:51-58

If a man dies, shall he live again? --Job 14:14

What happens to us when we die? That mystery has intrigued people down through the ages.

Some researchers are cautiously suggesting that they may be close to an answer. They are checking into reports from individuals who claim to have undergone near-death experiences that took them beyond time and space. Some analysts think that further research will eventually solve the mystery of death.

Must we anxiously await their verdict? By no means! God has already revealed in the Bible what happens after death.

If we have trusted God's Son Jesus Christ as our Savior, we know we will be "present with the Lord" when we die (2 Cor. 5:8). Paul said that because Christ died for our sins and rose from the grave, "Death is swallowed up in victory" (1 Cor. 15:54). But those who reject Christ will have to face God's fierce judgment and an eternity in hell (Rev. 20:11-15).

Anyone looking for clues about what happens to us when we die would be wise to research the Bible. It gives us God's answer to the most pressing question of the ages. Christ's empty tomb assures us that it is a mystery already solved. — Vernon C. Grounds

He lives, and grants me daily breath;
He lives, and I shall conquer death;
He lives, my future to prepare;
He lives to bring me safely there. --Medley

Because Christ lives, death is not tragedy but triumph.

><><><>><>

Job 16:1-5
Sharing The Pain

READ: Job 16:1-5
Weep with those who weep. --Romans 12:15

From the way Job's friends tried to console him, we learn a basic principle about giving comfort to others in their suffering: A comforter's ability to help is not so much his talent for using words as it is his capacity to be sympathetic. That's the type of understanding Job longed for when his friends began trying to correct him.

Dr. Paul Brand has beautifully expressed this truth in his book Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. He writes: "When I ask patients and their families, 'Who helped you in your suffering?' I hear a strange, imprecise answer. The person described rarely has smooth answers and a winsome, effervescent personality. It is someone quiet, understanding, who listens more than talks, who does not judge or even offer much advice. 'A sense of patience.' 'Someone there when I needed him.' A hand to hold. An understanding, bewildered hug. A shared lump in the throat."

Sometimes, in trying so hard to say the right thing, we forget that the language of feeling speaks much louder than our words. There are times when the best thing we can do is "weep with those who weep" (Romans 12:15).

Helping others in distress begins when we share their pain (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). —Mart De Haan

Lord, keep me merciful and kind,
With You, O Christ, first in my mind;
Teach me to feel another's woe,
And mercy to all people show. —Brandt

Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load.

><><><>><>

Job 16:12
Ground Squirrels
READ: Romans 8:27-39

I was at ease, but He has shattered me. —Job 16:12

Ground squirrels hibernate near our home during the winter, and they reappear when the snow melts in the spring. My wife Carolyn and I enjoy watching them scurry back and forth from one hole to another, while others stand like tiny sentries watching for predators.

In mid-May, a man from a nearby golf course arrives on a little green tractor with a tank loaded with lethal gas. The groundskeeper tells us that these little critters have to be eliminated because they dig holes in the fairways. Some survive, but most do not. It always makes us a little sad to see the tractor arrive.

If I could, I'd chase the little animals away. I'd destroy their holes and force them to settle someplace else. I'm sure they would resent my interference, but my actions would be solely for their good.

So it is with God. He may break up our comfortable nests now and then, but behind every difficult change lies His love and eternal purpose. He is not cruel or capricious; He is working for our ultimate good (Romans 8:28). He wants us to be "conformed to the image of His Son" (v.29) and to give us glorious enjoyment in heaven forever. How then can we fear change when it comes from Someone whose love for us never changes? (vv.38-39).— David H. Roper

What tenderness the Father shows
To sinners in their pain!
He grants to them His strength to bear
The hurt that brings them gain. —D. De Haan

God's love can seem harsh until we view it with hindsight.

><><><>><>

About That Sandwich
READ: Job 20:4-23

Though evil is sweet in his mouth, and he hides it under his tongue, . . . his food in his stomach turns sour. --Job 20:12,14

The absent-minded professor strode into his freshman zoology class with a paper bag in his hand and a twinkle in his eye. His broad grin projected the delight he felt in knowing he was about to initiate his rather squeamish students in the methods of animal dissection. In his typical professorial style he proudly announced, "I have brought a frog, fresh from the pond, that we might together study its outer appearance and later dissect it." With that he opened the bag and carefully unwrapped the contents. To his complete puzzlement, there was a ham-on-rye sandwich. "That's strange," he said. "I distinctly remember eating my lunch."

Job 20 tells about a person who recognized that evil can taste good, despite being very bad for the one who partakes of it. Even though Zophar wrongly implied that Job was suffering as a consequence of his sin, the principle he set forth was right: A person who feeds on evil will sooner or later realize what a fool he has been.

Are we careful what we feed on? Is what we take into our minds pure and true and honoring to God? Or are we swallowing the pleasures of sin for a while? We must be careful that our lives are not marked by an absent-mindedness that we will someday regret. — Mart De Haan

Sin's pleasures have such great appeal,
They look like bargains rare;
But seldom do we clearly see
The hidden costs they bear. --DJD

If you don't want the fruits of sin,
stay out of the devil's orchard.

><><><>><>

Job 21:22
Informing God
READ: Psalm 139:1-6
Can anyone teach God knowledge? —Job 21:22

We cannot tell God anything He doesn't already know. When we pray, we simply put into words what He's been aware of all along.

That doesn't make prayer unnecessary; rather, it encourages us to pray. We find relief in talking to Someone who knows us and our situation fully. It's a comfort to know that God's response arises not from information we give Him, but from His perfect knowledge of our circumstances. He knows all conditions—past, present, future—that bear on our well-being.

