Job 42: Some Things Never Change | Guest Speaker: Brad O'Kelley

Good morning.

I'm looking around this room.

There's like 20 people in this room that are more suited to speak to you today.

I assumed all of you were dead.

And that's why they asked me.

So I'm glad that you're alive.

What a day.

This is gonna be great.

Yeah, I feel better about it now.

It's all good.

I don't want you to worry too much though, okay?

I um my name's Brad O'Kelly, by the way.

I guess I should start with that.

Um I'm a nobody here.

I don't uh I don't do anything.

I mean, I'm not an elder, I don't work here.

Um I do help with student ministry.

Audrey got mad at me for that.

Um high school boys, whew, uh yeah, they're a tough bunch, but they're they're good guys.

Um yeah, other than that, that's about it.

I don't worry though.

I do have uh two degrees from one seminary if you're into that jazz.

And then um also I've spoken all over the Southeast to tens of people.

Uh you know the church that you pass on vacation and go, who in their right mind would ever go to church there?

That's the church that calls me to come preach.

And then they don't call me back.

So this is even better because this is the last Sunday we're gonna be in this room.

We've got a brand new room next week.

Russ will be back next week.

We're just gonna pretend like this never happened.

So we swing for the fence, and then it'll be done.

All right?

So we'll have a good time at least.

You're not gonna be any smarter when you leave here, but maybe you'll be able to sit at lunch and go, that was interesting.

Um, whatever.

Let's look at Job 42 real quick one more time.

Uh I know Lindsay Reddit and she did a great job.

I didn't throw any weird names at her.

I didn't do anything like that.

Uh that was perfect of her to do that.

She pumped the ladies' retreat.

Y'all need to sign up for that.

Uh my wife never complains about the ladies' retreat, so it must be pretty decent.

Um, you know, so yeah, you'll have a good time.

But look at Job 42 real quick, because I just want to read through this thing one more time.

And there's just a couple things I want to go through.

All right, look at Job 42, if you got a Bible, if you got your bulletin, or whatever.

It says, Then Job answered the Lord and said, I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?

Therefore, I've declared that which I did not understand.

Things too wonderful for me which I did not know.

Hear now and I will speak.

I will ask, you instruct me.

I've heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.

Therefore I retract and I repent in the dust and ashes.

Let's pray one more time.

Father, thanks for today.

Uh thanks for letting me do this.

Uh, I hope that it makes sense.

I'm gonna let you handle that.

I love you, and we pray your will be done in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, so because we're just getting to know each other, um I've come up with a list of four things that'll help you know me better.

And these are also four things that I know I'm absolutely correct about.

Okay?

You can't change my mind.

My wife's tried.

There's just four things that I will not compromise on.

Number one, we'll just run through them real quick.

Jesus.

I mean, nobody's gonna argue with that in here, right?

Number two, Ford trucks.

Careful.

I was raised Southern Baptist, that's like saying sick them to a dog.

Tell you that right now.

Ford trucks.

Number three, gif peanut butter.

Number four, cottonel toilet paper.

Those are four things that I know for a fact I am absolutely correct on.

You cannot change my mind.

I've been lost without Jesus, life's a whole lot better with him.

I know that for a fact.

I've owned a Chevrolet, I know plenty of you own a Chevrolet.

The Lord will have his vengeance on you.

I'll tell you that right now.

It'll be when you're on vacation, got all them screaming kids in the back, and it's just that's what happens.

Tell you right now, you got a chance.

You got a chance right now to repent.

Change your hearts, buy for.

Third one is gif peanut butter.

That's from a small marital spat that took place early in our marriage.

Uh, when I opened the pantry, uh, I eat one spoonful of gif peanut butter every day.

Okay.

I had a birthday yesterday, I'm an old man, I'm like stuck in my ways, okay?

One scoop of gif peanut butter every day.

I open the cabinet early on in our marriage, and there's this jar.

Glass jar.

Something's happened to it.

You know?

It's separated.

It's weird.

And of course, I called my wife and I said, you know, what is happening here?

