daily java

Daily Java:

Then Bildad the Shuhite replied to Job “How long will you go on like this? You sound like a blustering wind.”  (Job 8:1-2)

I am reading the book of Job in my daily Bible reading. Job had some real problems and his life was ruined through no fault of his own. When it came down to it, his problems were a result of a bet between God and satan. Satan told God that Job was only devout because God blessed him. God said, take it all away and he will still worship. And the contest was on.

Nothing that happened to Job after this was Job’s fault. Everything Job had was taken away. All he had left was his wife and three friends he could have done without.

Job’s wife was understandably upset. She saw her husband, whom she loved, broken and beaten, afflicted with boils, having taken residence on a trash heap. Her response was to go ahead and get it over with. Curse God and die. To her anything was better than this living hell.

His three friends were well-meaning, on one level, but they were also self-righteous men who, although they didn’t have the slightest idea what they were talking about, still felt compelled to give advice.

Bildad’s entry into the stupid advice pool? “If you would just listen to us, you would be able to understand. We know what is wrong and you refuse to listen.”

In his mind, as well as the minds of the other two, he had the answer, if only Job would listen. Job was wrong and they were right. It was that simple.

You come across people like this a lot. It is almost a gnostic sense of “I know what is right and if you were smart, you would listen to me.”

What did Job do when faced with these well-meaning friends who knew nothing? He ignored their advice.

Job knew what his relationship with God was. Later on, he makes the beautiful comment:  

But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and he will stand upon the earth at last. And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God! (Job 19:25-26)

Of course, just because you think you are right doesn’t mean anything. In fact, you can feel you right down to the very core of your being and still be wrong. Two examples of this.

First is the passage from Jeremiah 17:9-10:  

The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.

Only God knows our hearts and what is truly right. We may think we do, but what we think is too colored with our lives and what is going on in our lives. We cannot be objective. Which brings us to the second thought and our example.

In 2 Samuel 6, King David decided to move the ark to a new location. Instead of carrying it like God said, with poles put in special rings carried by priests, he decided it would be nice if he carried it on a new wagon pulled by young horses.

As it hit a bump in the road, a young man names Uzzah put his hand up to steady it and dropped dead immediately.

A perfectly normal reaction to try to save the ark from falling off, but no one was to ever touch the ark, God had said, even in good intentions.

It scared David so much he parked it and waited.

The point? Just because you think something is a good idea and what God wants doesn’t mean it is. And like in Bildad’s case above, just because you think you are right doesn’t mean you are.

Job knew his relationship, and these three men, I think, were secretly pleased to see such a great man fall.

Just the kind of friends Job needed.

daily java

Daily Java:

Later, as Jesus left the town, he saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Levi got up, left everything, and followed him. Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Jesus as the guest of honor. Many of Levi’s fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them. But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with such scum?” Jesus answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor — sick people do.  I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.” (Luke 5:27-32 NLT)

Jesus always made people mad. If it wasn’t his doing stuff on their holy day of rest, the Sabbath, it was the fact that he hung around with people that were considered on the fringe of society.

You can imagine the perplexed and offended expressions on the faces of the other apostles when Jesus walks up to a guy who was a tax collector and asked him to come and be part of his group.

Nobody liked tax collectors. They worked for the Roman Empire and their job was to collect taxes. The problem was that they did it on a commission basis. The more they took in, the more they made.

They had to give a certain amount to the Romans, but could keep all the rest. Since the amount of tax the Jews had to pay was always somewhat unknown, he could stick them for all he wanted.

And since the Jews hated the Romans – they were, after all, an opposition force in their country – they hated to give money in taxes to them. But above all, they hated people who helped the Romans.

The Jews felt about the tax collectors like the French felt about the women who associated with the Germans in World War II. After the war, these women had their heads shaved and were basically thrown into the streets.

The strict Jews wanted nothing more than to kill these tax collectors.

Then Jesus comes along and takes one into his inner circle and then goes and eats dinner with him and his friends. Why? Why would he embarrass them like this? You can almost see the other apostles sitting rigidly at the table, not having any fun, scowling at the other guests and at Jesus, who was probably having a good time.

And others didn’t like it either. The religious leaders asked him why it was that he ate and drank with such scum. Jesus’ answer? They need me.

He said, healthy people don’t need doctors, sick people do. He also told them that he didn’t come to call those who think they are righteous. He came to call those who know they are sinners.

Those who think they are righteous had and have trouble accepting Jesus. They think they are fine. Those who are without him recognize strongly their need for him.

Let a preacher go into the average bar and have a beer with a bunch of people and the church would be up in arms. Why? That isn’t where he belongs. He belongs here with us.

The problem with all this is that it is exactly where he belongs: with people who need the Lord desperately.

Those people in church many times are so full of their own self-righteousness that they cannot see the need. They come to worship different things that Jesus brought. They worship their own way of doing things, tradition, their own preferences and completely forget Jesus and his grace.

There is a world lost and dying out there without Jesus and his grace. But people argue over procedures so much that they forget that.

Jesus didn’t have ten cents for procedures, for the way we have always done it, for what people thought in general.

He really didn’t care what people thought. He came to bring people to God.

And if he brought the wrong people, too bad.

I want to be like him.