The Gospel According to Job 8

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome back. How do you deal with suffering and loss and bad things happening to good people? COVID wars, human trafficking, just regular day to day injustices and a fairnesses. What's your go through strategy? Well, we're going to talk about it. Welcome to Gospel Ran podcast and Doctor Bill Senior's YouTube channel. I'm your host, Doctor Bill Sinyard. We're free wherever you get good podcasts and of course on YouTube as well. Please subscribe and as always, one of the fastest way you can help us grows by leaving your comments below. Thank you ahead of time. Also, thanks for making Gospel Rant one of the top ten percent of podcasts in the world. That's great. Thank you for listening every week. We hope that you'll pass it on. We hope that it helps you regularly hear about God's love for the unlovable, the love the and lovely and worthy unlikely. That's us. That's all of us on any given day. If we want to be just a little bit honest, We're gonna get right into Job. After this brief word from our sponsors, I'll be right back. Even as Job signed his freshly pinned oath of intcence, the clouds noticeably darkened, the air is ominously chilled. If one had strained to listen through the wind and rain, they could hear the bone chilling, cackling laughter of Satan's grotesque victory dance. The fate of the very structures of heaven and Earth were violently disrupted by Job's oath of ediceence. Remember that the accuser, Satan said there was a critical flaw in God's greatest creation, humanity. So you remove the bribes, and humanity is gonna quickly find more supportive deities. They're going to love and serve God only as long as the gravy train continued. What's the point of serving God? What's in it for me? That's what Satan was accusing humanity and God creating them with that flaw. God, on the other hand, seemed more willing to bet on humanity's faithfulness. I think that's exciting. The target mutually agreed upon was Job. He was legally blameless. The narrative says so, upright, the narrative says so, God says so. Both Satan and God testified that was true, And if anyone deserved blessings from God for all of his faithful and as it was Job. If Job received curses instead of blessings, here's the question, would he remain faithful to God or would he legally curse God being unjust, unfaithful, abandoned. So he's the perfect choice. If Job the best of humanity cracked, then there really was no hope to find God's higher love and humanity. But something else is going down. There's a higher game at play, something beyond the capacity of even the heel bider Satan to see. Stage is set and hear the rules for the sake of the game. Not only will blessings do Job be set aside and time and space, but in their place Job will be wrongly treated as if he were guilty of huge celestial crimes, the innocent, treated as if he was a vile criminal, unfaithful, and very unfaithful to God, which he wasn't. There were rules. There can be no intervention by God that could make Job aware of the nature of the bet. In this great narrative, God must remain silent. He cannot appear to offer defense, he can't answer Job's requests charges, and God wins the bet. If Job says something to the effect naked eye came from my mother's roomb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised, which, by the way he does, Satan wins if Job legally he curses God. That doesn't mean this doesn't include complaining, but legally curses God, charges God as being unfaithful. But the game had gone south. In a surprise narrative turn, Job had initiated a legal proceeding the oath of innocence that without God's appearance in the defendant's chair, it must necessarily end up with an implicit or explicit curse. So it appears that Satan has gained a powerful, unalterable upper hand in the chessboard. With the whole plan of God for humanity at stake, what is going to be done? Enter the enigmatic Eli, who so from out of nowhere came a young man, the son of Barachel, a prominent Buzite from the family of ram Eli, who was his name. He was obviously angry and offended at Job for wanting to be vindicated publicly at all costs, even if it included dragging God's no through the mud. He was also in sense that the three so called wise friends couldn't see the obvious citizens of this tormented righteous man. So see, here's the point. There's a righteous God and a righteous man, and then there's this conflict. Right. If you're in that worldview number four we talked about last week, that's confusing. It can't happen. But in worldview number five, it can and does, and you've probably suffered some of the same thing. I think it's helped got to help you make sense of some of this mess. I didn't say I like it, but make sense of it. Here we go. But at the end of the last podcast, I asked a question about Elijhu with different vowel points Eli, who's name could be the same as another famous typical character, who answered from all Elijah, the prophet who is we are told to come before God's return, before God's glorious revealed. And this is in Malachi chapter four five to six. See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents, or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction, which is in a sense what God does with Job. And ultimately we know this refers to John the Baptist, the Elijah s character who comes before Jesus God. But here is the metaphor prophet has come before God's speech, who is going to make Job ready to hear it? And here it is, so Elijah blurted out, And this is my interpreted translation of his talk. With all due respects, I realize that I am young relative to you and your friends, and so I have constrained by tongue to honor my elders. But I can see now that age is not an assurance of wisdom. In reality, we know that it is not age that produces godly wisdom, but God's spirit himself, who gives wisdom to whomever he chooses. I listened to your legal arguments in response to Job's complaint, but sadly found them and consistent and strained. Let's face it, none of you has brought any real evidence to refute Job's claim of innocence. So I intentionally waited until you stopped speaking dead in your jurisprudent tracts. Thankfully, there is only silence now I will take a different approach. Now it is time for me to speak and for you to listen. I am so filled with the spirit of God, I'm about to burst at my seams. Job. It is your sworn testimony, in my very present that you are innocent of all charges related to God. So the only conclusion to draw is that God must have wrongly found you guilty. What are you thinking? Reconsider your case. Your basic syllogism is quite faulty. You imagine that either you are right and God is wrong, or God is right and you are wrong. So if your innocence, then God must be unjust and guilty, or you are guilty and God is just and right to put you through all of this. But what if there's a third possibility where you are innocent and undeserving of this suffering, and God is righteous and purposeful causing them to fall upon you traultman, good a mysterious blessing. That's the point. God has many ways eli who continues that are above our pay