Job's Faithful Response: Prayer and Restoration

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so today is the names hell all change since you hung around, That's

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of the things that are really important to us is that we bring only the

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so here you go. This one today is I think super useful for

our listeners. Right. This almost feels like a cooking segment on the on

the like Good Morning America or something, doesn't it? Or relevant? Or

how to choose the right clothes to wear on the Memorial Day weekend? Kind

of doesn't it? So this one tenet diet tips. That's right. So

this one is the ten best excuses to give the pastor when you're late for

church, which is great. We haven't read these yet, no, okay,

so here goes it says it happens to everyone. Sometimes, despite your

best efforts, you end up being late to church. Though the grace of

God is vast, the grace of your pastor may not be, coming up

with good excuses for being late for church can be important. The Babylon b

is here to save the day by providing you with the following list of the

best excuses you can give your pastor when you're late to church. Number one

implying that these are not true. Yes, Number one, I prayed too

long. This morning, a lost track of time. Yes, sometimes you

end up being late because of how super duper spiritual you are. It happens.

Number two, you could say, my children attempted to murder each other,

and this typically happens every Sunday morning before church, which, by the

way, that would be true, right, yes, yes. Number three

you could offer this one. We had thirty two shoes, but they were

all left feet. We couldn't find any of their matches. Was enough children,

That's entirely pliable. Number four, I was making godly biblical memes about

the Bible and stuff. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's not

likely, right. You know that you do know that ability to create spicy

memes as a spiritual gift, right yeah? Yeah? Okay. Number five,

I had to own some libs on Facebook, doing the Lord's work.

Yeah, doing the Lord's work, man, good, bust some people for

being liberal on the Facebook. Okay, here we go. Number six,

The last shall be first. Hey, Jesus said it, pastor, I'm

just trying to follow Jesus. That's right, And so if you're going to

follow Jesus, then you have to be last one. That's a good one.

By the way, you could use that in almost any setting. It

is it is. Yes, yeah, I shall be first. Oh no,

oh no, here comes the hate mail. Number seven, Greta Thunberg

was sitting in the road. Should someone be expected to run over protesters?

How dare you? Number eight? I'm not here this week, but I'm

actually getting here really early for next week. That's really funny. You're getting

to church a full week before the pastor. We because we do four services

on a Sunday at Heritage Church. I think it's really funny how some people

they show up so late. They're like, well, I'm just just the

next one. I guess I'm just early for the next one. Yeah,

it's so funny. Okay, So number nine was I was caught up to

the Third Heaven. That was in the Book of Revelation. Oh, the

Bible says, yeah, he's John says that he was in the spirit on

the Lord's Day and he was caught up into the Third Heven. And the

subtitle says, your pastor will be so much in awe that he'll forget that

you were late. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. It was.

It was it John, There, No, it wasn't. I think

that was Paul caught up into the third heaven. Okay, and then number

ten, I have a wife, say no more, no more. I

have a wife that is actually pretty brutal. It's why are you late?

I have a wife that's terrible. Actually. However, yeah, however,

yeah, there's there's a stereotype for a reason there. Say no more is

what it literally says here on the page, right, So just rattle off

one or more of the excuses listed above and you'll be golden, become a

master of the late church excuse, and you can just show up whenever you

want. It's so funny. Okay. You know there are people who intend

on being late. They're just not music people, so they actually purposefully only

showed up for the message the time. It not too many in our church,

right, because our music is really good, because our preaching is not

that good. Our preaching is not that good. I was gonna say the

music is really good. But yeah, that's funny. It's funny. Okay,

Well, only the finest for our listeners. From Yes, you're welcome,

everybody, You are so welcome. It's our privilege. That's great,

it's our pleasure, isn't that what Chick fil A says? Our pleasure,

yeahure, yeah, yeah, Chick fil A is the best. Okay,

I love Chick fil A. Yeah yeah. I saw in an episode recently.

