Two Journeys

In 2 Thessalonians 3, Paul writes final instructions concerning prayer for evangelistic success and warns about idleness.

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In part two of this study of 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul finishes his discussion on the Man of Lawlessness and the importance of good doctrine and works.

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Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) lead the Reformation in Switzerland. Learn about the exiting life of Zwingli as a priest, reformer, and solider!

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In 2 Thessalonians 2, Paul prepares the Thessalonian Christians for the coming of the antichrist.

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In 2 Thessalonians 1, Paul prays for the persecuted Thessalonian Christians that they will trust God’s justice and look forward to Christ’s coming, being fruitful in His service until then.

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In 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28, Paul gives clear instructions concerning a healthy church life to the Thessalonians.

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Pastor Andy Davis preaches a sermon on Job 29 and 30. This sermon unpacks Job's hopelessness, and looks at a fully-developed Christian hope.

Take your Bibles and open, if you would, to Job 29. We'll be looking this morning at Job 29 and 30. I want you to imagine an old widower who's in the process of selling the home that he's lived in for 40 years. He goes up some of those spring-loaded stairs up to the attic. He hasn't been there in a while, but he makes his way over to a far corner in the attic. And he pulls out a box that he hasn't looked at in years. And he undoes the flaps and opens it up. And he begins to swim in a warm sea, a warm ocean called nostalgia. The memories come upon him, wave upon wave. He pulls out an old photo album and pours over it, page after page. And memories, memories come flooding into his aged mind, warmed by tears, sparkled with laughter.

He pulls out some mementos, some artifacts from the old box. Each of the items lifted out of the box, carries with them a string of powerful memories of a deceased spouse and of the sweet times they had together, their wedding day, their honeymoon, their early years together. The photos show each of them a lot younger. He looks pretty fit as he finished a road race or as he lifts a toddler up on his strong shoulders. He finds a packet of anniversary cards from his wife. He looks at each one. He remembers his wife's elegant handwriting and the way she had with words. And tears fall from his eyes on some of the pen strokes, make the ink run a little, slightly. Memories are filling his mind. And the feeling is bittersweet, in some ways, though, more bitter than sweet. Time only goes in one direction. His wife is dead. His kids are grown, gone. All of them living in other states. You can't go back again. Those days are gone. And the hardest part of all is feeling that for him, all of his best and brightest days are in the past.

Now, I wonder how many people all over the world feel that way, all of my best and brightest things are in the past. Seems to me the only possible answer to the bitterness that distracts from the sweetness in that so-called bittersweet feeling of nostalgia is Christian hope, Christian hope. Hope is a strong feeling in the soul that the future is bright based on the promises of God, and that all, not some, of your best things are yet to come, all of them are. No matter how blessed your life has been, no matter how wonderful it's been, all of your best things are still in the future. 

And I believe with a proper understanding of heaven, we will know that none of the past blessings and their details will ever really be lost at all, but we will be able to know them and study them and remember them and delight in them even more perfectly in heaven than we ever did while they were happening on earth. We miss a lot. It flies by, and then it's over. But wouldn't it be something if the Lord in his goodness would say, "Let's review your life and let's review how good I was to you in that marriage and how good I was to you with your children and how wonderful those times really were," free in heaven, free from all death, mourning, crying, and pain, no regrets, just perfect, pure memories of the goodness and the grace of God. Wouldn't that be something?

Now these are the themes that are flooding into my mind as I read Job 29 and 30. Because in chapter 29, we see Job yearning for the past, "Oh, for days gone by." And then in chapter 30, we see Job lamenting the present. And in chapter 30, we also see Job dreading the future. But I can't let Job and his depression in this chapter have the final word. I want to finish with the delight of a fully developed Christian hope based on New Testament promises, based on New Testament doctrine, a fully developed Christian hope as the remedy to Job's bitter nostalgia. 

So let's start at chapter 29, yearning for the past. Job's nostalgic longing is asserted. Look at verses one and two. Job continued his discourse. Verse two, "How I long for the months gone by." Again in verse four, "Oh, for the days when I was in my prime.” It was a life of rich blessedness. God watched over me and blessed me." Look at verses 2-5,"How I long for the months gone by, for the days when God watched over me, when his lamp shown upon my head and by his light, I walked through darkness. Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God's intimate friendship blessed my house, when the Almighty was still with me."

The best part of Job's former life was that God watched over him, he said, God loved him. God protected him. He said God's light shone in his life, representing the way that God guided him with wisdom and knowledge. Job speaks of the days when he was in his prime, literally, “my harvest days.” “Those were my harvest days, those autumn days, when a bumper crop came into the barn, when blessing upon blessing rolled into the barns of my life.” And of all of the blessings, God's intimate friendship was the greatest, a sense of closeness of God's secret counsel, as though God himself, Almighty God, whispered wisdom and love into his ears. What's so tragic about all this as you read it, is that Job doesn't realize that God in no way loved him any less at that point than he ever did in the past. God's love is not like our love. It's not fickle. It's not vacillating. But when we go into these times of affliction and trial, beware, you won't know yourself, you won't know God, it seems. You're in a fog and you begin to hear whisperings and insinuations. In Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan talks about Christian going through the land of the shadow of death, and he hears whispering, and he thinks it's his own voice. And he just doesn't seem to know what the truth is anymore. Beware that that doesn't happen to you when you go through afflictions and loss. He thinks that God's not with him anymore. 

And he says, "My family was around me back then, and we were happy." Verses 4-5, "When God's intimate friendship blessed my house, when the Almighty was still with me and my children were around me." So Job can't help but think about his dead children, seven dead sons, three dead daughters. Their faces shine in his mind. He can hear their laughter, their witty conversations with each other, their achievements that made him proud, proud to be their father. God's blessings extended to them as well as to him. He blessed them lavishly and watched over them as well.

"When the Almighty was still with me.” Think about those words, clearly implying he's not with me anymore. God has forsaken me. God has left me. And back in those days, the cream and the oil just flowed. Look at verse 6, "When my path was drenched with cream and the rock poured out for me streams of olive oil." This is the language of rich blessedness. As Job walked down the path of his life, his path itself was drenched in cream. Or one translation has, “butter.” Flowing with blessings everywhere, like God describing the Promised Land, “the land flowing with milk and honey.” That's what his life was like. Even the rocks themselves poured out olive oil. Everything around him was blessed by God.

And not only that, he was honored and esteemed by other people. Look at verse 7, "When I went to the gate of the city and took my seat in the public square." Now, the city gate was a place of official business in the ancient world. That's where the most important men in the city would go to make critical decisions that affected the lives of everyone in the city. And Job was one of those great men, with an honored seat above all the others at the city gate, he was deeply honored by everyone who saw him. Look at verses 8-10, "The young men saw me and stepped aside. The old men rose to their feet. The chief men refrained from speaking and covered their mouths with their hands. The voices of the nobles were hushed and their tongues stuck to the roof of their mouths." So Job was seen as a man blessed by God. Wealthy, yes, but also wise and amazingly merciful to the poor and needy.

