The Gospel According to Job 6

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Speaker 1: Welcome back. After a couple of a troubling podcasts and YouTube shows. Book of Job. Like I said, it's a nerving and frightening and confusing and wonderful all at the same time. And by the way, the wonder of it is just going to blow your way and it's going to explain so much, even though in the end we may not like it, I get that right. So the core message is this is how God works. And again it really is an image of the Cross, so you just may be surprised we're going to talk about it. Welcome to Gospel Rat podcast and Doctor Bill Sinord YouTube channel. I'm your host, Doctor Bill Sinard. We're free wherever you get podcasts, of course on YouTube as well, so please subscribe. As always, one of the fastest ways you can help us grow is by leaving your comments below. Thank you sincerely for that, and thanks for making Gospel Podcast one of the top ten percent podcasts in the world. Isn't that crazy anyway? Thank you for listening every week. We hope that it helps to regularly hear about God's love for the unlovable, unloved, unlovely, unworthy, and unlikely. And that's all of us that's you. That's be no judgment. It just is on any given day if we were just a little bit honest. All right, I just want to get right back into this after a brief word from our sponsors, we'll be right back. So things to watch for as you read and study job number one. Job is not condemned by God. Never. God has no charges pending against Job. He is humanly speaking, legally speaking, innocent. And you know, part of the reason is he's used sacrifice, he's used atonement. He understands God requires that Jesus the cross right. So Job is not being punished, he's not being disciplined. Soop stop saying that teachers. Two. Watch for Job's assessment of his innocence. Three, Watch to see if Job curses legally, curses God to his face, then Satan wins. Four Watch to see if Job ever is out of sync with God. And we know he and God says, so. Five is Job's faith conditional? Any fingerprints of the retributive principle of the three friends? So here's job seven. Tw If I have sinned the Hebrew Hatah, what have I done to you? A watcher of men? Why have you made me your target? Have I become a burden to you? Why do you not pardon my offenses? That's the word pashah, and forgive my sins? That's a bone. Fascinating choice of words. The three words for sin, hatap, a shah, and a bone are really the trinity of the words for sin and Hebrew, meaning anything I've ever done that was off base, anything anything unknown or known, very important common words in the Old Testament. Well, here's my rough translation of seven twenty. So, man watcher, let's say hypothetically that I did fall short of perfection, which I'm not pleading guilty to at all, in the big scheme of things, What real difference does it make to you? What could I have possibly done towards such a beating as the strenuous oppression warn you out? Rather, why wouldn't you just take my supposed rebellion off of me and take it on yourself, Just take away my iniquity? So sarcastically so, God, even if I did sin, wouldn't it have been so much easier just to take them off of me? He's claiming innocence, but deeply honors God by arguing that God can and does lift sin from his people. Sacrifice the cross. This is way before the cross. But that's what God does, that's the nature, that's the desire, the passion of God, the rescue of sinful people. So sarcasm aside is a bold statement of the character of God by someone in such pain, such a justice, such suffering. Right. In response to Bill Dad's formulaic understanding of the perfection of God, Job responds in nine to two. Indeed, I know that this is true. But how can a mortal be righteous before God? Well? This is trial language. How can a mere man ever hope to win a lawsuit against God? How can a person prove to God that he's innocent? Right? You see the conundrum. How can anyone ever hope to be acquitted when it's God who's the accuser and the judge? What would pursuing litigation against God even look like? Here's Job ninety three. Though one wished to dispute with him, meaning taking him to trial, he couldn't answer him one time out of a thousand. His wisdom is profound, his power is vast. Who has resisted him and come out unscathed? Meaning what good would it do to take God to trial? Well? Job knows that no one could stand up under his cross examination. That's a very high view of God. And here's my expanded version of nine fourteen to twenty one, and then later thirty two to thirty five. I think this will help quote. How then can I answer charges from him? What arguments could I possibly make? Even though I am innocent, I cannot answer him. The only semi reasonable course of action left to me is to beg my judge. Even if I could somehow officially summon God and he actually came to the courtroom, I can't imagine he would really sit there and hear my case. I suspect he would crush me with a storm this time and multiply my wounds for no reason. He would not let me regain my breath, but would overwhelm me with misery. If it is a matter of strength, he is mighty. If it's a matter of justice, who has the social way to actually summon him? So let's say I go to court before God, totally innocent, no doubt I would say something offensive or inappropriate and blow it. Then I wouldn't be innocent anymore. Although blameless, I'm not concerned with myself. I reject my life. God is not a man, that I might answer this charge, that we might go to court. If only there were an arbitrator. Maybe you know someone who has the authority to ensure that both parties abide by the resolution. Someone to remove God's rod from me, so that God's terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak up without fear of him. But as it stands now with me, I cannot close quote. You see the conundrum. The idea is that Job gets it. There is absolutely no no way to settle this complaint against God from a human standpoint. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that he can possibly do to restore his experience of being with God and being in God's favor. That would be paganism. This isn't paganism. God's favor is not purchased by us, is purchased by him by his son. So the complaining, the reasoning of what the trial would look like, the imagining of a mediator, nothing that he is aware of could possibly work. Is he out of sync with God? Yes? And no. Yes, God is not stalking him, but it sure feels like it is God angry at him. No, but it feels like it is God being cursed by Job. Absolutely not high view of God, high high view of God's justice. That's why the complaints are so visceral and universal and relatable. His legal questions are valid, His frustration is normal, His heightened metaphors are reasonable. In fact, to be calm and collected would be tragic. It wouldn't make any sense. It would be narcissism, it would be something nonhuman. This is not stoic fatalism. This is not emotionless so called hyper calvinism. You know what happens happens? What is the most maddening thing to Job? He's helpless. He knows that he's innocent. God agrees, He knows that God is just. God agrees. I mean, how can you reconcile that he knows something is terribly wrong? He doesn't have his book to read, the book of Job. So this is the fingerprint of a wild, heaven born faith. Even though he's in the midst of the worst possible thing. He believes Jesus on the Cross. It's heaven born, spirit born, god born faith, not ours. It doesn't come from us choosing. He will even imagine the judge stepping down on the ash heap and taking the beating on his behalf, which is what Jesus will do. He steps down on our ash heap with all the wounds, and he's going to carry them for us and rescue us. He still does not curse God from his heart, not yet. But he also does not just suck it up and confess something just to get God off his back. Right, that would be pagodism. That's what the three friends suggested. Job's a righteous man, he's a man of faith. To confess would be a lie and an offense to God, right Job thirteen to three. But I desire to speak to the Almighty and to argue my case with God. Though he slay me, yet I will hope in him. That's that heaven born hope. It's a fruit of the spirit. I will surely defend my ways to his face. Indeed, this will turn out for my deliverance, for no godless man would dare come before him. Man, that's capital of faith. Such heaven sourced holy spirit faith makes us run towards God even when we think He is persecuting us. There your following me. The human is speaking the last place. Job would run as to God. He want to run away like Jonah. So even if we think that he's the one causing or allowing my pain. This heaven in faith and hope draws me. There's a part of me that's going, don't do it, don't do it, and it is so powerful it overrides that even when the very same God is allowing suffering, he could stop it. But all too often, all too often he doesn't. Why Because we'll build on this Job's God orda in quest is a gift. It's a reward for Job's faithfulness, and it gets Job glory, which is one of the things that God wants for me, for you. So to get there, I got to go through pain and suffering and craziness. In the end, all is going to be rectified and explained. If God withheld the final blessing, well, that would be crazy. That'd be a travesty, and that would be a sin by God. Right makes sense if there was no resurrection and glorification in Jesus setting on the throne the cross. You know, Look, still we have nasty questions to address. What about Job's family, what do they think? What about the injustice? What about not asking Job for permission? I got that question, and we're going to try to answer those yeah. So for now the readers see two levels of gaming. There's the wager between Satan and God. Then there is the silent question between God and Job, where Job has the opportunity to crush the head of the stake for the prophecy. And this is what heaven born faith, spirit birth faith can do in such situations. It's one of the reasons you know you have it. It's one of the ways you can see it in other people. Though he slay me, even feeling unjustly, I'm going to trust in him. Where else would I go? So anyway, listen to thirteen eighteen Faith Ignited Hope. Now that I have prepared my case, I know I will be vindicated. Can anyone bring charges against me? Well? If so, I'll be silent and die. Only grant me these two things, oh God, and then I will not from you. Withdraw your hand from me, and stop frightening me with your terrors. Man, that's so wonderful. Then summon me and I will answer, or let me speak, and you reply. How many wrongs and sins have I committed? Show me my offense and my sin? Why do you hide your face and consider me your enemy? Will you torment a wind blowed leaf, being a helpless dead leaf. Will you chase after dry chaff? For you write down bitter things against me and make me inherit. The sense of my youth is the n sync with the mind of God. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, this is this is such great God. Focus God, honor and complaint. Don't try to do this on your own. This is a heaven born thing. He is humbly and publicly recognized that only God can fix this bizarre situation. He can't appease God. That's paganism. This isn't paganism. It's something different Jobe nineteen seven. Though I cry I've been wronged, I get no response. Though I call for help, there's no justice. He has blow way so I cannot pass. He has shrouded my paths and darkness. He has stripped me of my honor and removed the crown from my head. He tears me down on every side till I'm gone. He uproots my hope like a tree. His anger burns against me. He counts me among his enemies. His troops advance and forced. They build a siege ramp against me, and in camp around my tent. This is great language He has alienated my brothers from me. My acquaintances are completely estranged from me. Though I cry violence hummas, there is no help. It feels like God's job is treating me like an enemy. That's what it feels like. He's not but that's what it feels like. He's blocked in like a siege. Those were man, those were dehumanizing. God has removed him from his former seat of honor. Is he in sync? Yeah, he's in sync with God. This is a stunning ancient complaint language. For some of you, this is very frightening that anyone who would speak to God this way you wouldn't. But God prescribes it biblically reached eighty eight A couple of times read it aloud. Very similar themes, very similar language and metaphors. The righteous person of that of such faith is supposed to officially complain. God gives that to you. It's actually a practice of faith. In today's lingo, if you prefer just put the English I feel like in front of each statement, that will help when you're being subjected to the horrifying things that job is going through, or what you're having to have gone through or have gone through in your life. Your heart is going to be much more direct because it's wounded and angry and reactionary. God knows that. And God is doing this or he's not stopping it. God is doing this to Job or not stopping it, whichever you can stomach the most. But to Job, they're the same. Is Job crossing the line? Well, let's look at that. After this brief message for our sponsors, we'll be right back. So is Job crossing a line? You know? The bet no Yuah, look at Job nineteen twenty five. I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see Him with my own eyes. Aye, and not another How my heart yearns within me. You see, he's still even in the midst of this, and after he's accusing God, there's this alien thing in him that wants to be in God's arms, that wants to see God, his redeemer, rescuer, face to face. I know they will come a time, he's saying, when God himself will come right here in this ash sheep. He's going to redeem me he's going to rescue me. By the way, at the end of the Book of Job, the Book of Job proclaims God as the rescuer and redeemer. We read the Book of Job and we talk about bad things happen to good people, good things happen about But the Book of Job is all about God rescuing humans being treated unjustly and unrighteously. He's the rescuer, the redeemer. Yeah. From our vantage point looking backwards, we interpret this to mean when he says, I know they'll come a time when God, I'm self will come, we interpret this to mean Jesus, the heavily redeemer, the one who actually redeems and rescues me. And you know, Job didn't have Jesus in mind, but he had in mind that this was the heart of God. This is what God does that he does. He's making a very bold statement on the surface about the confusing nature of God. To him, right, God's a redeemer, God's a rescuer, God's just. He seems to have that, and that's faith, not logic. In Job's case, it appears that God's against me unjustly. It seems like, but I know somehow in my heart of hearts that in the end he's going to rescue me, because that's what God innately does. This is my God, says Job, looking and sounding very different than his three friends who were immersed in paganism, but God is going to rescue them as well. God is both the antagonist and protagonist in this story and yours and mine. God is both the judge and the defendant and the prosecutor in his trial in our trhile and Job trusts that somehow, So how's it going to turn out? And why would any of us like that to happen in our lives? Well, we're going to pick that up in the next podcast, the next YouTube show. Yeah, but before that, check out my new teen fantasy book. It's available in Amazon and Kendall Shadow Down. It's a C. S. Lewis esque fantasy and an allegory the Book of Job, and it's in sync with this podcast series, so it'll help us see, help us understand what's going on here in a different language. Adults are love. Get on getting great feedback. Give me your feedback bill at gospeldashat dot com. If you like it, give a review on Goodreads and Amazon now that's so helpful. Yeah, we'll see you next time. Take heart, child of God.