October 19, 2023
Please use the comment section on this page to share insights from today’s reading OR your own personal Bible reading.
Reading along with us in Job? Here’s today’s reading:
Job 31 (NIV)
1“I made a covenant with my eyes
not to look lustfully at a young woman.
2 For what is our lot from God above,
our heritage from the Almighty on high?
3 Is it not ruin for the wicked,
disaster for those who do wrong?…..Continue Reading
Job still struggles to find sense in what is happening. Accounting for the actions in his life trying to find or help his friends find a place where there was sin or disobedience toward God. He is so spiritually confused about what is happening because his thoughts prior to these circumstances were probably similar to that of his friends; you sin and punishment follows. He abruptly closes his arguments and defense with a plea for God to just tell him what he did. You can feel the desperation to be reconciled with God; not to be reunited with his “stuff” or back in good social status but rather he just wants to hear God’s voice again in his life and to feel close to Him again.
Job makes his final defense in this chapter…and in doing so, begins to sound like a very religious person.
I feel badly even taking that perspective, because of all that Job has gone through…all that he has lost. But…
When Job asks for “God to weigh him in honest scales and he will know that I am blameless” (verse 6) I shudder a bit. Because we know that “none is righteous, no not one.” (Romans 3:10, Psalms 14 and 53)
But so often that is the cry of the fallen man, and can even become the cry of the man who believes he is striving after God. “Look at all the good things I have done for you, God! Look at how righteous I am, compared to all these other people! How can you not bless me? How can you turn against me? I am so good for you!!”
Oh man…the heart of man is a broken sinful thing, until God has replaced our heart of stone with a heart of flesh, and His Spirit has breathed new life into us. Only then, in God’s mercy and grace, can we come to a place that acknowledges that any good we may do, is through the abiding presence of God in us. That any righteousness we credit to our own account, well, that righteousness is as filthy rags before the Lord.
Is this heart of Job that makes his defense based on his own supposed blamelessness….it is possible that THIS is the reason that God allowed Satan to sift Job? God knows all things, and if Job were in fact blameless before God, then surely God would not have allowed Satan to go after him…but perhaps God knew that Job still needed refining…just like all of us.
Young Elihu is about to enter the fray and help Job see that perhaps he is seeing himself and seeing God wrongly. But we have the benefit of God’s revelation of Scripture, and the indwelling Spirit of God Himself to help us understand. That ultimately, as Pastor Peter so eloquently preached this past Sunday…we are not our own…we were bought with a price. We have been delivered from bondage to sin, and placed into bondage to Christ and His Righteousness….ultimately, as Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 2:10, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Job is about to get a lesson…and it is a lesson that I need to learn and relearn, by God’s grace, every day as I die to myself and live to Christ.
Job 31: It is as though Job expends his last defense, his final profession of his stand before God and man. He presents a series of hypothetical situations, that if true, would warrant righteous judgment from God. None of the “if” conditions exist in his spiritual walk, wish I could say the same of myself. Job’s deliberations are quite high-minded, lofty, elaborate, but I feel he is being honest.
31:1 an old memory verse, worth capturing again! Peace, Gordy
Job is still puzzled why God is allowing this suffering for he believes he is walking rightly. He mentions some things of how he is walking and wishes that God would answer him and show him where his sin is. But he is fearful that destruction would come from God if he sinned. He is walking in the fear of God and wouldn`t cross that line of going against what God wanted. He however isn`t walking in his own self righteousness for that would be sin. God does answer him in the latter chapters starting in chapter 38. But for now he has to listen someone else that also believes that Job has sinned. From chapter 32-37. And they accuse Job of using so many words yet this person is doing just that. May God bless our own conversations that we would speak with the wisdom from above.
There is a side note here. Job again like earlier mentions that he is made in his mother`s womb just as other`s are made by God in their mother`s womb. Verse 15 Also in verse 33 he refers to Adam`s sin. Just a note here if you missed it. I have read Job many times over the years but I don`t remember seeing Adam mentioned. God bless all.
Job is a hard read because it confronts the realness of our faith. Are we still going to worship God even if like Job, there will be times when we experience hardships like this..
“If I have walked with falsehood,
Or if my foot has hastened to deceit,
6 Let me be weighed on honest scales,
That God may know my integrity.”
I think we have to be careful not to judge Job according to New Testament standards. We are in the age of grace and have the benefit of looking back and knowing that God will come as a perfect man, die and rise, in order to establish righteousness according to the law, for all mankind….because man cannot perfectly obey the law. BUT Job was judged according to the law, so he was living, according to the law and weighing his behavior and obedience according to the law. We know that God approved because He points out Job to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?”
Once God speaks we will see how Job stands before Him….I believe his sin is thinking that he understands God and His purposes.
This too is a very powerful chapter with Job laying out in stark terms the kinds of things that might lead to judgement and how he believes he has not done any of them. He has been kind and generous to those around him and has been pure and honest in his dealings. He has not taken advantage of others or sought to promote himself because of his success. He has done well and in a last statement of desperation laid his case before God and now asks God to answer.
It is very common for us to wonder why things happen and we always look for things to be fair and always look for someone to blame. It is actually the mistake that Job and his friends make. They falsely accuse him and he defends himself against them, but they effectively are doing the same thing, trying to make sense of something in terms of cause and effect. And the account of Job let’s us know that sometimes that is not warranted and we have to look to God for His answers and purposes and what He is accomplishing independent of what we may or may not deserve. The just live by faith trusting God to know what He is doing as He unfolds His plan in our lives….
Job as in a court room setting stands up and defends himself. Reading job. I continue to be reminded. My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts. As in our small finite minds we weigh our lives before God and say. I don’t deserve this. I am a righteous man Is His Grace sufficient. ? How many thousands of people have been able to push through another day because of the book of Job.
Job 31