Job 38:1-40:5 After thirty-seven chapters of people speaking in Job, God finally intervenes. God begins by declaring his superiority over everything. He wants Job to understand that he is God, and Job is not. As God, he created the world and sustains everything. As God, he knows all things and humans do not. Job is forced to acknowledge he was wrong in claiming God was unjust. He thought God was b...  Read More

Job 35:1-37:24 Ends do not justify the means. The philosophy which embodies this mindset is consequentalism. It is the idea that anything can be rationalized if it leads to a positive outcome. Elihu interprets Job as a proponent of this mindset by saying that he pursued holiness and yet reaped suffering on earth, so there was no reason or purpose for obeying God. Think about how narrow that perspe...  Read More

Job 32:1-34:37 After Job has been hounded by three friends for an unknown amount of time, a fourth individual steps up to the plate to confront him. Elihu says he waited to speak because he was younger than the other men but once he begins to speak, he comes to a similar conclusion as the other friends. He believes he knows exactly what is happening behind the scenes of Job's life and what God is ...  Read More

Job 30:1-31:40 Job feels like everything and everyone is against him. He feels like he is being mocked and opposed by his peers and society. Even more significantly, he feels like God is against him. He says that God does not answer him (Job 30:20) and has turned on him ruthlessly (Job 30:21). What a terrifying plight: to think that you are all alone and have been abandoned by everyone. Though Job...  Read More

Job 26:1-29:25 One of the most common themes in the Bible is idolatry. This is the temptation to trust in anything other than God as the ultimate source of our security. In the Bible it is usually self-made deities, while today, it is often looking to money, power, or pleasure for ultimate satisfaction. Regardless of the externals of idolatry, the heart condition is the same and results in opposit...  Read More

Job 22:1-25:6 Doris had seen much difficulty and heartache in her long life. She and her farmer husband raised eight children on a small fruit farm in the Midwest. Their fifth child was tragically killed at age four when he fell beneath the wheel of a small tractor. Their oldest daughter was stricken with bulbar polio on the eve of her departure to college and spent a year in an iron lung. In the ...  Read More

Job 19:1-21:34 In suffering there is always an opportunity to find hope. Yesterday we saw what God was actively doing in heaven brought hope to Job (Jesus' current intercession). Today we see what God will do in the future brings hope. We can look beyond our present circumstances to the reality of eternity to find hope. Embracing this mindset is to choose the hope of eternity over the grumbling an...  Read More

Job 15:1-18:21 Where do you find hope in the midst of pain and suffering? During Job's whining, complaining, and anguish we see a few breakthrough moments of hope. One of those is found in Job 16:19-21: "Even now my witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high. My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God..." Job finds hope amid his suffering knowing he has a witness, advocate, and...  Read More

Job 12:1-14:22 We can probably all remember times when people told us completely unhelpful things. I can remember going into my son’s first MRI, before we knew he had a brain tumor, and someone telling me they were sure that nothing was wrong. Nope! We constantly have people, who maybe with the best of intentions, tell us things that are either wrong, insensitive, or unhelpful. This is where Job f...  Read More

Job 8:1-11:20 One of the major issues we see in the conversation between Job and his friends is the distinction between knowing the truth and applying it. As we look at Bildad’s and Zophar's statements we see they clearly understand God's justice and humanity's sinfulness. They comprehend these truths but misapply them to Job's situation. They believe that since God is just and we are sinful, Job ...  Read More

Job 5:1-7:21 As we sat for our Thanksgiving meal in 2007, my mother, wracked with pain, wanted us to read The Message Bible’s introduction to the book of Job. “When these people go through suffering, their lives are often transformed, deepened, marked with beauty and holiness, in remarkable ways that could never have been anticipated before the suffering.” This was true in her life. She saw her ma...  Read More

Job 1:1-4:21 One of the clearest opportunities to find what we believe is to suffer. When we find ourselves in a hard place like Job, it quickly reveals our true beliefs about God. Job loses his wealth, family (except his wife), and physical comfort, and after this spends nearly forty chapters wrestling with the why of his suffering. Job cannot understand why he would be made to suffer and determi...  Read More