Two Journeys

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a sermon on Job 14:14. In this verse, Job asks what will happen after death - the fundamental question of our mortal lives. Job presents his view of the afterlife, although he was a better man than any of us will ever be, we have a better hope than he ever had.

Well, I'm just crackling with energy to preach this sermon to you today. I've been thinking about this one question, it began somewhat academically for me, but began to emerge as one of the key questions in my entire studies in the book of Job. And the question had to do with what did Job believe about the resurrection? And to try to understand that, and to go through his various statements, and to feel the weight of them, and to look at the words honestly, and to do it with some evangelical commentators in the book of Job, and be troubled by the fact that as they wrote their commentaries, it seemed that they'd forgotten about Jesus, that bothered me. And I wanted to look at the Old Testament through the lens of the New Testament. The surest interpretation of the Old Testament is always the New Testament. And I wanted to bring that to bear, but there were just significant issues as we walked through.

And now last week I shared with you the conviction I have that in the wisdom of God through the power of the Holy Spirit as he assembled the cannon of the 66 books of the Bible. One of the reasons he has given us the book of Job is that we as believers in Jesus Christ can say, Job 13:15, as it appears in all of the English translations, as, “Though he slay me yet will I hope in him." But you must know foundational to that testimony is a belief in resurrection from the dead. Hope is a feeling in the heart that the future is bright based on the promises of God. We must have a hope in the resurrection in order to be able to make that assertion. No matter what happens in my earthly life, no matter what happens with my possessions, no matter what happens with my loved ones, no matter what happens with my health, even if I die, I'm going to hope in God. What is the basis of that but the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And so for me, it is a challenge. It's a challenging book, hermeneutically, interpretatively. I want to share with you the fruits of my meditations, but I also want to teach you as readers of the Bible for yourselves, what to do with the book of Job. How, first of all, not to skip it, but first two chapters, exciting, last few chapters, great, middle…hmm. Lots and lots and lots. One dear sister said, "Boy, there's a lot in Job, isn't there?" Yeah, there is. What a long book, and the details. But to deal with it honestly, and to try to walk through it. And we come this morning to Job 14:14, the question that Job asked, "If a man dies, will he live again?" It's a fundamental question of our mortal lives isn't it? Is this world all there is? Does death actually end everything?

Are we truly, in the end, just an assemblage of atoms that when disassociated from one another cease to exist as life, whatever life is? Are our hopes, and dreams, and thoughts, and feelings merely biochemical illusions that will end when the chemicals can no longer react like that? Is it really like the brilliant cosmologist atheist, Stephen Hawking, said before he died, "I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairytale for people afraid of the dark." Many people think that. Is there hope beyond the grave? Or as Job puts it plainly, "If a man dies, will he live again?"

Now for us as Christians, we have the answer to that question. The resurrection of Jesus Christ, the bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead is the single most significant event in all of human history. The empty tomb, the mysteriously vacant grave clothes, stone rolled away. Then even more, the resurrection appearances as he appears to the women, and as he appears to the apostles in the upper room, and as he appears to more than 500 eyewitnesses, and as he shows them the evidence of his death on the cross and of his resurrection. That single event, all the evidence written for us in the pages of the New Testament, changes everything for us.

Now, the challenge for us in the book of Job is to understand Job's perceptions of the afterlife, but to do so in light of what Christ has accomplished for us. Now, today, I'm going to argue one central proposition, one thesis. And here it is: Job was a better man than any of us will ever be, but we have a better hope than he ever had.

I want to tell you the story about that proposition. This is a funny story, it wasn't in my outline. I actually don't care how long the sermon is, but I do, but I don't. Anyway, I was driving home from an elders meeting, I was talking to my son, Calvin, and those words popped in my mind, I was talking about Job and the rumination I've been doing on this question. And I said, "Job is a better man than will ever be, but we have a better hope than he ever had." And then I just stopped, I said, boy, that was good. I said, "Calvin, write that down and text it to me." Because I was driving in the dark I couldn't do anything about it. So he did. That's the way I didn't forget it.

What do I mean by Job was a better man than will ever be? If you had Job's level of hope you would not have done so well. You would not have been so loyal to God. You would not have handled it as well as he did. You would not be the one human being on planet earth that God boasted about to Satan. You just wouldn't have done as well as him. His piety, his godliness, his care for the widow and the orphans, all of his credentials are in order, Job 31 will make that plain, I believe every word there. That's the man he was: better than us. But we can hope better than he did.

And I think in the overall 66 books of the Bible, as God and his wisdom, his eternal wisdom, he's chosen what books to give us. And as we believe in a progression and unfolding of wisdom, and understanding, and comprehension from the first statement in the garden of Eden about the seed of woman crushing the serpent's head, what does that mean? And then things unfolded, God gave more and more and more light to his people, it just unfolded. We have a record of that unfolding. We have these 66 books. I've come to realize that the point of it all is to bring us to saving faith in Jesus Christ. And as a part of that, to give us a vibrant, energetic hope, that totally affects how we live our lives here on earth, makes us fruitful, makes us light shining in a dark place until finally we're done with our days here on earth and go to the heaven he's prepared for us. That's what the Bible is given to do for us. And each book of the Bible has its role to play.

So a number of years ago, I saw this insight concerning the book of Ecclesiastes. Now I add a paired or matched statement with the book of Job. The book of Ecclesiastes it's ‘vanity of vanity's, life is empty, it's meaningless, everything that we do ends up dust in the wind,’ that's the theme of the book of Ecclesiastes. And then Job thrashing around from time to time, saying openly insulting things about God, like the end of chapter 14, when he says that God just levels men's hopes. And he says those kinds of things, and then other times speaks as someone who does believe in life after death and all that. So here are my paired statements: The book of Ecclesiastes is what life would look like if there were no resurrection from the dead. It's all in vain. But Paul has told us that because Christ has risen our labor in the Lord is, what? Not in vain. That's the answer to Ecclesiastes. Then the book of Job is what suffering would look like if there were no resurrection from time to time. So I just give you that going forward, as you have opportunity to read those books.

Christ has risen. We get to say that. We get to face suffering in this world, maybe less than Job, but whatever God brings in our lives, we get to face it with the knowledge that this world is not all there is, and there is a glorious heaven yet to come. And so 1 Corinthians 15:20 says, "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep." We have that as a statement of a historical fact that's already occurred. Job didn't have either the statement or the fact yet.

All right. So let's walk through Job’s struggle with doubt. What did Job really believe about the grave? He posed a question here, which I've already quoted a couple times, Job 14:14, "If a man dies, will he live again?" It is not entirely clear that he believed the answer was yes, not in this chapter anyway. Look back at verses seven through 12, which you just heard Mike read for us, "At least there is hope for a tree: if it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail. Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump may die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant. But man dies and is laid low; he breathes last and is no more. As water disappears from the sea or a riverbed becomes parched and dry, so man lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more. men will not awake or aroused from their sleep."

It's like Job is saying that a tree that is felled is better than a man who dies. Trees have been known to recover. Buds come up from the hidden subterranean root system, and a tree has a second life. But the man, when he dies, you never see him again, to the end of history. So then two verses later, “If a man dies, will he live again?” After that, I'm thinking, I don't think he knows. Or right now it seems like he thinks the answer's no. And this is just evidence of what pain can do to a mind, what afflictions can do to our soul. It is possible for us to be moved off of convictions that we have through our pain and our suffering and have moments like this. That's part of the function of the book of Job, to make you realize what it's going to be like to fight the battle of pain.

Now, along with this comes the theology of Sheol, the Hebrew word for the grave. There's a lot of issues with Sheol, what did they believe? What is it? What is the grave to the Hebrew mind? So if you go back, you don't have to turn there, but just listen. Job 7:9-10, he says, "As a cloud vanishes and is gone, so is he who goes down to the grave, he does not return. He will never come to his house again; his place will know him no more." Job 10:20-22, he says, "Are not my few days almost over? Turn away from me," he says to God, “Turn away from me so I can have a moment's joy before I go to the place of no return, to the land of gloom and deep shadow, to the land of deepest night of deep shadow and disorder, where even the light is like darkness.”

A few chapters later, Job 17:13-16. It says, "If the only home I hope for is the grave, if I spread out my bed in darkness, if I say to corruption, ‘You are my father’ and to the worm, ‘My mother’ or ‘my sister,’ where then is my hope? Who can see any hope for me? Will hope go down to the gates of death? Will we, hope and I descend together into the dust?" That's just poetical hopelessness friends. In none of Job's assertions like this, about death and the grave is it certain that he has any clear view of resurrection. He doesn't talk about it. Just darkness.

Now there is one statement that he makes in chapter 19, probably the most famous statement in the book. You can turn ahead and look there if you want. Job 19:25-27, there Job says this, "I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I and not another. How my heart yearns within me!" Now I'm going, God willing, to have the opportunity to preach on that chapter in due time. And that statement in due time, but I want to reach ahead for it and say that's I think his best testimony connected to resurrection.

Some of you who know and love classical music Handel's Messiah is one of the greatest pieces of classical music ever written. And the climax of Handel's Messiah of course, is the “Hallelujah Chorus.” People know that very well. Sing it at Christmas time. But in the Messiah, there's a piece right after that, a sweet soprano aria based on this text in the KJV. “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.” It's one of the sweetest pieces of music I've ever heard. And only a genius Handel would know what to do after the “Hallelujah Chorus.” I mean you just end it. All right, we're done, go home. But no, he comes back with this incredibly sweet-sounding meditation on resurrection. KJV text says, “The worms destroy this body yet in my flesh, I shall see God.”

Now, like I said, I'm going to deal with that amazing statement in due time. I don't want to break off and preach on that. It's a great text. But I would say it's enough to say that his view, his idea of life beyond the grave was in his mind at that point in a positive way, but other times not. So in and out inconsistent and frankly, even in that statement, it's unclear what he's meaning by it. Is he looking at healing, he's going to be healed in the end, God's going to swoop in at the last minute and heal his body? Which he does do at the end of the book. Even if Job were not thinking only of present physical healing, he may have only had a view of resuscitation, a kind of renewal back into the physical life he's always known, of continued extended long life in this present form.

I don't believe any Old Testament hero had any vision of the resurrection bodies such as we have today. So let's talk about those Old Testament heroes and what they hoped for in this world concerning the future world. Take for example, Abraham, you remember how God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, his own son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loved? Offer him as a burnt offering, some place that God would show him? And he went off on a three day journey with his son and with some servants. And when he reached Mount Moriah, where he was to obey God's command, he said to his servants in Genesis 22:5, “Abraham said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you." Wow. It's interesting moment. What was he thinking? Well, the author to Hebrews tells us what he was thinking. In Hebrews 11:17-19, it says, "By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, of whom God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead and, figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.”

All right, so he had a view of the possibility of resurrection after death. But I think even then, home based to the Genesis 22 account is he imagined that Isaac would just come back to life again after Abraham had killed him in the same form and pattern he was in before, “I and the boy will go worship and we will come back.” He will still be a, I don't know, a young teenage boy in the same body after that event.

And so as you look at the theology of Sheol of the grave, not just in Job, but in the Psalms, it seems to be a consistent question. Like Psalm 6:5, it says, “For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise?" The people in Sheol don't remember and they don't praise. And then Ecclesiastes 9:10 says, "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going." So whatever you have in mind to do, do it now, because when you go to the grave, that's all done. And then Hezekiah said in Isaiah 38, when he was facing his own death through illness and then God healed him miraculously. He said this, Isaiah 38:18-19, “For Sheol,” the grave, “Sheol does not thank you; death does not praise you; those who go down to the pit, do not hope for your faithfulness. The living, the living, he thanks you as I do this day.” So God, if you want praise, keep us alive.

Just between us, I'm going to tell you, I think the praise God has up in heaven is better than whatever we do here on earth. That's no offense to Wes and his team at all, you do a great job brother, but I just think this is a dim dress rehearsal of what kind of worship and praise is going on up there. And we're going to enjoy that. But Hezekiah doesn't seem to have a vision of that. Now the best we can say comes from Hebrews 11:13-16, all of these heroes of the faith had some kind of vision or understanding of life after death. The author writes in Hebrews 11:13-16, “All of these people,” these heroes of the faith, “Were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they 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. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would've had opportunity to return. Instead,” says Hebrews 11:16, “They were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them." So they at least had some dim view of a life-after-death world back in those days, in the old covenant days.

Now listen, as I was doing all of this and getting so incensed that these supposedly evangelical commentaries on Job, that don't seem to know anything about Jesus and I've stopped reading some of them, I'm done. It just stirs me up. It gets me angry. And I shouldn't be in that state when I'm writing a sermon. Amen? So I just set him aside. I'm a Christian, I'm going to read Job like a Christian, but I realized that I was being too loyal to Job and trying to protect him too much, I just need to let Job say what he said. My loyalty is to Jesus, and to him we give first place. And then you know who helped me with this? Athanasius. I was reading Athanasius on the incarnation. Now, Athanasius lived in the 4th century AD, three and a half centuries after Jesus died and ascended, rose again and ascended. And so that was at the end of the time, the era of the Roman persecution, it was done. Constantine had declared himself to be a Christian, Athanasius came after that. And he was defending the Orthodox doctrine of the incarnation against Arianism, the heresy we now know in the form of the Jehovah's Witness, deep teaching, that Jesus is God's greatest created being.

