Shall we turn now to the book of
Job, chapter 1.
As we come to the book of Job,
we actually enter into a new section of
the Old Testament.
As you know, the Old Testament is divided
into different divisions.
The first five books comprising what is often
called the Pentateuch, the books of the law.
The next several books are historic, as they
deal with the history of the nation of
Israel from the time that they have come
out of Egypt and they begin as a
nation in the land.
And it covers that period of history while
they are in the land of Israel through
the Babylonian captivity and through the repatriation and
the regathering again to Israel.
And the books of history take us up
to about 400 BC.
Now we are entering into a third part
of the Old Testament, the books that are
known as the books of poetry.
And these include Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song
of Solomon.
And they are Hebrew poetry.
And in Hebrew poetry, it is unlike our
English poetry in that Hebrew poetry does not
rhyme words, but actually gives sort of parallel
thoughts or contrasting thoughts.
And their sense of literature and poetry is
found not in the rhyming of a word
or not in a meter, but in the
thoughts themselves, the paralleling thoughts or the rhyming
thoughts.
The words don't necessarily rhyme, but there is
a rhyme or a parallelism within the thoughts
or a contrast.
The way of the righteous and the way
of the wicked.
For the righteous shall flourish, but the wicked
shall be cut off.
The righteous, the wicked.
And so you have the contrast between the
thoughts or you have parallel thoughts where they
are building the way of the Lord is
right, the way of the Lord is true,
the way of the Lord is just.
And so you are giving parallel thought concepts.
So Job is the first of the books
of poetry.
It has been considered perhaps older than the
book of Genesis, though Genesis of course deals
with history that predates Job.
Yet there is a Jobab mentioned in Genesis
that is very possibly the Job of this
book who lived contemporarily with Abraham.
So it is possible that Job dates back
as far as does Abraham, just a couple
of generations away from Noah and the flood.
Thus in the book of Job, which is
one of the oldest books of man's literature,
the expression of the thoughts of some of
the earliest men, once writing was developed and
thoughts could be recorded, we find that men
from the beginning have been pretty much the
same.
Though our cultures have changed and times have
changed from Job, yet basically the same things
that were a problem to Job are the
same things that become a problem to us.
The same needs that Job expressed are the
same needs that still exist in man today.
In Job, we have the picture of a
man who was reduced, perhaps more than any
other man has ever been reduced, to just
the bare essence of existence.
With Job it's just raw existence.
Everything that we think as necessary for life,
everything that we consider to be important for
our lives was stripped away from Job.
His possessions, his family, his friends, his health,
lost everything.
He even lost the consciousness of the sense
of his own worth as he began to
curse the day that he was born, cry
out for death.
Now, when you have lost everything, then is
when is exposed the deepest longings and quest
of man.
You see, you're not worried about where shall
we go to eat after church tonight.
And this doesn't become a real major issue,
a point of argument and debate.
Or what are we going to do tomorrow
on the holiday?
You see, we crowd and fill our minds
with a lot of things that really aren't
essential to life because we have friends and
we have many interests.
And these things can become very important to
us.
And unfortunately, people can spend their whole lives
in things that really don't matter.
A whole life can be wasted in non
-essentials.
It isn't what shall we eat or shall
we eat or not or can we eat
or not, but it becomes then the argument
is what is the choice of what we
are going to eat?
Well, I have a taste for Mexican food.
Well, I have a taste for Italian food.
Well, I want Mexican food.
I want the chips with the sauce.
Well, I want lasagna.
And you call the attorney to get a
divorce.
Oh, how tragic that man can spend his
life majoring in minors and never, never
come to the real issues of life.
Now, with Job, man, it was just existence.
Everything was stripped away.
Now, just the raw person, what are the
things that are expressed?
What are the cries?
What are the needs?
They are the basic needs of man and
the basic needs of life that are expressed
at this point.
And thus, Job becomes a very interesting book
to us as we listen to the cries
of Job as they deal with the deepest
issues of life.
The story of Job is an interesting story
and it is one that surely does confirm
what God has declared in Isaiah.
Isaiah and Job expressed Himself.
And that is that the ways of God
are beyond our finding out.
God said through Isaiah the prophet, My ways
are not your ways, saith the Lord.
My ways are beyond your finding out.
I do not pretend to understand everything about
God.
In fact, I must confess that I understand
very little about God.
That's why I worship Him.
If I could understand Him completely, then He
would be on my level.
