Job 34:1-36:33, 2 Cor 4:1-12, Ps 44:1-8, Pr 22:10-12
Today is the 30th day of August. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It’s great to be here with you today on the, I guess, the eve of the final day of this month and the eve of when we’ll begin the family reunion here in the rolling hills of Tennessee. So, that’s exciting. We’ve made this far in this year. I, probably, once a month mention, “I can’t believe were here.” Like, it really does in so many ways feel like we just started the journey, like we’re still in the book of Genesis, but we have traveled so far, and through so many stories and so many things that have been brought out because of what’s in the Scriptures. Right now, we’re working through the book of Job, which brings up plenty of things to be considered, especially things about what we think we know that we don’t know. So, let’s get back into it. We have a few more days before we will complete the book of Job. Job has been in pursuit of an audience with the Almighty God face-to-face where he would like God to explain to him why he is enduring such suffering. And it’s more than just suffering. He believes that God is specifically judging him, and he wants to understand why. And, of course, Job’s friends are trying to tell him that it’s different than what he thinks. And, so we had this new voice coming to the mix yesterday, the youngest of the friends who has waited to speak until now and we’re in the middle of what he has to say. So, we’re reading from the New International Version this week. Job, chapter 34 through 36.
Commentary:
Alright. Let’s start in the Proverbs today and then jump back to Job for a second. So, the proverb says, “Drive out the mocker and out goes strife. Quarrels and insults are ended.” I mean, it’s worth just kind of meditating on that for a second, but even if we do, like we would end up going out, “yeah, I agree, throw out the mocker, fighting will go, quarrels and insults will end if there is no mockery. But normally only when we read something like this, we don’t think we’re the mocker. Like, we don’t look in the mirror and realize how far we’ll take things to be right in argument or in a dispute. And it causes us to lose sight because we draw the lines in the sand and then we’re like we’ve gotta be right and we’re not paying attention to whether we are or not. And because the conflict just amps up, right? And then it becomes about winning. And we’ve lost the fact that these kind of conflict…conflict is how we solve problems. Like, this is how things get done, but we…we turn conflict into like a strategy, like how to defeat each other instead of defeating the problem that is causing the conflict. So, we start attacking each other instead of the problem. And that is what mocking does. So, if we…if we look up mocker and we try to find the origins of this word, what does this actually mean, then we find that it is…it is deeply rooted in scorn and contempt. It basically works like this. If you’re in a conflict with somebody - spouse, child, friend, coworker, whatever - you’re in this conflict and then you start over…over the course of the conversation to look down on them and you begin to consider that their point of view is beneath your consideration, that they’re just wrong, well then we start to personalize the conflict and we can very easily start becoming condescending, arrogant, right? Scorn and contempt…and we use these to win the battle. We make it personal. In other words, we become the mocker. So, when we’ve lost our equilibrium, right, when the emotions have amped up and our face is all red and we’re saying things that we haven’t really thought about saying, like when we lose sight of the problem and start fighting each other then what’s gonna follow? Pride, right? Arrogance. Like, it’s just gonna be there because we’re not trying to resolve a conflict anymore, we’re trying to win, we’re trying to be right, we’re trying to diminish and suppress the other person or the other person’s point of view. The battle is about domination then. And, so, when that happens, and it’s probably happened in everybody’s life who’s hearing me, then we throw off the gloves, right? We’re not like sparring anymore, we’re like actually trying to really hurt somebody. And man, you can really hurt somebody with your words. If you are a mocker. So, basically Proverb had…Proverbs had one sentence for us that simply said, look, if the mocker is not a part of the conversation then the fighting and the quarrels and the insults will go away and disappear which will then allow us to participate in actual conflict resolution that does something good. And that’s pretty tough thing to do when you like…like once…once the whole pot is simmering, right? Once you’re in the heat of the moment it’s pretty…it’s pretty tough to shut that off. One person, you know, maybe a conflict is happening and it’s going okay but somebody then says something that’s just a little bit over the line. They got a little mad. They said something they probably shouldn’t have said and then…then all bets are off, the whole thing is just blowing up. So, how can we…I mean conflict is necessary…like conflict is unavoidable. Nobody always sees eye to eye. Like, I love my wife and she loves me, and we’ve been together a very, very long time and we have a family and we are committed to each other and we are moving in the same direction and we are on the same page but we do not always agree with each other. So, we’re just simply not always going to agree in this world. We will find people who have different stories and different sets of convictions and are looking at things differently and we may not understand them, but we can’t just mock them, or we can’t just diminish them, we can’t just try to dominate them. That doesn’t do anything good. So, how can we can we step into those, kind of, tense times without bringing the mocker. Basically…basically we have to walk in with a set of convictions and believe that our hearts are good toward each other. Like, that’s the baseline. My heart is good toward you. Your heart is good toward me. And when we believe that then…then we’re not really trying to dominate anybody. Like, we’re not on our defense waiting for that one thing to get said that’s gonna set the whole thing off. When we know that our hearts are good toward each other in this then our defenses fall because there’s nothing to defend if you not being attacked. What is there to defend? And when we believe that our hearts are good towards each other then we can remind ourselves, there’s a problem here. We’re not seeing eye to eye on this particular issue. That doesn’t mean we’re not seeing eye to eye in life as people. We’ve got this problem. Let’s figure this out. Like, let’s attack this problem and not attack each other while we’re at it. So, let’s will watch for the mocker. I mean, that little one sentence in Proverbs just says so much, would change so much in our day-to-day lives.
