Title:- The Ruined Truth
Job 3:14 …..With kings and counsellors of the earth, Who built ruins for themselves,
The prefix to our text today, is the extreme trial and testing of Job. At this point in the narrative, after sitting in suffering silence and in communal mourning with his good friends, for seven whole days and nights, Job finally opens his mouth, cursing the day he was born and wishing he was dead. He is utterly despondent and without hope. Many of you can say now, “been there, done that, seen the video, got the T-shirt!”It has been my observation that often times in the extremities of our depressed and suffering states, we speak out extreme words of observations and conclusions. They are either pin-point accurate assessments, that maybe previously a living ‘hope and desire’ had clothed with possible change, or they are absolute self pitying lies! This particular observation of Job is however, neither of those things.
His exclamation concludes with a statement of comparative and universally agreed support. In other words, this truth stands alone, no one will contest it. It's not just his depression and despondency speaking, no, it's the truth! Kings and counsellors may build kingdoms and empires for themselves and stud them with glittering diamonds of palaces for both the winter and the summer months, but in the end, they build for themselves, ruins.
This at the very least should jolt us into refocusing our eyes. As I write today, I remind myself that libraries are filled with thousands upon thousands of forgotten books. As the dead are brought back from current wars and interned in the earth, I remind myself that even Arlington cemetery was once a house for the living, and now looks out over ¼ million dead and will no doubt have its real estate expanded even further. Some of these forgotten corpses even now lay in unmarked graves and tombs, but no matter, for in the end no one will remember even those presently marked in the dirt, once loved and known, when all their left behind worldly estates, be they vast or miniscule, are possessed by someone else's driven dreams and eaten up by some one else's consuming progress, until they are like them, in the end, gone and never to be thought upon! We must remember that each of us building in this world, build for ourselves, ruins. It's all very depressing isn't it?
And so it should be. It takes countless repetition to knock it into our thick heads that THIS IS NOT IT! Matter is the MOST real illusion that you will ever come across. Take a piece of wood and crack yourself over the head with it and BAM! You’ll find it real. Yet catch it on time lapse photography over the years and watch it disintegrate. Throw it on the fire and watch it burn, introduce it to some termites and see it get chomped and collapse into dust. Do you get my point? Dear friends what will you make of these things and the ruined truth that Job leaves you with today? How then will you live? What will you be building today?
Listen:- According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is. If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. 1 Corinthians 3:10-15
Pray:-Lord, help me to build enduring works in heaven. Show me real treasure, for all I see that glitters is not gold at all. Show me the precious diamonds, for most shiny things that I lust after, do not last forever. In Jesus name I pray, Amen!
No comments:
Post a Comment