My daughter sent me a clip. She was watching the episodes while I

was out out of the country and it was one of the Bible Guys live

events. Oh yeah. We were asking for somebody to mention an overrated restaurant

member, and somebody shouted out chick and we just went after that. We

went after him. That's Jesus Chicken. Man, You're like you got a

lightning broad right on top of your head. I don't think you go to

heaven now. It's really funny. Don't mess with Jesus Chicken. Okay.

So here we are Job chapter forty two. After all the things, let

me just remind you now, God goes into even more challenges. He tells

Job again, hey, brace yourself like a man. I've got more questions

for you, and he goes, are you as strong as God? You

know? Can you just speak with like thunder like like my voice? Can

you, you know, do all the things I can do? Of course

you can't, And then he starts talking about one time He mentions what was

the one behemoth some giant animal. And well, this one's Leviathan. Oh

you're saying in another place. Yeah, So in a previous chapter in here

he's talking about this giant creature that God made called Behemoth. And then here

in Leviathan. You read Leviathan, and it sure seems like he's talking about

a dragon, by the way, some kind of a dinosaur, kind of

a creature. It's really really interesting. You can read that yourself if you'd

like. I can in Job chapter forty one, and God saying did you

make that? Uh no, no, you didn't let me answer it for

you. So finally, when it's all done, Job says this in chapter

forty two, verse one, he says, Then Job replied to the Lord,

I know that you can do anything and no one can stop you.

You asked, who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorance? It's

I, And I was talking about the things I knew nothing about, things

far too wonderful for me. You said, listen and I'll speak. I

have some questions for you, and you must answer them. I had only

heard about you before, but now I've seen you with my own eyes.

I take back everything I said said and I sit in dust and ashes to

show my repentance. Who that is so strong? It's so strong. So

after he's all done, the Bible says, after the Lord had finished speaking

to Job, he said to Eliphaz the timidnight, I am angry with you

and your two friends, for you have not spoken accurately about me, as

my servant Job has. So take seven bulls and seven rams and go to

my servant Job and offer a burn offering for yourselves. My servant Job will

pray for you, and I will accept his prayer on your behalf. Will

not treat you as you deserve, for you have not spoken accurately about me,

as my servant Job has. So Aliphaz the Temanite, bill Dad the

Shoeyite, and so Far the Namathite did as the Lord commanded them, and

the Lord accepted Job's prayer. When Job prayed for his friends, the Lord

restored his fortunes. In fact, the Lord gave him twice as much as

before. Then all his brothers, sisters, and former friends came and feasted

with him in his home, and they consoled him and comforted him because of

all the trials the Lord had brought against him, and each of them brought

him a gift of money and a gold ring. So the Lord blessed Job

in the second half of his life even more than in the beginning. For

now he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand teams of

oxen, and a thousand female donkeys. He also gave Job seven more sons

and three more daughters, and he named his first daughter Jemima, the second

Kaziah, and the third Karen. Happuch, in all the land, no

women were as lovely as the daughters of Job, and their father put them

into his will along with their brothers. Job lived a undred and forty years

after that, living to see four generations of his children and grandchildren, and

then he died an old man who had lived a long, full life.

Wow, one hundred and forty years after that. Yeah, it was halfway

through. That's what Bible says, right, second half was greater than the

first. It said it said that he named his first starter Jemima, and

then his second has a Kaziah. So I mean Kaziah's children would have had

an ant Jemima. No, it's true. It's true. It's true.

Come on, it's true. You can't it's true. You can't argue with

the it's true. That's right, and Jemimah and man, she made good

sir, that's so funny. Man, that's true. That's great. Yep,

only Chris Sarba, let me let me just say that. Well you

said loud, you said Jemimah. I did. How do you not think

of a Jemimah? Well? I did, but I didn't realize that.

Literally, Kazya kids and Karen's kids, right, and then the three the

seven brothers kids. There's a bunch of cousins and nieces and nephews and an

Anchemima. That's right. That's awesome, man, And your mama takes a

role. That's great. So here we go. I think Job's response is

phenomenal. Right now, you gotta remember all these things we just read.

