Job CXV

 Job 9:1-13, “Then Job answered and said: ‘Truly I know it is so, but how can a man be righteous before God? If one wishes to contend with Him, He could not answer Him one time out of a thousand. God is wise in heart and mighty in strength. Who has hardened himself against Him and prospered? He removes the mountains, and they do not know when He overturns them in His anger; He shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble; He commands the sun, and it does not rise; He seals off the stars; He alone spreads out the heavens, and treads on the waves of the sea; He made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south; He does great things past finding out, yes, wonders without number. If He goes by me, I do not see Him; If He moves past, I do not perceive Him; If He takes away, who can hinder Him? Who can say to Him, ‘What are You doing?’ God will not withdraw His anger; the allies of the proud lie prostrate beneath Him.”

Few Scripture passages describe, define, and present God in a more succinct, concentrated, and complete way than Job’s response to Bildad. The sovereignty of God shines through from small things to great, from dealing with individuals to shaking the earth out of its place. The awesomeness, majesty, omnipotence, and grandeur of the God we serve are described in vivid detail in the words Job speaks with such clarity as to humble even the most brittle of souls.

Even after all he’d been through, Job was still in awe of the God he served, understanding his own frailty and insignificance in light of His all-consuming presence. Among the many things lacking in the modern-day church, reverence for God and awe at His majesty rank in the top ten because it’s easy to dismiss, disobey, or otherwise ignore God once these things are stripped away from the individual consciousness. If I hold no reverence, awe, and yes, even godly fear for God, then being in open rebellion toward Him will not seem like such a big thing.

Try as the wolves might to convince the masses that we are on equal footing with God, and therefore, by definition, being little gods in our own right, the Word will always stand firm against such foolishness. Whether the words of Job, the writings of David, Solomon, Jeremiah, Paul, or dozens of others within scripture who understood the majesty of the God they served and were able to verbalize it, we come to understand that there is none like Him. As David once wrote, the Lord is the great God and the great King above all gods. No powers, principalities, kings, princes, or other gods are equal to Him in power, never mind we, who are but frail creations, imputed value, and worth by the presence of the risen Christ in us.

But God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son. Indeed, He did. The motivation was love for His creation and a desire to reconcile mankind unto Himself, not any inherent value man possessed in and of himself. What gives man value is the soul, which God Himself placed within, not the outer flesh that is corruptible and goes back to the dust of the earth. Everything we are is because of who He is and what He’s done, and Job understood this better than most.

His first words, in response to Bildad, were an acknowledgment that only a fool could stand before God and insist upon his own righteousness. How can a man be righteous before God? Short answer, he can’t unless the righteousness of God is imputed upon him.

Job never claimed righteousness. He never stood on a soapbox, beat his chest, and demanded the world behold him in all his blamelessness. He feared the Lord and shunned evil. It is God who deemed him blameless and upright. It is God who singled him out as a man apart, unique in his generation.

When we deem ourselves righteous, not only are the chances high that we aren’t, but pride in our own righteousness becomes a reality and begins to take root and grow in the heart as if out of nowhere. When our singular focus is to be pleasing to the Lord and walk circumspectly with Him rather than project an air of righteousness, we do not possess, what others say about us becomes irrelevant. We are unconcerned about how others view us, see us, or what pompous title they will or won’t attribute to us. It is God and God alone who can look upon us and deem us upright. He holds us to His standard and not our own. It’s not about what I say I am; it’s all about what He says I am.

Men love titles; they always have. Given that everyone wants to feel special in some way or stand out in a crowd, there has been an explosion of people appropriating titles they have no realistic claim to, to the point that everyone and their grandmother is either a prophet, an apostle, a bishop, a deacon, or some offshoot or derivative that screams ‘look at me; I’m more special than those other people.’

At some point, Jesus gets lost in the shuffle, and it becomes all about the person, their ego, their reach, their influence, and their authority. The focus shifts from the kingdom of God to the fiefdoms of men, with everyone sharpening their knives in anticipation of having to protect their piece of the pie.

Among the many reasons the church has become so ineffectual of late, the need for getting the credit, getting the glory, and getting the praise rather than just doing the work and giving all glory to God is running neck and neck with the diluting and watering down of the gospel. I need people to know I did the thing. I need my name on a marquee; I need to name the ministry after myself, and I need to build a brand because it’s what the world tells me I need to do to be successful. The world may, but it’s not the world you should be listening to. What does God say? What does Scripture say about how we should approach ministry and do the work to which we have been called? Our purpose was never to be well pleasing in the sight of the world but to be well pleasing in the sight of the Lord.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.