Welcome to today's Daily PBJ devotional. Read Exodus 10, Job 28, and Psalm 58 if you're reading through the Old Testament with us this year. This devotional is about Job 28. Surely there is a mine for silver, And a place where gold is refined. Iron is taken from the earth, And copper is smelted from ore. Man puts an end to the darkness, He probes the farthest recesses For ore in deepest darkness. Far from human habitation He cuts a shaft, In places forgotten by the foot of man. Far from men he dangles and sways. Food may come from the earth, But from below it is transformed as by fire. Its rocks are the source of sapphires, Containing flecks of gold. No bird of prey knows that path, No falcon's eye has seen it. Proud beasts have never trodden it, No lion has ever prowled over it. The miner strikes the flint. He overturns mountains at their base. He hues out channels in the rocks, and his eyes spot every treasure. He stops up the sources of the streams to bring what is hidden to light. But where can wisdom be found? And where does understanding dwell? No man can know its value, nor is it found in the land of the living. The ocean depths say, It is not in me, while the sea declares, It is not with me. It cannot be bought with gold, nor can its price be weighed out like silver. It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir, in precious onyx or sapphire. Neither gold nor crystal can compare to it, nor jewels of fine gold be exchanged for it. Coral and quartz are unworthy of mention. The price of wisdom is beyond rubies. Topaz from Kush cannot compare to it, nor can it be valued in pure gold. From where then does wisdom come? And where does understanding dwell? It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing, and concealed from the birds of the air. Abaddon and Death say, We have heard a rumor about it, but God understands its way, and He knows its place. For He looks to the ends of the earth, and sees everything under the heavens. When God fixed the weight of the wind, and measured out the waters, when He set a limit for the rain, and a path for the thunderbolt, When he looked at wisdom and appraised it, he established it and searched it out. And he said to man, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding. This is God's word. In this beautiful chapter, Job meditated on the scarce resource of wisdom. In the first 11 verses, he talked about how people extract precious minerals from the earth. It is a complete pain to get silver, gold, iron, and precious gems out of the earth. Despite how difficult and dangerous it is, men will do it because these things have immense value. The value of owning and selling these natural resources far outweigh the expense and trouble it takes to extract them from the earth. But what about wisdom? It is more valuable than anything. So where can wisdom be found, as Job asked in verse 12a in the NIV? You can't mine it from the earth, as we saw in verses 13 through 19. And it is invisible to anyone but God, according to verses 20 through 27. Fortunately, God has revealed it to humanity. Verse 28 says, And he said to the human race, The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding. That's the NIV's translation of verse 28. We live in a society that is increasingly secular and becoming hostile to our faith. Those who denounce Christianity will try to tell you how the increase in human knowledge makes faith unnecessary, and in fact shows how useless faith truly is. It is true that we enjoy many human inventions and innovations, and most of those were not discovered or created by Christians. Yet we also see in our society that, despite how educated and confident we are about our learning and scientific discoveries, people are becoming more and more foolish. They believe that gender is not biological, that sexual promiscuity of all kinds is acceptable and harmless to a person and society. They believe that free speech is oppressive and that human governments have the answers to all human problems, if only we gave them more power and more money. Meanwhile, people in our society are prosperous, but unhappy. They have access to healthy food and excellent health care, but live in despair. They form families, then tear them apart through divorce. Then they wonder why their kids are closed off emotionally and turned to destructive behaviors like drunkenness and substance abuse. These are the consequences of not fearing the Lord. God will let you make sinful choices and live your own way. You may become very well educated, too. but you will lose all access to wisdom if you don't fear the Lord. The poor choices people make morally, and the pain they experience because of those choices, are symptoms of the folly of rejecting God and His Word. You and I know better, to some extent, if we know the Lord. But we can still be deceived by the ways of this world. This passage calls us to stop and reflect. Are we living in the fear of God and growing in wisdom? Or does the wisdom of this world seem to make better sense to us because we've departed from the Lord's ways? Wisdom is the most valuable resource humanity can have. And it isn't rare or hard to find like gold and silver and iron. The Bible says wisdom calls out in the streets and beckons to the foolish. The rarity of wisdom isn't that it is hard to mine. It's rare because it can only be found in God. To find wisdom, we must humble ourselves in repentance and faith, and trust that God's ways are higher than our ways. We must learn to obey his word, even when the world seems to have a better explanation. When we fear God and keep his commands, then we find wisdom. There's no other way to get it. So let me encourage you to cultivate your spiritual life, to look to God for wisdom, morally speaking, to guide your life in God's word. And I'll see you next time. May God bless you. Hope you have a great day today.