Day 15: Job 40-42

Welcome to 5 -Minute Bible, your daily guide for your daily reading. Today is

January the 15th and we'll be closing out the book of Job reading chapters 40 -42. Today's reading brings us to the conclusion of the book of Job and Job 40 -42 records

Job's response to God, God's final word and the restoration that follows. Now we're still in the patriarchal world without law, priests, sacrifice or temple but something decisive has happened.

God has spoken and now the question is no longer why Job suffered but what happens to a human being after standing face to face with the living

God. In Job 38 -39 you'll remember that God took Job on a tour of creation to show him how vast and complex and governed that the world truly is.

Well now in Job 40 -42 God is going to press the implications home.

He asks Job whether he is truly capable of ruling the cosmos or correcting injustices or even mastering a fraction of the creation.

He takes Job on a tour of the behemoth and the Leviathan and he shows him how they stand as living reminders that the world contains forces that no human being can control, tame or even fully understand.

Now Job finally responds not with explanations or defenses or demands but with repentance.

He confesses that he spoke far beyond his ability or understanding closing out chapter 41 pointing to how we should respond to God as well and in chapter 42

God rebukes Job's friends for misrepresenting him, for lying about him and saying that he was wicked when

God clearly says that he's a righteous man. And then to conclude the book God restores

Job's fortunes and brings the story to a dramatic crescendo not because Job solved the mystery but because Job learned to trust the

God who governs everything. As you read today I want you to ask this question, what changes in my life when

I stop demanding answers and finally begin trusting God? Job never learns about the heavenly courtroom.

He never hears why Satan was allowed to test him. He never receives the explanation that you and I might expect that he would receive and yet everything changes when the relationship becomes more important than the explanation.

The central pattern in Job 40 -42 is humility born out of perspective and not information, posture and not data.

In chapters 38 -39 God overwhelms Job with the scale of the cosmos.

In 40 -41 God presses the lesson even further, if Job can't even govern the animals or command the chaos or restrain the evil then he's just not qualified to judge

God's rule of the world. Job's repentance therefore is not about secret sin, it's about overconfidence in his own ability.

He realizes that the world is far too masterful and beautiful and layered and too full of hidden realities for any human being to interpret it even in the smallest way, much less in the way that he thought he could before.

This is where the book lands the plane. Suffering did not mean that God was absent, it meant

Job was trying to interpret an infinite world with finite vision and when that illusion collapses, peace finally enters the heart of Job.

Now, the conclusion of this book points unmistakably to Jesus Christ just like all of the rest of the book has.

Job is a righteous sufferer who learns that righteousness alone cannot explain his suffering or control his outcome or even secure his restoration and in the same way

Christ is the righteous sufferer who willingly enters suffering to redeem his people.

Job repents of speaking beyond his knowledge but Christ speaks only what he hears from the Father. Job intercedes for his friends at the ends of the book and offers a sacrifice for them in the same way that Christ permanently intercedes for his people offering the once and for all sacrifice that cleanses them of their sin so that as he sits at the right hand of God he could lead his people home.

And most importantly, Job learns to trust God without answers just like Jesus learns to trust the

Father by walking up Mount Calvary and enduring the suffering on the cross.

And because Christ rose from the dead, believers now know something that Job could have never known that God brings the greatest good out of the darkest evils.

If the resurrection came out of Calvary then darkness and suffering and pain are never proofs of God's absence but often the place where new life is silently and quietly being prepared.

The book of Job teaches us that human wisdom will run out, moral systems will break down, fairness will often fail, explanations will collapse, but God remains faithful all the time.

Job began by asking why, he ends his book by knowing who, and that is enough.

The goal of suffering is not always answers, it's communion. The purpose of faith is not control, it's trust.

And the hope of God's people is not in understanding everything but knowing the one who does.

And with that, I want you to read your Bible carefully, devotionally, and joyfully. And may the

Lord use his word to sanctify you completely and we will continue our journey tomorrow.