Echoes of Time - Lesson 9 - Job / Noah

Last night at dinner I spoke to Becky about how this lesson would be a little hard on the ladies;
she let me know that the last three lessons were hard on the ladies.
I didn’t think they were. I don’t want them to be. I don’t want this one to be either.

But here we have Job – what are the only words we have recorded of his wife?
What about Noah – what do we know about his wife?

With this class we decided to look at marriages from the Bible and learn from them what we could.
An example of me and how I learn, in terms of plumbing and managing;
I have learned as much from the bad plumbers as I have from the exceptional ones.
I learned what not to do. I learned from their mistakes.

Here is a conversation you might have with one of your children.
‘Mom, when you were my age did you go on dates?’
‘Dad, did you ever smoke?’
How do you answer that?

We want our children to learn from our mistakes.
We want them to be better off than we were.
But what do they respond back with? ‘You did it and you turned out ok.’
‘I have to learn from my own mistakes.’

We don’t want to be the same way.
We should be able to learn from other’s mistakes.
We should abstain from sayings like, ‘I’ve always been like that…’
‘I’ll never change…’

We can learn from the example that successful people have set.
We can also learn from other people’s mistakes.
We don’t want to go through life and say; ‘I wish I had learned that lesson sooner.’

We have already heard a couple of times in this series
that the second generation repeated the same sin as the one before.
The Bible also tells us that
‘…the sins of the father are passed on to the third and fourth generation…’

So let’s see what good examples we have here and can learn from.


Job 1:1, ‘There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.’
Some synonyms for the word eschew:
avoid, shun, have nothing to do with,
turn your back on, steer clear of, disdain, abstain from & give up.

Do we avoid evil at all costs,
do we turn our back on evil,
do we steer clear of it,
do we abstain from it?

Or do we say, ‘I did it again…’
For me, it’s a critical spirit. For someone else maybe submission.
We don’t need to go around the room…

What can we learn from this verse?





Job 2:9-10, ‘Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die. But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.’

There is a lot there in those two verses.
‘…he said unto her…’
He didn’t bark unto her.
He didn’t scream unto her.
He didn’t belittle unto her.

He did not sin with his lips.
Men I think we can learn from this example.

What can we learn from these verses?





James 5:11, ‘Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.’


Grace is when we get something we do not deserve, and
Mercy is when we don’t get what we deserve.


Can you give testimony of God’s mercy?





Do we receive the same mercy from our friends and loved ones?

Job 16:1-3, ‘Then Job answered and said, I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all.. Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest?’

Don’t you want to tell people to leave you alone?
God forgave me why can’t you?

How can we answer their lack of mercy?





Job 21:3, ‘Suffer me that I may speak; and after that I have spoken, mock on.’

I just really enjoy that verse and wanted us to read it.

Does that verse say anything to you?





We then see that Job’s unselfish prayer leads to his deliverance

Job 42:10, ‘And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.’

Would his suffering have ended sooner, if he prayed for his friends sooner?
What about us?
What are we praying for?
‘Lord I pray they leave me alone.’
‘Lord change my spouse.’

What does this verse say to you?





As for Noah and his wife…
Does anyone know her name?
We don’t know Job’s wife’s name either.
At least she had one speaking part.

Can we speculate good or bad about Mrs. Noah?





As we read about Noah's life,
we discover that he lived in a decadent society.
The Bible says that all the imaginations of peoples' hearts
were continually wicked.
They were always thinking about things that God finds detestable.

However, even when things seemed so bad,
God picked out Noah because he was a person who tried to do what was right.
He chose Noah to do a very special work in his day.

God asked Noah to do some pretty odd things
He was to build a huge boat in the middle of dry land
simply because God told him to do it!
It took many years, and we can imagine that the people
of that time thought Noah and his family were a bit off their rockers.
They probably became the object of ridicule.

Any thoughts here?





Obedience

Genesis 6:14,22, ‘Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.’
‘Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.’




The New Testament records his obedience

Hebrews 11:7, ‘By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.‘


‘…being warned of God of things not seen as yet, (he) moved with fear…’
How quick are we to move?

How quick do we want our children to move
when we ask them to do something?

How quick do we expect them to move
when we tell them to do something?

Do you wish to elaborate here?





Warned his neighbors of impending judgment

2 Peter 2:5, ‘And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;’

It says he was a preacher of righteousness,
It doesn’t say he was a preacher of fault finding,
A preacher of guilt,
A judgmental preacher sent to condemn.

A preacher of righteousness,
It sounds to me like an encouraging preacher,
‘You might want to think about doing this…’

What do you think?





The parent’s of a normal family do not want their children to struggle as they did,
and hope they can still be as strong as they are without those struggles.
I would like us to be a little more encouraging.
A little less fault finding.

A little more uplifting
A little less discouraging.

Let’s make sure our words are so clear that they could not be interpreted out of context.

God is watching,
The world is watching,
Our family is watching.

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