11/10/2011 8:49:38 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: A Plea for Death
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Job 17:1-16
Message of the verses: “1 ¶ "My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished, The grave is ready for me. 2 "Surely mockers are with me, And my eye gazes on their provocation. 3 "Lay down, now, a pledge for me with Yourself; Who is there that will be my guarantor? 4 "For You have kept their heart from understanding, Therefore You will not exalt them. 5 "He who informs against friends for a share of the spoil, The eyes of his children also will languish. 6 "But He has made me a byword of the people, And I am one at whom men spit. 7 "My eye has also grown dim because of grief, And all my members are as a shadow. 8 "The upright will be appalled at this, And the innocent will stir up himself against the godless. 9 "Nevertheless the righteous will hold to his way, And he who has clean hands will grow stronger and stronger.
10 ¶ "But come again all of you now, For I do not find a wise man among you. 11 "My days are past, my plans are torn apart, Even the wishes of my heart. 12 "They make night into day, saying, ’The light is near,’ in the presence of darkness. 13 "If I look for Sheol as my home, I make my bed in the darkness; 14 If I call to the pit, ’You are my father’; To the worm, ’my mother and my sister’; 15 Where now is my hope? And who regards my hope? 16 "Will it go down with me to Sheol? Shall we together go down into the dust?’”
In order to understand this plea of death that Job is talking about here we have to understand Job’s feelings at this time in his life. We must remember that Job is the object of a contest between God and Satan, but Job does not know that or ever will know that in his earthly life. The contest is where or not people serve the Lord just because their lives are good, but when their lives are not good do they continue to serve the Lord. I want to go to one of the famous parables that Jesus taught and is found in more than one of the Gospels, in fact I believe that it is the first parable that is found in Matthew’s account, and we find it in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. Jesus had just been performing many miracles of healing people and of casting out demons when the “religious” leaders of Israel said of his miracles that they were done in the power of Satan. You will find this in the other Gospels also, and after this is said of Jesus He begins to teach in parables because of the hardness of their hearts and because of this speaking against the Holy Spirit. “10 And the disciples came and said to Him, "Why do You speak to them in parables?" 11 Jesus answered them, "To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been granted.” Now listen to what this first parable is about, the parable of the Sower. "Behold, the sower went out to sow; 4 and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate them up. 5 "Others fell on the rocky places, where they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up, because they had no depth of soil. 6 "But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. 7 "Others fell among the thorns, and the thorns came up and choked them out. 8 "And others fell on the good soil and *yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.” This is the parable, now I want to focus in on the seed that fell among the bushes or thrones and see what Jesus had to say about that seed: “22 "And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.” Now we must remember that there is only one seed that has been sown in this parable that we can consider as a true believer, and that is the soil that is sown in the good soil, for that is the only one that produces fruit, and all true believers produce fruit. As we look at the seed that was sown in the thorns we see what Satan tells Job about how Job would react when troubles come, yet Job was part of the seed that was sown in the good soil and even though many troubles have come upon him he did not turn away from God like the seed that was among the thorns.
Job was hurting so badly that he lost all desire to live. Dr Wiersbe writes the following to help explain this: “When I was a young Pastor, I heard an experienced saint say, ‘I have lived long enough to be thankful for unanswered prayer.’ At the time, I was shocked by the statement; but now that I have lived a few more years myself, I know what she was talking about. In the darkness of despair and the prison of pain, we often say things that we later regret; but God understands all about it and lovingly turns a deaf ear to our words but a tender eye to our wounds.” If Job’s friends could have only done the same for Job then he would have been comforted and could have been better able to endure this difficulty.
Dr. Wiersbe writes these words also as he quotes John Henry Jowett, ‘God does not comfort us to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters.’ “God comfort is never given; it is always loaned. God expects us to share it with others.”
It was many years ago while attending “Moody’s Founders Week” in Chicago that I heard a speaker talking about how he had learned something from his father that was new to him. I have racked my brain to try and remember the speaker’s name, but have not come up with it. The man’s father had told him that when he was going through some difficult times that God had left him on his own and the son had a hard time understand that. Job was going through this same experience, for at this point God was not speaking to him at all. Now I know the verse in Hebrews that says “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” I am not saying that I understand this fully, yet there are times when God’s presence is not with us when we are going through troubles and we have to continue to trust the Lord at that time of our life because we know that it is because of His love for us that He chooses to do this. This is why Job wanted to die and why he said the things that he said in this section, yet God had something better for him. I remember this speaker talking about this so many years ago, I have never forgotten it, and yet I am not sure that I understand totally what his father was relating to him, but I believe that Job would have understood it.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: In a Bible study setting a few years back the teacher, who was on DVD, was talking about the difference between men and women. One of the differences was that men do not listen well, and men like to fix things right away. I fit into that fixing things right away category. The speaker said that when women began to tell their husbands things that a lot of the time they are not looking for a fix, but are looking for a listening ear. I fail at this far too much, and yet this study on Job is helping me out, and by the power of the Holy Spirit I will change this and be a better listener, listing with my heart more than my ears.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
1. Be a better listener, and not try to fix everything unless asked to do so.
2. Continue to learn contentment.
11/10/2011 10:21:22 AM
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