Scripture Focus: Job 10.12-14
      You gave me life and showed me kindness, 
         and in your providence watched over my spirit. 
      “But this is what you concealed in your heart, 
         and I know that this was in your mind: 
      If I sinned, you would be watching me 
         and would not let my offense go unpunished. 

Reflection: How Not to Read Scripture
By John Tillman

In part of today’s passage, Job describes a God who seems deceptive. Job accuses God of using kindness to mask a secret desire to harm Job when he inevitably sins. Is this God real? Should we be ducking for cover from a God who is out to get us?

Sometimes when we read the Bible we forget who is talking and why. It is not always God talking and every phrase or group of words is not always an actionable directive or nugget of “truth” we can apply. We need to see the bigger picture.

In this passage, God is not telling us that he is out to get us. Job is sharing his emotionally charged opinion with his friends. Job is conjecturing, not speaking for God. Later, God will condemn Job’s words as “darkening his counsels” and being “words without knowledge.” (Job 38.1-3)

We also can “darken God’s counsels” (or obscure his plans, as the NIV puts it) when we speak words from the Bible without knowledge. It is an error to think of the scripture as the “words of God” instead of the “Word of God.” The Bible is God’s Word—his perfect revelation, but it is not a transcript of God’s unambiguous commands. The Bible is a work of art, not a manual.

Some may fear this lowers the Bible’s authority or lessens the miraculous spiritual nature of the Bible. The opposite is true. We rob the Word of God of its power when we think of it as merely an owner’s manual of unimaginative, dictated instructions. No analogy is perfect but the instruction manual analogy for the Bible is particularly flawed. If it were true, we should skim the Bible and toss it in the closet with the rest of the instruction manuals. This is how not to read scripture. No one ever found joy and companionship from re-reading an instruction manual. 

The Bible is more akin to a pointillistic painting. When you zoom in far enough, all you might see is a few dots of red, blue, or yellow. You have to step back to see the likeness the artist has created.

This is why is it so vital that Christians read the whole Bible and read it regularly. (This is why we follow a whole-Bible reading plan.) In this way, we are equipped to view the Word of God as a work of art that reveals who God is, what God is doing, and what God expects us to do. 

*View the world’s most famous pointillistic painting, “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte”, by Georges Seurat at this link.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence
Early in the morning I cry out to you, for in your word is my trust. — Psalm 119.147

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Job 10 (Listen -2:12)
Romans 14 (Listen -3:28)

Read more about How to Read Prophetic Judgment
There are many prophecies that are meant to comfort us. But the more typical function of prophecy is to cause us discomfort.

Read more about A Berean Palate
The Thessalonians were prone to being riled up by exaggeration and falsifications. Just like we are. 

Scripture Focus: Job 9.33-35
      If only there were someone to mediate between us, 
         someone to bring us together, 
      someone to remove God’s rod from me, 
         so that his terror would frighten me no more. 
      Then I would speak up without fear of him, 
         but as it now stands with me, I cannot.

Reflection: Christ, Our “If Only…”
By John Tillman

Job cries out over the course of his many speeches for mediation.

Job’s speeches flow with expansive, idiomatic imagery that recognizes an uncrossable gap between Job and his creator. God could no more come down than we could go up, and if God did step down…mountains would melt seas would flee…making Job’s problems inconsequential. 

Job had no illusions that he could actually speak to God. He only asked, “If only…”
If only, he would hear me…
If only I could face him…
If only he could hear my case…
If only I could stand in his presence…
If only there was a mediator…
If only there was a go-between…
If only there was a redeemer…

In the context of the beliefs of his age, Job’s request was foolish, impossible, and inappropriate. To propose God lower himself to address Job was unthinkable. Even as great a man as Job was reported to be, this was considered to be a prideful and sinful desire. Even Job’s friends, who, out of love, sat in the dust with him for days without speaking, considered this a scandalous bit of madness. This is why Job’s friends seem so harsh to us, so callous. Job is asking not only for the impossible but for the inappropriate.

But thank God that he is the God who abandons propriety to run to us. God’s love for us is foolishly, scandalously undeserved. He is the God who does the unthinkable on behalf of the unworthy.
God does not step foot on Earth to melt mountains but to melt hardened hearts, turning them back to God.
God does not wade into humanity, timidly cringing at the grossness of flesh, but rejoicing in living among us. He joyfully eats our fish, pays our taxes, touches the diseased, speaks to (and raises) the dead.

God is a God for whom there is no uncrossable gap. He crosses the distance to us. 
Christ comes, applying for Job’s job posting. He would be our mediator if we let him. He stood between us and God. He removed God’s rod from us and placed it on his own back. He will remove our terror of God and allow us to see perfectly God’s tender mercies to us.

God told Moses he was the Israelites’ “I am.” Christ holds out his hands to Jerusalem, to Job, to us, and to all mankind, longing to be our “If only…” 

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting
The Lord Lives! Blessed is my Rock! Exalted is the God of my salvation!
Therefore will I extol you among the nations, O Lord, and sing praises to your Name. — Psalm 18.46

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Job 9 (Listen -3:22)
Romans 13 (Listen -2:35)

Read more about Greater Footstool, Greater God, Greater Redeemer
As Job begins, Satan walks the Earth and has power over it. Before Job ends, he declares the promise that the Redeemer will stand upon the Earth to reclaim it.

Read more about Taking Sin Seriously
Jesus doesn’t “let the woman go.” He sends her out. Jesus, instead of taking the woman’s life, redeems it. He buys it for his own.