"Your Father knows," Jesus said in Matthew 6:8. He knows our thoughts, our intentions, our desires; He is intimately acquainted with all our ways (Psalm 139:3). He knows the anguish of our heart, the strain of continual frustration, the enemies inside and outside that war against our souls.

So, can we presume to dictate the time and terms of our deliverance from trials or adversity? Can we say our way is better, more likely to develop our soul? No, we cannot teach God anything. He alone knows the way to bring us to glory. Out of all possible paths, He has chosen the best, the route most adapted to who we are and what He has in store for us.

We cannot teach God knowledge, but we can love and trust Him. That's all He asks of us.— David H. Roper

The answer God may choose for me
Is sure to be the best,
So may I always thankful be,
And in His goodness rest. —D. De Haan

Remember, He loves you so much that He sent His Son to die for you (Jn. 3:16). While you are groping for Him in the darkness, a nail-pierced hand is being lovingly extended toward you. Grasp it in faith! You will discover that the quest for God is not a wild-goose chase, but the way to find forgiveness of sin and the fulfillment of your deepest desire: a personal relationship with the God of the universe. -- V C Grounds

Found by God! Found by God!
Lost in sin, but now I am set free;
It was not I who found, O Shepherd true
No, I was found by Thee. -- Anon.

God sometimes puts us in the dark so that we may see the light.

><><><>><>

Job 23:3
Where Is He?
READ: Job 23:1-12

Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come to His seat! --Job 23:3

When the regime of a repressive dictator was overthrown in 1979, most citizens of Uganda felt a great sense of relief. Even in the midst of disarray and destruction, the people celebrated when the government changed hands.

The comment of one happy citizen, though, expresses how many Christians respond to adversity. He said, "I stopped going to church because I thought God had forgotten us. Now I can go again."

An opinion like that isn't new. Through the years, many of God's children have made the mistake of thinking the Lord had abandoned them when times got bad. Job cried out, "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!" (Job 23:3). We too can so quickly fall into that pattern of thinking. Somehow we feel that God and good times always go hand in hand. And someday they will—in heaven. But now it's so different. Trouble periodically rolls in like a heavy fog, and we must take by faith the fact that God is very much with us, even though we may not sense His presence.

God always sees us. Nothing gets by Him or escapes His notice. He always knows and cares. The question is whether we will continue to be as trusting as He is faithful. Will we be good and godly even when times are bad? — Mart De Haan

Trust in Him, ye saints, forever—
He is faithful, changing never;
Neither force nor guile can sever
Those He loves from Him. —Kelly

The presence of trouble does not mean the absence of God.

><><><>><>

Job 23:8
God Was At Columbine
READ: Job 23:8-17

I go forward, but He is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive Him. --Job 23:8

This item appeared in a newspaper after the 1999 fatal shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado:

Dear God: Why didn't You save the children of the Littleton school? —Sincerely, a student

Dear Student: I am not allowed in schools. —Sincerely, God

The intended message seems clear: If we bring God back into the public schools by allowing prayer and Bible reading, then such tragedies would not occur. Whether you agree with that sentiment or not, one thing is sure—laws can't keep God out of school. They didn't that fateful day at Columbine High! God reached out to the gunmen through those who confessed their faith in Christ before being shot. He was there in the courage of a teacher who gave his life helping students escape.

God may be doing His greatest work when evil seems to triumph. When Job looked back, he saw that his suffering gave him a new understanding of God (Job 42:5-6). At Calvary, man crucified the only sinless One who ever lived, yet God turned history's darkest day into man's redemption.

Are you facing a great injustice? Keep trusting God. Those who go through the greatest darkness are those who most fully appreciate the glory of His light. — Dennis J. De Haan

When tragedy, heartache, and sorrow abound,
When evil appears to have conquered the right,
We center our heart on our Father's great love,
For He will bring hope in the darkest of night. —DJD

God may be doing His greatest work when evil seems to triumph.

><><><>><>

Job 23:8-17
Bring Out The Shine

Many years ago I bought a 1964 Volkswagen from my neighbor. The car was mechanically sound, but the outside looked pretty rough. Dents marred its surface, and dirt and grime had dulled its once deep blue color.

As time passed, I wondered if its original luster and beauty could be restored. I was sure its bumps could be eliminated, but what about the finish? So I began to experiment on some of the worst spots. Much to my delight, I discovered that with a lot of elbow grease and some rubbing compound my drab little Volkswagen could be brought to a beautiful shine.

We as Christians have the wonderful potential of reflecting the beauty of our Savior. But sin has left its mark on our personalities, and a lot of "road film" needs to be removed before the lovely character of Jesus can be seen in us.

God often brings about this change through the buffing of hardship and trials, for pressure has a way of loosening the dirt and grime of rebellion and selfishness. The Bible tells us that tribulation produces perseverance, character, hope, and confidence by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:3-5).

We might wish that a speedy "car wash" could do the job, but there's no substitute for the difficulties that can bring out the shine of Christlike character. — Dennis J. De Haan

What pains my dear Lord must be taking,
How true and how faithful His care;
I know if He gave me all sunshine
I could not His own image bear. —Beattie

A gem cannot be polished without friction,
nor a man perfected without adversity.

><><><>><>

Job 23:10
From Complaining To Trusting
READ: Job 23:1-117

When He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold. --Job 23:10

Job was a good man. He feared God, helped the needy, and opposed the wicked. Yet he made the mistake of placing too much emphasis on his own good character. We see this in his bitter complaint (Job 23:2). Job claimed that if God would only listen to him the way a judge and jury listen to a defense attorney, He would conclude that Job is pure gold (Job 23:2-10).

