As long as my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils, my lips will not speak falsehood. And my tongue will not utter deceit.
– Job 27:3–4
What a powerful declaration of desire in Job. He’s basically saying no matter what happens to me, I want to hold fast to my integrity. I want to live and think and speak in righteousness. Job is committed to righteousness, no matter what comes his way. Oh, don’t you want to live this way? No matter what comes your way today to be committed to righteousness. The picture we’ve seen from the very beginning of Job, I think Job 1 and Job 2, in all of this, in light of all that happened to Job, he did not sin against God with his lips. That was the language in Job 1 and 2.
Job 27:3–4 Declares God’s Praise
He worshiped and honored and praised God with his lips, with his heart, with his life in the hardest moments of life. Oh, so can we just pray Job 27:3–4 in our own lives? God, we pray that no matter what comes our way today, or at any point in our lives, God, that we will be righteous, in our thoughts, in our desires, in our actions, in our behavior, in our words, that justice Job said here, as long as my breath is in me and the spirit of God is in my nostrils, my lips will not speak falsehood, and my tongue will not utter deceit.
God, we know that when we walk through difficult days, challenging moments or months or years, that the temptation to turn away from You is ever-present. The temptation to believe that which is not true or to speak that which is not true, or to lash out against You or against others when others wrong us. God, keep us for from sin, we pray in those moments. Help us to live in righteousness, no matter what comes our way. God help us to be pure and holy.
Praise God for His Holiness
I think about Job’s language later in Job 27:6, I hold fast my righteousness and will not let it go. God, we pray that you would help us to hold fast to righteousness, to the righteousness that Jesus has made possible for us. Jesus, we praise You as the sinless completely righteous one, who even when mocked and beaten and scourged and spit upon and nailed to a cross, You held fast to righteousness. Even when tempted to the full, by the adversary, You held fast to righteousness. Jesus, we pray for the power of Your Spirit, Your righteousness at work in us, no matter what comes our way.
God, we pray that at the end of today, just today, God, and we’ll pray the same thing tomorrow God, that at the end of today, no matter what has come our way, we’re going to lay our heads on our pillows tonight, and by Your grace to have held fast to righteousness. God, we pray that today and each day in our lives, in Jesus’ name, the name of the only One who can make this possible in our lives, the Righteous One in Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