Job's mercy ministries flourished. Look at verses 11-17, "Whoever heard me, spoke well of me, and those who saw me commended me, because I rescued the poor who cried for help and the fatherless who had none to assist him. The man who was dying blessed me. I made the widow's heart sing. I put on righteousness as my clothing. Justice was my robe and my turban. I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy. I took up the case of the stranger. I broke the fangs of the wicked and snatched the victims from their teeth." Job cared for the poor and needy. He rescued them from oppression and from poverty. He says he brought joy to the fatherless and the widow. They were groaning in sadness through their affliction, through their poverty, until Job found out about them and stepped in and cared for their needs. 

His character traits were obvious for everyone to see and know. This was his reputation in the community. This is how people knew him. He was a righteous man. He was committed to justice for the poor. He was willing to fight for them. He broke the fangs of the wicked, he said, and snatched victims from their teeth. So these are powerful men who used their positions of power to oppress the weak. Job would ride in to the rescue, and that's why everyone respected him. He loved righteousness and hated wickedness. And he was not selfish with his wealth, but he used it for others. 

And he expected the blessings to go on for the rest of his life. He thought it would never change. Look at verses 18-20, "I thought, 'I will die in my own house, my days as numerous as the grains of sand, my roots will reach to the water and the dew will lie all night on my branches. My glory will remain fresh in me. The bow ever new in my hand.'" Well, he thought all of that would go on forever. Why wouldn't it? These blessings came directly from Almighty God, his intimate friend. He wasn't abusing them. He wasn't abusing his rank. He wasn't abusing his wealth. He was using it like God wanted him to, for the poor and needy. And that's why he was held in such esteem by everyone in the city. And he talks about that again, that was a big deal for him. Verses 21-25, "Men listened to me expectantly, waiting in silence for my counsel. After I had spoken, they spoke no more. My words fell gently on their ears. They waited for me as for showers and drank in my words as the spring rain. When I smiled at them, they scarcely believed it. The light of my face was precious to them. I chose the way for them and sat as their chief. I dwelt as a king among as troops. I was like one who comforts mourners." 

These words are almost too good to be true, but they seem to be true in Job's case. Job's wisdom was held in such esteem that people gathered around him to hear anything he wanted to say. It was like Solomon. People came from the ends of the earth to listen to his wisdom, to hear the pearls of truth that came dropping from his lips. He was like the sun to those in darkness, like the rain to those in drought. He was like a king surrounded by an undefeated army. Those were the days. Those were the days of my blessedness, the days of my prime. Oh, how I wish it were like that again. I wish we could go back to those days again, but we can't. Those days are over. That's Job 29. 

Job 30, he laments the present. And he begins with the mockery that he's experiencing. Look at verse 1, "But now they mock me." To be laughed at by others is exceedingly painful. To have people whisper at you as you walk by and then break into raucous laughter and you just know they're talking about you, they're laughing at you. And there is an essential arrogance to that kind of mockery, isn't there? The people who do it feel superior to the people they're mocking. 

What makes it so painful for Job is who these people are that are mocking him. Look what he says about them, verses 1-10, chapter 30, "Men younger than I, whose fathers I would've disdained to put with my sheep dogs. Of what use was the strength of their hands to me, since their vigor had gone from them? Haggard from want and hunger, they roamed the parched land and desolate wastelands at night. In the brush, they gathered salt herbs, and their food was the root of the broom tree. They were banished from their fellow men, shouted at as if they were thieves. They were forced to live in the dry stream beds among the rocks and in holes in the ground. They brayed among the bushes and huddled in the undergrowth, a base and nameless brood. They were driven out of the land. And now their sons mock me in song. I have become a byword among them. They detest me and keep their distance. They do not hesitate to spit in my face." 

So he's older than these youngsters that are mocking him. They should respect his wisdom and stature, but they don't. And they are the sons of utterly disreputable characters in the city. Job says he would not have put their fathers with his sheep dogs to watch his sheep. They would've been less reliable than the dogs by far. These men were like homeless ruffians, not much better than highway robbers or driftless brigands. Job speaks of them as if they were a pack of mongrel dogs or wild animals, braying at the moon, wearing rags through their own laziness and debauchery. "And now their sons think they can mock me. They make up clever songs about me. Some of them actually have spit at me." Utter disrespect. "Any respect I ever had in society is utterly gone. It's gone. The whole city has judged me in the same way as my three friends have, it seems. They all think that I'm being judged by God for some secret wickedness of a magnitude so great it almost can't be mentioned."

Now, as I read these words, I can't help in my heart but to turn aside and see the magnitude of Christ suffering on our behalf. It makes me think about the mockery that Jesus Christ went through when he was condemned and executed. It says in Mark 14:65, "Then some began to spit at him. They blindfolded him and struck him with their fists and said, 'Prophesy.' And the guards took him and beat him." And then in Mark, 15:16-19, "The Roman soldiers led Jesus away into the palace, that is the Praetorium. And they called together the whole company of soldiers. And they put a purple robe on him and they twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. And they began to call out to him, 'Hail, king of the Jews.' Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him." And then in 15:29-32, in Mark's gospel, "Those who passed by when he was being crucified hurled, insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, 'So, you are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days? Come down from the cross and save yourself.' In the same way, the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. 'He saved others,' they said, 'But he can't save himself. Let this Christ, this king of Israel come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.'" Listen to this, "Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him."

That abuse, that spitting, that mockery is staggering because these people are unworthy, as John the Baptist said, to stoop down and untie his sandals. They don't know who he is. Jesus was the only begotten son of God. Before him, the seraphim hide their faces at his glory. Jesus was the only perfect man that ever lived. Whatever résumé of righteousness Job had, Jesus was infinitely greater, the only perfect résumé of righteousness there's ever been. Jesus was the one wiser than Solomon. His words were perfect. No one ever spoke like that man. Jesus raised the dead. He raised the widow's dead son at Nain. Jesus healed lepers with a touch. Jesus drove out demons effortlessly with a word, and they were terrified of him. And now this is the one they're spitting on and mocking and laughing at and beating with their fists, smashing the crown of thorns down on his head. 

This same one is the most humble man that ever lived as well. It's amazing how humble Jesus was, because one of those two robbers, while he was being crucified, later changed his mind about Jesus. Isn't that incredible? In some mysterious way, God, the Holy Spirit, moved out according to the plan of the eternal Father, and transformed the thief on the cross. And at some point, he saw in Jesus a coming king who would be raised from the dead and would have a glorious kingdom. And not only that, he saw that it would be possible that such a king would want someone like him, an utterly worthless individual in and of himself, in his kingdom. And so he said, "Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom." On what basis? On the basis of sheer grace and mercy. And Jesus said to him with incredible graciousness, "Today, you will be with me in paradise." Now you think about that. This man was mocking him a few hours before that. And Jesus effectively said, "I want to spend eternity feasting with you in my father's kingdom." That's the grace of our savior.