And I tend to, I'm just gonna be real honest with you, I tend to overreact.

I don't know if you're picking up on that yet.

I tend to overreact.

And luckily, my wife loves me enough and knows me enough to know that I will overreact in these situations.

And so I call her in there and I go, what is that?

And at this point she knows you're overreacting.

So she says, It's almond butter.

Eat it, it's better for you.

I'm sorry, I didn't hear that last part.

I was looking for my lawyer's phone number.

What?

Have you lost your mind?

Not eating almond butter.

I will go to Costco and buy 872 ounces of gif just to prove it to you.

We will leave it on the counter, you know.

Small marital spat number two.

A lot of people think it was when she sold our furniture while I was at work on Facebook.

It's not.

That's just Tuesday at our house.

Um Marital spat number two was uh buying toilet paper on sale.

Okay?

That's how you end up with Scott Single Py toilet paper.

My question that day was, are we broke?

Am I do I not provide well enough for us to afford the second ply?

What's going on here?

And uh again I was told, shut up and use it.

And she said, even if I did, even if I did buy the stuff that wasn't on sale, I wouldn't buy cottonelle, I'd buy shaman.

Charmin.

That's when I was like, you ever been frustrated enough in a situation where you just audibly pray to the Lord right then?

Not a sweet pastoral prayer, just a prayer, like in this case.

Lord, I know I said for better or worse, but this is a bridge too far.

We need some cottonel in this house.

Now, some of you have picked up on the fact that my list is very short.

There's only four things on the list.

That's because there's about 972 things I've been completely wrong about.

Over and over and over again.

I've been wrong.

So the list is very short, and it's four things.

And so when I look at somebody like Job, if you don't know the story of Job, here's what's going on with Job.

This is 30,000-foot view, you ready?

What happens is he's got it all.

Right?

Just like some of you in this room, you've got it all, whether you realize it or not.

Job has it all, okay?

Everything's going right for Job.

He's got the family, he's got the house, he's got the cattle, he's got all the stuff happening.

And all of a sudden the Lord says, Hey, you know what?

Have you seen my servant Job?

And he says this to Satan.

He says, Have you seen my servant Job?

Look at him.

Look how great he is.

Look how his life is going.

Satan goes, I'm telling you right now, this is Brad O'Kelly's paraphrase, by the way.

He says, I'm telling you right now, if you'll let me get my hands on him, he'll curse you by lunchtime.

And God says, All right, go ahead.

He trusted Job enough to really let Job have to go through this intense suffering.

And then all of a sudden, I'm taking us all the way to the very end of Job's suffering.

He's had friends show up that are morons.

He's had a wife come up and go, why don't you just curse God and die?

I mean, all of this stuff, just in the first couple chapters of Job, all these people come in and they just treat him like junk because the idea in their heads is this is that if bad things are happening to you, it's because you've done something bad.

We know people like that in our lives, right?

I know people like that, because sometimes it's me.

I get that way, right?

Good things ought to happen to good people, bad things ought to happen to bad people, life would be a whole lot better if that were the case.

And these are the thoughts going through the friends of Job saying, the only reason this is happening to you is because you've done something bad and you're not admitting to it.

And Job spends this entire long book running through his friends' comments and sayings and all of this stuff trying to prove to them, I haven't done anything, I don't know what's going on here, I'm kind of lost at it.

And in the midst of that suffering, in the middle of the book of Job, what happens is this is that all of a sudden he begins to allow those people and those words and those comments to influence his mind.

And he begins to question God's judgment, question God's sovereignty, and question God's view of justice.

And now we jump all the way to the end, and guess what's happened?

God has shown up on the scene, and he's dealing with Job.

And just like I have a very short list of four things, I honestly believe that there's four things in this small little passage of scripture right here that absolutely never change.

If we're talking about God in the Old Testament, all the way through the New Testament, how all those things translate, how you can find the gospel in the Old Testament, there's four things that happen in this passage of Scripture that I believe go straight through the rest of the Bible, all the way past Jesus, into Peter and Paul's ministry, and all right to what we're doing today.

