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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