We usually take verse 10 to mean that God was testing Job to burn away the dross of sin. But Eliphaz had accused him of "iniquity without end" (Job 22:5), and the patriarch's reply was his defense against that charge. Job said that God's testing of him would eventually reveal that he was already pure gold. So he kept on affirming his uprightness. Finally, the Almighty confronted Job. "I will question you, and you shall answer Me," He said (Job 38:3). When God had finished, Job was silenced and humbled. Every trace of self-righteousness was gone. He admitted that he had spoken ignorantly (Job 42:1-5). Then he said, "Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (v.6).

Whenever we think we deserve better from God, we need to remember that His sinless Son gave His life for us. This will silence our complaint and renew our trust in God's love, wisdom, and goodness. — Herbert Vander Lugt

O Lord, what is the meaning of my loss?
My heart is right, and yet how great the pain!
Then graciously You draw me to Christ's cross
And show me that my faith is not in vain. --DJD

Strong trials build strong faith.

><><><>><>

Job 23:10
Tested By Fire
READ: 1 Peter 1:3-9

He knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold. --Job 23:10

In October 1991, a firestorm destroyed 2,500 homes in the vicinity of Oakland, California. When the devastated owners returned and sifted through the black debris, they found that all their possessions had been reduced to soot. But one man and his daughter discovered a tiny porcelain rabbit. They marveled that so fragile an object had survived intact. Other victims of that catastrophe also found pottery and porcelain items that had somehow defied the all-consuming firestorm.

The Sunday after the disaster, a local minister carried to his pulpit an unbroken vase, which was the only thing recovered from his home. He asked his congregation, "Do you know why this is still here and my house is gone?" He answered his own question by saying, "Because this had passed through the fire once before."

Can the fiery trials of life actually prove to be a blessing? The apostle Peter indicated to us that they can. He explained that various trials can result in "praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:6-7).

Fiery trials may be very painful, but if by God's grace we endure them, our faith can emerge from the blazing furnace purer and stronger than it was before. —Vernon Grounds — Vernon C. Grounds

Some through the water, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood,
Some through great trials, but God gives a song
In the night season and all the day long. —Young

Fire refines gold; adversity refines man.

><><><>><>

Job 23:10
Blue-ribbon Christians
READ: Hebrews 12:1-29

He knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold. --Job 23:10

While visiting New England, I was presented with a tin of pure Vermont maple syrup. It was given to me by a man who consistently had won blue ribbons for his product.

Producing syrup of that quality is no easy task. Its richness, flavor, and color depend on many factors: the tree from which the sap is drawn, the time it is collected, the existing weather conditions, and the skill of the one who controls the boiling and filtering process. A blue-ribbon award is the result of a carefully controlled procedure from start to finish.

This reminds me of the way the Lord refines the lives of His children. Even now, He is working on us. The fires of affliction and trial may be painful for a time, but afterward they will result in great blessing and reward (Hebrews 12:11).

I remember well when my brother and I collected some sap from our maple trees in the back yard. We put it in a big tub on a burner in the basement, and then promptly forgot all about it. Many hours later Mother almost fainted when she opened the basement door and was greeted by billowing clouds of smoke. How thankful we can be that God never forgets us in that way. He knows just the right amount of heat necessary to make us blue-ribbon Christians! — Richard De Haan

All God's testings have a purpose—
Someday you will see the light;
All He asks is that you trust Him,
Walk by faith and not by sight. —Zoller

God sends trials not to impair us but to improve us.

><><><>><>

Job 23:10
The Pain That Perfects
READ: Job 23:1-10

May the God of all grace . . . perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. --1 Peter 5:10

As children of the heavenly Father, we can be grateful that He loves us enough to discipline us. Whatever He sends our way or allows to come into our lives is "for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness" (Heb. 12:10).

In the book Flashes of Truth, James Duff writes, "The colors that are painted on china are burned into the clay. Otherwise they would easily rub off. It is said that what is to become a golden color on the finished article is a dark liquid before the fire is applied. And the first two or three applications of heat obliterate all trace of color, which has to be renewed again and again.

"So it is with God's dealings with us. No sooner has God finished a work with us than He plunges us into the fiery furnace of pain or sorrow . . . . What for? That through the fire, beauty of character--the heavenly Potter's work--might be rendered permanent in us."

Are you in the furnace of affliction? Remember, the heavenly Father loves you. If He didn't, He would be ignoring you. In His great wisdom He is working to "establish, strengthen, and settle you" (1 Pet. 5:10). So even though you don't understand His ways, you can trust Him and be grateful that He allows the pain that perfects! — Richard De Haan

All God's testings have a purpose--
Someday you will see the light;
All He asks is that you trust Him,
Walk by faith and not by sight. --Zoller

A Christian's character, like a beautiful gem,
is formed by pressure and polished by friction.

Job 23:12
Are You Starving?
READ: Psalm 119:33-40

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. --Matthew 4:4

Hold everything! Wait a minute! Have you read the Scripture for today? It's only eight short verses, and it will take you only 45 seconds.

No, don't lay this booklet down and mumble to me, "I'm in a hurry and you're delaying me." I see you're eating breakfast this morning even though you're late. You take time to feed your body, but you were going to starve your soul. Take 45 seconds and read Psalm 119:33-40. If you don't read the rest of this devotional, that's okay--as long as you read the Bible.

