September 10, 2025 • 61 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome into the Wednesday Bible Study. We are grateful that
you are here and taking time with us. My name
is Rick Burgess. If we have never met, what a
pleasure to meet you. I actually not only do this
Bible study, been doing it for quite a while. My
day job as a host a radio show, or as
I would probably be more. Probably a better definition what
(00:24):
I do now is I'm a content provider. You can
get them, get it all kinds of a way. I
was on the radio, on YouTube, on podcast, on the stream,
and app, so whatever the case may be. We do
that Monday through Friday. You can find all the details
at Rick Burgessshow dot com. Also, we have a brand
new podcast that is available wherever you get podcasts, and
(00:45):
it is just seems to be growing by leaps and bounds,
not surprising anytime you're dealing with the supernatural. But it's
called Strange Encounters and it is an ongoing podcast studying
and commenting on spiritual warfare from a biblical worldview. So
if you are not following us with that podcast, go
find it. And it's produced by our very own eighty
(01:09):
Van Adler, who produces this and also Blaze Media teinous
on that. So this is the Wednesday Bible Study. It
is something that started as part of a strategy for
reaching the discipleing men in the room. It's all men,
but all across the country, it's men and women on
the various platforms either live or archive the word. I've
been doing it for about a decade. And if you'd
(01:31):
like to find these other Bible studies that what's funny
is we've been going so long now. I actually talked
to a husband and wife in the last twenty four hours.
They're like, you know, we just keep searching for the
study of Matthew and I don't know where it is.
I don't know if you've gotten rid of it. And
I said, well, there's not one because we've never done Matthew.
So so maybe that's God saying we should do Matthew.
(01:52):
I don't know, no, but there are a lot of
books of the Bible that we have done. We're doing
job right now. We'll be in chapter thirty if you
want to go ahead and turn there. And if you've
missed any of that or any of the past studies,
you can get those at the Manchurch. Themanchurch dot com.
That's the name of the strategy. It features high challenge
and the form of gatherings of men events. We send
(02:16):
speakers out for that and then the high equipping with
all of our resources. We have six forty week curriculum
and we also have multiple individual resources in the forms
of devotions and full link book called Men Don't Run
in the Rain. That's one of our newest resources. You
can find that wherever you get books. But if you
are looking for the other devotions, the thirty one day,
(02:39):
the forty day, the curriculum, all that is at Themanchurch
dot com. And if we can help you in any way,
let us know. We also do conferences and we'll be
announcing we'll be announcing tickets will be going on sale
for next year's conferences. We're doing two and those will
go on sell. If I don't know when, you may
be catching this live or on an archive, but we'll
(03:02):
have them on sale by the first of October, late
September first of October, so be looking for those markets
and you can come spend a week in with us
and hear all of our speakers in one big weekend
and also find out about all of our latest resources.
So let's open up in a word, of prayer, and
let's jump right into Job chapter thirty. Thank you for
(03:22):
being with us today, Lord, Thank you for your presence.
May your Holy spirit overwhelm this place. May it be
everywhere as we study your holy word, so obvious to see. Lord,
in the times that we're living, in the spiritual warfare
that's all around us, we see the results of the
rejection of You, and we also see the results of
(03:42):
your grace and your mercy and redemption that you offer
to all who are willing to repent and turn from
faith in ourselves and put our faith in You, to
leave our own authority and to submit to your lordship.
I pray Today's we historical events of this man Job,
all that you're teaching him. We at the same time say,
please teach us in your name. We pray Amen. So
(04:06):
we're getting closer and closer to Job's encounter with God.
He's been asking for it, and he's gonna get it.
But right now he's still in this monologue that he's
taking the floor. We're gonna meet a new gentleman coming
up here, real, real, shortly, matter of fact, about two
more weeks, we'll we'll meet Elihu and we'll see what
(04:29):
he has to say, uh or eli hu and uh
and and it'll be a little different approach. And then
after that we go right into meeting the one and
only living God uh and uh and the Lord will
actually give us his resume. If you've never never gone
through this book before, we we get a real impressive
resume on the creator of all things. So so anyway,
but but last week, if you weren't with us, you
(04:52):
need to go back and catch it. But I'll give
you a quick summary. Uh. Job was remembering when everything
was right between God and him. I remember when I
was respected. I remember when God was good to me.