All the way.

So here's the first thing I want you to see, and it's real tough.

You're gonna have to write a lot, you know, because uh I I make one-word points.

Okay, so get ready.

First thing I want you to see today is I want you to see confessing.

Look at Job 42, verse 1 and 2.

Job 42:1

The first thing Job does, he says, Then Job answered the Lord, he's face by face, face to face before the Lord.

It says, Job answered the Lord, I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

Now that sounds like some high, lofty language, right?

Like he is really just laying it on thick to show God that he believes this, and this is, you know, this is really Job, like really coming into his own and all this stuff.

This is great.

And here's what's really happening.

What you don't realize is two chapters before, three chapters before in chapter 38, God has shown up on the scene in a whirlwind and is literally dealing with Job in this moment and questioning him.

If you read chapter 38 and 39, I'm talking about peppering this guy with questions.

Did you create the mountains?

Did you make the stream flow?

Have you had anything to do with setting the pillars of the earth in motion?

I mean, he is hammering Job with this stuff.

And finally, Job, in his very first words, the only thing that he can think to say is to confess to the Lord and go, I know that you can do all things.

This isn't some high and lofty statement.

This is literally Job confessing to the Lord that in the midst of his suffering, he forgot that God could do all things and does all things for a purpose.

That sounds like me.

In the midst of the daily life, right?

In the midst of the things that we do every single day, the places that we go, the people that we see, all those things.

When you get to work, when you get into the office, when you're at home with the kids, whatever it may be, it's pretty easy to forget that God's in control sometimes, right?

Because the situation that you're in gets out of control.

That's what's happening with Job here.

In the midst of this suffering, it got out of control.

And this is Job's confession.

I know that you can do all things, and that your purpose can't be thwarted.

Second thing I want you to see today is understanding.

Look at verse 3 and 4.

Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?

Therefore, I've declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

Hear now, and I will speak.

I will ask, and you instruct me.

Now, the crazy thing about these two little verses right here is this is that it's actually Job quoting from previous chapters.

This is some of the stuff that God hammered him with in chapter 38 and 39 and all that stuff.

And what Job is doing is he's saying, You got me.

You got me.

I didn't understand what I was talking about.

I had no clue how this was going to work out.

I didn't know anything about it.

And that I absolutely get.

I celebrated her birthday last night.

It wasn't a big number.

We're inching closer to a big number.

A little worried about it.

That's okay.

You know, it is what it is.

But we went to, we did one of my favorite things, just gathered up spokes, and we went up here to Marietta Square and went to the Butcher of the Baker and had dinner.

That's it.

That's that's birthday.

Okay, done.

But here's the crazy part about Butcher the Baker.

I get the menu and I read the menu, and I'm gonna be real honest with y'all.

I know you're gonna be shocked by this.

There's some stuff on that menu, I don't know what it is.

I have no clue.

I read it.

I know that some of y'all, I know, let me I let me just go there.

Some of y'all are foodies, you know.

Some of you are much smarter than me.

You know what it is.

I don't.

I'm reading through it and I go, I don't get it.

Don't understand how you put these things together.

I don't understand.

I don't even know what that is.

But here's the thing.

I've eaten there a hundred times.

And at first I was intimidated by that.

I would read the menu and I'd be intimidated by it and go, I don't, I don't get it.

I'm a little nervous to eat here, you know.

What's something I can make sense of out of this menu?

And that's the only thing I'm gonna get.

No, no, no, no.

See, here's what I learned is that they have they have great servers, they have all these people that were there, and literally now, and Micah and Katie, they go to church here.

I don't know if they're here today, but they didn't pay me to say any of this.

So um here's the great thing, though, is that is that Micah, he's he's the chef and he takes care of everything.

So as I got to know Mike and Katie, I realized that, you know, there there's some there's some good stuff in here.

I don't understand it, I don't get it, but there's some good stuff in there.

And so what I've learned to do is this is don't worry about what's on the menu.

