Welcome back to our series that is getting us closer to understanding as much as we can the gift of joy, joy that will carry us to our Destination? Joyful! ™, and keep us heading towards our eternal home! Grab your coffee and come on in. I’m hoping to wrap up this first joy stop in the life of Job!
So we are digging for understanding of the verses preceding Job 8:19 and I was sharing with you Matthew Henry’s commentary. He goes on to describe the hypocrite/spider, and the bee/Christian.
The one who builds his life on false hypothesis is very fond of it/self, just as the spider is of her web. I can just imagine a spider weaving her web, sitting back on all her legs and admiring her work. But it weaves deeper than that, as Matthew Henry explains: “he pleases himself with it, wraps himself in it, calls it his house, leansuponit, and holds it fast.”
Whew, I’ve often likened effects of sin to a spider and a web; the longer we stay in a particular habit, hurt and/or hang-up, it becomes like this web, spun so tightly there seems to be no way out because you can’t find the exit, or the beginning! Definitely no joy in that dilemma!
Just as the spider weaves this web with her legs, so a hypocrite takes hold of false security with his/her hands, hugging themselves in the fullness and firmness of their outward prosperity! Think of building your house on sand or a rock! Matthew 7:24-27!
Now that was paraphrased, and to explain it simply, this is a false sense of joy, aka, external happiness! This is not in any way a form of joy, because joy is internal and happiness is external, based on external things. Take the X out of external and what do you have? Eternal! Joy is based on eternal things.
As I read further in Matthew Henry’s commentary, I was astounded at how direct and blunt he was about those professors, teachers who flatter themselves with their so-called secured salvation and is secure in their place in heaven, those who cheats the world with their vain confidences. Wow, this is Bildad’s argument to Job. Oh, em, gee, he’s literally accusing Job now! I can’t help but giggle as this becomes a bit more clear to me because I’d love to as Matthew Henry, even though you are describing Bildad’s argument, are you describing Bildad who is describing Job?
Ahh, here's the proof that there's no joy in finger-pointing, either!
I love how Matthew Henry wraps up this first analogy of the hypocrite and the spider:
“The prosperity of worldly people will fail them when they expect to find safety and happiness in it. They seek to hold fast their estates, but God is plucking them out of their hands; and whose shall all those things be, which they have provided? Or what the better they will be for them? The confidences of hypocrites will fail them. The house built on the sand will fall in the storm, when the builder most needs it and promised himself the benefit of it. When a wicked man dies, his expectation perishes. The ground of his hopes will prove false; he will be disappointed of the thing he hoped for, and his foolish hope with which he buoyed himself up will be turned into endless despair; and thus his hope will be cut off, his web, that refuge of lies, swept away, and he crushed in it.”
Whew, I’m thinking Bildad, in his quest to understand what was going on with Job, why what was going on was going on, lost sight of true joy!
Join me next week for the analogy of the hypocrite to the flourishing tree, which I promise will lead us to a deeper understanding of joy!
Joyfully,
Evinda
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