One Year Bible, September 1

JOB 40:1 - 42:17                                                                                                    
"MOREOVER" GOD SPEAKS AGAIN: "Job, do you still want to argue with God?"

JOB'S REPLY: "No Sir!"  What more could he say to the God he had misjudged?  He had charged God with cruelty, when God was working out His purposes of LOVE.  But God wants more from Job: Job is still clinging to his integrity!  Job's power is and was not his own.  Instead of clining to his integrity, Job would be better clinging to God Himself. 

BEHEMOTH                                                                         LEVIATHAN
God                                                                                          Satan
Christ                                                                                       Antichrist - a fraud
The Truth                                                                                 The Lie
Righteousness                                                                          Unrighteousness
Life                                                                                          Death
GODLY - "chief of the ways of God"                       UNGODLY - "king over all the sons of pride."
tamed by God                                                                          wild and hardhearted
swallows up "Jordan" (death)                                                   spews out flames and smoke

JOB'S REPLY TO REAL STRENGTH:   He is not even clinging to his integrity any more! "I abhor myself."  Job moved from "hearing" to "seeing" (v.5),  Job is content.

RESTORATION:   Job is vindicated and then restored. God even dealt with Job's "friends": their intention was right, but what they said was wrong. They were restored through Job's ministry.  Everyone that knew Job before, came and comforted him for the "adversity that the Lord had brought upon him." (42:11)

THE TEST:   Although Job had lost everything, he still clung to God.   SATAN LOST.  Job loved God because He is God, not because of the rewards.  Job received a DOUBLE PORTION from God.  He was "more than a conqueror".

RESPONSE:  Rom 8:35-39, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

"You have heard of the PATIENCE OF JOB" -  Endurance, what it takes to go the distance. Job had it. It IS possible to maintain Christian integrity and dependence on God in the worst of circumstances.

2 CORINTHIANS 5:11-21                                                                                                        
THE SECRET OF UNSELFISHNESS:  The love of Christ.   I have no life of my own.  My whole life is a sacrificial offering to God and to His mission.  The "old me" is dead.  The love of Christ has me in its grasp.   It is irresistible and I have no choice but to do what He says.  And the essence that gives that love power is that Christ loved us and gave Himself for us.   He took my place and died MY DEATH.  He was my representative and my substitute.  The force of that love has absolute authority over my whole life.  We are His forever.  My life can never be my own.   All I was apart from Christ has lost its significance.   My old life "passes away" by the "law of reduced interests".   The old gets filtered out, bringing about "singlemindedness".   Not even Jesus is known "after the flesh" - hence no gender, no race, no class distinctions.  Knowing Jesus in the flesh like His apostles did, does not hold the significance of knowing Him in His death and resurrection - as we ALL DO.  In His physical death and ours "with Him" and "in Him", the carnal or fleshly distinctions pass away so that we don't know ANYONE by the flesh and our old fleshly ways of looking at Jesus are gone too!  His love constrains us all!

THE NEW UNSELFISH ME!   My past is as dead as Jesus was on His Cross! This is what it really means to be a Christian: Christ died FOR me and AS me!  It is the most intimate union possible.  I love and trust God, and lose SELF in One Whose Life is Greater and Bigger than I.  The actual putting away of the old and production of the new is a lifelong process; but there is a definite day and time when I assumed my new identity (got born again). The is the daily walk of faith. I live AS Him, and He lives AS me.  I "grow up into Him" (Eph 4:15).  I AM A NEW PERSON AND LIVE IN A NEW WORLD.

RECONCILIATION:   We were estranged from God, and now we've been reconciled through the love of Christ. The estrangement was two-sided: the reconciliation was something GOD ACCOMPLISHED because His obstacle was so much greater than ours. He dealt with our "trespasses" and His wrath against sin (Rom 1:16-18) and all we had to deal with was our "distrust".  We aren't making peace with God - He had to make peace with us!   The Cross is God's awful demonstration of His Love. God made peace through His Son, and now God makes His appeal through us!   It is not that we have no more against God - but that God no longer holds our sin again us!  Our condemnation became His and we are now justified by our faith in Jesus.  We are accepted in God's sight - the "the God of all comfort".

RESPONSE:   Sometimes when God tries to comfort me, I'm sure it's like comforting a wounded dog who bites his rescuer.  When I first got this revelation about the crucifixion of SELF, I was afraid my personality and identity would get swallowed up somehow - and I would be disappointed because I'd have no more "self-expression". (Hah!)   Now, I am more concerned that my personality and identity WON'T get swallowed up so that Jesus can be seen in me!  To tell the truth, I hope that NO BELIEVER would "just be himself".   We are supposed to be Jesus! And since learning to ENDURE, instead of SURVIVING - God is changing me, and my personality is much better and more expressive as God wants it.  I don't want to ever have self-centered "self-expression".   All those hyphenated "self-" words are appalling and disgusting to me.   I guess that should scare me, because whenever I see a speck in my brother's eye, it's probably because of the beam in my own!

PSALM 45:1-17                                                                                                                    
THE BRIDE OF JESUS:  "My heart is overflowing" - I think God is totally in love with each one of us.   The "grooms garments" (Jesus) smell like "myrrh, aloes, and cassia" which are all sweet-smelling spices that express His "gladness". The Bride is advised to forget her people and give herself to her Groom.

PROVERBS 22:14                                                                                                               
"The flattering words of a temptress (sin) are a pit" - and a person who willfully and habitually rejects the wooing of the Holy Spirit, is vulnerable to the temptress's wooing.


RESPONSE: In Hebrews 12:14-17 is a troubling account of how a "bitter" man falls prey to being a "fornicator". When we close off our hearts to God and rebuff His advances to us, we become susceptible to unlawful affections. People look attractive to someone who doesn't know that God loves him.  Our hearts are so needy and crave acceptance so much, that substitutes can look inviting if we are not getting those needs taken care of by our relationship with Christ Jesus.