Month: August 2021

Job 33:26 He shall pray unto God, and he will be favourable unto him: and he shall see his face with joy: for he will render unto man his righteousness.

This third part of God’s promise given through Elihu is still based on the condition of hearing the Word of God. If you listen to God, then God accepts your prayer, you will see God, and you will be restored with the gift of God’s righteousness. Awesome promises come to those who hear the Gospel of God’s word and promise.

The Lord will be favorable to your prayer. Because you believe the gospel you stand in a favorable position before the throne of God. You may know that He receives your prayers and will listen and answer. We wouldn’t pray if we didn’t think He actually hears and responds. He does! You have the right and privilege of being intimate with an almighty and caring God.

You will see His face with joy. An inner shout of joy springs from your spirit when you are in His Loving Presence. We have Jesus’ promise that the pure in heart will see God. We come into His Presence when we receive absolution, hear the gospel, receive the Sacrament, and when we pray in Jesus’ name. There is no greater joy on earth than seeing the face of God.

He gives to us His righteousness for Christ’s sake. Through the gospel the Lord restores to us the righteousness, innocence and blessedness of Paradise. We are accounted righteous by faith in Christ. No lies, fears, taunts and doubts of the devil can dislodge that proclaimed truth.

Job 33:25 His flesh shall be fresher than a child’s; he shall return to the days of his youth.

Elihu adds a conditional promise to the “if you hear the Word of God” condition. The promise is quite amazing: you will feel young again! We hear many false promises about renewed health and youthful vitality: buy this, do that. We know it’s not true, but we get suckered in anyway, because the desire for fresh health and life never goes away. However, we can believe this promise. God is saying, “Hear my Word, listen to Me, believe the Gospel, and your youth will be renewed.”

Can that be true? Yes, the Lord said it. 2 Corinthians 4:16, “Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.” There is no doubt that the physical body is dying, perishing, deteriorating, and getting weaker. And there also should be no doubt that the spiritual soul of a Christian is becoming more alive, growing stronger, and is being renewed every day we live. We do so by looking at the things that are unseen for they are eternal. See also Isaiah 40:31, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength…mount up…run…walk.” Waiting on the Lord means looking to God, listening to Him, praying, and trusting in Him.

We may not feel youthful and strong all the time, but the Word says we are youthful and getting stronger. The physical body says one thing; the spiritual soul says another. Which will you believe? God’s word and promise, which is fresh and new? Or your dying human body, which is old and decaying?

Job 33:24 Then he is gracious unto him, and saith, deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom.

Elihu, a younger man, responds after he accuses the three friends of giving no answers to Job. But in truth, he will do no better than the three.

Elihu offers a conditional promise here. He says God will be gracious and deliver from death. The condition is this: listen to the Word of God first. V. 14: “God speaketh once, yea, twice;” v. 16: “He openeth the ears of men;” v. 23: “If there be a messenger, an interpreter.” In other words, if you listen to the Lord (hear His Word), then He will be gracious and deliver you from the pit (death).

Then he offers these words as the cause of deliverance: “I have found a ransom.” Elihu did not know he was prophesying about the Messiah, who said, “The Son of Man has come to give his life as a ransom for many.” Because of Christ, the Ransom, God will deliver us from the Kidnapper, Sin and Death. We have heard God’s Word, listened to Him, and believed the gospel promise. Therefore, the promise is true: our gracious Lord will deliver us from the evil of eternal death, for He has provided the ransom.

We may pray with confidence, “Deliver us from evil.” Sin, Death, and the Devil are the evil ones of the Pit. We are in the Pit are we are destined for the Eternal Pit unless delivered by the “Ransom.” And we are.

Job 23:10 But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.

In this speech of Job’s God actually gives us three promises: 1) God knows my way, the way that I take; 2) He will try (test, prove) me, like gold is refined in an extremely hot furnace; 3) I will come forth like gold, like a bride that will be beautified and purified.