Every time I read Job, I want to bring you to Christ, every time. And so we're looking at Job, and he was a righteous man, a good man. And they mocked him, it seems, and they spit at him, but Jesus was greater. Now we return to Job. Look at verses 11-14, chapter 30, "Now that God has unstrung my bow and afflicted me, they throw off restraint in my presence. On my right, the tribe attacks. They lay snares for my feet. They build their siege ramps against me. They break up my road. They succeed in destroying me without anyone's helping them. They advance as through a gaping breach. Amid the ruins, they come rolling in." So Job basically says the social aspects of his rejection were so overpowering and aggressive it was like people assaulting him violently, like a walled fortress that has a breach in the wall and the soldiers come rushing violently in through that breach. God has stripped him of his defenses. And now like wild beasts, these men come after him verbally, not that they actually attacked him physically, because clearly in his weakened physical state, he would've died easily, immediately. It wasn't that. But their insults hurt him. Their mockery hurt him. Their disrespect wounded him. Job felt like that. Terrors came in wave upon wave. 

Look at verses 15-17, "Terrors overwhelm me. My dignity is driven away as by the wind. My safety vanishes like a cloud. And now my life ebbs away. Days of suffering grip me. Night pierces my bones. My gnawing pains never rest." Wave upon wave. And worst of all, it seems, God has become my greatest enemy. Look at verses 18-19, "In his great power, God becomes like clothing to me. He binds me like the neck of my garment. He throws me into the mud, and I am reduced to dust and ashes.” It's like God is focused on me to destroy me. He's watching me closely and I can't shake his piercing gaze. He has thrown me down into the mud. And he doesn't answer my prayers." Verse 20, "I cry out to you, oh, God, but you do not answer. I stand up, but you merely look at me.” Instead, God just seems to be finding new ways to crush me further, he says. Look at verses 21-22, "You turn on me ruthlessly; with the might of your hand, you attack me. You snatch me up and drive me before the wind; you toss me about in the storm."

Now, how can God kick me when I'm already down? Everyone knows it's particularly cold-hearted and ruthless to keep beating on a man who's on the ground. Everyone knows that. Once the man's down, you stop beating on him. Job says he knows that, but God doesn't seem to know that. Look at verse 24-26, "Surely no one lays a hand on a broken man when he cries for help in and his distress. Have I not wept for those in trouble? Has not my soul grieved for the poor? Yet when I hoped for good, evil came. When I looked for light, then came darkness. I was already down on the ground, crushed, and more trouble came on me." 

So he's lamenting his present. He's yearning for the past, lamenting his present, and he's dreading the future. Where is all this leading? Job sees nothing good for the future. Look at verse 23. He says, "I know you will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living." This whole thing's going to end up in my death. That's where we're heading. And we've already seen that his view of death is a place of hopelessness, of dark despair. Verses 27-31, "The churning inside me never stops. Days of suffering confront me. I go about blackened, but not by the sun. I stand up in the assembly and cry for help. I've become a brother of jackals, a companion of owls. My skin grows black and peels. My body burns with fever. My harp is turned to mourning and my flute to the sound of wailing."

So in chapter 29, Job yearns for the past when God was his friend and he was in his prime, when blessings washed over his every move, pure nostalgia, looking back at bygone days, knowing that they can never come again, so he thinks. In chapter 30, he laments his dark present, how horrible everything is, the worst being that God is no longer his friend, but it seems his enemy. And it's open season on Job by every lowlife man in the city who openly mocks him, while undoubtedly the more polished mockers do it more quietly at their dinner tables, but they're still laughing about Job. And then chapter 30 also, he has no expectation for anything good in the future, just death.

All right, so that's Job 29 and 30. What is the remedy? What is the remedy? Well, it's the same every week, every time we read this. Job is a better man than any of us will ever be, but we have a better hope than he ever had. We should have. And I think the purpose of Christians reading the book of Job is to get ready to suffer better than this. Not in any way minimizing the greatness and the magnitude of his character and of the suffering and knowing that our suffering will probably be less than his, but I think the New Testament says we can suffer better than this. Job's lament speaks of his general hopelessness. But we, because of Christ and because of the promises of the New Testament, we can and should have a buoyant, evident hopefulness that carries us through any and every suffering.

Now, let me talk about nostalgia. Nostalgia should not be the permanent home of any Christian. There's nothing wrong with remembering the past, looking at old photos and mementos of past days of blessing. There's nothing wrong with photo albums. There's nothing wrong with hope chests filled with memorabilia. Nothing wrong with watching old home videos of your kids' first steps or the three-year-old birthday party. The rehearsal dinner video presentations, parents always weep. I weep, they're not even my kids. Graduations, we watch them grow up and get to this point, and we all cry. And I think like at a wedding, it's like, "Oh, tears of joy." No, it's not. I give my daughter away to some guy. He's a godly man, I love him. But it's like, "What a raw deal. I've had this beautiful treasure with me all these years, and now I get to give her away and get to pay money for the privilege." Tell me that's not a raw deal. 

But the nostalgia can just be so difficult, so difficult. And there's nothing wrong with married couples looking at pictures of them on their wedding day. You're like, "Boy, I was good looking back then. And so were you." Be careful there, all right? "You were something back in the day." No way to turn that into a compliment. But isn't it a joy to know that for Christians, the best is always yet to come? And it just doesn't matter how blessed your life is in this world. And God can lavishly bless us here. But for Christians, the best is yet to come. That's what hope is. Hope is a strong feeling that your best things are yet to come, even on your deathbed. And I want to say especially on your deathbed. You're about to step through a portal into a world of blessedness that can scarcely be put into words. 

That's what Christian hope is. Romans 8:24-25 speaks of that hope, "For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." And I mean right to the end of our lives. We don't have it yet. We don't have it yet. We don't have it yet, but it's coming. It's coming.

Hope is continually forward-looking. Hebrews 11 speaks much of this hope. Hebrews 11 says, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for." And so a lot of Hebrews 11 speaks of hope. Verses 9-10, "By faith, Abraham made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him with the same promise, for he was looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God." That's what hope is, looking forward. It's a forward perspective. Looking forward to that city.

A few verses later, Hebrews 11:13-14, "All these people, these heroes of the faith, were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised, but only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth." People who say such things show that they're looking for a country of their own, country of their own. Verse 16 of that same chapter, "They were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. And therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them." We're going to a city and a country, and it's going to be glorious. And nothing you experienced on earth can remotely compare with it, nothing.

And so you should die well. You should die filled with hope. You should die knowing your best things are yet to come. And then before that, decades before that, you should live well too, knowing that your best things are not in this world. You should live as an alien and a stranger here, not holding too tightly onto the things of this world, not being burdened by a crushing nostalgia, wishing for the past days when you were in your prime, trying to hold onto something.

Paul talks about this in Philippians chapter three, about a forward-looking faith, looking ahead. He says in Philippians 3:13-14, "Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward." So there is that healthy forgetting what lies behind. Be thankful if you want to, look back, you should say thanks for that. But don't live there. Forgetting what lies behind, pressing on toward your heavenly destination.

