Year 5, Day 151: Mark 4

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Teacher

• Teacher: One who holds forth the truth and is excited by it. The teacher looks for ways to explain, enlighten, and apply truth.  A teacher's authority doesn't come from how smart they are but from the Word of God and the power of a transformed life.

In Mark 4 we get a great glimpse of what it looks like to be a teacher.  Here’s the cool thing about this chapter.  In Mark 4 we get to see how Jesus taught the crowds and how Jesus taught His disciples.  And you’ll notice that these two are not the same thing.

In His infinite wisdom, Jesus knows something that has taken me the better part of 40 years to figure out.  You can’t teach large groups intimately.  You can only teach people intimately when you know them well.  When you are teaching people who know of you but who don’t know you well, you can only teach truth generically.

This is why we see Jesus teaching in parables when we see Jesus among the crowd.  Jesus is teaching generic truth because that is what the people will understand from Him.  He uses His opportunity with the crowd to plant seeds of truth that others will be able to take to greater root in depth and bring forth greater harvest.

But the truth is that Jesus doesn’t have the connection with the masses to speak truth deeply into all of their lives.  This is an important point to remember.  Because when we speak both truth and challenge into the lives of people with whom we don’t have the relationship to endure the level of challenge it ends poorly.  People become easily offended when we expose faults without having the relationship to sustain it.  Jesus knows this.  He teaches the crowd differently because of this.

However, when we observe Jesus in situations with His disciples, we see Jesus speaking truth at a very deep and challenging level.  How many times does Jesus challenge His disciples with the idea that their faith is still weak as we see in Mark 4:40?  How often do we hear Jesus tell the disciples that they should be at a point in their life where they are understanding more deeply as we see in Mark 4:13?

Jesus has the relationship with the disciples to push them hard and challenge them.  He has the depth of relationship to expose their failings.  He can teach them more deeply because the depth of the relationship can sustain the revelation of imperfection and the specific areas of change that need to happen in the disciples.

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Year 5, Day 150: Mark 3

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Chemistry

• Chemistry asks whether the person in question can work with the other people that God has called.

I think that taking a look at Mark 3 through the lens of Chemistry will be profitable today – especially in the light of protection that we discussed yesterday.  After all, today we have more people come to Jesus and question his ministry.  More religious leaders come to question Jesus about the healing of the man with the withered hand.  They come and accuse Him of being in league with Satan, even!  And then twice we hear about Jesus’ family coming against Him because they think he has lost His mind!  So taking yesterday’s context and bringing it forward into today’s passage, we see that people continue to speak out against Jesus.

But that’s not the whole story, is it.  Crowds begin to follow Him.  The people in the world who are actually seeing people’s lives change are coming to Him.  Sure, some of those people are just coming for the show or they are coming for temporal healing and relief from their present circumstances.  But Jesus doesn’t seem to mind that.  In fact, seldom in any of the Gospels does Jesus speak out against the crowds.  They come, and He uses the opportunity to put God’s power on display.  But the truth is that even this doesn’t really speak to chemistry.  It speaks to opportunity but not chemistry.

In the midst of all of the persecution and the crowds gathering around Jesus to use Him we get a really neat story of chemistry.  Jesus calls the Twelve.  There are legitimate disciples that are gathering in the midst of the persecution and the crowd’s gathering for the show.  In fact, if we think back to yesterday, remember that Jesus called Levi into discipleship in the midst of the religious attack!

That’s the interesting thing about chemistry.  Jesus uses the situation around Him to see who is really interested in following Him.  Jesus uses the conflict with the religious leaders to speak into the lives of whoever might be listening.  Jesus uses the opportunity of the crowd to speak into whoever might be listening.  That’s how chemistry seems to work.  We speak into the situations around us and see who is willing to listen.  Then we find out with whom God has created the chemistry to work together.

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Year 5, Day 149: Mark 2

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Protection

• Protection: In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us to pray that God might deliver us from evil – even the Evil One.  Sometimes we need God’s protection from the sin around us.  Sometimes we need protection from the sinful people around us.  Other times we need protection from the sin that lies within ourselves. In any case, Jesus’ point is clear.  We need protection from the Father to make it through each and every day.

As I read through Mark 2, I was absolutely amazed by the amount of rejection that this chapter contains.  Yes, Jesus is gathering disciples.  Yes, the crowd – the rabble, even the sinners and tax-collectors – are willing to listen to Him.  But look at the reaction of the religious elite.  They are constantly on His case.

Jesus is accused of blaspheming by saying that He can forgive sins.  Jesus is accused of having bad choices for friends as he calls Levi and then hangs out at a dinner that Levi organizes.  Then Jesus’ disciples are accosted because they aren’t behaving like all the other religious people because they aren’t fasting.  Finally, Jesus and His disciples are accosted because of the timing of the things they do!