These articles in Our Daily Bread are not designed to be a substitute for the Bible; they are meant to stimulate your desire to read more of the Bible. If reading this booklet has caused you to neglect the Word of God, please throw this booklet in the wastebasket!

Job said, "I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food" (Job 23:12). Jesus taught, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Mt. 4:4).

Yes, you may have had a rough day yesterday and you're way behind. But why should you be surprised that it was such a bad day if you started it without God's Word? Don't make the same mistake today. Take time to read. --M. R. De Haan, M.D. (founder of RBC Ministries) — M. R. De Haan

Read Psalm 119:33-40 and make its words your prayer:
Teach me (v.33). Give me (v.34).
Make me (v.35). Incline me (v.36). Turn me (v.37).
Establish me (v.38). Spare me (v.39). Revive me (v.40).

If you're too busy to read the Bible, you're too busy.

><><><>><>

Job 23:12
The Book To Treasure
READ: Psalm 19:7-11

I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my necessary food. --Job 23:12

Joseph Brodsky won the Nobel Prize for Literature and was a US Poet Laureate. He proposed that books of American poetry be placed next to Gideon Bibles in motel rooms. "Poetry," he reasoned, "is perhaps the only insurance we've got against the vulgarity of the human heart." Before Brodsky's death in 1996, many books had already been distributed to hotels and hospitals.

Those of us who love poetry find in it pleasure, wisdom, and inspiration. But even the best literature cannot be compared to the value of the words of the Bible.

Imagine a despairing soul on the verge of suicide picking up a book of poetry and thumbing through its pages. It's highly unlikely that even the noble thoughts of Henry W. Longfellow or John Greenleaf Whittier, to say nothing of a modern poet like T. S. Eliot, would inspire him to fall on his knees and cry out to God for mercy and grace. Yet the Gideons' files are full of testimonies from individuals who, alone in their hotel rooms, have opened a Bible and through its message have been born again to newness of life.

Poetry has its honored place in our culture. But human words, however creatively woven together, can never take the place of God's Word. — Vernon C. Grounds

A well-turned phrase and words that rhyme
Can give us inspiration,
Yet nothing but the Word of God
Can bring us His salvation. --Sper

Many books can inform.
Only the Bible can transform.

><>><>><>

Job 28:12
Gold Rush
READ: Job 28:12-28
Where can wisdom be found? --Job 28:12

In the late 1970s, thousands of men and women rushed to the American West. In the tradition of the diehard prospectors of 1849, they dredged river bottoms and reopened gold fields long since abandoned. The activity, however, was not sparked by new finds. The same old metal had been there all the time. But because the value of gold had skyrocketed, the dust and flecks were now worth mining.

Suppose you knew that 100 pounds of pure gold could be found somewhere in the walls of your house? What you wouldn't do to find it!

Now let's change the stakes. What would we do if we knew that a large amount of wisdom was in our house? Well, it is! God tells us that nothing compares in value with the spiritual treasures contained in the Bible--not even gold at the highest prices (Job 28:12-17).

We would probably search everywhere in our house to find 100 pounds of gold. Yet, do we seek with as great a diligence the mind and will of God? As His followers, we should long to understand the fear of the Lord and to develop a hatred of evil--which the Bible says is true wisdom (v.28). And its value has never been higher. We need a new rush--not for gold, but for God! — Mart De Haan

More valuable than diamonds rare
Is priceless wisdom from above;
With purest gold it can't compare
Because it's filled with truth and love. --DJD

Wisdom is understanding what's really important.

Job 29:12-13
Bring Them Joy
READ: Job 29:1-16
Whoever receives this little child in My name receives Me. --Luke 9:48

Poet Shel Silverstein wrote a heart-touching verse titled, "The Little Boy and the Old Man." In it he portrays a young boy talking to an elderly gentleman.

The boy says, "Sometimes I drop my spoon." "I do that too," replies the old man.

"I often cry," continues the boy. The old man nods, "So do I."

"But worst of all," says the boy, "it seems grownups don't pay any attention to me." Just then the boy feels "the warmth of a wrinkled old hand." "I know what you mean," says the little old man.

But do we really know what those two meant? Are we like the righteous patriarch Job, who was a man of compassion, helping the helpless? (Job 29:12-13). We consider Job good and godly (Job 1:8) because he demonstrated love to others, not just because he believed in God and offered prayers for his own family. He had Christlike compassion long before Jesus walked this earth.

The concerns of the Lord's heart have not changed. He still is asking all who have accepted Him as Savior to be instruments of His love for those who need help (Mt. 22:39; Lk. 10:30-37; 1 Cor. 13; 1 Pet. 3:8). He longs to touch others' lives through you and me. — Mart De Haan

In her book Listening To Others, Joyce Huggett relates her experiences of listening to suffering people. She says they often raved about all she had done for them. "On many occasions," she writes, "I had not 'done' anything. I had 'just listened.' I quickly came to the conclusion that 'just listening' was indeed an effective way of helping others."

This was the help that Job's wordy, preachy friends failed to give him. He complained that they were "miserable comforters" (Job 16:2) and was so distraught that he even accused God of not listening. He cried out, "Oh, that I had one to hear me!" (31:35).

What does active listening accomplish? Listening is a way of loving others. It says, "I want to understand and know you." It comforts the brokenhearted, builds relationships, and encourages faith in God. Listening is also a means of learning the facts. Solomon, in Proverbs 18:13, warned that it is folly to answer a matter before hearing it.

