Quote for the Day
“… you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.”
Today's Prayer
This week pray that God will be real to those on the road. Ask God to give those traveling a sense of His comfort and His peace. For those at home ask God to comfort them with his perfect peace and love.
Job 42:7-17
Job 42:7-17 (NIV)7 After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. 8 So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the LORD told them; and the LORD accepted Job’s prayer.10 After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before. 11 All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.12 The LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. 13 And he also had seven sons and three daughters. 14 The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. 15 Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.16 After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. 17 And so he died, old and full of years.
Message
The answer from God was a hard one to take, but the validation of his relationship and knowledge of God must have been one of the sustaining events for Job’s life. After so much pain and suffering and false accusations, having God Himself telling the friends that Job had spoken correctly of God must have been a true comfort to Job. But look closely and you will see it did NOT go to his head. God asks Job to pray for his friends, and he does. He did not drop them or leave them behind. Instead, he did exactly what God had asked, just like he had done for his children in years past. He brought the friends before the throne of God in prayer. Why? Because he loved them with God’s love. Job did not let sin get in the way. Rather, he chose to do as God asked and was blessed because of it.So is the moral of the story that we should obey God and then we are doubly blessed? Certainly not. As Job commented throughout the book (and God has just said Job spoke correctly about Him), our life on earth is a mere moment in time. The punishment of the wicked and the rewards of the righteous are at the discretion of God during this life and fully implemented in the next. Yes, God rewarded Job after this event, but Job looked to God and his relationship with Him as the true reward. He never once asked for the reward of pleasures in this life. He sought God alone, and in that was his reward. As we seek God, He will reward us…with His presence.