Job Chapter 27-28:ALL

Welcome to Cross the Bridge But right now open your Bible to the Old Testament Book of Job and follow along for today's teaching. In this series of special weekend edition programs, Pastor David has been teaching lessons from the life of Job. Job is one of the oldest books in the Bible. We are finding out that what needed to be learned back then still needs to be learned by us today as we continue studying chapters 27 and 28. Now here's Pastor David. Verse one.

Moreover, Job continued his discourse and said, My righteousness I hold fast and will not let it go. My heart shall not reproach me as long as I live. May my enemy be like the wicked and he who rises up against me like the unrighteous. For what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he may gain much if God takes away his life?

Verse nine. Will God hear his cry when trouble comes upon him? Will he delight himself in the Almighty?

Will he always call on God? I will teach you about the hand of God. What is with the Almighty I will not conceal. Surely all of you have seen it.

Why then do you behave with complete nonsense? This is the portion of a wicked man with God in the heritage of oppressors received from the Almighty. If the children are multiplied, it is for the sower, and his offspring shall not be satisfied with bread. Those who survive him shall be buried in death, and their widows shall not weep. So Job is talking about the judgment that's on the unbeliever, the unrighteous.

And then he goes into some of these prosperity things and issues. Verse 16. Though he heaps up silver like dust and piles up clothing like clay, he may pile it up, but the just will wear it, and the innocent will divide the silver. May I suggest the words of Jesus?

When you see these things start to happen, look up. Your redemption is close. Focus on Jesus. Amen? Praise God. Focus on Jesus. Praise God.

So let's go back. Verse 16. Though he heaps up silver like dust and piles up clothing like clay, he may pile it up, but the just will wear it, and the innocent will divide the silver. He builds his house like a moth. Verse 18.

Like a booth, which a watchman makes. The rich man will lie down, but not be gathered up. He opens his eyes, and he is no more. Terrors overtake him like a flood. A tempest steals him away in the night. The east wind carries him away, and he is gone. It sweeps him out of his place. It hurls against him and does not spare. He flees desperately from its power. Men shall clap their hands at him and shall hiss him out of his place. Surely there is a mine for silver and a place where gold is refined.

This is now in chapter 28, verse 2. Iron is taken from the earth, and copper is smelted from ore. Man puts an end to darkness and searches every recess for ore in the darkness and the shadow of death. He breaks open a shaft away from people. In places forgotten by feet, they hang far away from men.

They swing to and fro. As for the earth, from it comes bread, but underneath it is turned up as by fire. Its stones are the source of sapphires, and it contains gold dust. That path no bird knows, nor has the falcon's eye seen it.

The proud lions have not trodden it, nor has the fierce lion passed over it. He puts his hand on the flint. He overturns the mountains at the roots. He cuts out channels in the rocks, and his eyes see every precious thing.

He damns up the stream from trickling. What is hidden, he brings forth to life. Verse 12. But where can wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding? Man does not know its value, nor is it found in the land of the living.

The deep says, it is not in me, and the sea says, it is not with me. It cannot be purchased for gold, nor can silver be weighed for its price. It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir and precious onyx or sapphire. Neither gold nor crystal can equal it, nor can it be exchanged for jewelry of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral or quartz, for the price of wisdom is above rubies.

The topaz of Ethiopia cannot equal it, nor can it be valued in pure gold. Verse 20. From where then does wisdom come, and where is the place of understanding? It is hidden from the eyes of all living, and concealed from the birds of the air.

Destruction and death say, we have had a report about it with our ears. God understands its way, and he knows its place. For he looks to the ends of the earth, and sees under the whole heavens, to establish a weight for the wind, and apportion the waters by measure.

He tells the waves how far to go. Verse 26. When he made a law for the rain, and a path for the thunderbolt. What an awesome description of God. Then he saw wisdom, and declared it.

He prepared it, indeed he searched it out. And to man he said, behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom. And to depart from evil is understanding. It doesn't say, and to depart from wisdom is understanding. It doesn't say, and to depart from the truth is understanding. To depart from evil is understanding. To cling to the truth is good.

Boy, a lot of stuff in here. Now, two of the things the Bible brings out is to love unconditionally. God wants to teach us to do that. And God also wants to teach us to honor, and obey, and even be loyal to authority.

He talks about that a lot. Here's the first life lesson. To be fully blessed, love unconditionally, and honor authority. In order to be fully blessed, love unconditionally, and honor authority.

Romans 13 one. Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority, resists the ordinance of God. And those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil.

Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you want praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good. So again, you honor them, you get blessed. But if you do evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is God's minister and avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore, you must be subject not only because of wrath, but also for conscious sake. For because of this, you also pay taxes. For they are God's ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all that are due, taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.

That's interesting. Pay taxes where they're due, customs where customs, fear to whom fear. Who are we supposed to fear? Only God. A reverence.

You're more concerned with what he thinks than anybody else. And honor to whom honor. Who are we supposed to honor? Honor authority.

God, your parents, your spouse, your spiritual leaders, your employer, and your government leaders. And if you do that, what happens? You get blessed. If you fail in one area of those six, you fail hard in whatever God has for you. If you fail in the first one, your success will be meaningless.

If you fail in honoring your parents according to the Bible, your life could be shortened. If you fail in number three, well, you're going to divide your wealth in half. Because every time you get a divorce, you split your wealth. I've got an uncle who's giving away five beautiful houses.

He's been married six times and six times was a charm, I guess. Your spiritual leaders, if you're doing well spiritually, you're going to be doing well with your spiritual leaders. And if you're not doing well with your spiritual leaders, you're not doing well spiritually is what the picture of the Bible gives. So again, your success will be meaningless. If you aren't honoring in number five, you will limit your success. If you don't honor the government in number six, they'll come for everything you have. And IRS doesn't even ask, you know.

I mean, they tell you what they're doing. And here's the thing. If you so honor in all six of those areas, you'll be blessed.

You'll be blessed. Now, here's what's interesting. When I started looking at this issue of honor, I'm going to use a word that we don't use often around here, but you know what word kept popping up with it? There's certain word pairings in the Bible. Mercy and truth paired together a lot. Grace and peace paired together a whole lot over 25 times in the Bible. The pairing with honor is the word wealth. That was kind of surprised too. 14 times it says honor and wealth. I thought that was intriguing.

Now, I know we're sitting here. Some of you may be thinking, well, that has nothing to do with me because I'm not wealthy. You might want to think of how we compare to other people in the world because the fact that you have a roof for when it rains makes you wealthy in some areas of the world. The fact that you have an ability to control the temperature, that's wealth.

The fact that you have running water, that's wealth. 80% of the world's population lives on less than $10 a day. 80%. 2.6 billion people live without basic sanitation, running water toilet. That's close to half. Two-third lack access to clean water. I talked about 80% live on less than $10 a day.

Two-thirds live on less than $2 a day. Feeling a little wealthier now, aren't you? Here's a life lesson. There are words that are paired in the Bible like grace and peace, like mercy and truth, and honor is tied to riches in the Bible. Honor and riches, I said wealth, sorry, it was riches. Honor and riches appear 14 times together in scripture. If we do not honor God, parents, spouse, spiritual leaders, your employer and government leaders, it will hurt personally any wealth you may have.

That's an interesting thing. See, the Bible, it doesn't just talk about spiritual things. It gives you guidance in every area of life, in the area of relationships, in the area of finances, in the area of spiritual things.

And we start talking about this now. Understand God gives some people above and beyond what they need to survive much more. How does God decide who He blesses and who He doesn't? Wealth is not always a blessing. If there's an unbeliever who is trusting his wealth, to get more wealth is not a blessing, it's a judgment. To the believer who's obedient, more wealth is a blessing. What's the difference?

What the person does with it. Pastor David will be back in less than one minute as he continues teaching in the book of Job. A great way to start out each day is with a practical email devotional every morning from Pastor David.

Visit crossthebridge.com to start receiving yours for free. If you have a cell phone, you can also text the word ENCOURAGE to 94253. That's 94253 to receive a short encouraging text from us each day. And now, back to the teaching. Here's a life lesson and we have to realize this about Job. Job was blessed. Blessed, blessed, blessed. So here's a life lesson. God gives many godly people, not all, blessings and wealth.

Especially compared to other countries. He blessed Job way beyond what his needs were because Job gave and God could trust Job. Now, these chapters are talking about wealth, they're talking about precious stones and silver and all this stuff. So let's realize that, that God found that he could trust Job with these things. When you honor God with your first fruits, you're showing God that you can be trusted with more. Again, this isn't your first service here. You're thinking, well, these people are all about money.