Most of all, listening to others should reflect our attentiveness toward God and His Word. He has so much He wants to teach us and tell us. As you take a moment of stillness today and give Him a listening ear, you'll be better able to listen to the hurting people around you. — Joanie Yoder

A caring heart, a listening ear,
A thoughtful word, a loving tear
Will help to lift the heavy load
Of hurting people on life's road. --DJD

You can win more friends with your ears than with your mouth.

><>><>><>

Job 34:21
“That Ain’t It!”
READ: Isaiah 55:6-9

His eyes are on the ways of man, and He sees all his steps. —Job 34:21

Visiting Alaska for the first time, I was excited that we were staying at the Mt. McKinley Lodge. As we were checking in, I caught a glimpse of a mass of rock through a large picture window, and I hurried out to the deck facing the mountain.

“Wow,” I murmured softly as I took in the view.

A man standing a few feet away said, “Uh, . . . that ain’t it!”

As I discovered that day, visitors to Alaska often miss seeing all of “The Great One.” Standing at 20,320 feet, the mountain is so tall that most of it is hidden on cloudy days. I was seeing only a part of the whole.

Often we’re satisfied with our limited view of life. But Jeremiah 29:11 reminds us, “‘I know the thoughts that I think toward you,’ says the Lord, ‘thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.’” With God’s omniscient, panoramic view, He sees the people He wants us to help, the things He wants us to accomplish, the character traits He wants to develop in us.

Proverbs 16:9 says, “A man’s heart plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps.” Our view of life is restricted by our humanness, but we can trust ourselves to the One who has an unlimited view! — Cindy Hess Kasper

There’s so much now I cannot see,
My eyesight’s far too dim,
But come what may, I’ll simply trust
And leave it all to Him. —Overton

We see in part; God sees the whole.

><>><>><>

Job 35:10
Midnight Melodies
READ: Psalm 42:1-11

God my Maker . . . gives songs in the night. --Job 35:10

For most of his adult life, German composer Ludwig van Beethoven lived in fear of deafness. You can imagine how he felt when his fear became a reality. His hearing gradually faded to the point where he could communicate only by means of writing.

To everyone's amazement, it was after Beethoven lost his hearing that he wrote some of his greatest masterpieces. Shut out from the distractions of the world, new melodies and harmonies flooded in upon him as fast as his pen could write. His deafness had become a blessing.

So too, children of God often find new joy in their night of sorrow and unexpected grace in their time of need. When God shuts us away from the things of this world, we may expect to hear more perfectly the matchless harmonies of heaven.

Even if all were shrouded in darkness, by His grace we would find that we could still rejoice in the God of our salvation. We need not despair, for He is "a very present help in trouble" (Ps. 46:1). The psalmist also wrote, "In the night His song shall be with me" (Ps 42:8).

It is our Maker who "gives songs in the night" (Job 35:10). If we wait on Him for the music, we'll find there is never a song so sweet as His "midnight melodies." — Henry G. Bosch

When the clouds of affliction have gathered
And hidden each star from my sight,
I know if I turn to my Father,
Sweetest songs He will give in the night. --Montgomery

When you turn your care into prayer,
God turns midnight into music.

><>><>><>

Job 35:10
Singing At Night
READ: Psalm 20:1-9

God my Maker . . . gives songs in the night. --Job 35:10

There are two little birds that are beautiful pictures of the spirit of song. The one is the skylark. It awakens early in the morning and greets the rising monarch of the day with music. Its whole being seems to burst forth in song.

The other bird is the nightingale. This dark-colored little bird hides away in the bushes and doesn't sing much in the daytime. But when evening comes, it trills forth with its beautiful, tender, moving night song.

In the spiritual realm, as in the world of nature, the singers of the day are more numerous than the singers of the night. But surely we can glorify God the most by singing in spite of the dark.

It is not hard to praise the Lord when everything is going well, when we have our health, when the family is happy, and when we have a good job. But what happens when trials come? When our health is gone, our money is spent, relationships are broken, or tragedy strikes, the reality of our faith is tested. Only those who are wholeheartedly committed to Christ can have a song in the night.

Some of the sweetest Christians I have ever met were God's patient sufferers on their beds or in their wheelchairs who had learned to sing in the dark. — M.R. De Haan

When the shadows are long He will give me a song
As when skies are blue and bright;
For each step of the way, each hour of the day,
And songs in the deepest night. --Grimes

If you keep in tune with Christ,
you can sing even in the dark.

><>><>><>

Job 37:14-19
Earthworms And Fruit
READ: Job 37:14-19

Every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused. —1 Timothy 4:4

Have you ever wondered why God made a particular creature, like mosquitos or snakes? I’ve often wondered about earthworms. Why did God form such creepy crawlers?

Actually, worms have an indispensable function to fulfill. Amy Stuart, in her book The Earth Moved: On The Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms tells us that in an average acre of ground there are countless earthworms continually breaking up the soil. Their silent and invisible activity is absolutely essential—no worms, no vegetation.

What, then, can we learn from earthworms? Not only in nature but also in our lives there are invisible forces at work. There is the silent and unseen work of prayer by those who are concerned about our well-being. There is the work of our own spiritual discipline, as we pray and meditate on God’s Word. And there is the vital work of the Holy Spirit, breaking up the clogged soil of our souls and producing in us the Christlike fruit of “love, joy, peace, longsuffering . . .” (Galatians 5:22-23).

In our lives and in our world, God has ordained unseen influences that bear fruit. Whether it’s the lowly earthworm or the crown of God’s creation—the human race—there is so much more at work than meets the eye. — Vernon C. Grounds

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all. —Alexander

God’s unseen work in our hearts produces fruit in our lives.

