To Listen and Obey is the Way!

Job 36

Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Friday, February 24.

Elihu believed Job’s suffering was the discipline of God, stating in Job 36:10-12:

He opens their ear to instruction, and commands that they return from evil. If they hear and serve Him, they will end their days in prosperity and their years in pleasures. But if they do not hear, they shall perish by the sword and they will die without knowledge. [emphasis added]

The Hebrew word translated “hear” twice in this passage is shema, which means to not only hear from God, but to heed His Word. It calls a person to listen and obey as the way! This Hebrew word is used in a couple famous passages, one of which is Deuteronomy 6:4-5, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” The other is when the prophet Samuel said to King Saul in 1 Samuel 15:22, “Has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.”

We must heed God’s reproof when He warns us or disciplines us. This is the only way of covenant faithfulness – to listen and obey! We are to accept God’s correction in the same way, and for the same purpose, that a child heed’s her parent’s discipline, as explained in Hebrews 12:7-11:

It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? … All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Seize the moment and receive God’s discipline as the concern and care of your loving parent.

God bless you!

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