Stop trying to understand the menu, right?

And just let it happen.

Because Mike is not going to send anything out to me that is gross.

You see, there's a new understanding in my life, and that new understanding is this is that I don't have to understand the menu because I know what's happening in the kitchen.

Does that make sense?

Do you know what's going on with Job right here in this very passage?

Job has been trying to understand the menu for so long.

He's been staring at it and reading it and trying to figure out why is this happening?

What is going on in my life?

I don't understand why all this is taking place.

And rather than stopping in that moment and saying, but it's still an almighty God in control of all of this.

He keeps trying to make sense of the menu instead of just letting something come out of the kitchen.

I get that.

Because I go there all the time.

I get how that works.

We get caught up in this thing, and this level of understanding just escapes us until literally we get before an Almighty God and realize all this time.

I've been trying to understand the menu, and I should have just been waiting on what's coming out of the kitchen.

Job is in the midst of this suffering and in this junk that he doesn't understand.

And literally now he's looking, and in verse 3, he says, Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?

He's quoting God and he says, Therefore, I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know.

This is a brand new level of understanding on Job's part because it has finally hit him that as hard as I may try to understand all of this, it will literally never happen.

Because what's going on is on a different level than where my mind and my heart can go because of an Almighty God and his sovereignty.

He says in verse 4, hear now and I will speak, I will ask you, and you instruct me.

Job is literally looking at God.

These are God's words to Job in chapter 38 and 39.

And Job is looking at God and going, Yes.

This is literally Job's moment of relief where he goes, Yes, please, just let me question what you're doing.

Let me ask, and if you will, will you instruct me on what's happening?

He's literally begging God, please, you instruct me.

I'm tired of trying to figure it out on my own.

Just teach me what you're doing.

It's finally come full circle.

Here's the third thing I want you to see this morning.

Believing.

Look at verse five.

I've heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.

I want y'all to hang with me, okay?

Remember, I went to seminary.

I'm gonna throw some Hebrew at you.

You ready?

I'm prefacing this.

Because I'll probably say it wrong.

There's probably somebody in here that's like a Hebrew scholar, never fails when I go somewhere, that's why I don't get invited back.

I mess it up, and somebody comes up to me afterwards and is like Iin.

You remember that word?

Ayen.

It's the Hebrew word for I.

And all throughout scripture is the same word, ayen, ayen, ayan, ayin.

And here's what happens: ayen, ayen, whatever.

Somebody's gonna come at me and say that after this.

Here's the best part though.

All throughout scripture is interchangeable.

You know what it's interchangeable with?

It's interchangeable with the physical and the spiritual.

In other words, the eye that you physically see with and the eye of your spirit, the eye of the soul.

However you want to look at it.

It's interchangeable all throughout scripture, 840 something times throughout scripture, and it interchanges every time.

Physical, spiritual, physical, spiritual, physical, spiritual.

So when Job uses these words right here, when Job says, I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you, it's not just the physical seeing of God that he's doing because God's on the scene, it's literally a deeper spiritual meaning of what's going on inside of Job right now.

And he's saying, I knew all of this stuff.

I knew it.

But I forgot it along the way.

And now my eye sees you.

I had all the head knowledge.

This is the place that we like to go as parents, right?

This place we want our kids to go, don't we?

We want them to come to a different understanding of how much we love them.

And that's real simple.

Do what we say, do what we tell you to do, and you will be so much better off.

How's that turn out?

It's working great for us.

We're incredible parents.

I don't know if y'all have picked up on that yet, but we are.

We're incredible parents.

It's working great.

Just do what we tell you, and your life will be great.

Never does that work in any place in life, but we want our kids to get that, right?

But what I've started to realize is this is that there are certain things that people like to teach their kids, and I, hey, it's all that's on you, man.

I don't know, I'm not here to fix your parenting or do anything like that.

You do what you gotta do, but you know, my girls, my three girls, my wife, the the house full of women that I live in, you know, there are certain things that they will never be able to say.

You know, my girls will never be able to say, my daddy was the richest or the best looking or the smartest or anything like that.