Jesus knows His sheep. He knows just what we need to put us on the right way and keep us there. He knows my way better than I do. He knows where I’ve been, how I got here, and how to get to the right place.

Honestly, when we are going through the midst of a trial of affliction it doesn’t really help much to know God is doing good for me in the refining process, but when we look back in reflection it is helpful to know God did something good. The Lord heats up the refining furnace, and just when we think we can’t take it any more He turns up the heat. He sees the impurities we can’t see and proceeds with the right purifying process.

In God’s good hands the final result is holiness, which looks like refined pure gold. The final purifying trial will be our own physical death. Then we will finally be pure and holy forever. We will be “like God.” We will see Him as He is and perfectly reflect His glory.

When we believe this “golden” promise we can live through minor irritations and huge catastrophes without complaining. Thank God in everything and for everything. God is always good, as good as gold, and He is always working all things together for good. And thank Him for the furnace!

Job 22:27 Thou shalt make thy prayer unto him, and he shall hear thee, and thou shalt pay thy vows.

There are many promises in Scripture that the Lord will hear our prayers. This promise, spoken by Eliphaz to Job has a contingency: if you return to the Almighty. Eliphaz had mistakenly accused Job of great wickedness and infinite iniquity. This was the reason for his great suffering. So repent. But Job did repent and believe, for he feared (believed) God and eschewed evil.

Even though the accusation may be false, the call to repent is still valid for all of us. It is still fitting, right, and salutary for us to repent daily, for we are still sinners every day, and we always need to return. Life distracts and blinds us to our sin and our need. Drifting away from conscious awareness of God, from humility and dependence, and from the need for Jesus happens all too easily. So return! As the Lord says to Martha, “You are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.” That “one thing” is Me. Listen to me! Return!

Repentance is embedded in the Lord’s Prayer. It centers us. We return. Then we have the promise: “He shall hear you.” The Lord is always ready to hear our prayers, but when we prepare our minds and open our hearts through repentance and faith in the gospel we are ready to believe He hears.

Job 22:23 If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up, thou shalt put away iniquity far from thy tabernacles.

Eliphaz is reprimanding Job in this speech spouting the conventional wisdom that his sins are causing his sufferings. According to the friends, the intense suffering of Job is directly caused by his serious sins. It must be, for why would it be so bad? In 22:5, Eliphaz scolds and asks: “Is not your evil abundant? There is no end to your iniquities.” Neither Job nor his friends know that his pain is directly caused by Satan without cause.

However, we must admit that God has permitted Satan to inflict the loss and the pain, up to a limit. So in some sense, God is the ultimate cause of bad things, though Sin and Satan is the direct cause. God has His reasons, which we may never find out, but we may be sure that that His reasons are good ones, his will is always good and gracious, and in the end He will work it out together for good for His kids.

Meanwhile, the conditional promise given through Eliphaz is still true: if you return to the Lord (repent and believe), then you will be built up. He is right in calling for all of us to repent daily and believe the gospel. Then the promise comes true: He will build you up, your soul, your life, your family, your eternity. Daily repentance and faith in Jesus builds us up and makes present and real all the promises of God. Job’s end was better than his present state. And so will yours be, if you return.

Job 19:25, 26, 27 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.

In the depths of despair and in the midst of complaint Job breaks out with this amazing declaration of faith. It is amazing that Job could see the resurrected body of his Redeemer and that he would, in his own resurrected body, see Him face to face. This proclamation is so miraculous that it had to be the Holy Spirit inspiring him to believe in and speak of his resurrected Redeemer.

Job expresses his faith in five different but related truths: 1) I have a redeemer, a person who will rescue me and bring me back from sin and misery; 2) this redeemer lives, himself resurrected from death to live eternally; 3) He will be in a resurrected body, standing on this physical earth at the last day; 4) after my physical body is utterly decayed I will see him with physical eyes in my resurrected human body (“flesh,” which is body and soul). 5) the Redeemer I will see is God, not someone else, not some vision, delusion, ghost, or phantasm.

