Bible Wonders - LEVIATHAN - PRIDE

Did you ever wonder? Did you ever wonder?

I do. Did you ever wonder? Why the sun always rises, but the stars never fall? Why dry land is never satisfied by water? And why fire never says enough?

Enough. I'm learning from the thought that I was God and realizing I desperately needed one, and then he had a really high standard. So in Job 41, we have a really cool description of the king of the children of pride. And if you look at all of Job 41, it's almost unbelievable all that is described there of this sea monster, which is appropriately called Leviathan. Which is significant in and of itself, because coming out of the sea, as you'll see in Revelation 13.1, the beast itself comes out of the sea. And the sea is a picture of chaos.

We've talked about that a little bit before. And so out of this chaos comes this unbelievable fire-breathing, eyes that light up, nostrils that snort light, all these things that are just remarkable. And yet, God clearly calls him the king of the children of pride. And so the word that I actually would like to dive into there, because the thing I don't want to be, and I'm sure you would agree, and obviously the thing that turned Job, by the way, because if you look, Job 41 is right before Job starts to confess, I don't know nothing.

So I love the transition between Job 41 and 42. So what God told him here obviously resulted in his repentance from pride of thinking he knew how to rule the world or whatever the situation may be. So let's just look at the word pride there as, you know, in Job there's a lot of words that are kind of unique to that book. And certainly this version of pride is one of the coolest, because when you really look at it, in Hebrew it says shin, and then a het, and then a zadik. And so if you would just allow me to kind of tell you where you put those three together, it is someone that is getting their life, that's the burning, the chewing, the shin is a tooth so to speak, or it could be a fire, it's something that oxidizes something.

So here we have this oxidation going on, and the next letter is this het, which means life. It's the beginning of the word she, which means life, but it very much is taking what we have and oxidizing it for righteousness. Because that last zadik at the end of that word, it means righteousness.

So when you put those together it may confuse, it did me for a minute, and then I thought about it, wait a minute. This person is getting their life from their own righteousness. In other words, the self-righteous. This is exactly the children, when he says he's the king of the children of self-righteousness. The picture obviously of the Pharisees or the Sadducees, but sadly, often, the picture of me.

Like I can do this on my own without God, that I can get it done in my own righteousness. Well, this is really a horrible thing, because what you have here is this dragon that is so proud, which is obviously a picture of Satan. He's so proud that he sucks in all those proud children of his, and just like Jesus said, your father is the devil. And so here we have a picture clearly of this father of the children of pride coming right before us, as Job is understanding what God is telling him here.

Pay attention. You can't take this guy on without me. And so my good friend, Pastor Carson, was telling me this story about this young boy, and he wanted to move a rock that was in his backyard. This is an amazing story.

It's going to roll around in my soul for a long time. But anyway, he was working on this rock, and he tried getting a pitchfork out there to dig up underneath it, and he tried a shovel to leverage his way out of it. Pushed on it, he tugged on it.

He tried putting a rope around it and tying it to the tractor and the lawnmower. He tried everything that he could possibly try, and when he couldn't move the rock, he just laid down on the rock in total despair and exhaustion of trying to move this rock. And the father came over to him and said, Son, have you tried everything you can to move this rock? And he goes, Oh, Dad, you have no idea. And he went into the whole list of things that he tried. He goes, Are you sure that's everything, every single thing that you could have done to move this rock? And the son said, Yeah, I've tried everything I could possibly think of to move this rock. And the father said, Well, there's one thing that you have failed to do, and that's ask me for help. Like, wow. How many times in my life, maybe just yesterday, was I trying to do something that didn't seem to move, and I failed to ask the father for help? Am I going to be someone that does it by myself, or am I going to be someone that does it in God's strength, especially my own salvation? Let's all pay attention to which father we are reacting to and read Job 41 in your own time. It's quite quite the chapter.