Thoughts in Worship Message Magazines Online Devotional for Friday, October 10, 2014 Based Upon Job 42:5 “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.” Job’s ordeal was a long and arduous one. He was rich in every way. He was a servant of God, a good family man with a wonderful wife and many children, a great boss with many servants, and one who owned real estate and livestock extensively. Job had it all. One day the devil suggested to God that Job only served Him because of the blessings he received. He went further to say that if those things were taken from him, he would curse God to His face. All of this he suggested after God asked, “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” Job 1:8. The devil has always been averse to the thought that someone can live in harmony with God’s law. In this accusation, he demonstrated his contempt for the holiness of God. As the story continues, God allows the devil to plunder all that Job had, including his family and good health with one stipulation. Satan could not kill Job. It is a blessing to know that all that occurs in our lives must first pass through the God filter. It is also a blessing to know that God puts boundaries on what the enemy can do to us. He says to Satan, “This far you can go and no further.” As Job struggled through his extreme ordeal, covered from head to toe with painful putrefying boils, the people closest to him suggested that He curse God, and that these things happened because he sinned. Have you ever been down and your closest friends made your situation worse? Though Job was bewildered and confused, wishing that he had some mediator between himself and God, he remained faithful. He proved to the onlooking universe that God was more important to him than anything else. “And said, Naked came I out of my mothers womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:21). “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.” (Job 13:15). Certainly, Job had questions and the Lord being as powerful and holy as He is, checked Job’s questionings, yet Job still pleased God. (Job 38-41). “Then Job answered the LORD, and said, Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth. Once have I spoken; but I will not answer: yea, twice; but I will proceed no further.” Job 40:3-5. It is curious to me how a man can be so highly spoken of by God, but he was. Even though Job was righteous before God and He demonstrated His favor by blessing Job with abundance, Job barely understood God. By the time his ordeal was over, Job had realized the limits on his relationship with, and view of God. It was through extreme experience with God through trials that he was able to say, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5, 6). In the end, God’s character was vindicated before Satan, and Job’s life was set back in order. “So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters. After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons sons, even four generations. So Job died, being old and full of days.” (Job 42:12, 13, 16, 17).--L. David Harris
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 10:18:21 +0000
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