And what would I have to worship?
But because He is so much greater, vaster
in wisdom and understanding and knowledge than I
am, I stand in awe and reverence and
I worship Him.
Now, He doesn't always do things my way.
Nor does He always stop to explain to
me why He did it His way.
Though I sometimes demand that He does, He
doesn't always even pay attention to my demands.
He just seems to go ahead and do
what He wants to anyhow in spite of
my objections.
But I appreciate that because I have found
a long time ago that I don't know
very much.
I fit in the category of which Shakespeare
wrote when he said, Man, poor man, so
ignorant in that which he knows best.
And I find I'm so ignorant in the
things I know best.
And thus, I am glad to submit my
life, my will, to God and to His
wisdom.
And I am thankful that I can pray,
Lord, I don't understand what You're doing, I
don't like what You're doing, but I know
that what You're doing is best, so just
keep doing it.
Not my will, Your will, Lord, be done.
The beginning of Job, it tells us a
little background of him.
Job lived in the land of Uz, wherever
that is.
But then concerning him, it said he was
a perfect man and upright, one that feared
God or reverenced God and hated evil.
Job was a good man, loving, reverencing God,
hating evil.
Now, he had seven sons and three daughters,
plus 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500
yoke of oxen, 500 she-asses and a
very great household so that this man was
the greatest of all of the men of
the East.
A good man.
A wealthy man.
A man who loved God and hated evil.
And his sons seemed to be partiers.
So in his concern for his sons, daily
he would offer sacrifices for them and say,
Lord, forgive them.
If in their partying they say something that
is contrary or against Thee, Lord, grant them
forgiveness.
And he was constantly praying for his children.
The background of the man.
Now, we turn from this man and now
we are ushered into the heavenly scenes.
We are now at the throne of God
and the angels are coming and presenting themselves
to God.
And along with the angels, here comes Satan.
Now, even after Satan's fall, it seems that
he had access and does have access to
the throne of God.
Why does God allow him access there?
I told you I don't know everything about
God and I don't know.
It's a question in my mind.
The Bible says he is the accuser of
the brethren and he accuses them before God
day and night.
Now, we find him in that position right
here.
He is accusing Job after God brings up
the subject of Job.
But first of all, when Satan comes in
to present himself before God, God says, Oh,
where have you been?
He says, Oh, I've been cruising around the
world.
Going to and fro throughout it, walking up
and down.
God said, Oh, have you considered my servant
Job?
God's doing a little bragging now.
He's got one down there who really loves
him.
He's a perfect man.
He hates evil.
Praying for his children.
The word considered is the word that I'm
interested in though because it is actually a
military term.
It is the term that is used of
a general who is studying a city before
he attacks it in order that he might
develop his strategy whereby he can destroy the
city.
So he's watching when they open the gates,
the method of which they open the gates,
how do the people come out, what gates
are the most easily attacked and he's developing
his whole strategy in order that he might
attack and destroy the city.
That's the Hebrew word, the background of the
word.
It's a military term.
Have you been studying Job?
Seeking to develop the strategy whereby you might
destroy him?
Have you considered my servant Job?
Now, God's witness of Job.
Perfect man and upright.
He loves me.
He hates evil.
And Satan frighteningly declares, yes, I've seen that
fellow.
I've studied him.
And not only had Satan been studying Job,
but he had developed a whole philosophy concerning
Job.
He said, Job has been blessed of you.
Look, he's the wealthiest man in the East.
He has everything anybody could ever desire or
want.
Job is just serving you because you've blessed
him so much.
Who wouldn't serve you if you blessed them
like that?
And you've put a hedge around him and
I can't get to him.
This interests me.
The hedge that God puts around his children.
He shall give his angels charge over thee.
To keep thee in all thy ways, to
bear thee up lest at any time you
dash your foot against a stone.
And God has a hedge around us.
Satan is complaining about that hedge.
Let me get at him.
Let me at him.
Let me take away his wealth.
And he's gonna curse you to your face.
Job only serves you because it pays such
big dividends.
So God said to Satan, alright.
I will let you at him.
Only don't touch him.
You can touch his possessions.
Don't touch him.
So it came to pass in a certain
day while his children were feasting and drinking
in his oldest son's house.
There came a messenger to Job and he
said, your oxen were plowing and the asses
were feeding beside them and the Sabians fell
upon them and took them away and they
killed all of your servants and I'm the
only one that is left and I have
come to tell you.
