When God appeared to Job in chapter 38, He revealed Himself to Job as the Creator, who “ ‘divided a channel for the overflowing water,’ ” the One who made “ ‘a path for the thunderbolt, to cause it to rain on a land where there is no one’ ” (Job 38:25-26, NKJV). Our Lord, … Continue reading –>
Read for This Week’s Study: Job 19:25–27; John 1:1–14; Job 10:4-5; Luke 2:11; Gal. 4:19; Luke 9:22; Isa. 53:1–6. Memory Text: “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4, NKJV). With the sudden appearance of the Lord Himself, beginning in chapter … Continue reading –>
Further Thought: “God has permitted a flood of light to be poured upon the world in both science and art; but when professedly scientific men treat upon these subjects from a merely human point of view, they will assuredly come to wrong conclusions. It may be innocent to speculate beyond what God’s word has revealed, … Continue reading –>
Read Job 40:1–4 and Job 42:1–6. What was Job’s response to God’s revelation of Himself? Obviously Job was overwhelmed by what God had shown him. In fact, in Job 42:3, when he says, “ ‘ “Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?” ’ ” (NKJV), he was simply repeating God’s first question to him. … Continue reading –>
From our perspective today, it’s easy to look at the questions that God had asked Job and realize how little a man like Job, living thousands of years ago, could understand about the created world. It wasn’t until the A.D. 1500s, for instance, that humans (at least some of them) finally understood that the motion … Continue reading –>
Read Job 38:4–41. What questions does God ask Job, and what is the purpose of those questions? If Job expected some detailed explanation about why all these calamities happened to him, he didn’t get it. Instead, what he got was a flow of rhetorical questions contrasting the Lord in His creative might to the transience … Continue reading –>
After what must have seemed to Job like a very long silence, God finally speaks to him, even if what He first said might not have been what Job wanted to hear. What was the first question that God asked Job, and what was implied in that question? Job 38:2. All through the Bible we … Continue reading –>
Read Job 38:1. What happens here that is different from everything else in all the other dialogues? Suddenly and unexpectedly, the Lord now appears in the book of Job, the first time since Job 2:6—“And the LORD said to Satan, ‘Behold, he is in your hand, but spare his life’ ” (NKJV). Nothing really prepares … Continue reading –>
Read for This Week’s Study: Job 38-39, John 1:29, Matt. 16:13, 1 Cor. 1:18–27, Job 40:1–4, Job 42:1–6, Luke 5:1–8. Memory Text: “ ‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding’ ” (Job 38:4, NKJV). Whatever their differences, the characters in the book of Job had one … Continue reading –>
Further Thought: In a discussion concerning the question of faith and reason, author John Hedley Brooke wrote about the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and his attempt to understand the limits of human knowledge, especially when it came to the working of God. For Kant, “the question of justifying the ways of God to man … Continue reading –>