So he was fighting that and he wrote this incredible book on the incarnation. And this is what he wrote, "Before the divine advent of the Savior, even the holiest of men were afraid of death and mourned the dead as those who perish." That's Job. They feared death and they mourned dead people pretty much like people who had no hope. Athanasius said, "But now that the Savior has raised his body, death is no longer terrible, but all those who believe in Christ tread it underfoot as nothing, and they prefer to die rather than deny their faith in Christ, knowing full well that when they die they do not perish, but live indeed and become incorruptible through the resurrection." Listen to this, Athanasius, "Death has now become like a tyrant who has been completely conquered by the legitimate monarch; bound hand and foot as he now is, the passers-by jeer at him, hitting him, and abusing him, no longer afraid of his cruelty and rage because of the king who has conquered him. So death has been conquered and branded for what it is by the Savior on the cross. It is bound, hand and foot, all who are in Christ trampled death as they pass by and as witnesses to him deride it, scoffing and saying, "Where O death is your victory? Where O grave is your sting?"” Well, that's good writing friends, it's even better theology. Death has been defanged, death has been conquered, death is in a cage, death has been conquered and we don't need to be afraid of it anymore.

So we don't want to give the top honor to the hero Job. He did better than any of you would've done under the circumstances, but he was an Old Testament saint who did not have the clear hope in resurrection that we have. Because the Son of God had not yet triumphed, his hope, Job's hope, therefore, was small and pale, and indistinct and vacillating compared with what ours should be. Even the most insignificant Christian today has every reason to have a vastly superior hope in resurrection than that of Job. So, as we've said, Job was a better man than any of us will ever be, but we have a better hope than ever he had.

Now let me take that last statement and root it in Scripture. And for that, we go to the book of Hebrews. A better hope, let's talk that phrase, it's biblical, it's a biblical phrase. Hebrew 7:18-19 is talking about the Mosaic Covenant, Old Testament, regulations, all of that. The author to Hebrews writes these words, Hebrew 7:18-19, "The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless (for the law made nothing perfect) and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God." A better hope, better than what? Better than they had, better than the Old Testament hope, it's a better hope. And then in the next chapter, we showed the grounds of the better hope.

Remember what is hope? Hope is a feeling, a sense in the heart that the future's bright. That's true of any hope, secular hope, any kind of hope, but Christian hope is, we add the phrase, based on the promises of God, based on the promises of God. Well, that's Hebrews 8:6. "The ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, and it is founded on better promises." So you just take those phrases. Hebrews 8:6, better promises, Hebrews 7:19, produce a better hope. Better promises produce a better hope. Now, I would expand the word promises to say better history. We have the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, we have the history of Christ's death, resurrection, and his ascension. We have that history. So all of that, the word of God, the New Testament word just is the ground for a better hope.

So what is the author to Hebrews seeking to do? He's seeking to show how infinitely superior Jesus is to everything in the Old Testament, all of the Old Testament, heroes and leaders and all of that. So Christ is superior to angels who mediated the Old Testament, Christ is superior to Abraham, Christ is superior to Moses, Christ is superior to Aaron, Christ’s priesthood is superior to the Levitical priesthood. Christ's final, once-for-all sacrifice is superior to all of the animal sacrifices ever offered. And then it says in Hebrews 2:14-15, that Christ has by his death freed us all from fear of death. Look at Hebrews 2:14-15, now just listen, if you're not there, just listen, "Since the children," that's us, his children, "Since the children have flesh and blood, he too,” Christ, “Shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." How powerful is that? Jesus by his death destroyed Satan and destroyed any fear we should have of death.

Now, we see some of that slavery even in a man as great as Job, some of that fear. There was a vagueness to his belief, there was a weakness to his hope, but when Christ rose from the dead he gave to even his weakest followers the spoils of his mighty victory. As JC Ryle said, "Christ has thrown open the gates to heaven,” for all believers. So I love what Jesus said in his resurrection glory to the apostle John on the island of Patmos, he said in Revelation 1:17-18, "Do not be afraid, I am the first and the last. I am the living one and behold, I am alive forever and ever. And I hold the keys of death and Hades," that's the Greek form of Sheol. I've got the key to it all. I'm never going to die again. Death has no mastery over, I'm in complete charge of death.

And so he says in John 14:19, "Because I live, you also will live." And in the texts to us doubting Thomas's, he shows us his hands and his side, and we can read it, and we can come under that incredible blessing. He says to Thomas, "Because you have seen me, you believe. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe." That's all of us, amen? We've not seen, and yet we believe that Christ has conquered death. And we do not believe in merely a resuscitation, we believe in a glorious resurrection in a body like his, a resurrection body. I can't go over 1st Corinthians 15:42-44 enough with you friends. This is probably the 20th time I've quoted this passage to you. I still think, I, and all of you think about it too infrequently. Let me read it again, "So it will be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown as perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown in natural body, it is raised a spiritual body."

So our resurrection bodies that we're going to get for all eternity will be, first of all, imperishable, they will never die again, and they don't perish along the way in heaven, we're not going to age in heaven. And we believe in a resurrection body that will be glorious, it will shine like the sun in the kingdom of our fathers. We're going to be radiantly beautiful in our resurrection bodies. And we believe in a resurrection body that is powerful, pulsating with energy and life and vigor. And like Isaiah 40 says, "We will run forever; we will run and not grow weary, we will walk and not be faint." We believe in a resurrection body that is mysteriously spiritual, a spiritual body. I put those two together, spirit, body. It's a spiritual body.

I think, you know, when it talks about may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, there is a sense of heaven in earth, and then in Revelation, the New Jerusalem descends out of heaven to earth and the new heaven and new earth become one in some sense. It's difficult for me, but in the resurrection body, there's a perfect combination of the spiritual and physical. That's the best I can make of spiritual body, but we're going to have that. And never again any sins, no lusts, no evil thoughts, no corruption, just pure as light. Now, let me tell you something, the Old Testament saints didn't have that sense, that certitude, those words, they didn't have any vision of that, but we do.

And look at it at work, look at Steven in Acts 7, when he preaches one of the greatest sermons ever. And he proves to a hostile Sanhedrin, the Jewish rulers, that their regular pattern throughout their history has been to assault and oppose the deliverers and the messengers that God sent, that was his point. And when he rang the bell on his climax of his sermon, they became enraged and did it again. It's what they did. And so they wanted to kill him. You remember this account in Acts 7:56-60, while they were coming down to stone him, he looks up and he says, “”Look, I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” Well at this, they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out the city and began to stone him…and while they were stoning him,” Jesus or “Steven prayed, "“Lord Jesus receive my spirit.” Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And when he said that he fell asleep.” Oh, that's a great way to die. A vision of the resurrected glorified Christ at the right hand of God, ready to receive you, no hostility whatsoever to the persecutors and then just falls asleep and he's gone.

But even better and even clearer on this whole theology of a New Testament, a hope and resurrection is the apostle Paul. So in this, in my sermon, I'm to some degree at this point in the sermon, I'm kind of comparing and contrasting Job and Paul and saying, which is better? It should be obvious. I mean, Job's maybe a better man than Paul ever was, it's true, but it is so different how Paul talks about death and the world beyond. And don't think that his losses weren't comparable to Job. He said, because of Christ, I've lost everything in this world. And Job never had people fasting until they could assassinate him. He never went through the systematic beatings, and floggings, and imprisonments that Paul went through for years, so he knew what it was to suffer. But look what says in Philippians 1:20-24, he says this, "I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage. So that now as always, Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death," you see that? I am confident that through the spirit, I will be courageous and Christ will be exalted in me whether I live or die. Sound familiar? Though he slays me, I'm going to be confident in him, whether...and then he says, "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I'm torn between the two." The most staggering statement I think any Christian’s ever made, I'm torn between whether I will keep getting beat up for the gospel or get to go and be with Christ, which he says is better by far. And if the Lord gave me a choice, I actually think I would choose to stay here because it's more important for you, Philippians, that I continue in the body, and that's what I think is going to happen.

So for me, I know what's going to happen when I die. I'm going to depart and I'm going to be with Christ because to live as Christ and to die is gain, what does that mean? More Christ, more of Christ, a clear view of Christ, of his glory, of his beauty, that's what I get when I die. But in the meantime, energetic, fruitful service, and friends, that frankly is my point in this whole sermon series. That you would be so filled with hope no matter what afflictions God brings you through that you'll be fruitful and Christ will be glorified in your body, and you'll bear fruit for eternity while you live. Because there's going to come a time, you'll die and you'll depart and be with Christ, which is better by far. In the meantime, let's be fruitful. And the way you're maximally fruitful is to be filled with hope, energetic hope in the resurrection.

It's especially true if God chooses to bless you, if you look at it properly, with a cancer diagnosis and you get to go be the one believer in that cancer ward. You're the one person with a radiant buoyant hope in eternal life and all of those people that have the same affliction you do, and none of them have your hope. Would God do that? Would he put you on that? Would he light a lamp and put it up on that stand? Yes he would. The question is, will you be radiantly filled with hope at that time or not? Well, that's the question. So throughout church history, the heroes of church history were willing to die courageously for the gospel. Athanasius said this, "Everyone is by nature, afraid of death." It's normal. We're afraid of death and bodily disillusioned, “The marvel of marvels is that he who is enfolded in the faith of the cross despises this natural fear and for the sake of the cross is no longer cowardly in the face of it. The natural property of fire is to burn. Suppose then that there were a substance such as the Indian asbestos is said to be, which had no fear of being burnt, but rather displayed the impotence of the fire by proving itself unburnable. If anyone doubted the truth of this, all he would need to do is wrap himself up in the substance in question, then touch the fire.” So do a scientific experiment on asbestos and see what happens, “So it is with the followers of Christ. They would naturally be terrorized by death, but they wrap themselves up in their faith, in the risen Savior, and they lose all fear of death.”

Polycarp is a very clear example of this in the second century, in the year 156, he died as a martyr for Jesus in Smyrna. They arrested him for being a Christian. He was 86 years old. And they brought him down to the amphitheater and the proconsul threatened to burn him at the stake, not an idle threat at all, very hard way to die. And he said to the proconsul, "You threaten a fire that burns for a little while and then it goes out. You know nothing about the fire of future judgment and the eternal punishment that is reserved for the ungodly. But why do you delay? Do what you want!” There's zero fear in Polycarp of being burned at the stake, utterly fearless. And so Puritain pastor Thomas Goodwin said this is as he lay on his deathbed, he said, "Ah! Is this dying? How have I dreaded as an enemy this smiling friend?" Adoniram Judson, "I'm not tired of my work, and neither am I tired of the world; yet when Christ calls me home, I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from school." You remember last day of school, you remember that? School's out for summer, you remember that? And you're just running. Teachers don't try to teach anything that day. No one's listening. People are already, they're already, and Judson said that, ‘I am going to run into heaven.’

Charles Spurgeon said this, "Every day, Christ is overcoming death for he gives his Spirit to his saints, and having that Spirit within them they confront death with songs…they face death with a calm countenance, and they fall asleep in peace. ‘I will not fear the death—why should I?’ You look like a dragon, but your sting is gone.” “For these saints to die has been so different a thing from what they expected it to be, so lightsome, so joyous; they have been so unloaded of all care, they've felt so relieved instead of burden that they have wondered whether this could be the monster they had been afraid of all their days. They find it a pin’s prick when they feared it would be a sword thrust; it is the shutting of the eye on earth, and the opening of it in heaven."

So for us, what applications can we take? Well, I think it's pretty clear. Let's fight fear and doubt, like Job did, but better than him. Job says in Job 14:13, "If only you would hide me in the grave and conceal me till your anger has passed!" It's terrifying, utterly terrifying, to have the God of the book of Job as your enemy, your prosecuting attorney. That is terrifying. And that's one of the themes of the book of Job. Some people actually should be terrified of death because they're not yet Christians. They're in danger of the fire that Polycarp spoke of. It is not easier for them to escape their earthly situations and then go to judgment. That's infinitely harder. Jesus said in Luke 12:4-5, "I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has the power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.” So no sorrow we face in this life could ever compare with that.

I'm going to talk more about that in Job 21, that's a very important topic, I'm not going to say much more about it. But we cannot understand and celebrate the atoning work of Christ if we don't understand hell. Because honestly Christians go through, in some ways, a harder life because they become Christians. But not after they die, not at all. The greatest danger we face is the just wrath of God against us for our sins. Job had a sense of that in Job 14:16-17, he says, "Surely then you'll count my steps but not keep track of my sin. My offenses will be sealed up in a bag; you will cover over my sin.” That is fulfilled only in the atonement of Jesus Christ. Because it says in Romans 3:23-25, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified," that means forgiven, made righteous in the sight of God, "Justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a propitiation,” sacrifice of atonement, “A propitiation through faith in his blood.”

Propitiation is the taking away of the wrath of God, the just wrath of God, through the payment of a sacrifice. That's what that word means. And we believe that Jesus on the cross did that for us. So therefore God's wrath is completely removed and therefore he will not count our sins against us. As it says in Romans 4:7-8, "Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered." The very thing he said, ‘I want my sin put in a bag and God not look at them anymore.’ Okay? Covered in the blood of Christ. Atoned for. And Job said, "If only you would hide me in the grave and conceal me until your anger has passed!" Well, if you're a Christian, God's anger has passed forever. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. It says in Romans 5:1, "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

My question is, do you know that? Is that your lot? Do you know that you're a Christian? Just because you're here in this building, doesn't make you a Christian. Just because you're watching the live stream doesn't make you a Christian. Is Jesus your Savior or not? I'm saying if he's not, you ought to be utterly terrified of death and flee to Christ, flee to Christ. But if you are a Christian, you should have no fear of death whatsoever. It's a portal, a doorway into a glorious life that we can scarcely put into words. So I'm asking you prepare to die well in front of your loved ones, in front of the medical care, in front of the on watching world that needs to see you die well, prepare now to die well based on your faith in Christ.

Final word, at the end of this chapter Job says one of the worst things I think he says in this whole book, Job 14:18-19, it says, "But as a mountain erodes and crumbles and as a rock is removed from its place, as water wears away stones and torrents wash away the soil,” speaking to God, he says, “So you destroy men's hope." I would say, Paul would say, brother Job, can I tell you? It's just not that way. God feeds the hope of his people, feeds it. “For everything that was written in the past,” Romans 15, “Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us so that through the endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope. So dear brothers and sisters hope in Christ, hope in him.”