My wife will never be able to say those things.

Because it's just not true, and that's on me.

I'll take that, you know, I get that.

But what I need them to do is I need to get them to a different level of believing, a different level of understanding in their hearts that while their father or their husband may not be those things, may not be the richest, may not be the best looking, may not be the smartest, I am the guy that will absolutely 100% of the time charge hell with a water pistol for them if I have to.

That's how deep my love is for them.

I need them to get on that level, not the level of knowing that I'm something, that I'm this or that I'm that or whatever.

I need them to know that I'm the guy.

I'm the man in their life that literally will fight every single day for you.

For the glory of God.

And that's easy to forget, right?

That's simple to let that go and forget because let's be honest, it's a lot more fun to be the richest.

It's a lot more fun to be the best looking, a lot more fun to be the smartest.

I would imagine, I don't know.

I'm none of those things.

I would imagine it's pretty good though.

Seems like it from my perspective.

But I don't know.

That's all I have to offer.

You see what I'm saying?

It's all I've got to offer, is I know that they can physically see some things in me, and I need them to get past that and get to a deeper level of understanding.

What Job is doing right here in this very passage of scripture is he's literally looking the Lord in the face and going, I knew all.

Of this in my head, but it makes more sense now and I understand it better because I see it with my eyes.

Not just the physical eye, but spiritually in his heart.

He's coming back to the realization that God is sovereign and over all things.

Last thing I want you to see today is repentance.

Look at verse 6.

It says, but now, or I'm sorry, therefore I retract and I repent in dust and ashes.

Let me tell you what's not fun.

You ready?

Repenting.

There is nothing fun about that.

To have to turn from your sin, to have to turn and admit that you've been wrong.

You know?

Nobody enjoys that.

It's bad when you have to do it before the Lord.

It's even worse when you have to do it like in front of your wife, you know, or something like that, or somebody that you love when you have to turn and make a new way, a new path.

Nobody wants to get into that.

It just shouldn't feel good.

But here's Job, and literally face to face before God, the last thing, the very last thing that he says, and he is literally closing his mouth at this point as he looks at God and he goes, I can't go anywhere else.

I can't do anything else.

The only thing left for me is to repent.

So he says, I repent in the dust and the ashes.

Now here's the beauty of that.

It's we looked at four things, right?

Confessing, understanding, believing, repenting.

Do you realize what's going on in this whole passage of scripture right here?

The tune changes, but the dance is still the same.

This is the same thing that Jonah told the Ninevites.

This is the same thing that John the Baptist preached in the wilderness.

This is the same process all throughout Scripture.

It's the same process.

Paul, Peter, all of those people that took the gospel to the Gentiles, same process.

It never changes.

It's the same four things: confessing, understanding, believing, and repenting.

It's the same thing over and over and over again, right up to the very day where we sit in a chair at Christ the Redeemer.

The process has never, ever changed when it comes to knowing the Lord God.

There's not a lot of things you can say that for in this life anymore.

There's not a lot of things that don't change.

There's not a lot of things that stay the same throughout history all the time, every time.

But when you go to the Word of God, you see over and over again faith and repentance.

And here's the great part.

You ready for this?

And I'll shut up after this.

Here's the best part.

Do you know what happens after Job walks through this process?

The Lord restores him.

Restores him.

Not just the physical stuff.

It says the Lord literally restores him.

He begins to restore Job.

Guess what?

There's also a spiritual meaning inside of that.

Because it's the same thing that the Lord God does for us when we walk through that process.

He restores us and the broken relationship that we had with an Almighty God through his Son Jesus Christ.

We can be restored because of what Christ did for us on the cross.

Let's pray together this morning.

Lord, I don't know if that made any sense at all.

I hope it did.

But the one thing I can say is I thank you that the process has never changed.

That you restore us through your grace and mercy and love through what Jesus Christ did on the cross for us.

We thank you for your restoration.

Lord, as we take communion this morning, remind us of how deep your love is for us.

We love you and we ask all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.