Good Questions Job, Part 2

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. That's an amazing thing when you think about what Joe went through. And we say how could anyone endure it? But I wonder, we don't know the length of time, but I'm going to guess that the length of time that Joe suffered all this is about six months.

Just for travel time, the talking, the conversation. He went through six months of the worst six months of your life. So if you saw Joe a hundred years later, when he has twice as much of everything, and you said, Joe, how bad was it?

What do you think Joe would say? I think you say the same thing the Apostle Paul said, momentary light afflictions. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now, as once again, he shows us how God's word meets our world.

Job's response to God's questions is this. I'm not talking. I'm not saying anything more. I put my hand over my mouth. I'm not going to talk about this anymore.

He said, I just don't want to talk. And when you first read it, you think there it is. That's what God wanted from Job.

It's not. He wants more. He wants more. So God gives another speech to Job, and it says the Lord answered Job out of the storm and said, gird up your loins like a man, and I'll ask you and you instruct me. Will you really in all my judgment? Will you condemn me that you may be justified?

You're questioning my judgment. By understand my definition, I am God. Now, by definition, if you're God, who can question your judgment? That's God's point. No one can.

How could you question my judgment? I love verse nine. Do you have an arm like God? And can you thunder with a voice like his? Got to love this. This is God. Take a look at it. You got one like that? You got nothing. You see, when my voice comes out, it comes out like thunder.

Let me hear yours. You see what I mean? That's that's God talk, and it's just an amazing thing. But God does. He said in verse 11, Pour out the overflowings of your anger and look on everyone who is proud and make them all. God introduces something right here.

He said, You know what I can do in my business? I take the proud. I make them all. That's a principle, and it's going to be something he illustrates here.

Everyone. By the way, if you're finding fault with God, isn't that pride? But he says at the job, he says, I make them all. He said, verse 12, Look on everyone who is proud and humble him and tread down the wicked where they stand.

Can you do that job? No. Now he introduces two characters that are so often, I think my opinion, not being dogmatic, but sort of with this. The first one is in verse 15. He says, Behold now behemoth. He introduces the word behemoth. And it's an interesting thing. And a lot of the commentators on this say behemoth is a hippopotamus.

And the second character will be Leviathan, and he's an alligator. I don't think so. I just don't. And I'll explain my reason. If that's what you think, that's OK. I don't really care.

You're just wrong. So. But but the point of it is this. The word behemoth is plural. We use it as a plural word. But when God describes it, he uses a personal pronoun.

It's always singular. This behemoth, this power, this plurality of power he refers to on a personal pronoun, which is interesting. He says, behold, behemoth, which I made as well as you. He said, behemoth, my creature. I made him just like I made you. He said he eats grass like an ox. And behold, his strength is in his loins and he has power and muscles in his belly and he bends his tail like cedar. And the sinews of his thighs are knit together and his bones are like tubes of bronze and his limbs are like bars of iron.

Now, please understand something here. This is he is speaking poetically. He is speaking metaphorically. He's speaking picturesquely.

He's speaking this way. Then he says this in verse 19. He is the first of the ways of God. Let his maker bring near his sword.

That word first is means first in preeminence. Behemoth is the preeminent. Notice he is the preeminent in the ways of God. Let me ask you, what was God's greatest creation? See, who's the greatest creation God ever created? Lucifer. The anointed cherub.

No one like him. God says, yeah, he was the first. He said, and I'm the only one that can bring a sword near him. I still have power over him. That's what this whole story is about.

That's what you find. But it plays on better with the second one. In the second one, he says this. He said, verse one of Chapter 41, he said, Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook? He talks about Leviathan. Can you bring him out with a fishhook?

He said, first three, will he make many supplications to you or will he speak to you in soft words? Now, if he's an alligator. When's the last time you've talked to an alligator and he's talked back to you?

In cartoons, you get an alligator to talk. But he says he doesn't talk to you in soft words. He's referring to something bigger than Leviathan.

And as I go on, I think it'll become clear. He says. Verse 10. No one is so fierce that he dares to arouse him. Who then is he that can stand before me?

No one arouses him. He is worthy. He's powerful. Verse 15. His strong scales are his pride. He said, shut up as tight as a seal.

Notice pride is introduced again. And then he says in verse 18, his sneezes flash forth white and his eyes are like eyelids in the morning. He said out of his mouth go burning torches, sparks of fire leap forth and out of his nostrils, smoke goes forth as from a boiling pot and burning rushes.

His breath kindles coals and a flame goes forth from his mouth. Is that like an alligator to you? I don't think he's talking about an alligator here at all. He's talking about something much, much more important than that.

He said, let me explain what I'm talking about when I deal with him. Verse 24. His heart is as hard as stone, even as hard as a lower millstone.

Does that sound like an alligator to you? He has a stone heart. No, it doesn't. He said in verse 20, 70 regards iron as straw and bronze as rotten wood. He has great power.

