Difference between revisions of "Sermon for February 21st, 2016"

Revision as of 19:05, 20 February 2016

Job 19:1-29

1Then Job answered: 2“How long will you torment me, and break me in pieces with words? 3These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me? 4And even if it is true that I have erred, my error remains with me. 5If indeed you magnify yourselves against me, and make my humiliation an argument against me, 6know then that God has put me in the wrong, and closed his net around me. 7Even when I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I am not answered; I call aloud, but there is no justice.

8He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths. 9He has stripped my glory from me, and taken the crown from my head. 10He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, he has uprooted my hope like a tree. 11He has kindled his wrath against me, and counts me as his adversary. 12His troops come on together; they have thrown up siegeworks against me, and encamp around my tent. 13“He has put my family far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me. 14My relatives and my close friends have failed me; 15the guests in my house have forgotten me; my serving girls count me as a stranger; I have become an alien in their eyes.

16I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must myself plead with him. 17My breath is repulsive to my wife; I am loathsome to my own family. 18Even young children despise me; when I rise, they talk against me. 19All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me. 20My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. 21Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! 22Why do you, like God, pursue me, never satisfied with my flesh?

23“O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! 24O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever! 25For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; 26and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, 27whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!

28If you say, ‘How we will persecute him!’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him’; 29be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, so that you may know there is a judgment.”

Beauty in the Book of Job

The ancient philosopher Plato said that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

English poet Thomas Overbury coined the expression that "Beauty is only skin deep."

And Albert Einstein famously explained his theory of relativity by saying that an hour sitting in the company of a beautiful woman seems like a minute, but a minute sitting on a hot stove seems like an hour.

However, my favorite commentator on the subject of beauty is, by far, Miss Piggy, who has said the following:

• Never purchase beauty products in a hardware store.
• Never let your frog outdress you.
• Beauty is in the eye of the eye of the beholder and it may be neccessary from time to time to give a stupid, misinformed beholder a black eye.

In many ancient texts, there is an idea--sometimes stated, sometimes implied--that outward appearance is somehow connected to inward condition. If you are a good person and do good things, your outward appearance will reflect that. If you are an evil person and do evil things (or have evil thoughts) that too will manifest itself outwardly. Fairy tales reflect this too. Whenever Pinnochio tells a lie, his nose grows longer. When the arrogant prince mistreats a witch in disguise, she turns him into an ugly beast or frog. In fact, witches, and evil monsters of all sorts, are by nature...ugly. Heroes and heroines, whether its poor Cinderella or powerful Hercules are, by nature...attractive. There is something simple and appealing in this. In fact, with few exceptions, you'll find the same thing in modern films and television shows, too. Our stories reflect the deep truth of what we really believe, even if we loudly deny it outwardly. Psychologists and marketers have demonstrated in countless studies that all of us instinctively trust more those we perceive to be attractive, and trust less those who are aesthetically...less fortunate.

The Hebrew word for beauty, or beautiful, יָפָה (yafa) only appears once in the book of Job, at the very end of the book, in reference to Job's daughters, who are described as the most beautiful in all the land. And yet, the idea of beauty--the outward, aesthetic appearance of a person, place or thing--runs throughout the book.

People are like stained - glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within. --Elisabeth Kubler Ross