Maggots (skin worms) will destroy my body and my vital internal organs (reins) will be consumed. Sin causes death and destruction. But I have a promise: because of the first resurrection, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, my body will rise up from death and decay and be transformed into an eternal, incorruptible, spiritual body. And this I know: the One who redeemed me is living still, and I will, too. And this is true, no matter what I am presently feeling. This may be the most powerful Promise ever spoken or recorded.

Job 9:3233 For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment. Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might put his hand upon us both.

This is not a promise as such, but it is an implied promise. It is actually a prayer, a request, a hope, a dream spoken by Job in his misery. He is praying for a man to be a mediator between Almighty God and himself, a mortal man. His hope and prayer turns out to be a Messianic Prophecy of Jesus Christ. He is the answer to Job’s prayer. He is the only hope for every human. He is the promise of God become visible and real and vital for us. He is the God become a man. He is the mediator (“daysman” in KJV) between us, who puts his hand upon us both.

1 Timothy 2:5: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” 1 John 2:1: “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate (attorney, mediator, daysman) with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” God, to whom man can find no way, has in Christ creatively and effectively opened up the way in which may and must go. Job could not know this, of course, ahead of time, but he could still believe God to create a way where there is no way. He could not see a way for the Almighty, Eternal, All Holy God to be united with puny, mortal sinful humans. But God did it.

We often find ourselves in impossible predicaments with no visible way out, but our Lord will find a way. He promises. And if He can do it with the most intractable problem ever, He can and He will do it with our problems.

Job 8:20, 21 Behold, God will not cast away a perfect man, neither will he help the evil doers; till he fill thy mouth with laughing, and thy lips with rejoicing.

Bildad continues his false theological presumptions that God rewards the good man and punishes the bad man; therefore, Job must have sinned. But within this implied accusation is a true promise from God: God gives us joy and laughter, but joy comes from God’s goodness toward us, not as a reward for our goodness to Him.

Joy is one aspect of the fruit of the Spirit. The Father and the Son place the Holy Spirit within us and He promises and produces inner joy and outward laughter. Sin and misbelief will try to smother the joy of the Lord, but it is still there. The Spirit uncovers the joy and refreshes the spirit upon our hearing the gospel and receiving forgiveness. “I bring you good tidings of great joy.” Now by faith we rejoice in the Lord always with songs and shouts of thanks and praise.

Jesus did not come into our lives just to make us happy, or simply to make us feel good, but laughter and rejoicing is a definite result of His coming. And as we abide in Him and stay connected to Jesus through the gospel true Joy will deepen and flourish.

Job 8:7 Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase.

Bildad is speaking here, and he is quite certain that this suffering has come upon Job because of some sin and that if he were perfect then evil would not come. This is one of those times when the friends have not spoken of the Lord what is right. But we know from other Scriptures that what he speaks in this verse is a promise of God.

The promise is that our faith, our wisdom, our knowledge, our understanding, our walk with God, the kingdom in us, and our love and good works starts out small but it will greatly increase. This is in reality a fact of life and a life principle of the created universe. Everything, at least every living thing, starts small and then greatly increases. It applies to everything that we learn about or learn to do. Our Lord applies this truth to our spiritual life to encourage us and give us hope. We grow in grace. Our faith increases. The kingdom gets larger. We actually do become better people. Love, joy, and peace take root and grow out and deeper.

Faith begins as a mustard seed and grows up to become a small tree. Just as every living thing begins as a small seed and grows, take heart, your spiritual life does the same. “Your latter end greatly increases.” God will finished what He started in you. Your inward man is being renewed every day. We do not always see the growth of any plant or animal from day to day, but we know it grows. So also it is with our faith and life that lives in the inner man. It grows and its end is greatly increased. And we can’t even get a clue regarding what wonderful things the Lord has in store for us. Because we believe this promise we want to keep feeding the life that God gave us.