Verse 33 makes it abundantly clear. He said nothing on earth is like him. He said one made without fear.

Do you realize that? Satan has no fear. Of anyone. Not God either.

He's not afraid. In fact, how did this book start out? You see, it starts out where?

In heaven. And who's talking to God? Satan. Doesn't sound like he's afraid.

In fact, a book in Revelation at the end of the Bible says he accuses the brethren day and night. He has no fear. He is not afraid. He said, I will be like the Most High. I'm going to sit on the throne. He was so convincing in his power, one third of the heavenly host left and went with him.

They fell. He said he has no fear at all. Now watch verse 34.

He looks on everything that is high. He is king over all the sons of pride. That's not an alligator. That's who he is.

Wow. Now, if this was a hippopotamus, an alligator, explain this to me. What would be the point of God telling Job that his inability to catch these creatures and control them shows that he has an inability to understand cosmic justice? What would that have to do with anything? He already dealt with natural. He already dealt with Mother Nature. He's talking about something spiritual here. Isaiah says Leviathan is a fiery serpent. He is the dragon of the sea. Psalm 74 Asoph said that Leviathan is a many-headed monster. In Revelation, at the end of the Bible, it talks about the great dragon himself, which is Lucifer. There's another thing. If you go back to Near East Semitic studies and their mythology of the cultures around the time of Job, they used Leviathan to be the enemy of a true God in their mythologies.

And Job would have known those stories. So it's my view clearly that he is referring here to Satan. And he said, can you control him?

I can. Can you control him? And notice, after this, Satan never speaks again. He's done.

This is all over. And now Job is going to give the response that God wanted the first time. Job now responds correctly. It says, Job answered the Lord and said, I know that you can do all things, that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Who is this that hides counsel with that knowledge? Therefore, I've declared that which I don't understand. Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. That word wonderful doesn't mean, oh, it's just great. It means these are things I never understood at all. Now you've explained it. Wow, this is great.

Things too wonderful for me. And then he says, Hear now and I will speak, I will ask you. And you instruct me, I heard those words. He said, Here it is.

I have heard of you by the hearing of the year and now my eyes see you. Therefore, I retract and I repent in dust and ashes. And that's what God wanted.

He's sitting on this ash heap, all emaciated, and he just start putting ashes on them. I completely repent. There'll be no more words for me.

That's what I've done. That's what God was looking for from Job. God gave Job no explanation. I don't think until Job went to heaven, he ever heard God say, he've got in heaven and said, How did this all come about? And God says, Oh, we had Satan and I had a conversation.

That's why, Joe, I don't think he ever heard it. God doesn't explain things like that. God reveals himself. You see, God reveals himself.

He said, Here I am. Let me see. Give you the word.

I will reveal it. Your job is to believe it. You see, that's what happens with God.

I'm just asking you to do it. Now, notice the aftermath of this. It's kind of funny. Verse seven. It came about after the Lord had spoken these words to Job that the Lord said to Eliphaz, the Temanite, one of the three friends, My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken to me what is right. He said, as my servant Job has. You told lies.

About me. He says, Now, therefore, take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up a burn offering for yourselves and my servant Job will pray for you. He said, For I will accept him so that I may not do with you according to your folly, because you have not spoken of me what is right and my servant Job has. Eliphaz, the Temanite, Bildad, the Shoahite and Zohpar, the Nemethite went and they did just as the Lord had told them.

Yeah, there's sin in the book of Job, but it's not Job. It's those three guys. He said, You better make sacrifices. And these are very expensive sacrifices for them.

Seven bulls and seven rams. That's a fortune for them. And he said, By the way, it's not enough. Job will have to intercede for you.

He'll have to pray for you. So they shut up. No more words from them.

They're not saying anything. Now God turns to Job. The Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for his friends and the Lord increased all that Job had to fold. Then all of his brothers and his sisters and all who had known him and came to him. They ate bread with him in his house and they consoled and comforted him for all the adversities that the Lord had brought him brought on him. And each one gave him a piece of money and a ring of gold. He doesn't need it.

This guy's going to be loaded. Remember, I started out the whole series saying he was, you know, Bill Gates of his culture. He had unbelievable wealth. Now he's twice as rich.

Notice what God does. The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than the beginning. He had he had 14000 sheep instead of seven. He had 6000 camels instead of three. He had 1000 yoke of oxen, which are 2000 oxen instead of 500 yoke. And he had 1000 female donkeys instead of 500. He had seven sons and three daughters, just like he had before. Notice he didn't get 14 sons and six daughters. Why? He wanted to take it easy on Job's wife.

No. He already has 10 sons and three daughters. They're with the Lord. You see, he already has those kids.

These are just 10 more that he gets. Show you the quality of who Job is. Watch what he says in verse 15. In all the land, no women were found so fair as Job's daughters and their father gave them inheritance among the brothers. That never happens in ever in the ancient Near East, ever.