This is, don't judge by just tonight. I mean, this is what these chapters are talking about. So we need to talk about. God blessed Job because he found he could trust him. And what happens is sometimes we look at what somebody else has instead of thinking, well, what did they go through? What did they do or not do to be in that position?

We get envious and we get mad and accusatory. The other thing that God trusted Job with, in addition to finances, was suffering. God trusted Job with that. He said in the beginning, he said, he will not curse me.

And he didn't. God knew Job. The devil didn't know Job.

Walked right into the trap. Next life lesson, God trusted Job with all of that sorrow, suffering and heartache saying, Job will never, will never curse God. Deuteronomy 8 18 says, And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he swore to your fathers as it is this day. And here's the life lesson from that. If you're tempted to be envious of others, ask what that person is doing or not doing to be in a position of blessing like that.

Say it again. If you're tempted to be envious of others, ask what that person is doing or not doing to be in a position of blessing like that. You know, maybe they've worked hard for 40 years and saved and invested.

Maybe they've worked the same job for 10 years and you can't seem to last longer than a year or something. There's probably things that you can learn if you look at that person's life rather than be envious. It's easy to get envious. But if you get envious, you don't get anything out of it except sin. And sometimes we're envious of somebody who's being judged. Never, never, never be envious of an unbeliever's wealth.

I don't care if it's Bill Gates. I don't know that he's an unbeliever, don't get me wrong, but I'm not envious of his wealth. He has to give an account to God for all that, not to me or you.

So I'm not envious of what he has. Now, the Bible says over and over that when we look after others, that God then is committed to looking after us. There's several verses that say this. Proverbs 19, 17 says, if you help the poor, you're lending to the Lord and he will repay you. Or in the complete Jewish Bible, he who is kind to the poor is lending to Adonai and he will repay him for his good deed. The life lesson here is when you look after the needs of others, God is committed to looking after you. When you look after the needs of others, God is committed to looking after you. He says when you give, he'll bless you.

Part of the issues that we're talking about tonight are trust. Do you trust the Lord? Now, if you tithe, you're revealing that you trust the Lord with your finances. If you don't tithe, you're revealing that you don't trust God with your finances. And I know some people say, well, I just got so much debt. Well, yeah, your debt is competing with the tithe.

That's why you need to be careful with debt. Next life lesson is this. Trust God with people. Trust God with your family. And trust God with your church family. You don't have to fix everything that's wrong with everybody in this church. That's not your job even. That's the Holy Spirit's job.

And if you take on that job, you'll be burned out within a short season. Trust that God, his Word, his Spirit, is moving in that person's life. And when God wants to deal with an issue, he'll speak to that person and that person will respond.

And if they don't respond, you'll see it. Now, nowhere in the Bible are we told to trust people. We're to trust God with people.

There's a big difference. I trust God with every one of you. Do I trust every one of you? Paul doesn't tell me to do that. If it did, I would.

But it didn't, so I won't. And again, you're not told to trust the pastor. But you trust God with the pastor.

Especially if a pastor has shown that he listens to God and has a track record of hearing from God. Now, D.L. Moody, and he's probably after Spurgeon, one of my favorites. When it comes to trust, he said something that is very strong, but I'll share it with you.

D.L. Moody said you cannot trust somebody that does not tithe because if they will steal from God who sees and knows everything, they will take from you when you're not looking. I told you it was strong. That's strong, isn't it?

That's what he said. And if you think about it, there's some wisdom in what he says. God himself has found out that some people can be trusted with increase and some people cannot be trusted with increase. And if you've gotten confused about your finances, honestly, the best thing that could happen to you is for you to go absolutely dead stinking broke.

So you can figure out it's not all about that. And then after that, you can rebuild your life with the proper priorities. But the worst thing that could happen to you, if you're confused about finances and you're not tithing and you're not giving, the worst thing that could happen is for you to have more, honestly.

Now, I've watched people. I don't have his permission to share a story, so I won't give his name, but I watched one brother who we talked about tithing and he got it, he stepped up, he tithed. When he stepped up to tithe, he was making $22,000, $23,000 a year. He came back three weeks later after he started tithing and said, I just got a new job for 60 grand a year. That's going to happen to every one of you.

