Job 40:1-42:17, 2 Corinthians 5:11-21, Psalms 45:1-17, Proverbs 22:14
Today is the first 1st day of September. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian, and it is great to be here with you to greet the new week and walk into it together and it’s just waiting for us to tell the story of the adventure of life that we are on together with God. So, it’s great to be here at a brand-new week, but here we are in a brand-new month as well. Today is the beginning of the ninth month of the year and it is the 244th day of the year. So, we have been on quite a journey together and we have a little bit of ground to cover before we will call it a full revolution around the sun and a full adventure through the Bible, but obviously the next stretch of road together will be through the month of September. So, we will carry over the book of Job that we began last month into this month. We will actually conclude it today. And in yesterday’s reading Job got what he wanted. The whole time he was asking for an audience with God and his friends are basically telling him that he can’t have that and that he doesn’t deserve that and in all kinds of things, things that we would say. And they weren’t just mean to him. They were trying to encourage him, but it got very, very tense when Job essentially threw down the gauntlet and said I am righteous. I haven’t done anything wrong. I feel like God is judging me for no reason at all and I want God to explain it to me. That was a little bit beyond what his friends could handle. And, so, you know, comfort turns into debate, turns into argument. But what Job wanted the whole time was for God to show up, for God to come. He wanted to hear it straight from God, and God did show up and He started asking questions that nobody can answer, and He’s not done. So, we’ll conclude the book of Job today. Job 40 through 42. And this week we’ll read from the New Living Translation.
Commentary:
Okay. So, we concluded the book of Job, and it took a while. It was a long story and we heard Job tell all that he thought that he knew about God. Ans we also heard all that his friends thought that they knew about God and all that they thought that they knew about Job as well. And then God gave Job what we asked for, which was an audience. And every time we get to that part of the book of Job, at least for me, like when God starts to speak, it's…there’s just so much authority there. “Do you still want to argue with the Almighty”, right? “You are the critic of God, but do you have the answers?” Oh, my goodness. And that…that’s chapter 40 verse 2. We should remember that verse. “You are God’s critic, but do you have the answers”, right? Because that’s what we’re looking…like…we spend our lives trying to find the answers, right, the right way that things work. And Job had dedicated his life to this and been righteous and his friends were wise people and even though this is thousands of years ago what this this tells us is that people have been trying to figure this out for a very very long time and we still have not decrypted God because we can’t. He is beyond us. So, Job spoke a tong of words about God and his friends spoke a lot of words about God and Job defended himself to his friends like this is what he would say in his own defense before God if he could find God. And then God showed up and Job didn’t have anything to say, right? So, he was all full of bluster and pain and suffering and discomfort and his friends are all agitated and they’re all explaining how God works and then God does show up and nobody has anything to say. And in conclusion what Job said was, “I had only heard things about you.” Right? Like, “everything that I thought that I knew about you, I had only heard about these things and now here you are and I realize I’ve said too much, I realize I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m putting my hands over my mouth. I’m shutting up. There is nothing to say here.” And, I mean, man in our own times of difficulty we’re doing the same thing. We’re crying out to God and we have this expectation that He’s gonna make it all go away but what if it doesn’t all go away. Like, what if we need to learn like Job did, that there’s way more going on than we know about. Usually we’re like very, very impatient. If we don’t get a quick fix, if it’s not ironed out pretty quickly, then pretty quickly we start to judge God, right? And then…and then we have to go back to this verse from God’s mouth, that “you are God’s critic, but do you have the answers?” And, of course, like Job, we don’t. And, so, then we start trying to judge whether or not God is trustworthy, or we start trying to judge whether or not He’s even there, which doesn’t change anything. He is. I mean, we can believe whatever we want but we can't…like…He is who He is, which is how he describes himself to Moses, “I am who I am.” There’s nothing that’s going to change that. So, our judgments against God and our estrangement that we pull our stuff away from God or that we move back toward evil because we don’t want to suffer the affliction, right, because we want to be God’s critic, but we don’t have the answers. That doesn’t change anything about God. It just simply shows how impatient we are, how untrusting we are, how unfaithful we are, how much of the betrayer we can be. And think about, last time you had these kinds of feelings about God, like, “You will abandoned me, You’re not even really there so I’ll go do my thing”, usually what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna go do something that we’re turning to for comfort in life, something to kinda make it all disappear for a while, but it doesn’t work. Walking away from God doesn’t work. And the truth is, if you think about, like when you get those feelings of, “you’re not really there, you’re not really hearing me”, like all of these kinds of things that start to bubble up and then we get the anxiety and make those rash decisions, we don’t know what we’re talking about. Like, when we put ourselves in a position to make a judgment or even like an assumption about the Almighty God…the Almighty God…we do not know what we are talking about. We are completely ill informed, and the only way we’re ever gonna become informed is to be in God’s presence as a son or daughter, not as an accuser. Remember this story and how it began. Who is the accuser in the story, right? Satan. So, why would we want to do Satan’s work by becoming an accuser of God? So, we have to remember Job and we have to remember that when he got what he wanted, when he got face-to-face with God, he had nothing, he had nothing to say. In fact, what he did say is that he takes back everything he said, right? So, he took back everything he said and sat in the dust and ashes to show repentance. So, this book packs a punch, takes us into territory that we haven’t been in in the Bible so far. It touches some pretty deep things, you, know, the kind of things you really only access through suffering or when you’re suffering. Let’s remember, life has its share of suffering. Everybody has hardship. Everybody goes through things, everyone, like everyone. It just depends on what we’re going to do with it. Is it going to thrust us more desperately and hopefully toward our Father or are we gonna just make the rounds looking for any comforter we can find and walk further into the darkness?
