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AUGUST 24
may be a new lump, since you truly are
unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover,
was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep
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5:1 sexual immorality.This sin was so vile that the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the
even the church’s pagan neighbors were doubt- leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the
less scandalized by it. The Corinthians had unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
rationalized or minimized this sin which was 9 I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep
common knowledge, even though Paul had company with sexually immoral people. Yet I
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written them before about it (v.9).The Greek for certainly did not mean with the sexually
“immorality” is the root of the English word immoral people of this world, or with the cov-
“pornography.” his father’s wife. The man’s etous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then
stepmother,with whom having sexual relations you would need to go out of the world. But
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bore the same sinful stigma as if between him now I have written to you not to keep compa-
and his natural mother. Incest was punishable ny with anyone named a brother, who is sexu-
by death in the Old Testament (Lev. 18:7,8,29;
Deut. 22:30) and was both uncommon (“not ally immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a
even named”) and illegal under Roman law. reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not
even to eat with such a person.
12 For what have I to do with judging those
also who are outside? Do you not judge those
6 Your glorying is not good. Do you not know who are inside? But those who are outside
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that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? God judges. Therefore “put away from your-
7 Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you selves the evil person.”
DAY 23:Why doesn’t God answer all of Job’s (and our) questions?
This question assumes that if God answered all our questions, it would be easier to believe.
This is not true.Trust goes beyond answers. Sometimes, questions become a way to avoid trust.
Take,for example, a little girl invited to jump off the stairs into her father’s waiting hands. She
asks,“Will you catch me, Daddy?”He answers,“Yes, I will!”She may jump or she may proceed to ask
endless versions of her first question.If she does jump,it will be more because of whom she knows
her father to be than because of his answer to one of her questions.The fact that she jumps does
not mean that she has run out of fears or questions; it means that her trust is greater than her fears
or questions.
In the end, we must trust God more than our capacity to understand God’s ways. The lesson
from Job’s experience does not forbid us from asking questions. Often these questions will lead us
to the reasons for our suffering. But Job’s experience also warns us that we may not be able to
understand all our suffering all the time, or even any of it some of the time.
God doesn’t answer all of our questions because we are simply unable to understand many of
His answers.

AUGUST 24 4 Their young ones are healthy,
They grow strong with grain;
They depart and do not return to them.
Job 39:1–40:24 5 “Who set the wild donkey free?
39 “Do you know the time when the 6 Who loosed the bonds of the onager,
Whose home I have made the
wild mountain goats bear young?
Or can you mark when the deer gives wilderness,
birth? And the barren land his dwelling?
2 7 He scorns the tumult of the city;
Can you number the months that they
fulfill? He does not heed the shouts of the
Or do you know the time when they driver.
bear young? 8 The range of the mountains is his
They bow down,
3 pasture,
They bring forth their young, And he searches after every green
They deliver their offspring. thing.

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