And before he could finish his message of
despair, a second servant came and he said,
the fire of God is fallen from heaven
and hath burned up the sheep and the
servants and it has consumed them and I
only am escaped alone to tell thee.
And while he was still talking, there came
another and said, the Chaldeans have made three
bands.
They fell upon your camels and carried them
away and they've killed all of your servants
with the edge of the sword and I'm
the only one that has escaped and I've
come to tell you.
And while he was yet speaking, another came
and said, your sons and daughters, while they
were having this big banquet, a wind came
out of the east and it blew down
the house and they were all of them
crushed to death and their servants with them.
Wipe out in a moment's time your wealth,
your possessions and even all of your children
are taken away from you.
What do you do?
Job fell on his face there in the
dirt and he blessed God.
He said, naked I came from my mother's
womb, naked I'm going to return.
The Lord has given, the Lord has taken
away, blessed be the name of the Lord.
And in all of these things, Job did
not curse God, neither did he charge God
foolishly.
I would like to say that I have
heard many people charge God foolishly.
Maybe they didn't curse God, but they've made
foolish charges against God.
I've heard people say, I don't think God
cares about me at all.
I don't think God loves me.
Those are foolish charges against God.
Sometimes because of our circumstances, we are prone
to make foolish charges against God.
But Job didn't do that.
He passed test one.
So, back again to the heavenly scene.
Another day, and again, the sons of God
are presenting themselves before Jehovah and Satan is
coming with them to present himself before the
Lord.
I have to say concerning Satan, I do,
well, would you say admire?
This guy has a lot of chutzpah.
I mean, to go in and stand before
God, to present himself before God, takes quite
a bit.
And God again said, hey, where have you
been?
As though God didn't know.
He said, oh, I've been messing around down
on the earth, going to and fro, walking
up and down in it.
God said, hey, have you considered my servant
Job?
Good man.
He's upright.
He loves good.
He hates evil.
Satan, having failed the first philosophy of Job
proving to be false, had his second philosophy.
Now, in the second philosophy, Satan shows his
cunning understanding of human nature, because the
psychologists tell us that one of man's strongest,
most basic instincts is that of self-preservation.
It's probably the strongest instinct that you have.
Self-preservation.
And so Satan, recognizing this to be true,
said, skin for skin, all that a man
has, will he give for his life?
You put limitations on what I could do
to him.
You didn't let me touch him.
Now, you let me get at him, and
he'll curse you to your face.
And so God said, alright, you may touch
him, but spare his life.
Again, God placing the restrictions and limitations upon
that which Satan can do.
Now, I believe that God does place upon
Satan the limitations.
The Bible says that God will not allow
you to be tempted beyond what you are
able to bear.
You see, God has put the limitations.
Satan can go so far, but God says,
alright, that's as far as you go.
Now, as far as I'm concerned, God lets
him go too far.
I would just assume God bottled the guy
up and ship him off into outer space
somewhere.
But yet, he is acting really under the
government of God because God places the restrictions
and the limitations upon what he can do.
Brings up a problem.
If God does control Satan, then why doesn't
God bottle him up and ship him out
of the universe?
If God one day is going to cast
him and his followers into this place scripturally
that is known as Gehenna, into outer darkness,
then why doesn't God do it now and
save us all the miseries?
Why does Satan have the liberties that God
has granted to him?
The power that God has granted to him?
Why did God allow him to come into
the Garden of Eden?
Why does God allow him the freedom to
war against us?
It's all involved in, why did God create
you?
God created you in order that he might
have an object to love and from which
he might receive love.
Now, in order to receive meaningful love, it
has to be a free will involved.
You cannot be a robot.
You've got to have a free will, the
capacity and power of choice in order that
your love for God might truly be a
meaningful love.
And thus, God gave us the capacity of
choice, the free will, but what value is
that unless there's something to choose?
To have the power of choice and yet
nothing to choose would be totally meaningless.
So, God not only had to create us
with the capacity of choice, but he had
to allow the opportunity of an alternate choice.
And thus, Satan was allowed to rebel against
God.
And he was allowed to come to man
and to offer man an alternate choice in
order that if man chose at that point
to love God, God would know that the
choice was from the heart and it was
meaningful and God could then receive praise and
glory from the meaningful love that was expressed
to him.
Taking a chance, man might make the wrong
choice.
You might be disappointed, your heart broken.
