SPIRITUAL
DIARY FOR 11/10/2011 8:49:38 AM
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 whether 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
No comments:
Post a Comment