Job 22; Job 23; Job 24; Acts 11

Job 22

1 Then Eliphaz from Teman answered:

2 Can a human being be useful to God? Can an intelligent person bring profit?

3 Does the Almighty delight in your innocence? Does he gain when you perfect your ways?

4 Does he rebuke you for your piety, bring you in for judgment?

5 Isn't your wickedness massive, your iniquity endless?

6 You have taken payments from your family for no reason; stripped the naked, leaving no clothes;

7 denied water to the thirsty, withheld bread from the starving.

8 (The powerful own land; the favored live in it.)

9 You have sent widows away empty; crushed orphans' resources.

10 For this reason, snares surround you; sudden dread brings panic to you

11 or a darkness that you can't see; rushing water will cover you.

12 Isn't God in the heights of heaven; see how high the topmost stars are?

13 You say: "What does God know? Can he judge through thick clouds?

14 Clouds conceal him so he can't see while he walks on heaven's rim."

15 Will you keep the ancient way traveled by sinful persons,

16 who were snatched prematurely when a river flooded their foundations,

17 who say to God, "Turn away from us; what can the Almighty do to us?"

18 Yet he filled their houses with good things; a sinner's logic is beyond me.

19 The righteous see and rejoice; the innocent mock them:

20 our enemies are certainly cut off; fire will devour what's left of them.

21 Get along well with God and be at peace; from this something good will come to you.

22 Receive instruction from his mouth; put his words in your mind.

23 If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored; if you keep wrongdoing out of your tent.

24 Lay your prized possession in the dust, your gold from Ophir on a rock in a desert streambed.

25 The Almighty will be your prized possession, silver piled up for you.

26 Then you will take pleasure in the Almighty; lift up your face to God.

27 You will pray to him, and he will hear you; you will fulfill your solemn promises.

28 If you decree something, it will stand; light will shine on your ways.

29 When they're humbled, you will say: "Cheer up; God will rescue the lowly.

30 He will deliver the guilty; they will be saved by your pure hands."

Job 23

1 Job answered:

2 Today my complaint is again bitter; my strength is weighed down because of my groaning.

3 Oh, that I could know how to find him— come to his dwelling place;

4 I would lay out my case before him, fill my mouth with arguments,

5 know the words with which he would answer, understand what he would say to me.

6 Would he contend with me through brute force? No, he would surely listen to me.

7 There those who do the right thing can argue with him; I could escape from my judge forever.

8 Look, I go east; he's not there, west, and don't discover him;

9 north in his activity, and I don't grasp him; he turns south, and I don't see.

10 Surely he knows my way; when he tests me, I will emerge as gold.

11 My feet have stayed right in his tracks. I have kept his way and not left it,

12 kept the commandments from his lips and not departed, valued the words from his mouth more than my food.

13 He is of one mind; who can reverse it? What he desires, he does.

14 He carries out what is decreed for me and can do many similar things with me.

15 Therefore, I am scared by his presence; I think and become afraid of him.

16 God has weakened my mind; the Almighty has frightened me.

17 Still I'm not annihilated by darkness; he has hidden deep darkness from me.

Job 24

1 Why doesn't the Almighty establish times for punishment? Why can't those who know him see his days?

2 People move boundary stones, herd flocks they've stolen,

3 drive off an orphan's donkey, take a widow's ox as collateral,

4 thrust the poor out of the way, make the land's needy hide together.

5 They are like the wild donkeys in the desert; they go forth at dawn searching for prey; the wasteland is food for their young.

6 They gather their food in the field, glean in unproductive vineyards,

7 spend the night naked, unclothed, in the cold without a cover,

8 wet from mountain rains, with no refuge, huddled against a rock.

9 The orphan is stolen from the breast; the infant of the poor is taken as collateral.

10 The poor go around naked, without clothes, carry bundles of grain while hungry,

11 crush olives between millstones, tread winepresses, but remain thirsty.

