Jabez – 1 Chronicles 4:9-10
Jabez asks God to enlarge his border. This word border in Hebrew is the word ‘gebul’ which is used in relation to a border or territory that is individual, it is something owned and something a person has control over. What Jabez was asking God for was to be expanded, to be stretched. Jabez means sorrowful, his mother named him this because she said “I have born him in sorrows”. She knew that her son, who was born in pain and born under the curse of sin (Genesis 3:16 ‘in great pain’), was destined for a life without hope unless God intervened.
Much has been written about this little prayer of Jabez but there are many things that we can learn if we take a fresh look at this man.
In the two verses we can see that Jabez recognised his frailty and insignificance as a man in God’s world and so asks 3 questions :-
- Enlarge my border
- That your hand be with me
- Keep me from evil so it (evil) will not grieve me
These are all commendable things to ask God for when we recognise our frailty in the sight of an almighty God.
The prayer of Jabez can be captured under 3 headings:-
- Faith Exercised
- Faith Experienced
- Faith Revealed
Jabez recognised his need and he called out to God (this is God in the plural – Elohim, trinity acting in unity), God in all completeness and fullness. When we call out to God in this manner we are giving our lives and our destinies into His hands, we are effectively saying like Jesus “not my will but your will” (Matthew 26:39, Mark 14:36).
There was a cry from the heart of Jabez, ‘if thou wouldst or ‘if it pleases you’ or ‘if it is your will’ 1 Chronicles 4:10. This is a great place to start when approaching God, ‘if it is your will’. This is a place of abandonment to God and His authority and His will for my life. It is all about God and not about ME. So the question we then ask is “what is God’s will?”
At this point I want to make it clear that I am not talking about ‘naming and claiming’ but just posing the question that all of us should ask when we encounter and engage with the almighty God, “what is God’s will for my life?”
The will of God in us is our will, IF, we have been ‘born again’ John 3:3-9 (you can read more about the Nicodemus experience at https://www.steveford.org/part-7-john-3), of the Spirit of God and embrace all that that being ‘born again’ into a new life in God entails. Christ died so that we could be forgiven, so that the power of cancelled Sin could be broken, so that we could live a life that truly glorifies God. Being set free from the curse of Sin is all about Jesus and not about ME, the moment we start to utter words like ‘I did this’ and ‘I did that’ we fail to recognise that salvation is all about Jesus and his death and resurrection. The moment we take charge of our lives the end result is not a good one.
So the will of God is our redeemed and sanctified life which can say with all assurance, as Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy will be done in earth as in heaven ” Matthew 6:9 – This is Faith Exercised.
The faith of Jabez was experienced in that, all though not recorded, we can read into the little statement in 1 Chronicles 4:10 “And God granted him that which he requested”. Jabez experienced God continually working to grant his request. The word granted in the Hebrew is continuous into the future with added certainty. God GRANTED certainty for Jabez’s future at a point in time, forever. Jabez knew that God had heard his cry and granted his request, This is Faith Experienced.
Jabez’s reward was his request being granted, Faith rewarded is all about living in the knowledge that God hears the ‘cry’ and grants the ‘request’ when the ‘cry’ is uttered in true honesty from a heart that realises that life is hopeless without God. One of Jabez’s requests was to “keep him from evil so that evil would not grieve or overpower him”. There is a sense that we all need to request this on a daily basis.
As Jesus points out in the prayer we refer to as “the Lord’s Prayer” in Matthew 6:9-13
KJV – “And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”
NLT – “Forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us”
Faith Revealed is the outworking of the
Faith Experienced which is the outworking of
Faith Exercised as requested from a contrite and lowly heart.
Jabez was a man who recognised that he needed God and so called a continual calling out to the God (the same tense is used for this word ‘called’ as is used for the word ‘granted’) of Israel, not just any god, but the one true living God of Israel.
These two verses here in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10 should inspire us to call on God and then inspire us to live in the knowledge that He has granted our request.
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