The Deceitfulness of Wealth And The Book of Job

Today we begin our journey into the book about Job and his suffering.

There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, "It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts." Thus Job did continually. - Job 1:1-5 ESV

What a man! 10 children, riches and a deep commitment to his Creator and God! Job was "the greatest of all the people of the east (Job 1:3).

Bible Reading Archeology

Where was the land of Uz? The name of the land means "wooded" in Hebrew. Commentators tell us that it was located in a region in the northern part of the Arabian desert, between Palestine, Idumea and the Euphrates river. The first clues as to where it was come in Job 1:15 where we hear that raiders came from Saba (Yemen today). The second raiding party came from Chaldea in southern Mesopotamia. Lamentations 4:21 places Edom in the land of Uz. One of Job's "comforters", Eliphaz was from Tema, in northern Arabia. Another (Zophar) is designated a "Naamathite", suggesting a mountain in NW Arabia. So we have a general idea of where Job came from. Check further with Dr. John Mackay for more details. ś

And when did Job live? Was he before or after Abraham? Or did he live before Noah? Where does Job fit on the Biblical timeline? Best guess is that he lived after Jacob's 12 sons had died (1700 BC) and before Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, about 1446 BC.  That puts him somewhere in that 200 year period. We probably cannot get more detailed than that.

But Job lost it all, as we shall see. This remains a reminder for us all not to put our trust in riches. And he lost his health as well. The Bible makes this point again and again.

Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever and never see the pit. For he sees that even the wise die; the fool and the stupid alike must perish and leave their wealth to others. - Psa 49:7-10 ESV

We all do well to heed this wisdom. . . More about this as we walk further into the teaching of Job the next time.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

Daily bread? Why bread? Why not, say, broccoli or carrots or cake? Why does our LORD teach us to pray, Give us this day our daily bread (Matt. 6:11) ? 

The fourth petition of the prayer our LORD taught us has a history, like everything else in the Bible. It goes back to the Exodus of the Children of Israel from bondage and slavery in Egypt in the 13th century B.C. Once they made it to the wilderness area between Egypt and the promised land they believed they were in big trouble. And they immediately began to complain about it.

And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, and the people of Israel said to them, "Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger." - Exod. 16:2-3 ESV

The LORD's response to this grumbling disbelief was to "rain bread from heaven" for them. Every day they were to "gather a day's portion"—no more—so that the LORD might test their faith in Him and whether they were willing to walk in His commands. On the sixth day they were to gather twice as much, for on the seventh day they were to rest (Exod. 16:4-7, 21-27).

And what was this strange food that appeared with the morning dew? No one could tell. This is why they said to one another in Hebrew, "Man hu?" What is it?
Moses reply was simple and to the point,

"It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat. This is what the LORD has commanded: 'Gather of it, each one of you, as much as he can eat. You shall each take an , according to the number of the persons that each of you has in his tent.'" - Exod. 16:15-16 ESV 
omer

An omer was equal to a couple quarts in our terms. Some gathered more, some less, but they discovered that whoever gathered much had nothing left over for the next day and whoever gathered little had quite enough nevertheless. Some tried to save it over to the next day, but they soon found that it bred worms and stank. And they also learned that it melted in the sun's heat. So it was a day by day existence. They were completely dependent upon the blessings of the LORD, for there was little else to eat in that wild, deserted area.

Many have offered guesses about Manna, but they remain but guesses. Here is one such, based upon a 2010 NY Times article.

The Bible describes it as being “like coriander seed,” and “white, and its taste was like wafers with honey.” 

But as miraculous as its biblical apparition may seem, manna is real and some chefs have been cooking with it. 

The dozens of varieties of what are called mannas have two things in common. They are sweet and, as in the Bible, they appear as if delivered by providence, without cultivation. 

Most of this manna is either dried plant sap extruded from tiny holes chewed out by almost invisible bugs, or a honeydew excreted by bugs that eat the sap. 

Rarer are the mannas not from sap, including Trehala manna, the sweet-tasting cocoon of the Larinus maculates beetle from Turkey; and manna-lichen (Lecanora esculenta), which occasionally dries up and blows around to form semisweet clouds out of which manna settles into drifts from western Greece to the central Asian steppe. 

Mannas form best in extremely dry climates — like the Middle East’s — where sap oozes at night and dries up in the morning. The favored theory on what the Israelites called manna is the sap of a tamarisk tree. 

In Calabria and Sicily, Italian farmers cut the bark of the flowering ash (Fraxinus ornus) to get the dried sap, the only domesticated form of manna. Italian apothecaries used it for centuries as a laxative, and other mannas have been used for medicinal purposes.

I suppose its OK to claim to know what Manna was. The real point is that it was always there for them throughout the 40 years before they claimed the land promised to Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 13:14-18).

Jesus' prayer for today's bread has all this in mind. More about this in my next post.

Faith in Jesus, The Great Work Of God

We're asking what it means to do greater works than Jesus did. The final sentence of my last blog was this:

You can ask for no greater work than to bring a soul to Jesus.

