Job Chapter 38:1-4

Welcome to Cross the Bridge with David McGee, Weekend Edition. Pastor David McGee is internationally recognized for his unique conversational verse-by-verse and chapter-by-chapter teaching through the Word of God. We have hundreds of his teachings through the many books of the Bible and encourage you to visit crossthebridge.com to study the scriptures along with Pastor David. But right now, open your Bible to the Old Testament Book of Job and follow along for today's teaching. Pastor David has been teaching practical lessons from the life of Job. We are finding out that what needed to be learned back then still needs to be learned today. I think you'll find that to be true today and tomorrow as we take a closer look at chapter 38. Now, here's Pastor David. We have the whole book of Job, chapter 38, and we have three chapters left.

There are so many treasures in here. The Lord asks a total of 74 questions. In those questions, he's not trying to get Job to answer them. As a matter of fact, he knows Job can't answer them. He's not trying to trap Job or trick him. He's trying to get Job to do a mental reset, if you will, because Job had started thinking in the wrong way.

And it can happen. Now, we saw earlier that Job, chapter 1, chapter 2, we see even God himself speaking about him, saying he's a good guy. But when these bad things happened to him, he mistakenly assumed certain things.

His three friends showed up, and they weren't the best of friends. And we can learn a lot by looking at those three friends, what they did, what they didn't do, what they did wrong, and trying to comfort Job. I think it's important that when somebody's really hurting, our role as the church is not the police to figure out who's at fault. It's the EMTs to stop the bleeding. Now, once we stop the bleeding, we can figure out what happened and how not to do these things again.

But first things first. Some of you are bleeding, not in a place we can see, but you've gotten hurt somewhere along the line and the wound never sealed. Well, tonight, the Holy Spirit wants to heal you. And if you will open up and allow yourself, God will touch you tonight.

I'm not talking about next week, next month. I'm talking about this evening. God is so faithful to show up here, so faithful to help us teach the Word. You know, when I come up here, they share so many things right from the Lord and not in the notes. And God bless the media team. I'd apologize, but you know, and I know I'm going to do it again.

But often, those are the very things that cause somebody's heart to thaw. Let's pray. Lord, thank you. Thank you for this evening. Lord, thank you that this is not church as usual, business as usual, religious ritual. We come in, we worship, we study the Word, we leave.

No. We've come here to meet with you, God, because we need you. And Lord, thank you that you don't leave us hanging when we need you. You show up.

You're faithful to do that. And so God, you told us, come to me when you're hurting. Come to me when you're heavy-laden. And God, we're here. Some of us physically, some online, but we're here coming to you.

Partly because there's nowhere else we can go to receive the words of life. And partly because we choose to come to you. We have learned to come to you. So tonight, Lord, we don't fall back on our excuses.

We're not going to blame our past or somebody else. Lord, we realize that you created us so you can fix us and you can heal us. And anything that's wrong, you can make it right.

Not only can you, but that's your desire. And we thank you that you're going to do that tonight. We ask that you open your Word to our hearts and open our hearts, open our hungry and for some wounded hearts to your Word, till even our scars cry out, hallelujah. Praise the Lord. And HaShem Yeshua, in the name of Jesus. And everybody said, Amen. Amen. Let's go to Job chapter 38. If you hadn't turned there, go ahead and do so.

And if you don't have a Bible, just raise your hand and one of the ushers will come and bring you a Bible. Most people are familiar with the story a little bit. So Job has been through a very hard time. He's had his businesses pummeled.

His children have died. And he was so afflicted with boils that when his friends showed up to come see him, they almost didn't recognize him. It's actually an interesting phrase, because there's one other that that phrase is spoken on. And that's Jesus in Isaiah. It says his visage was unlike that of any man.

A lot of people have tried different translations that seem disconnected from the Hebrew, honestly. But what it appears to be saying in the Hebrew is that Jesus had been so beaten that he didn't look human. I don't know if you've ever seen a boxer or an MMA fighter a couple days after. Or maybe you've done some tussling and you get conked on one side of your face.

I mean, it starts to look weird. See, it talks about when they had Jesus that they covered him and they were hitting him while he was covered. People in jail, I've been told, they do this blanket party thing, you know, where they throw a blanket over somebody and you smack the person that's underneath. And the issue is when you're underneath the blanket is you can't respond. You don't see the punches coming, so you can't brace or duck or you don't know where the next one's coming from. If you've played football, maybe you had the bull in the ring thing. It's a little bit similar, but different.