I remember when my name was held in high regard.
I remember when older men respected me and young men
feared me. And I remember when somebody wanted counsel. My
(05:14):
counsel was considered to be of great value. And I
took care of orphans, and I took care of the needy,
and and when husbands were dying, that they would speak.
I remember all this. But now in chapter thirty, he says,
but now it's just not that way anymore. He's he's
(05:36):
now going to the dark side of the picture, the
plight that that he has been plunged into and he
has been plunged into this. I know some of these things.
Sometimes truth is hard. Some some commentators have used this phrase.
(05:58):
I mean, I almost kind of I'm a little bit
there's a little bit of anks for me to use
this phrase. But you look at it one way. There's
certainly not anything at stake here. But it almost looks
like God and Satan have placed Job in the middle
of their debate. He I mean, have you noticed Job.
(06:23):
I think I want to prove you wrong about Job.
There's a bit of a I don't want to use
the word wager, but there's a bit of a debate
going on. He's going to reject you. God says he's
not going to reject you, and he won't reject me.
I know he won't. And Satan says, well, if you
allow me to do certain things, he will, and Jobs
(06:44):
just caught in the middle of this. He doesn't know
this has happened. He has no idea, he doesn't know
what God is doing. He knows it's not good, and
as we've said many, many times, he seems to be
going to the right source. He wants God to explain
what's going on, and he is he said, I showed
you how my life used to be. I showed you
(07:05):
how my life once was. But now I'm going to
show you how it is now. And it's nothing like
it was. But now, it says in chapter thirty, verse one.
But now and the first first eight verses will be
about in the markers, these these young, these ill bred, undesirables,
(07:27):
that are rejected by society. Even they mocked me. I mean,
I told you that the the high, the most esteemed
of society celebrated me. Not anymore. Now, the lowest of
the low they think they're even better than me. Now
and he says, but now they laugh at me. Men
(07:47):
who are younger than I, whose fathers I would have
disdained to set with, the with the dogs of my flock.
They're not even of good raisin. They're their daddies are
a bunch of evil men. I would have no regard
for even their dads. And here they are, these worthless
(08:08):
youngsters with no standing in society, and they laugh at me.
That's where I am. Now, that's a big drop. That's
a big drop, because think about this, and I thought
about this in my own life. So he looks back
at last week at these esteemed men. There are men
(08:32):
in this room, and there are men in my life
and women as well, that your assessment of my character
matters to me. If I felt like that, you thought
my character was flawed, I would address it. I would
be like, I do care how these men and women
see me, because their opinion to me has standing. Now,
(08:56):
I will tell you there's a lot of people whose
opinion of me has no standing whatsoever. I couldn't care
less what they think of me because I know who
they are, so their assessment doesn't have any standing. So
what he's saying is even that category, the ones that
I would never put any value in. They have a
(09:17):
bad view of me, and I don't even care what
they think about me. But I would normally not care.
But here they are laughing at me as well, even
though they have zero standing in society. They're not good people.
Verse two. What could I gain from the strength of
(09:38):
their hands? Men's whose vigor is gone? They have no vigor.
Even if they were for me, they wouldn't bring anything
to the table. You ever thought about that? You know,
when you ask for help, don't just ask them to
send anybody some people. If they send them for help.
It's not gonna be worth anything. He goes, these are
(09:59):
people that I would never even remotely ask for anything from.
They wouldn't be any help to me. And and yet
here they are. And and then he says, they're not
men of strength. They're they're weak, They're they're pathetic, they're
they're they're scoundrels. Uh three through want and hard hunger,
(10:21):
they gnaw the dry ground by night and waste and desolation.
There's a bunch of scavenders. They don't even they don't
even have they don't even have a home. Uh, They're
they're always hungry. That and then the weird thing about them,
they're they're so hungry, but yet they live in places
where they're never gonna find food. They're not even good
at going to where the food is. You remember the
(10:44):
first time that you kept seeing this And I've heard
comedian a comedian comment on this before. You know a
lot of these people that we see starving all the time.
You almost want to go stop living where you can't
grow anything, go to where the food is. And I
heard a comedian one time say we need to be
raising money for U hauls, not sending move them somewhere else.
(11:05):
This place is never going to produce food. And and
so he says, they they picked salt work and I'll
tell you about that, and the leaves of bushes and
the roots of the broom tree for their food. These
were these were worthless plants there, he said, they're they're
like these gangsters. They're like animals, and they're and they're forging, uh,
(11:29):
you know, for their food, and and and they're they're
they're even going to these unappetizing desert plants that nobody
would want, you know, the the salt of worth, and
the and and the broom roots. None of these things
were considered to be worth anything, and no one would
want to eat them. They're willing to eat even that.
So in five he says, they're driven out from human company.
(11:53):
They shout after them as after a thief. He said,
you know, I was, I was once held in high
regard at the gates. I had standing, and now I'm
being harassed by a bunch of banished outcasts. Can you
(12:13):
imagine that? And what he is realizing is, he said,
I've become so despicable. I'm in such bad shape. My
life is so rotten. They don't see me as an
equal to them. They see me beneath them. You know,
this is a group I would never desire to be in.
(12:35):
And even they say they wouldn't accept me so verse six.
And the gullies of the Torrents, they must dwell in
holes of the earth and of the rocks. They're destitutes.
They don't really call anywhere home. They're no mads. They're
(12:57):
always roaming for some other whatever. I remember, how many
any of you ever been to like India? Yeah, so
you'll you'll know this. I remember when my wife got
back from India. She said the place was so desolate
and the level of poverty so grotesque. She said, when
(13:20):
when when the plane landed and we got back to
where we live, she said, I'd never I've been on
lots of mission trips, I'd never I'd never seen anything
like this, she said. I when we turned on the
street and I saw the trees and the greenery, I
began to weep. When I saw the refrigerator and all
(13:41):
the food and the grocery stores, I began to weep.
I could not believe how bad it was. In one
of the ways, she described how a lot of the
people she saw lived they just went to sleep wherever
the day ended. They roamed around, you know. So she said,
that's first time I've ever been somewhere where adult people
(14:01):
were naked. They didn't have any clothes on, and and
and they would just lay down whenever they got exhausted,
just wherever they were. It wasn't like this is the
place I always sleep. They just would sleep wherever the
day she said. It's like they would move around, and
as it got time to go to sleep, wherever it was,
they just lay down to sleep. And so this is
(14:22):
kind of what he is describing. Uh So, the kind
of people that are laughing at him. They considered their
situation better than mine. That's how bad this is. Uh So.
Then in verse seven, among the bushes they bray. Under
the nettles, they huddled together. The brush is where they gather.
(14:44):
There's really no shelter for them from the from the
the elements, and this bray. When I first saw it,
I thought it is he call them some sort of animal?
Is this some sort of donkey? It's not. It means
to grind into a power, uh it says, you know,
they they they would even grind you know, underneath these
(15:06):
these these bushes, just anything they can they can eat
and consume. It's it's it's a hard life. And then
and then in verse eight, A senseless, a nameless brood.
They have been whipped out of the land. These are
sons of a fool that they're They're a worthless bunch
(15:30):
of nameless people. And the most honorable man in the land.
At one time I was. I was not just hey.
I wasn't just honored in my neighborhood. I wasn't just
honored in my city. I wasn't just honored in my state.
I'm using our the way we are set up. I'm
(15:50):
honored in the region I'm called. I was called an
honorable man of the East Okay. And now I'm being
dishonored by the lowest of the low. That's really what
he's say. That's that's the swing. It's been that big
a swing. You know. It's one thing if you were
(16:10):
kind of somewhat honored and then the lowest of the
low didn't honor you. He's no. I went from the
top of what everybody's trying to achieve, the kind of
character and integrity and respect, and now I'm down here.
I can't think of anything lower than me, that's that's
that's low. Now. I'm sure we've had times in our
(16:32):
life we've been laid low. I'm sure we've had times
in our life that we felt that life was not
going the way we wanted it to go. But the
kind of despair that Job is describing is it's almost
like he can't quite find the words, but he's trying.
He's putting us there. And you know, it was interesting.
(16:54):
I had lunch yesterday with one of the most respected
men in my life and he said something really profound.
He said, he said, we don't really have a choice
when it comes to living in the falling, falling creation.