And then there’s something really, really interesting that ties into this that we find in the book of Job today. Something that Elihu said to Job, and it’s really interesting because it hits us between the eyes. Elihu said, “beware of turning to evil, which you seem to prefer to affliction.” So, let’s think about that for second. We find ourselves in seasons of suffering and…and…and it’s hard whether that be that we’re suffering in our mind like with depression or anxiety or that be that we’re suffering physically or we’re grieving or that we just we feel like trapped in our lives…that like there’s no wiggle room on any side. We can’t get ahead. And, so, we feel like were suffering or we’re being forced to learn endurance and we do continue to endure, but things don’t seem to be getting better. Then, what is the invitation? Like, what starts percolating inside of us? We start getting angry, we start getting resentful and as that grows we start throwing our hands up and say, “what do I gotta do here” until we want to just chuck the whole thing. And that is the point at which we start saying God has abandoned me. God doesn’t see me or maybe even so far as I’m not sure there is even a god out there. So, eventually we’re like it doesn’t matter anyway and then we start…you know…we start going down an evil path because we prefer that to the affliction that we are suffering. So, we’re essentially saying, “well, I waited, and God didn’t show up. So, I’m going to do my own thing”, which just is like being at the bottom with a shovel trying to see how far further we can go. In the same way that when argument gets going and we become the mocker, we don’t just shut off and go, “oh my goodness. I am so sorry. I’m being the mocker here. I’m sorry for what I just said. I don’t mean that.” Like, that rarely happens. So, we see today, the Scriptures, a couple of behaviors that are really volatile and really, really unhelpful in our lives that we get drawn into because we would prefer that over whatever it is we’re facing. So, if we’re in an argument we don’t necessarily want to do productive conflict resolution. It’s easier to be the mocker and just get into a war even though that just breaks our hearts in the end. Or we may be enduring through something that we just throw our hands up in the air and go to the dark side, basically, because we would rather be on the dark side than facing affliction. Neither one of those paths end anywhere good. And, so, let’s take them to heart today, as we examine our own lives.
Prayer:
And we invite You Holy Spirit into that because we’re all guilty of all of this. We have for sure been the mocker. We have, for sure, just thrown her hands up and given up and gone…gone and done destructive things just because we were enduring an affliction of some sort. Help us. Help us God because these are just indicators of when we take over in our own…like when things are not working as we had expected, and we take over and make things worse. Come Holy Spirit, help us to at least pause and listen for Your voice in our lives because there’s always that meet, there’s always that moment of choice before we say that thing or do that thing, there’s always a choice. Come into our choices we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Hi this is my first time calling. My name is Rachel. I am really just prayerful for my family right now and I’m hoping you all can pray with me. We’ve been working to kind of just to honor God with what we’re doing but we have some difficulties because my dad just really struggles, and we don’t really know how to reach out to him or how to honor him in a way that he can respect or understand to show him God’s love. He’s just really hurting. He has been for a long time. He doesn’t want to open up about it or anything like that. And he often tries to push all of us, his kids and his wife, away as much as possible. And we just don’t really know what we’re doing on that. So, I would appreciate your guy’s prayers. Thank you so much for this time and for listening to my request. Bye.