I promised to take a deeper look at questions raised by our Lord's promise given to his disciples in the upper room, the very night he was betrayed:

"Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. - John 14:12-14 ESV 

You will recall that Jesus himself said our primary work is to believe in him, as he said to the crowds who followed him after he gave them a sign of who he really was by feeding thousands in the wilderness with a little boy's lunch.

Then they said to him, "What must we do, to be doing the works of God?" Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." - John 6:28-29 ESV

How is it that faith in Jesus can be called the work of God? The answer is found by listening carefully to Jesus' comments about the story of the Exodus, also in John 6. The Jews who chased after Jesus when he had fed them referred to the manna their ancestors received during their forty years in the wilderness:

When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, "It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat. ... The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan. - Exod 16:1-35 ESV

 

The wilderness of the Sinai peninsula is a most uninhabitable place. The only way they survived out there—the only way—was because of the inexplicable gift of manna. I say inexplicable because they never did figure out what that bread was. That's why they called it manna (man hu in their language means, "What is it?"). And yet it came day after day. And it kept them alive.

Keep that in mind as you hear Jesus say about himself, 

". . . my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst." John 6:32-35 ESV

In other words, all your needs for this life and for that age to come are and forever will be met by Jesus. Come to him in your need both for food and for forgiveness and he will provide it.

And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." - John 6:39-40 ESV 

And again,

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." - Jhn 6:47-51 ESV

Yesterday at worship I ate that bread of life. As the pastor placed the wafer of bread into my mouth I heard him say, "Take and eat. This is the true body of Christ." This is the flesh that Jesus gave for me—and for all—upon the cross (1 Cor. 10:16-17). This is what we Christians celebrate. This is what we proclaim. This is what we will sing about and shout out on Easter Sunday. Christ is risen! Christ who died rose again. And because he lives we also live. And we who believe in him will never die. And it is all a completely undeserved and inexplicable gift (manna),  given to us in this wilderness as we make our way to the land of promise. To believe this, to put your entire trust and faith in this Good News is the work of God. The power to believe it is all God's work in me—not my work, but his! It is all grace, free and undeserved.

"This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent."

 

Water, Word And God's Spirit

We continue our meditation upon Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus in John 3:1-21.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

So goes the famous words from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The mariner and all onboard waited in vain for a wind to blow that would take them to land where they might find drinking water. Without water to drink only death awaited them.

And every tongue, through utter drought,

Was withered at the root;

We could not speak, no more than if

We had been choked with soot.

Through water God's Spirit brings new birth, new life, new hope, said Jesus in His nighttime conversation with Jewish Sanhedrin member Nicodemus. 

Jesus answered, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. - Jhn 3:5-6 ESV

Nicodemus knew of the importance of water in the history and in the rituals of Israel. By water the LORD had rescued them from slavery in Egypt as Pharaoh's armies were drowned in the Red Sea (Exodus 15:4). When nothing but desert threatened the LORD twice gave them water from a rock Moses struck with his rod at the LORD's command (Exod. 17:6; Num. 20:8-11). Water was used to clean clothes, to wash feet, to sprinkle on dwellings, to pour on unclean people, on altars, etc. (e.g. Lev. 8:6, 21; 11:32-38; 14:6-9, etc.). The waters of the Jordan river parted when Israel finally marched into the Promised Land (Joshua 3:15-17), "and all Israel was passing over on dry ground until all the nation finished passing over the Jordan."

Every year the people celebrated their Exodus journey from slavery to freedom during the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles in the seventh month in the Jewish calendar (Sept.-Oct.), the time of the year when the fall harvest was gathered (Deut. 16:13-16). For an entire week they lived in booths (sekhakh) as they praised their LORD for bringing them safely through the wilderness to their prosperous land and for giving them another year of His blessings. On the eighth and final day of the feast, the high priest, in a great processional made up of priests and thousands of worshipers, descended from the Temple Mount to pause briefly at the Pool of Siloam. A pitcher was filled with water, and the procession continued via a different route back to the Temple Mount. Once back in the Temple, with great ceremony the high priest poured the water out of the pitcher onto the altar.

In this way the people were reminded of God's continued blessings and deliverance from slavery and death. This ceremony was also intended to invoke God's blessing on the nation by providing life-giving water for the coming year. In Israel rains normally stop in March and there is little or no rain for almost seven months! If God did not provide the "early" rains in October and November, there would be no spring crop, and famine would again be at the doorstep. On the last day of that feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out,

"If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. - Jhn 7:37-39 ESV

As God provides water to quench thirst and grow crops, so He gives His Spirit to bring new life to all His children. In this way water and the Spirit are intimately tied together. This is the new birth that Jesus speaks about in His conversation with Nicodemus. Or course, it is not the water itself that gives new birth.  By itself water cannot work such a wonder. It is the Spirit of the Living God at work in the water, the Spirit speaking God's life-giving Word, the Word that glorifies Jesus. And how does the Spirit glorify Jesus in the hearts of those upon whom water is poured? The Spirit tells those so washed (baptizein in Greek) that Jesus has taken them with Him into death and from death to life eternal. He has gathered them together and brought them safely out of bondage and slavery. Now He is leading them through the wilderness of this world to the security of the promised land.

We have adopted the Greek word baptism to speak about this wondrous creative activity of God's Spirit. More about this next time.