So hope colors even specific things that we long for. Your best physical days are yet to come. Think about that. I know all you athlete heroes, the stuff you did in high school, impressive. Can't do any of it now. But boy, those were the days. You were a hero on the field or on the track. Well guess what? Your resurrection body is going to be vastly more capable than anything you ever had in high school. Your best physical days are yet to come. And I believe the same is true of beauty. Age robs beauty from us, male and female. But you are going to be spectacularly, radiantly beautiful in heaven. Your best beauty days are yet to come. So don't spend a lot of money trying to be beautiful in that last stretch of your life. Just some advice, all right? Because you're getting closer and closer to a glorious, radiant beauty you can scarcely imagine.

And not only that, your marriage, your Christian marriage, husband and wife both born again, walking in grace with each other, loving each other, caring for each other till death do you part, and then you're parted by death. It's going to happen. Well, I believe that your best days of unity, of union, are in the future. They're in heaven. You'll have somewhat of a super-marriage in heaven. I'm well aware that Jesus said at the resurrection people neither marry nor be given in marriage. They'll be like the angels in heaven. There's no procreation, and therefore no marital relations in heaven. But there is the perfection of the relationship, of the intimacy, of the closeness, of the oneness. Not a single disagreement between you in heaven. Think about that. Your best days of union are yet to come.

And so also your relationship with your Christian children. However much you enjoyed your growing up years, if they're born again and you're born again, you'll spend eternity with them in perfect unity as brothers and sisters in Christ, celebrating what God did in and through their lives, and loving them. And all your Christian friendships will be consummated. Some of them you lose by death, some of them you lose by distance as people move away. Some of them, sadly, we lose by sin, as Paul and Barnabas didn't quite enjoy each other much at the end as they did toward the beginning. But God heals those things and restores them. And Paul and Barnabas are perfect friends now. And think about the beauty of their relationship and celebrating what God did through them together, their missionary trip. 

So, at some point, you are going to give up all of your memorabilia. You can give it all up. All your photos, you're going to give them up. And your kids and grandkids will go through them, and those pictures won't mean as much to them as they did to you. And they're going to end up physically destroyed in a dump somewhere, etc. Or maybe your kids will hold onto some of them. But at some point, all of that knowledge will flicker away. All of that memorabilia will be gone. Don't worry about it. Don't be enslaved by it. Because in heaven, you will get a perfect review and a celebration of every good and perfect gift God ever gave you. I really believe that. So set your heart on things to come, not on things in the back. Set your heart on things to come and things above.

And more importantly than any of this, can I tell you? Christ will never, ever cease to be your friend. God, your heavenly Father, will never cease to love you and care for you. He's not like us. He's not a friend like us, fickle and fair-weather. At the end of this time, God is going to heal Job's perception of him. And Job is going to say in chapter 42:5-6, "My ears have heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you." What do you think he felt when he said those words? "And I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes," like the happiest repenter ever, because he knows God loves him. Well, we should never doubt that. It's proven forever at the cross. Greater love has no one than this, that he laid down his life for his friends.””God demonstrates his own love for us in this, while we were still sinners” — at our worst — “Christ died for us.” Nothing is going to tear his love away from you or your love away from him. 

It says in Hebrews 13:5, "God has said, 'Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.'" Says that to us in Christ. But the question is, are you a Christian? Are you a Christian? Are you born again? Have you come to faith in Christ? All of these beautiful things I've been describing are for brothers and sisters in Christ. They're for Christians, not for non-Christians. Do you realize that all that mocking and beating and the death that Jesus died, he died for sinners? Do you realize that he died for you? That you deserve the mocking and the rejection and the beating and the death, but Jesus did it in your place so that you might have forgiveness of sins. And you don't have to do any good works. What did the thief do to be with Jesus in paradise? He did nothing. He trusted in the savior. And that's all you need to do for the forgiveness of your sins. 

Now, as I finish, I just want to ask one question. I want to turn the whole thing around and say, in some way, could it be possible that Christ might be nostalgic for your affections? You know, in Revelation 2:4-5 it says, "I hold this against you. You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen. Repent and do the things you did at first." He's speaking to the Ephesian Christians who had forsaken their first love. And Jesus is saying to them, "You loved me better and more back then than you do now." Has that happened to you? Don't think it's impossible. The world, the flesh and the devil are assaulting our affection for Jesus every day, and trying to cause us to drift away from him. So look at your own life. Look at your Bible reading patterns. Look at your prayer life. Look at your attitude and demeanor toward Christ. Is it the same as it was back then? Is it greater? Is it growing? Or has there been some declension, some degeneration? Have you forsaken your first love? Well, if so, remember the height from which you have fallen, what you used to be like in loving Jesus, and repent of the sins that have led to this distance and do the things you did at first.

All right, well, we're going to go to a time now of celebrating the Lord's Supper. And so I'm going to pray in reference to the sermon and then we'll prepare for the Lord's Supper. Lord, thank you for Job, the book of Job and the lessons in it, in Job 29 and 30. And now as we turn to the Lord's Supper, Lord, we thank you for your mercy and pray that you would be with us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Job becomes nostaligic for all the lost good things, lamenting the present and dreading the future because he does not seek Christian hope.

The post O For the Days Gone By! (Job Sermon 17) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul instructs the church about the impending Day of the Lord, and the need to live godly, upright lives as children of the light, awaiting final salvation.

The post Thessalonians Episode 5: The Coming Day of the Lord appeared first on Two Journeys.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a sermon on Job 28. This passage is a hymn or poem (possibly spoken by Job) elevating God's wisdom over human ingenuity.

 Turn in your Bibles to Job 28. And we come to a magnificent chapter, a poem, or a hymn to wisdom. This chapter will celebrate God's wisdom over against man's science by using an extended illustration of mining. Mining. It will say men know how to mine precious materials from the earth, but we don't know where to find wisdom. Now, the question that's in front of me as I continue to walk through this complex, this deep book is, what function does this chapter have in the book of Job? Why did the Holy Spirit move that this be part of this book here and now? What purpose does it serve? Well, at the simplest level, it gives us all a break.

I don't know about you, but I feel a need for a bit of a break in the book of Job. I mean, it's been 27 chapters of sorrow and distress and misery. Of Job, a man, a righteous and a godly man who had wave upon wave of affliction and trial that came upon him, who lost much of his wealth in a single day, who lost all ten of his children in that same single day, who then subsequently lost his health to a terrible disease and was greatly afflicted.  And then for all these chapters through chapter 27, we've had a cycle of discussions and debates by his friends who have come to comfort him in some way, and you know what that's been like. One of those “with friends like that, who needs enemies” kind of thing. But it's been very distressing and difficult as again and again, Eliphaz, Zophar, and Bildad have unfolded the same basic theology. You, Job, are suffering because you are a wicked man. You're suffering greatly because your wickedness is great. If you would just confess and renounce your wickedness, the suffering would go away. 