When it comes to pain, there's not a whole lot
we can do. We're not in control of pain. Pain
(17:16):
is something you can't just say, I refuse pain, and
I mean I would if we could, right. And that's
why you see so many people addicted to drugs because
they're trying to find a way to find some way
around pain. Right. And if you've ever been in severe
pain and somebody gave you something that took it away,
(17:37):
you kind of find yourself putting your arm around it
and say, that's my new buddy. You know. And because
it was during that switch off, I've told you there's
a lot of drug addictions. I don't really understand. I'm
in severe pain now I'm not. I get that. Okay,
that's a hard one. And and but what he said
is said, we don't really have any kind of any
choice in that. He said, But what we do have
(18:00):
a choice in is suffering. I thought that at first,
he said that. I said, I don't know. I agree
with that. He goes, no, no, here, ma'am. We have a
choice on how we see it. We can lament, we
can wallow in it, we can feel sorry for ourselves,
we can woe is me? He said, that's a choice,
he said, He said pain. We then we do about
(18:20):
that suffering? Suffering. We got a little more choice in that,
We got a little more say so in that it
doesn't have to be as awful as we make it.
And what you're hearing right now is not saying that
job is in sin, but but job is kind of
It seems like the window is closing for somebody to say, well,
(18:41):
let's just let's put a positive spin on this job.
This is all great, God's in control. You know, something's
going on here, and and he's going, you know, time's
kind of running out on me being able to say,
but everything's going to be all right. And he is wanting,
as we've seen over and over again, and what just
just let me die? And he's convinced you're gonna see
(19:04):
it in here. He's convinced that is gonna be the
end of this. He he is not at the point
where he thinks God's gonna answer. He's he just said,
I just want to tell you how it is, tell
you what I would like. He's already said that a
thousand times. But I really believe that the end is
only going to come from death. That's what he thinks.
So so he talks about that, and then he said,
(19:26):
all right, there's that. So that's the kind of people
I'm dealing with. That's the kind of people that are
laughing at me. This is how far I have fallen. Now,
I'd like to get specific, real specific about this. I
want to talk about the hostility there showed me. I
want to talk about some things they're doing to me,
some things that are happening, some action that is that
is being taken. Nine and now I have become their song.
(19:51):
I am a byword to them and now, which is
similar to and but and now I'm I'm the object
of their sarcastic satire. I mean they make fun of me,
that they're they're seeing a little chance about me. They're
they're making, you know, rude comments about me. You know,
(20:13):
they're they're call me names. And I don't I don't
know if you know. Sticks and stones may break my bones,
but words will never hurt me. I don't know who
wrote that. That's crazy. I got news for you. Words
hurt uh. And they may not break a bone, but
they'll break your heart, won't they. I mean, it's rough.
(20:34):
I don't care how tough you are. I consider myself
to be somewhat tough. I don't care how tough you are.
You're lying if you're telling me that was. When people
say awful things about you, it doesn't bother you. It
may it may be to bother you to certain degrees,
again based on the swords, but but it bothers you.
And what is the most frustrating thing to me is
(20:56):
when people say things about you that aren't true, and
you can't seem you keep wanting to get that narrative
cleared up in you and then and boy, now, now
now you talk about a narrative getting away from me.
I mean, did you see the woman the other day
with this thing? With this woman that was mean to
a kid and his daddy about this baseball and of
(21:19):
course we must we must burn her. To say at
the stay I woke up, I want you to listen
to this. This is what I don't like. I don't
I thought the woman acted in a way that was
not not It was not good behavior. I'm not saying
that her behavior is okay. However, I got a real
problem with getting up on Saturday morning, on my day
(21:41):
off and going, all right, I need to put out
the latest strange encounters. Let everybody know that adders put
that out. So I go to my social media to
try to you know, it's part of my job. So
I go there and I'm being assigned. I want you
to know, person looking at this, we've all decided we
must all destroy this woman. Let's make her famous today
(22:01):
and everybody start tweeting this read whatever ex Instagram. Put
this woman on display before the world and let's destroy
her today because she was mean to a kid at
the baseball game. Oh yeah, you were being told go
get her. Now, we don't know her, never met her.
I got a little clip I'm supposed to watch and
(22:21):
then go out and demand that she be destroyed. Now, remember,
if we all become this mob with our torches, okay,
if you're not careful, what will what will happen? We'll
burn the wrong house down. Well, guess what happened about
halfway through this? She must be she she must be destroyed. Okay.
And again I'm not saying what she did was something
(22:42):
you'd go now. It was. It was. It was rude,
But we really shouldn't destroy people over being rude. Okay,
So we're destroying her. I mean we're going off you.
You found I had more assignments about her than the
guy who slaughtered the woman in Charlotte. There was more
about her, okay. And so I'm like, Wow, she's really
(23:04):
in trouble today. And so what happens? They we must
find out her name, we must find out where she works.
Let's destroy her today. Well they pull a name out,
it's not her. This woman comes up. I said, hey,
y'all are all coming after me? I'm a Red Sox fan.
I don't even like the Phillies, y'all got the wrong person.
(23:25):
But the mob's burning houses, right, so they burned somebody
else's house. This is reckless, reckless. So what he's saying
in the version of it right now, these destitutes are
telling all these people horrible things about me, and I'm
becoming a laughing stock. He had no idea that one
day you'd be able to do that by the millions,
(23:45):
you know, But even in his own area, this thing
is getting out of hand, and he's like, no one's
even considering the source of who's saying these things about me.
I haven't done what everybody claims I've done. And I
will tell you that this stuff we're doing, it's the
way we're doing this with social media and everything. You're
(24:06):
really you're really hurting a lot of people. We've just
become mean, we just become heartless. We treat people like
they don't that they're like they're animals now and now
now some people are acting like animals. But I think
that comes from this. We just don't care anymore, you know.
I can't wait to sit there. Who's the next person
(24:26):
we're all going to destroy? And don't forget Anonymously, I
had somebody comment on one of our strange encounter things
and uh and said something about, you know, the Rick's
not doing the show he did before, and nobody really
knows how that all went down. Kind of makes you wonder.
(24:47):
And so I went back and chrise, this person's got
some kind of cartoon anonymous, you know, to gut liss
to breach out to me directly. And I said, you
just posted something that you don don't know anything about
on a public platform, anonymous with a cartoon face instead
of just reaching out to me directly. Makes me wonder.
(25:11):
You know, all you doing is playing the role of
the devil. That's all you do it. You know, what
about your character makes me wonder that you would anonymously
say something about somebody makes me wonder about you. If
you want to talk to me, you can contact me directly,
but you're too gutless to do it because you're a coward.
You hide, you hide behind these things. Well, He's like,
(25:33):
these are the kind of people I'm dealing with. He
was dealing with this law and before we ever dealt
with it. So verse ten. Yeah, this atmosphere we have today,
it is a fruitful soil for cowards. This is the
greatest moment for cowards there's ever been. They can sit
there behind a shroud and say anything about you they
(25:55):
want to, and never have to face you. But God
knows and and and they'll answer for it one day
if they don't repent. Uh. Verse ten. They abhor me.
They they they, they keep aloof from me. They do
not hesitate to spit in the sight of me. I'm
(26:17):
disgusting to them. They keep their distance because I'm so
diseased when they see me. God has allowed me to
be so repulsive. I used to find them repulsive. They
find me repulsive. The sight of me makes them want
to spit. I'm so disgusting, and of course they'll do it.
(26:37):
And uh and then look at verse eleven because God, Ah,
there it is again. I'd underline that because God has
loosed my cord and humbled me, they have cast off
restraint in my presence. Well, look at verse eleven. So
who's he saying has allowedness to go on? God? Satan
(27:02):
can't even get a mention in job other than the
very beginning of it because Joe's never never, Joe's not
blaming the Savan for anything. Now Satan may be the tool,
which that's true, you know, it's the time that I
was having a bit of a theological debate. And we've
discussed this before about this allowing and causing and Satan's
(27:23):
doing it. First of all, can we all just come
off that we're so important to the kingdom that Lucifer
himself has assigned himself to us when he's not omnipresent.
He's not omnipotent. Okay, he's not omniscient. And we really
think that Lucifer has said, I tell you what, I
got an issue in Birmingham, Alabama that Rick Burgess. I'm
(27:46):
going after him. Now. Have I Are there enough demons
that I've encountered that I certainly have? Do I battle
the biggest enemy though my sin nature? Yes, much more
than I battle demons, even though it's important to know
about demons. James kind of kind of gave us a
little bit of humbling there when he says a lot
of your problems just your own sin nature. Yeah, the
(28:07):
battle between my sin nature is probably the hardest battle
I fight, beyond anything else. But Job did rank Satan
because we know that Satan talked to God about it,
so we do know that. But he's never blaming Satan,
even though Satan is the instrument what he knows, and
this is something really incredible that here's job this long
(28:30):
ago and he understands that God's in control. He gets it.