Such was the case.
But God didn't know that down through the
years there would be those who would make
the right choice and for the treasure of
having the love of those who would choose
to love him and serve him, he allowed
the choice knowing that many would make the
wrong choice but yet also knowing that there
would be those who would choose to love
him and would express their love for him
and he could come into a meaningful relationship
of love and fellowship with those who chose
to know him and to follow him and
to love him.
So the choice is still there and Satan
is still operating in order to encourage you
to take the alternate choice.
But the fact that you resist the devil
and the temptations and the seductions and the
allurements and the enticements and those things that
he seeks to place in your path to
cause you to turn away from God and
the Word of God and the Law of
God and to follow after your own lusts
and desires, the fact that you resist those
temptations and you still love God and you
gather and you worship God and you sing
together of your love and your praise and
you spend your time in meditation, in his
Word and just in fellowship with him, that
fellowship is extremely meaningful because God knows you
don't have to but it's coming from your
heart.
And for that reason God created man and
God has allowed the whole mess to exist
in order that there might be at least
within it those who would love him with
a sincere love.
You don't have to love God.
You don't have to serve God.
There are very attractive alternate decisions but man
must make his choice and God is honored
when man makes the right choice.
Now, Satan then is a tool that God
uses.
God has placed him under certain restrictions and
still there are restrictions however Job is now
afflicted with boils all over his body, running
sores.
He takes a piece of broken pottery and
scrapes his body, extremely painful, stinky, loathsome, covered.
He sits in a bed of ashes because
it's impossible to sit down or lie down
anywhere without the extreme pain of this staph
type infection that covered his entire body.
And his wife coming near to him, smelling
the foul odor, seeing the pain and the
suffering and the misery of a man who
has been reduced to this, said to her
husband, why don't you get it over with?
Why don't you curse God and die?
Now, that came from a heart of love.
It hurt her to see her husband in
such total misery.
Job, I can't stand to see you like
this.
Why don't you get it over with?
Why don't you curse God and die?
But he said unto her, you speak as
one of the foolish women speaks.
Shall we receive only good from the hand
of God and shall we not receive evil?
In all of this, did not Job sin
with his lips?
Now, there were three friends who when they
heard of the misery of Job, decided that
they would come and visit with him.
Eliphaz, who was from Timnan, Timan is the
Timanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Namathite.
And they had made an appointment to gather
together and to mourn with him and to
comfort him.
When they saw him, they didn't recognize him.
And they were just so shocked that they
just began to weep.
They tore their clothes and they just sat
down weeping.
And for seven days and for seven nights,
they sat there.
And no one said a word to him
because their grief was extremely great.
And finally Job spoke up.
And Job begins to curse the day of
his birth.
Job opened his mouth and he cursed his
day.
Notice he didn't curse God, just the day
in which he was born.
Let the day perish wherein I was born
and the night in which it was said,
there's a boy that is conceived.
Let that day be darkness.
Let not God regard it from above.
Neither let the light shine upon it.
Let darkness and the shadow of death stain
it.
Let a cloud dwell upon it.
Let the blackness of the day terrify it.
As for the night, let darkness seize upon
it.
And you notice the repetition of darkness, blackness,
darkness.
This is Hebrew poetry.
It's that repetition and all of a thought
and of an idea with amplification upon it.
Let that night be solitary.
Let no joyful sound come therein.
Let them curse it as the curse of
the day who are ready to raise up
their mourning.
And let the stars of the twilight thereof
be dark.
Let it look for light and have none.
Neither let it see the dawning of the
day, because it shut not up the doors
of my mother's womb, nor hid the sorrows
from my eyes.
Why died I not from the womb?
Why wasn't I stillborn?
Why did I not give up the ghost
when I came out of her belly?
Why did the knees prevent me?
Or why the breast that I should nurse?
For now should I have lain still and
been quiet.
I should have slept.
Then I had been at rest.
With the kings and the counselors of the
earth which built desolate places for themselves.
Or with the princes that had gold who
filled their houses with silver.
Or as an hidden untimely birth I had
not been as infants which never saw light.
Why didn't I die where it would all
be over with?
I would have just been quiet.
I would have never experienced anything.
There, he said, the wicked cease from troubling,
and there the weary be at rest.
There the prisoners rest together.
They hear not the voice of the oppressor.
The small and the great are there.
The servant is free from his master.
