Job 7
This chapter is a continuation of chapter 6 where Job is speaking.
He refers to man's time of service on earth and says that as the servant longs for the evening and the employee for his wages so he, Job, longs for the nights to be gone - nights of misery, tossing to and fro.
We read that his skin is cracked and loathsome, covered in worms and dust - and then he appears to be turning his words towards God, asking him to remember the brevity of man's life and how it vanishes away.
Because of this he says he will not restrain his anguished complaint in the bitterness of his soul. He asks why God watches over him like a seamonster and sends terrifying dreams at night when his bed should be a place of rest and comfort - so that he longs for death.
And then he seems to say that man is so insignificant so why should God be so concerned with him, daily trying and examining him. He asks how long will it be until God leaves him,and he will die, or if he has sinned why doesn't he forgive him, for he will soon be dead.
My attention was caught today by verse 17, 'What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him? and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him?'
To magnify is to make something look bigger than it is, perhaps so that it can be seen in more detail; and setting your heart on something seems to speak to me of a strong desire, interest or concern for something - not just a passing concern, but a deep, determined concern or interest.
I wonder how Job was meaning these questions? Was it coming from a place of humble, depreciation - telling God he didn't feel significant enough for God to be noticing him or concerning himself with him?
Was it in a complaining way - as the following verse might suggest - that God is magnifying him to see him more clearly as it were and examine him, and perhaps he was trying to tell God that man was too insignificant for God to go to such trouble?
Or, was it a sign of Satan's temptation - that we are too insignificant for God to take any notice and concern himself with us?
Maybe Job's questions were motivated by an element of all of these thoughts. We see how in other parts of the Bible this question is also asked - in Psalm 8 & 144 from a place of awe and worship; and also in a prophetic way speaking of the Lord Jesus in Psalm 8, which is confirmed to us by Hebrews 2:6.
How do we ask these questions today?
Does the truth of the wonder in them touch you? The wonder that God - the great God of heaven and earth concerns himself with the humans he has created! And what awe and fear this should also fill us with - that as Job says in the next verse - God examines us.
God knows the minutest details of our lives, what we are thinking, doing, saying. Whether we are living for ourselves or for him. Whether we are wasting away the time, life and possessions he has given us or whether we are using them to bless those around us and honour him.
Think of the wonder that God loved the world so much 'that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life' (John 3:16).
Are you able to wonder today at the love he has set upon you for eternity - that he cares about these minute details of your life? That he concerns himself with you...that he has set his heart upon you? Does such love make your heart in return run towards him, like the hymn writer John Berridge* wrote,
I was thinking this the other day - thinking why does God take any notice of me - me! - I am not any better or any different from all the other people in this world...the answer softly came in unspoken words, 'because he would'. (I can't find these words in the Bible - or as a hymn - do you know where they are?)
Maybe you wonder whether God will ever take notice of you. You feel that he cannot see you, he does not care about you. Dear friend, God is invisible to you, but you are not invisible to him. He knew about you before you were even born as Psalm 139 tells us.
Go to him in prayer and tell him the thoughts and longings of your heart...he will answer you in his time and in the way he knows is best.
Search for him in the Bible - his words, which he can as freshly speak to you today as when they were first inspired by the Holy Spirit to those who wrote them - words which will impress themselves on you, that Jesus concerns himself with you.
* Hymn 268, Gadsby's Hymns
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