And somebody says, yeah, but Satan's the one doing this
stuff to him. But who drew the boundaries? Remember the
analogy of the pitbull? You know, I come in here
and I've got a chain, and I've got this crazy
dog and he's ready to go after any of y'all
that I let him go after. But I'm I have
(28:50):
the chain, and if I go, sorry Steve, if I
go go get Steve, I let enough change chain for Steve.
And then over here, you know, we're I'm sitting there
and there's there's Greg, and Greg's like, boy, I hope
he doesn't put him over here. And all of a sudden,
he starts going over toward Greg, and I just pulled
the chain back of what he starts marking about halfway here.
But I won't let him get Greg. Who's in control?
(29:12):
But who's biting people? The dog? I'm not biting people,
but the dog. The dog can't bite anybody. I don't
let him bite. You know, I got the chain. Well,
we saw God tell Satan exactly what he couldn't do,
and we saw Satan go back and ask for a
little more chain and God gave him a few more.
(29:33):
So how this shows the faith of job. This shows
you Now he's confused and he's upset, and he feels abandoned.
But you gotta love the fact that he knows that
God has allowed this to happen to it to me,
he was way ahead of his time. You know, it's
(29:56):
almost like we all just can't face the fact that
the person that we need to get right with is God.
God's the one that you know. And and sometimes, as
we've said many times in here, what's difficult because you've
got to be careful because you don't want to turn
into arrogance and pride is to sometimes think, Lord, thank
(30:22):
you for finding me worthy of the suffering. Now be
careful because that you can get in a bad place.
Don't get prideful about that. But there's a certain I
hope confidence not arrogance. A certain confidence. You know, have
(30:42):
you ever had like there's nothing bigger than having the
approval of God. But you know, we all have had
these people in our life that if they came over
to you and said, I knew I could trust you
with that. Feels pretty good, doesn't it. Well? What about
when God says I can trust you with that? See God,
job's in goods standing with God? And you're like, Rick,
(31:03):
is this what good's standing with God looks like? Sometimes? Sometimes?
And so he says, but God has loosed my cord.
God has humbled me. Now he's getting that because I
will tell you that many times. There's all kinds of
reasons that God allows pain and suffering. I'll tell you
when that's up there at the front, humbling us. Even
(31:24):
Paul said he had to be humbled by the thorn
of his flesh. He said, that's why it's there. Whatever
it was keep me from being conceited. I was allowed
to see the third Heaven. I was a pretty big deal.
God used me to go out and plant church after
church after church after church. But then he lists for
us what and look at all the suffering I had
(31:46):
to do for all this, and all this is just
to keep me humble. The apostle Paul, you know what
he said, if I had done everything I did for
the kingdom, even after persecuting the church and being delivered
from that, he said, my ministry was so powerful that
if God didn't allow me to suffer, I would have
been too arrogant. I couldn't have handled it. How about
that That's one way to keep us from taking God's glory,
(32:08):
isn't it is? We're so broken down we ain't got
time to right so. And by the way, he's not
gonna share his glory with anybody, not with the Apostle Paul,
not with the greatest heroes of the Bible. He's not
gonna share it with anybody. He's certainly not gonna share
it with us. Okay, and so Joven it seems to
understand this, he said, they've cast off restraint in my
(32:31):
presence because they see they think I love this, They
think God's left me. I know God's allowing it, but
it's you know what it's done. He's down right now.
You ever had people that didn't like you and all
they could think is, man, if I ever get him down?
Do you remember, young men, we love sports analogies. What
(32:55):
we always told, if you had the opponent down, don't
let up, don't let up. And you know what they said,
We've been waiting on you to be in this situation.
You used to think you were see really something. You know,
you looked at us down here, scurrying around. We got
nowhere to lay our heads. We're all a bunch of scoundrels,
our daddies. They are a bunch of idiots. We have
(33:15):
no standing. But look at you now. You know what
he said. God has humbled me so much. They don't
even have restraint. They don't fear me at all. Picture
that twelve on my right hand, the rabble rise, they
push away my feet, they cast up against me. They're
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ways of destruction. What he's saying here, he says, they
build their path of destruction against me. They plan an
attack against me again because they don't fear me. Thirteen
they break up my path. They promote my calamity. They
need no one to help them. I am this, I
(33:58):
am easy to defeat. Now, I'm an easy foe for
the enemy. And don't miss this one. Just what I
talked about a minute ago. Look at the second part.
