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May 22 + Daily notes & readings

DAY 142

DAILY READINGS

Job 8-11 & Psalm 137

DAILY NOTES

Job 8
  • "God will not reject a blameless person."  So, what does that imply about Job?
Job 9
  • Job feels as though God passes him by.  God does not give attention to what Job is enduring.
  • There is no way for Job to confront God.  Job reasserts his innocence, but also recognizes his humanity before God.  
Job 10
  • Job questions why he was even born.  
  • And it's not just that God did one thing to him.  Job feels as though God is continually after (see vss. 16-17).
Job 11
  • Of course, Zophar isn't wrong.  Can any of us "find out the deep things of God?"  or the "limit of the Almighty?"  We can't.  
Psalm 137
  • Jerusalem had been overtaken and the people of God taken captive.  
  • The psalmist grieves these events, and prays for Israel's enemies to be overrun.  Think of how Verse 9 reads in such a context.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS

Job desperately wants someone to be a judge between him and God--a mediator.  An umpire (Job 9:33).

We're told in 1 Timothy 2 that Jesus is the mediator between God and man.  God has a problem with our sin and Christ intercedes, mediates on our behalf.  What makes the book of Job so important is that it gives a voice to people who have a problem with God.

Have you ever questioned why young children die?  Why diseases take innocent life?  Why bad things happen?  Those are the kinds of questions Job is trying to address, at least in part.

Of course, Job, and whoever wrote Job, had no inclination of Jesus.  So, we have the benefit of reading Job and asking questions through the lens of a Crucified Savior.  Is that helpful?  I think so.  Bad things happened to Jesus.  Those things could be explained, but Jesus also reminded us there were things that we could not explain (think about the "end time").   And there were things we have tried to explain that we didn't do a good enough job with (think of those who died when a tower fell on them)--maybe we shouldn't try to explain them.

I wonder if that's part of what Job wants us to realize.  That we cannot understand God fully.  But we can trust God fully.

Do you have a hard time with that?

Stay blessed...john

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