Scripture Focus: Job 3:20–26
“Why is light given to those in misery, 
and life to the bitter of soul, 
to those who long for death that does not come, 
who search for it more than for hidden treasure, 
who are filled with gladness 
and rejoice when they reach the grave? 
Why is life given to a man 
whose way is hidden, 
whom God has hedged in? 
For sighing has become my daily food; 
my groans pour out like water. 
What I feared has come upon me; 
what I dreaded has happened to me. 
I have no peace, no quietness; 
I have no rest, but only turmoil.”

Reflection: Lamenting With Job :: Guided Prayer
By John Tillman

Job’s language is harsh and bitter when he speaks of his suffering. He doesn’t quote platitudes. His words do not sound like “prayer.” He curses his own life and wishes that he had been stillborn. He curses the joy of his conception. He curses every circumstance or kindness that brought him to life.

Job’s prayers are not perfect but they perfectly express what is inside his heart. The scriptures specifically tell us that in nothing he said did he sin. (Job 1.22)

Complaining is a sin that separates us from God. Lament is a powerful prayer that connects us to God. With the help of the Holy Spirit, who will pray on our behalf when we are unable to form words, lament can swallow up complaining in our lives. Lament is frequent and important in the Bible and should be in our lives as well. 

The prophets lament. (Habakkuk 1.2-4)
Approximately 50% of the Psalms are lament. (Including Psalm 22, quoted by Christ on the cross)
Christ laments. (In Gethsemane and on the Cross)
Paul laments. (Romans 9.1-5)

May we lament through this prayer mixed with Job’s words from Job 3.20-26. 

Prayer for Lament:

You have given us light, even in our misery.
Help us to lament, Lord.

Help us to take our unvarnished pain to you, God. 
Help us to know that we need not soften our language or hold our tongues when we are hurting. 
You have already heard the worst of our thoughts before we speak.
We release our pain to you through our words and our wordless cries…

You have given us life, Lord, even though we are trapped in death.
Help us to lament our sin.

No matter how righteous we feel, Lord, remind us we are like dust.
Show us your holiness that makes ours look like filthy rags.
Fill us with your spirit and expel from us every complaining spirit.

Give us your presence as our daily bread, rather than the bread of our sufferings.
Help us to lament with you.

Rather than complain about our sufferings as if you did not know about them or as if you caused them…
Let us instead recognize that you are in our sufferings with us. Let us share them with you. As we yoke ourselves to you, share the weight of our suffering, Lord, easing the strain on our hearts.

Hear our prayer. Give us peace.
Hear our cries. Give us quietness.
Hear our lament. Give us rest.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting
To you I lift up my eyes, to you enthroned in the heavens.
As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, 
and the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, 
So our eyes look to the Lord our God, unitil he shows us his mercy. — Psalm 123.1-3

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Job 3 (Listen -2:32)
Romans 7 (Listen -4:09)

Read more about A Generational Lament
God accepts the prayer of the despairing and the cries of the frustrated and broken more quickly than the prayers of the proud.

Read more about Lamenting Our Detestable Things
God will find us and God will speak to us when we lament our culture’s sins as our own.

Scripture Focus: Job 2.1-2
On another day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them to present himself before him. And the LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” 
Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.” 

Job 19.25
      I know that my redeemer lives, 
         and that in the end he will stand on the earth.

Reflection: Greater Footstool, Greater God, Greater Redeemer
By John Tillman

As Job begins, Satan walks the Earth and has power over it. Before Job ends, he declares the promise that the Redeemer will stand upon the Earth to reclaim it.

Job is one of the places in the Bible depicting cultural beliefs about the cosmos that show God as a God of gods, or lower divine beings. When ancient writers thought of “the heavens,” or of the “council of gods” in God’s throne room, or “the mountain of the Lord,” they had images in mind that came from what the prevailing culture believed to be true. Just as we might picture God in a boardroom and angels as corporate officers, Job saw God as a king over other kings, rulers, and powers.

Ancient writers saw the heavens as the floor of God’s dwelling place—the underside of a literal floor through which God could look down. We are not that different from them. Simply because we, with modern telescopes, can see farther into the heavens than ancients, does not make us more intelligent or less dependent on metaphor to understand God’s vastness. 

We have found the heavens to be larger than the ancients guessed. Does that mean that the heavens are any less of a footstool for our God? No. It means both God’s footstool and God, himself, are more expansive than we knew.

If we have discovered God’s footstool is bigger than we thought, we must recognize that the God whose feet rest upon it must be greater than even the wisest of wisdom literature could comprehend.

It is this God whom Job proclaims “will stand upon the earth” as his (and our) redeemer. Job, nor we, could have fully imagined the lengths Christ would go to in fulfilling his words.

Christ, who is higher and greater than anyone has imagined, would become less and lower than anyone would imagine, to do for us what no one could imagine. 

As Job, may we never lose faith in our great redeemer, Christ, who stood upon the Earth.
He stoops down in humility to join us.
He lay down in suffering to die as one of us.
He rose up in victory to assure us.
He enters our lives to transform us.

May we be changed, shaped, and focused as a telescope toward the Heavens, striving to reflect and magnify his image.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting
Deliver me, O Lord, by your hand from those whose portion is life in this world. — Psalm 17.14

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Job 2 (Listen -2:11)
Romans 6 (Listen -3:28)

Read more about He Stoops to Raise
Christ’s entire life could be understood as a process of descending and ascending…He goes from the highest place, to the lowest place. And then, he ascends.

Read more about Humbled by the Heavens :: A Guided Prayer
Extoll the undeniable, wordless speech of God through the wonder of his creation that we can see with our naked eyes, if we will but open them.