Close with me now in prayer. Lord, thank you for what we have studied today, complex topic, what did Job believe, what should we believe? We thank you for the godliness of this man, his piety, his courage, his willingness to suffer, and to not give up his confession of his hope in God. But I thank you that in your kind providence, as history has unfolded, you've given us better promises, better promises, and resulting in a better hope. Lord, I pray that you would feed our hope, help us to be in your word, help each of my brothers and sisters to be every day in your word, feeding their hope so they can be lights shining in a very dark world. Lord we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Though Job may be a better man than we ever will be, we have a better hope than was revealed to him in Jesus, who died and lived again.

The post If a Man Dies, Will He Live Again? (Job Sermon 10) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this twelfth episode of the Peter Podcast Series, Andy and Wes discuss 2 Peter 1:12-21. They talk about the certainty and trustworthiness of Scripture.

The post Peter Episode 12 – The Absolutely Certain Word of Scripture appeared first on Two Journeys.

The class works through Paul Tripp's book on marriage "What Did You Expect?". This class focuses on making a daily commitment within your marriage to regularly confess sins and repent.

The post Strengthening Your Marriage: Coming Clean & Canceling Debt appeared first on Two Journeys.

Job makes an increadible statement: "Though [God] slay me, yet I will trust in him." Our faith should similarly outlast tragedy and death.

The post Though He Slay Me, Yet Will I Trust in Him (Job Sermon 9) appeared first on Two Journeys.

Andy Davis preaches a sermon on Job 13:15. This text is the whole point of the Book of Job for Christians: we must hope in God even though he slay us.

As I come to preach to you this morning, I'm thinking about a critical moment in Israel's history in which the Israelites were apostatizing, they were syncretistic. They were trying to mix together worship of Baal and worship of Yahweh. God raised up a prophet, Elijah, to call them back to faithfulness to the living God. And you know that climactic moment when he took on the hundreds of the prophets of Baal in a great contest on Mount Carmel. At the climax of that encounter, Elijah had an altar built and he had the animal sacrifice on the altar, and had the whole thing drenched in water. And all the people were there watching to see what would happen. And in response to a simple prayer from Elijah, nothing complex about the prayer, just ‘God, please answer with fire from heaven that these people may know that I'm your servant, that everything I've done I did at your command and that you are calling your people back to yourself.’ And then fire fell from heaven and consumed the sacrifice, and the altar, and the stones, and the water. And all of the people fell down on their faces and they confessed, ‘The Lord, he is God. The Lord, he is God.’

Now I'm here as a preacher. I'm just a man. I'm just wearing these regular clothes. I've got this microphone, I've got this Bible here with words on the page. I've got this sermon here that I wrote. We're all just sitting here on wooden pews. All the physical stuff is here. What we need is the fire that falls from heaven, and we're not going to see fire. It's a spiritual fire that falls by the illuminating work of the Spirit taking these words and making them burn within our hearts. And a sense of the presence of the invisible God that we don't usually have, and that God would use that to call us out of our wayward ways of idolatry and into serving him in spirit and truth. That's what I want out of this time, something only God can do. Other than that, it's just very physical and ordinary. There's nothing special.

What's so amazing about that is that that actually can happen for some people and not others in the same room. I understand that. But today's sermon is all about an encounter with the holiness of God and that's what I want. And I know that nothing will happen unless God moves by the Spirit. It's my desire that through just the humble mechanism of a sermon of words, that you would actually have a sense of the infinite majesty of God. And that you would, in some sense, fall on your face before him and confess the Lord, he is God.

John Calvin, in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, the opening line, something that has captivated me for years, he said this, "Nearly all the wisdom that we possess, that is to say true and sound wisdom, consists in two parts: the knowledge of God, and of ourselves." Calvin goes on to say that unless we know God, we really can't know ourselves. It's only by seeing the infinite majesty and the holiness of God that we really know who we are because we are so good at lying to ourselves and deluding ourselves and comparing ourselves to others favorably. We don't really seem to know who we are now. This same man, John Calvin, preached the sermon on the text that we're about to study. And it captivated me, and I want to share some of his thoughts with you. It's one of the most powerfully convicting sermons I've ever read.

John Calvin had a way of just simply leveling human pride, just leveling it. Another image is one of a tangled overgrowth, like a jungle of plants. And you could see like machete work, where individuals are going and hacking it all out and clearing it out. That's just how prideful we are and how hard it is to be humbled. Calvin, in that sermon, spoke in the plain way of the infinite majesty of God and how the terror of God ought to slaughter our pride. I want to draw out some of those insights with you today for your humbling, my humbling, and therefore for our healing, spiritual healing.

My goal is to buttress your souls through this so that you will trust God no matter what he chooses to do in your life. That's my desire. I want you to be able to say from your hearts, whenever the time comes, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.” Now essential to you being able to do that is you have to learn to stop complaining against what God is doing in your life, to stop murmuring against him and to stop questioning him and stop arguing with him and stop being angry with him for what he chooses to do in your life. But before that happens, you have to know how majestic he is, how sublime, how perfect he is in his being and how lowly we are as creatures and as rebels, that you would have a sense of both of those.

Ultimately, I believe that the text we're studying today is the whole point of the Book of Job for us Christians. After the resurrection of Christ, why did the Holy Spirit want this book in the Bible? What did he intend to say to us Christians? I'm reading it as a Christian. And as I've said before, and I will continue to say, I believe it's to bring us to that point where from our hearts, we'll be able to say, "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him."

So we begin at verse 11 with the statement that Job makes to his friends. Look at verse 11, chapter 13, "Would not his majesty terrify you? Would not the dread of him fall on you?" He's speaking to his friends in chapters 12 and 13. We've been through one full cycle of dialogue. Eliphaz has spoken. Bildad has spoken. And Zophar has spoken. They're all coming from fundamentally the same point of view, the law of sowing and reaping, law of retribution. You reap what you sow. So therefore, all of this misery, Job, that's happening in your life is because of your own sin. Because of the magnitude of the misery, you must be a very great sinner. Job comes back at them in a lot of ways, we looked at some of them last week, sarcastic, he's prideful, different things.

But more than anything, I think at this point, he wants them to come face to face with the same God he fears. He's saying, would you do any better, if this same God looked at you, addressed you, “Would not his majesty terrify you? Would not the dread of him fall on you?" He rebukes their shallow explanations of his sufferings. Verse 12 he says, "Your maxims are proverbs of ashes; your defenses are defenses of clay." But fundamentally I assert to you, as John Calvin did to his congregation five centuries ago, the majesty of God ought to terrify you. The dread of God ought to fall upon you. Job is exposing his friend's faulty statements about God. Why is it that we are also impudent in falsifying the truth about God? It's because we don't see him in his lofty majesty, and we easily pull God down to our level. We make Almighty God like ourselves, and that's a lie. There is an infinite distance between us and Almighty God. As Solomon said, when he dedicated to temple, "Heaven, even the highest heavens, cannot contain you."

So John Calvin said, "Let us bow our heads and let God say whatever pleases him, and when we have heard his word, let him also do whatever he thinks is best, and let us adore him in all his works, especially when we enter into the consideration of our feebleness and frailty saying, “WHAT ARE WE?”" I'm thinking about Proverbs 9:10, which says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." Job, I think, speaks as one who has a genuine fear of the Lord. It's the way he lived his life before the trials came. And he senses that his trivial friends do not really have a healthy fear of the Lord.

So we would be better advised if we took it upon ourselves to speak more carefully of this holy God than we do. But ordinarily, we humans proceed to speak of God stupidly. We ought to repent of this lighthearted trivial manner of speaking of the almighty, holy, majestic God, as in direct violation of the Ten Commandments. Exodus 20:7, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold guiltless anyone who takes his name in vain." If we're going to speak about God, we should allow a holy reverence and a fear to come upon us. We should learn to conceive of the infinite glory that is in him. The Puritan commentator, Matthew Henry, wrote this, "There is in God a dreadful excellency." Dreadful excellency, "He is the most excellent Being, he has all excellencies in himself and in each infinitely excels any creature. His excellencies in themselves are amiable and lovely. He is the most beautiful Being; but considering man's distance from God by nature, and his defection and degeneracy by sin, those excellencies are dreadful. His power, holiness, justice, yea, and his goodness too, are dreadful excellencies. They shall fear the Lord in his goodness. A holy awe of this dreadful excellency should fall upon us and make us afraid. This would awaken impenitent sinners and bring them to repentance, and it would influence all to be careful to please him and fearful of offending him."

So how can we, finite beings, even begin to conceive of such a God? If we were to compare him with his creatures, with any of his creatures, we would be stripping God of his majesty. And what can we do now when we've been surrounded all our lives with people who have spoken empty words about God, who have joked about him, who have lowered him, who have stripped him of his majesty? We're so used to this lighthearted trivializing of the name of God, the way people talk about him, the way they joke about him. How shall we recover?

Well, I think we recover in part by beginning to consider what we are. We should meditate on our feebleness and the poverty of our being as creatures. That we are small, we're weak. We were created from the dust of the earth. And we should compare our infinite smallness to the majesty of the creation that we see around us. Even the stars up in the cosmos, as David said in Psalm 8:3-4, "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man, that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” Something very healthy about that feeling. What is man?

But God is infinitely above the cosmos as Isaiah 40:12, makes it plain, “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or at the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens?” Later in that chapter, Isaiah 40:26, Isaiah says, "Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and his mighty strength, not one of them is missing."

Compare ourselves to the radiant angels, the glorious angels that surround his throne, a hundred million of them and serve him continually in heaven. If we had the glory of angels and the purity of angels, we could get closer to the presence of God. But notice how they are, notice how in Isaiah six, the seraphim, the Hebrew word means burning ones, holy burning angels cover their faces and they cover their feet and they never stop crying aloud to one another, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord Almighty.” They're overwhelmed by the infinite gap between God, the creator and they, as creatures. They are overwhelmed by it. That's why they cover their faces. John Calvin says, "But what are we but rottenness,” compared to the seraphim? What are we, but rottenness? Not only are we the dust of the earth, but we have been rebels against this holy God. We've rebelled against him. We've broken his laws. We've violated his majestic sovereign rule. We've transgressed his precepts. So we're not merely creatures of the dust, feeble and frail. We're also rebellious and, amazingly, arrogant in our rebellion.

How frail are we? We are like Calvin said, we're like sparks that jump up from a fire, like a campfire. You've seen a campfire before. And sometimes you watch a spark elevate and start to spiral upward and you watch it. You keep watching, it kind of moves out and then it just goes out, that's it. It's got no thermal mass to it. It's just a very feeble thing. And Calvin says we're like that. We are sustained every moment of our existence by the sovereign will of God. We're feeble and frail. Because of his pure goodness and patient grace in and of ourselves, we couldn't sustain ourselves one instant. We couldn't take another breath. We couldn't make our hearts beat one more time. Only God can do that. And he wills it and he sustains it because there is in ourselves nothing but smoke and vanity. So it is beneficial for us to have a lively sense of who this God is, who created us and who sustains us every moment of our lives, that we are from him and that everything we see in any direction we look, God made it. Ultimately, God made it. Whether we look up or down, left or right, front or back, we will see clear evidence of his powerful handiwork and his mighty wisdom.

This should cause us to be astonished and ashamed at our pride, our arrogance, and to truly humble ourselves before his infinite majesty, to adore his lofty glory. We should quiet ourselves from all murmuring and all questioning of him. John Calvin said this, "So then let us learn to know better who God is in order that we may be trained in all modesty and sobriety, and meanwhile let us examine what we are. When we see that our flesh does tickle us to applaud ourselves so that we're inclined to flatter ourselves and seek to stand in our own conceit, let us stir ourselves up to say ‘Where does this conceit come from?’ It's because you really have not known yourself. Then we shall find that we have a bottomless pit of sin in us, that we're wrapped in such ignorance that it is horrible to behold, which is as it were so thick a darkness that it utterly chokes and strangles us."

So if the essence of all true and sound wisdom is knowledge of God and of ourselves, it seems that we don't know either very well. And that's exactly why we are proud. If we had the experience of an encounter with the glory of Almighty God, we would react with the same trembling and fear that all of the people of God in the Bible always had when God showed up, every time. Calvin, at the beginning of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, he writes, "Hence that dread and terror by which the holy men of old trembled before God, as the Scripture uniformly relates."

And so if you just look at Job 13:11, would not his majesty terrify you? Just take the question on. If God showed up in one of those radiant theophanies, what do you think you would be doing? What do you think would happen to you? Would you not be down on your face like everyone else? Think about Abram when God wanted to prove the truth of his promise that his descendants would be more numerous than the stars in the sky and that he would inherit the earth he was walking on, had a covenant cutting ceremony. In Genesis 15:12, “As the sun was setting a deep sleep fell on Abram, and suddenly a terror and a great darkness descended on him.” A terror and a great darkness. And then God showed up like a fire pot.

Then there's Jacob, his grandson, at Bethel when he had that dream and his mind was filled with light. And there was a stairway going up to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it. And at the end of that incredible evening, he woke up that morning, Genesis 28:17, and he was filled with terror, “And he said, "How awesome is this place? This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”"

Then there's Moses. Twice in his life, more than that, I'm sure. But at the burning bush, Steven relates in his sermon in Acts 7:32, "Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look." And then again, when God caused the ground to shake under the nation of Israel and descended in fire on Mount Sinai. The author in Hebrews 12:21 says, "The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, “I am trembling with fear.”" What do you think you would be doing if you'd been there? The ground is literally shaking under your feet and the mountain around which you have assembled is burning at the top with God having descended in fire on the mountain. You'd be on your face.

