The Everyday Prayer

Re:Verse passage – Job 19:13-19 (day four)

Satan is very thorough in his quest to break the faithfulness of a child of God.  1 Corinthians 10:13 says God will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able.  This look at Job shows us what the red line looks like.  The deceiver had no limits, short of the life of Job.  God provided a way of escape for Job…He will do the same for us.

Since we have the Word of God, we can read Revelation, the last chapter.  Richard Wurmbrand was arrested.  A Romanian pastor, he began to lead the other prisoners to Christ.  The Communists planned to kill him.  Wurmbrand told his captors that if they killed him, his blood would become the blood of a martyr and more would be saved.  They released him out of fear of doing that.  They told Wurmbrand that they weren’t going to kill him, no matter what he did to try to make them.  He continued to bear fruitful witness in a communist land, without hindrance.  Have you read the last chapter?  (We win!)

Re:Verse passage – Job 19:13-19 (day three)

“My intimate friends have forgotten me.”

Bereft of his children, separated physically and emotionally from his wife, deserted by friends, no longer possessing social standing, and unable to find God, Job, from all he can see, has achieved non-person status. It’s worse than death because intimacy with others is out of reach. He can’t contact anyone and seemingly no one can contact him. He’s like the astronomers sending messages into the void of space not knowing whether any form of sentient life will ever receive – or answer – those messages. He is, in his experience, alone in the universe. Isolation is deadly to a human being. His cry to others and particularly to God – “Why have you forsaken me?” – is the very cry that will one day cross the lips of the Savior Job longs to find.

Re:Verse passage – Job 19:13-19 (day two) 

My relatives have failed,
And my intimate friends have forgotten me. vs. 14

The depths of grief that gripped Job’s heart was almost unendurable. This seeming pit is double-edged in that no one around you can walk your exact journey, and no one, then, is able to truly empathize. This is a hopeless place. If walking with Jesus on his journey to the cross last week has given us any insight into our savior, however, is that he understands the weight of sorry. Truly. It doesn’t help to simply say “Jesus understands”, but it may provide the beginning of a way out of the pit to run to the scriptures and observe the cosmic weight of Christ’s sorrow.

He was despised and forsaken of men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
And like one from whom men hide their face
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Isaiah 53:3

Re:Verse passage – Job 19:13-19 (day one)

Join us as Senior Pastor Chris Johnson, Associate Pastor Aaron Hufty, and Associate Pastor Bryan Richardson walk us through Job 19:13-19 in our Spring Re:Verse Series: “JOB – Through the Storm.”

Re:Verse passage – Job 13:15-16; 14:1-2, 14-17 (day seven)

This also will be my salvation,
For a godless person cannot come before His presence. Job 13:16

This is our salvation. Our Savior was “born of a woman.” He came to walk in our shoes. He came to feel our pain and agony. He came to live our life. Yet, He came to die our death. He came to us so that we could come to Him:

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things just as we are, yet without sin. Hebrews 4:15

This is our salvation. Our Savior “does not observe [our] sin” because He became it. He became our darkest secrets. He became deepest regrets. He became the very thing we hate. He became sin so we could become like Him:

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 2 Cor 5:21

This is our salvation. The stone is rolled away. He conquered sin and grave. He lives so that we can “live again.” This is our salvation.

Re:Verse passage – Job 13:15-16; 14:1-2, 14-17 (day six)

How frail is humanity! How short is life, how full of trouble! Job 14:1

Suffering, or any of the hard things in life, have a way of making us really think about meaning and purpose. We can’t help but ask, “What is the meaning of all this?”

So, while suffering is a result of the Fall, if we allow him, God will use it to shape our thinking and understanding of the world and the purpose of life itself. That’s what Job has been doing in his painful musings and complaints, particularly in chapter 14. His reason drives him to an extraordinary and hopeful conclusion…almost (he lands more or less with his hopefulness in tatters).

And we are there with him all along the way.

I think there are two main reasons Job is in the Bible, one it reassures us that it is okay to be driven by suffering to feel deeply about life and to ask wonderful and terrible questions about its meaning and purpose. A faith-filled life is not void of these kind of deep and resonant contemplations, but full of them as we live and breath in the world this side of eternity. Two, we have a guide in Job in reasoning through suffering, leading us down a needed path towards a divine and eternal end-in awe of God and fellowship with him.

Job doesn’t allow us to take life for granted. Ponder it. Rejoice in it. And long for God.

Re:Verse passage – Job 13:15-16; 14:1-2, 14-17 (day five) 

“Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him; I will surely defend my ways to his face.”  Do you sense and see Job’s faith growing and stretching- ever so slightly. There is lament. There is sorrow. There is immense suffering. Yet woven into his heart and thoughts are little kernels of hope and trust. Which is easier, to trust God with praise or pain?  Which demands more determination, to recognize His silence or to believe that within His silence, He will hear our cries and pleas.  Job’s faith is still there. It is bludgeoned and bruised, it is its most minuscule, but Job’s faith continues to give rise to hope.  All that is needed according to Jesus is a mustard seed.

A Good Friday thought about Jesus’ suffering from Tim Keller: “Jesus lost all his glory so that we could be clothed in it. He was shut out so we could get access. He was bound, nailed, so that we could be free. He was cast out so we could approach. And Jesus took away the only kind of suffering that can really destroy you: that is being cast away from God.”

Re:Verse passage – Job 13:15-16, 14:1-2, 14-17 (day four)

We have to stand in admiration of Job…facing all of the trials and suffering that he did, he continued to trust in God.  Job said even if God slays me, I will hope in Him.  What faith!  Job lived generations before Jesus came to walk among us.  He had a mature faith that trusted God, no matter what.  We have a very different perspective.  Living in AD instead of BC, we have the benefit of Scripture.  Scripture reveals to us God’s plan for the world.  We have seen how He has worked in history…we have learned from the prophets, from the apostles, from servants like Paul…we have the truth of Scripture.

We also have the gospel story of the work of Christ.  We can know the gift of forgiveness of sin, we can know the power of the Holy Spirit, and we can know the glory of the Father.  Job’s faith had none of these to build his foundation on, yet he remained faithful and obedient to the Lord.  How can we not believe?

Re:Verse passage – Job 13:15-16, 14:1-2, 14-17 (day three)

So far in this study, Job has taught us that God can handle every part of our human condition. He can handle our fear, anger, sadness, and confusion, – all with great unending patience. Job lets open the floodgates of his heart towards God, and God patiently hears every word.

Here, Job seems to turn a corner. He recognizes that while God has allowed this suffering in his life, God is also his only hope. The tone of his voice changes a bit – he adopts a tone of determination. “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him.” In the same breath, Job both laments and expresses his hope. His circumstances are bad, and he will cry out to God in his anguish, but he also knows that God is his hope, and he longs to see His goodness again.

In His grace, God allows us to do the same thing. We can come boldly to the throne of God in lament, expressing our fear, anger, sadness and confusion. Yet in the same breath, we can boldly state where our hope comes from. And how much more hope we have than Job! We know how the story ends. We know that our mediator came, died, and rose again! If you’re lamenting this week, remember that in the same breath, there is also hope.

Re:Verse passage – Job 13:15-16; 14:1-2, 14-17 (day two) 

If a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my struggle I will wait until my relief comes. 4:14

Job asks several rhetorical questions throughout his responses to his friends. In Job’s frame of reference the obvious answer to the question of will a man live again is no. This is the perfect week to study this portion of Job’s story as we also consider Jesus’ journey to the cross. We know that because of Jesus we can have new, abundant, and eternal life because of the sacrifice on our behalf. Take time this week to spend time in the Word focusing on how you can confidently answer Job’s question because of the resurrection. How can you share that truth with a friend or family member who has never trusted Jesus? We have new life because of Jesus.