I'm trying to get into Job 38, but just what he did. And think of the scourging, which was not a little leather whip. It was more like this, except a lot longer. And it had bones and rock and nails and different things that were poked through here. They'd just gather stuff and poke it through. And then they would smack the person and the nails and stones and sink into their flesh. And then they would jerk it back.

When they jerked it back, it just peeled skin off. Most people didn't survive the scourging. It was a torture to get somebody to admit what they had done wrong. And for the first time in the history of scourging, he had no wrong to admit to.

He had not committed any sin. So why that part? Okay, we got the crucifixion and he died for our sins.

But the beatings, why? So you could be healed. The Bible says by his stripes, we have been healed.

So God offers us healing through that. Now, it would have been one thing if that would have caught Jesus by surprise, but it didn't. He knew. And why did he do it?

So that tonight we could be healed. Let's read Job 38, verse 1. Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now there's a phrase. We hear so many words today.

We read so many words today, but so much of it is words without knowledge, words out of ignorance, words out of people and a society that doesn't know God. Let me remind you, who is seated here is Job and Elihu, who is the newcomer, who is really speaking the words of God. And then there's these other guys. Job chapter 2, verse 11 speaks of these three, and please note the number, three friends. When three of Job's friends heard of the tragedy he had suffered, they got together and traveled from their homes to comfort and console them.

So their intention looks like it's good. Their names were Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Nemethite. Interesting names. Now these guys, they're not really regarded well, so nobody named their kids Zophar.

When's the last time you met some kids at all? There's Joshua and little Sue, and there's Zophar. So they're remembered as kind of blowing it. When they saw Job from a distance, they scarcely recognized him because of these boils, and it says he had taken broken pottery and scraped these boils to relieve the infection pressure. Evidently his face was swollen and marked. Wailing loudly, they tore their robes and threw dust into the air over their heads to show their grief. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and nights.

And no one said a word to Job, for they saw that his suffering was too great for words. Now when a Jewish person dies, first of all they have to be buried within 24 hours, and it's a really big deal if you can be buried in Jerusalem, and an even bigger deal to be buried on the Mount of Olives, which is the world's most expensive cemetery. And the reason is the Jewish people believe as Christians that that's the place of the Messiah.

When he returns, his feet will touch the ground at the Mount of Olives. One of the other things they do is they have what they call sitting shiva. Shiva is seven in the Hebrew, shivat is where we get shivat, and it's seven days of not talking. Not only is there not talking when you visit the person who's grieving, but they also cover the mirrors so that nowhere in the house are there any mirrors. So that for that week, the person is not concerned with what they look like. Because, think about it, and I think that's brilliant, just think about it, when you're grieving, and then somebody comes over to visit, you hear the doorbell, what's the first thing you probably do? Well, how do I look? And if you've been weeping, you look bad, what are you going to do?

I mean, that's just the way my makeup ain't going to fix that, man. And so you cover the mirrors. That's a very kind thing. And relieving the pressure of conversation is a very kind thing.

So there's some pieces of this that we might want to consider, I think. So these guys had spoken, then Joe had spoken, and then Elihu had spoken, and then now God is going to speak. If you've got the King James or New King James, notice is is an italics. Whenever you see that, that's added as the translators were translating to English or whatever language it was, sometimes they had to add words to help the sentence to flow.

They didn't change the meaning. Here is is removed, so it would be who this, who, which in Hebrew it flows better than that. But remember that as you're reading the Bible, because that happens in many places, especially in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures. This is a Bible study tip here. Whenever words appear in italics, in the New King James or the King James, in some other translation, it means the word or words that appear in italics have been added at the request of the translators to help make it more readable or to add clarity.

So you'll see it occasionally, and again, it never changes the meaning. Verse 4, you see that happens again. Verse 3, Now prepare yourself like a man. I will question you, and you shall answer me.

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell, you see, me is an italics, if you have understanding. So in the Hebrew, it reads, Tell if you have understanding.

You see, me is inferred in the original languages, but the English translators added it to help it flow. But again, there's no difference. Tell me if you have understanding. Tell if you have understanding. So either way, words without knowledge.

We listen to a lot of words without knowledge, if you think about it. And when I was praying and preparing this, this Holy Spirit kind of spoke something to me that was very interesting. What if, in your house, you had a device that would tell you any time, day or night, what the weather is or is going to be, that could tell you whatever is going on in the world, any part of the world at any time, you could view sports at any time, entertainment, current events. Imagine if you had a device that you could access at any time that would do all those things. Imagine this, if you had that device, but you walked around your house going, I wonder what the weather is going to be. I wonder what the weather is going to be tomorrow, or the next day, or next week. I don't know. I'm not sure. I wonder what the weather was yesterday. I'm not sure. I don't know. But you could know if you had this device. And at this point, most of you are going, okay, pastor, the device is a television, right?