It’s hard to know where to start but my husband and I both are in Bible College for theology degrees, but in order to do that I had to work a little more and he had to work less. So, he’s staying home with the kids and he does a great job and I’m still home sometimes, but I have lost the chance to homeschool them and to work in the garden and with the animals and all the things that I love to do. But we have decided to do this in service to the Lord. I’m just worried and sad. I miss being home with my children and I’m so thankful husband is there to disciple them while I’m not. But the pain and the sadness of it is real. I miss them terribly and I don’t want to do the wrong thing. And I also work at night. And, so, it’s very, very hard on me physically and hard on my family. And I pray that the Lord would bring comfort and resolution and I know that His grace is sufficient for everything. I am praying for release from working at night. For peace and understanding that He knows exactly what He wants for us and that he’s orchestrating everything down to the smallest detail for his glory and for our good…
Wow, this is incredible to be able to press a little red button and then make your appeal to the Lord and with your brothers and sisters. I thank all of you for your love and care and concern. If you’re listening to this, it’s because you do care and you believe in prayer and you love the Lord. So, this morning I just bring to you my son Adam who’s been sick for many, many years. Really didn’t know what it was. Finally we just went to see some more holistic doctors, got him on a diet and he’s just much better. But I think we’re finding that a lot of it is emotional or psychological. He has a solid career and so on but the money that has been spent on seeing doctors in the process has really caught up on him. And, so it’s eating alive on him now as he wants to be out of debt. So, anyway, I hold him before the Lord, and I thank you so much for your prayers. God bless every one of you that are listening to this today. Keep fighting the good fight of faith.
Hey Daily Audio Bible family, this is John Corrado calling from Bethlehem Pennsylvania, well, in New York City on top of a roof on a bright sunny, sparkly, shiny, new day here. Well, it’s in the afternoon, so the day isn’t new but every moment where made new in Christ, right? So, it’s brand-new right now. Listen, I just wanted to reach out in advance of the family reunion that’s taking place this weekend to pray a prayer over everything that’s going to take place there this weekend. I’m gonna get right into that now. Father God thank You so much for this amazing day, a day that was never promised to us. Thank You for Your grace and mercy and Your kindness Father God and everything that You do to us and for us and through us through Your word Lord God, that we endeavor to the end and we place ourselves in every day. Thank You for how You’re working in our hearts and our hearts and transforming us more to be like Christ through Your word Father, as we lean into You further and further You make us more and more like Your son as we grow and develop the kingdom here on earth that will eventually be one day all Yours again Father God. Thank You so much for the family reunion coming up this weekend Lord. I ask You to bless each and every aspect of the reunion, everything Father God from all the travel, all the travel plans, all the arrangements, all the coordination, all the events. I ask for special blessing for Brian and Jill and his family for China for Michael and for SarahJane for anyone that’s going to be involved for the YMCA aspect of it Lord God. And I especially ask a blessing over each and every one of us that’s going to be in attendance, that we can be in great unity with one another Lord God. I’m so excited. Thank You for the opportunity to be able to come together we ask for a…
Hey fellow DABbers, this is Emily of Jim and Emily in Houston. We love you and where praying for the family gathering, family reunion this weekend. We wish we could be there. I really want to see my More sister’s and Chris and Beth, and we just love you guys so much. But we are going to Wales on September 25th. We are moving there to be missionaries and to help a church plant renovate a closed Victorian era church building turning it into a community outreach center and a working church and we need your prayers. Margo in Liberia, you have inspired us. Please pray for us. Paul in Wales, we are believing for revival and what we specifically need prayer for is that someone would lease our house. We’re packing up stuff. It fills me with oodles of anxiety going through stuff. So, please pray for me in that. Pray for what needs to be sold gets sold. We’re putting stuff in storage. And for all those details. Houston does have a heat embargo on shipping animals. So, please pray that on September 25th we have no problems with heat so that our kitty can come with us. And please keep praying for revival in Wales. We love you guys and I just have to say, Brian and Jill, thank you so much for this podcast. You were with us in 2014. Sorry, in __. And may God work miracles there and we trust that He’ll be with us in the UK as God works miracles there too. Thank you. We love you.