grade. Consider the hypothetical case quite different from yours, of a guilty man who is being afflicted rightly due to his sin. In his case, we would both agree that he is getting what he has earned right. But surprisingly, God, without waiting for that man to request a formal hearing like you've done voluntari roily comes to him. Ah, But in his case it's not for deserved judgment. Surprisingly, God takes a very different tact without permission. He uncovers the sinner's ears and with a miraculous loving discipline, restores him to his full favor, honor, glory. He seals the undeserving man to him again why he loves him? Undeserved blessings not the retributive principle at all? Is it? Job? Do you see from even this hypothetical case that God's ways are so much higher and inscrutable. There's a bigger picture to things in God's celestial courtroom. Job, The judge's desire is not just declaring innocence or guilt. God's desire is to rescue the afflicted person's soul and to extend glory and honor to them. It's the flip side of your case. Job, think job. If God does that for non innocence, thinks how he feels to you. Think of what he might be doing for you now elied to you. It's just warming up. Job, what are you thinking. You probably have begun to think this way because you have been listening too long to your foolish, less than righteous friends. Here they say that it is unthinkable that God would ever do wrong. It is true that God is not the author of evil, nor will he pervert justice. But one needs celestial wisdom to hear and apply the breadth of these truths. From your little keyhole vision, there is no way for you to apprehend at all. This requires higher wisdom than you have. Things are far more complex than even you imagine. Job. We're talking about the creator God. He didn't get into that position by appointment. There is no one with more gravitas, no one with more authority, no one to whom God reports or owes anything. If God is such a trivializer of justice as you portrayed you indictment, that he would falsely condemn that's your words, an innocent person as a criminal, how could he ever be judge over anyone. The end of your indictment is a condemnation of the Just and Mighty One. Are you really ready to do that? Are you willing to challenge God's name to vindicate your own job in spite of your complaining, he does hear the cry of the oppressed and needy. He is the good judge, but the range of judicially appropriate responses is eternally broad. Job, then why are you so hung up on getting just what you think that you deserve? What if God wants to give you far more than just vindication? Look like a prosecuting attorney, penstripe suits, lick back hair. You clear your throat to begin your great rhetoric, but when you open your mouth it's only emptiness that's few out. It would have been better to have remained silent. You lie who clears his throat and continues, bear with me a little longer. I will give you testimony on God's behalf in abstincia. I declare that God is not guilty on all charges. I'm telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Stop pigheadedly clinging to your so called innocence. Job, Do not build your case on what God owes you. The only thing that you and all your friends have actually agreed on is that no one, absolutely no human can truly make a solid case of absolute innocence before the penetrating all knowing eyes of the Almighty job. Do you have the hutspot to subpoena God who is the authority over him, to be able to critique his judicial actions? Certainly not? You think with me this applies to your situation. God not only causes the thunder marvelously, but with it he accomplishes great things that we can and I know. And this takes discernment and wisdom. That's the operative point here, job. There is nothing that happens by chance, no random events, including the tragedies in your life, the so call injustices. God knows exactly what he is doing, and you can bet that it is a glorious higher purpose. Listen to this job, I'm out of time. Stand and consider the inner tickings of the wondrous things of God, not just the whats, but the hows and wise. Now is your chance. Job. See he's coming. Look a golden aura comes from the north. God comes in his frightening splendor. Find wisdom, job. There are none with truly wise hearts who can understand what he is truly accomplishing. Behold God, Well, okay, here it is. What do you think I mean? The dickens in this brilliant narrative. Who's going to win God or Satan. What will happen to Job? How will God bring consolation to all who suffered? Right, including Job's family? Final word after a brief message from our sponsors, will be right back assumption. Job and the three friends believe that God always does what is perfectly right and just. Given any event, God will choose the most upright and just path without exception, because God can only do good. So many Christians believe that's the case. Today it isn't, and based upon that assumption, the three friends conclude that Job must be guilty of some offense against God because he's being treated as if he were guilty. Punishment discipline is reasonable, and like I said, it's familiar, likely familiar to you. But in contrast, Job really believes that he is innocent, So unless God tells him what he did wrong, then God is acting on just He initiates the oath of Innocence to force God to testify publicly that he is either innocent or to lay out his case against Job based on the wager, God cannot do either. If God says Job is innocent, then he will have to, based upon the assumption, admit that he mistreated Job treated Job unjustly Eli, who now comes before the well known appearance of God. At the end of the book, he says that there is something far bigger at play. What if Job is innocent and God is behind it all and is still perfectly just and will bring sufficient consolation to all who have suffered unfairly, even to their satisfaction. In reality, Job is right and God is right. How do you figure that out? It takes godly wisdom. I mean, in the end, God always does what is right and just, but he might use bad things, unjust things to work the highest good for those he loves. That's within his tool. I know that's going to bother some of you, most of you, many of you, maybe all of you. But it makes sense right as you think it through. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who He loves, who love him, who have been called according to his purpose for Romans eight twenty eight. But like Jesus on the Cross, he can use injustice for a greater good. One last talk in our series, how is it all going to work out? Probably not what you've heard before. In the meantime, check out my new teen fantasy book, shadow Bound. It's a C. S. Lewis esque fantasy, but it's also an allegory. The Book of Job. I'm trying to bring stuff down to the teen level. Adults love it. I think it's clearing up some of these in the weeds things that I'm suggesting. And I hope that it's in sync with the podcast series Get It for your church's youth ministry, teens in your family, your neighborhood, Amazon and Kindall all right, one more podcast asked for the Book of Job. We'll do it next time. Take Heart, Child of God. M