What about Isaiah? We've talked about him. He saw the Lord seated, high and exalted, the train of his robe filled the temple, the seraphim covering their faces. What was his reaction? “Woe is me! I'm ruined! For I'm a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” What do you think you would be doing?

What about Habakkuk? When God gave him a revelation of what was going to happen with sinful Israel and the exile to Babylon, how God was going to use the Chaldeans to punish his own people, and he was somewhat arrogant, Habakkuk said, ‘I don't get it. I'm going to stand here at my post and I'm going to wait until you answer me.’ Well, he answered him. What was Habakkuk's reaction? Habakkuk 3:16, "I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept in my bones, and my legs trembled." Same thing.

Ezekiel had an almost inexplicable vision of the glory of God, almost stretched words to the breaking point to try to describe what he saw. High above all of these angelic beings was a throne and one seated on it. And he says, "This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell face down."

We think, well, that's all Old Testament. We're in a new era of closeness with God now through Jesus. What about the Mount of Transfiguration, which I mentioned even last week. Peter, James and John and Jesus is revealed in glory before them and his face shown like the sun, his clothes became radiantly white, whiter than anyone in the world could launder them, “And a bright cloud enveloped them and a voice came from the cloud saying, "This is my son whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!"” What were they doing? Peter, James, and John were on their faces. What would you be doing? Same thing. Would not his majesty terrify you? Would not the dread of him fall upon you, if you had been there?

And then there's the apostle John at the end of a holy and fruitful life exiled in the island of Patmos. And it was the Lord's Day. And he had a vision of the resurrected glorified Christ, which he describes in Revelation one, "His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze, glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters…when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead." Friends, that's after the resurrection, that's after Christ’s ascension into heaven. That's in the new covenant era. Would not the dread of him fall upon you? Would not his majesty terrify you? Almighty God himself said, "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is humble and contrite in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and revive the heart of the contrite." He said later in Isaiah 66:2, "This is the one I esteem: he who is humble in contrite and spirit, and who trembles at my word."

So I do believe that the purpose of the book of Job is to bring us to a solid confession of trust in God. But before we get there, we have to know who we are and who he is. I do believe that the purpose of the book of Job is to humble us like Job himself was humbled at the end of the book. Job 40:4-5, "I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer—twice, but I will say no more."

And then in chapter 42:5-6, "My ears have heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent and dust and ashes." The fear of the Lord is essential to us being humble in his presence. And it's essential to the holy life he's calling us to live. He shook the ground at Sinai and he descended in fire on Sinai to make the people afraid to sin. He said that in Exodus 20:20, “Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid, God has come to test you so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning."”

So it is essential to us, therefore not questioning God or murmuring against him or arguing with him or getting angry at him when he chooses to bring us through pain and sorrow for our own glory to know his majesty, his wisdom, his love, his power. Now ultimately, Jesus Christ came to take away all fear and terror of God, ultimately. As John Newton puts it so beautifully in Amazing Grace, "Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, in grace, my fear is relieved."

So what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration when Peter, James, and John were trembling on the ground? Well, it says in Matthew 17:7-8, “Jesus came and touched them, "Get up", he said. "Don't be afraid." And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.” He did the same in Revelation 1:17-18, “John said, "When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: ‘Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I'm alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.'"”

So Jesus comes in the wake of the powerful working of the Holy Spirit that makes us fear his judgment and his wrath and makes us fear sin and comes and puts his hand on us, who believe in him, who trust in him and his atoning work on the cross. And he says fear not. Fear not. But we who live in the 21st century in the affluent west, we're used to a very casual form of religion, aren't we? We're not used to having our pride stripped away from us so roughly. We revel in the imminence of God, his closeness. God is my friend. God loves me. He is my loving father. He hugs me. All of those are true.

We're not so familiar with: ‘our God is a consuming fire.’ We're not so familiar with the transcendence of God, the infinite holiness of God, his majesty, that proper dread should come upon us in time, in his presence. So this I believe is a profound basis of Job's astounding piety. And from that we see Job at his absolute best.

Look at verse 15A. We get to 15B at the end. But 15A is better than 15B. Job 13:15, he says, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." I want you to see the logical connection. Verse 11 feeds the first half of verse 15. "Would not his majesty terrify you? Would not dread of him fall upon you?” feeds, "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him?" So let's just understand the statement plainly. Even if the worst possible earthly outcome were to happen to me, I would still hope in God. I would still trust in him. What is that? My wealth, my family, my health. These three things were assaulted in the trials with Job. Imagine things like that happening to you. Though he were to clear out my wealth, I would still trust in him and hope in him. Though he were to take a loved one out of my life or multiple ones from me, I would still hope in him and trust in him. Though he were to assault my physical health, even to the point of death, though he slay me, I will still hope in him and trust in him.

Now I believe essential to the reality of that statement is a solid belief in the resurrection from the dead. I will be trusting in God on my deathbed because I don't think that's the end of the story. Job already knew he was going to lose everything at death. Job 1:21, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised." Death should not come as a shock to us. Some surprise, a stunning plot twist that we never saw coming. I will die, but I will die hoping in God. I will die trusting in him. The only way any of that makes sense is the resurrection from the dead, life beyond the grave.

Did Job believe in that? Now, that's an interesting question. And it's so complex, we're going to reserve it for next week, if God lets us live. If we get time next week, we'll talk about what Job believed about the resurrection from the dead. It's harder than you might think. Some people question the translation here. Some of you, dear scholars, read the footnotes of your English Bibles. And you're like, wait a minute. I'm not even sure that's what the verse says. All right. Well, it's what the verse says up on the page. There are some footnotes in some of your more scholarly Bibles. So what does it say up on the page? Well, in the King James version, it says, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” The New American Standard, the ESV, “Though he slay me, I will hope in him.” There's the only difference is trust and hope, kind of equivalent. CSB Job 13:15, “Even if he kills me, I will hope in him.”

So they all say about the same thing. You would think that would settle it, but the scholars don't let anything be settled. So they just keep working on things and they say, yes, but there's another reading in the Hebrew, all comes down to a little Hebrew word, lo, which could mean to or for him, or it could be a negation, a not word. And so they actually think a better translation given how Job's behaving at other times is this, “If he were to slay me, I would have no hope.” Wow, that's different. Don't you think? Say it again slowly. If he were to slay me, I have no hope.

That's a downer. That's not too encouraging. Doesn't make much sense. I don't feel like the Holy Spirit's saying that to me as I read the Book of Job. Like if I die in the end, all my hopes are gone. What does that mean? It's for this life only I'm hoping in God. Directly the opposite of what Paul said. “If for this life only we hope in Christ, we are of all men [most] to be pitied.” Seems like Job is a man to be pitied. Like if you would give me my children back, and if you give me my health back and give me all the stuff back that he took from me, then I'll have hope in him. But if he doesn't, I have no hope.

Now, those scholars say, yes, but look at other things Job says. Yes, it's not great. And we're going to walk through it next week, not this week, but I'll give you an example. Job 17:11-16. It's a good example of Job at a low point, "My days have passed, my plans are shattered, and so are the desires of my heart." Wow, "These men turn night into day; in the face of darkness, they say “Light is near.” If the only home I hope for is the grave, if I spread out my bed in darkness, if I say to corruption, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother’ or ‘My sister,’ where then is my hope? Who can see any hope for me? Will hope go down to the gates of death? Will hope and I descend together into the dust?” That's really depressing. So I had to wrestle with what Job thought about the resurrection from the dead and the full effects and fruits of that wrestling will be next week's sermon.

Let me tell you something. Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who fall asleep. Amen. I know the end. I'm not entirely sure what Job knew. And we'll talk about that, but I know what we believe and I know what we have. And we're able to go back to Job 13 and 15 and say, whatever the translation, “Though he slay me, yet while I hope in him” makes perfect sense as the final end of the story of Job. Makes perfect sense. So whatever Job intended and whatever, frankly, Job said, I know what the Holy Spirit is saying concerning the rest of our lives. We're going to suffer. We're going to struggle. We're going to die if we're not the final generation. We're going to lose everything in death. And that will not be the end for us, Christians. But we're going to be raised in glory and we're going to spend eternity in heaven. And so we can die well.

I would say the book of Job makes no sense with that alternate translation down in your footnotes. And you should be glad it didn't make it up on the page. That instead, this is the scholars that did the King James Version, the scholars that did the New American Standard version, the NIV and the ESV and all of them thought it best to put it up on the page, I think will stick with it. But I think it ultimately makes sense for the whole story. Otherwise it makes no sense. His children really were dead. They were gone. He would not see them again in this world. And the possessions that would be restored to him at the end of his life, what's that, they're just going to be taken from him when he dies again. And so we have to have an answer that goes beyond the grave, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.”

Now is your theology big enough to think of God slaying you? Did you think your death would have nothing to do with God? The fact of the matter is Psalm 104:29 says, "When you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust." You realize that whenever a Christian dies, God did it. Whatever affliction or malady they had, God could have healed it. Effortlessly. Look at the healings that Jesus did. None of them were hard for him. He sustains life as he chooses. He can bring anyone out of any illness and any physical emergency any time he chooses. Ultimately, then, no Christian dies accidentally. No one shows up at the proverbial pearly gates, and God is shocked to see them. ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘Car accident.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Really.’ ‘Okay. Well we got to hurry and get a place for you. Get a cot set up. We're almost done. Come on in.’ That is not going to happen. When he takes away their breath, they die.

As a matter of fact, Psalm 116:15 says, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints." It's a precious thing when the time comes to call them home. We follow a Savior who laid down his life willingly. John 10:18. It says, Jesus said, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have the authority to lay it down and the authority to take it up again. This command I receive from my Father." I just lay down my life for them. And I take it back up again in resurrection power. And then we follow a Savior who's calling us to do the same. In some cases, literally.

Jesus said in John 12:24 through 26, "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces much fruit. The one who loves his life will lose it, while the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me." Now, we see that in church history, some of our brothers and sisters were called to literally die for the gospel. They were called to be martyrs to spread the gospel. Tertullian said in the Roman era, “The blood of martyrs is seed for the church.” Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him that he will use my death to spread the gospel and he'll reward me in heaven, rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven. Even if they kill me. That's the way they lived. That's the way they died.

And we follow a cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 11, who are willing to lead exquisitely difficult lives for the cause of the gospel, who did not always have the earthly win, but sometimes had what some would call the earthly loss. But it was all part of God's wonderful plan. And so it says in Hebrews 11:35-38, "Others were tortured and refused to be released, so they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and caves and holes in the ground." They lived out, though he slay me, yet will I hope in him. And theirs was kind of a long dying kind of life in service to the gospel. They were willing that God would slay them, that others might live.

I see beautifully in the Bible, a progression on this whole logic. Job says, though he slay me, yet will I hope in him, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego facing that golden idol and the fiery furnace said this to the tyrant, not-yet-converted Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 3:7 and 17-18, "If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know we will not bow down to your idol and serve it." So keeping it simple, though he slay me, yet will I obey him.

But Paul has the final word on this pattern. He basically says, though he slay me, yet will I rejoice in him. I will delight in him while he's slaying me. So in Philippians 2:17, he says, "Even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith, I am glad and rejoice with all of you,” so you too should be glad and rejoice with me. As he had said earlier, "For me to live is Christ and to die is,” what, “gain.” If God wants to take me home, let him take me home. But I think I'm going to stay, he said, serve you Philippians and suffer more for the gospel. I'm actually torn between the two. What an incredible man he was. Torn between suffering more for the gospel for the benefit of others or going and being with Jesus, he actually would prefer to stay and suffer some more so that there would be fruitful labor. Incredible. But though he slay me, I'm going to rejoice in him.

So Job's triumphant statement should inspire us Christians to suffer well and to die well for Jesus, for the spread of the gospel and for our own growth in godliness as well. And in order to get there, you have to start at verse 11. "Would not his majesty terrify you and would not the dread of God fall upon you?" Start there and then you'll have that kind of robust faith that he's talking about. All right, well that was Job at his best.

I can't help, but finish the verse and that's Job at his worst. It's like, what is it with Job? You're good. You're bad. You're in, you're out. What is it? Well look at the second half of verse 15. I'll read the whole verse. He says, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him; yet I will argue my ways to his face." Hmm. Interesting. What happened to dread of the Lord falling on you in terror and majesty?

This is who Job was at that point. He was ready to argue his own innocence before God, before the holiness of God. Job should have heeded his own words. And he doesn't feel this way at the end of the book, does he? Not at all. He's not going to argue his ways to God's face at the end, but that's how he felt at that point. I'm reminded of Richard Sibbes’ masterpiece meditating on the bruised reed and the smoldering flax, the beautiful statement made by Isaiah the prophet and then ascribed to Jesus by Matthew, Matthew, 12:20, "A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory." Friends, we redeemed sinners are weak and feeble. We're bruised reeds. We're not mighty oaks of righteousness. We're bruised reeds, and Jesus is skillfully able to take that bruised reed and bind it up though it hangs by a slender green thread. He's got that skill and that gentleness, Jesus does, to bind up bruised reeds. That's the first image. Richard Sibbes talks about that, but he also talks about the second image, the smoldering flax. What is that? It's like a wick. And it's smoldering, it's almost extinguished. It's got some light, it's got some heat, but it's got some noxious smolder too. We're not mighty bonfires of holy righteousness and zeal, we're flickering flames or smoldering wicks. And there is continually in the saints, a combination of light and heat on the one side than smolder and noxious smoke on the other. That's who we are, and it especially comes out in times of affliction.

