12/2/2011 8:02:45 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
My Worship Time Focus: God is Great PT-1
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Job 36-37
Message of the verses: In Today’s SD we begin the last two chapters in Job before the Lord will speak. As mentioned before Dr. Wiersbe, in his commentary has broken up this twelfth chapter of his commentary “Be Patient” into two main points with different sub-points under those main points.
In chapters 36-37 of Job we see statements from Elihu showing the greatness of God. In 36:5 we read “Behold, God is mighty,” and in verse twenty we read “Behold, God exalteth by power. We read in verse 26 “Behold, God is great,” and so we see that Elihu magnifies the greatness of God in His merciful purposes for man in chapter 36 verses 1-25 and then in His mighty power in nature in verses 36:26-27:13. Then in verses 14-24 of chapter 37 Elihu makes one more plea for Job to fear the Lord and to repent. I would say by Job not doing this because it did not need to be done that God had won his “bet” with Satan. I would suppose at this point in time that Satan was very upset because I believe that Satan felt that this would not be a great problem to get Job to reject the Lord because of what had happened to him.
God’s merciful purpose for man (Job 36:1-25): “1 ¶ Then Elihu continued and said, 2 "Wait for me a little, and I will show you That there is yet more to be said in God’s behalf. 3 "I will fetch my knowledge from afar, And I will ascribe righteousness to my Maker. 4 "For truly my words are not false; One who is perfect in knowledge is with you.
“5 ¶ "Behold, God is mighty but does not despise any; He is mighty in strength of understanding. 6 "He does not keep the wicked alive, But gives justice to the afflicted. 7 "He does not withdraw His eyes from the righteous; But with kings on the throne He has seated them forever, and they are exalted. 8 "And if they are bound in fetters, And are caught in the cords of affliction, 9 Then He declares to them their work And their transgressions, that they have magnified themselves. 10 "He opens their ear to instruction, And commands that they return from evil. 11 "If they hear and serve Him, They will end their days in prosperity And their years in pleasures. 12 "But if they do not hear, they shall perish by the sword And they will die without knowledge. 13 "But the godless in heart lay up anger; They do not cry for help when He binds them. 14 "They die in youth, And their life perishes among the cult prostitutes.
“15 ¶ "He delivers the afflicted in their affliction, And opens their ear in time of oppression. 16 "Then indeed, He enticed you from the mouth of distress, Instead of it, a broad place with no constraint; And that which was set on your table was full of fatness. 17 "But you were full of judgment on the wicked; Judgment and justice take hold of you. 18 "Beware that wrath does not entice you to scoffing; And do not let the greatness of the ransom turn you aside. 19 "Will your riches keep you from distress, Or all the forces of your strength? 20 "Do not long for the night, When people vanish in their place. 21 "Be careful, do not turn to evil, For you have preferred this to affliction. 22 "Behold, God is exalted in His power; Who is a teacher like Him? 23 "Who has appointed Him His way, And who has said, ’You have done wrong’?
“24 ¶ "Remember that you should exalt His work, Of which men have sung. 25 "All men have seen it; Man beholds from afar.’” (NASB)
“1 ¶ Elihu continued speaking: 2 “Let me go on, and I will show you the truth. For I have not finished defending God! 3 I will present profound arguments for the righteousness of my Creator. 4 I am telling you nothing but the truth, for I am a man of great knowledge.
“5 ¶ “God is mighty, but he does not despise anyone! He is mighty in both power and understanding. 6 He does not let the wicked live but gives justice to the afflicted. 7 He never takes his eyes off the innocent, but he sets them on thrones with kings and exalts them forever. 8 If they are bound in chains and caught up in a web of trouble, 9 he shows them the reason. He shows them their sins of pride. 10 He gets their attention and commands that they turn from evil. 11 “If they listen and obey God, they will be blessed with prosperity throughout their lives. All their years will be pleasant. 12 But if they refuse to listen to him, they will be killed by the sword and die from lack of understanding. 13 For the godless are full of resentment. Even when he punishes them, they refuse to cry out to him for help. 14 They die when they are young, after wasting their lives in immoral living.
“15 ¶ But by means of their suffering, he rescues those who suffer. For he gets their attention through adversity. 16 “God is leading you away from danger, Job, to a place free from distress. He is setting your table with the best food. 17 But you are obsessed with whether the godless will be judged. Don’t worry, judgment and justice will be upheld. 18 But watch out, or you may be seduced by wealth. Don’t let yourself be bribed into sin. 19 Could all your wealth or all your mighty efforts keep you from distress? 20 Do not long for the cover of night, for that is when people will be destroyed. 21 Be on guard! Turn back from evil, for God sent this suffering to keep you from a life of evil. 22 “Look, God is all-powerful. Who is a teacher like him? 23 No one can tell him what to do, or say to him, ’You have done wrong.’
“24 ¶ Instead, glorify his mighty works, singing songs of praise. 25 Everyone has seen these things, though only from a distance. 26 “Look, God is greater than we can understand. His years cannot be counted.’” (NLT)
I have outlined some of the verses or parts of the verses because for the most part I do not agree with them. The first highlighted portion speaks of the health and wealth Gospel, which of course is not true. The second highlighted portion could well be true, but I believe that it would be up to God on when to do such things. The last highlighted section is not true for we can read in the first chapter why all of these awful things happened to Job. This is an example of what I was writing about in the last SD when I wrote that when you eat fish and come to a bone you get rid of the bone and keep on eating fish. Well I believe that these are examples of “bones.”
