“Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, ‘Because I bore him in pain.’ And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!’ So God granted him what he requested” (1 Chronicles 4:9-10, NKJV).
What a pain! Has anyone ever said that about you? It was said about the person we are looking at in this scripture today. Jabez’s name in Hebrew means “pain”! His mother delivered him in great pain and she never let him forget it. She named him Pain so that he would always remember what he had done to his poor mother. I had a relative who was a lot like Jabez’s mother, because she repeated the story of how much pain her child had caused her in birth. And she always liked to tell the old, old story when there were several people around. Other parents do something similar by rehearsing all the disappointments they have felt with their children, and the pain it has caused them. You might say Jabez came from a dysfunctional family, with a controlling mother who was an expert at exacting guilt from her children. But in spite of all that, he overcame the obstacles created by his upbringing. The Bible says that he was an honorable man — more honorable than the rest of his family. Why was that?
We find Jabez buried in a long list of genealogies — so and so was the father of so and so, and so and so was the father of so and so . . . . ad infinitum. It goes on for nine chapters in the book 1Chronicles. You are so bored by the time you reach Jabez that you almost skip over him. But he is there like a shining star in this long list of anonymous characters. It is significant that what Jabez is remembered for is not some outstanding achievement, but a prayer. He did not win a great battle or erect a great building. He simply prayed a prayer. But out of all the people in this nine chapter list of characters, he alone is lifted out because of the prayer that he prayed.
What is so unusual about this prayer, and why have preachers been talking about it for centuries? Let’s look at the prayer piece by piece in order to discover why God was pleased enough with his prayer to have it forever recorded in scripture. His prayer was in four parts: 1) He prayed that God would bless him. 2) He prayed that God would enlarge his territory, or his borders. 3) He prayed that God’s hand would be upon him. 4) He prayed that God would keep him from evil.
The first point we will consider, then, is: Jabez prayed for God to bless him. He sought God’s blessing on his life. He was not worried about being selfish, he wanted God’s best and believed that God wanted to give it to him. He remembered his ancestor Abraham, when the Lord said to him: “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing” (Genesis 12:2). Jabez sought the blessing of God that he might be a blessing to the world. The Bible tells us that our whole reason for existence is to be a blessing to God and a blessing to the world. That’s it. You are not here for you. The world does not revolve around you. Your whole purpose for existence is to be a blessing to the world.
There is nothing wrong with praying for God to bless you, if it is for the purpose of being a blessing. It is not wrong to pray for wealth, if you are wanting to bless people with your material blessings. If you want to have more so that you can give more, then that is an acceptable prayer. If you want to be able to give more to missions or an outreach program so that people will come to know Christ, then by all means pray for material prosperity. If you want wisdom so that you can help other people then pray for wisdom, for the Bible says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5). But if you just want more wealth in order to spend it on yourself, your prayer will not be answered. If you want wisdom so you can feel smarter than other people, your prayer will not be answered. If you want success, or want to be a leader, so that you can lord it over others, your prayer will not be answered. But if you want to serve others with more talents and resources, then pray for those things in order that your life may be a blessing.
Jabez also remembered his ancestor Jacob who wrestled with God. When God told him to release him, Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Genesis 32:26). And from that point on Jacob entered the promised land and prospered so that his descendants blessed the whole world with unbelievable spiritual blessings. Through Jacob and his offspring, God’s Messiah came into the world. God wants to bless us, but we have to want the blessing. We need to wrestle with God and not let go until he blesses us.
The problem is that apathy has so gripped the American church that we don’t seek God’s blessing. We have so much already. Our plates are so full. Besides, we are too busy to be blessed with anything else. Blessing means responsibility. Serving God by serving people takes time. If God gives me more, I have to do more, and I just want to relax.
In our own church we have just gone through a year when we have read the Bible through together. I have preached through the Bible. We have studied it in Sunday School. We have gone over its lessons in our small group Bible studies. But all of this does no good unless you are using what you have learned. If it is not creating a new passion within you to know God better and serve him more effectively, then it has not done its work. If you are not closer to God this year than you were at the beginning of last year, then somehow you have missed the blessing. You need to pray that God would bless you and bring a new fire in your soul; a new passion for God; a new zeal for serving him; a new desire to have your life be a blessing to the world.
The surest sign that you are a growing Christian is that there is within you a growing desire to have your life used by God. The thing that grieves me most about our current culture is our preoccupation with ourselves. It is all about us. We want more, and we want it faster, better and cheaper. Our lives become shallow and self-centered when we are worried about how we look, what we have, and who might have more. So many people never have a purpose larger than themselves. This is why Jabez prayed the second part of his prayer: Jabez prayed that God would enlarge his borders. Jabez was from the tribe of Judah, which was the ruling class among the Hebrews. To increase his territory meant that his people would have more area to live in and that he would have more people to serve as a leader. He was not thinking of himself, he was thinking about the welfare of others. A leader is a servant of other people. Jabez wanted to be used by God more than anything else. Is that your prayer and desire? Is there a longing, a passion inside of you, to be used by God no matter what it takes? Are you living only for yourself at this time, or are you wanting God to use your life in this world? Do you want to be blessed by God to be a blessing? Then pray for God to enlarge your life and your sphere of influence. Ask him for something so big that you cannot possibly do it by yourself. Ask him to enlarge your territory. Surely there is more to life than trying to make yourself happy.
One of the things I am praying about for my granddaughters is that God would give them spiritual gifts in order that they might be used by him in this world. I am praying that they would have a passion for serving God and that he would give them the necessary tools to serve him. I am also praying that prayer for you. I do not want this church to be a country club with a steeple on top. I want us to be God’s people, being used by him in a world that needs him desperately. I want us to live for more than ourselves and our own interests. I pray that our lives would be used up in serving God by serving the needs of others. I want to be a part of what God wants to do in this world.
In a time of great discouragement, God spoke through the prophet Isaiah saying, “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes” (Isaiah 54:2). God wants you to see beyond the circumstances. He wants to enlarge your life if you will join him by praying and believing for his blessing.
The third thing to consider is: Jabez prayed for God’s hand to be upon him. Jabez knew that what he was praying for was bigger than what he could accomplish himself. He was praying for something so big that only the hand of God on his life could accomplish it.
What would you pray for if you knew that you could not fail? What is God speaking to you about which you have been ignoring? What have you dreamed about, but dismissed because you thought it was an impossible dream? Begin to pray for the hand of God to be upon your life so that you can accomplish something great for him. Hopefully, it will be something so great that when it comes to pass, you and everyone else will have to say, “This had to be the hand of God, because there is no way I could have done this by myself!”
But the final part of Jabez’s prayer is the most important. We need to consider the fourth part of his prayer: Jabez prayed that God would keep him from evil. One translation misses the point, I believe, when it says, “Keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” The New King James puts it like this: “Keep me from evil that I might not cause pain.” It is actually a play on words. His name meant pain. He had caused pain, but he did not want to cause any more pain. He wanted his life to be a blessing. He wanted to be protected from the harm of evil, but he also wanted to be kept from sinning, because he knew that sin causes pain. It brings pain into the world. It brings pain into the life of the one who commits it, and it brings pain into the lives of those whom the sin was committed against. But most of all, sin causes God pain.
Do you remember what the world was like just prior to the flood in Noah’s day? The Bible says that, “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” Then it says, “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (Genesis 6:5-6). Sin brings pain to the heart of God. If you don’t believe that, you need to take another look at the cross. We miss the pain of God in our protestant churches. Jesus is missing from the cross, and we have our crosses made of polished brass so they sparkle in the light. We wear the cross as jewelry. But the cross was an instrument of torture. Sin caused God real pain. Even in Christian art he is often pictured on the cross, but his body is clean and his head is lifted toward heaven with a sublime look of peace on his face. But the real crucifixion was much different. He was naked and the flesh on his back and chest had been shredded by Roman whips. His body was filthy from the cell where he was kept. There were deep bruises from the beatings. The painful crown of thorns caused rivers of blood from his head to stream down his body. But all of that was nothing compared to the moment God poured out upon him the sin of the whole world and separated himself from the Son. Sin causes pain. David said, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11). Jesus taught us to pray the prayer of Jabez when he prayed, “And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13).
And if you think you can get by with sin without there being pain in your own personal life, you are mistaken. It will be like a cancer eating its way through your life. It will strip you of God’s blessing and destroy your effectiveness. It will tear apart your relationships and leave you very alone. It will leave you beaten, and it will alienate you from God. Pray that you will be kept from evil and from the pain it inflicts. Because if you do, you will experience the blessing of God and feel his hand upon your life. God is in the blessing business, for he says to you today, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior” (Isaiah 43:1-3).
Take hold of the promises of God and do something great for him. Go ahead and ask him for the moon, and he will give you the sun and the stars as well.
Rodney J. Buchanan
January 7, 2001
Mulberry St. UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
THE PRAYER OF JABEZ
1 Chronicles 4:9-10
“Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, ‘Because I bore him in pain.’ And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!’ So God granted him what he requested” (1 Chronicles 4:9-10, NKJV).
The points to consider in the prayer of Jabez are:
1. Jabez prayed for God ____________________________
____________________________________________________ .
2. Jabez prayed that God would ___________________
____________________________________________________ .
3. Jabez prayed for God’s __________________________
____________________________________________________.
4. Jabez prayed that God would ___________________
____________________________________________________.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION (Jan. 7, 2001)
1. What were Jabez’s four requests?
2. If you could ask God to bless you in some way, what would it be?
3. What does the phrase mean, which says, “Blessed to be a blessing!”
4. If you knew you could not fail, what would you attempt to do for God?
5. Are there ways in which God has been calling you to serve him that you have kept in the back of your mind? What are they?
6. Why has the American church failed so badly in influencing the morals and worldview of the people in our country? How can we do a better job?
7. Why do so many people live only for themselves? How can we model a different lifestyle? What is the cost?
8. Why do even people in the church take sin so lightly and fail to see its seriousness? What would be an effective corrective measure?
9. How and why do we miss the blessing of God?
10. How does sin cause pain? Think of all the dimensions you can.
11. How can our church be more effective for the Kingdom?