Yeah, it is. But think, if you had all that, you didn't turn it on, and you went around asking questions that you could know simply by turning it on the box. But you walked around going out where it's the weather. What was the weather yesterday? What's it going to be next week?

What a tragic waste it would be to have access to those things and not be using them. You walk around asking questions that you could know. Who won the game? I don't know. But you could know.

You got access. It will tell you what the weather was. It'll guess at what it will be. But can you get love from it? No. You can feel love, but it's only reminding you of a previous time when you felt love.

It's not creating love. Can it give you real spiritual answers? Not really. Can you receive forgiveness from it? No. Can you be taught how to be a better husband, father from it? Not really. Some channels maybe, but mostly no.

I mean, we may have dads in here who watch 20 hours plus of television a week, but would be terrified to spend an hour with their child. Not you guys, the Sunday crowd. 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 to receive a short encouraging text from us each day.

That's 94253. And now back to the teaching. Ask yourself the hard questions. What if you had something that could teach you that you are loved, that you're a special creation? What if you had something that would teach you about eternity and not only teach you the simple fact that you are loved, but how to love others? What if you had this device and you could access it at any time and it would do all those things for you, would bring you joy and peace when you were saddened? What a wonderful device that would be if only we had something like that.

We do have something like that. And yet we walk around and go, God, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do? I'm going to call somebody else. I'm going to post on Facebook, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do? What am I doing?

I'll call the pastor. What am I doing? What am I doing?

What am I going to do? Read it. This is an incredible book. I just don't have time. You have time.

You're spending it on other things. And so often we get in trouble before we start digging in this book and we're halfway divorced before we try to figure out how to fix our marriage. And sadly, sometimes that's too late. Get in the book, get in there on a regular basis. Get where it's the first thing you reach for when you wake up, like an alcoholic grabbing a bottle. Now, some of you may get uncomfortable with that, but let me tell you what, getting addicted to this is a good thing. Amen. So dig in the Word. Teach your kids the Word. Yeah, they probably may not want to some days.

Don't ask them, sit them down and do it. Do you want to have devotions? No. Okay.

No, that's not the way that goes. And let me tell you from experience, you turn your head and blink and they grow up. So while you can and while they want to, spend time with them. Focus on this book. How can I be a better employee?

How can I increase my income? It's all in there. You start reading a Proverb a day. Watch what happens to you at work.

And the thing is, this is not a secret. Joshua chapter one, verse seven, only be strong and very courageous that you may observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded you, do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate.

There's that word again. In a day and night that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success.

Have I not commended you? Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid nor be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Praise the Lord.

So some of you even now should make a commitment that you're going to do this first thing in the morning. Now, in verse three, God says, this is again, this is God speaking. Now prepare yourself like a man. It's interesting the word chosen there for man. It's not the normal Hebrew word for man, which would be, interestingly enough, ben adam, son of man. It's gabir, which is the highest man.

That's the warrior. That's a high compliment. Whenever that word appears or when somebody calls somebody gabir, that's a high compliment. That's an encouraging thing. And what does encouragement mean?

Encourage. Put courage in somebody. You realize you can say certain things and put courage in somebody? When's the last time you put courage in your spouse?

Do you do that on an regular basis? The circle of this gabir is giborim, which is how I address a lot of leaders. The giborim, it's noting their commitment and their faithfulness and it's recognizing their spiritual warriors and it's speaking confidence to them and encouragement. And if you're a leader here, you're a giborim. Whether you're a deacon or an elder or a life group leader, you are a giborim. I call you giborim or warriors.

There's a battle going on. You realize God loves you just because, not because you serve. If you serve here, I am so grateful.

Thank you. And we're supposed to serve. Be sure you start serving from a seated position, from Sunday, that you know you've been forgiven.

Then you begin to serve and pour out. Now these words, these questions, they come out sounding a little bit harsh, but that's not the intention. Job has started thinking in a way that's bad. He's started being religiously prideful.

He's trying to blame God and exonerate himself, say that he's innocent and God's the guilty one. And so God asks him questions that he can't answer. And let me ask you a question. Can you answer these? None of us can answer all these. It's interesting the ones that we can't answer. There's some mind-blowing stuff in here. As a matter of fact, I could easily go till midnight with these things and probably not cover it.

And you know that's not a novel threat. So what about these questions to you as we go through them? Consider yourself like God is asking you these things.

