SPIRITUAL
DIARY FOR 12/2/2011 8:02:45 AM
My Worship
Time Focus:
PT-1 “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 exalted 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
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