The before and after of a clematis: the loveliness of last week is a skeleton today."If they obey and serve Him, they will spend the rest of their days in prosperity and their years in contentment" (Job 36:11).
What do such words as this really mean? Can it all be as simple as it sounds? Here might be an even better question: How can this particular person, the tortured Job, give such a far-out testimony? All of his days were certainly not spent in what most of us would call prosperity and contentment. And notice that Job said this in the middle of his story, after he had been beleaguered with ruined health and destroyed family and goods, and before God gave him "twice as much as he had before."
Why twice as much? I have heard many say, "That wouldn't have helped me any! Everybody knows that getting another child- no matter how much you love that child- can ever take away the grief or 'make up for' losing the one you lost." But we need only to keep reading to learn that it must have worked for Job because verse 12 says ,"The Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first." I interpret that to mean that Job was happier, more contented, more fulfilled in the latter part than he was in the first part. Did his spiritual blessings correspond with his physical blessings? Was he more spiritually blessed because he was more physically blessed? I don't think so. I think he learned something about the goods of this world that enabled God ( if you can strain your imagination a little to get what I mean by the Lord of the Universe being "enabled" as though there is some greater enabler above Him... ) to grant him not only more children (and beautiful ones, at that!) but also better health and more possessions. Perhaps after he had learned to proclaim what he did in verse 36:11, he could have owned the whole world and still taken it lightly compared to what he possessed as a child living in the hand of the one Holy and sovereign God.
Listen to 1 John 2:15-17: "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world-- the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does-- comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever." He is saying that by loving the world we cripple our ability to love, and thus obey, the Father.
Why? Does this necessarily have to be true? J.I. Packer, in his wonderful little devotional book, Great Joy, explains it in a way that hits me between the eyes:
"Love of the world is egocentric, acquisitive, arrogant, ambitious,
and absorbing and leaves no place for any other kind of affection.
Those who love the world serve and worship themselves every
moment. It is their full-time job. And from this we see that any-
one whose hopes are focused on gaining material pleasure, profit,
and privilege is booked for a bereavement experience, since, as
John (v. 17) says, the world will not last. Life's surest certainty is
that one day we will leave worldly pleasure, profit, and privilege
behind. The only uncertainty is whether these things will leave us
before our time comes to leave them. God's true servants, however,
do not face such bereavement. Their love and desire center on the
Father and the Son in a fellowship that already exists (cf. 1 John 1:3)
and absorbing and leaves no place for any other kind of affection.
Those who love the world serve and worship themselves every
moment. It is their full-time job. And from this we see that any-
one whose hopes are focused on gaining material pleasure, profit,
and privilege is booked for a bereavement experience, since, as
John (v. 17) says, the world will not last. Life's surest certainty is
that one day we will leave worldly pleasure, profit, and privilege
behind. The only uncertainty is whether these things will leave us
before our time comes to leave them. God's true servants, however,
do not face such bereavement. Their love and desire center on the
Father and the Son in a fellowship that already exists (cf. 1 John 1:3)
and that nothing can ever disrupt."
What is happening to us now-- what we own, the titles we aspire to, and the pleasures we enjoy-- therefore, must be prayed over diligently. We must pray seriously for discernment concerning it all. We must take care to learn and keep learning whether we are allowing our love of all of this to become our ultimate hope. Herein lies the snare. None of this can become our hope, because none of this lasts. John and Job both seem to be warning us about these temptations to allow our hope to be built upon the hopeless; they seem to be recommending to us a continual assessment of our true focus so that we can redirect it to the only One who holds in His hand our eternal assignment when we are finished with this fast-fading life.
"All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall because the breath of the Lord blows on them... but the word of our God stands forever." Isaiah 40:6-8
What is happening to us now-- what we own, the titles we aspire to, and the pleasures we enjoy-- therefore, must be prayed over diligently. We must pray seriously for discernment concerning it all. We must take care to learn and keep learning whether we are allowing our love of all of this to become our ultimate hope. Herein lies the snare. None of this can become our hope, because none of this lasts. John and Job both seem to be warning us about these temptations to allow our hope to be built upon the hopeless; they seem to be recommending to us a continual assessment of our true focus so that we can redirect it to the only One who holds in His hand our eternal assignment when we are finished with this fast-fading life.
"All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall because the breath of the Lord blows on them... but the word of our God stands forever." Isaiah 40:6-8