Here's the life lesson. These questions are meant to rescue Job and other people and us from stinking thinking. God wants to rescue us from wrong thinking or stinking thinking. There's some ways that you're thinking right now that are wrong and you need to change them. And God tells us that in Romans 12, 1 and 2. He says, look, I'm going to be changing you by changing your mind.

The word there in the Greek is metamorpho, where we get our word for metamorphos, which is what the caterpillar does when he changes into a butterfly. It's only used two places. In Romans 12 and at the melt of Transfiguration when Jesus revealed himself. Now God knows all of these answers, but He's not bragging. He's not trying to make us feel bad. He's trying to get Job and us to understand He's God and we're not. So the next life lesson is God is not bragging or asking Job or us to answer these questions. God is not bragging or asking Job or us to answer these questions. As a staff, we get together and pray for you guys and share things with one another.

And one of the things I shared with staff yesterday, I want to share with you as well. In the Hebrew, the name of God, the main name of God is Yahweh. And that's spelled without vowels. It's just four letters, consonants. Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh. There's certain Hebrew letters that are associated with exhales, just like our letters really. The Heh instead of an H. But Heh, if you say Heh, you're exhaling, right? Try saying Heh and inhaling. So you're breathing out with the Heh. Well, with the Yod, you're breathing in.

With the Vav, you're breathing in. So when you spell the name of God, you're breathing in and out. Now, the significance of that is in the beginning when we were created, God breathed on us and created us. And the word for spirit is Ruach.

The word for breath is Ruach. We breathe the spirit, God begins to change us. Now, we're breathing God in every breath. He's filling our lungs with air. And so when you spell the name of God, Yod, Vav, Heh. And what they would do is they would do that several times and just calm down, taking deep breaths.

Don't get nervous. We're in the Bible and we're in the biblical. But here's the thing. We all kind of have an inner voice that speaks with us, conscious or whatever you want to call it. God wants to influence that. And the enemy has also figured out that if he influences that, that you can get in real trouble. If he can get you saying something over and over and over.

God really convicted me about the phrase, I don't know what I'm going to do to not say that because he's waiting for me to ask him what to do. So I can, I don't know what to do. Why don't you ask me?

Okay. I ask him, he's going to tell me. So I can't say I don't know what to do.

That's just revealing I hadn't talked to him. So when we wander around saying, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I don't know. It's usually because we haven't been talking to him.

And we get these things, these little vocal patterns. People don't like me. God doesn't like me.

God doesn't love me. If you went to public school after they started teaching the theory of evolution and you believed it, now you're saying, well, God didn't create us. God didn't create us. Actually, God didn't create us. We evolved.

God didn't create us. You start running down evolution and remembering it's a theory. Did you know that bees talk to each other? Not the way we do, but when one bee finds food, he goes back and he does this little dance.

And I mean, he tells them how much is there, where it is, how far it is, everything so they can go get it. Now I look at that and go, praise God, that is so cool that he programmed that into a bee. And evolution just looks at that and says, well, the bee evolved into doing that dance and then them figuring out how to do it and what he was saying.

Okay, so while he was figuring out that dance, the rest of the bees would have starved to death not being able to find food because he was trying to tell them that they were evolving, figuring out what the dance meant. Well, they didn't have to evolve. They know.

God created them with something in them that knows. And the other theories are really weak against creation. Seriously, man, there was nothing and then it exploded. How many times has it happened to you in your life where there's nothing and then it exploded?

Now, when I was a kid, I told my parents that that happened, but I mean, there were M-80s and firecrackers involved. I mean, so, and yet we buy into it. Or we say, well, I believe in evolution, but I believe God influenced it. They call that theistic evolution. It doesn't fit. The days and the animals are out of order compared to the evolutionists.

So it's either or. Now I've looked at it scientifically and been convinced by people with PhDs that it is exactly as God said, that he created me. Now, if you're sitting there going, well, okay, so is this like a big deal?

Yeah, it really is. Because we have a whole generation coming up that we've told they were a cosmic accident and we're wondering why they don't value life. You've been listening to Pastor David McGee on Cross the Bridge Weekend Edition. Tune in again tomorrow afternoon as Pastor David continues teaching on most stations. If you're not able to make it to your home church this Sunday, why not join us for our live stream at 10 a.m. Eastern Time or on Thursday nights at 7 p.m. Eastern Time? Just visit crossthebridge.com and click on our live stream link. There you will experience a live service from David's home church, The Bridge in North Carolina. Again, that website is crossthebridge.com.

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, 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!