• Job 19:15 “They that dwell in mine house, and my maids, count me for a stranger: I am an alien in their sight.
• vs. 16 I called my servant, and he gave me no answer; I intreated him with my mouth.
• vs. 17 My breath is strange to my wife, though I intreated for the children’s sake of mine own body.
• vs. 18 Yea, young children despised me; I arose, and they spake against me.
• vs. 19 All my inward friends abhorred me: and they whom I loved are turned against me.
• vs. 20 My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
• vs. 21 Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me.
• vs. 22 Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?”
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(Job’s words here in Job 19 should not be quickly dismissed as simply Job having a pity party. As is evidenced by Job’s wife and three friends, Job was being viewed and treated negatively by those around him.)

The way people viewed me changed with my brain infection in 2011. Since then, I experience a myriad of mental, physical, and verbal issues. I move around in a wheelchair. I am often looked down upon. Even the medical community has treated me as a second-class citizen. Except for close preacher friends, most churches stopped calling and using us. Praise the Lord for Spirit-filled believers who have viewed me through the eyes of Jesus, but most do not since they live “after the flesh”. And the flesh naturally and sinfully looks down upon the sick, weak, and poor. To the flesh, it is about self, pride, and survival of the fittest.

From our text, you can read how Job experienced being looked down upon in his trial. Job mentioned servants, children, his wife, and even his “inward”/close friends “abhorred” him. Again, sinful man naturally looks down upon the weak, sick, and poor.

• Proverbs 14:20 “The poor is hated even of his own neighbour: but the rich hath many friends.”
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• Proverbs 19:7 “All the brethren of the poor do hate him: how much more do his friends go far from him? he pursueth them with words, yet they are wanting to him.”
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Are you like that, believer? James 1:27 reveals that “pure religion” is “to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction”. Why then do so few from our churches visit nursing homes and orphanages? Without charity, I Cor. 13:1-3 emphasizes we are “nothing” and it “profiteth” us “nothing.”

Your natural flesh does not really care about those around you and “beneath” you. But the saved have more than a selfish flesh, we have Jesus. To Jesus, His first message in Lk. 4:18 sums up the love of God:

• Luke 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,”
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When you look at those around you through the eyes of Jesus, and think about those around you with “the mind of Christ”, and love those around you through “the love of God”, only then will you truly live “pure religion” and treat the hurting correctly.