And so we need to learn the lesson from Job that when pressed hard, we're going to have times of disrespect. We ought not to have it. He repented from it at the end, but we're going to say things we ought not to say. We're going to have demeanors and attitudes we ought not to have. And so that's where the Holy Spirit and his power and his love and his gentleness brings us back to the fear of the Lord and the dread of his majesty. And then back to the resurrecting power of Jesus. Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.

Close with me in prayer. Lord, we thank you for what we've learned from these basically two verses today. I pray that you would strengthen each one of us to a holy, healthy fear of the Lord. We are so glib when we talk about God and we don't imagine properly what would happen if you showed up in your glory, if you showed up in a glory cloud and spoke to us, if you shook the ground under our feet. But Lord, we know that whenever that happened with the holiest men and women, they always were on their faces. And so Father, I pray that the fear of the Lord would be the beginning of wisdom for us. And then we would see that because of Christ mighty resurrection victory, we'll study this more next week, we can say, though he slay me, yet will I hope in him. We're ready by your grace to suffer well and not charge you with wrongdoing and not murmuring, complain and argue, or be angry with you, but we're ready to send off a beautiful aroma of witness to the on watching, the onlooking world. In Jesus' name, amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a sermon on Job 11-14. He covers Job’s third lament, showing how the weariness of the trial and Job's pain has begun to wear him down and cause him to doubt.

This morning we're going to continue our study in the book of Job. We're looking at these three chapters, Job 11 through, actually four chapters, through 14. At the end of his life, a man that I considered to have lived the greatest Christian life in church history, the apostle Paul, said these words, very well known, “I have fought the good fight, I've finished the race, I've kept the faith.” And he sets in our hearts by these words, some powerful images. The Christian life is a holy war, a holy war that we must fight. It is a good fight. We must battle sin every day of our lives. Battling the world, the flesh, and the devil, it's a holy war. I've finished the race. It's a marathon race, not a sprint. It's not a short race. It's a marathon, a life long, hard run, which we're told that we have to lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily entangles our feet and run with endurance this marathon race of faith. That's what it is.

Now, the Holy Spirit would be for us, our drill instructor preparing us to fight well, and our commanding officer for the middle of the battle to enable us to be victorious in this daily holy war. That's what the Holy Spirit would be for us. The Holy Spirit would be for us, our coach who would train us how to run with endurance and then would stand along the side of the race course and urge us on and exhort us to run fervently till the end. That's what the Holy Spirit would be for us. How does he do this? Well, he does it by means of the word of God, which he inspired, he himself inspired centuries ago. He would take the Scriptures, and as I prayed a moment ago, he would illuminate them to us, cause them to glow and shine in truth.

There's a text I want to commend to you as we continue to study the book of Job, Romans 15:4. You can look at it now if you'd like, or just listen, Romans 15:4. There the apostle Paul wrote, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope.” It's a powerful verse, especially for the study of the book of Job. Everything that was written in the past, including the book of Job was written to give us instruction. We're supposed to be taught things. The mind of the Christian needs to be instructed in right doctrine.

And the result of this is to fuel endurance for that long marathon race or that holy war. And that we might, through the encouragement of the Scriptures, that we might have hope. What is hope? Hope is a feeling, a sense, a glowing sense in the heart that the future's bright based on the promises of God. That's what hope is. That's what God wants to give you as we study the book of Job.

Now, as we get that instruction, that teaching ministry of everything that was written in the past, we learn that there're just different things in God's word. It's not all of one sort. And we find in God's word, accounts of both truth and falsehood. People who spoke amazing truths, people who also spoke falsehoods recorded for us in Scripture. We have records of right actions and of wrong actions. We have records of right attitudes and wrong attitudes. We get the positive, we get the negative, we get all of that in Scripture. And we have the guidance of the Holy Spirit to help us sift through it all. And we get that, don't we, in the book of Job. And so we sort through this.

Thirdly, by way of introduction, I want you to look at the text we're looking at today, Job 12:11. This will kind of stick with us as we continue to study the book of Job. Job 12:11, “Does not the ear test words as the tongue tastes food?” So we are going to be food testers as we go through the book of Job. We're going to taste everything. Recently, I have gotten into—from time to time—watching competitive cooking shows. I know, I know. All right. Some of you don't watch these at all. I was led into it by some others. I won't talk about any of those details. But that's what we're doing tonight, we're watching a cooking show. And I've gotten interested. They're amazing. And at the end, the meal is presented and the judges, Gordon Ramsey or some other guy, I don't know all their names, tastes what was cooked. And they have an expert palate. The more you go on in the Christian life, the more refined your palate gets, the more you're able to taste everything that you're reading in Scripture and sample it, and to see truth, falsehood, to taste bitter, sweet, salty.

And to some degree, changing the metaphor a little, we're just going to end up calling balls and strikes on the things that we read, especially in the book of Job. We're going to read it and say, is it so, is it so? And if it passes the doctrinal test and so much of it does, even those things said by the friends are still true assertions, they're wrongly applied frequently, but they're true assertions, we find ourselves drawn into deep theology. And we're going to do that today. So all that's by way of introduction.

As we come to this, Job's third lament, we're going to see here how the weariness of this trial has begun to break him down. We're going to see flickers of unbelief in the things he says concerning the final vindication over death, the triumph over death. We're going to see flickering of doubt about that actually. We're going to see also how Job's friends are pridefully detached from his suffering because they're not going through it. They don't feel it because it's not them.

We're going to see briefly and talk much more about it next week, the terror of the majesty of God. And in all of these things, I believe God is desiring to prepare each of you, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, for trials you will face between now and the end of your lives. Our Christian hope is realistic hope. Abraham faced the fact that his body was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old and that Sarah's womb was also dead, but he did not waiver through unbelief facing those facts.  

So we're not up here preaching a prosperity gospel. I'm not telling you that if you have faith in Jesus, you're going to have nothing but prosperity and success in your lives. And if you're not experiencing prosperity and success in your life, something's wrong with your faith. I'm not telling you that. I'm telling you the opposite. You will, through many hardships, enter the kingdom of heaven. And secondly, it's actually very important how you are as you go through those trials. It actually matters whether you're filled with hope as you suffer or not. And the book of Job, 42 chapters of it with lots of details, was given to help you in that respect. But it's not easy because some of what they say is true, some isn't, and we have to sift through it.

Now, this section begins with Job rebuking his friends. And so just walk through what Zophar says that sets Job off. In Job 11, Job's third friend, Zophar, gives his first speech. He takes his gloves off, if he ever had them on, and comes hard at Job and rebukes Job, who by this time has twice defended his innocence. Zophar is probably the youngest and definitely the most arrogant and the most insensitive of the three friends.

Look at 11:2-6, Zophar says, "Are all these words to go unanswered? Is this talker to be vindicated? Will your idle talk reduce men to silence? Will no one rebuke you when you mock? You say to God, ‘My beliefs are flawless and I'm pure in your sight.’ Oh, how I wish that God would speak and that he would open his lips against you and disclose to you the secrets of wisdom for true wisdom has two sides. Know this: God has even forgotten some of your sin."

Wow. That's Zophar. Zophar confidently appeals to the infinite majesty of God, verses 7-9. "Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? They are higher than the heavens—what can you do? They are deeper than the depths of the grave—what can you know? Their measure is longer than the earth and wider than the sea." Actually, all of that's true. I would commend those verses to you for your meditation. They're true even though Zophar said them.

Then Zophar gives the kind of advice, same kind of advice as the other two friends. Job, just repent and God will restore you to your prosperity, verses 13-18, “Yet if you devote your heart to him and stretch out your hands to him, if you put away the sin that's in your hand and allow no evil to dwell in your tent, then you will lift up your face without shame; you will stand firm without fear. You will surely forget your trouble, recalling it only as waters gone by. Life will be brighter than noonday, and darkness will be like morning. You'll be secure, because there is hope; you'll look about you and take your rest and safety." So stop sinning, Job, because it's clear that you are, put away all that secret sin, throw yourself on the mercy of God and look what will happen. God will restore you. So much for Zophar.

Now it's time for Job to deal with not only Zophar, but all three of them. It's accumulating in him, building up and he lets off some steam here. He rebukes his friends part one chapter 12:1-12. This is his first rebuke. Starts with sarcasm. “Then Job replied: "Doubtless you are the people and wisdom will die with you." That's quite a statement. Actually, it's one of my favorite statements in the book of Job. "When you three die, there won't be any wisdom left on earth." Then pride verse three, "But I have a mind as well as you; I'm not inferior to you. Who does not know all these things?” Everything you know, I know already. Then he laments his public shame. Verse four, "I've become a laughingstock to my friends. Though I called upon God and he answered—a mere laughingstock, though righteous and blameless!” The horizontal aspects of suffering are painful. Feels shameful to him to go through this.

And then he makes a very potent accusation of them, and it's something we should take to heart, verses 5-6, "Men at ease have contempt for misfortune." I'm going to say that again, “Men at ease have contempt for misfortune.” If you're not going through it, it's hard for you to feel it. We're not actually very compassionate. And when it's not us, we don't really feel it much. Part of Christian sanctification is for that to be transformed, where you go through it as though it were happening to you.

But that's what he says. He accuses. He said, look at you. You're at ease. And therefore you have contempt for people that are suffering, “As the fate of those whose feet are slipping. The tents of marauders are undisturbed, and those who provoke God are secure—those who carry their god in their hands.” So the wicked are doing well. They're not going through these things, and you're at ease. One saying that struck me years ago, and I think about it often, it's easy to be righteous in someone else's life. It really is. I know exactly what you should do, that kind of thing. But you're not going through it, you don't know what it's like.

In verses 7-10 interestingly, Job says even the animals know what you know. Look at verse 7-10, he says, "But ask the animals, and they'll teach you, the birds of the air, they'll tell you; speak to the earth and it will teach you, let the fish to the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is a life of every creature and the breath of all mankind." So this is natural theology. It's going to shine at the end of the book, God himself is going to do it. Nature shows that there's a mighty, powerful, creator God who sustains everything. Even the animals, the fish, they all know this. Now they don't know it, that's the difference between animals and humans. We are creating the image of God and we can know and study the works of God as such. They can't. But they do display the wisdom of God and the power of God. That's what he's saying.

And then as I mentioned, in verse 11 and then verse 12, I'm testing your words. I'm testing what you're saying, “Does not the ear test words as the tongue tastes food?" You need to do that with all 66 books of the Bible, every day that you have a quiet time, every conversation you have, test it. See if it's true. Like the Bereans, you're going to take the things I preach and bring them home and line them up with Scripture. You should do this. Be discerning. And Job says, this is what I'm doing with you, I'm evaluating. It's interesting, I think there may be no book in the Bible that more needs this than the book of Job. You have got to test everything you read even if Job's saying it, because Job kind of comes in and out of strong faith. He does well sometimes, other times not. So you have got to test and evaluate.

“Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not long life bringing understanding?” The very same thing the friends have said, the longer you live, the more wisdom you're going to gain, you're going to gain experience and all of that. So to his friends' summary, your so-called wisdom is obvious. I already knew it before you said anything. And it's just so unfair that I'm being publicly shamed and you people have no compassion whatsoever. It's very easy for you to judge a suffering man because you're not suffering. That's what he's saying in this section. 

Next he turns, Job turns with dread to the power of God, the awesome power and knowledge of God. He says in verse 13, God owns wisdom and power, “To God belong wisdom and power; counsel and understanding are his.” He speaks of God's destructive power. It's awesome and irresistible. Verses 14 and 15, “What he tears down cannot be rebuilt; the man he imprisons cannot be released. If he holds back the waters, there's drought; if he lets him loose, they devastate the land.” If he doesn't get the water just right, we die. God actively rules over all of humanity and he destroys them all in the end. All of them.

Verses 16-25, earthly victory comes from God, verse 16, “To him belong strength and victory; both deceiver and deceived are his.” In other words, every victory, however you want to define it, on earth, it's God that gives it. And no one escapes God. Verses 17-21, “He leads counselors away stripped and makes fools of judges. He takes off the shackles put on by kings and ties the loin cloth on their waist. He leads priests away stripped, overthrows men long established. He silences the lips of trusted advisors takes away the discernment of the elders. He pours contempt on nobles and disarms the mighty.” So you go through those verses, and you could just circle all of the offices of significant people, kings and counselors and the mighty and the nobles and all that, and God can do anything he wants with any of them anytime. Any of their decrees, he can overturn it or uphold it. He just rules over everyone. Verses 17-21.

Not only that, God exposes men's secrets. Verse 22, “He reveals the deep things of darkness and brings deep shadows into the light.” Will be no secrets whatsoever in heaven. All eternity, everything is uncovered and laid bare. Jesus makes that very plain, no secrets.

God's sovereignty then over the rise and fall of mighty empires and nations. These are great verses. Look at Job 12:23-25, “He makes nations great, and destroys them.” Just ponder to that. If you look back, if you know anything about the rise and fall of the world, one human empire after the other has risen up, reached an apex and then dropped off and gone down into obscurity or weakness, comparative weakness compared to its heyday. I could name nations in Europe that all had their time in the sun and then dropped off. And now they're weak comparatively, one after the other. That's what he does, “He makes nations great, and destroys them; he enlarges nations, and then disperses them. He deprives the leaders of the earth of their reason; he sends them wandering through a trackless waste. They grope in darkness with no light; he makes them stagger like drunkards.”

Now these verses very much remind me of one of the greatest chapters, for me anyway, in the whole Bible, Daniel chapter four. Do you remember Nebuchadnezzar, the tyrant? And he's arrogant and filled with pride at his empire. And God gives him a shot across the bow, a warning, through a dream, of a big, huge, leafy branchy tree that has all these birds perching and all the animals under it. And the tree gets cut down, toppled, stripped. And all of these things are prediction of something that's about to happen in Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel warns him specifically about them. If you do not repent, show kindness to the oppressed and if you do not primarily acknowledge that God rules sovereignly over every nation of earth, including the Babylonian empire, you'll lose everything. Well, he doesn't repent. He's arrogant, he's prideful. And God strikes his brain, takes away his reason, like the text says here in Job, so that he's insane, thinks he's a cow, is out being drenched with the dew of heaven and eats grass like a cow for seven years. Like that. That's what God can do to someone's mind. And he didn't kill him, he just did that to him.