><>><>><>

Job 38:1-7
Celebration Of Creation
READ: Job 38:1-7

By Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth. —Colossians 1:16

In The Magician’s Nephew, one of the books in C. S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles, Digory and Polly use special rings to go into other universes. In one instance, they are transported to a place where they witness the creation of a new world. In the darkness, a beautiful voice sings stars into existence, followed by a newly created sunrise. In the morning light, they see that a mysterious lion is the singer. In response to his voice, grass spreads out like carpet, and trees grow in moments. Then animals begin to form out of the ground. When Narnia’s creation is complete, Aslan, its creator, gives the gift of speech to animals and celebrates with his creatures.

Lewis’ skillful use of Christian symbolism provides a fresh perspective on the wonder of our own world’s beginning. There was a time when our universe did not exist. There was no matter, no energy, and no time. Then the Son of God spoke into being what we now see (John 1:1-3). In response, angelic worship resounded from the heavenly places. The book of Job tells us that at the foundations of the earth "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy" (Job 38:4,7).

On a starry night, worship that began with angels should resonate in our own hearts to God’s glory. — Dennis Fisher

The God who made the firmament,
Who made the deepest sea,
The God who put the stars in place
Is the God who cares for me. —Berg

God’s work of creating is done;
our work of praising has only begun.

><>><>><>

Job 38:4-13
'Were You There?'
READ: Job 38:4-13

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth. --Job 38:4

What you do with the Bible depends on what you do with the first sentence of Genesis. The Bible opens with a simple statement, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). If you believe that, you can believe everything else that follows. If you reject that statement, you will also deny every other cardinal truth in the Scriptures.

Joe and Charlie were arguing about Genesis 1:1. Joe said he believed the record of creation just as it was written. Charlie was an unbeliever, and went to great lengths in giving his own theory of how the world began and then how life developed from a primordial cell through reptiles, monkeys, and up to man. When he was all through, Joe looked at him and said, "Were you there, Charlie?" It was a good question. "Of course I wasn't there," he replied. Joe said, "Well, God was. He was the only one there and I'll take the word of the Eyewitness rather than the guesses of those who rely on their own imagination."

In a court of law, eyewitness testimony carries the most weight. Hearsay testimony is thrown out. The same is true of creation. God asked Job the question, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" (Job 38:4). God was there, and His Word can be trusted. — M. R. De Haan

I'll trust my all to God alone,
Whose Word is truth and light;
I'd rather walk by faith with Him
Than go alone by sight. —Anon.

You will be able to trust the Bible
when you have come to trust its Author.

><>><>><>

Job 38:1-15
Why Are We Here?
READ: Job 38:1-15

All things were created by Him and for Him. --Colossians 1:16

Why are we here? Listen to the opinion of Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard paleontologist who is regarded as an eminent authority on how life began.

Gould says, "We [exist] because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a 'higher' answer--but none exists."

Contrast that godless guesswork with the majestic affirmation of the opening verse of the Bible: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1).

Yes, that's the higher answer! We're here because the Lord Almighty has brought everything into existence by His will and power (Col. 1:16). We're here because a wise, loving Creator wanted us and fashioned us as beings who are able to obey Him, serve Him, trust Him, and love Him.

Which answer do you accept? The answer that we're here because of a series of mindless accidents--the answer that leads to despair? Or do you accept the biblical answer that brings the hope of everlasting love and life? — Vernon C. Grounds

I sing the mighty power of God
That made the mountains rise,
That spread the flowing seas abroad
And built the lofty skies. --Watts

The design of creation points to the Master Designer.

><>><>><>

Job 38:29
Dangerous Beauty

From whose womb comes the ice? And the frost of heaven, who gives it birth? —Job 38:29

Loud creaking and snapping broke the stillness of the icy morning. Freezing rain had silenced every man-made noisemaker. Power lines were down; homes and businesses had no electricity. Roads were impassable, keeping thousands from daily routines. Nature was calling attention to herself, and she got it. As the sun rose, her stunning beauty was indescribable, her destructive power undeniable.

Ice glistened like crystal against a brilliant blue sky. But the ice that made the branches sparkle in the sunlight also weighed them down, causing them to break under the burden.

The same can happen to those who have glittering lives. They call attention to themselves with stunning beauty, talent, or intelligence. People notice and admire them. But eventually the weight of pride causes people to crack and break. The reality is that God alone is worthy of all praise.

Job's friends called attention to themselves by speaking as if they were experts on suffering. When God had heard enough, He pointed out to Job that no one has knowledge, power, or importance apart from Him. Later, He sharply rebuked Job's friends, and said, "You have not spoken of Me what is right" (Job 42:8).

True worth is in exalting God, not ourselves.— Julie Ackerman Link

Lord, pride, that fearful enemy,
So quickly takes control;
I plead this day Your pardoning grace
Will cleanse my heart and soul. —D. De Haan

The fly that buzzes loudest usually gets swatted first.

><>><>><>

Job 40:2
Who Calls The Game?

Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? —Job 40:2

During an afternoon baseball game when American League umpire Bill Guthrie was working behind home plate, the catcher for the visiting team repeatedly protested his calls.

According to a story in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Guthrie endured this for three innings. But in the fourth inning, when the catcher started to complain again, Guthrie stopped him. "Son," he said gently, "you've been a big help to me calling balls and strikes, and I appreciate it. But I think I've got the hang of it now. So I'm going to ask you to go to the clubhouse and show them how to take a shower."