Prayer:
Father, as we as we begin this brand-new month and this brand-new week, we invite Your Holy Spirit into this. This is where the road is led. We conclude the book of Job here and we begin this new month. So, it’s like we have gone through a bunch of emotions and a bunch of things to think about in terms of our own suffering and hardship in life and You’ve brought us fresh into this new month to contemplate this. So, come Holy Spirit. We acknowledge that the fact…the fact is, we know very little of You. We like to think that we’ve got it all figured out. We have book after book after book of theology to try to like, add it all up, but You are beyond anything we can comprehend, and we cannot figure You out and we will not figure You out. It’s a very arrogant thing to even consider. And yet You have condescended and diminished Yourself down to something we can understand that right here with us, that we are right here in Your presence and still we thrash about trying to do things in our own strength. Forgive us for that. And as we move through and into this new month, come, come may we be humbled before You, may we be in awe of Your glory, may we finally understand that we do not understand everything that we think we do. But we do know You are our Father. We do know that You love us. We do know that You have adopted us into Your family and that You love us. And, so, we rest in that. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
What’s up Daily Audio Bible. I haven’t called in in a while. This is Asia from Chicago. I just finished listening to August 27th and by the way, Brian, awesome job with this app update. The quality of audio is so much clearer after it being a part of the app. So, very exciting. I’m calling in for two individuals today. I’m calling in for Natalie who lives in Indiana. You talked about struggling with anorexia and are in a inpatient care facility and I just want to know I am praying for you sister and that it really is so hard battling. It’s not even just an eating disorder it’s a control disorder and I just am praying that you can feel the relief of Jesus in control of your situation and that you don’t have to control your life because God’s got it under control and He loves you so much, so, so, so much, loves us all so much. So, yeah, love you sister. I once struggled with anorexia as well. So, I understand where you’re at. I’m also calling in to pray for a woman that called today that did not state her name, but she’s a recovering meth addict. This is day nine. Probably by the time you hear this it will be day 12 or something, but I just wanted you to know I’m praying for you and I love you and it’s gotta be so difficult. So, I’m praying for you while you’re undergoing withdrawals. Stay strong sister. You are, you’re surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. Love you all. Bye.
Hi this is Polly in Anchorage Alaska and I just heard you sister, share that you had nine days clean from meth and I wanted to let you know that I’m praying for you, I want to encourage you. I have a daughter who nine years ago I thought that I would never see her again. She was so lost in drugs and she’s celebrating nine years clean and sober and I’m so grateful to God. She’s clean and she trusts the Lord Jesus and she used __, people in AA, and she has faith in the Lord and remarkable, remarkable changes in her life because of the Lord. So, it happens for people in many different ways, but I am praying for you and want to encourage you and I hope that we hear from you again and leave your name for us. God bless you. I love you Brian and Jill. Thank you for this wonderful program that you give us every day.
[singing] You alone are my heart’s desire and I long to worship you. As the deer panteth oer water so my soul longeth after thee. You alone are my heart’s desire and I long to worship thee. You alone are my strength my shield to you alone may my spirit yield. You alone are my heart’s desire and I long to worship thee [singing stops]. Gracious heavenly Father I come before You. I thank You Father God that I can go boldly before Your throne because of the love of Jesus Christ and His blood that covers me. He makes me righteous Father God and I am so grateful. I bring before You Father God my brother, Prodigal and I ask Father God that You would completely heal him from the top of his head to the soles of his feet to the tips of his fingers but more than that Lord I ask that You would come down and anoint him with a deeper anointing of Your Holy Spirit that he might have power, power and might to withstand anything that the enemy throws at him. Bless him Father God, comfort him, and show him the love of Christ. In Jesus name. Treasured Possession.
Good morning Daily Audio Bible, this is Diana from Virginia and I just wanted to call in and congratulate the Daily Audio Bible, Brian and the team for this amazing update that you just did with the Daily Audio Bible app. The ability to be able to record a message right from the app is so huge. I am so overwhelmed. When I just heard it, because that is the one thing that I’ve struggled with, is just being able to pick up the phone and call. And, you know, a lot of us kind of, you know, are juggling so many things, not that that is an excuse or a good excuse but just the convenience of having it there and being able to dial in right away is just like mind blowing. So, I just wanted to congratulate you and the team on this effort to continue, you know, enhancing how we stay interactive and how we stay as a community and continue praying for each other and all these wonderful things and just how this forum is being a home for me. Like, it’s the first thing I do when I wake up when I’m getting ready for work and now just being able to have that ability to do that, there is absolutely no excuse. And, so I just wanted to congratulate you and thank you so much for everything that you continue to do and hopefully I can call in a little more often. But, yeah, I just wanted to congratulate you because this is exciting, and I was just trying it out. Have a great day and thank you all for your all you do. Love you.
Hello, everyone this is Jay from Nashville. Just wanted to reach
out and just talk for a moment because sometimes when I feel sad, I have a list
of people that I call and this time I went down my list and there was no one
available. And then I went to my favorites and realize that I’ve got friends
and family all over the world in the DAB. So, I want to thank God for the DAB,
I can just call in and get everything off my chest you know. So, I’m just
feeling a little lonely. So, pray for me guys and I’ll pray for you. All right.
Love you. Bye.