May 16, 2006

Reading through the Bible in one Year:2 Samuel 9:1-13:39; Luke 22:39-23:12

Good Evening Brothers and Sisters,

I apologize for missing yesterday's study.  James came home yesterday unexpectedly yesterday afternoon.  It was good, he's been gone for a while.

"Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” The Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man fearing God and turning away from evil. And he still holds fast his integrity, although you incited Me against him to ruin him without cause.” Satan answered the Lord and said, “Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. “However, put forth Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh; he will curse You to Your face.” So the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your power, only spare his life.” " (Job 2:1-6, NASB95) ^[1]

We have the scene in heaven again where God is giving orders to the angels.  Satan walked in and it seems that he was an interloper because the text seems to indicate that he did not fit in with the group that was before the Lord.

Don't miss what is being said here.  The devil was not successful in causing Job to curse God because of the removal of all of his things and personal relationships.  In the first chapter, Satan was not given permission to take his life, and it seems that the restriction went as far as him not being able to touch his body either.  Job weathered the test with flying colors; he held to his integrity and continued to follow God.  It's interesting, the verb use for "ruin" gives the idea of "swallow him up" according to the NASB footnotes.  The idea is that of total destruction, or to consume a person.

Satan held that if he could attack Job's health then he could get Job to curse God.  This opens some very interesting parallels between Job and Jesus.  First, consider that Satan was not able to take Jesus' earthly possessions because Jesus did not own anything.  He did attack Jesus through his earthly ministry in many ways.  At the point that Jesus went to the cross, the disciples were scattered, His closest friends deserted Him.

Satan reasoned that if he were allowed to take Job's health that Job would curse God to get his health back.  Isn't it interesting that Jesus was beaten ruthlessly several times with a fist, beaten with rods, crowned with a crown of thorns which were beaten into His head, had the flesh ripped off of his back with a cat of nine tails, then hang on a cross until He was dead.  I don't think that Satan learned his lesson with Job, he tried the same strategy with Jesus.

I am going to close here, all comments are welcomed.

Father, as we consider Your word today, open our eyes so that we can see and understand how that Your word applies to our lives.

In Him,

Joe Turner.

May 18, 2006

Reading through the Bible in one Year:2 Samuel 14:1-19:43; Luke 23:13-56

Good Evening Brothers and Sisters,

Job 2:7-13

     7     Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.

     8     And he took a potsherd to scrape himself while he was sitting among the ashes.

     9     Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!”

     10     But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

     11     Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this adversity that had come upon him, they came each one from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite; and they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him and comfort him.

     12     When they lifted up their eyes at a distance and did not recognize him, they raised their voices and wept. And each of them tore his robe and they threw dust over their heads toward the sky.

     13     Then they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights with no one speaking a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great.

NASB95

Deuteronomy 28:35

     35     “The Lord will strike you on the knees and legs with sore boils, from which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.

NASB95^[1]

Try to imagine the anguish that Job was in at the time.  Boils today are like huge pimples where an infection Job was covered with "sore boils" from head to toe.  This doesn't seem to be the case in Biblical times, consider this:

“Shechin ra, supposed to be the judham, or black leprosy, of the Arabs, termed elephantiasis by the Greeks, from its rendering the skin, like that of the elephant, scabrous, dark colored, and furrowed all over with tubercles. This loathsome and most afflictive disease is accompanied with most intolerable itching.”^[2]

I’m not sure how you would think of this, but from my perspective, it had to be incredibly uncomfortable.  There wasn’t any benadryl to knock the itching; there weren’t any powerful antibiotics to fight off the infection.  His only option was to scratch the sores to try to get some relief.

I think that I understand one reason why Satan did not take Job’s wife during the slaughter of his family.  She was sensitive to the needs of her husband and could not understand why he would be willing to suffer so much.  It is also apparent that somehow she knew what was going on in the spiritual battle because of her advice to curse God. 

Take a careful look at Job’s response to her.  All of us are willing to accept the gifts from God.  “Please God, give me this or that so that my life might be comfortable!”  But what about when the bad things happen?  What do we do then?  Do we thank God that our family is sick, and that the world is falling apart around us?  Do we thank God for the bad times and are we grateful that God considers us worthy of going through the trial?  For the most part we question what we have done wrong to justify what we are experiencing.  It often turns into a time of soul searching to see what we have done wrong.  Do you see the error in that?  If we are under grace and if we are forgiven of all our sins, thereby all of our sins are completely washed clean by the blood of the cross, then does God punish us to extract sin from our lives? 

Isaiah 1:18

“Let Us Reason”

     18     “Come now, and let us reason together,”

Says the Lord,

“Though your sins are as scarlet,

They will be as white as snow;

Though they are red like crimson,

They will be like wool.

NASB95

Isaiah 43:25

     25     “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake,

And I will not remember your sins.

NASB95

Jeremiah 31:33-34

     33     “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

     34     “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

NASB95^[3]

Or is the punishment of God more like discipline where we are re-directed and taught a better way to live our lives to His glory? The writer of Hebrews indicated that we are to strive against sin, and can expect discipline:

Hebrews 12:4-11

A Father’s Discipline

     4     You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin;

     5     and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons,

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,

Nor faint when you are reproved by Him;

     6     For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines,

And He scourges every son whom He receives.”

     7     It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

     8     But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

     9     Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?

     10     For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness.

     11     All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

NASB95^[4]

Job understood that he had not sinned, therefore the punishment that he was receiving had to be to a better good because it was in the will of God.  Which raises one other thought, can we get out of God’s will if we are following Him?  Of course, there is the other response, many will encounter the trial, curse God, turn their back on Him and use every method possible outside of God to deal with the situation.

Job was very wealthy, he had some powerful friends, being friends they heard of his calamity and came to comfort him.  Note their reaction when they saw him.  They did not even recognize him he was so incredibly sick.  Try to imagine open sores caked with ashes from the scraping, bloody festering boils that showed no signs of healing.  Try to imagine a body wracked with pain and itching.  I would wager that the only thing that did not change on Job was his eyes, he did not lose focus on God’s plan for his life.  He did not give up when any normal man would have.

Job’s friends acted appropriately, they sat in utter silence for an entire week.  Their mission was to simply comfort Job with their presence.  What could be said to a man they knew as righteous that had the entire world cave in on him?  But their speechlessness would not last for long. 

One parting thought, when Jesus was taken away to be crucified, his body was beaten beyond recognition.  Those who came to the cross to mourn for Him were speechless.  He was more marred than any man has ever been according to the prophecies, more marred than Job.

Isaiah 52:14-15

     14     Just as many were astonished at you, My people,

So His appearance was marred more than any man

And His form more than the sons of men.

     15     Thus He will sprinkle many nations,

Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him;

For what had not been told them they will see,

And what they had not heard they will understand.

NASB95^[5]

Father, as we consider Your word today, open our eyes so that we can understand and apply it to our lives.

In Him,

Joe Turner.