BETTER THAN BEFORE

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

After the Lord had said these things to Job , He said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about Me, as my servant Job has. So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.

You have not spoken the truth about Me, as my servant Job has.”

So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the Lord told them; and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.

After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before. All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought on him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.

The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. And he also had seven sons and three daughters. The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.

After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so Job died, an old man and full of years.

Job 42:7-17 

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

We often go through a lot in life. Sometimes, our circumstances feel as if they will never change and our hardships never end. Sometimes we maybe even begin to wonder if God will ever make things different.

That’s why the Book of Job is such an important part of the Bible. For it offers a great deal of hope to those who feel hopeless – hope that one day God will deliver, restore, and make things better than before.

We know of this hope as we look at the end of Job’s story in Chapter 42. You’ll recall that God had delivered a lengthy discourse directed at Job, reaffirming and reinforcing His greatness and majesty – His mighty omnipotence. And you’ll recall that the Job, who for so long had demanded an audience with God so he could defend himself against what he perceived as unjust suffering, was left feeling unworthy to even be before God, despising himself for his attitude and repenting in the dust and ashes.

Because of this – because of Job’s repentance and restored sense of reverence toward His Maker – God was ready to restore Job but not before one more important thing happened.  

For after God speaks to Job, we find Him turning his attention to Job’s friends and see where God wanted Job to play a part in their restoration before he received his own.

As we look at the passage, we see where God is angry with the three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. All had spoken to Job multiple times and all had spoken like they knew of the very nature of God even though they didn’t speak directly to God. Because of this, God accused the three men of not speaking the truth about Him and ordered them to “take seven bulls and seven rams”, got to Job, and “sacrifice a burnt offering” as a result of their sin. Job then was to pray for them which God would accept and then refrain from penalizing them.

And so Job’s three friends did what the Lord told them to do and the “the Lord accepted Job’s prayer.”

Note three things here.

First, We only speak truth when we communicate with God and ensure the words we are speaking are words He approves of. The easiest way to do this is to submit our words to God first.

In other words, we pray for God to speak through us and then allow Him to do just that. When we allow Him to speak, we never need worry about whether we are saying the right things or not for we will speak truth. That’s all God speaks.

God is truly a God of truth.

Second, God wants us to reconcile with others through prayer. The exchanges between Job and his friends were less than cordial. In fact, they were downright testy. What would repair the rift?

How about prayer?

For God could have just ordered the three men to offer their sacrifices to Him and leave it at that but He didn’t. Instead, He has them perform the sacrifices with Job who was to pray for them, a prayer that God would accept before he pardoned. In other words, it was Job’s prayer as much as it was the sacrifices that led to atonement – atonement between God and the three men but I believe also atonement between Job and his friends. Before God restored all of the material things that Job had lost, He chose to reconcile Job’s heart, first to Him and then to his friends.  

God is a God of reconciliation.

Finally, God is a God of forgiveness and mercy. He could have just levied punishment on Job’s three friends, afflicting them as He did Job. But He didn’t. He offered the three men a way to reconciliation through an offered sacrifice and a prayer from Job, the one they had mistreated by not speaking the truth of God.

As I considered this, I couldn’t help but see the parallel between God and us. We all deserve His wrath, punishment, and destruction because of our sins but, like in the case of Job’s friends, God wasn’t willing to allow us to perish. The path to reconciliation was just different.

For we weren’t required to sacrifice bulls and rams to cover our sins. No, God instead sacrificed His only Son, Jesus, for us – the unblemished Lamb of God slain to cover the sins of the world. God loved us that much and all we needed to do after that one sacrifice was to believe and trust in Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior (John 3:16).

And when we do that, something amazing happens. For we ask and receive Jesus into our hearts by way of the Holy Spirit and things change forever. We become new creations, transformed and changed, made better than before.

And the riches that come with our transformation far exceed any of the material riches Job ended up with as God brought all he had before his hardship and then some. For the inheritance we enter into is priceless, eternal and forever – all because of the mercy, love, grace, reconciliation, and forgiveness God shows us through Jesus Christ.

Thanks be to God for all He was, all He is, and all He is yet to be.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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