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Job 33:19-36:33

Job

33:19-34:20  -  Things are going well. We say, ‘Thank You, God’. We rejoice in the Lord. We give praise to His Name. Everything seems to be going so well - but we need to take care! In the good times, our praise and thanksgiving can go stale. We take God’s blessing for granted. Our rejoicing in the Lord becomes a superficial thing. Things start going badly. We blame God. We say, ‘Where are You, Lord? What are You going to do about this?’. What we must remember is this: The Lord is with us - even when we’re going through hard times. He hasn’t stopped loving us. He hasn’t gone away and left us. He is there beside us, every step of the way. He wants to bring us closer to Himself, to give us this powerful testimony: ‘He redeemed my soul from going down to the pit, and I shall live to enjoy the light’ (33:28-30).
34:21-35:16  -  ‘If you have sinned’ (35:6). Let’s think about Job, Jesus and ourselves. (a) ‘Job feared God and shunned evil’ (1:1). He was not being singled out for special punishment - because he was much more sinful than anyone else. This does not mean he had never sinned (7:21; 13:26). (b) There is only One Man ‘without sin’ - our Lord Jesus Christ (Hebrews  4:14-16). Did this mean that Jesus did not suffer? No! - ‘He suffered for us...He bore our sins...He died for us...He died for our sins’ (1 Peter 2:21-24; Romans 5:8; 1 Corinthians 15:3). (c) There’s no ‘if’ about it! When we sin - What are we to do? Like Job, we must trust in our ‘Redeemer’ - the Lord Jesus Christ (19:25). He gives ‘quietness’ and ‘songs in the night’ (34:29; 35:10). ‘Be still and know that He is God. Shout for joy to Him’ (Psalms 46:10; 98:4).
36:1-33  -  ‘God is mighty, and does not despise any’ (5). God is great - great in power, great in love. How sad it would be if the God of great love had no power to save us! How terrifying  it would be if the God of great power had no love in His heart for us! What a joy it is to know that He is both the God of great power and the God of great love! He is ‘abundant in power’ - and He loves us: ‘He heals the brokenhearted and...lifts up the downtrodden’. What can we say about this God of great power and great love? - ‘Praise the Lord!’. Let us  ‘sing to the Lord with thanksgiving’. Let us ‘make melody to our God’. “It is good to sing praises to our God’ (Psalm 147:1-7). ‘How good is the God we adore! Our faithful, unchangeable Friend. His love is as great as His power and knows neither measure nor end’ (Mission Praise, 244).

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