Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

How then can a mortal be righteous before God?
    How can one born of woman be pure?
If even the moon is not bright
    and the stars are not pure in his eyes,
how much less a mortal, who is but a maggot—
    a human being, who is only a worm!”

• Job 25:4-6

Maybe one reason that this chapter of Job had not been quoted is that it is only six verses in length.  Bildad the Shuhite replies to Job to ask how a mere man can respond to God.  As he says, we are mere worms to the God whose home is the entire universe.

As the chapter starts out, God has dominion.  He is sovereign over all things, so if we have the temerity to question God’s methods or reasons to do this or that, we are acting well out of our station.

But as Philip Yancey wrote in his book, The Bible Jesus Read, the book of Job has about 30 chapters that we could do without.  The first two chapters are instructive.  Then you have Job complaining while his friends use every pop psychology of that day to “cheer” him up.  In fact, in those chapters, you can get a lot of wrong theology by taking it out of context.

We are called children of God.  God loves us.  There are ample reasons why we can ask for things or ask why God did something one way or the other.

God is still sovereign, and we may not like the answer that we get, but God loves us enough to answer our questions.  Some may not get answered until we are with God in Heaven, but He has remembered all our questions.

Is man righteous?  No, except in the Son of God, Jesus.

Are we worms?  If considering our strength and longevity, we might as well be, but when we accept Jesus into our hearts, we are called sons of God.  That is not exactly wormlike.

Yes, we are born of woman, but God lifts us up when we accept Jesus into our hearts.  We may not be pure in this world, but what God sees is someone whose sins are washed away.

Be careful in the book of Job to understand the context and who is speaking.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory