Nipate
Forum => Controversial => Topic started by: GeeMail on October 28, 2015, 09:50:18 AM
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"Cursed Be the Day"
Even the harshest critics of the Bible would have to concede a major point: the Bible does not gloss over human foibles and weaknesses. With the exception of the spotless and sinless Son of God, few Bible characters whose lives are presented in any detail in the Bible come away without their weaknesses and faults exposed. This goes even for the prophets. As stated before, the God these prophets served is perfect; the prophets who served Him were not. They, like the rest of us, were sinners in need of the righteousness of Christ to be credited to them by faith (see Rom. 3:22 ) . From Noah to Peter, and everyone in between, all were sin-damaged creatures whose only hope was, as Ellen G. White says, to go before the Lord and say: "I have no merit or goodness whereby I may claim salvation, but I present before God the all-atoning blood of the spotless Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the
world. This is my only plea. The name of Jesus gives me access to the Father. His ear, His heart, is open to my faintest pleading, and He supplies my deepest necessities."- Faith and Works , p. 106.
Read Jeremiah 20:14-18 . What does this passage tell us about the prophet's state of mind concerning his own personal situation?
His words here, of course, remind us of Job's, whose situation was much
worse than Jeremiah's (see Job 3:1-36 ) . Though Jeremiah had the assurance that he was doing God's will, and the assurance that the Lord was with him, at this point the pain of his present situation consumed him. Whatever his intellectual understanding of what the truth was, for now it was overshadowed by his own sorrows.
At times, many people might find themselves in a similar situation: they might intellectually know all the promises of God, but they are so overwhelmed by sorrow and pain that these promises are pushed into the background, and all they can focus on is their immediate suffering. This is an understandable reaction; it doesn't mean it's a correct one, but it is understandable. What we see here again is the humanity of Jeremiah, which is similar to the humanity of us all.
Have you ever felt the way Jeremiah did here? If so, what did you learn from that experience that could help you better cope the next time you feel that way?
www.ssnet.org/lessons/15d/less05.html
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http://www.ssnet.org/lessons/16d/less05.html
Let the Day Perish
Imagine that you are Job. Inexplicably your life, all that you have worked for, all that you have accomplished, all that God has blessed you with, comes tumbling down. It just doesn’t make sense. There doesn’t seem to be any reason, good or bad, for it.
Years ago, a school bus went off the road, killing many of the children. In that context, one atheist said that this is the kind of thing you can expect in a world that has no meaning, no purpose, no direction. A tragedy like that has no meaning, because the world itself has no meaning.
As we have seen, though, this answer doesn’t work for the believer in God. And for Job, a faithful follower of the Lord, this answer didn’t work either. But what was the answer, what was the explanation? Job didn’t have one. All he had was his extreme grief and all the questions that inevitably accompanied it.
Read Job 3:1–10. How does Job first express his grief here? In what ways might any of us relate to what he is saying?
Life, of course, is a gift from God. We exist only because God has created us (Acts 17:28, Rev. 4:11). Our very existence is a miracle, one that has stumped modern science. Indeed, scientists aren’t even in total agreement on what the definition of “life” is, much less how it came about, or even more important, why it did.
Who, though, in moments of despair, hasn’t wondered if life was worth it? We’re not talking about the unfortunate cases of suicide. Rather, what about the times when we might have, like Job, wished that we hadn’t been born to begin with?
An ancient Greek once said that the best thing that could happen to a person, outside of dying, is never to have been born at all. That is, life can be so miserable that we would have been better off not even existing, and thus be spared the inevitable anguish that comes with human life in this fallen world.
Have you ever felt the way Job felt here; that is, wishing you had never been born? Eventually, though, what happened? Of course, you felt better. How important it is for us to remember, then, even in our worst moments, that we have the hope, the prospect, of things improving.