Life Matters - September 11, 2024
Most of us may never experience the depth of loss and turmoil that Job experienced, recorded for us in the 42 chapters of the book of the Bible bearing his name. Yet most of us can identify, to one degree or another, to loss, to turmoil, being misunderstood.
Job lost his livelihood, then his children, then his health, his wife turned against him, then his three best friends became his ‘’miserable comforters all.” (Job 16:2) All because of a battle going on behind the scenes that Job was unaware of and yet affected him in spirit, soul, and body. His spiritual, emotional, and physical endurance were all tested to maximum levels. Job’s faith in God didn’t break. It held. But as three of his best friends sought, in all the wrong places, to find meaning for the tragic, horrible turn of events in Job’s life, Job’s battered faith came well nigh to breaking. His three friends were sure Job had somewhere, somehow sinned, thus bringing these calamitous events upon himself by incurring the wrath of Almighty God.
Unwittingly, as testified in Job chapters 32 to 42 by both Elihu and then God, these three well-meaning friends attempted, for all practical purposes, to draw Job’s emotions into the fear of man. And Job resisted their efforts with everything that was in him. God calls Job a righteous, upright man in chapter one and we may safely conclude that Job knew what it was like, in spirit, soul, and body, to be in a right relationship with God, to fear God and to keep His commandments. We can also safely conclude, in light of the fact that Job was a man of like passions as you and I, that Job also knew what the fear of man was like, both by experiencing—at the very least—twinges of it himself, and in seeing how it misguided and devastated, in spirit, soul, and body, others, and possibly himself at times.
Whatever the case may be in Job’s past experience he certainly was determined not to give in to whatever fears these men were attempting to pull him into. Fears that he rightly sensed to be an evasion of reality. He sensed it in their condescending attempts to somehow trap, to corner him, even while they said many good and right things.
Job’s three friends believed he was being chastened by the Almighty, (Job 5:17) and that it was up to them to convince him of what they supposed to be fact. They had seen that his ‘’grief was very great’’ and had ‘’sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights’’ in deep sympathy with nothing to say. As long as Job had nothing to say.
But Job opened his mouth. He cursed the day he was born. In his abject distress and misery he wished for death, he saw peace in the grave. And then he reveals something about himself. In verses 25-26 of chapter 3, he reveals that even in prosperous times he felt insecure and struggled to keep it all together. Now he stumbled into justifying himself.
Marshall Segal, and rightly so I believe, gives the symptoms of the fear of man as being; ‘’spiritual dryness, restless insecurity, irrational anxiety, escalating fear, emotional isolation.’’ In Job’s own words we get a glimpse into the mind and heart of a powerfully wealthy man with the insecurities of a little boy. Can we men and women not all identify? At one time or another? Perhaps not in being powerfully wealthy but surely in maintaining instead of losing, in gaining and not going backwards, whether it be monetarily, or simply living a sustainable life. In being a ‘’better person’’ than being accused of. I’ll risk only exposing myself by saying that ‘’this writer certainly can.’’ I have many times relived little boy emotions when facing this ‘’ big bad world.” May those times drive us to an ever strengthened, ever deepened, dependence upon God and His ability to work in and through us. May we be filled with spiritual vitality, by courage flowing into and through us from the throne of God’s grace. As Jesus said, ‘’Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’’ (John 14:27) ’’Let not your heart be troubled neither let it be afraid, ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.’’ (John 14:1-3)
Jesus assures us that if we lose everything in this life for His cause we will gain everything He has in store for us in the next. (Matthew 19:29) Like Job, many are tested. In unprecedented (for America) ways.
As we have a woman with the morals—or lack thereof—of a modern day Jezebel running for the highest office in America, she and her ilk are a threat to national security and any present material stability the average citizen may have. American currency is being devalued at a rate not seen for over four decades. The income gap is again widening. The moral currency handed forward from past generations is being trampled underfoot. Those three factors together make for a volatile situation. Perversions are already being pushed ‘’forward’’ (but downhill) by the power of finance. Her policies, if elected, promise more of the same.
It is a good time, as always, to remember, as one Burk Parsons put it; ‘’When we say we want to be the hands and feet of Jesus, we must remember what happened to the hands and feet of Jesus.’’
Life Matters!