And the lesson, Daniel 4:17, the lesson is, “So the living may know that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes and sets over them the lowliest of men.” And Nebuchadnezzar learned that lesson in Daniel 4:34-35, "At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever. His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “What have you done?”…Now, I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride, he is able to humble." That's Daniel 4.

Well, that's what Job is saying here in Job 12:23-25, “He makes nations great, and destroys them; he enlarges nations, and disperses them. He deprives the leaders of the earth of their reason: he sends them wandering through a trackless waste. They grope in darkness with no light; he makes them stagger light drunkards.” So God owns all wisdom and sovereignly rolls over the peoples of the earth. He raises empires as high as he chooses, and then crushes them back down into the dust of the earth. God's power over all individuals, no matter how great or how small, is absolute and terrifying. Imagine, then, what it's like to have such a mighty God as your adversary. That's what Job is saying here. This is who I'm against. This is who is hunting me down for my sins and prosecuting me.

Then, at the beginning of chapter 13, Job rebukes his friends again, circles back for a second time on them. I actually think they deserve it. Job 13:1-2, “My eyes have seen all this, my ears have heard and understood it. What you know, I also know; I'm not inferior to you.” And besides, verse three, I don't even want to talk to you anyway, who I really want to talk to is God, not you. Verse three, “I desire to speak to the Almighty and argue my case with God.” And then he resorts to insults. Verse four, “You, however, smear me with lies; you are worthless physicians, all of you.” And I think that's so true. Would you go to Job's friends if you were down or discouraged or depressed and needed some input? Not at all. You wouldn't feel better. They are worthless physicians. So because you're worthless physicians, the wisest thing you could do would be to shut your mouths.

Verse five, “If only you would be altogether silent! For you, that would be wisdom.” Listen, there are some people that that's the beginning of wisdom. Stop talking. There's an account where Peter, James, and John are on the Mount of Transfiguration and they see Jesus radiant and glorious. And Peter says, “Lord, it's good to be here. Let's put up three shelters, da, da, da.” And then the text says, he did not know what to say. They were so frightened. It's like, look, the best thing you could do would be to shut your mouth. Just be quiet.

And so it is Job is saying concerning Zophar and really, the friends, if you would be silent, that would be wisdom for you. Big problem is you're lying about God, verses 6-8, “Hear now my argument; listen to the plea of my lips. Will you speak wickedly on God's behalf? Will you speak deceitfully for him? Will you show him partiality? Will you argue the case for God?” At the end of the book, this is the very thing that God is going to criticize the friends for. They have not spoken about me, God says, rightly. And so Job is actually onto them in this regard.

And then he gives a warning, which I will develop, God willing, more fully next week, not today. You should be just as afraid of God as I am. But you're not. He says in verse nine, “Would it turn out well if he examined you?” Would it turn out well if he examined you? Feel the weight of that. How would it turn out if God searched you, “Could you deceive him as you might deceive men?” Would you be able to fool God, verse 10 or verse nine. And then verse 10, “He would surely rebuke you if you secretly showed partiality.” And then verse 11 would say, next week, we're going to, God willing, swim in it for a while, we're going to take our time on verse 11, “Would not his splendor terrify you? Would not the dread of him fall on you?” I'm not going to say anymore. Just, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. We're going to walk in it next week.

Would not your defensive words be scattered like ashes and crumble like clay? Verse 12, “Your maxims are proverbs of ashes; your defenses are defenses of clay.” So Job's friends are vastly underestimating the infinite majesty of God and they should be approaching Job more humbly. They should be aware that they themselves are under the same sentence. They're under the same scrutiny. God's eyes are pure. He can't even look on evil. We are all under this, Job is saying, not just me. And they should fear God and they should repent just as much as Job has cause to do that.

Now in the next phase, Job turns away from the friends and makes his case directly toward God. So from 13:13 up to 14:22. Now, Job 13:15 says, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.” It's a powerfully important verse and we're going to give full attention to it next week. So basically verse 11, verse 15, both parts of verse 15 will occupy our whole time next week, God willing. I believe that that verse, rightly translated, though he slay me yet will I hope in him or trust in him, may well be the point of the entire book of Job, all 42 chapters. It's like that's it. That the Holy Spirit would move in you, dear Christian people, to the point where you from your heart could say that to God, "No matter what God does to me in this world, I will hope in him and trust in him." I think that's the point of the book. “Yet,” verse 15B, “I will surely argue my ways to God's face.” So like I said, next week we're going to zero in on both of that.

Often we find in the book of Job, Job at his best and at his worst side by side. So we'll talk about that next week, God willing. He says in verse 16, my boldness and willingness to argue my ways to God's face proves my innocence. Verse 16, “Indeed, this will turn out for my deliverance, for no godless man would dare come before him.” Is that true? I don't know. I think there's some people who just don't know God and are very cocky and confident in reference to God. But Job, knowing what he does know about God says, I know his holiness and his power and yet I'm saying, I'm confidently willing to argue my ways to him. That should prove my innocence.

And then horizontally, other humans, the lack of accusers and witnesses prove my innocence. And this is true. Look at verse 17-19, “Listen carefully to my words; let your ears take in what I say. Now that I've prepared my case, I know I'll be vindicated.” Verse 19, “Can anyone bring charges against me? If so, I'll be silent and die.” If you can bring some witnesses about all my evil doings and wicked acts, bring them and I'll just shut my mouth and die. But you can't.

Then he turns up to God and says, God, show me my sin or else leave me alone. Look at verse 20 and 21, “Only grant me these two things, O God, and then I will not hide from you” withdraw your hand far from me, and stop frightening me with your terrors.” Give me a hearing, God, let me make my defense. Verse 22, “Summon me and I will answer.” Let me speak and you reply. I want that conversation, God.

And then he asked him, please show me my sin. What did I do? Verse 23, “How many wrongs and sins have I committed? Show me my offense and my sin.” And God, how did it happen that I became your enemy? I thought we were in a good relationship. How is it that now you have become my enemy. Verse 24, “Why do you hide your face and consider me your enemy?” I don't understand why you're pursuing me at all. I'm nothing. I'm like a windblown leaf, “Will you chase after dried chaff?” Verse 25, I'm nothing. Why do you even pay attention to me?

And then he says, you have shackled me to my sins, even the sins of my youth. So I can't seem to escape the things I did years and years and years ago, I don't do them anymore, stopped doing them, but seems like you're bringing them up again. As David said in a Psalm, “Remember not the sins of my youth.” Look at verse 26-28. “For you write down bitter things against me and make me inherit the sins of my youth. You fasten my feet in shackles; you keep close watch on all my paths by putting marks on the soles of my feet. So man wastes away like something rotten, like a garment eaten by moths.” So why, God? Why do you judge insignificant men?

Chapter 14:1-6, man born of trouble is of few days and full of trouble, “Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. He springs up like a flower withers away; like fleeting shadow, he does not endure.” Life's generally hard. Everywhere I look, Job saying, I see people suffering. People who are sad, people who are sick, people who are dying, people who are hurting. Man born of woman is born to trouble. So why do you spend your time judging us? Verse three, “Do you fix your eye on such a one? Will you bring him before you for judgment?” Now, how could impure beings like us ever be pure in your sight, “Who can bring what is pure from the impure? No one.” We are impure, how could we ever be pure? God, if that's what you're looking for, that we be pure as light, we aren't. None of us are. And then he says, man's days are determined by your sovereign plan. So why do you judge us? Interesting theology here. Verse five and six, “Man's days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months. You have set limits he cannot exceed. So look away from him and let him alone, till he has put in his time like a hired hand”.

This reminds me of the doctrine of predestination. The Greek word for predestination that Paul uses in Ephesians and Romans literally means to set the boundary lines like a horizon line ahead of time. And that's what Job says in terms of his lifespan. You have set the boundary for my lifespan, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be,” Psalm 139:16.

But Job seems to use this fact as an excuse for his sins, for why God should not judge us. Many do this. God is absolutely sovereign. He predestines our lives, he sets us up by his decrees ahead of time. Why then does he hold us accountable for what we do? Paul brings up this very same argument, Romans 9:19, when he's walking through the issue of predestination, when it comes to human salvation. Romans 9:19 he brings up this argument, “One of you will say to me, “Then why does God still find fault or blame us? For who resists his will?”” God's sovereign. If I'm just doing what I was sovereignly ordained to do, then I can't be held accountable for that. But Paul refutes that immediately in the next verse in Romans 9:20. He says, “But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what does formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” And it's the universal testimony of the Scriptures, not only that predestination is true, but that human beings are absolutely held accountable for the decisions they make. There is a judgment day. We will give an account for every careless word we have spoken. That is biblically true. So it's not an excuse that God predestines, that God is sovereign, that God knew ahead of time what we do. All different ways of saying different aspects of that doctrine do not excuse us from our sins and our guilt.

And then he says, and this is very powerful and we're going to really dig into this at another sermon, not next week, but Job seems from time to time, and especially here in Chapter 14, to have no hope of resurrection. It doesn't seem to inform his attitude at all from time to time. Look at verse seven and following. He says, “At least there is hope for a tree: If it's cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail. It's roots may grow old in the ground and stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and it will put forth shoots like a plant. But man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more. As water disappears from the sea or a riverbed becomes parched and dry, so man lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more, man will not awake or be roused from their sleep.”

So that's very, very hard right there. Job 14:7-12 seems to say, I don't see any evidence for human resurrection. You die and that's it. You lay them down in the grave and they don't get up again. You never see it. You don't see human beings rising up out of the grave. You just don't see it. To the end of the world, it just doesn't happen, Job says. Well, Job says, if that's true, at least the grave can conceal me from this misery and your anger, God. Verse 13, “If only you would hide me in the grave and conceal me till your anger has passed! If only you would set me a time and then remember me!”

Then he asks in verse 14, a very significant question, “If a man dies, will he live again?” Now, what do you think the apostle Paul would say? We're going to talk fully about this God willing in the future. But what do you think Paul would say to that question, “If a man dies, will he live again?” I know what he would say. I know what I would say. I know what all you Christian people would say, and it doesn't have to be Easter Sunday to give an answer. But Job doesn't seem to have an answer. He doesn't wait for an answer. His implied answer is no in 14:14.

But strangely, and he says, I'm still going to wait for my deliverance when at last, I hope, my sins will be atoned for, and I won't have to deal with them anymore. Look at 14-17, “All the days of my hard service I will wait for my renewal to come. You will call and I will answer you; you will long for the creature your hands have made. Surely then you will count my steps but not keep track of my sin. My offenses will be sealed up in a bag; you will cover over my sin.” Those are powerful verses and we're going to visit them at the end of the sermon.

His yearning is for a renewal even beyond the grave. He's yearning for God to restore him, have that love relationship with him for which he was created. He yearns to be set free of God's careful record keeping of his sins. Where at last, God's omniscience and careful, meticulous watching over him every moment will be for his pleasure and his joy and his good, not his destruction, as he feels. This is the heaven we want, isn't it friends? Where at last, our sins will cause us not the slightest bit of trouble at all.

But Job ends this portion with a return to the reality of his agony. It seems all roads on earth, for Job at this point, lead to hopelessness and the grave. Look at verses 18-22, “But as a mountain erodes and crumbles and as rock is moved from its place, as water wears away stones and torrents wash away the soil, so you destroy man's hope.” That's so depressing. I had hope, now it's gone. It's eroded. It's destroyed. My hope is gone. “You overpower him once for all, and he's gone; you change his countenance and send him away. If his sons are honored, he does not know it; if they're brought low, he doesn't see it. He feels but the pain of his own body and mourns only for himself.”

Well, I had an array of applications, I'm going to just zero in on one thing. Just one. Do you see how much Christ, the incarnate son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, the one who lived a sinless life, did all these amazing miracles, died on the cross and rose again from the dead, physically rose from the dead on the third day, answers all of Job's questions and meets all of Job's needs? Do you not see it? Look again at Job 14:12, “Man dies and does not rise again.” Job 14:12.

What would Jesus say to that? Would he not say this, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” That should answer Job 14:12, don't you think? Look at Job 14:14. If a man dies, will he live again? Well, I just answered that a moment ago. I could just quote John 11 again, but there's so many other verses I could choose. So why not John 5:28-29, “All who are in their graves will hear the voice of the Son of Man and come out.” Clear teaching of bodily resurrection. We're going to hear Jesus call us by name out of the grave, John chapter 5.

Look again at Job 14:16-17, “Surely then you'll count my steps, but not keep track of my sin. My offenses will be sealed in a bag and you will cover over my sins.” Didn't the apostle Paul say in Romans 4, “Blessed is the man whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered?” Our sins will be covered in the atoning work of Christ for all eternity, in terms of their condemning power, their power to make us feel guilty. Jesus looked at the paralyzed man who was lowered down by ropes through an opening in the roof, lowered down and laid there. He looked at him and because of his faith said, your sins are forgiven. What would that be worth to you to have the judge of all the earth, Jesus, the judge of all the earth, look at you and say, because of your faith, your sins are forgiven. He has that power. He has the power on earth and in heaven to forgive sins.

And so Job yearns for a day when his sins will be locked up in a bag and not looked at again and not cause him any trouble. That day is coming for all who trust in Christ. The question is, is that you, dear friend? Is that you? Have you trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins? It's not universalism. We Christians don't believe everybody goes to heaven, doesn't matter how you live, what you think, what you believe, we don't think that. We think you have to believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, to trust that his death is effectively your death, his resurrection is your resurrection. Putting all your trust in him and none of your good works because you can't survive this kind of a God scrutinizing you on judgment day. You will not survive. But if Jesus is your advocate, you will more than just survive. You'll spend eternity in a glorious resurrection body praising him for all eternity.

