For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
Take care not to offend your friends. There is nothing more difficult than regaining the trust of one whose friendship you have lost by giving offense. Be careful when arguing with friends, in such situations it is very easy to give offense unintentionally. If you do so, do not be too proud to apologize immediately.
There are a lot of things I thought of writing about this psalm, but every time I read it again I was convicted by one line.
When I read that I was reminded that I do not approach the Lord in prayer as I should, nor as much as I should. I ask the Holy Spirit to transform me so that my first desire each morning is to go to the Lord in prayer.
When a new governor, Festus, took over the political/religious leaders of Jerusalem attempted to get him transferred to Jerusalem for trial. They planned to arrange an ambush to kill Paul while he was being transported to Jerusalem. Festus rejects the Jewish leaders request and insists that they bring their accusations before him at his court in Caesarea. When the Jewish leaders made their accusations against Paul before Festus they were unable to prove any of them. When Festus tried to convince Paul to go up to Jerusalem to face trial, Paul realized that Festus was not going to release him. Therefore Paul asserted his right as a Roman citizen to appeal to Caesar.
Festus admitted in his consultation with Herod Agrippa that he had no basis for continuing to hold Paul. He asked Herod Agrippa to turn the Jewish accusations into something which represented a violation of Roman Law. I have been struggling to get to the point I saw in this passage. Festus had no particular animosity to Paul or to Christianity, but he was convinced that in some way Paul must be a bad person to have generated the animosity the priests and Jewish religious leaders felt toward him, even though they could not provide evidence to support their accusations. We see the same reaction in people today. They hear the accusations made against Christians and are convinced that, while none of the Christians they personally know are like that, Christians, in general, are guilty of the fault being expressed.
Today’s passage continues with the genealogies, but stuck in the middle of them is this passage:
There was a man named Jabez who was more honorable than any of his brothers. His mother named him Jabez because his birth had been so painful. He was the one who prayed to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and expand my territory! Please be with me in all that I do, and keep me from all trouble and pain!” And God granted him his request.
Bruce Wilkinson wrote an entire book around this prayer, which I think makes too much of it. However, there is something there for us to meditate on. The first point is that Jabez was honorable. IF we expect God to answer our prayers, we need to be honorable, and that by God’s standards of honorable, not just man’s standards.
In order to understand the value of this prayer we need to look at the two sentences in reverse order. In the second sentence, Jabez asked God to be with him in all he did. That is certainly a good thing to do, but if we want God to be with us in everything we do, then we need to be sure that everything we do is with God. That is, we need to make sure that everything we do is what God wills us to do. If we desire that God be with us in all we do and act accordingly, God will bless us. I am not going to expound on Jabez’ request that God expand his territory, nor on his request that God keep him free of all trouble and pain because not everyone is called down such a path.