The daughters get a full inheritance, just like the sons do. That's countercultural, but that tells you something about Job, how magnificent he is. Now, look what else happens. Verse 16, after this, Job lived 140 years. And he saw his sons and his grandsons for four generations. He lived 140 more years. And Job died an old man full of days. Wow.

Now, that part is really different. He got all the blessings here on earth, but he suffered in a way none of us could imagine. That's an amazing thing when you think about what Job went through. And we say, how could anyone endure it? But I wonder, we don't know the length of time, but I'm going to guess that the length of time that Job suffered all this is about six months.

Just for travel time, the talking, the conversation. He went through six months of the worst six months of your life. So if you saw Job 100 years later, when he asked twice as much of everything, and you said, Job, boy, how bad was it?

What do you think Job would say? I think you say the same thing the Apostle Paul said. Momentary light afflictions. That was just a small part of my life. My life was great before then. My life was even better after then.

These are momentary light afflictions. That's what the Apostle Paul said, and he suffered immensely as well. How does that apply to us? I know that some of you go through things that are just unbelievable. Some of the people in this church have suffered immeasurably physically. It just breaks your heart to be with them and see how they suffer. But I have a hunch that if I were to approach you 100,000 years from now in heaven, and I said, could you tell me about when you were back on earth those last seven years of your life and how bad they were?

What do you think they'd say? That was momentary light afflictions. In light of all that I got here, listen, Job got double what he had, and that's a lot, but he had nothing like you and I get. You and I are joint heirs with Jesus Christ. You know what that means? You get everything. Everything. He inherits it all, and so do you.

It's no way to even give it an expression. So the idea is Job gets everything back. It's a great book with a great story. But there are some lessons I want to leave you with and then close.

The first one is this that I've learned through this book. God's future plan is almost always unknowable to us. God's future plan is almost always unknowable to us. You're just cruising along.

Your life's going some way, and all of a sudden, in just a split second, a diagnosis, an auto, your life changes forever. Now, God's aware of it, but for us, it's unknowable. And God never tells Job, even in the aftermath. So it's unknowable for us. Secondly, God's purpose will ultimately, either here or in heaven, reveal itself. So don't question it.

You see, don't question it. God says, I'll reveal my purpose. When that time comes, I'll reveal my purpose. Thirdly, in the midst of our suffering, God will reveal himself through his word.

Do you know what God says to you and me when we suffer as his children? He asks us one question, not 77, but one. Have you read? Have you read? Have you read this? That's Revelation. Have you read?

Oh, God, why? Wait, have you read Romans 8, 28? Have you read this?

All things work together for the good. Have you read this? Do you believe it or not? You see what happens? God reveals himself and says, have you read this? The apostle Paul goes through a lot of agony.

He calls it momentary light afflictions. Have you read this? That's God revealing himself to us. And the question he asks is, have you read this? Do you believe this?

Which leads to the next point. And that is, it's very unlikely that God will ever explain himself to you and to me. He's not into explanations. He's into revelation. And when he reveals it, he wants us to believe it because he's God.

That's what makes the difference. Being a sinful person living on a cursed planet, it's unimaginable how much we can suffer. So much of the scripture is addressed to that for us. And the last thing is, our spiritual maturity is measured by what we will endure. If you want to know how spiritual you are, find out what you will endure. You see, that was the situation with Job. How spiritual was Job? Well, he was the most spiritual man on earth. How do you know that? God said it.

It wasn't an opinion. It wasn't like his group said it. God said, Job's the most spiritual man on earth. And so what's the next point? Then what will he endure? What will Job endure if he's the most spiritual man on earth? And that's why God came out of the whirlwind. He goes, Job, look, I said you're the most spiritual man on earth.

You ought to know better than this. And that's why he didn't say anything about Job's suffering. He didn't say anything about it. He said, Job, just let me ask you the questions.

You were questioning me. And Job said, I put my hand over my mouth, I shut up, and now I repent without an explanation. Next time you really have to suffer, don't waste it.

Make sure you understand that this is a measure of how you'll grow. How well, what is it you endure? Job, what a wonderful book. How practical for us. Let's pray together. Father, I pray for those who are suffering at the moment.

It's so easy for us to get horizontally preoccupied. We just see the circumstances, we feel the pain, and we agonize over it. And whether we want to admit it or not, we begin to question you. Why?

How could this happen to me? Why haven't you stopped it? And we question your integrity when we ask that question. The book of Job is enormous. None of us will ever suffer like he did. None of us will have the blessings that he had. But Father, it's a picture for us to realize how we can handle suffering in our lives.

You've asked us to endure for a season. I pray, Father, that the next time we suffer, we are able to take these truths of this great book and apply it to our lives for your glory and for our good in Christ's name. Amen. That's OnePlace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online. At that website, you will find not only today's broadcast, but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org.

That's fbcnola.org. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.