Job Chapter 31:ALL

Welcome to Cross the Bridge 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 through the book of Job.

Let's read Job chapter 31 verse 1. Let me be weighed on honest scales, that God may know my integrity. If my step has turned from the way, or my heart walked over my eyes, my heart walked after my eyes, or if any spot adheres to my hands, then let me sow and another eat. Yes, let my harvest be rooted out.

If my heart has been enticed by a woman, or if I have lurked at my neighbor's door, then let my wife grind for another, or serve for another, and let others bow down over her. For that would be wickedness. Yes, it would be iniquity deserving of judgment.

For that would be a fire that consumes to destruction and would root out all my increase. Verse 13. If I have despised the cause of my male or female servants when they complained against me, what then shall I do when God rises up? When he punishes, how shall I answer him? Did not he who made me in the womb make them?

Did not the same one fashion us in the womb? Verse 16. If I have kept the poor from their desire, or caused the eyes of the widow to fail, or eaten my morsel by myself so that the fatherless could not eat of it, but from my youth I reared him as a father, and from my mother's womb I guided the widow. Verse 19. If I have seen anyone perish for lack of clothing, or any poor man without covering, if his heart has not blessed me, and if he was not warmed with the fleece of my sheep, if I have raised my hand against the fatherless when I saw I had help in the gate, then let my arm fall from my shoulder. Let my arm be torn from the socket, for destruction from God is a terror to me, and because of his magnificence I cannot endure.

If I have made gold my hope, or said to find gold, you are my confidence. If I have rejoiced because my wealth was great, and because my hand had gained much, if I have observed the sun when it shines on the moon moving in brightness, so that my heart has been secretly enticed, and my mouth has kissed my hand, this also would be an inquiry deserving of judgment, for I would have denied God who is above. Verse 21. If I have rejoiced at the destruction of him who hated me, or lifted myself up when evil found him, indeed I have not allowed my mouth to sin by asking for a curse on his soul. If the men of my tent have not said, Who is there that has not been satisfied with his meat?

No sojourner had to lodge in the street, for I have opened my doors to the traveller. So we see that he was being responsible with the increase that he had been given, that he was helping to provide for others. Verse 33. If I have covered my transgressions as Adam by hiding my iniquity in my bosom, Verse 34. Because I feared the great multitude, and dreaded the contempt of families, so that I kept silence, and did not go out of the door. O that I had one to hear me! Here is my mark! O that the Almighty would answer me! That my prosecutor had written a book! Surely I would carry it on my shoulder, and bind it on me like a crown.

I would declare to him the number of my steps, like a prince I would approach him. When my land cries out against me, and its furrows weep together, if I have eaten its fruits without money, or caused its owners to lose their lives, then let thistles grow instead of wheat, and weeds instead of barley. The words of Job are ended. Let's read a few more verses here in chapter 32, because there are some interesting things here that we won't include in chapter 31, but let's read on chapter 32 of Job, verse 1.

For these three men ceased answering Job, because he was righteous in his whole lives. Then the wrath of Elihu, the son of Barachael, the pazite of the family of Ram, was aroused against Job. His wrath was aroused because he justified himself rather than God. Also against his three friends his wrath was aroused, because they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job. Now because they were years older than he, Elihu had waited to speak to Job. When Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of these three men, his wrath was aroused. So Elihu, the son of Barachael, the pazite, answered and said, I am young in years, and you are very old.

Therefore I was afraid, and dared not declare my opinion to you. I said, Age should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom. But there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding. Now listen to this, great men are not always wise.

Seems he's going to be coming out with a lot of on time stuff. Great men are not always wise, nor do the aged always understand justice. Job was presenting himself as being right, and God being wrong, and he was trying to justify himself rather than God in chapter 31. When Job in chapter 31 says, hey put me on the scales, that God may know my integrity, he says in verse 6, chapter 31 verse 6. Job says, oh that God may know my integrity.

Look, it's easy for us to sit here and criticize Job, but we need to learn from what we see here. Whenever you think God should be impressed with your integrity, that's not a good road to go down. Or is it God owes you something? See that's where religion, man's way can take you. It's a humbling thing the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah has so many of those awesome verses, you know the prophet writes in chapter 64, 6. But we are all like an unclean thing. All our righteousnesses are like filthy racks. We all fade as a leaf and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. Or in the New American Standard, that's a good version too, says for all of us have become like one who is unclean. All of our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment. All of us wither like a leaf and our iniquities like the wind take us away. And when the prophet says our righteousnesses are like filthy rags, that's a very descriptive term.

It's used menstrual cloths. That's what our righteousness looks like. Now not only do you have that image, but also understand that makes you unclean. There's a portion of that cycle where a woman would have been considered unclean and would have even gone outside the camp. So our righteousness is unclean. Our righteousness leaves us unclean.