Wherefore is light given to him that is
in misery and life to the bitter in
soul which long for death but it does
not come.
They dig for it more than for hid
treasures which rejoice exceedingly and are glad which
can find the grave.
Why is light given to a man whose
way is hid and in whom God hath
edged in?
For my sighing cometh before I eat and
my roarings are poured out like the waters.
For the thing which I greatly feared has
come upon me and that which I was
afraid of has come unto me.
I was not in safety, neither had I
rest, neither was I quiet, yet trouble came."
Now, let me point out first of all
that you should not take the statements of
Job in his misery and seek to develop
from them biblical doctrine.
For the Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and
others have taken these statements of Job here
and they have developed the doctrine of soul
sleep out of these statements of Job.
Where he declares verse 17, There the wicked
cease from troubling, there the weary be at
rest, there the prisoners rest together, they hear
not the voice of the oppressor.
He's talking about the grave.
Why didn't I just die?
Where even the wicked is at rest, where
nobody is troubled, where there's silence, where there's
nothing.
Remember now the context.
This is Job.
He's crying out of the misery of his
own experience.
These are not God's inspired truths that he
is crying.
These are his endeavor to understand God and
the ways of God.
Job is actually challenging God.
Why did God ever allow me to live?
Why wasn't I born dead?
And the reason why you cannot take these
statements of Job as he is talking about
death, where there is no trouble, where everybody
is at rest and peace and so forth.
The reason why you cannot take these for
biblical doctrine is verified in the 38th chapter
of the book of Job.
For after the vain endeavor of man to
understand what was going on, God finally came
on the scene.
And in the 38th chapter, when God began
to speak to Job, God began to question
Job.
He said, first of all, the first question,
who is this that darkeneth counsel by words
without knowledge?
Now, what is expressed in Job is the
greatest knowledge of the day, the philosophies of
men and the wise men of that day.
And God speaks of all of their speculations
of being words without knowledge, which indeed they
were.
All of this counsel lacks real knowledge to
it.
But it did.
None of them really understood what was really
going on behind the scenes.
Who is this that darkeneth words of counsel
without knowledge?
And then in verse 17, God said to
Job, have the gates of death been opened
unto you or have you seen the doors
of the shadow of the death?
Okay, Job, you've been talking about, hey, I
wish I were dead, where everything is quiet,
where there is no trouble, where there are
no problems.
Everyone rests together.
God said, well, hey, have the gates of
death, have you been there?
Do you know what's going on there?
You know, you're talking, Job, with words that
have no knowledge.
You're talking of things you don't know about.
You haven't been there.
You don't know that that's the case.
Therefore, if you want to develop doctrine concerning
what transpires to a person when he dies,
you cannot go to the words of Job
or to the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes,
nor even to the Psalms, because many times
these men were speaking of things of which
they did not know, expressing the ideas, the
thoughts, the wisdom of man and the limited
knowledge of man.
If you really want to know what happens
beyond the grave, you better go to the
words of Jesus.
Who knows better than He?
If you want to develop doctrine of what
happens when a person dies, you have to
go to the words of Christ or to
the inspired words of the Holy Spirit in
the New Testament.
God rebukes Job because he's talking about something
that he knows nothing about.
Talking about death and what he imagines what
would be if he were dead.
But God said, you're wrong.
Now, there are those blessed, misguided saints who
are just as ignorant as Zophar and Bildad
and Eliphaz who take the Scripture where Job
declared, what the thing I feared, the thing
I feared has come upon me.
And they say, that was Job's problem.
He lacked faith.
And he was fearing these things all the
time.
And you know, what you say is what
you get.
And so Job had this fear which shows
the lack of faith.
Had he had enough faith, this never would
have happened to him.
That's as stupid and ignorant as Eliphaz or
Bildad or any of the rest of them
that were trying to understand Job's condition.
These men show the same ignorance.
Only they have no excuse for their ignorance
because God has told us in the beginning
what was going on.
At least Eliphaz and Bildad, Zophar, they have
an excuse for their ignorance because they weren't
able to read the first chapter of Job
to know what was really happening.
But it is...
Well, I can't get into that.
But it is...
It's not biblical exposition.
It is sheer stupidity to use this Scripture
to say, well, you know, the person, because
you were fearing this, this is why it
happened to you and all.
The thing that you fear is going to
come upon you.
That is not true.
You can look at David and he said,
I know that one day Saul is going
to kill me.
That's a negative confession, David.
