Let’s wrap up these conversations on “calling on the name of the Lord” as a primary spiritual act. I’ve got a few articles* you can read if you want to catch up, but let’s get right into it.

You might know I’ve got a really intense system of Bible notes and list-making. One of my commenters on YouTube remarked last year, it seems like what you might find in the Thompson Chain Reference. I’ll call that a compliment!

This feeds into today. It isn’t about a specific mention of “calling on the Lord," but the language world this idea gets us into. It finds its basis in another massive list I’ve been keeping for the past few years on “Refuge” as a spiritual/biblical action.

All of this brings us into the book of the Bible that absolutely stopped me in any reading plan for years. I could never find a way to engage with Job.

Until 2024. It all changed that year. Not because of some nastiness in my own personal life where I identified with Job, but this language world** around the idea of refuge. It had been on my mind for at least a year… plus I was starting to think about the “calling on the name of the Lord” idea as well.

Job lets us intersect these two ideas. The realization I came to in 2024 that made me begin to understand Job was about trying to figure out what the block was in his life. Not the sin, but the underlying rub that keeps coming up.

It’s refuge. More specifically, it’s Job’s unwillingness and inability to take refuge in God.

Before we jump into it there is something we need to know. Many historical-critical scholars consider Job as an extremely OLD part of the Old Testament. The story is set during the time of Abraham and the patriarchs, meaning it isn’t necessarily Jewish. This is an OLD book in the timeline, and we can’t read it in the same way we would books that have a later date. This is part of the idea of “progressive revelation," which I talked about in my video on the NET Bible. We have to understand Job as a very early understanding of YHWH and how God works. Perfect for the “calling on the name of the Lord” idea.

Let’s look at a couple of verses. I’ll do this in bullet points to make sure it comes across.

• Job 1:9 “Then Satan answered the LORD, “Does Job fear God for nothing?" Yep. The whole weird thing about Satan in Job. BUT - the big question is the actual question. Does Job have a fear of God? This can send us down another rabbit hole (and Bible list) about fear and God. To put it shortly, does Job have an understanding of the LORD that drives him to both an awareness of his state before Him and the personal knowledge of His power? Big questions to start off the study.
• Job 6:1-13 Here we get into the meat of it all. Job is asking questions about his own internal strength, his ability to get himself out of any situation. Job is finding his personal grounding in himself, not in who the LORD is.
• Job 8:20 “See, God will not reject a blameless person, nor take the hand of evildoers.” This is one of the speeches from a friend of Job (Bildad). In it, Bildad brings up a larger category I’ve been keeping track of: the idea of being “blameless” before God. This shows up quite often in the Psalms, but also in the New Testament. It is also figured into Job 19:20 as part of Job’s response. This matters because blamelessness is part of holiness, and the way we present our entire life before God. Job sees himself as blameless, but something is lacking. This seems to be the struggle Job is working out between his friends. Bildad presses into Job, thinking Job has done something intentional to wrong God, and thereby causing the suffering.
• Job 9:1-13 There is so much in this section. I was tempted to write an entire email on this, but I won’t. There are a few key features: Job is living with a decent big picture of who the Lord is. But Job is still trying to prove his innocence here. He is living in this paradigm of “I’ve done good things…so why are bad things happening to me?” This is best understood in 9:2: “But how can mere mortals prove their innocence before God?” This verse is key. Job is still seeking his own power and ability to show righteousness.
• Job 10:2,6 Job still sees things as a direct line between actions and response. He hasn’t done bad things, so why have bad things happened to him? That is the big theological question he has in his head. Honestly, this is a big question we have as well. This is the classic problem of evil question so many people get hung up on. How can a loving God allow (or cause) bad things to happen?
• Job 40:5 At this point, Job is in an actual arguing match with the LORD himself. The whole chapter is an example of bravery before the divine.

Does God tell Job his sin was a neglect of taking refuge and calling on the name directly? No. BUT when we pull back across the whole narrative. There is a verse where I think we begin to see the change in job.

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; (Job 42:5)

What we see here is Job recognizing that he had a working, intellectual knowledge of God. What Job didn’t have was personal knowledge and relationship. Without a base level of these things, calling out and seeking refuge is pretty difficult to comprehend as a personal decision.

I think this is a pretty big realization…and it is one we can bring into our own life in major ways. My own investigation into scripture is a personal one primarily. It is about developing this larger than life understanding of who God is and how he wants to have a relationship where we can call on him, where we can take refuge, where we do know Him personally as a God offering a WIDE salvation, not just an eternal one that shows no real world benefits now.

Thanks for hanging in on this LONG series on a single biblical concept.

*Article Archives

​Calling on God as Fundamental ​
​Exactly What Does Calling on God Look Like?​
​Invoking The Lord (The First Call)​

**Language World - This is a literary and sociological term, but one that belongs inside of biblical reflection. If we ask what is the greater purpose of spiritual formation, Christian Sanctification, and many other reasons to engage scripture…what we find is how God’s world wraps over our own experience. One of the things scripture does is give us a different vocabulary for the way we explain and live our lives.

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Curious about how I talk about these lists I keep? Late last year, I did a whole YouTube video on my Bible lists.