Day 10: Job 24-28

Welcome to 5 -Minute Bible, your daily guide for your daily reading. Today is January the 10th and we'll be reading

Job 24 -28. Now today's reading brings the dialogue in Job to a decisive turning point.

Job 24 -28 remains set in the patriarchal world, long before the law or the priesthood or any of that.

But the conversation now has reached its breaking point. Every human explanation for suffering has now been tried and it has been found wanting.

What remains is not just another argument, but a far more unsettling question whether human beings are capable of finding true wisdom at all.

And suffering is what's exposed this question. Now in chapter 24,

Job again exposes the gap between reality and the tidy explanations that his friends are trying to offer.

He even describes the oppression of the poor and the unchecked success of the wicked as two examples.

Chapter 25 brings Bildad's final and remarkably brief speech that shrinks humanity down before God's greatness without offering any real insight whatsoever.

In chapter 26, Job responds by affirming God's immense power and sovereignty over creation.

And then in chapter 27, Job firmly rejects his friend's conclusions and maintains his own integrity.

Then in chapter 28, the one that rises above the entire debate, in a kind of poetic reflection,

Job acknowledges that while humans can dig deep into the earth in order to uncover all sorts of hidden treasures, wisdom itself cannot be uncovered by human effort.

There's not a shovel or a drill or a plow that can go deep enough to find it. Because wisdom belongs to God alone.

And as we read today, I want you to ask yourself the following question. What do we rely on?

What do you rely on? When our explanations stop working. When we reach the limits of our worldly wisdom.

All of us try to make sense of life. We analyze and compare. We research. We reason.

We tell ourselves stories to survive the pain and the trials that we go through.

But Job 24 -28 confronts us with a very sobering truth. There are moments when human wisdom, no matter how sincere or sophisticated it may seem, simply fails.

The key tension in this text is the collapse of human wisdom. Job's friends speak confidently, but their certainty harms rather than heals.

Their explanations are neat and logical, but wrong. Job himself reasons more carefully, yet even he reaches to the limits of his ability.

He reaches a chasm that he cannot cross. Chapter 28 exposes the problem that every one of us share.

We assume that if we think hard enough, that we explain carefully enough or work long enough, we can figure out life and we can't.

Wisdom does not yield itself to human effort and energy and striving.

It can't be extracted through our experience or mastered through debate. True wisdom is not discovered by humanity, but it is a gift revealed to us by God.

And Job 28 prepares us for the ultimate wisdom, which is Jesus Christ. The wisdom, that wisdom that must come from outside of ourselves.

Because if wisdom belongs to God and wisdom remains hidden from human striving, then salvation requires wisdom itself, wisdom incarnate to descend from heaven.

And Christ, who is the very wisdom of God, doesn't offer us a new technique for unearthing wisdom.

He's wisdom made flesh. Where Job shows the limits of our human rationality,

Christ reveals divine wisdom in human form, living, speaking, suffering, breathing, and obeying

God perfectly. The fear of the Lord is wisdom and Christ fulfills that fear on our behalf, trusting the

Father fully, even when suffering made no human sense. In Jesus, the wisdom that Job longs for, the wisdom that seems just beyond his grasp, steps into human history in the flesh.

As you read Job 24 -28 today, pay close attention to the silence that settles over the conversation.

The arguments fade, the explanations collapse, and wisdom stands just outside of human reach.

But the stage is now set for God Himself to speak, and when He does, human wisdom will finally be put in its place.

And with that, read your Bible carefully, devotionally and joyfully, and may the

Lord use His word to sanctify you completely, and we will continue our journey tomorrow.