Job also had been complaining about calls he didn't think were fair. In his case, the umpire was God. After listening to Job's objections, the Lord finally spoke out of a violent storm. Suddenly things came into perspective for Job. God was gentle, but He was also firm and direct. The Lord asked him the kind of questions that bring finite man back down to size. Job listened, gave up his complaining, and found peace in surrendering to God.

Father, we don't make sense when we complain about Your fairness. Help us to be like Your Son Jesus, who trusted You without complaining, even to the point of dying on the cross.— Mart De Haan

When troubles come and we complain
Because we do not understand,
The problem is our narrow view
That fails to see God's loving hand. —K. De Haan

When you feel like complaining,
think of all that Jesus endured.

><>><>><>

Job 41:1-11
Giants Of The Deep
READ: Job 41:1-11

God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves. —Genesis 1:21

The blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived. Some are 100 feet long and can weigh over 175 tons. The biggest one ever measured had a heart the size of a Volkswagen!

In Genesis we are told, “God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind” (1:21).

When the Creator revealed Himself to Job in his time of suffering, He used the giants of the deep, including the mysterious Leviathan, to illustrate His divine power, His unsearchable nature and incomparable character.

“Shall one not be overwhelmed at the sight of [Leviathan]? No one is so fierce that he would dare stir him up. Who then is able to stand against Me? . . . Everything under heaven is Mine” (Job 41:9-11).

God uses the whale, the Leviathan, and all the giants of the deep to remind us of how awesome He is as Creator of the universe (Romans 1:20). The One who made creatures that cannot be controlled is Himself beyond our control and understanding.

Just as a frightening thunderstorm makes us stand in awe of the Creator, so should the blue whale. All of God’s creation points to His eternal power. — Dennis Fisher

Great is the Lord, He is holy and just;
By His power we trust in His love.
Great is the Lord, He is faithful and true;
By His mercy He proves He is love. —Smith
© 1982 by Meadowgreen Music Co.

Creation is filled with signs that point to the Creator.

><>><>><>

Job 41:1
3-D Under The Sea
READ: Job 41:1-11

God created . . . every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded. —Genesis 1:21

My wife and I went to see a large-screen 3-D documentary on life in the sea. We put on plastic eyeglasses that created a 3-dimensional effect and then marveled as one surprise after another jumped out at us from the screen.

Predatory sharks swam dangerously close to us. Giant turtles tumbled and swirled so close we felt we could reach out and touch them. One exotic sea creature dangled what looked like a lure in front of its mouth to attract smaller fish. The narrator marveled that the life-forms that produce coral reefs inexplicably spawn on only one night out of the whole year. Their offspring then catch currents that carry them to other parts of the ocean.

As I sat there, I thought, How can anyone think all of this happened by chance? The fingerprints of a Designer are on every sea creature we’ve seen! As Christians we know that time and random chance could never result in such perfectly designed sea creatures. Instead, we accept the witness of God’s Word that "God created . . . every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded" (Gen. 1:21).

The more we learn about life in our world, the more we recognize God’s eternal power and worship Him as Lord of creation (Rom. 1:20). — Dennis Fisher

The greatness of our God is seen
In sky and sea and forest green;
And living creatures great and small
Reveal the God who made them all. —D. De Haan

All creation sings God’s praise.

><>><>><>

Job 41:21 Leviathan

Job 42
Praying Like Christ

"I do not pray for these alone, but for those who will believe in Me through their word." -- John 17:20

With friends like his, Job didn't need enemies. His three would-be comforters failed miserably in their efforts to ease his pain. Instead of bringing sympathy, they recited a creed of iron and ice that only compounded his anguish.

Yet Job was able to emerge from his cave of pain and confusion in triumph. A significant step toward
that victory was his willingness to pray for the very friends who had criticized and accused him. God honored his prayers, and Job had the delight of witnessing his friends' forgiveness and restoration.

Jesus also prayed for His friends (Jn. 17:9-19), despite their constant failings. With the shadow of the cross falling darkly on Him, Jesus prayed for Peter even though He knew Peter would deny Him within hours (Lk. 22:32-34).

Jesus prayed for you and me also (Jn. 17:20-24). His work of prayer, which began before his death and resurrection, continues to this day. Although we sometimes act more like His enemies than His friends, Jesus died for us, reigns in power for us, and still prays for us (Ro 8:34).

Following Christ's example, we are to pray for our friends and acquaintances -- even when they hurt us. Is there someone you can pray for today? -- Haddon W Robinson

As we attempt to live like Christ
In actions, words, and deeds,
We'll follow His design for prayer,
And pray for others' needs. -- J. David Branon
Jesus' Blueprint For Prayer


Nothing makes us love a person so much as praying for him.

><>><>><>

Job 42:1-6
No Answers

Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? —Job 40:2

Just before Christmas 2003, Lydia came home from work to the sight of flames shooting out of her house. She was devastated by more than the loss of her home—seven of her family members died in the flames. When news about the tragedy spread that morning, a deacon from her church rushed to comfort her. She had some deep questions for him, but he had no answers.

Lydia could relate to Job's story. He lost all 10 of his children (Job 1:18-19), yet he continued to worship God (v.21). Then his health was affected, and his wife urged him to curse God and die (2:9). Job's friends thought they had the answer—he must have sinned and deserved his troubles.

Job complained bitterly to the Lord and pleaded for an explanation and relief, but God didn't give him any answers. He didn't even tell him about Satan's request to test him (1:6-12; 2:1-6). Instead, He reminded Job that He was the all-wise God and that Job was not. Job was humbled, and he repented for having questioned God's authority (42:1-6).

This side of heaven, we may not find answers for our desperate questions of "Why did this happen?" and "Why me?" But we can rest in the truth that God is in control and that He loves us.— Anne Cetas

Though darker, rougher, grows the way
And cares press harder day by day,
With patience in His love I'll rest,
And whisper that He knoweth best. —Pentecost

God does not have to answer our questions,
but He will always keep His promises.

><>><>><>

Job 42:7
Misquote
READ: Deuteronomy 4:1-14

Do not add to His words, lest He rebuke you, and you be found a liar. —Proverbs 30:6

Imagine the frustration of a mother as she tries to gather her family for supper. Her 8-year-old son comes through the door smuggling a dead bird behind his back. "Call Ann for dinner," says his mother. "Then wash your hands and come to the table."

A minute later the 4-year-old daughter comes running into the kitchen, sobbing uncontrollably. Her brother had just waved the stiff bird under her nose and told her that if she wasn't at the table in 17 seconds, Mom wouldn't let her go out and play for a whole week.

This story about a misquoted mother doesn't begin to capture the confusion that follows when we misquote the heavenly Father. Often we become preoccupied with our own ideas of how things should be, like Job's friends, who didn't speak rightly about the Lord (Job 42:7). The result is that we say more, or less, than God actually said in His Word (Deuteronomy 4:2). We need to make sure we know exactly where His words stop and our opinions begin. If we don't, we may misrepresent Him, and Proverbs 30:6 warns that we are then in danger of being found liars before God.

Let's take care that we don't express our opinions as if they were God's words. — Mart De Haan

Lord, grant us wisdom to discern
The truth that You've made known,
And may we never teach one word
Beyond what You have shown. —D. De Haan

We must adjust our lives to the Bible—
never the Bible to our lives.

><>><>><>

Job 42:1-17
No Explanation Required
READ: Job 42:1-17

I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. --Job 42:3

A Christian who believed God had led him to take a daring step of faith remarked, "If God doesn't give me success in this matter, He'll certainly have a lot of explaining to do!"

It's easy to judge this man's words, but have you ever said, "When I get to heaven, I certainly expect God to explain why some of my prayers were not answered and why tragedies were not always prevented!"

In Romans 8:28, Paul didn't promise that all circumstances and events would be explained—if, indeed, we could comprehend the explanation! Instead, he promised that "all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose."

The story of Job reassures us that questioning God is common to human experience. Yet, when Job demanded that God justify His lack of intervention in his trials, He didn't comply. Instead, He bombarded Job with His own searching questions (Job 38-41). The Almighty does not have to explain Himself, nor is He required to reveal His grand design. He reveals Himself and His plans, in His way and in His time.

Thoroughly humbled, Job admitted, "I have uttered what I did not understand, things... which I did not know." Like Job, will you now trust God—no explanation required? — Joanie Yoder

What God is doing you may not know now,
Hereafter He may tell you why;
Questions that taunt you and trouble your mind
Will someday have heaven's reply. —Hess

When we trust God's promises,
we won't demand explanations.

><>><>><>

Job 42:5-6
Goodness And Grace

I have heard of You . . . but now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. —Job 42:5-6

A teenager whose father is abusive said to me, "I want to be a good man like my Sunday school teacher and like you, not like my dad."

Knowing his Sunday school teacher, I could certainly agree that he was a "good man," and I was grateful that he also saw me as "good." I do want to be reverent, kind, forgiving, pure in my lifestyle, and obedient to God. But I also know the sinfulness of my own heart and how dependent I am on God's goodness and grace.

The Lord spoke of Job as "a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil" (Job 1:8). Yet after all his trials, Job said, "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6). Even after reflecting on his own goodness (Job 29:1-25), he knew the condition of his heart.

From a human perspective, many people may be described as "good." But God sees the disobedience, selfishness, and hate that lie deep within all of us. He also knows that we have spiritual blind spots. And when He opens our eyes to see ourselves as He does, we understand why a "good man" like Job said he abhorred himself.

Lord, help us to be good but never to lose sight of our sinfulness and unworthiness. Thank You for the forgiveness You offer us in Christ.— Herbert Vander Lugt

Teach me, Lord, my true condition,
Bring me, childlike, to Your side;
May I never trust my goodness—
Only in Your grace abide. —Anon.

Even the best people have nothing to boast about.

><>><>><>

Job 42:5
The Upside Of Sorrow

Sorrow can be good for the soul. It can uncover hidden depths in ourselves and in God.

Sorrow causes us to think earnestly about ourselves. It makes us ponder our motives, our intentions, our interests. We get to know ourselves as never before.

Sorrow also helps us to see God as we've never seen Him. Job said, out of his terrible grief, "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You" (Job 42:5).

Jesus, the perfect man, is described as "a man of sorrows," intimately acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). It is hard to fathom, but even the incarnate Son of God learned and grew through the heartaches He suffered (Hebrews 5:8). As we think about His sorrow and His concern for our sorrow, we gain a better appreciation for what God is trying to accomplish in us through the grief we bear.

The author of Ecclesiastes wrote, "Sorrow is better than laughter, for by a sad countenance the heart is made better" (7:3). Those who don't let sorrow do its work, who deny it, trivialize it, or try to explain it away, remain shallow and indifferent. They never understand themselves or others very well. In fact, I think that before God can use us very much, we must first learn to mourn. — David H. Roper (Our Daily Bread, Copyright RBC Ministries, Grand Rapids, MI. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved)