The Fear of the Lord: Job's Path to True Wisdom

You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk

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b Hi Renee, Renee, we are so glad that you wrote in you

say I love your show. Oh thanks. My only complaint, what my

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big grin on my face as I listen keep up the great work. That's

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Goofy goofy? Okay, right, like like a little out of her mind?

Yeah, well lupy. I I would I would always, I would

think like lopy is more like a like you're sort of in a trance almost

like you, you know, take medicine. It makes you loopy loopy?

Okay, anyways, okay, Well this next one is from Lucia C.

Thank you for reading it. She says, I appreciate the down to earth

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every morning. Also, I just need Chris to know that I now sing

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so funny. Thanks, Lucia. Oh that's great, that's really fun.

So be careful, Lucia. Why don't you stop at that point? Yes,

and don't adopt anything else, Chris says, or does so Lucia's workplace.

I think she's a little lot. Yeah yeah, yeah, now they

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reach out because I'm new to listening to your podcast. Hey, well welcome

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guys talk about the Bible. This podcast is literal gold literal. You love

the use of literal in that way. I have a thing about literal.

I have a thing about it. It's not literally old. Well, hey,

be careful, Lynn is new nice. Oh I wasn't busting on Linn.

I was just busting on the word literally. Well, I think it

is a little literal gold, Lynn, So I think you're y it says

Uh. I've been sharing your podcast with all my friends and family. Jeff

and Chris works so well together. Their personalities compliment compliment each other so well.

Actually, I'm not sure that it's true, Lynn, I'm mostly carrying

Chris most of the time. That's true. That's not true. You're not

You're supposed to argue with me just a little bit on that one. Okay.

I absolutely love you guys. This podcast always makes my day. Oh

well, that's nice. This is amazing, just amazing. I think we

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Lynn. And by the way, I'm not even kidding when I say this,

I'm absolutely one nd percent serious. Uh, you know, we're both

busy guys. In fact, people don't even know this, but you literally

just this is a this is actually where you can use literally. You literally

just landed last night after traveling, after flying how many hours, well,

twenty four thousand, six hundred miles and then and that doesn't count the numbers

number of as you drove. Oh, you're right right, that's right,

right, which means you probably drove and flew the distance where somebody would circle

the glowy around the world. Yeah, oh, definitely, definitely. We

drove about five or six hundred miles into Tanzania on a part of that trip.

So yeah, yeah, it was definitely twenty five thousand miles or more.

Yeah, And that's how much distance around the world, right, right,

right, So that is just crazy. And so all that to say,

you're super busy. I'm super busy. I got home last night and

went straight to a birthday party my grandson's five year old. And you're here

today in the morning. Yeah, and so so you want to talk about

Loopy, let's go. Let's go back to that one. I'm feeling it

today. This might be the good time for you to talk about hig Gui

Loopy. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yesterday, if you were listening

on the podcast, I said, I mentioned Haguy, yes, and I

meant to say Hosea as soon as we were done on the podcast. Yes,

you went, was it ha Guy? Right? I was like,

no, it was Hoseiah and I didn't realize I said, ha guy,

And so I knew all along it was right. You were thinking Jose right,

but I said jose and Gomer. And the funny thing is, the

weird part is is that I had a brain, like a brain a brain

fund where I just we're sorry for that, like we couldn't come up with

Joseiah, and I knew. I knew Gomer. I was like Goomer and

Goomer, Gomer, Gomer and you were talking about Gomer pop. So anyway,

the bottom line is is, uh, I gosh, this is a

thought that went into a thought. My original thought was, even though that

we're really busy, we come into record, I think I'm going to do

this recording, which we do five days in a row. It takes like

four hours. But the only thing that keeps me going is because people say

things like this. They say, man, I really appreciate it. It

really helps me. Uh, you know, I I enjoy it and I'm

learning and uh and I think to myself, well, gee, then we

better keep on making time for this. Right. We were talking to a

mutual friend a while back, right, and we were just saying, we

can't believe people keep listening. It's and I don't mean that in a negative

way. It's just I can't believe people keep listening and they say so many

nice things, and yeah, it's inspiring. It makes us want to keep

going. Yeah, and we're coming up on what almost by the end of

the week. I think the last episode of this week is four fifty four

and fifty episodes. Yeah, four and fifty those episodes together. How many

HG daily episodes do we have? There were like one hundred and seventy of

those, so we're over six hundred episodes together. Yeah, well, doing

podcast stuff, so it's a lot of fun. Hey, when you do

six hundred to anything together, it's yeah, you better like each other,

right, right, right, for sure? For sure? All right.

Well listen, hey, we're going to dive into Job chapter twenty eight.

And this whole entire thing. Job is just working it out, isn't he

is? He's working it out. He has thoughts left and right. He

is trying to figure out what is happening to him. And by the way,

we didn't talk about this yesterday, but picture of this in a pile

of ashes, isn't he still in a pile of ashes? He's sitting there

in sackcloth. Basically, he's wearing like a grain, a grain sack,

you know, and and sitting in ashes and he's right. Yeah. And

the reason why, by the way, is because and I've always thought about

this, was he in ashes because just because it was the softest thing that

existed? Or was he in ashes because it was symbolic like tearing your clothes.

Well, I know it's symbolic, yeah, but yeah, it might

also been just that it was a make that boils because he was covered in

boils, right, and covered boils. He was scraping, scraping his boil.

Oh, there you go, drying it out. He was scraping the

boils off with broken pottery. Because not only had he had everything taken from

him, his oxen and his donkeys and his servants and all his livelihood and

then his family and everything was just taken away, but then the next phase,

phase two, was an attack on his physical body, and then he

was covered with boile. So he's so he's laying there and ashes, you

know, talking to his wife, talking to his friends, and then you

know, just working out his emotions of what is happening? Is God to

blame? How should I react? And by the way, I said this

once you last week. But you know what's encouraging about this is never once

has Job considered taking his own life. His wife suggested it, you're right,

and and die, curse God and die, but no, never once

did he ever? He didn't, And thank goodness, they didn't, you

know, why because right around the corner are blessings upon blessings, And so

when things are the absolute worst and you feel like there's no hope and there's

nothing worth living for, just hang on to hope, just knowing that you

never know what's around the corner. So we are just going at a at

an extremely brisk pace through this book. In we're gonna read Job twenty What

chapter are we reading twenty eight? Twenty eight? Yeah, yeah, we're

reading twenty eight. But if you go back just a few chapters here he

talks about at one point, God knows where I'm going and when he tests

me, I'm going to come out as gold. Remember how we talked about

he kind of he's up and down. Why you guys being mean to me?

Why? Why is God being mean to me? Hey, you know

what, God's testing me and I'm going to come out of this fire and

I'm going to be like peer gold. And then he goes back to the

next chapter twenty four. He's like, how come isn't God paying attention?

How come God doesn't go judge wicked people? So Job's recognizing I'm I've done

the best I can. I'm a good person, and he was even God

recognized Job did not know that God was proud of how good Job was,

right, not at this point. But he's like, in chapter twenty four,

he's like, I'm a good guy. Why isn't God going on judging

bad people? In the whole chapter? It'him going, are you not paying

it sent to the bad people? I got pulled over one time for doing

three miles an hour over the speed limit. I hate that, right,

I hate that I've had that happen once. Now, speed limit was three

miles below an hour below what I was going. And when he walked up,

he said, you know how fast you're going? I was a fifty

eight and it was a fifty five. He goes, that's right, And

he was going to write me a ticket, right, And I'm like,

are you serio, You're going to write me a ticket for three over?

And he goes, well, I can you know I have the right to

write your ticket. And I said, really, of all the things happening

in this city, the single most important thing for you to do is write

me a ticket for three miles over. And he goes, three miles and

overs against the law, and he wrote me the ticket. Then, so

as I thought about it later. He was going to let me off,

but then I got mad and challenged to go. Of all the bad things

happened in this city, the single most important thing was I was doing fifty

eight and fifty five. R dude, go arrest a bad guy. This

is kind of of his Now. I had a bad attitude, but in

this situation job is fairly justified, saying very very justice. Come on,

God, are you paying attention? All the wicked people are prospering, and

here I am miserable, and I think it's your fault. You're doing this

to me. And so he goes through all these conversations with everybody going I

know my life, I know what I've tried to do. By the time

you get to chapter twenty seven, he literally says, I'm going to maintain

my innocence without wavering. My conscience is clear as long as I live right.

I'm not bending on this, and he's talking to his friends at this

point. I'm not bending on this. My conscience is clear, and I

just don't understand it. But I still believe I'm going to come out like

gold. Right. Hey, by the way, before we dive into it,

to all the police officer. Listeners out there, don't pull me over

for three miles. I drove all the way to North Carolina, Duck,

North Carolina, and drove like fourteen hours, and it was four in the

morning, and I had three kids sleeping in the back with blankets, like

tiny little kids, and I was a mile from the house. And that

particular actually was twenty five miles an hour. Okay, he pulled me over

for like twenty eight just almost the same scenario at four in the morning.

And I said, sir, I didn't know it was twenty five. I'm

falling asleep as I'm driving. I just drove fourteen hours to get to this

vacation spot. And he gave me a ticket? Did he really? He

did? Well, just merciless. Yeah, and you know, yeah,

I got a ticket for running a yellow light one time, failure to yield

amber. That's the judge threw it out. He goes, where's the officer

and I said, he's not here. He said, I wouldn't showed up

for this one either, and you just dismissed it. Sometimes, Hey,

thank god for the police officers. I'm complaining about two times, and I

was only saying it from job's perspective. Yes, so if we complain every

once in a while about getting a ticket, we don't feel like we deserve

Job was complaining that God wasn't paying attention to the bad guys, right,

right, So that's all we were doing. There's the reality is I feel

like when I get a ticket, I just go ahead and pay it usually

because there's a lot of times I didn't get a ticket, right, I

mean, I deserve this one, but I deserved one hundred thousand of them,

right, you know, I didn't get them. So anyways, that

brings us up to this point where he goes, I will maintain my innocence

without wavering and my conscious as clear for as long as I live. And

then from this point on, this is his big last speech, his big

last prayer kind of thing. As he's going through this and he's going to

talk about the technology of the day, and I'm just going to blast through

this whole chapter because I think it's interesting. He goes and by the way,

he's talking about wisdom. Where does wisdom come from? Yeah, he

gets to wisdom. Yeah, but he's talking about how wise people are,

and then he goes, God's wisdom is beyond it is where he's going to

go with this chapter. So if you're wondering what it's about, that's what

he's talking about. So you remember this is iron age or the rate at

the beginning of that. So mining was a big deal, right, that

was cutting edge technology. He says. People know where to mind silver and

how to refine gold. They know where to dig iron from the earth,

and how to smelt copper from rock. And they know how to shine light

in the darkness and explore the farthest regions of the earth. As they search

in the dark for ore. They sink a mind shaft into the earth,

far from where anyone lives, and they descend on ropes, swinging back and

forth. And food has grown on the earth above, but down below the

earth is smelted as by fire. Here the rocks contain precious lappy lazuli,

and the dust contains gold. These are treasures no bird of prey can see,

no falcon's eye can observe. No wild animal has walked upon these treasures.

No lion has ever set his paw there. People know how to tear

apart flinty rocks and overturn the roots of mountains. They cut tunnels in the

rocks and uncover the precious stones. And they dam up the trickling streams and

bring to light the hidden treasures. But do people know where to find wisdom?

Where can they find understanding? No one knows where to find it,

for it's not found among the living. It is not here, says the

ocean. Nor is it here, says the sea. Cannot be bought with

gold. It cannot be purchased with silver. It's worth more than all the

gold of o fear greater than precious onyx or lappi lazuli. Wisdom is more

valuable than gold and crystal. It cannot be purchased with jewels, mounted and

fine gold and jasper are worthless, and trying to get it. The price

of wisdom is far above rubies. That's a common phrase in the Book of

Proverbs. By the way, Yep, precious paradot from Ethiopia cannot be exchanged

for it. It's worth more than the purest gold. But do people know

where to find wisdom? Where can they find understanding? It's hidden from the

eyes of all humanity. Even the sharp eyed birds in the sky cannot discover

it. Destruction and death, say, we've heard only rumors of where wisdom

can be found. God alone understands the way to wisdom. He knows where

it can be found, for he looks throughout the whole earth, sees everything

under the heavens. He decided how hard the winds should blow and how much

rain should fall. He made the laws for the rain, and laid out

a path for the lightning. And then he saw wisdom and evaluated it.