And so how does Job 28 fit into that? Well, I think that we should look on Job 28 as part of Job's final defense of his own righteousness. Job 27:1 says, "Job continued his discourse." Job 29:1 says, "Job continued his discourse." So it's kind of right in the middle it seems, of a section of Job's statement. So it's best to just, I think, read it that way. I've said again and again, it really doesn't matter to me who says what, ultimately. I think if we do know we can line it up with what we know about that person and their personality and try to understand their words, but it really is the Holy Spirit that's speaking this book to us and he has a purpose and we have to look to that and understand it. So what does Job 28 say? I've already given you a brief kind of summary. 

It is, "Man knows how to mine precious materials from the earth, but we don't know where to find wisdom." That's point one. Then in verse 23 and 28, it will say, "True wisdom comes from God alone. God is the only one who knows where wisdom can be found and who can teach it." And he does teach us wisdom and it culminates in a simple, clear statement in verse 28, "This is wisdom: to fear God and to shun evil is understanding." Well, that's the whole book, whole chapter. How does Job 28 fit into the book of Job? Well, it's part of Job's defense because of verse 28. Verse 28, "To fear God and to shun evil is wisdom." But the very first thing we find out about Job at the beginning of the book is that this is the exact description of Job. God says to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him, a man who fears God and shuns evil." That should look very familiar to you. 

So Job is a wise man. He's saying this about himself. "I am not who you say I am. I'm not a wicked man. I fear God and shun evil." Now I'm going to unfold that and show how clearly it lines up with Job's life in chapter 31. And we're not going to go to 31, but I'll just tell you that is his ethic. That's how he lives his life. Well, how does Job 28 fit into the Bible? And then how does it speak to us? Well, we've seen in general with the book of Job, there's timeless wisdom here, but it's a shadow compared to the full reality we find in Christ. We get the idea of good, better, best in the unfolding revelation of God. And so while it is true that wisdom is to fear God and shun evil, there's a better wisdom than that. That is true, but it's not sufficient. I would say along with that, not either/or, but both/and, along with fearing God and shunning evil is the delight and the joy and the love that comes in a relationship with God where God becomes our treasure. God becomes our gold, worth more than anything we could ever find in this world. The kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he sold all of the material treasures he found on earth and bought that field and the treasure is Christ, and Christ gives us God.

And so if you put those together, to fear God and shun evil, plus to delight in God and yearn for him and find pleasure in him, now that's wisdom and we find all of that in the gospel of Jesus Christ. All right, so there's the sermon. You can go rest now or kind of take the rest. I'm going to go into a lot of details. Seems beneficial to do so, but you have the overview. I guess if I could just apply it to you, I want you to know, just look at where we're at, where we live, what our setting is here. We're in one of the smartest places in the country. There are a lot of different ways to measure that, but there's just a lot of PhDs around here. There's a lot of high tech companies around here. There's a lot of intelligent people who take human technology and human wisdom and do amazing things with it.

We have high tech companies right near us that are doing semiconductor research. We have software companies. I guess Apple's going to come and build a big campus here and do what they do. You've got pharmaceutical research. We've got all kinds of amazingly intelligent, smart people doing amazingly intelligent, smart things. But those who are not yet converted are not wise. They're not wise. And they need us and the other godly people, other churches in this area, to tell them to flee their foolishness and to find true wisdom in Christ so that we would not be overwhelmingly amazed with human wisdom and human ingenuity and human technology. Not intimidated at all by that, but say, "Can I point you to true wisdom? That wisdom is Christ." And beyond that, I want each of you who are Christians, who came in here today born again, to go home thanking God that he made you wise, that he won you out of your foolishness into a lasting wisdom through Christ. Just thank God for that.

Okay. So now let's look at some details. In Job 28:1-11, this section celebrates the staggering levels of human ingenuity found in mining. Maybe you've never thought much about mining before, but that's what's going on in this chapter. These 11 verses talk about mining. Human technology in general is a stunning marvel. It far exceeds the capacities of even the most extraordinary animals and birds, as we shall see. There's a massive, almost immeasurable gap between the intellectual prowess of human beings and every other creature. Human beings, therefore can do amazing things by virtue of their brain power. Now, the example that Job uses in this chapter is the extreme complexity of mining, but as we shall see human ingenuity, technology, science as we know it, is not ultimate wisdom. We may be able to extract gold and gemstones and other precious things from the depths of the earth, but we cannot trade that gold and those gems and those precious things for true wisdom.

So however far human science, human wisdom, human technology, and ingenuity takes us, it's going to fall far short of the wisdom that God yearns to work within human hearts. And a lot of that wisdom comes through suffering. Suffering makes us wise. Job feared God and shunned evil before any of this happened, but he feared God more profoundly after God showed up and talked to him at the end of the book. And so whatever level of fearing God and shunning evil you may have in your life, you could have more, should have more. Now let's walk through the details of how this chapter celebrates human skill and mining, human ingenuity and mining. So the existence of rare and valuable materials is a feature of planet earth and it was woven into the physical creation that God made and it's described very early in the Bible in Genesis chapter two. 

You remember how there was a river that flowed from the garden of Eden and it broke off into four headwaters of four rivers, and one of those rivers was the Pishon River. And it says, if you were to follow the Pishon river out from the garden of Eden, you would come to the land of Havilah, where there is gold and onyx. So very early in the book, we've got this idea of precious materials and throughout the history of human society, gold has played a major factor in commerce and in wars and in conquest and all kinds of things because of its attributes. Gold is precious because it's malleable, easily meltable, formable, shapeable, and it's incorruptible, it doesn't rust, and it's rare. So as with any economic issue, you've got the law of supply and demand. It's valuable, but rare. 

And so Job 28 describes the extreme efforts men have gone to draw precious materials from below the surface of the earth. Now the history of mining must be fascinating. When did people realize that these precious materials could only be brought forth into the light of day by extreme efforts, down into the dark deep, dark recesses of the earth? Perhaps early on men found caves and you know how men are, they just want to explore them. Hey, there's a deep dark hole. I'd like to go into it. I mean, what's up with some people? But that's how they are. And so they would get torches and they would go in there. Maybe they're looking for some water or I don't know what, just that sense of adventure. And in the flickering light of the torch, they see some glitter along the wall, silver maybe, or they find some vein somewhere of silver or gold, and then they kind of chunk it out and bring it out into daylight and start looking at it. In the course of time, they learned how to process it.

And so in Genesis four, we have a man called Tubal-cain, who it says in Genesis 4:22, "forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron," forged them. So that's just technology of learning how to deal with different types of materials that come from the earth. Tubal-cain seems to have been the first blacksmith or at least he's the first one mentioned in the Bible. He's learning to work metals like iron and bronze. Given that he's also in the lineage of Cain and a son of Lamech who delighted in being able to wreak vengeance on his enemies, some of this blacksmithing must have been used for forging weapons.

Herein lies is a big part of the problem of man's ingenuity. Man is brilliant in science, but then he uses his discoveries to make better and more destructive weapons by which he can kill his fellow man and take over his property, his farms. So mankind learns how to do things, but not why or why not to do certain things. Thus, to man's amazing brain is given a low level of wisdom that makes him vastly superior to all animals and other creatures, but man's essential wickedness and foolishness since the fall of Adam, makes that low level technological wisdom actually often damaging or destructive.

Mining is also very dangerous. You could imagine some expeditions going to various hot, dry places where certain things were found and the people have to go down into the depths of the earth and it would be maybe slaves that would be forced to do this. And so you get this economic disparity between the mine owners and the mine workers and all of these kinds of things go on. And it must have been from a very early stage. Under the hard, rocky earth the ground had to be essentially assaulted to pry loose its riches. It was a forceful, violent effort. It was deadly dangerous. In some mining endeavors, a large fire perhaps would be kindled in the shaft or tunnel, which heated the rock to high temperatures. Then cold water was poured on the super-heated rock, causing it to crack. Chunks of rock then fell down and the miners could go down to the bottom of the hole and pick them up and bring those rocks up into the daylight where they could be processed. All right. So that's the nature of mining in general, what we know about it. Let's look at the words, what Job actually says. 

First of all, he introduces the topic in verse one and two. "There is a mine for silver and a place where gold is refined. Iron is taken from the earth and copper is smelted from ore." So those words are why we're talking about mining today. That's what the text talks about. That's what we're talking about. And so it's about mining. It talks about the challenges of the search for precious metals, the need for light, torches, lanterns to push back the darkness. Look at verse three, "Man puts an end to the darkness. He searches the farthest recesses for ore in the blackest darkness." It stands to reason, it's away from the sunlight. It's deep down in the depths of the earth. There's no light down there and so you need to bring torches. It mentions cutting the shaft in these austere places where no one can live or wants to live and hanging on a trapeze to do the work.

Verse four, "Far from where people dwell he cuts the shaft, in places forgotten by the foot of man. Far from men he dangles and sways." It speaks of these trapezes are there because the pit is deep, and halfway down on the wall there's some precious materials they have to get off. So the only way they'll be able to work them is with ropes and platforms. And so they dangle and sway on those platforms. And then verse 5, "The earth from which food comes is transformed below us by fire." You have to do something to the walls, the rocky walls, you have to do something to get this stuff out. And so it speaks of the transformation of the earth, of holes that are dug that weren't there before, by again human ingenuity, and the products are precious, verse 6, "Sapphires come from its rocks and its dust contains nuggets of gold."

Now mankind's technology makes them far superior to all other creatures. Look at verse seven and eight. "No bird of prey knows that hidden path. No falcon's eye has seen it. Proud beasts do not set foot on it and no lion prowls there." So these are pinnacle creatures, birds of prey that soar high on the thermals, far above the surface of the earth. The eagles and falcons kind of rule the air. And then lions, the king of beasts kind of rule the jungle. But these lordly creatures never do anything like this. It would never enter their little minds to do this. They're not found there. They know nothing about the subterranean regions of the earth. It is mankind with his relentless thirst for exploration and knowledge, his scientific mind, his sharp eye, his ability to reason and put together technologies that might have seemed to have nothing to do with mining but then it's like, wait a minute, we could use that over here to do this. And so technologies are put together using iron tools, forged in a smith to then mine other precious materials more efficiently. No eagle, no falcon, no lion, no chimpanzee, no really intelligent porpoise is thinking about any of these things. 

It also speaks of the violence of the effort. Look at verses 9-10, "Man's hand assaults the flinty rock and lays bare the roots of the mountains. He tunnels through the rock." So the earth does not yield its precious treasures easily or free of cost. In later years, explosives, powerful explosives will be used to crack open the Earth's treasure box. So you imagine the 19th century sticks of TNT or other explosives used to open up the rocky mountain. As a result of that, human lives are lost. Mining accidents occur regularly. Massive boulders are broken loose and rolled down and block the escape of miners that are further down below and, little by little, their air goes away and then they die.

The discovery of hidden treasures in verses 10-11, that's the whole point of all of this.,"His eyes see all its treasures. He searches the sources of the rivers and brings hidden things to light." So all of this technology, these amazing efforts are made for treasures, material physical treasures brought up from the subterranean regions of the earth. They were hidden from view, but now the sunlight captures their glory and makes them glitter and shine. But, part two, "True wisdom cannot be mined and it cannot be purchased," verses 12-19. This is an analogy, it's really a parable almost, an illustration. Verse 12-14, this is the point of the chapter, "Where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell? Man does not comprehend its worth. It cannot be found in the land of the living. The deep says it is not in me." So we humans know how to mine hidden treasures from the depths of the earth, but we don't know where to find wisdom.

The true treasure is not found in that way. Human science cannot discover it. We are brilliant at technology, but fools toward God and eternity. Now this very point is the point that Paul makes in 1 Corinthians chapter one, where he says, "For since in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know God. For that reason, God was pleased to the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe in Christ." And so we're not going to find it, not even by philosophical reasoning or by inventing our own religions. We will not find eternal wisdom that way, either. God has ordained that he must teach us wisdom or we will never learn it. We don't know where to find wisdom. Verse 12, "Where can wisdom be found?" We can search for diamonds deep in the earth. We can discover sapphires. We can discover their stony fire and look at their faceted brilliance and it's going to captivate our eyes and our hearts. And it'll be the envy of our neighbors. But we are essentially fools because we can't find wisdom on the earth. We don't know where it dwells. 

Verse 13-14, look at it again,"It cannot be found in the land of the living. The deep says, it's not in me. And the sea says, it's not in me." Furthermore, what is wisdom worth? What is wisdom worth? What's the value of wisdom?  We cannot set a market price on wisdom and the things we got up, the glittery shiny things we got up out of the depths of the earth, you can't trade that for wisdom. It's not for sale in that sense. Look at verses 15-19, "It cannot be bought with the finest gold nor can its price be weighed in silver. It cannot be bought with the gold of Ophir, with precious onyx or sapphires. Neither gold nor crystal can compare with it, nor can it be had for jewels of gold. Coral and jasper are not worthy of mention. The price of wisdom is beyond rubies. The topaz of Cush cannot compare with it. It cannot be bought with pure gold." 

So some rich fool can be surrounded with the rarest gems and gold aplenty, but his restless heart has led him to all manners of corruption and tyranny. His marriage is ruined. His children hate him. He has developed bitter enemies who would love to kill him and take all of his treasures from him. And he's mortal, he's not going to have them forever. When he dies, he'll give them to others. He'll let them go. He is a rich fool and he cannot trade all his gold and jewels that he's so prized for wisdom. Wisdom was far more valuable than all of those things he accumulated all along, but he didn't know it. He was allured, he was deceived by the glitter. He learned how to assault the earth for its hidden treasure but true treasure was truly hidden, because true wisdom comes from God alone.

That's the third point. True wisdom comes from God alone verses 20-27. The hymn reveals the source of true wisdom, and that is God. Again, it asks the same question. Verse 20, "Where then does wisdom come from? Where does understanding dwell?" Then it presses deeper still, verse 21, 22, "It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing concealed, even from the birds of the air. Destruction and death say only a rumor of it has reached our ears." So if you could search every square inch of the surface of the earth, you would not find wisdom openly displayed anywhere. Like gold and diamonds, it starts out hidden from view. It is concealed treasure. But even if you could move all the mountains and probe down to the realm of the grave, the deepest depths of the earth, the place where death and destruction live, the subterranean regions of the earth. If you could probe deeper and wider than any mining enterprise has ever reached, you still would not find wisdom. 

A rumor of wisdom, a whiff, an aroma of it would be around you the whole time through the whole search. As though tantalizing you, enticing you and tormenting you, but you wouldn't find it. You would know that something called wisdom existed, but it would elude you. So you are smart. You are a genius with all manner of technological achievements, which have enriched you with the rarest gems the earth possessed. You uncovered them all and you have them on display in your dining halls, in your storehouses, but you are a fool. Ruining your life, finding no lasting peace, no joy, no pleasure. You are a rich, intelligent, accomplished fool, and it would be good for you to know it. A rumor of existence, so the existence of wisdom is there, a whiff, but you cannot find it. But God knows where to find it.

Look at verses 23-24, "God understands the way to it and he alone knows where it dwells. For he views the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens." God knows how to find what you're looking for. He understands the way to it. A journey to the place where it exists, where wisdom exists, but it's not a physical journey, it's a spiritual journey. God knows the way to wisdom for he made the earth and sees every part of it, nothing escapes his notice. And God's creation shows his credentials in giving wisdom. We're going to see this at the end of the book. The book of Job is saturated with what theologians called natural theology, the theology of nature, the theology of creation. Look at verses 25-27, "When he established the force of the wind and measured out the waters. When he made a decree for the rain and a path to the thunderstorm, then he looked at wisdom and appraised it. He confirmed it and tested it."

Well if man is wise in science, in studying the earth in its nature and using its attributes, how much wiser is the God who made nature? We're always infinite steps behind him intellectually. He made it, we're studying it, using it. So God is the creator, we are the students of creation. God said, "Let there be light," Isaac Newton studied its attributes. God said, "Let there be gravity and time," Albert Einstein came up with some theories of relativity. God made all life, biologists and botanists and zoologists analyze the species and study their natures and their habitats and genes and all that. But God made it all. The evidence of God's wisdom is everywhere around us. "God is wise," says Job, "in the force of the wind." He knows how much wind to use in every situation.

Sometimes the light breath of a zephyr, barely able to cause leaves to flutter, cool the face of the labored at the end of the day and cause the aromas from the flowering trees, the magnolias, the lilac to fill your nostrils and it's very pleasant. But sometimes he unleashes gale force winds that rip and rend and topple and whip the ocean into a frothy frenzy. God wisely decides how to move the air in the atmosphere and what to do with weather. The weather patterns all over the earth, as he alone sees fit and understands. God is wise also says the text in measuring out waters. The waters. There is enough water to cover the entire surface of the earth, so says the Bible. Noah's flood, everything was covered. There's enough water. But God, in his wisdom, when the flood was over, caused the subterranean areas of the ocean, even to sink down and to accept water into itself and then to move the edge of the ocean back.

And as another text says, "He speaks to the proud waves and says, this far you may come and no farther." He limits the force of the waves. Here you may go and no farther. God measures out also the fresh water. How much of it that we need to stay alive? How much should be sprinkled down from the heavens as we discussed in an earlier sermon, spritzing it down so that there is a bumper crop. He knows how to give just the right amount of rain for a bumper crop. He also knows how to give rain for not a bumper crop, for crop failure, for drought or for a flood. Either way you end up with crop failure and God wisely chooses how much water in each case. God is wise in directing the path of the storms. The thunderstorms may seem completely random to you.

 Have you ever seen the flash of a lightning bolt across the sky and you think what causes that jagged shape? Why does it go like that? It's every movement is dictated by the wisdom of God. God made and sustains the entire world by daily wisdom. Not even daily wisdom, instantaneous wisdom. He is flying this planet like a skilled pilot and every moment is ordained by his wise providence. Verse 27 it says, "God confirmed and tested wisdom by creation and by his daily sustaining of creation." Everything in creation, everything in daily providence is the of the wisdom of God. But have you ever driven by some area of the town your whole life? And then one day you had to walk by it and you're like, "Wow, I didn't know that was there. And I didn't know that was there either. And look at that and look." You were blowing by all of these displays of the wisdom of God in providence and you missed almost all of them. 

It's okay. In heaven, you get to review them and look at God's mighty works and celebrate his providence in creation, in nature and in history. And then you get to bring him the praise and glory he deserved all along. As it says in Psalm 111:2-4, "Great are the works of the Lord. They are pondered by all who delight in them." Another translation says studied. "Glorious and majestic are his deeds and his righteousness endures forever. He has caused his wonders to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and compassionate." So we who lack wisdom, we can only find it from one source and that is God himself. Human ingenuity and scientific accomplishment will never result in wisdom. It will only produce arrogance and tyranny and materialism and warfare and agonies, if not tempered by the wisdom that God alone can give.

Now in verse 28, we come to the crowning moment of the chapter, a definition of true wisdom, verse 28, "And he said to man, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom. And to shun evil is understanding." This is the beginning of wisdom we're told in another place. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And that leads to shunning evil. Job is going to make this very clear in Job 31. This is his motive for everything he does. He's going to talk about sexual purity in that chapter, "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a woman." Why? Well, because God sees my ways and counts my every step. That's why. He also treats his servants, men servants and maid servants with justice and fairness. He is kind to the widow and the orphan and cares for them. Again, why? Because he fears God and he's going to have to give an account to God for how he treated them. 

As he says in Job 31:13 and 14, "If I have denied justice to my men servants and maid servants when they had a grievance against me, what will I do when God confronts me? What will I answer when called to account?" He fears God, therefore he treats people well. This is his ethic. This is the way he lived his life. In order to do this, you have to believe that God exists and that God will bring to judgment all of the people who ever lived. That you're going to have to give an account on the day of judgment for everything you've ever done or didn't do. And so this infinite, majestic God should just tower over you at every moment and give you a sense of an appropriate fear of the Lord that leads to a shunning of evil. No book, I think, in the Bible gives such dramatic language of natural theology as does the book of Job.

Later, in a few chapters, Job 37:2-5, Elihu says this, "Listen. Listen to the roar of his voice, to the rumbling that comes from his mouth. He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heavens and sends it to the ends of the earth. And after that comes the sound of his roar, he thunders with his majestic voice. When his voice resounds, he holds nothing back. God's voice thunders in marvelous ways, he does great things beyond our understanding." That's the terror of the Lord. And by faith, we are brought to another place in redemptive history, to the base of Mount Sinai, where God descends in fire and gives his law to mankind and causes the ground to shake beneath our feet. And he speaks with such a mighty voice that the people beg that they never hear that voice again, unless they die.

The fear of the Lord causes us, and he says that in Exodus, he says, "Do not fear. The fear of the Lord has come to keep you from sinning." And so it is a healthy ethic though inadequate, I'll say it more in a moment, healthy but inadequate, but it's still necessary, that all of you who hear me today and I who speak these words should fear God and shun evil. Just in your mind, be brought to the base of Sinai and see God descending in fire on that mountain and hear him speak, because God says it to you. And then go in your mind to the darkness of Gethsemane where Jesus, who feared God like no one has ever feared God, fell to the ground in anticipation of drinking the cup of God's wrath and in terror said, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death," and great drops of blood came out of pores of his skin. No one feared God like Jesus. 

That's wisdom. Fear God and shun evil. We need to understand what evil is. The Bible gives us a whole taxonomy of it. Many sin lists, many. Galatians 5:19-21, it says, "The acts of the sinful nature are obvious. Sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery, idolatry and witchcraft, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions and envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like that will not inherit the kingdom of God."

 Evil is relentless. It is treacherous. It is devious. It is deceptive. The Bible gives a whole long treatment of what it looks like and how it functions in human society and what happens to the people who do it, like Ahab and Jezebel, dogs licked up their blood. We have whole stories about what happens when you live evil and how God brings judgment. And therefore salvation, in part, consists in the people of God coming to hate evil like God does. We come to that point that we fear the Lord and hate evil, shun evil. As it says about Jesus, that God the Father said about his own Son, "You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness and therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy." Jesus loved righteousness and hated wickedness perfectly. And you know what's so beautiful? You know what gives me hope? Someday I will love righteousness and hate wickedness as much as Jesus. And so will all of you who are my brothers and sisters in Christ. That'll be the perfection of our salvation, won't it? 

We need to understand therefore, that God does not, cannot tolerate sin. We need to realize a day of judgment is coming. God is patient. He does not bring judgment immediately, but he does warn us. In this text in the end, Job 28:28, "Fear the Lord and shun evil is a warning” for all of us. Job lived this out. But I want to say to you now, as I already said at the beginning of the sermon, true wisdom goes infinitely beyond that. That negative side is essential, but it's not enough. Christ is God's eternal wisdom and Christ is infinitely greater than “fear God and shun evil.” Christ is the wisdom of God. 1 Corinthians 1:23 and 24. "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But to those whom God has called both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God."

And I believe like that parable says, the kingdom of heaven is like a man who found treasure hidden in a field. Kind of links up with our mining theme. He mined it up and found it, put it back in, covered it so no one else would buy it. Runs and sells everything he had and with joy, bought that field and that treasure. So there's a fear and a joy aspect of true salvation. And you know what the treasure is? Christ. Christ is the treasure. Colossians 2:3 says, "In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." He is the treasure of God's infinite wisdom. And the thing that's exciting, what I've learned in my studies about heaven is you have only begun to scratch the surface on the infinite majesty of Christ. You'll be studying Christ for the rest of eternity. That's how infinite this treasure is. 

So there is a fear and hatred and loathing and negative side of true holiness. And then there's an attractive, alluring, positive, delight, treasure side. Both of those together, are found in Christ and that's true wisdom. Christ is the wisdom of God incarnate. It was wise for God to send his son, his only begotten son into the world to save us, telling us we could not save ourselves. That was wise for God to humble us like that. And it was wise for Christ to be born in humility, born of the virgin, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. It was wise for him to grow up in the normal way. “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.” Luke 2:52. It was wise for him to be hidden and concealed from Israel until he was about 30 years old.

And it was wise for God to send John the Baptist to announce his coming and point at him and say of Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” And then it was wise for Jesus to have his public ministry that consists in perfect words and incredible miracles. Rivers of healings, walking on water, stilling the storm, feeding the five thousand, giving multiple evidences of his deity through these miracles. It was wise for him to do that. And the specific miracles he did were very wise and it was wise for him to talk like no man had ever talked before. It's one of my favorite moments when they send some temple police to arrest Jesus and they go and listen for awhile. That was their first mistake. No, that was a good thing to do. They come back empty-handed and say, "No man ever spoke like this man."

It was wise for him to live a sinless life every day under the law of Moses, under the law of God, perfectly fulfilling the righteous demands of the law of God and winning for all of us, a robe of righteousness that he just is willing to give us freely as a gift the act of obedience of Christ, our perfect holiness and righteousness. And it was wise for Jesus, every moment to display all of the attributes of God, the Father. So he can say to his followers, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." But most of all, it was wise for Jesus to die on the cross in our place as a substitute under the wrath of God, that we might not have to face the wrath of God, but would be freed from our sins forever by simple faith. And it was wise for God to raise Christ up from the dead on the third day, triumphing over death in the grave and giving us a hope of eternal life.

And it was wise for him to save us in stages so that we are justified, forgiven, made right in the sight of God by simple faith, apart from works instantaneously. All of our sins forgiven, past, present, and future by faith in the blood of Christ. It was very wise for God to do that. And then it was wise for him to call on us to be holy and to be sanctified and to grow in grace in the knowledge of Christ, day by day, and to wrestle with our sins by the power of the spirit and be humbled thereby, and to learn how much we needed a Savior and still do, and to be humbled by this journey of holiness and to yearn for perfection and holiness. And then it will be wise at the end of all things, at the Second Coming of Christ, in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, to change all of the children of God instantaneously and give us perfected resurrection bodies to go with our perfected, resurrected souls. 

The consummation of our salvation will be perfectly wise as well. And then you'll begin your eternal education in the glory of God in earnest. And you'll become wiser and wiser and wiser and wiser for all eternity, but you'll never get, you'll never be omniscient, for God alone is omniscient. So you'll always have more to learn about the infinite majesty of God. Now, where is all of this wisdom found? This wisdom is found in Scripture. It says, and this is a word for you fathers, how it says in 2 Timothy 3:15, how Timothy from infancy, "from infancy have known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." The best thing you fathers could do is sit down with your families, gather them around and crack open this book night after night and pour out the wisdom of God on your children. Pour it out. 

But look again what it says, "wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." You want to know where the wisdom of God in Christ is found? You read about it in his book. You don't see it in nature. You're not going to see it in the wind or the storms or the ostriches or any of that. You find it in scripture, alone. So we have an obligation to the people, the really intelligent, smart PhD people of RDU to tell them what true wisdom is, to lead them to find it through faith in Christ. To be bold, even this week in evangelism. Don't be intimidated by them. Esteem it, great. Be interested in their research, that's fine. But change the subject at some point to true wisdom, the wisdom that's found in Christ. And then I'll finish with what I started with. If you are born again, if you're a child of God, your heart right now should be filled with thankfulness that God rescued you out of dark foolishness, into the wisdom that he alone can give. And that is Christ.

Close with me in prayer. Lord, thank you for this time we've had to study Job 28. I thank you for the song that we sang earlier in which we begged you, show us Christ. Lord, I pray that the way that this chapter has shown us Christ would stick with us, that we would realize that Christ is the wisdom, the true wisdom of God and that we would give eternal thanks for that wisdom. Lord, I pray for any that came in here as yet unconverted. I pray that now, even now, you would be drawing them by the sovereign Spirit to faith in Christ. It's in his name I pray. Amen.