When I make a list like that, it seems so petty.  When I consider that the religious leaders are speaking out against the very Messiah that God sent to save them, it seems even more petty!  But let’s not lose sight of the fact that this whole chapter is about how the religious elite reject Jesus and find fault with Him.

This is why we need God’s protection.  The world will find fault with us.  Those who prefer to keep God in their box will find fault with us.  When we follow Jesus, there will be plenty of reason for the people around us to find fault with us because we’ll be living with a different agenda than most of the people around us.  If they find fault with Jesus, they’ll find fault with us, too.  Praise God that He does give us His protection!

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Year 5, Day 148: Mark 1

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Approval

• Approval: We all need to feel as though we are accepted.  When we seek the approval of God, our Up is in the right place.  But when we seek the approval of other people besides God, we open the door to pursuing false gods and risk putting someone or something other than God in our Up position.

When we read about Jesus’ first moments of ministry, there is something that should stick out.  Even before Jesus goes out and officially begins His ministry, he hears words of approval from God.  “You are my beloved Son.  With You I am well pleased.”  Jesus has the approval of the Father.

Have you ever wondered what the reasons for this approval are?  I think there are few broad reasons, and I think that they are very much straight-forward.  First of all, Jesus has the approval of the Father because He is sinless.  Jesus has the approval because His nature is not corrupted by the influence of sinful humanity.  This is the reason that we need Christ.  Without Christ and His sacrifice, we cannot have God’s approval on this point.  Our nature is sinful.  It is only through the sinless sacrifice of Jesus that our sins are done away with and we can know the approval of the Father.

However, at the end of this chapter I think we have a second reason for Jesus’ approval.  Jesus tells the disciples, “Let us go into the other towns, because that is what I came to do.”  In other words, Jesus does what the Father asks of Him.  Jesus is obedient.  Jesus is willing to do whatever the Father sets before Him.  That is reason for the Father to approve of Him.  If we are to be like Jesus and we are to seek the approval of the Father, we need to be obedient to Him as well.  We should be about doing what the Father places in our life before us.

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Year 5, Day 147: Ephesians 6

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Protection

• Protection: In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us to pray that God might deliver us from evil – even the Evil One.  Sometimes we need God’s protection from the sin around us.  Sometimes we need protection from the sinful people around us.  Other times we need protection from the sin that lies within ourselves. In any case, Jesus’ point is clear.  We need protection from the Father to make it through each and every day.

Ephesians 6 contains one of the iconic passages.  Ephesians 6:10-20 speaks about putting on the full armor of God.  But here’s the thing.  There are two reasons for putting on protection: either you are going on the offense or you are getting ready to go on the defense against an attack for an enemy.

Take a close look at verse 10.  What’s the point of God’s armor?  It allows us to stand against the schemes of the devil.  This is not a passage about offense.  This is a passage about defense.  This is a passage about resisting the pull of Satan through the world.  This passage is about being able to protect ourselves against the attack that will come.

As Paul says, we do not wrestle with flesh and blood.  We wrestle with the powers and principalities of this world.  We wrestle against the cosmic power.  We wrestle against spiritual forces of evil.  We wrestle against this present darkness.

What’s the point of our protection?  It gives us an opportunity to speak about the Gospel.  When we are able to stand, we are able to speak about God and His ways.  That’s the point.  We don’t put on the armor of God to go into the world and beat up the world for God’s sake.  We put on the armor of God so that we can withstand the assault of the enemy and having withstood it we can proclaim the Gospel to those who see us withstand evil and who desire to learn from it.

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Year 5, Day 146: Ephesians 5

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Imitation

• Imitation: This is the second over-arching step of the discipleship process.  First we gain information, then we imitate our spiritual mentor.  Imitation leads to innovation of spirituality in our own life.

I think that imitation is one of the hardest things to do in the Christian life.  Yes, we look to Christ.  Yes, we are grateful for His sacrifice.  We are incredibly thankful for His free gift of eternal life.  But then we have to live like He lived.

How exactly did He live?

• He was there when the crowd needed Him. 
• He healed people. 
• He listened to them. 
• He received anyone who wanted to come to Him regardless of how much or how little money they had, how great or how small their reputation was, and what gender they were.
• He taught and re-taught when His disciples didn’t understand.
• He accepted that His disciples would turn on Him and abandon Him.
• He died for us even though He was incredibly innocent.

In other words, He was selfless.  He gave of Himself for our sake.  He didn’t come to achieve His goals, He came to accomplish God’s will for our sake.

This is why I think imitating God is one of the hardest parts of the Christian walk.  Gratitude and thankfulness is natural and easy.  But putting our feet forward and living out God’s truth in our lives is difficult.  Living a life that pursues God’s agenda and pushes our own agenda down is far more difficult in reality than it sounds.

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Year 5, Day 145: Ephesians 4

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Challenge, Invitation

• Invitation: God is always inviting us into relationship with Him. He desires that we know Him and that we know His desire for us.
• Challenge: God does not merely wish us to be in relationship with Him as we are.  He challenges us to grow, stretch, and transform as we take on the mantle of being His representatives to this world.

Ephesians 4 is a great chapter with respect to seeing the cycle of invitation and challenge.  God the Father invites us into relationship with Him through His Son.  We’ve been talking about this for the past couple of days.  We are saved by grace.  We are saved through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ as He died upon the cross.  I am in relationship with God at His invitation, not because I am great.

However, look at where this idea naturally leads Paul.  If we are in relationship with God, then we are challenged to rise up out of our sin!  He is pretty blunt when he says to not live as the Gentiles do.  We need to change who we are.  We don’t need to change with respect to physical things such as Kosher laws or circumcision.  What we need to change is our character.

Look at the examples that Paul uses.  Don’t be sensual.  Don’t be greedy.  Don’t be impure.  Put off your old self and let God create something new.  Be angry, but not angry in a way that you sin.  Don’t take what isn’t yours, but instead work hard for what you want.  Don’t corrupt the world around you with your worlds; build it up instead.  Don’t slander God, but embrace His seal upon us.

Invitation and challenge.  We receive grace: God’s invitation.  We are challenged to respond: the good works of God’s character for which we were created.

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Year 5, Day 144: Ephesians 3

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Identity

• Identity: Our true identity comes from the Father.  Only when our identity comes from God can we be obedient in ways that satisfy our person to our core.

I often wonder about my identity.  It is easy to let the world around me determine my own identity.  I am a man.  I am intelligent.  I am an American.  I like living in a place defined by fried chicken, cornbread, sweet tea, and cheese grits.  I enjoy teaching.  I like hockey.  I have a few favorite restaurants and a few favorite foods.

But is that really the identity that I want to broadcast?  Sure, there is nothing sinful in that list I give above.  There is nothing wrong with having those characteristics in my life.  But is that really my identity?

Read Ephesians 3:16-19 again.  What is Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians?  What identity does he pray for them to have?

• Strong with power through his Spirit
• Christ dwelling in your hearts through faith
• Rooted and grounded in love
• Strength to comprehend
• Knowledge of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge
• Filled with all the fullness of God.

Honestly, when people should think about me, what do I want them to think?  Do I want them to think of a hockey-loving teacher who likes fried chicken and cheese grits?  Or do I want them to think of a person who embodies the list of attributes that Paul sets forth here?  I think the choice is clear.

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Year 5, Day 143: Ephesians 2

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Obedience

• Obedience: Genuine and satisfying obedience comes out of our identity.  Our true identity comes only from our Father.

As I was reading this passage today, a part of the scripture jumped out at me that I had glossed over many times.  We are created for good works.  Our function is good works.

Of course I always knew that, which is why I think I always gloss over it really easily.  God made us and we are in relationship with Him so that we can do His will.  That’s one of the great underlying premises of relationship with God.

However, because we understand that premise so easily we miss the point that Paul is trying to make in context.  Paul says this immediately after saying that we are saved by grace and not work.  It is not our works that save us.  What saves us is the gift of God coming to us through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ upon the cross.  Therefore, works must be our obedient response rather than our natural condition.

God created us for good works.  In fact, Paul goes one step further.  We are created in Jesus Christ for good works.  It is the transformation that God does in us through Jesus Christ that allows us to be obedient to His will.  We are not perfect little angels at conception.  We do not come out of the birth process innocent little creations who are free of sin.  We are born into this world sinful and corrupt.  Through Jesus Christ – through the grace of God – God takes that person whose nature is corrupt and causes them to be able to be obedient.  Our obedience is always a response to God’s grace; it is never an act we do on our own in order to win God’s grace.

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Year 5, Day 142: Ephesians 1

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Up

• Up: Up is the word we use for what we worship.  If we are following God’s will, God will occupy the Up position.  Our life, our identity, our mission, our family on mission is all derived from Up.  This is why God needs to be in our Up position.

There are many reasons in this first chapter of Ephesians to think about why God should be the center of our worship and the center of our life.  God blesses us.  God chooses us when we don’t deserve it.  He causes us to be holy and blameless.  He adopted us.  He gives us wisdom to see His mysteries.

But there is more here.  He gives us the Holy Spirit.  He gives us a guarantor of our salvation.  He gives us the ability to know what it is like to live daily in the presence of our God before we truly deserve it!

Yet there is even more.  When we look at the community God creates around us we see even more reason to celebrate.  Only God can bring human beings together and have it end well.  Only through our focus upon Him can we put our own self-centeredness aside and look to help one another and spread His glory throughout the world.

Whether we think about God, how He interacts with us individually, or how He interacts with us as a community there is plenty of reason to worship Him.

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Year 5, Day 141: Galatians 5 & 6

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Calling

• Calling asks whether or not God has called the person to the particular work at this point in their life.

Galatians 5 & 6 are largely about calling, which makes sense since the prior chapters were primarily about character and having an internal perspective that lines up with God.  Once the internal life is established, we can then turn to calling.  Once we know what God wants us to be and we are resolved to be obedient, then we are prepared to live it out.  This is our calling.

So what does Paul say that God is calling us to become?  We are to embody the nature of God to the people around us.  We are to be people who model: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  We are to carry one another’s’ burdens.  We are to restore people who have fallen away from God.  We are to do good at every opportunity.

This is our calling.  This is why we are crucified in Christ.  This is why we are to be a people of grace and not a people dependent upon blind obedience to the Law.  God calls us to be representatives of His character.

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Year 5, Day 140: Galatians 4

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Challenge

• Challenge: God does not merely wish us to be in relationship with Him as we are.  He challenges us to grow, stretch, and transform as we take on the mantle of being His representatives to this world.

I believe Galatians 4 is all about the challenge.  We can see this because Paul is bold in his proclamation to a bunch of Jews.  He compares being under the Law to Ishmael, the slave born to Hagar.  He compares being free in Christ to Isaac, the child of the promise born to Sarah.  This is a bold claim indeed.

Paul knows that his audience wants to identify with Sarah and more so with Isaac, the child of the promise.  But by comparing the Law to Ishmael, Paul sets up conflict within his audience.  He uses this conflict to challenge the Galatians to jump to the side grace and to be willing to give up the idea that a person is justified by their ability to do the law.

I believe the same challenge exists within our culture today.  How many of us will only listen to a certain person, or a certain gender, or people of a certain age, or people who dress a certain way, or people who cut their hair a certain way, or people who have a certain amount of money?  We as human beings like to put limits and credentials upon those to whom we will listen.  But Paul advocates a position of grace.  He advocates a position of spirit.

Does the Holy Spirit only indwell those who dress the right way?  Does the Spirit only indwell with people who cross over a certain threshold of money?  Does the Spirit only indwell with people of a particular gender?  I can keep going.  But what I’m getting at here is how we respond to challenge.  Do we have to have things our way?  Or am I open to however God is working in my life?  That is the challenge that Paul puts forward here in this chapter.

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Year 5, Day 139: Galatians 3

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Obedience

• Obedience: Genuine and satisfying obedience comes out of our identity.  Our true identity comes only from our Father.

I think the idea of obedience is fundamental to the middle section of the book of Galatians.  But this idea of obedience goes multi-directional.  It must fundamentally start with Christ.  From where does our salvation originate?  Christ and His obedient death on the cross.  Why can we have access to the Holy Spirit?  Christ and His death on the cross.  Jesus Christ is obedient to the Father and died according to His will.  everything we are in Christ begins with Christ.

However, this idea of obedience also extends to us.  Does everyone have the Holy Spirit within them?  Sure, Christ died so that anyone who desires relationship with God can have that relationship.  But does that mean that all people do?  By no means!  God calls me to respond obediently to His calling.  God calls me to hear about His grace and love and mercy and then receive it.  Then He calls for me to obediently live out my reception of His grace.

It is by faith that we are in Christ.  But we are not done with the Law, either.  The Law shows us how to live and in Christ we obediently look up to the Law and strive for it.  We do not do this to prove to God why He should save us.  Rather, we do His will because it is our response to the fact that He has already saved us.

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Year 5, Day 138: Galatians 2

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Calling

• Calling asks whether or not God has called the person to the particular work at this point in their life.

If our authority is from the Father as I asserted yesterday, then what is our calling?  Are we to go out and beat people over the head with the Bible until they yield?  Are we to go out and make war with those who are not Christians?  Are we go through life looking down upon those who have not yet embraced God’s love?

Did Christ beat people over the head with God’s Word?  Did Christ make war?  Did Jesus look down upon those who did not have a relationship with the Father?

No.  Jesus did none of these things.  Jesus came and taught anyone who would listen.  Jesus came and died for the sake of other people.  While being powerful, Jesus sacrificed Himself for the sake of the people around Him.

Paul tells us in Galatians 2:19-20 that we are to do the same.  Paul says that he has been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer he who lives, but Christ who lives within him.  The same should be true for us.  Our calling is to live like Christ.  We are not to beat people down with God’s Word.  We are not to make war with those who oppose us.  We are not to look down upon the people around us.  Instead, we should sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the people around us.  That is our calling.

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Year 5, Day 137: Galatians 1

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Authority

• Authority: Our calling.  This comes from God as king.  Because He calls us as His representatives, He gives us authority to go and do His will.

What I love about Galatians 1 is that Paul is very much a no-compromise apostle in his writing.  He is blunt that his authority comes from God.  He does not get his authority from a counsel.  Neither does he get his authority from an individual or a financier.  Paul gets his authority from Jesus Christ.

This is a really powerful comment.  Who do I serve?  Who do you serve?  Am I only able to speak truth because other spiritual people have approved of me?  Or does my truth come from God the Father and the king of the universe?

I don’t know about you, but I know this is easily answered but difficult to live out.  It is easy to call out that our authority comes from God alone!  But it is difficult to stand up and live it out.  How often does my opinion of myself come from the approval of others?  How often do I think that I can only have God’s wisdom if I am taught it by other people?  We should get our authority from God.  Salvation comes only from Him; the same is true for wisdom and authority.

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Year 5, Day 136: Job 42

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Character

• Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person.  It is hearing from God and obeying.  It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

Now we arrive to the final chapter.  We’ve heard God speak.  We’ve heard God’s wisdom come to bear upon the flaws of the people of His creation.  We’ve seen God come out on top.  And then we get the true heart of God’s character.  What is it that happens when God comes out on top?

When God comes out on top, look at what happens.  God expects repentance and gets it.  But once the repentance happens, God forgives.  Job’s friends repent and are forgiven.  Job repents and is forgiven.  And God puts the whole thing behind Him and moves on.

God is slandered throughout the whole book of Job.  Job’s friends make God out to be a person who uses prosperity to force people how to behave.  Job makes God out to be a God who doesn’t defend the righteous.  God takes it and forgives.

We should imitate this behave.  It is not important that our dominance be asserted.  It is not important that people know how right we are.  What is important is that when the people around us make the inevitable mistakes that they will make then we are forgiving and put it behind us.  Above all else, God is a God of grace, love, and mercy.  We should imitate that – especially in the presence of genuine repentance.

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Year 5, Day 135: Job 41

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Guidance

• Guidance: God grants us His guidance.  Sometimes this guidance is God leading us away from temptation.  Sometimes this guidance is helping us to follow in a direction for which He has chosen.  Our default position should be to wait for God’s guidance and then follow when it comes.

Isn’t the topic of guidance really what the book of Job is all about?  Isn’t the book of Job all about how each of us has something to learn from God? 

• Job’s three friends think that Job’s suffering means that he has sinned.  They need to learn that life is far more complex than prosperity gospel.  Just because I have much does not mean I’m righteous.  Just because I have little or my life is full of sorrow does not mean I am full of sin and cursed by God.
• Elihu learns that even when we are right and full of wisdom we are still susceptible to the pull of the same prosperity Gospel that trapped Job’s friends.  Elihu is full of wisdom, but he is not without error.
• Job learns that while he is righteous and that he is correct in not deserving of this fate, his perspective needs to be broadened.  There are reasons that things happen to us for reason beyond reward and punishment.  God is at work on incredibly deep levels and has an agenda beyond where we typically focus.

Look at God’s final point here to Job.  Job may be righteous.  He may have a great relationship with God.  But Job cannot create.  Job cannot even subdue that which another person creates!  If Job cannot even subdue what God creates, then what right does Job have to bring God’s motivations into question?  God is guiding Job away from thinking about his own punishment and guiding him to broaden his perspective.

There is always more to God if we are willing to go there.  There are always deeper levels to contemplate beyond our reward for good behavior.  God can use anything in our life to teach us about our position in creation.  God can use our life to change the perspectives of others.  God can guide our life to draw us and the people around us closer to Him.  Isn’t that far more significant than our reward or punishment for behavior?

That’s what God is trying to teach Job and those who read this book.

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Year 5, Day 134: Job 40

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Ambition

• Ambition: We all need a goal to which we can strive.  When our ambition comes from God, we find fulfillment in our obedience into that for which we have been equipped because our Out is in proper focus.  But when our ambition comes from ourselves, we find ourselves chasing after our own dreams and trying to find fulfillment in accomplishments of our own making.

I could easily do another blog post on God being the king.  After all, isn’t that what the vast majority of this chapter is all about?  Can Job clothe himself in righteousness?  Can Job judge over creation?  Is it not God who is King and not Job?

However, as I’ve done the last few days I want to talk about this on a deeper level.  What is it that got Job into this little moment with God?  Yes, Job is righteous in God’s eyes.  But even in his righteousness Job sinned.  Job focused on how he was being wronged and how God didn’t do anything about it.  Rather than focus on what God might do through it, Job focused on himself.  He wants to be right.  He wants to have all the answers.  He wants to be vindicated.

The question is, why?  Why is this so important to Job?  Why does Job have to be right?  Why does he have to be on top?  I think the answer is in the human desire for ambition.  Job wants to be right, not focus on what God is doing.  Job wants to be vindicated, not used by God.  Job wants the record to be set straight, not be humble before God.  Job wants to accuse God for not defending him rather than stop and listen to what God is actually doing.

Don’t get me wrong.  Job does eventually figure it out.  Here in this passage Job finally realizes he needs to shut up and clasp his hand over his mouth.  This is where we finally see his humbleness shine through for good.  Here we see Job finally put aside his quest for vindication and be silently humble before God.  We finally see that Job gets it.  It isn’t about him.  It isn’t about his ambition.  It is about God.

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Year 5, Day 133: Job 39

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Authority, Power 

• Authority: Our calling.  This comes from God as king.  Because He calls us as His representatives, He gives us authority to go and do His will.
• Power: This is the natural outcome when we truly get our authority from the king.  When our authority is from God, we are equipped with His power to accomplish His will.  We act on His behalf in a world that He desperately loves.

I could easily do another blog post on God being the king.  After all, how many of these verses have to do with the awesomeness of God?  How many of these verses talk about how great God is and how much God does that we don’t even think about?

However, I’d like to go a step further than just focusing on God’s kingship.  Once we understand that God is indeed King, we can understand just how much of our life is actually under His control.  He controls the movement of the animals.  He controls the behavior of the livestock.  He controls the movement of the stars and the rain that falls.  He controls everything.

This means that if we want to have control over anything, we need to get it from God.  If God has all the control, then we only get control from Him.  If we want power, it needs to come from Him because He is king.  If we want authority, it must necessarily originate from Him.

I believe that this is one of God’s primary points in this chapter.  Yes, He is putting Job in His place.  But He is also reminding us that once we are in our place, we are ready to receive from Him whatever authority and power He decides to give to us.

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Year 5, Day 132: Job 38

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: King

• King: This is the pinnacle of the Kingdom Triangle.  When we look towards God’s position in the universe, we acknowledge that He is an omnipotent king.  Authority comes from Him.  Power comes through His authority.  He is looking for representatives for His kingdom.

There is much reason to speak about God as king at the end of the book of Job.  God comes out swinging.  He asks Job, “Who darkens my counsel without knowledge?”  God lays it all out right here at the beginning.  Compared to God, what am I?  Compared to God, what are any of us?  Even if I know that which I know very deeply, what is it compared to all the things that God knows and I’m completely clueless to the fact that they are even there to be known?

And then God gives a plethora of examples as to why exactly He is king.  He set the universe in motion.  He knows what it is like to see it start.  He knows what it is like to command the wind and the storm.  He knows what it is like to command the snow and the rain.  He knows what it is like to command and set limits to the dawn.  God knows what it is like to know the Pleiades or even Orion intimately.  God know the nature intimately.  God even knows what it means to impart wisdom into others.

That’s what it means to be king of the universe.  He is completely king.  What are any of us to Him?

Yet let’s not forget that God is not so great as to not notice us.  He wants relationship with us.  God may know everything from the stars in the sky to the foundations of this world.  But He wants relationship with you and me.  He wants a relationship so badly that He sent His own Son.  He is indeed king of the universe.

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Year 5, Day 131: Job 37

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Competency, King

• Competency: Being able to accomplish what one is called to do.
• King: This is the pinnacle of the Kingdom Triangle.  When we look towards God’s position in the universe, we acknowledge that He is an omnipotent king.  Authority comes from Him.  Power comes through His authority.  He is looking for representatives for His kingdom.

Yesterday I spent a fair amount of time talking about God as King.  Today, we get another great opportunity to do so.  Elihu gives us many images to ponder God’s awesome nature.  He makes the snow fall.  He makes the rain fall.  He gathers all the clouds in the sky.  He scatters the lightning.  God set the world in motion and He continues to control it all.

God is clearly the king of the universe.  That is a huge part of Elihu’s great message for us this morning.  But I think we can take this chapter and go farther with it than that.  I think we can push past simple awe of God and take it to our relationship with this creator.

Elihu asks a deep and probing question: shall it be told to Him that I would speak?  This is fundamentally the same question that Paul asks in Romans 9:20 as to whether the clay can look at its potter and demand to know why it was made in such a manner.  What right do we have to stand before God and question Him?  We can be in awe in His awesome presence.  But what right do we have to question Him as to why anything happens?

This is where the idea of competency comes in to play.  Am I competent to do what God asks me to do.  So often we think of competency in terms of just being able to accomplish what I should accomplish.  But there is another side of competency.  Am I able to refrain from doing that which I have not been called to do?

Who am I to stand before an almighty being and question Him?  Who am I to stand before my maker and think that He owes me any answer?

Of course, I am in relationship with God.  He wants me to grow closer to Him.  But in order to be a competent follower I must learn the difference between seeking truth and demanding God explain Himself.  It is not wrong to seek answers because we seek His truth.  But it is always wrong to make demands that God explain Himself when things go differently than we estimate they should go.

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Year 5, Day 130: Job 36

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: King

• King: This is the pinnacle of the Kingdom Triangle.  When we look towards God’s position in the universe, we acknowledge that He is an omnipotent king.  Authority comes from Him.  Power comes through His authority.  He is looking for representatives for His kingdom.

It seems to make common sense that the king of the universe – the omnipotent being who set it into motion – should be the center of our life.  We should be about drawing closer to God and living according to His ways.  When we focus on Him, our lives are ordered, our advice is sound, and we are a blessing to the people around us.  Life is good when the King is truly at the center of our universe.  God the Father should be in our Up position.

However, it is often the case with human beings that we get our life out of order.  Rather than submitting to God’s order and God’s ways, we let our own desires rule our life.  We let our own wisdom guide our paths.  We turn our eyes from God and supplant the Father with a god we’ve created in our own image.

That’s what we see Elihu doing here.  So far, Elihu’s voice has been sound and full of God’s wisdom.  But in the opening portions of this chapter he begins to speak for God instead of allowing God to speak through him.  He also begins to assert that the righteous prosper and the unrighteous struggle in life.  He begins to assert a prosperity Gospel.  He asserts it not because it is true; he asserts it because he wants it to be true.

Job is not suffering because he is unrighteous, and it is wrong to assert this.  The same mistake that haunted Job’s friends now comes to roost in Elihu.  Elihu gets much right, but in this chapter we begin to see him fall from good theology.

That’s the danger of supplanting God and putting our own conception of God in His place.  When we do this, we often begin to teach theology that is not in line with what God actually asserts.  We begin to assert what we want to believe rather than what God tells us to believe.  We begin to believe what our wisdom says is true rather than actually listening to what God’s Word tells us is true.

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Year 5, Day 129: Job 35

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Ambition, Appetite

• Appetite: We all have needs that need to be filled.  When we allow ourselves to be filled with the people and things that God brings into our life, we will be satisfied because our In will be in proper focus.  But when we try to fill ourselves with our own desires we end up frustrated by an insatiable hunger.
• Ambition: We all need a goal to which we can strive.  When our ambition comes from God, we find fulfillment in our obedience into that for which we have been equipped because our Out is in proper focus.  But when our ambition comes from ourselves, we find ourselves chasing after our own dreams and trying to find fulfillment in accomplishments of our own making.

Elihu focuses on two major points in his critique of Job.  Elihu asks how it is that Job can ask, “What benefit is there to being righteous?”  In other words, Job has questioned what good his righteousness has been to him.  The second point that Elihu raises is what is to us whether we bring anything to God.  In other words, why are we concerned with what we can add to God?

While I think Job is an amazing man and he lived an incredible life in incredibly horrible circumstances, I also think that Job is guilty on each of these points.  The one place of error that Job has been consistent is in questioning why God hasn’t defended him.  He is guilty of short-sightedness.  In fact, he is guilty of self-centered sight.  Job has occasionally been focused on what is in it for him.  This is rooted in appetite.  Job wants to know what benefit has come to him for his faith.  Of course, we know what benefit comes from relationship with God.  We also know that Job knows this, too.  Job knows his redeemer lives.  He just is forgetful and occasionally has a temporal mindset rather than an eternal mindset.  That’s often what appetite brings about.

As to Elihu’s point regarding what we bring to God, I think that this is an error of ambition.  Think about this for a second.  If God is omnipotent and omniscient, what can I possibly bring to God?  What can I bring to God that He already isn’t?  We want to be important.  We want to be recognized.  That’s ambition speaking.  But the truth is that what should be important is our humbleness before God that allows us to be used in His hand.  That’s what is truly important.

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Year 5, Day 128: Job 34

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Character

• Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person.  It is hearing from God and obeying.  It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

Often when I talk about character I talk about our character.  But occasionally it is important to remember to track the idea of character back to God and remember that He is the model of character.  We should be about getting our life to look like Him.  As we draw closer to Him, our character will naturally improve.

Fundamental to God’s character is His righteousness.  He is just.  Everything that He does is just.  If God does something, it is by definition right.  That’s what it means to be a perfect God.  Our God is not a God like many ancient cultures whose love needs to be bought and whose wrath needs to be appeased.  He is just.  He is righteous.  He never looks to harm us.  So long as we do right, we have nothing to fear from Him.  This is the argument that Elihu makes in this chapter, and he’s spot on correct.

This might seem like a no-brainer.  But it really is an important concept.  How often do I get angry at God for something that happens?  If I get angry at God for something that happens to me, am I not intrinsically questioning God’s character?  Think about this, and you’ll see what I mean.  If I get angry at God, then I am assuming that He had something to do with it.  So if I am assuming that He had something to do with what happened and I am angry, then I am calling His action into question.  If I call God’s action into question, then am I not fundamentally questioning God’s justness and therefore questioning God’s character?

Unfortunately, this is what Job has occasionally done in this book and this is the error that God will highlight in a few chapters when He speaks to Job.  Job does call God’s character into question by arguing that God should have protected Him better.  That’s just not right.  If Job thinks God had anything to do with what is happening and Job also believes God is just, he should not be able to be angry at God because there must be something at work that God is doing that is just.

This is a really difficult position to take in one’s life.  It is difficult to not get angry at God for not using His omnipotent power for our benefit.  It’s tough for us to see God as being willing to let evil come into our life for some greater purpose because we don’t want to care about the greater purpose.  We want to care about ourselves more than anything else.  Because of this, we end up not seeing God for what He is actually doing and question His character.

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Year 5, Day 127: Job 33

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: In:

• In: This is the word we use to express our relationships with our spiritual family.  These are often the people who hold us spiritually accountable.  They are the ones to whom we typically go for discussion and discernment.  These are the ones with whom we learn to share leadership.  They are the ones with whom we become family on mission.

Certainly Elihu isn’t perfect, and we’ll start to see some of his imperfections shortly.  But for right now, I think Elihu should get high marks for his approach.  Elihu appears to be really adept at building In.

Look at how he approaches Job.  First of all, Elihu doesn’t come to criticize Job.  He doesn’t come with his mind already made up.  He’s already listened to all the conversation that has happened thus far.  When he speaks to Job, he says, “I am toward God as you are.”  Elihu is looking to create common ground between him and Job.  He doesn’t want to walk in opposition; he wants to walk beside Job.

Furthermore, Elihu says to Job that he too was pinched of prom a piece of clay.  In other words, Elihu is saying that he understands that he is just a man.  He understands that he isn’t perfect and doesn’t have perfect insight.  Yes, he is confident that he has wisdom, but he is opening the conversation with Job by reminding Job that Elihu knows he’s human and finite.

Then he tells Job that he doesn’t need to fear him.  Job will not feel a tremendous weight from Elihu’s speech.  Job can be at ease, even if Elihu tries to speak truth into his life.

You see, what Elihu is trying to do is create some In with Job.  Elihu doesn’t want to dominate over Job, he wants to walk with Job.  Elihu doesn’t want to place himself as better than Job but as Job’s equal.  Elihu doesn’t just want to spout words of advice, he wants to listen first and then speak.

Elihu is showing grant competency at being In.  Elihu wants to walk through life with Job rather than stand in judgment over Job’s life.  This is all any of us can ask from our In.

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Year 5, Day 126: Job 32

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Competency

• Competency: Being able to accomplish what one is called to do.

I think it is interesting to hear Elihu speak.  I realize that he is human.  He is going to make his own fair share of mistakes with respect to theological teaching.  He’s not perfect.  But I think he really shows us a competent image in this opening chapter.

First of all, look at what Elihu does.  Elihu sits and listens.  He lets everyone else speak their words before opening up his mouth.  I realize that Elihu is young and he is likely respecting the older men.  But even so this is an incredibly competent approach!  When dealing with any issue, information is always helpful.  Elihu sits and listens and absorbs before speaking his mind.

Second, look at what Elihu says.  Elihu accuses Job’s friends of not developing true wisdom.  Elihu accuses them of not ending in wisdom.  He accuses them of having theology that is more self-justifying than anything else.  I think that this is a competent analysis.  I think this analysis of Elihu comes because Elihu spends so much time listening first.

In the end, I always look forward to Elihu’s speech.  As I said, he’ll make his mistakes, too.  But I think he sets a great example of how to posture oneself when preparing to address a situation.  Look.  Listen.  Observe.  When the time is right give a competent analysis rooted in legitimate observation.

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Year 5, Day 125: Job 31

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Character

• Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person.  It is hearing from God and obeying.  It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

I think that the last sentence above is my favorite definition of the word character.  Character is what you do when nobody is looking.  Character is what you do when you can get away with anything.  Character is who you are when the only person there to hold you accountable is yourself.

Job is a man of character.  Look at the laundry list of reasons he gives as to how his righteousness shines in his life.  Mind you, this is not a works-based righteousness argument.  Our righteousness should shine before mankind not so that we are saved but as a demonstration of our salvation.  This is what Job is saying here in this passage.

Job has cared for the widow and the orphan.  Job has treated those under him with respect and compassion.  Job has cared for the earth and has been careful of the demands that he has placed upon it.  Job has kept himself sexually pure and honest.  I can keep going, but this is a great report!

Of course Job isn’t innocent of wrongdoing.  Who among us is without sin?  But Job is a man of character.  On the last day that we hear Job’s words, it is refreshing to hear him finally come back to what matters most of all.  He is righteous before his God.

After all, isn’t that why this whole book started in the first place?  Job is righteous before God.  Satan could do his worst, but Job remained faithful and righteous.  Amen.

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