He set it in place and examined it thoroughly. And this is what he

says to all humanity. The fear of the Lord is true wisdom. To

forsake evil is real understanding. Oo. Yeah, you know what a what

a conclusion? Yeah right? So he starts out talking about we are people

who know how to find things, and we find things that even animals can't

find. And yet when it comes to finding wisdom, we can't. We

can't find it, yeah right. And then and then he goes on to

talk about where is it and how valuable it is, and then concludes that

only God knows the path to wisdom and has and is the source of wisdom.

Right, and then he says, the fear of the Lord is true

wisdom. You know that one comment the fear of the Lord is wisdom.

Uh, there's a life application of study Bible note, and it says the

fear of the Lord is a key theme in the wisdom literature of the Bible,

like Job or Psalms, or Proverbs like Ecclesiastes in the Song of Solomon,

which by the way, are all wisdom books, wisdom books written by

all, all by Solomon except for one. Right, Psalms and Job were

not. But proverb Psalms is David, mostly David. Yeah, yeah,

And but Proverbs Ecclesiastes. That's right. So it says it means to have

respect and reverence for God and to be in all of his majesty and power.

This is the starting point of finding real wisdom. And in Proverbs chapter

one, seven through nine, it actually lays out and says that the fear

of the Lord is the being of all wisdom and actually says this is the

purpose of the book. It lays it out that way. Yeah, that's

right here, Oh good, you got it, ye, Proverbs one seven

through nine, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but

fools despise wisdom and destruction. And then it goes on to say listen,

my son, to your father's instructions. Do not forsake your mother's teaching.

But the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge or wisdom. This

is written by the wisest man who ever lived. And then he talks about

the value of it, and he says, wisdom is more valuable than anything

that you could possibly have. Written from a man who had everything. Yeah,

there is nothing that he did not have. Yeah, So I think

this is what he's highlighting here is why he made it through this test.

So well, this is what I think he's doing is he does fear God,

and he does believe that God is in control, and he recognizes,

you know, at the end here he's talking about how God made laws for

rain, lays out the path of lightning. He determined when the when the

wind would blow, and when the rain is going to fall, and throughout

the whole earth God set laws up. There's all these laws of nature.

And he said, look, how wise God is that he could assemble the

laws of nature. And then he said, you know, we feel pretty

wise. We can go find gems and we know how to plant, you

know, food, And that lappy Lazuli, for instance, was a gem.

It's really deep blue. Have you ever seen one? They're really deep

blue. They've been mining them in Afghanistan for six thousand years, right,

stunningly beautiful. You got all these different different gems that he mentions gold and

silver. And you know, we spend a lot of our life and we

develop wisdom with regard to or smarts let's say street smarts. Street smarts to

make money, to build wealth. We develop technologies to hopefully make our lives

a little bit better. But that doesn't make us wise. You know,

I was in a meeting a couple of days ago about the use of I've

had two meetings about this recently, about the use of AI artificial intelligence in

ministry, right, And one of the conclusions, you know, we were

talking about is, hey, if you use it as research assistant, fantastic,

this is really good. You know. I used to have i still

do, thousands of books and I'd have to go through and find them and

I'd make markings, and for a little while in my life, I was

actually keeping a catalog of all my best ideas that I found in different books

where I could find them, you know. And my plan always was to

put together like a digital index, and I never did, but now I

can with AI. There's different ministry ais out there that I can search all

of the books plus ten thousand times more all that knowledge in seconds that I

can go find the information that But that doesn't make me a better human just

because I can find information faster, it might make me lazier. So we

have to be careful not to get lazy and just believe everything that shows up

on a screen. That's one. The other one is AI doesn't have a

soul. There's no soul to it, so it can't really give It can't

really give spiritual insight. It doesn't have wisdom, it has information. There's

a big difference between the information it takes to make money and the wisdom to

really live a good life. Right, And he says the beginning of wisdom

is fearing God, and that fear of God is having a healthy respect and

saying, God, your ways are the right ways, your words are the

right words, and I'm going to live your way. The fact that he

had fear for God caused him to live God's way and even caught the devil's

attention, and that's why all of this was happening in the first place was

because he had the fear of God. God taught him to live this way.

The fear of God taught him wisdom. And so the best way to

live is having a healthy respect for God. I think a lot of times

what we do is we want God. It's not a healthy respect for God.

We want God to be our good luck charm and we want him to

bless what we plan to do. But I think what job is sending them

here is in spite of all the wisdom and all the knowledge that we have,

we're not truly wise people unless we go God's way. Yeah, and

you know, all these scriptures pop up into your mind, you know,

like His ways are higher than our ways, His thoughts are higher than our

thoughts. Trust in the lower with all your heart, and do not lean

on your own understanding. Right. So, so just the indicators that you

know, no matter how wise we think we are, no matter how you

know, how much we think we figured things out, God's wisdom is the

source of all wisdom. And there's a there's a little graph here at the

end of the Life Application Study Bible, and it says work and wisdom be

found. I think it's interesting and points out Job's three friends, those with

those weird names, right, h what is it a leaf? As as

Bill Dad and so Far and Elfhaz says wisdom can be learned by observing and

experienced life. That's that's it. That that recaps sort of what he says.

Bill Dad says wisdom is inherited from the past, right from his you

could learn from wisdom. So Far claims that wisdom belongs to the wise.

In other words, it's just gifted. But then Job is the one that

says God is the source of wisdom. Isn't that cool? So if you

were to summarize sort of what these three friends, you know, believe,

it's a really good lesson. You could take that and just have a lesson

on friends hang around with those who are going to point in the right direction.

So I met with a wedding couple yesterday and I prayed, and I

always pray sort of the same thing. I say, Bless them financially,

take care of them, provide, bless them, you know, spiritually,

surround them with people that appoint them in the right direction, and then bless

them relationally, put the right people in their lives. And they always at

the end, they always just say thank you for that, you know,

because it's just one of those, you know prayers that say like, wow,

that's you know, praying that God would watch over us and all these

different things, every facet and every facet. But whenever I think of that,

that's what I think of when I'm even when I'm praying, I think,

I think, surround this couple or surround this person with the right kind

of people that will both encourage them emotionally and then also spiritually. And this

is this is what Job has discovered, Like these are good friends, but

not not when it comes down, they're looking for wisdom in less superior places.

Yeah, you can pick up good things from living life, Yeah you

can. That's a hard way to gain wisdom, by the way. Yes,

that means you touch the you touch the hot the hot stove to find

out it's hot. Now you have some wisdom. But that's a hard way

to live. Yes, you can learn from the past, right, history

teach us. That's incredibly important. You can learn from other wise people,

but all of those are less superior to the fact that God is the source

of wisdom, and we can learn from God without having to go only with

those other paths. Yeah, and it's also worth noting that three friends weren't

able to bring Job down, right, right, So Job is stronger than

not one, not two, but three influences. And by the way,

that's that's pretty rare. Yeah, because if you hang with people that are

gonna drag it, you know, if they're there, If you're the one

who's setting the bar spiritually, and you hang out with three good friends,

uh, oftentimes there you know more than not, you're gonna be the one

that's dragged down. Yeah. Yeah, So Solomon, to end things,

Solomon tells us wisdom is the principal thing. So with all of your getting,

get wisdom and sell it, not trust, he says. And then

James tells us if anybody lacks wisdom, let let them ask from God,

who gives generously, right, right, And so wisdom is it God's word.

The fact that you know you're listening and spending a little bit of time

every day listening to God's word, I think that's incredibly important. You just

take it in, you're filling your reservoir of wisdom, and then at the

right time God will pull those things out. So good job, that's awesome.

Well, that is a great place to end, and hopefully we will

see you next time. All the Bible guys,