Our best. That's humbling isn't it? And it should be and it's supposed to be. When you look at these things and see that Joe was trying to say, look, God, look at my righteousness and even my righteousness compared to God's. So we see that Joe really slipped off here at the end in what he was saying. And granted now, you know, the enemy had kind of warned him down and be careful that years ago there was such words of wisdom as Charles Stanley used the acronym HALT. And he said, anytime in ministry where you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, hungry, angry, lonely or tired, be careful. Whenever you have a huge victory, be careful. Elijah, he was elated because of the victory on Mount Carmel. All the prophets, God had shown himself mighty on his behalf. And of course, Jezebel says, I'm going to get you. And he freaks out and runs. This leaves us an interesting place for chapter 32.

I really almost want to jump into there, but time would restrain us. But here's what's interesting, too, is that we find ourselves in this season called Hanukkah. And it helps us to understand this season, to understand its significance to us, to the Jewish people and to the world. First of all, Hanukkah is not one of the seven biblical feasts.

Leviticus 23 has those. And hopefully you know those if you've been here a while and should be able to go through them and pass over unleavened bread, firstfruits, Pentecost, the spring feast, and then the winter feast of Rosh Hashanah first, Feast of Trumpets, then Yom Gippur, Day of Atonement, and then Feast of Booths, Sukkah. Feast of Tabernacles. There's the seven biblical feasts. Hanukkah is not one of those.

It's not one of the seven. And in addition to those seven feasts, there's also the monthly New Moon. There's also the Shabbat. And we're going to talk about the Shabbat more sometime this season because it would be awesome for you to have a Shabbat, take a Shabbat, perhaps Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or New Year's Eve. And so we'll give you a handout and I'll talk a little bit about how that is because once again, you know, we, in saying, oh, the Sabbath is not for Gentiles, so let's just throw all that away.

No, no, no, no. Up until just a few years ago, Gentiles kind of kept the Sabbath and we had the blue laws. You can get into the legislative morality discussion, but I mean, we do legislate morality. To say we don't is just it's hard to cure stupid. But did I say that? Did you hear that? I didn't say that. You just thought I said that. I didn't really say it. We're calling it from God's Word for wisdom.

We're coming up with some interesting things. Now, again, Hanukkah and Purim, those are two not biblical feasts, but they are of significance. If we had the Apocrypha in our Bibles, which we don't as Protestants, we would read that in Maccabees, first and second Maccabees, that there was Hanukkah. Should a Christian celebrate Hanukkah? Well, if we're following Jesus, I guess we should because Jesus celebrated Hanukkah and it's recording the Scripture. I never was told this.

I read this and saw it. In John chapter 10 in verse 22, it says, Now it was the feast of dedication in Jerusalem. The feast of dedication is Hanukkah. It's also called the festival of lights.

But let's keep reading. Now it's the feast of dedication in Jerusalem and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's forge. So he went up during Hanukkah to minister. So should we celebrate Hanukkah?

Absolutely. And we should use it as an opportunity to minister. Some Christians get into, well, Christmas, it's Saturday, and we're not really sure it's the day that Jesus was born.

And you come off looking like Scrooge. Don't do that. And don't do that on Facebook because unbelievers are watching. 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. In a few verses in John, Jesus answered them and said, I told you, and you did not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me, but you do not believe because you are not of my sheep. As I said to you, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

Listen for his voice. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. And please understand that when the Lord is speaking to you, sometimes the enemy will come in there and try to talk to you, try to slip something in. How can you tell?

Go to the word. God's never going to contradict his word. The enemy will contradict the word of God. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. But it's getting good, neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand.

I and my Father are one. Incidentally, when, I was going to say if, but when somebody says, oh God, Jesus never said he was God or never presented himself to be God or nobody thought he was God, that nonsense. Great passage here, John chapter 10, verse 31 to 33. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, many good works I have shown you from my Father. For which of these works do you stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, for a good work we do not stone you, but for blasphemy.

And because you, being a man, make yourself God. They weren't confused about what Jesus was saying. They were upset. They were accusing him of saying he was God.

Why? Because he was saying he was God. He said me and my Father are one. And they got mad. Again, anytime you see these guys getting mad, that's a big clue. Go back and read something.

You missed it. So they get mad. So again, this is during this feast of dedication, festival of lights. Lights are very important. Biblically, they're very important to us. There is something in us, pre-war, looking at a fire or even a candle.

There's something about that light that we are drawn towards. So there's Hanukkah, and it has many spellings. If you're wondering how to spell it, I don't know.

There's like three different ways and everybody seems okay with all of them. One has one N, one K, one has two Ks, one starts with a CH. So Hanukkah, it's pronounced the same no matter how you spell it. Hanukkah, Hanukkah, Hanukkah. Festival of lights, feast of dedication. Again, while it's not one of the seven Jewish feasts, it has more to reveal about the end times than any of the other feasts.

Let me review a little bit for you of what happened. In another little detail that I discovered in my research, there was a man, a leader, who when he became the official leader, added Epiphanes to his name, to his title, basically making himself a god. So he decides that he's a god, tells everybody he's a god. It's Antiochus Epiphanes. Now, he's over Judea, and he is of Greek influence.

He's doing what is called Hellenizing, or getting people to speak Greek, write Greek, read Greek, pick up the Greek ways. And this was happening in Israel, and people were falling away from the faith. And so there were two groups of people, and one of them were following Antiochus Epiphanes, and he came back from this war in Egypt, and there was a scuttle, and he decided he was going to put his foot down.

Interesting. When he was in Egypt, Antiochus Epiphanes, he literally drew a line in the sand, and that's where we get that line in the sand thing, from Antiochus. So he comes back from Egypt, sees this stuff going on in Israel, and they just do horrible, unspeakable things. They killed 80,000 people in Jerusalem. A lot of them were women and children.

They had them do just horrible stuff. And at the same time, he takes the temple, and takes all the gold out of it. He's been influenced from the altar of Satan, from another place that we read about in the book of Revelation. So he's been influenced by that altar of Zeus, altar of Satan. He comes to the temple, and in the temple puts an altar to Zeus, and then puts all these unclean things. Then he takes a pig, which is an unclean animal, takes his blood, and just slings his pig's blood all over the temple. He tells the Jewish people, you can't celebrate Sabbath. You can't do anything Jewish. You can't go to the temple. You cannot worship.

If we find you worshipping or celebrating the Sabbath, okay. And they did. They called a group of people hiding out in a cave and going there and celebrating the Sabbath, and they had a spy that came in, that told about them, and they were all executed.

There were two ladies who circumcised their children, and they were made to go through the streets with their children, nursing them in front of everybody. And then he had them thrown off of the high point in the city. Things were bad. They were bad, and they were outnumbered.

They were outgunned. This was an army that Antiochus had, but there was a group of people that wanted to worship God. And yeah, they knew it was illegal, but they were the remnant that said, we're not going to obey man. We're going to obey God. And friends, the time may come in this country where we have to decide. We may have to engage in civil disobedience. If they come in, they say, look, you know, you can't say that this is a sin or that's a sin because that's hate speech. Some would label what I said Sunday hate speech.

And so, okay, because of that, listen, don't do that again, or we're going to throw you in jail. Y'all better go ahead and get a bail fund for Pastor David because I'm going to keep declaring the gospel. Amen. Praise God.

Absolutely, man. And so Antiochus sitting this object up is what's spoken of in the book of Daniel when he speaks about the abomination of desolation. It's a picture of the end times. They had desecrated the temple, but the Maccabees, they said, you know what? We have to fight against this. So they started. They started fighting against it.

Little skirmishes, little guerrilla warfare. They got this street and then that little town and then this highway and then that little town. And then they got up to the gates of Jerusalem. And even though they were outnumbered and outgunned, somehow they took Jerusalem back. And they went into the temple and it was, you know, weeds growing everywhere.

And then they went in and they saw that pig's blood and they started cleaning and scrubbing. And they went to light the menorah. But they only had oil for one night and it took eight days to process the oil, to use it in the menorah.

So they didn't know what they were going to do. Well, the oil that was supposed to last for one day lasted for eight days. And so meanwhile, they were making the oil and preparing it.

And that oil burned long enough that then they could prepare the oil and then use that. And that's why it's called the Festival of Lights or the Feast of Dedication. And you see there's a picture there of a remnant standing up for God.

Even though it's not popular, even though the government at that time said it was illegal, they still stood up. And what a wonderful picture of what we need to do and whatever times we find ourselves in. A key verse that they use for Hanukkah was Zechariah chapter 4 verse 6. So he answered and said to me, this is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. We need to remember that. It's not by might nor by power, but by spirit, says the Lord. Now that's not an excuse for us to sit back and just, God will do it.

No, no, no. We press in, we do all we can and then let God handle it. We give God our best and then watch what he does with it.

Oh, one last thing. Upon more research, Antiochus Epiphanes was pushing a Greek agenda on them, but he himself was not Greek. He was Syrian. So God saved Israel from the Syrians. Over and over, God preserves Israel through this.

He always preserves the remnant. Now friend, I firmly believe that we, the church, will be raptured out before the tribulation. 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, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. How do you receive this gift of everlasting life from God? First, acknowledge you are 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 in 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 in to 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.