What you say is what you get.
No, Saul didn't kill him.
You don't have to be worried about making
some negative confession.
You know, it isn't that God is waiting
and listening and you make some negative...
Alright, you said it, so I'm going to
do it.
You know, what kind of a God is
that?
In the same token, you can make a
positive confession for something that is not good
for you and God is gracious enough not
to do it for you.
You don't control God and please don't try.
The world is in enough of a mess
now and it would be even worse if
I were the one that began to take
over and order the things that were going
to happen.
So Job has made his complaint and so
Eliphaz, his friend who came to comfort him,
he said, if we attempt to talk to
you, will you be grieved?
But really, after what you've said, who can
keep silent?
He said, behold, you have instructed many people.
You have strengthened weak hands.
Your words have held up the person who
was falling and you have strengthened feeble knees.
But now, when it comes to you, you
faint.
It touches you and you're troubled.
Oh, those are nice words to hear, aren't
they?
From a friend who's come to comfort you
in all your misery.
Well, you know, great one you are.
You know, you were counseling and lifting up
others.
Your words held them up and all and
you were going around doing this.
But now it comes to you and look
what happens.
Man, you faint.
You know, you go under.
Is not this thy fear, thy confidence, thy
hope, the uprightness of thy ways?
Remember, I pray thee.
What innocent man ever perished?
And you see already he's beginning to get
the knife out.
Job, you're not innocent.
What innocent man ever perished?
Well, let me tell you this.
Many innocent men have perished.
There's not really good logic to what Eliphaz
is saying at all.
In fact, the most innocent of all men
was crucified.
So there really isn't sound wisdom in what
Eliphaz is saying.
It's just, you know, the argumentations of men
which often lack real wisdom.
Even as I have seen they that plow
iniquity and sow wickedness reap the same.
So, Job, you're just getting what you reap,
what you sowed.
You're reaping it now.
Those that sow iniquity and wickedness, they reap
the same.
By the blast of God they perish and
by the breath of his nostrils they are
consumed.
The roaring of a lion, the voice of
the fierce lion, and the teeth of young
lions are broken.
The old lion perisheth for lack of a
prey and the stout lion's whelps are scattered
abroad.
Now, he said, he gets all mystic, a
thing was brought secretly to me.
My ear received a little of it.
In the thoughts from the visions in the
night when a deep sleep had fallen upon
men, a fear came upon me and trembling,
it made all my bones shake.
A spirit passed before my face and the
hair in my flesh stood up.
And it stood still, but I could not
discern the form of it.
And an image was before my eyes and
there was silence.
And I heard a voice saying, Shall mortal
man be more just than God?
Shall a man be more pure than his
Maker?
Behold, he put no trust in his servants
and his angels he charged with folly.
So, the guy comes off now super spiritual.
Have you ever had those people come around
super spiritual, you know, when you're in trouble?
And, you know, visions and dreams and voices
of angels and spirits and all, you know,
and this hooey thing, you know.
And so, here's all he lived as, you
know, when other men were asleep, in a
deep sleep at night.
The spirit passed by.
I could tell it was there.
I couldn't tell the form.
And it began to speak, you know.
He charged his angels with folly and how
much less in those that dwell in houses
of clay.
Interesting and picturesque phrase of our body.
A house of clay.
But in the New Testament it said we
have a treasure in this earthen vessel.
Same thing, in this house of clay.
There's a fabulous treasure.
For God is dwelling in this house.
Know ye not that your body is the
temple of the Holy Ghost which is in
you?
And we have this glorious treasure, he said,
in these earthen vessels, that the glory, God
has put a lot of treasure in this
dumb clay pot in order that the glory
will always go to God, not to the
clay pot.
I'm just the vessel, but I have the
capacity to contain the wealthiest treasure in the
world.
Even God will dwell within my life.
But it is ridiculous, it's ludicrous to put
something of such great value in such a
common container, just a clay pot.
But God has done it.
That the glory will not be in the
vessel, but in the contents.
Now it is always pathetic and sad and
tragic when the clay pot tries to get
the glory and tries to draw attention and
glory to itself rather than to the one
who dwells within, doing the work.
So I love this, it's very picturesque.
Men who dwell in houses of clay, talking
about our body, whose foundation is the dust
which are crushed before the moth.
They are destroyed from morning to evening, they
perish forever without any regarding it.
Doth not their excellency which is in them
go away, they die even without wisdom.