Bible Wonders - STIRRING UP THE MIRE

Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?

I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises, but the stars never fall?

Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough? Certainly, we get revisited in the book of Revelation. But here we have a description of the sea monster, and specifically, in verse 30, it says his underparts are like sharp potsherds. He spreads himself like a threshing sledge on the mire.

Well, that's a fascinating little thing that's going on. So, God is describing this evil dragon, and he's describing his, you know, what goes on with him here, and there's this whole part about him, you know, seething, and like a cauldron that he's going to make the deep look like a hoary head, meaning like a gray hair. And so, there's no doubt, when you think about Satan, or evil in general, it tends to stir up things in us.

It can certainly stir me to all sorts of anger and emotions, and so I decided to look at what he's stirring up, and when you look at it in English, it's called mire, but in Hebrew, it gets a different definition, which is this picture, and again, I'm going to put it in the show notes, exactly what the Hebrew looks like. But it's a tet, followed by a yud, followed by a tet. Now, here, usually, when you think of tet, you think of goodness, right? Because it's the first thing that God calls good. When he makes light, it says, you know, he calls it good. So, that letter tet is a critical part of the idea of tub of goodness.

So, why would we have a tet, and then a yud, and then another tet? Well, as I began to process this, this is a basket of goodness, and normally, the Hebrews say that the goodness, which is often a baby, actually, is hidden inside this letter. So, we got, Satan is stirring up hidden goodness, and you can't help but think about, you know, when Joseph said what you meant for evil, God meant for good. So, we have this picture, if you look at a swamp, that at the bottom of the swamp is what they call mire, right?

Which is really, it's decomposing material that eventually will decompose if you get enough time and pressure to become oil. Now, there's a lot of energy right there. There's a lot of goodness that is down in that mire. It's certainly very rich soil if you ever go dry out a swamp and plant stuff down in that mire, so it's rich. It's extremely rich, but it's hidden because it's in the mire. And so, when I think about Satan, he's got this belly that's going to stir me up like big time.

Now, goodness in these baskets is hidden from me. And often, things like you might even put into context that I'm thinking about this nation right now, things have been stirred up big time. Satan has done his task. Well, as you look through Job 41, which we talked about yesterday, is going to lead to Job's, you know, conversion. I mean, as he begins to process what this Leviathan is, who's the only person that Satan answers to? You know, God has control of him. When you look in this section of Job 41, you can see that this is God's servant, and Satan is meant to stir things up so that we will take a look and like the check engine lights start flashing, like, why am I so upset?

Why is it that I'm so angry? What has Satan stirred up in me? What he's stirred up is hidden goodness, hidden goodness that I haven't really interpreted. The events of my life that caused me great pain, where God was actually meaning something for good that needed to be interpreted in order to get out into the light and, right, to use all that energy that's stored up that's like in the bottom of a swamp, right? If you drain the swamp, then possibly you can plant things in that soil that'll grow like nobody's business because there is so much richness.

There's so much hidden treasure that's down in there. I want us all to forget this beautiful story of what Satan meant for evil. He's stirring us up, there's no doubt, but God means that for good. I actually saw this from Lin Wood, one of the attorneys for Donald Trump, that as a result of the events of the last few days, that more Americans are praying for this country than perhaps have ever prayed for it before. A lot of stuff had to get stirred up for us to pay attention that, wow, we need God because this is bigger than anything that we can handle on our own, right? And so as we get stirred up, if we're stirred to prayer, we're again asking God to handle what it is really His responsibility to handle, and meanwhile, to take those goodness, that goodness that we haven't seen before and interpreted before, and process that for something that's beautiful. Enjoy walking around in the mire and we'll get all stirred up. So God can use all that stirring up for good if we take it to Him, humble ourselves, and seek His face and turn from our wicked ways. Then He will hear from heaven, and He will heal our land.