Topic : Job

Resources

• Bibliotheca Sacra 138:550:139, Structure and Purpose: Literary features of
• Bibliotheca Sacra 138:551:213, Structure and Purpose
• Swindoll, 1 Step Forward, pp. 50ff; Starting Over, p. 47
• Disappointment With God, Philip Yancey, Zondervan
• Joseph Stowell, Through The Fire, Victor Books, 1988, pp. 121ff

Resources

• The Upside of Down, Joe Stowell, Moody, 1991, pp.174ff
• The Strong Family, Bible Study Guide by C. Swindoll, p. 120
• C. Swindoll, Growing Pains

Trusting God in Trials

Mary Kimbrough composed this poem based in Job 13:15, which underscores the wisdom of trusting God through trial:

“Though He slay me, I will trust Him,”
Said the sainted Job of old;
“Though He try me in the furnace,
I shall then come forth as gold.

“Though the ‘worms of deep affliction’
Cause this body to decay,
In my flesh I shall behold Him —
My Redeemer—some glad day.”

“Though He slay me”—can I say it
When I feel the searing fire,
When my fondest dreams lie shattered —
Gone my hope and fond desire'

“Though He slay me, I will trust Him,”
For He knows just how to mold,
How to melt and shape my spirit —
I shall then come forth as gold!

Our Daily Bread, January 3, 1995

Resources

• “Evangelical Preaching,” Charles Simeon, p. 105

God Explodes

God doesn’t explain. He explodes. He asks Job who he thinks he is anyway. He says that to try to explain the kind of things Job wants explained would be like trying to explain Einstein to a little-neck clam...God doesn’t reveal his grand design. He reveals himself.

Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, p. 46, quoted in Disappointment With God, Philip Yancey, Zondervan, p. 190

Resources

• “Evangelical Preaching,” Charles Simeon, p. 89

Resources

• “Evangelical Preaching,” Charles Simeon, p. 233

Leviathan

“In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea” (Isaiah 27:1).

There is a remarkable animal called a “leviathan,” described in the direct words of God in the 41st chapter of Job. It is surprising that most modern expositors call this animal merely a crocodile. Our text plainly calls it a “piercing serpent...the dragon that is in the sea.” He is also said to “play” in the “great and wide sea” (Psalm 104:25,26). God’s description, in Job 41, says “a flame goeth out of his mouth” (v. 21) and “he maketh the deep to boil like a pot” (v. 31). The entire description is awesome! Whatever a leviathan might have been , it was not a crocodile!

In fact, there is no animal living today which fits the description. Therefore, it is an extinct animal, almost certainly a great marine reptile, still surviving in the oceans of Job’s day, evidently one of the fearsome reptiles that gave rise to the worldwide tales of great sea dragons, before they became extinct.

But that is not all. In ending His discourse, God called leviathan “a king over all the children of pride” (Job 41:34), so the animal is also symbolic of Satan, whose challenge to God instigated Job’s strange trials. He is “the great dragon...that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world” (Revelation 12:9). Perhaps, therefore, the mysterious and notorious extinction of the dinosaurs is a secular prophecy of the coming Day of Judgment when God “shall punish leviathan” (Isaiah 27:1) and the “devil that deceived them” will be “cast into the lake of fire...and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Revelation 20:10). HMM

Our Daily Bread, Saturday, October 31.

Resources

• The Strong Family, Bible Study Guide by C. Swindoll, p. 120