#DailyDevotion God Intends To Purify Our Faith
February 20th
Read Job 15:1–23, 30–35
Job 15:12-16 Why does your heart carry you away, and why do your eyes flash, (13) that you turn your spirit against God and bring such words out of your mouth? (14) What is man, that he can be pure? Or he who is born of a woman, that he can be righteous? (15) Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight; (16) how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks injustice like water!
Eliphaz can hardly handle himself listening to Job. What Job says about himself cannot be true. He really must have done something really wrong to have the Lord lay this trouble upon him or so Eliphaz thinks. Job certainly has confessed in the previous chapter that he is not without fault. Job has confessed that he is a sinful man. He just doesn’t think he’s done anything to deserve this.
Eliphaz is correct in his words though, there is no pure man but Jesus Christ. There is no one born of woman who is righteous but Jesus Christ. Anything and everything in all creation is not perfect because even the angels have their limits, they are not eternal like God. They are not omnipotent, omniscient or omnipresent. Much less so is humankind who not only does evil but invents wickedness.
So we may want to curb our speech when we talk about God. We want to make sure we speak rightly about him and to him especially before others. People should not think that we have turned against God in our complaint.
Luckily for us there is a man who is pure and who is righteous. It is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the pure and spotless Lamb of God. That’s only lucky for us if Jesus is the Lamb of God for us. As the Lamb of God, Jesus has taken away the sin of the world. That means your sin. The Father has laid all our sin, iniquity, guilt and shame upon Jesus. He is our scapegoat. He has become sin so that you may become the righteousness of God. We need to remember this in the midst of our suffering. If this is true then what we are suffering is not because of the wrath of God. He is purifying our faith calling us continually to repentance and faith in Christ.
Heavenly Father, in the midst of trouble help us to remember your Son Jesus Christ our precious lamb who has become sin for us that we may become your righteousness. In Jesus’ name. Amen.