God is speaking from a tornado, right right? A whirlwind, Yeah,

it was it. A tornado could have been just like a little a whirlwind.

You ever see that? Do you ever see the like air spinning in

a circle but not as fierce as a tornado? What's a tornado? How

like I've seen I've seen in an alleyway leaves in a circle that go all

in a tornadic fashion. Okay, so okay, so you're saying the semantics

are, doesn't matter how strong the tornado is, it's still a tornado.

Yeah, that's what you're saying. Yeah, but of course God was talking

about my voice like thunder. Also, by the way, did you say

in a tornado fashion? Yes, that's so funny. Yeah, it's so

funny. So so God also was speaking and mentions his voice sounds like thunder.

So I doubt it was a little dust devil with thunder voice. Yeah,

okay, all right, fine whatever, right, So anyways, okay,

I get it, all right, right, So, so I think

this is pretty very substantial. And by the way, his buddies are all

sitting there, elephants is there? These are these three guys are there?

Man? Right? And how about how about the Lord? The Lord's like

sort of going back to them and scolding, the kind of roughing them up,

well, because they're they're coming from man's perspective rather than Finally, Job

shifted around. Even though Job was like, God, I don't understand why

this happened. I feel like you're being mean to me. I think that

you're not paying attention to the other bad people on the planet. I'm a

pretty good guy, and you know he's frustrated with that. But God is

is while God challenged him, there's a lot of sarcasm of God's challenge by

the way he's pretty biting and the things he says. But Job's response is,

well, let me do this for you, because he does this twice

where God pauses and Job responds right, So he pauses in the middle,

and in chapter forty, Job just simply says, I'm nothing. How could

I ever find the answers. I'll cover my mouth in my hand. I've

said too much already. I have nothing more to say, so Job saying,

look it, I've overspoken. I didn't know what I was talking about.

I'm not going to say anymore. And then God goes, well,

let's go on, brace yourself like a man. I got some more questions

for you, and God just kind of piles on, going, dude,

you don't know anything. And finally Job's response is you can do anything and

no one can stop you. And he said, you asked me. You

know who is it that questions my wisdom with such ignorance? He goes,

it's me. I was one was talking about things I knew nothing about him.

Yeah, that's the phrase that stands out to me. I mean,

obviously the one that he says about the ears in the eyes is the strongest

one. But when he says I was talking about the things I knew nothing

about to literally take every bit of uh. I mean, think about how

many words have been spoken. Think about all those chapters where Job is just

you know, imparting. You know what, we would look at and say,

yeah, that sounds like good reasoning, It sounds like good wisdom,

sounds like good logic, it sounds like good emotion, like that, these

are all reasonable things. And then for Job to literally come to the conclusion

and says, I was I didn't know anything. I don't know what I

was talking about at all. And what he's doing is he's responding and saying

compared to God, I thought I had, you know, a level of

wisdom, a level of insight, but come to find out I've had nothing.

Yeah. Right, And so I think that sometimes we need to recognize

the fact that no matter how smart we think we are, when we're trying

to figure out God, you know, the bottom line is is all of

us are in the same camp as Job. I had the privilege serving with

a pretty famous pastor. I was twenty six. I think I was twenty

five. No, I had just turned twenty six when I started serving with

him, I think. And I served until just before I turned twenty eight.

He was eighty five years old, so he'd been in ministry, he

and his wife for sixty five years. He had two earned doctorates, right,

just incredibly brilliant. He had pastored and built one of the greatest churches

in American history up to that point. I say his name, you know

what I'm talking about, And so I'm a young man. And he would

sit on the front row of the church service. After he had a college,

he'd sit on the front row of the church service and just let anybody

come up and just ask questions after Sunday night church until everybody was done.

But he couldn't hardly hear. So I'd sit with him and I'd help say,

you know, what did he say? I'd say a thing, then

he just answered and he just oozed wisdom. Incredibly intelligent man, wise man.

