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3/13 Reading Portions: Exodus 24; John 3; Job 42; 2 Corinthians 12
Job 42:6
“…therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
SUMMATION
The book of Job is summed up in this last chapter; and today’s verse is the blessed and exalted key to its summation. Job repents for having justified himself before his friends. After YHVH God’s discourse, Job recognized that he “uttered what [he] did not understand” (Job 42:3), and that he heard of God from his fathers, but now he has seen God with eyes of faith in a personal, more intimate way. The truths of Romans’ seventh and eighth chapters are reconciled at the end of Job’s story today. When the majesty of almighty God is revealed to fallen man, that His Word is “holy and righteous and good” (Rom 7:12), the apostle cries out like Job before him…
Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Romans 7:24
Repentance is a grace of God, continually needed because of the corruption remaining in our mortal flesh (though we are saved by grace). The grace of repentance can only be received and engaged when we sink in the residue of dust and ashes. The pride of self-exaltation and self-justification burns to dust and ash by the revelation of the glory of Jesus Christ, the eternal God who must become a Man and die like disobedient, dusty Adam, and suffer God’s wrath until the ashes of man’s sin are paid in full. Jesus paid a debt He did not owe for a debt we owe and cannot possibly pay. The results are majestic and manifold, and here are a few. Those in error, like Eliphaz, Zophar, and Bildad, because they were in the presence of a penitent man of God, they could hear the Word of God. Because Job recognized the sovereign majesty of God, understanding that he was a mere creature and servant of the Creator, Job could be used to bless his ill-comforters, since there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1), and because it “is God who justifies” and He alone (Rom 8:33). We may not suffer as deeply or extensively as Job; nevertheless, our heavenly Father has allowed us to endure the drama of life, that He may be made known, and that He may bless others through our repentance in the dust and ashes of Christ’s cross. Hallelujah! What a Savior!
The suff’rings we endure today
Give true repentance holy sway,
So God in Christ will make a way
That we can “see” what Christ doth say.