SPIRITUAL
DIARY FOR 10/28/2011 8:32:24 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “Job’s Response”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Job 6-7
Message
of the verses: Today’s SD is broken
up into two parts as it follows the sixth and seventh chapters of Job. We will take them one at a time. In this section we will see Job appealing to
his friends to understand the plight that he is in and to have a little
sympathy for him and then Job will appeal to the Lord to lighten his suffering.
Job’s
Appeal to His Friends(Job 6): 1 Then Job answered, 2 "Oh that my grief were actually weighed
And laid in the balances together with my calamity! 3 “For then it would be
heavier than the sand of the seas; Therefore my words have been rash. 4 “For
the arrows of the Almighty are within me, Their poison my spirit drinks; The
terrors of God are arrayed against me. 5 “Does the wild donkey bray over his
grass, Or does the ox low over his fodder? 6 “Can something tasteless be eaten
without salt, Or is there any taste in the white of an egg? 7 “My soul refuses
to touch them; They are like loathsome food to me.
8 "Oh that my request might come to
pass, And that God would grant my longing! 9 “Would that God were willing to
crush me, That He would loose His hand and cut me off! 10 “But it is still my
consolation, And I rejoice in unsparing pain, That I have not denied the words
of the Holy One. 11 “What is my strength, that I should wait? And what is my
end, that I should endure? 12 “Is my strength the strength of stones, Or is my
flesh bronze? 13 "Is it that my
help is not within me, And that deliverance is driven from me?
14 "For the despairing man there should be kindness from his
friend; So that he does not forsake the fear of the Almighty. 15 “My
brothers have acted deceitfully like a wadi, Like the torrents of wadis which
vanish, 16 Which are turbid because of ice And into which the snow melts. 17 “When
they become waterless, they are silent, When it is hot, they vanish from their
place. 18 “The paths of their course wind along, They go up into nothing and
perish. 19 “The caravans of Tema looked, The travelers of Sheba hoped for them.
20 “They were disappointed for they had trusted, They came there and were
confounded. 21 “Indeed, you have now become such, You see a terror and are
afraid.
22 "Have I said, ’Give me something,’
Or, ’Offer a bribe for me from your wealth,’ 23
Or, ’Deliver me from the hand of the adversary,’ Or, ’Redeem me from the
hand of the tyrants’? 24 “Teach me, and I will be silent; And show me how I
have erred. 25“How painful are honest words! But what does your argument prove?
26 “Do you intend to reprove my words, When the words of one in despair belong
to the wind? 27 “You would even cast lots for the orphans And barter over your
friend. 28 “Now please look at me, And see if I lie to your face. 29 “Desist
now, let there be no injustice; Even desist, my righteousness is yet in it. 30
“Is there injustice on my tongue? Cannot my palate discern calamities?”
It
is interesting that Job is actually addressing all three of these “friends”
even though
Eliphaz was the only one who spoke, for Job must have sensed that all of them
agreed that his plight was due to sin in his life. We can learn from a child who described
sympathy as “your pain in my heart.”
These three friends of Job could not
feel the heaviness of his suffering that is described in verses one through
three. His friends could not understand
or feel the bitterness of his suffering as seen in verses four through
seven. It is because Job did not
understand what was really going on that he thought that God had put a target
on him and was shooting those poison arrows at him that he describes in verses
four through seven. These poison arrows
were making Job’s spirit bitter. If
perhaps Job’s “friends” could have given him a bit of encouragement then his
spirit would not be as bitter, but they were not about to do that. When job described the two animals who were
looking for food he was describing the bitterness in his heart that needed to
be feed by love from his friends.
We see in verses eight through
thirteen that Job wants his friends to feel the hopelessness that he felt in
the situation that he was in. People who
suffer for long periods of time lose hope of the future, and that is what Job
was experiencing at this point.
Job felt useless, for hopelessness
can lead to uselessness and the desire to go on living. Job asked God to take his life in the
following verses: Job 3:20-23; 6:8-9;
7:15-16; 10:18-19; 14:13. When one looks
at what was happening to Job one can truly understand his desire to die, and
yet Job carried on through all of his sufferings and through all of the bad
company that he faced with his “friends,” so we see that Job had little to look
forward to each morning when he woke up.
We now see that in verses 14-30 that
courageously Job pointed out the ineffectiveness of his friend’s ministry to
him. Job did not give up on the fact
that he had not sinned to cause the problem that he was facing at this time,
and this took a great deal of courage just to get up each morning to face what
these men would say to him.
When you read about the dry brooks that
Job speaks of in verse fifteen Job is describing the uselessness of the counsel
that he is receiving from his friends, for they should have been like ragging
rivers full of sympathy for him.
Job’s appeal for his friends to
teach him (v-24) and look upon him (v28) were not happening. Dr. Wiersbe describes them as similar to the
priest and the Levite walking on the other side of the road and not stopping to
help the fallen Samaritan, they were their but they were not there.
Job ends this portion of his
speaking to his friends with an appeal for them to reconsider his plight and to
love him as they should.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: In order
for a person to have sympathy for another person the first thing they need is
to love them, and then they need to set self aside and concentrate on showing
the love and sympathy that the person is needing in order to minister to them
in the way God did for us by sending His Son to die in our place. Someone once said that the middle letter in
sin is I. I have to agree with that
statement, and remember to have the “I” set aside in order to minister to the
hurting people around me.
We will take up chapter seven on
the next Spiritual Diary.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
1. Like Job’s friends I need to learn
more about sympathy for others, and not care about any points that I want to
make, but just love those who need to be loved.
2. Continue to learn contentment.
10/28/2011
9:25:28 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment