The Devotional - 38

The Devotional

Comment:

If you have ever had the opportunity to stoke the back of a duck, it will always feel dry. And when it comes to words of instruction many of us receiving these words are like the down of a ducks back; the duck is dry and under the first layers of soft down ignorant of what it is like to be wet. For the duck, this is normal since the LORD God created the duck to resist water. On the other hand God created mankind in His Image. Genesis 1:22 “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (NIV). How about that, do you believe it? Are you and I aware of wisdom and instruction revealed by the LORD God through His Word, the Holy Bible? Or, or we abnormal like the many whose intellect is starving, parched and starving; who by choice are ignorant of their God ordained image?

Challenge: Job 1 through 19

For the moment I would like to revisit some of the words of Eliphaz in chapter 15. I poked at these words yesterday but forgot the point I intended to make so here it is, the verse and the point.15:27 – Though his face is covered with fat and his waist bulges with flesh. The point! Take a brief look around today at the many fat faces and bulging bellies! Eliphaz sees this as a blight, not just directed at Job, but in the surrounding communities of the day in which they all lived. Today is no different, is it?

Back now to chapter 17 and Job’s words beginning in verses 10 -11 – (my version) “but come on, bring it on, try again, maybe this time I will find a wise man among you? Bah Humbug! My future and plans are shattered, even the desires of my heart have melted away. Yet you continue to talk of a better day”. These comments of Job, along with chapter 19 put spark in the words of Bildad and Zophar which are some of the cruelest or hottest words pointed at Job in the book, chapters 18 and 20.

Again, I like the words of Job, here in chapter 19, right out the gate he says “If it is true that I have gone astray, my error remains my concern alone”. While the statement without the following context is really an error in judgment, Job qualifies his words with the following; “if indeed you would exalt yourselves above me and use my humiliation against me”. Job feels abandoned by God and by his friends. 

As he finishes his plea in chapter 19 he says, you are my friends you came to me in friendship (Job 2:11-13), he says “have pity (mercy) on me as I seen when you first arrived. How often should I repeat to you my desire for your comfort? Job says, “Men look, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the end He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see Him. I myself will see Him with my own eyes – I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me. (Yes, we the children of God do yearn for His return and we know our Redeemer lives).

Job 19: 28-29 – Yet you say day and night, how shall we continue to hound him, since the root of the trouble is in him? Job says you are missing the point, I do not need your accusations, I need your comfort and you yourselves should fear the judgment. Your wrathful words toward me will bring punishment on you and then you will know that there is a “judgment!” The question then to us is. “Do we look joyfully at this pending return and judgment of God, or do we look fearfully? The answer is personal, but each of us will give account, Romans 14:9-13.