Day 153: Job 37, 38 and 39

Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? (Job 38:2)

How often do we... let me start over. How often do I presume to speak for God? This is a danger to which pastors are especially prone. In today's world, the closest thing to the Thus saith the Lord of the Old Testament prophets is the Sunday morning message preached from pulpits all over the world.

We go to school to ensure we are interpreting the Scriptures correctly, and speak with confidence that we are representing God accurately. Yet at the same time, we must be careful to leave our dogmatism at home, for we are human and our understanding of God's word and God's ways are dynamic (at least it should be), shifting over time as we grow deeper in knowledge and in relationship with our Creator.

When Jesus said, It is written... (Matthew 4:4), he left it at that, but on other occasions he said, You have heard that it was said . . . , but I tell you... (5:21,22). He spoke with an innate authority (which we will never have), refuting the law's popular interpretation, yet never refuting Scripture itself.

Rather than darkening God's counsel by presuming to speak for him with words without knowledge, we must be careful rather to let the voice of God speak through a correct and responsible interpretation of the scriptural text.

Do you speak for God, or do you allow God to speak for himself?

Day 152: Job 34, 35 and 36

His thunder announces the coming storm. (Job 36:33)

Three friends sat silently while Job grieved, and then opened their mouths causing him to suffer even more. Elihu, a younger man, accompanies them sitting quietly out of respect for their age and standing in the community, but he has reached his limit; he can hold his tongue no more. Chapter 32 tells us he was angry with Job for not admitting his guilt, and angry with his three elders for their inability to convince Job of his need for confession.

Elihu expresses his conviction that God cannot possibly do wrong (34:10), and asserts that a man's suffering must be interpreted as punishment for wrongdoing. Since God rewards the upright and punishes the sinful, suggesting a just man might also suffer is the same as accusing God of evil.

As far as Elihu is concerned, God is not hard to figure out. Do right and prosper, do wrong and suffer. There is just no other explanation for suffering than punishment for wrongdoing. God is easy to read. Just as thunder is a sure sign of an approaching storm, suffering is a sure sign of God's displeasure.

As we get older, we find out things aren't always so black and white.

Are there opinions you held strongly in youth about which you've learned to be more flexible with a few years under your belt?

Day 151: Job 31, 32 and 33

I have made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl. (Job 31:1)

In the 1983 film WarGames, Matthew Broderick plays a teenage computer whiz kid who accidentally hacks into the missile defense of the United States. Thinking he's found his way into a computer game company, he's eager to sample their newest product. He comes across such files as Tic-Tac-Toe, Chess,... and a very intriguing Global Thermonuclear War.

The computer asks: Do you want to play a game? And before he knows what's happening, the computer locks him out and initiates a countdown to a preemptive nuclear strike.

While the countdown progresses, the kid challenges the computer to a game of Tic-Tac-Toe. Because two evenly matched players can play Tic-Tac-Toe all day and neither of them ever win a game, the computer soon learns the concept of stalemate. It starts looking ahead through all the possible outcomes of nuclear war and comes to a conclusion:

The only winning move is not to play.

The control room at NORAD breathes a collective sigh of relief, the world is saved, and the delinquent computer genius becomes the hero.

We may think we can play the game of lust and come out a winner but we cannot. There are always consequences for playing this game. Job had taken precautions to protect himself. When it comes to sexual fantasy and lust, the only winning move is not to play.

How are you protecting yourself? ...your marriage?

Day 150: Job 28, 29 and 30

Man puts an end to the darkness; he searches the farthest recesses for ore in the blackest darkness. (Job 28:3)

Job describes an awesome, scary picture of ancient mining operations. He writes about cutting a shaft through the rock, dangling from ropes, and working in pitch blackness, illuminated only by the miners' lamps. No bird or animal has ever seen what man discovers there in the cave's loneliness.

But where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell (v. 12)?

Job is telling us that wisdom is more valuable than even silver or rubies, and that we should be willing to go to greater lengths to find wisdom than we do to dig up sapphires and gold.

Our hero is also comparing the toils of his life to the search for riches. He has worked harder and sacrificed more than any treasure hunter. And he has discovered the hard truth that wisdom is more difficult to find than a vein of gold.

Do you treasure wisdom enough to keep going until you find it?

Day 149: Job 25, 26 and 27

I will never admit you are in the right; till I die, I will not deny my integrity. (Job 27:5)

One after another, first Eliphaz, then Bildad, and finally Zophar, Job's three friends spout off the same age-old retribution wisdom. If you're suffering, it must be because you sinned. Humble yourself and be restored.

But Job couldn't humble himself. He had nothing to confess. To feign guilt just to gain relief wouldn't have been right. Job was not about to allow God off the hook just to ease his own discomfort.

Is there a lesson here for us? How often do we fall on our own sword, when we know we're not in the wrong, just to make peace? If Job is a theodicy, a defense of God's justice in the face of seemingly contradictory evidence, then it is also a study in the ethics of conflict.

How many times have I taken one for the team? While it sounds noble, it may be no better than a prizefighter taking a dive. Romans 12:18 reads: If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone, but avoiding conflict isn't always the ethical thing to do. Standing our ground may be more Christian than retreat. Winning a battle for my own glory certainly does not display a proper Christian attitude, but falling to the mat just to avoid the unpleasantness of conflict doesn't either.

Have you ever kept the peace and lived to regret it?

Day 148: Job 22, 23 and 24

If only I knew where to find him. (Job 23:3)

St. John of the Cross, the 16th century Spanish mystic, wrote The Dark Night of the Soul to describe the painful and lonely journey of an individual seeking spiritual maturity. John wrote his treatise while imprisoned by his own monastic brothers for his attempts to reform the order. It symbolizes a spiritual crisis in which God seems far off and unapproachable.

Watchman Nee, the Chinese church planter who died in 1972 after twenty years in prison, wrote about the brokenness of the outer man in The Release of the Spirit. He talked about how God uses struggles and hardships in our lives to break the shell (the personality or the soul) that binds the inner man (the spirit). Nee and St. John could have been reading each other's emails.

We talk about times when God seems to be hiding and our prayers bounce off the ceiling, times we cry out to God but get no answer. That's what Job was experiencing. He was seeking, but God was nowhere to be found.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent (Psalm 22:1,2).

It seems that Christ also experienced the dark night of the soul.

Have your cries for God ever been answered only with silence?

Day 147: Job 19, 20 and 21

Why do the wicked live on? (Job 21:7)

There's the crux of the matter. I know bad things happen to good people, but if it at least seemed like the scales were balanced and that the wicked suffered as much as the righteous, then I could say, Well, trouble comes to us all in equal measure.

But that's not how it seems. While I'm struggling to pay my bills; while I'm suffering through illness and injury; while my kids are making bad choices causing me to lose sleep; my neighbor just bought another boat. Why does he need two boats? How is that fair, God?

It's not so much that good people suffer, but that bad people so often seem to get a pass. Why do they have the advantage?

Near the end of the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner's character Roy Kinsella confronts baseball right fielder Shoeless Joe Jackson. Kinsella complains how he did all the work and went to all the expense to build a baseball field in the middle of his struggling farm, and he's about to go under.

Kinsella: I never once asked "What's in it for me?"

Jackson: What are you saying, Roy?

Kinsella: I'm saying... What's in it for me?

Looking at the seeming disparity between the lifestyles of the rich and famous and the lifestyle of the average believer, can you understand why Job thought life seemed unfair?

Have you ever asked, "What's in it for me?"