SPIRITUAL
DIARY FOR 11/9/2011 10:04:00 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
“A Plea For Sympathy”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Job
16:1-14
Message
of the verses: We are now going to
move into the second main point in Dr. Wiersbe’s outline, which he entitles “Job: Three Requests.” Under this second main point we will see
three requests that Job will make of his friends. The first one is “A plea for sympathy,” and
next is “A plea for justice,” and the third is “A plea for death.” I will see how far I get in today’s SD.
“1
Then Job answered, 2 "I have heard many such things; Sorry comforters are you all. 3
“Is there no limit to windy words? Or what plagues you that you answer? 4 “I
too could speak like you, If I were in your place. I could compose words
against you And shake my head at you. 5 “I could strengthen you with my mouth,
And the solace of my lips could lessen your pain.
6 "If I speak, my pain is not lessened,
And if I hold back, what has left me? 7 “But now He has exhausted me; You have
laid waste all my company. 8 “You have shriveled me up, It has become a
witness; And my leanness rises up against me, It testifies to my face. 9 “His
anger has torn me and hunted me down, He has gnashed at me with His teeth; My
adversary glares at me. 10 “They have gaped at me with their mouth, They have
slapped me on the cheek with contempt; They have massed themselves against me. 11
“God hands me over to ruffians And tosses me into the hands of the wicked. 12 “I
was at ease, but He shattered me, And He has grasped me by the neck and shaken
me to pieces; He has also set me up as His target. 13 “His arrows surround me.
Without mercy He splits my kidneys open; He pours out my gall on the ground. 14
“He breaks through me with breach after breach; He runs at me like a warrior.”
I want to begin this section with a
quote from John Henry Jowett “God does not comfort us to make us comfortable,
but to make us comforters.” This is
exactly what Job is learning with the unsympathetic friends that he is
with. Dr. Wiersbe writes “Sometimes we
have to experience misunderstanding from unsympathetic friends in order to
learn how to minister to others. This
was a new experience for Job, and he was trying to make the most of it.”
I think that we should look at a
section of Scripture from 2 Corinthians to see what the Apostle Paul has to say
about this. “3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction so
that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the
comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (2Cor. 1:3-4)
Job calls his friends “sorry comforters” in verse two. He had called them earlier in 6:15 “Deceitful brooks” and in 13:4 he
called them “worthless physicians.”
Job tells his friends what he was
receiving from God in verses seven through fourteen, and although this was in
part true, that is not the point of Job’s story. However even if this is not true in Job’s
eyes, this was not the time for his friends to jump all over him, for this
could have been straightened out at a later date when Job was feeling
better. At this point all his friends
had to do was to listen to Job, listen with their hearts and not with their
ears so much.
“A
Plea for Justice:” (Job 16:15-22) “15
“I have sewed sackcloth over my skin And thrust my horn in the dust. 16 “My
face is flushed from weeping, And deep darkness is on my eyelids,
“17 Although there is no violence in my
hands, And my prayer is pure. 18 “O earth, do not cover my blood, And let there
be no resting place for my cry. 19 “Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,
And my advocate is on high. 20 “My friends are my scoffers; My eye weeps to
God. 21 “O that a man might plead with God As a man with his neighbor! 22 “For
when a few years are past, I shall go the way of no return.”
We have seen in the past that Job’s
desire is to have a trial before God, and in this section he again mentions his
need for an advocate. He friends surely
were not an advocate for him for they all believed that he sinned and that is
what caused all the troubles that he is having.
We can surely see some of the pain
that Job is going through from reading this section, for he speaks of sackcloth
and he speaks of how much he has cried.
No matter where he was talking or listening he was in great pain. Even though his desire was to die, he did not
want to die before he was vindicated before the Lord, and his friends. In verse
eighteen he speaks of not having the earth cover his blood. Dr. Wiersbe writes “The ancients believed
that the blood of innocent victims cried out to God for justice (Gen. 4:8-15)
and the spirits of the dead were restless until the corpses were properly
buried (Isa. 26:21).
I have mentioned before that we as
believers today have an Advocate, The Lord Jesus Christ “Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God
through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.” (Heb. 7:25) “1 My
little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And
if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous; 2 and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours
only, but also for those of the whole world.”
(1John 2:1-2) Don’t be afraid
of the word propitiation, for this goes back to the cross of Christ, and it
means that God was
satisfied with His sacrifice. In
the Greek world the word means “scarification of an angry god.” God who surely is angry with sin was
satisfied with Christ’s payment for our sins.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: I will
have to admit that being a comforter I have a lot to learn, and I am learning
how not to be a comforter by reading what Job’s friends are saying to him. I am learning a bit about being a comforter
by reading the commentary from Dr. Wiersbe, and also from the Apostle
Paul. My prayer is that I will listen
with my heart, and not listen with my ears so much.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
1.
Be a better
comforter.
2.
Continue to
learn contentment.
11/9/2011
10:46:38 AM
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