It is possible that his listeners were getting restless by this time, and I for one would not blame them, even thought we see some truth from Elihu we also see that he is proud of what he thinks that he knows, even cocky and that would cause his listeners to become restless. He says in verse three that he is getting his information right from God, or from the heavens. Pretty bold statement if you ask me. No humility in Elihu from the sounds of some of the things he is speaking.
In verses 1-4 we see his introduction and then in verses 5-15 we look at his “Explanation.”
I want to look at verse five and six for a moment: “God is mighty, but he does not despise anyone! He is mighty in both power and understanding. 6 He does not let the wicked live but gives justice to the afflicted.” (NASB) I wish to explain why I said what I said about the highlighted portions above and it will go along with what is in these verses as well. When we look at what will eventually be what happens to the wicked and to those who are true believers in Jesus Christ we shall see that the wicked will be punished and that the true believers will be greatly rewarded and live in a city where the streets are pure gold as the later chapters of the book of Revelations explain, but while both the righteous and the wicked are here on earth it does not always mean that the righteous will live great lives, and the wicked will always be punished right away for their wickedness. Job is a great example of what I am saying for he was a righteousness man as the Lord said of him in the first two chapters.
Let us go back to the statement about being a true believer in Jesus Christ and ask the question how does this happen to a person. I think that this is a good time to speak about it, for in fact, this is the most important question that a person will be faced with in all of their lives for the answer to that question will determine where a person will spend eternity. The Bible teaches that all are sinners “Ro 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Why does Paul make such a statement like this? Well this goes back to when Adam and Eve fell into sin in the Garden of Eden. All people on this earth are descendants of Adam and Eve and so when God made the statement that when you eat of the tree of knowledge and evil you will surely die He was saying that spiritual death would happened right away and physical death would eventually come to all people. Adam and Eve were spiritually dead when they ate of the fruit and so all of their descendants are born spiritually dead. As soon as this happened we read in Genesis 3:15 these wonderful words, “And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.’” This is God speaking to the “serpent” or “Satan” and telling him that one day there would come from the “seed” of woman a Savior who would eventually bruise the head of Satan, and Satan would bruise the heel of Him. Of course this happened on the cross where even though Jesus Christ died, three days later He was raised from the dead and by His death He defeated the power of Satan and one day He will put him into the lake of fire forever.
You may say that this is a great story but how does it have anything to do with me? Well the answer is that because we are all born spiritually dead and because Jesus Christ died for all of our sins what we need to do is to confess (agree with) our sins to God, that we are a sinner, that we sin and then by faith, believe that what Jesus Christ did on the cross was for you and as the Scriptures says you will be born again and have new life in Jesus Christ. If you believe this is true and wish to do this and still have more questions please write to me at rabbitsix@hotmail.com and I will be glad to talk to you about all of this.
Meanwhile back to Job 36:5-15. Job may have though, and we get this idea from the speeches he made, that God was ignoring him, but this was not true for Elihu says in verse seven that God does not take His eyes off the righteousness and in 1Peter 3:12 we can see this too. “For the eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, And His ears are open to their prayers; But the face of the LORD is against those who do evil.’” (NKJV)
The Lord will discipline those that are his as we spoke of before that this is found in Hebrews chapter twelve. This is true, but there are times when things like what happened to Job will happen to us, and we will suffer. Jesus Christ suffered for us and many times in the book of Acts and also we read of it in the epistles that believers will suffer for the cause of Christ and even will die for the cause of Christ. The book of Revelations is full of stories how this will come about in a period of time that is called “The Tribulation.”
Elihu writes in verses 16-25 that Job needs to make a decision and in this section we see the “application.”
Dr. Wiersbe writes: “Elihu saw several dangers ahead for Job and tried to warn him. The first was that Job might look for some ‘shortcut’ for getting out of trouble and thereby miss the message God had for him. Job might agree to let somebody ‘buy his way out,’ but no amount of money could do that (Job 36:18-19). The Wall Street Journal said it best: ‘Money is an article which may be used as a universal passport to everywhere except heaven, and as a universal provider for everything except happiness.’”
There was a second danger mentioned in verse twenty and that is that Job might want to take his own life. “The night’ and darkness’ are images of death and Job often expressed a longing to die.” Job did express his desire to die in the past, but he was a man of faith and therefore would not do something like that.
In verse twenty-one we see a third danger mentioned by Elihu and that is that Job may want to turn to a life of crime. I am sure that this has happened to many people who have done this in fact Dr. Wiersbe writes “In my own pastoral ministry, I have counseled people who were so bitter against God that they abandoned their professions of faith and went back into the world.”
In verses 22-25 we see some good advice from Elihu, “22 "Do you have any idea how powerful God is? Have you ever heard of a teacher like him? 23 Has anyone ever had to tell him what to do, or correct him, saying, ‘You did that all wrong!’? 24 Remember, then, to praise his workmanship, which is so often celebrated in song. 25 Everybody sees it; nobody is too far away to see it.” (Message)
Spiritual meaning for my life today: One of the things that I desire to do is to keep my perspective right when it comes to money, for money is something that we all need to bring glory to God with. We are His stewards and so everything we have is His, for He made it all. I must remember to praise the Giver of the gifts and not the gifts that the Giver has given to me.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
1. Romans 12:1-2.
2. Proverbs 3:5-6.
3. Luke 22:40b, 46b.
4. Philippians 4:11b.
5. Ephesians 6:10-18.
12/2/2011 9:35:28 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment