Sunday, April 12, 2020

Job 40-42

What does it say?
After hearing the Lord speak Job said, “I am insignificant; what can I reply to you?” God wants to know if Job will really annul his judgment in order to justify himself because that would require Job’s condemnation of God. God says that he made Job and the Behemoth. The Behemoth as a very large and very strong creature. The Behemoth is the first of the ways of God. The sea creature Leviathan is so strong that no man can capture it and the Leviathan was made by God. God created everything and everything created belongs to God. There is no creature that the Leviathan fears. Job confesses that he did not really know God and spoke what he did not understand. Job is repentant towards God and attentive to hear the word of God. The Lord was displeased with the way Job’s friends spoke; therefore, the Lord commanded them to make sin offerings and piece offerings to God through Job. After Job’s intercession for his friends, the Lord restored all of the fortunes of Job two fold. Job died an old man and full of days. 

What does it mean?
What can a man say to God? God created everything and everything belongs to God. I belong to God, for the Lord our God created me. The greatest and most powerful creatures on the earth and in the sea were created by God. This means that God is more powerful than the most powerful things in creation. I cannot think of anything in the solar system larger and more powerful than the sun; yet, God created the sun and the sun belongs to God. The earth looks like a speck next to the sun and I am not even a speck on the earth. I am insignificant; what can I say to God? The answer is nothing. I must confess my sin and repent. I need atonement and an intercessor to draw near to God.

What Shall I do?
I shall not complain about whatever the Lord gives me. The Lord is God and I am a man. I am writing this on Easter morning just before sunrise. The sun is about to rise on the first day of the week. Today we remember the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. On that morning, about 2000 years ago, Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb. (Jn 20:1) This insignificant woman looked into the holy of holies and saw two angles in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying. (Jn 20:11-12) The Lord revealed himself to her in the garden, near the tomb, bodily risen from the dead. She was the first to be commissioned by the Lord. Jesus said, “Go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.” (Jn 20:17) I am insignificant, yet the Lord has revealed himself to me in his word. The Lord himself became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ and atoned for my sins on the cross. Now he lives to make intercession for me, so that I can draw near to God. (Heb 7:25) My life does not belong to me but to the Lord; he created me and he redeemed me by his blood through faith. I belong to the Lord; therefore, I shall learn to observe all that he commands. (Mt 28:16-20)