No, it's not going to. That's not every person. That happened to him. Praise God for that story. But God says he will bless you when you step out and honor him.

Now, we talked about love. Go through these scriptures pretty quick. Proverbs 10, 12, hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins. Or in the New Living Translation, hatred stirs up quarrels, but love makes up for all offenses.

Proverbs 8, verse 35, for whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul. How do you wrong the Lord? Well, there's a few ways and we're talking about one and not honoring God.

And it says, all those who hate me love death. Then we go to 1 John. We have those passages about loving each other. And then we've got the lettuce scriptures. You know, the lettuce scripture. The ones that talk about lettuce, don't look at me with that tone of voice. It's in there.

Hang on. Hebrews 10, 21. It says, in having a high priest over the house of God, let us, talk about lettuce, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled with an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Lettuce, hope fast in confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And lettuce, consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsake in the assembling of ourselves together. Listen to this, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another so much more as you see the day approaching. The closer we get to what we believe is the return of Jesus, the more you need to be fellowshipping, the more you need to be in church. Why does it say that? Because it also says that with the end times, comes a great falling away.

You know what's interesting? Ten years ago, the largest churches in America were teaching the Bible, but they were biblically based churches. They were all about the Bible. They proclaimed salvation.

They gave all their calls. When I think about the ten largest churches in America now, there's some I'm kind of unsure about. It concerns me when a pastor gives his pulpit over to a Muslim cleric and says, this is my brother.

There's a thing going on called Chrislam right now. People are trying to merge Christianity and Islam. Kublai Khan, who was the son of Genghis Khan, asked the pope to send 100 missionaries to come train his leaders so that they could train everybody else. Four years later, the church sent two missionaries.

Within 100 years, the majority of Asia converted to Islam. There was a window and we missed it. This was back around 1000 AD or so when the Catholic Church was more biblical. There was a unique opportunity and they missed it. We have a unique opportunity now.

Unlike anything of the last 2000 years. Daniel chapter 12 speaks about the battle that is going on now even. Daniel chapter 12 verse 1. At that time, Michael shall stand up. Michael the Archangel. The great prince who stands watch over the sons of your people and there shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation.

Even to that time. And at that time, your people shall be delivered. Everyone who was found written in the book.

Sounds like a preacher or rapture. And many of those who sleep in the dust, they shall awake. Some to everlasting life. Some to shame and everlasting content.

Listen to this. It's getting darker. Years ago I was in Phoenix. Then I went up to Camp Verde Flagstaff area and it was amazing how I could see the stars. Those same stars were shining in Phoenix.

But I couldn't see them there. It was when it was totally dark that the stars shone the brightest. We're coming to a dark time on this planet. And it's the time that we're called to shine the brightest. You've been listening to Pastor David McGee on Cross the Bridge Weekend Edition.

Tune in again next Saturday afternoon at 4.30 Eastern and 1.30 Pacific time as Pastor David continues teaching lessons from the life of Job on most radio stations. Friends, God loves you and wants you to experience his peace, forgiveness and life. The Bible says, How do you receive this gift of everlasting life from God? First, acknowledge you're a sinner in need of forgiveness. Believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and died for you on the cross, taking your sin upon himself to provide forgiveness for you.

Then ask for him to enter your heart and life, turning away from your sins, that is your own selfish desires, and then open your heart to follow God's plan for your life. You can start your new life by praying something like this from your heart. Dear Jesus, I believe that you died for me, that I could be forgiven. I believe you are resurrected, that I could have a new life. Lord, I have done wrong things and I am sorry.

Please forgive me for all of those things and please give me the power to live for you the rest of my life. In Jesus' name, amen. My friend, if you prayed that prayer today for the first time or are coming back to God after wandering away, please let us know. Email PastorDavid at CrossTheBridge.com and share your good news. That's a great first step to growing in your new faith. We'd love to email you back some more ways to continue in this wonderful adventure of faith. Remember that you are not alone and you are loved. Also, don't forget to visit CrossTheBridge.com to discover more resources provided at no charge to help you learn more about the Bible. If you'd like to help us share God's Word with others, please click on the donate button and support this program with your regular gifts and tune into Cross the Bridge weekend editions each Saturday and Sunday on this station or on the CrossTheBridge.com website. God bless you and have a great day.