This psalm calls all peoples of the world to recognize God as King. It is a call to worship the Lord Most High. He is not just the king of Israel, but over all nations. There is no one higher nor mightier than He. There may be rebellion in the world today against the great King, but His triumph is assured and those who oppose Him are destined to fall. For whom do you offer your worship of clapping and shouting?
King Solomon was the writer of Ecclesiastes. He observed the beauty of how God had assigned everything a season and how these things seemed to repeat over time. Yet, he also observed that God had put an eternal longing in man’s heart that wanted to know and experience more than just what his season on earth allowed. This “eternity” that God put in humanity’s heart makes us unique in creation. We long for that which will last. We long for ultimate meaning and purpose. We long for God. Solomon found that everything “under the sun” was “vanity” (empty, meaningless). Why? Because we long for that which is beyond the sun. We long for the Eternal One. As Pascal said, “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”
Job’s response after God answered his questions with some of His own was brief. He basically concluded, “You’re God and I’m not.” This is not fatalism, but acceptance that even though God’s good purposes are higher and better than ours, He still hears us and responds when we cry out. God is not afraid of our hardest questions. Yet, be aware when you ask that you may learn as Job did that your “arm’s too short to box with God.” Or that your intellect is too limited to understand. Are your questions motivated by a desire to know God better? Or are they really expressions of doubt or accusation? Suffering did not cause Job to doubt God. And God heard Job’s cry and answered him.
Presently, we walk through life believing in our risen Lord without actually seeing Him. We believe because of the witnesses – the witness of the Bible, of the saints who have passed the faith down to us, and because of the inner witness of the Spirit of adoption who causes us to cry out, “Abba, Father” to our God. Our faith is by God’s grace and not our sight. The world says seeing is believing. However, Jesus said to Thomas, “You have believed because you have seen, but blessed are those who have not seen, yet have believed” (John 20:29). We believe in the risen Lord. He is the Head of His body, the Church. And so, we believe that just as the Head was raised, so shall the body be raised. The same God who raised Jesus from the dead, will raise us. We live by this faith, even though our eyes have not yet seen its fulfillment.
The same God who created physical light by His command has sent His Son, Jesus to be our spiritual light. Yet, our hearts remain in sin’s darkness until they behold the light of the gospel “in the face of Jesus Christ.” Those who would seek to know God, to see His glory, must seek the face of Jesus. There is no other power to enlighten our darkened hearts. For Christ is the image of the invisible God, the Light of the world, the only way to the Father. Although our hearts now reflect His light as we share the gospel, we are not its source, so we must always direct others to seek His face. We sing: “Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”
Job made a “covenant with his eyes” that is a much needed one for today. His covenant (pledge, sacred promise) was with God and with his wife, that his eyes belonged to God and to his wife alone. He had predetermined what he would allow his eyes to gaze upon and what he wouldn’t. Looking upon a “young woman” was not allowed. Why? Because he had made a covenant that restricted his vision. He would not let his eyes linger on a young woman, therefore avoiding the temptation to covet or lust after her. It is an accepted fact that men are more susceptible to visual stimulus than women. Yet, both should make a covenant with their eyes that protects them from temptation.
A psalm for the soul. When you are discouraged and “cast down,” learn to encourage yourself in the Lord (1 Sam. 30:6). Bring your soul to the Lord. Instruct your soul to “hope in God” and “praise Him.” Have you not yet learned that a fresh encounter with God in Word and prayer will change the disposition of your soul and therefore your “countenance,” putting a smile in place of a frown? Reset your soul’s hope from its idols and put its hope in God. Worship works.
Parents, discipline your child and teach them the right way while they are still young. It’s much easier to correct a 3-year old than a 13-year old. Focus on heart change, asking the Lord to help you, and perhaps someday you will know the joy of having your 30-year old walk beside you in friendship, holding the hand of your 3-year old grandchild doing the same.
Job’s friends kept challenging him to repent because their simplistic assumption was that since evil had befallen Job, he must have done something to deserve it. Yet, Job continued to claim that God had done him an injustice. He also questioned their hypothesis further, by asking why God would let the “wicked live and become old” and “mighty in power.” Job was wrestling with the problem of evil. Why do bad people get to enjoy good things? And why do bad things happen to good people? Where is God’s justice? Job is not the only person to ask these questions. We still struggle with them today. Perhaps we can catch a glimpse of understanding by hearing what Jesus said about this in the gospel of Matthew. He said that the Father “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). The truth is that God sheds His grace on all of us, even those who have made Him their enemy. Yet, someday an account will be given. And only those found in Christ Jesus will be saved.
From verse 8 it appears that Paul was living in Ephesus when he wrote his first letter to the Corinthians. Ephesus was one of the great cities in the Roman empire located on the Mediterranean coast of Asia Minor in the country we now know as Turkey. Paul stayed in Ephesus for an extended period of time and found the city to be an “open door” for the gospel, not only for its citizens, but also as a hub of ministry in reaching those in the surrounding cities. Yet, wherever there are people coming to Christ and getting saved, there is also increased activity by the Adversary, the devil. So, Paul planned to “tarry” in Ephesus as long as the gospel door was open, knowing that such “doors” do not stay open forever. There is an urgency to such opportunities that Paul recognized. Are we looking for such open door opportunities in our world today?