But I can remember going to They would often take my wife and I

to lunch, which was weird, you know, twenty seven year old's going

out with two eighty five year olds eighty six year olds for dinner every week

after church, and we went because they bought us free lunch, and we

were poor, so that was great. But I can remember talking about them

and their ministry, and I had learned more and more and more about all

the things he'd done all over the world, all the things God had helped

him do, the thousands of preachers and missionaries that had come out of his

school, and all this stuff. And missus Malone said, well, you

know you're seeing us at this point of we're way more gentle because we're way

more wise. And those two things are because we're older. And she said,

I think our greatest mistakes were how many people we hurt because we were

right, but we did it the wrong way. She said, the more

doctors we got, the more we realized, how we know, the more

educated we became, the more experienced we became, the more humble we became.

So when we were younger and we were getting the experience and we were

achieving all the things, nothing could stop us. And she said we sometimes

would bulldoze people. And doctor Malone said, uh yeah, he said,

I had smart, but not wisdom. Well, right, he said I

was intelligent, but I wasn't wise, right, And he said, the

older I got, the more wise I became, the more wise I became,

the more humble I became, and that caused me to me more gentle

towards others. And that's what it feels like here because Job highlights the fact

that he's chosen the wise path. That's why he lived the life he lived

before God allowed this to happen in his life. Right, he's saying,

I chose the wise path. But now what you hear have is this incredible

humility from Job where he's going. You know, I was talking about I

was talking about things I knew nothing about, things far too wonderful for me.

And I was thinking about a big argument I recently heard between two quasi

theologians, both of them well read, fairly educated, fairly well educated,

young, and they were arguing with so much confidence. Right, you've been

around that before, Yeah, of course, so much confidence. And you

know what, both of them had elements of truth in their arguments, but

they were arguing their their their elements of truths as if they were absolute,

total, definitive fact. And so on occasion I would just inject out,

what about what if have you ever thought of? And they got frustrated with

it. You know, they came back later on, we had a secondary

conversation with it, and they were a little bit more humble about it after

they thought about it. But it's interesting that confidence sometimes is the luxury of

the young and the inexperienced. But here here's a guy that he come out

of it and finally he goes, God, your things are too wonderful for

me to understand. And I was speaking about stuff I should have kept my

mouth shut about. But then I love this. Here's my favorite part in

the whole story. It's not the restoration of everything that God gives back to

him. My favorite part is this. I had only heard about you before,

but now I've seen you with my own eyes. I take back everything

I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.

He goes, dude, I only heard that. That's you and me.

We've only heard about God. I've never had God show up in a tornado

shouting and thunder at me. Right. I never had that experience. I've

never had any kind of like face to face encounter with God. The extraordinary

privilege to be job. Yeah, yes, but you could apply that also,

right, because every truth like this has an application. You could apply

it to those people who don't like you. And I will never probably physically

see God until we go to heaven. The chances are pretty good about that.

But you can also translate that into witnessing seeing God working, absolutely see

God's work. Yeah, because because you know when you when you hear somebody

tell you about God and oh God so amazing, you're like, Okay,

I've heard about it. But then when you witness God doing a miracle in

the in your midst and he does things in your own life and the lives

of people around you to such a degree towards undeniably God, and then you

see that you could make that statement, I've only heard about God, but

now I've seen Him with my own eyes, because we have the privilege of

the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and the evidence of the

Spirit is is is sometimes very tangible, right, even though that God himself

may not be tangible. Well, the fact that God goes back and he

uses his own creation as evidence of how great he is means that you and

I can see how great God is just creation, that's right. And then

we can also see God when he intervenes that he does miracles and he you

know, casts out demons, and he he saves people whose lives could never

turn around on their own, and when God heals and God does so many

incredible things. But we have God's word completed. Job did not. This

is the first book in the Bible, right, jobs written book? Ye,

first unwritten books because I think the nature of a book is that it's

written. It doesn't come chronologically first when you open the Bible. Oh yeah,

the Bible is not in chronological order. Yeah, but this this would

have been the first book that had been their unwritten books. I don't understand.

And so in that I think it's incredibly Uh, it just moves me.