"You can't survive ... God scrutinizing you on judgment day. You will not survive. But if Jesus is your advocate, you will more than just survive. You'll spend eternity in a glorious resurrection body praising him for all eternity."

Close with me in prayer. Father, there's so much to learn in the book of Job. So many details, so many things we don't know, so many mysteries. But Lord, we do see as Job thrashes out, as he says things from time to time it seems that ought not to be said, and we can be compassionate because he lived long before Christ died and rose again. And he just saw it at a distance. We have the record. We have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, we have the Epistles, we have the book of Revelation. We have all of this truth. We thank you.

Father, I pray that you would help us to live filled with hope. Help each one of us to get ready to suffer well. To not imagine we're going to make it out of this world, healthy, prosperous till the day that we die. But that you actually will bring severe afflictions and that we will not question you or doubt you, but will be radiant with hope. And then lost people who are presently without hope and without God in the world will see our hope and ask us to give a reason for the hope that we have. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

In Jobs third lament, it becomes clear that the pain of his trials is getting to him and he is starting to doubt the goodness of God.

The post Job’s Third Lament: Pain Made Him Doubt (Job Sermon 8) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this episode, Andy covers John Wycliffe (c1324-1384), the morning star of the Reformation. Wycliffe courageously stood against the false teachings of the infallibility of the Pope and transubstantiation. Wycliffe taught dominion founded on grace, the priesthood of all believers, the authority of scripture, and the importance of scripture translations in the common vernacular.

The post Journeys from the Past – Episode 20: John Wycliffe (c. 1324-1384) appeared first on Two Journeys.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a sermon on Job 8-10. Job moves from anger to despair about God as his legal adversary who will be his prosecutor in court. He yearns for a mediator. Job did not know something that we now know, our mediator is Christ.

One of the sweetest and most encouraging texts in the Bible for me is Romans 8:31, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” But what about the opposite? What if God were against you? What then? How could we survive? And especially if the context were very much what Ben was sharing in his prayer, the context were judgment day. The final court of God's justice. If God were against us, then what? This morning, we're going to find Job as he's on his own pilgrimage of sorrow and suffering, moving from anger to a sense of despair specifically about God as his legal enemy, his legal adversary.

The image is of Almighty God, the creator and sustainer of the universe, being his prosecutor in court. What if that is the case? What then? How could any of us survive that? This morning, we're going to hear Job crying out, yearning for a mediator, as he says. “Someone who could lay a hand on us both.” Both God and man, someone who, Job thinks, would be able to advocate on his behalf and testify on the basis of Job's essential righteousness. That he is blameless. A mediator who would speak on his behalf to God saying, "This man is innocent." However, in the goodness of God, Job and all of the redeemed gets something infinitely better than that, infinitely better. A mediator who will actually tell Job the truth: your righteousness is not enough. And will give him a perfect righteousness of his own, imputed to him as a gift, and then will advocate on the basis of that imputed righteousness that Job would spend eternity in heaven. We're going to discover how a mortal man like Job with all of his normal sinfulness can actually stand perfect in the sight of a holy God. And for all of us, that's going to be our hope for judgment day. Let's walk through this.

We begin in Job chapter eight with the second of Job's friends, Bildad the Shuhite, and he begins in verse two, Job 8:2, by saying, "How long will you say such things? Your words are a blustering wind." Bildad is becoming angry at Job, and he's going to get angrier as the book unfolds. Now, Bildad the second friend, his basic doctrine is God never perverts justice. Look at Job 8:3. “Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert what is right?”

Bildad sees it right in the two senses. First, Job really is questioning God's justice, as we shall see. Secondly, God could never pervert justice ever. In this, Bildad is right. And Bildad's support comes from the wisdom of the ancients. Look at verses eight and nine. “Ask the former generations and find out what their fathers learned, for we were born only yesterday and know nothing, and our days on earth are but a shadow.” What can we find out from the ancestors? And that is that God is perfectly righteous. He never perverts justice. The wicked get what they deserve. The wicked get what they deserve. And he makes a very cold hearted application to Job's children. You remember that Job lost all 10 of his children in one day. Bildad says in verse four, "When your children sinned against God, he gave them over to the penalty of their sin." That's what happened. Now, that is staggering really. Here's where Bildad errs as he does with Job himself. Just because someone dies doesn't mean they're guilty of some noteworthy sin, or perhaps we would say the opposite is more accurate. If Job's children died because of their sin, it's likely that I deserve the exact same fate as them. There's no difference, because we are all of us sinners worthy of death. Wages of sin is death.

Do you remember the story in Luke 13 of some individuals coming to Jesus with some current event? There were some Galileans who were slaughtered by Pilate soldiers even while they're offering sacrifices to God. You remember that? They were coming with the same theology that Job's friends have. They're getting what they deserve for their sin. Do you remember what Jesus said? Luke 13:2-3, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered that way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” So that's the fact. All of us deserve to die for our sins. And unless we repent, we will all likewise perish, Jesus is saying.

Now, there's a bitter insensitivity to Bildad here, and there's also an arrogance, a spiritual arrogance. First, the bitter insensitivity. He's coldly insensitive to a grieving father saying those kinds of things. Your children sinned. God killed them. But there's also spiritual arrogance because he assumes that Job's children, like Job himself, are far worse sinners than he, Bildad, is. The reason he's still in good health, the reason he's still enjoying prosperity is he's not a sinner like them.

Now, Bildad's counsel to Job is this, trust God and plead with him. Look at verse five, “Look to God and plead with the Almighty.” And he makes him a conditional promise, Bildad does, “God will restore you if you are truly pure.” Verses six and seven. “If you are pure and upright, even now he will rouse himself on your behalf and restore you to your rightful place. Your beginnings will seem humble, so prosperous will your future be.” But Bildad also makes a conditional warning: “if you actually are wicked, you will perish quickly.” He speaks of the wicked like a papyrus reed that grows quickly eight to 10 feet up out of the marsh. But look how easily it is toppled. He mentions the hope of the wicked being so flimsy like a spider's web. That if one leans against it, it easily gives away.

Then in verse 13, “Such as the destiny of all who forget God; so perishes the hope of the godless.” This is the justice of God. He crushes the wicked and blesses the righteous. Sound familiar? That's what these friends have been saying. That's their consistent pattern. Now Job has to answer this in chapter nine and on into 10. He begins by conceding that Bildad's basic theology of God's justice, the law of retribution, blessings for the righteous, curses for the wicked, is true. Look at verse two of chapter nine. "Indeed," he says, "I know that this is true." But there is a basic problem, Bildad, with your theology. Who is righteous before God? What's the point? If it's a null set, if it's an empty set, there are no righteous people, then what good is that theology?

Look at verse two again, “How can a person be justified before God?” Job could ask effectively, if God finds fault with heart sins and small sins, which I don't deny, Job doesn't deny that he commits these, but if God finds fault with the smallest sin, then how can anyone survive? Including you, Bildad. What's the point of your theology?

Now, for the rest of chapters nine and 10, we're going to trace out the dimensions of Job's complaint against God. His real problem is not with Bildad. He fades at this point. The real issue has to do with his view of God, Job's view of God. Job's desire here in this chapter is to take God to court. He wants to take God to court and he wants to win his case. Look at verse two and three. He says, "How can a man be declared innocent by God?" One translation puts it this way, "If one plan to enter into litigation with him, he could not answer him, not even one time out of a thousand!" If you wanted to have a legal dispute with God, you want to take God to court, and the two of you faced each other in a court of law, that's Job's desire, he wants to take God to court and win, he would not be able to answer God even one time out of a thousand.

Now, Job's goal here is to stand vindicated before God and man. When in verse three he asked, "How can a man be just with God?" The Hebrew means to be declared righteous. It's justification. It's to be seen legally exonerated or legally vindicated from whatever you're accused of. The court trial has come. The verdict's come down and you walk out a free man or free woman. He wants to win. He wants to win his court trial with God and walk out of the courtroom with his arms raised triumphant, completely exonerated. But he has a problem with that. Who is his legal adversary? It's Almighty God. He says, if I were to stand before him in a courtroom, he is my judge, as well as my prosecuting attorney.

If there were a thousand accusations God meant, I couldn't speak up even one time out of a thousand. What could I say? I would be rendered silent. There'd be nothing I could say. Well, ironically, that's exactly what does happen at the end of the book. In Job 40:4-5 he says, "I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer—twice, but I will say no more." That's where we're heading. That's where all of us are heading. If you're healthy, that's where you're heading. You're just going to put your hand over your mouth before God and not charge him with anything.

But he's not there yet. It is vital for us as sinners to realize this. If God began recounting all the deeds and all the intentions of our hearts, recorded from the beginning of our days on earth, as he is fully capable of doing, the court seated, the books are open, Revelation 20, and we're judged according to what we have done as recorded in the book. What answer could we give? But Job goes far beyond that. He speaks of God's astonishing majesty as being his greatest terror. Look at who is my adversary, my prosecutor in court. It is Almighty God. It is the creator and ruler of the entire universe. What chance do I have? Look at verse four, “His wisdom is profound, his power is vast.” You're facing omniscience and omnipotence in a court of law.

But Job here portrays God and his destructive power. Not as God the creator, but as God the destroyer. Look at verses four through seven, “Who has resisted him and come out unscathed? He moves mountains without there knowing it he overturns them in his anger. He shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble. He speaks to the sun and it does not shine; he seals off the light of the stars.”

I can't help but read these words and not think about the end of the world as depicted in the Book of Revelation. If you go to Revelation six, don't turn there, but just listen. Revelation 6:12-17. You remember how Jesus has the scroll with the seven seals, and he opens these seals one after the other and terrifying things happen on the earth. And he gets to the sixth seal, this is Revelation 6:12-17, “I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake, and the sun turned black like sack cloth made of goat hair, and the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to the earth, as late figs dropped from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come. And who shall be able to stand?"”

How could a mortal man stand before that kind of power and survive? Job says, this is the same God who created the constellations. He created them and sustains them, the distant stars. Job 9:8-10, he says, "He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea. He is the Maker of the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the south. He performs wonders that cannot be fathomed, miracles that cannot be counted." We're looking at God's omnipotence on display and creation. A single one of God's wonders could occupy our minds for the rest of the year, but he does more than a single one. He does more of these than we can imagine every day.

And he's invisible. A hidden enemy is 10 times more terrifying than one you can see. We never know when he's going to strike, Job says. Look at verse 11, “When he passes me, I cannot see him; when he goes by, I cannot perceive him.” This invisible, omnipotent, powerful, as he sees it, enemy is accountable to no one. He doesn't have to give an answer for anything he does. Look at verse 12, “If he snatches away, who can stop him? Who can say to him, "What are you doing?"” God is infinitely above accountability to us. Doesn't have to answer any of us about what he's doing. Verse 13, he talks about conquering Rahab, the primordial enemy. It's an image that Hebrew poets use a lot, kind of like a dragon that God slew to bring order to the chaotic universe. If God can handle that kind of a mighty enemy with ease, what chance do I have, Job says. Verse 14. How then can I dispute with him? How can I find words to argue with him?

Back to the original problem. I want to take God to court and argue with him, but I will lose. Now, in all of this, behind all of this, you must know Job's basic conviction is, I am innocent. I'm blameless. He says it again and again. 9:15, “Though I were innocent, I could not answer him; I could only plead with my Judge for mercy.” Verse 20, “Even if I were innocent, my mouth would condemn me; if I were blameless, it would pronounce me guilty.” And then just straight out in verse 21, “I am blameless.” “I am blameless.” And that's exactly why he wants to dispute with God. He feels all of this wave upon wave of destruction that's come into his life is unfair. It's unjust. He feels these judgements from God have overwhelmed him, portray him as overwhelmingly wicked and evil and he knows it's just not so.

So, Job feels checkmated by God. And his unspoken accusation, although he's getting closer and closer to saying it and he will say it later in the book, God is unjust. Behind all these words is a growing sense that Job really feels that God is unjust and irrational in the way he runs the universe. To some degree then, to some degree, Bildad is right. Job is subtly claiming that God is unjust in what he's done to Job. Job will openly assert it later in the book. He's only hinting at it here. Basically he's saying, it's an old expression, might makes right when it comes to God. It's just because he's omnipotent and he can just run everything.

No one can challenge him. Might makes right. Look at verses 14-19, “How then could I dispute with him? How can I find words to argue with him? Though I were innocent, I could not answer him; I could only plead with my Judge for mercy. Even if I summoned him and he responded, I do not believe he would give me a hearing. He would crush me with a storm and multiply my wounds for no reason. He would not let me regain my breath but would overwhelm me with misery. If it's a matter of strength, he is mighty! And if it's a matter of justice, who will summon him?” In other words, if I served God a subpoena and he didn't want to come, what could I do? And if I did that, it seems like all that would happen is more of the same that's already happened to me. I'd just get crushed more. He would multiply my wounds even more for no reason, for no reason. That's the charge of God's injustice.

And then he says that God actually is unjust in how he treats innocent people on earth. 9:22-24, “It's all the same. That's why I say he destroys both the blameless and the wicked. When a scourge brings sudden death, he mocks the despair of the innocent.” Do you hear that? He just makes fun of the innocent people who are grieving and crushed. He mocks them. “When a land falls into the hands of the wicked, he blindfolds its judges. If it's not he, then who is it?” Wow! You'll see as we keep moving through the book how right it is that Job repents at the end of the book. I think this is part of the reason why the Holy Spirit gave us 42 chapters of Job. Do you not sense that some of these same attitudes are in your own heart and in mine too? It actually would take far less in our lives than it ever took in Job's life to have them bubble up out of our mouths, charging God with this kind of injustice.

In Job 10, he expands his accusation as if God is actually cruel. He actually enjoys the torment he's brought on him. Look at 10:3, “Does it please you to oppress me?” Do you enjoy this? “Are you pleased to spurn the work of your hands while you smile on the schemes of the wicked?” God knows I'm not guilty. He also knows that no one can deliver me from his hand. Look at 10:6-7, “You must search out my faults, probe after my sin—though you know I'm not guilty, and that no one can rescue me from your hand.” God continues to send wave upon wave of sorrow upon me. He's relentless against me. Look at verses 15-17, “If I'm guilty—woe to me! Even if I am innocent, I cannot lift my head, for I'm full of shame, drowned in my affliction. If I hold my head high, you stalk me like a lion and again display your awesome power against me. You bring new witnesses against me and increase your anger toward me; your forces come against me wave upon wave.” That's the problem.

Now, Job has in his mind a possible solution at the end of chapter nine. Look at verses 33-35, “If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay a hand upon us both, someone to remove God's rod from me so that his terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak up without fear of him.” Now, most of the translations just have him saying there is not such a one. But in the context, I think it's reasonable that you sense that he's yearning for such a one. That's what he wants. If only there were someone like this, someone to arbitrate, someone to lay a hand on us both. God doesn't have to listen to me. God doesn't have to answer me. I have no standing. I have no place to compel his attention. But if there were someone who could stand between us like a mediator, an arbitrator who could compel God to listen on my behalf. The effect in Job's mind would be to remove God's rod of terror from him. He would solve his problems. He would vindicate Job. He would set him free forever, and then he would have peace with God at last.

But this deep desire is unfulfilled. Verse 35, “Then I would speak up without fear of him, but as it now stands with me, I cannot.” Well, but wait, the answer's coming. It hadn't come yet in redemptive history, but we know the answer, dear friend. Christian brothers and sisters, amen! We know the answer, don't we? We know that there is a mediator.

Job couldn't see him at that point. Job has deep despair. I hate my life. Job spends many words in these two chapters lamenting his very existence. Chapter 9:21 he says, "Although I am blameless, I have no concern for myself; I despise my own life." He notes that though the individual days seem long because of his misery, he has said this before, his life is as fleeting as a runner, like one of those little skiffs that goes so fast driven by the wind. And then he says, I can't put a happy face on all this. Look at 9:27-28. He said, "If I say ‘I'll forget my complaint, I will change my expression and smile.’" That's what you need to do. Just smile. Put on a happy face, “I still dread all my sufferings, for I know you will not hold me innocent.” So what's the use of even trying? What's the use of trying to clean myself up? What's the use of me trying to wash my hands and rehabilitate my image with onlooking people? Chapter 9:29-31, “Even if I am found guilty, why should I struggle in vain? Even if I wash myself with soap in my hands with washing soda, you would plunge me into a slime pit so that even my clothes would detest me.”

Now, amazingly, Job celebrates that it was this same God who gave him life to begin with. Look at 10:8-12, beautiful verses. This is Job speaking to God about his creation, his original formation, “Your hands shaped me and made me. Will you now turn and destroy me? Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese, clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews? You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence, you watched over my spirit.” These are some of the most beautiful verses in the entire Bible on God's direct, skillful, knitting together of every human being in his or her mother's womb.  This is exactly why I am pro-life in this age of abortion. Verses like this tell me God is directly involved in the creation of every single human being that has ever lived or ever will live. There are no accidental human beings when it comes to the activity of God in the womb. But Job's point here is you did all that and now you're destroying me. The same God who formed me in the womb, that knit me together in my mother's womb, and then protected me, lavished blessings on me, in your kind providence watched over my spirit, now you're watching over me to detect my sin and crush me. So why did you ever make me to begin with?

Basically at this point, Job just wants God to leave him alone. Let him die. Look at 10:18-22, “Why then did you bring me out of the womb? I wish I had died before any eye saw me. If only I had never come into being, or had been carried straight from the womb to the grave! Are not my few days almost over? Turn away from me so I can have a moment's joy before I go to the place of no return, to the land of gloom and deep shadow, to the land of deepest night of deep shadow and disorder where even the light is like darkness.” By the way, that is Job's view of the grave. In a later sermon, God willing, I'm going to talk about his defective view of the grave and how much better we can do now that Christ has been raised from the dead. That's a later sermon.

All right, from this, I want to take four great lessons. Lesson number one, it is sinful to dispute with God. Job wants to dispute with God, to take him to court, to challenge him, to argue against him, to fight him on behalf of his own blamelessness. This is such an extremely common thing in our world, especially during times of great suffering that people don't seem to really know how wrong it is. In fact, I would argue, as I have done, that this is one of the central purposes of this whole book of Job, is to get us to never do that again. To teach us to put a hand over our mouths and to trust God. I think it's beneficial for us to get ready for our own battles ahead of time. Maybe even right now, some of you may be going through great sorrow and suffering right now, this could be your time of testing. But for the rest of you, it's coming. It is coming. We live in a world of sorrow and sickness and loss and death. This book is here, and, in the providence of God, these sermons are here to get you ready for what you do not want.

But God wills to bring his people through sorrow and suffering and it is wrong to dispute with God. God's ways will not always make sense to us during the time. Sometimes it will seem that God is unjust or that his providential ruling of daily life is irrational and random, but it's not. We need to fix in our minds for all time how God has proven his commitment to justice. He did it at the cross. He did it at the cross of his own beloved son, Jesus Christ. It says in Romans 3:25-16, “God presented him as a propitiation,” or a sacrifice of atonement, “through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” So friends, a far bigger problem of God's justice in God's mind, far bigger than how he would appear unjust if he brings adverse circumstances to his people on earth, far bigger problem than that, is how can he take sinners, like you and me, and bring us into a heaven of light where he is perfectly pure? How can he do that and still be just?

That's a bigger problem. How can he be both just and the justifier? And he solved that at the cross. At the cross, he poured out, and we sang it earlier. He crushed his own son, showing he would rather do that, he'd rather crush his Son, his only Son whom he loved, than let a sinner like you or me into heaven without our sins atoned for, addressed. That's his commitment to justice. So, when we suffer some earthly loss, some loss of material wealth, or precious loved one, or physical health, we should banish forever from our minds any anger or determination to dispute with God over his justice. He's proven his justice at the cross.

And actually we really are not blameless and pure. Jesus stopped the rich young ruler who said, good teacher, da, da, da. Wait, wait, wait, wait, why do you call me good? No one is good, but God alone. I don't really think we believe that. But all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We tend to compare ourselves to others. I'm better than this guy. I'm better than that guy. We tend to do that. Well, that's not how it's going to work. God is going to compare us to his perfect standard and we're all going to come short.

When we consider our sinfulness here on earth, we should not compare ourselves to other sinners, but God's perfect standard in the law. So, if this is true, on what basis would we dispute with God, or murmur against God, or complain, or accuse him? Yet it seems we are already at one time or another to accuse God of injustice. The best people do this. Jeremiah did it. You can look it up, Jeremiah 20:7. He said, "God, you deceived me and I was deceived." God says to Jeremiah, Jeremiah, if you speak worthy and not worthless words, you can be my servant. It's worthless to say that God deceived him, but that was Jeremiah saying that to him.

We know why. He was going through suffering. We should set it in our minds ahead of time, it's actually monstrous to dispute with God and question his justice. When people get angry at God, they treat him like he's their valet, their foot servant. They yell at him. They demand an answer from him, forgetting our own sinfulness. Fact of the matter is, even if we closely examine ourselves honestly, we miss 99% of our sins. David said it in Psalm 19:12, "Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults." Forgive my hidden faults. I can't even discern my own errors. In the end, Job quieted himself and humbled himself and repented of his disputing with God and questioning God. Let's do that now ahead of time.

Second lesson, Christ is our perfect mediator. Christ is our perfect mediator. Job yearned for a mediator, “If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both, someone to remove God's rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more.” Job ended that yearning with despair, “as it is, I cannot.” But now there is a mediator. 1 Timothy 2:5-6 it says, "For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for us all." In the incarnation, Jesus, the perfect God man, fully God, fully man, is able to stand between God and man. He's able to represent God on behalf of us like saying, no one is good, but God alone, saying those kinds of things and speaking God's perfect law and perfect words to us. He represented God to us perfectly, but then he represents us to God. He is the perfect bridge builder. He is, in the incarnation, able to stand God and man and build the bridge between us. He understands our weakness and our temptation. He experienced all of it perfectly. Hebrews 4:15, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are—yet was without sin.”

But as I said Jesus is an infinitely superior mediator than the one Job wanted. Remember what I said? What did Job want? Someone to look at my case, get to know me, get to know what's going on, and then be my advocate and say, God, he's blameless. What's going on? Oh yes, I see it now. Okay. And then the rod comes off. Job doesn't get that. What does he get instead? He gets Jesus looking at him with eyes of blazing fire and feet of burnished bronze saying, “Unless your righteousness surpasses what you have on your own, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." And then when a righteousness through his, Jesus', own perfect obedience to God's law every day of his life until his death and take that perfect righteousness and give it as a gift to Job and to all who repent and believe in him as a gift, and then turn and advocate the redeemed on behalf of that imputed righteousness that we have as a gift by faith.

That's better, friends. You know why that's better? Because when we get to heaven, we will boast in the Lord and in the Lord alone, not in ourselves. That's what we get, someone to remove God's rod from me so his terror would frighten me no more. Here's the thing, Jesus is the best defense attorney there has ever been or ever will be.

Now, I looked it up. I went online. How high do hourly rates get for the top level defense attorneys? You would not believe. Billable hours, a thousand dollars an hour. Wow! You couldn't afford that. Jesus doesn't charge anything except one thing. He looks you in the eye and says, you have to give up your plea of not guilty. You give that up, I'll be your defense attorney. But if you claim you don't need me, if you claim you're basically blameless, if you claim you're basically righteous, I will not defend you and you'll stand on your own on judgment day. He'll be your defense attorney and he has never lost a case and he never will. It helps that he's the judge as well. I mean, it helps. But he has never lost a case. And through perfect justice, he will remove God's rod of wrath from you. Romans 5:1 it says, "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Amen? The rod of wrath is removed. That's what propitiation is. It's gone. The bloodshed removes the wrath of God. And then Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Thirdly, therefore, God is not against us. God is for us. He is for us. Job's lament in chapters nine and 10, spins out from a consistent perspective: God is against me. God is my enemy. God is hunting me down to destroy me. But in Christ, in Christ, God is for us. Romans 8:31-32, “What shall we say in response to all this? If God is for us, who could be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will you not also along with him graciously give us all things?” What does that mean to have God for you? What will it mean on judgment day? It'll mean everything. It'll mean everything. You'll hear from him, welcome you who are blessed into the eternal kingdom prepared by my Father. Welcome you who are righteous through faith.

Fourthly, God's majesty is our delight, not our terror. There's a lot of natural theology in Job. we're not done with it, God himself will do it a lot. Just look at the wonders of creation. Look at the majesty and the power of displayed in the creation and sustaining of the universe. Job discussed in awe and wonder the power of God over creation, the God who can shake the pillars of the earth and stop the sun from rising and cause the stars to fall from the sky. Job stood in awe at the majesty of God and being so far beyond all accountability, the God who cannot be stopped from anything he wants to do, the God who is not accountable to us. He isn't, friends. It's true. He doesn't need to give us an explanation.

Job discussed the meticulous care of God and knitting his body together in his mother's womb, the wisdom and intelligence of God in making his body in that secret place. He noted all the providential ways that God lavished blessing on him by his kind providence. But he felt that God's majesty was a terror to him because God was against him. But if God is for us, then his majesty is a delight. I believe, as many of you know, in a dynamic heaven where we're going to go and study the infinite dimensions and details of God's majesty for all eternity, for all eternity.

I asked a friend this week. I said, "Suppose I told you I got you a gift this week. It was a storehouse with a million square feet for you, just for all your stuff." I'm sorry, what? A million square foot storage facility? We don't have that much stuff. I mean, we have stuff, but we don't have that much stuff. What would you do with a storage facility a million square feet? Or how about a billion? All right, so let's move that on into eternal. What are you going to do with eternal time? What are you going to do with a storehouse so big that it's infinite in its dimensions? You got to fill it with an infinite thing. And that is the glory of God. God will fill it every day in glory. He will fill it with a study of God's own attributes. What he did in the past, what he is doing in that heavenly present, and what he will unfold in that heavenly future, that's what we're going to spend eternity celebrating. God's majesty will be our delight, not our terror.

The question I have to ask as I finish is what about you? You've heard all this. Are you claiming your own basic innocence and thinking you're going to stand before such a holy God on judgment day? You cannot survive. You cannot survive. Or are you willing by faith have Jesus be your mediator, the one who could lay a hand both on God and on you and bring you together for all eternity? Who are you trusting in?

Let’s close in prayer. Lord, thank you for Job. We thank you for these chapters, Job 8-10. Thank you for the things we're learning. Father. I pray that you would just be working saving faith in the hearts of those that are hearing me today. Just work in us. Lord, those of us who have been saved for many, many years, who have been justified for many years, just continue to expand our sense of what Jesus did for us, what he drank for us on the cross. With infinite courage, he drank the cup of God's wrath that we might be freed from terror. Thank you, Lord Jesus. I pray that you would help us to walk on in gratitude. To realize that no matter what the disappointments we may be going through, or things that have happened in our lives that didn't go the way we wanted, nothing compares to the fact that Jesus drank our cup, the cup of God's wrath for us, that we might spend eternity free from blame and glorious. We thank you in Jesus' name, amen.