12 From the city, the dying cry out; the throat of the mortally wounded screams, but God assigns no blame.

13 They rebel against light, don't acknowledge its direction, don't dwell in its paths.

14 The murderer rises at twilight, kills the poor and needy; at night, they are like a thief.

15 The adulterer's eye watches for twilight, thinking, No eye can see me, and puts a mask over his face.

16 In the dark they break into houses; they shut themselves in by day; they don't know the light.

17 Deep darkness is morning to them because they recognize the horror of darkness.

18 They are scum on the water's surface; their portion of the land is cursed; no one walks down a path in the vineyards.

19 Drought and heat steal melted snow, just as the underworld steals sinners.

20 The womb forgets them; the worm consumes them; they aren't remembered, and so wickedness is shattered like a tree.

21 They prey on the barren, the childless, do nothing good for the widow.

22 They drag away the strong by force; they may get up but without guarantee of survival.

23 They make themselves secure; they are at ease. His eyes are on their ways.

24 They are exalted for a short time, but no longer. They are humbled then gathered in like everyone else; cut off like heads of grain.

25 If this isn't so, who can prove me a liar and make my words disappear?

Acts 11

1 The apostles and the brothers and sisters throughout Judea heard that even the Gentiles had welcomed God's word.

2 When Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him.

3 They accused him, "You went into the home of the uncircumcised and ate with them!"

4 Step-by-step, Peter explained what had happened.

5 "I was in the city of Joppa praying when I had a visionary experience. In my vision, I saw something like a large linen sheet being lowered from heaven by its four corners. It came all the way down to me.

6 As I stared at it, wondering what it was, I saw four-legged animals—including wild beasts—as well as reptiles and wild birds.

7 I heard a voice say, ‘Get up, Peter! Kill and eat!'

8 I responded, ‘Absolutely not, Lord! Nothing impure or unclean has ever entered my mouth.'

9 The voice from heaven spoke a second time, ‘Never consider unclean what God has made pure.'

10 This happened three times, then everything was pulled back into heaven.

11 At that moment three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea arrived at the house where we were staying.

12 The Spirit told me to go with them even though they were Gentiles. These six brothers also went with me, and we entered that man's house.

13 He reported to us how he had seen an angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and summon Simon, who is known as Peter.

14 He will tell you how you and your entire household can be saved.'

15 When I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as the Spirit fell on us in the beginning.

16 I remembered the Lord's words: ‘John will baptize with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.'

17 If God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, then who am I? Could I stand in God's way?"

18 Once the apostles and other believers heard this, they calmed down. They praised God and concluded, "So then God has enabled Gentiles to change their hearts and lives so that they might have new life."

19 Now those who were scattered as a result of the trouble that occurred because of Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch. They proclaimed the word only to Jews.

20 Among them were some people from Cyprus and Cyrene. They entered Antioch and began to proclaim the good news about the Lord Jesus also to Jews who spoke Greek.

21 The Lord's power was with them, and a large number came to believe and turned to the Lord.

22 When the church in Jerusalem heard about this, they sent Barnabas to Antioch.

23 When he arrived and saw evidence of God's grace, he was overjoyed and encouraged everyone to remain fully committed to the Lord.

24 Barnabas responded in this way because he was a good man, whom the Holy Spirit had endowed with exceptional faith. A considerable number of people were added to the Lord.

25 Barnabas went to Tarsus in search of Saul.

26 When he found him, he brought him to Antioch. They were there for a whole year, meeting with the church and teaching large numbers of people. It was in Antioch where the disciples were first labeled "Christians."

27 About that time, some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch.

28 One of them, Agabus, stood up and, inspired by the Spirit, predicted that a severe famine would overtake the entire Roman world. (This occurred during Claudius' rule.)

29 The disciples decided they would send support to the brothers and sisters in Judea, with everyone contributing to this ministry according to each person's abundance.

30 They sent Barnabas and Saul to take this gift to the elders.