Like when I read it, I teared up just a little bit.

I've only heard about you before, but now I've seen you with my own

eyes, and the number of people that I've seen who God just radically transforms

their lives and they go, I heard about it before, but I never

thought it was for me, and it is for you. And then God

challenges his buddies and goes, hey, you guys were wrong, job right?

You need to repent of that, and then God gives me back everything

times two. Right. So this was a short season in Job's life.

We are horrified. We talked about this yesterday. If you missed it,

you should go back and watch it. It was at the end of the

episode we talked about yesterday that God is more concerned about our character than he

is our comfort. And Job had said in the middle of the book here

that I know this that when I come through this, when I'm tried and

purified, I'll come forth as gold. And God is purifying. There's way

better in you. But the only way that God can get it out sometimes

is knocking off the rough spots, right, And that's what he does,

is he pulls out the best. I can't think of a person in the

Bible who finishes better than Job. Yeah. Right, And he had he

had every reason, every reason in our minds to turn against God. I

lost my children, I lost my wealth, I lost my wife turned against

me, I lost my health. My friends are coming after me and just

being a bully to me. God, I feel like you've abandoned me,

and it's your fault. You did it right, But I trust you and

love you. Anyways, and he finishes so well, and that's I think

one of the big things that your past is your past. But God,

if you humble yourself like like Job did, God took that as the sacrifice

he made the other guy's sacrifice. He didn't make Job sacrifice, right,

Hey, you guys go sacrifice for your sins. But Job, I'm going

to accept that humility as your sacrifice. And there's something to that, you

know. It also reminds me, I don't know what the deal with my

voices today, so sorry that I'm coughing and everything else cleared my throat.

But the it reminds me another scripture later on. What is a scripture that

says comparing ourselves among ourselves and measuring ourselves by ourselves is not wise? Yeah

yeah, yeah, in the New Testament, but it talks about that,

and that's what it reminds me of too when I think about, you know,

somebody who you know has hardship and they have hardship come their way,

and what they say is they're saying, like, geez, this didn't happen

to all my other friends, you know, like all my other friends are

life, and yet here I am and I'm better than them, right,

Like, I've tried harder than them. These guys don't even love God.

And here I am. I've given my whole life to God, and yet

I have this lot in life that is you know, that is bad.

And you know, I just think that there's some wisdom in the fact that,

you know, we shouldn't compare ourselves. We should just you know,

among ourselves and be jealous and envious. I think that that's a human thought,

and I think that God steers us away from those kind of thoughts because

when it comes down to it, everything that happens to us is all about

our relationship with our heavenly Father, not about those around us. It's not

about the wicked, it's not about others around us. It's not about what

God chooses to do with other people. Right, We should just measure it

with our relationship with God and what we know about him. Yeah. And

then after all the criticism and the kind of the bullying from his friends,

the bad advice, job praise for his friends, right, Yeah, So

he's humble in front of God and he's humble in front of his friends.

Well, God said, if not for job, praying for you, right,

right, Like he says, I'll go ahead and accept Job's prayer for

you, not your prayer. Right, Job's prayer. Right, You guys

deserve judgment now because you were so messed up, your advice was so off.

That'll give you that. That'll heighten the value of a godly friend.

Right, But what kind of humility does it take. So this idea of

loving God and loving people, we want to serve God, we want to

serve people. But he's also humble before God. He's humble before people.

In this moment, it's it's hard. It's hard to pray with people.

I mean, he starts to say, I kind of feel like you guys

are treating like enemies. He actually says that, and Jesus says, love

your enemies, and Jesus says, pray for your enemies. Jesus said,

do good to your enemies. And this is what we're seeing. We're seeing

Job live it out. So the whole thing he finishes, so well,

that's great. Well, hey, that's a great way to wrap up Job.

And we're going to pick up tomorrow with Uh, she's don't even what

we're doing tomorrow. What are we doing? Exodus? Exodus? We're joining

the Exodus. Wow. Yeah, okay, well, hopefully we will see

you next time on the Bible guys. Mhm h