Look at thirteen second. They promote my calamity, back to
what I said a minute ago. Not only do they
love it, they make sure everybody else knows it too.
They're celebrating my downfall. They promoted they let everybody you
(34:18):
see what happened to job. Now, I know that never
happens in our society. There's somebody that we didn't like.
You know what do we love the most? Let's just
call it people that convict us. And we think they're
more devoted than we are, and their faith makes ours
look bad. Oh if they could just have a moral failure.
(34:39):
I can't wait to tell everybody. Well, you know you
heard their marriage just having some trouble. Everybody thinks their
marriage is so wonderful. I heard they're having some trouble.
As a matter of what, I'm gonna make sure everybody
knows it. I'm gonna I tell you what. I'm gonna
do it. What the running joke? Oh, here's how I'm
gonna promote it. I'm gonna promote their calamity. How with
a prayer? Quick? We need to be praying for so
(35:03):
and so. I heard their marriages in trouble. Please don't
tell anybody right on my Facebook post. So they're promoting
my calamity. They want everybody to know. And how about this,
he says, But my calamity is so well known they
(35:24):
don't need anybody to help them with this. It's so obvious.
Fourteen as through a wide breach they come amid the crash,
they roll in. This is all military language. Here. The wall.
What we know about a wall usually is around the city.
Wall protects, he said, the wall that protected me. At
(35:44):
one time I was hedged in by God. But now
that wall has such a gaping hole in it. I mean,
I can't even protect myself against everybody this attacking me.
I'm wide open for attack now, and they know it.
Ever felt that way, terrors are turned upon me. My
(36:05):
honor is pursued as by the wind, and my prosperity
has passed away like a cloud. Let me just sum
up what he's saying right here in Calhoun County. I
have no dignity, I have no hope, I have no safety,
I have no prosperity. Everything that at one time was
(36:26):
a blessing to me, they're all gone. Everything I had
is gone. I'm not respected, I've lost all hope. I'm
not safe from attacks verbally or physically. And I've lost
all my prosperity. I've lost all my money, all my land,
all my kids. I've lost it all. Now comes the turn.
(36:52):
I pointed out that these people have no standing that
are against me. The lowest of the low hate me.
I told you the way they're treating me. Now I'd
like to talk about something else. I'm being abused by God.
So he says this of verses sixteen through nineteen. And
now my soul is poured out within me. Days of
affliction have taken hold of me. Now what does all
(37:14):
that mean. It's very poetic, but let me just simplify
that for you. I'm convinced I'm dying, okay, and now
my soul is poured out within me. I'm dying. Days
of affliction have taken hold of me. I'm not going
to physically survive this. That's what he thinks. Now he's wrong,
but that's what he thinks. Let me put a point
out again, He's wrong, but that's what he thinks. Don't
(37:38):
ever lose hope, you know. You know what. The beautiful
thing that you got to love about this is if
you're if you're in a bond and you feel like
you're dying, and some of you have been there, take
solace in the fact that you your life is not
(37:59):
going to be shut down to God allows it. You say, well,
I'm pretty sure I'm going to die. You know what
you should say, May the lords will be done. If
he wills me to come out of here, I'll come
out of here wide open with a great testimony, ready
to talk. If he says this is the end, then
I'm gonna be in his presence like Paul taught us,
and that'll be all right too. See. Did you feel
(38:21):
that calm come over you just saying I've had that
situation had before? You know, you remember that all daring
the pandemic. We were all terrified that that, you know,
and you know, and it did bother you. I mean
I lost people in the pandemic their earthly life, and
some of them I didn't expect. Now, some of them
I knew were in trouble if they got it, they
had compromised immune systems and things like that. But I
mean I saw some pretty healthy people go down. You're right, yeah,
(38:44):
And I was like when that happened, I had a
whole new attitude. I was like, that person's healthier than me,
you know, And so I thought so really, me thinking
there's no way it could be trouble. And then you
hear in the phone the first time I remember the
doctor when he said that. He said, hey, you're positive,
and I thought, okay, And then all of a sudden,
(39:05):
I just remember, I went, well, if the Lord wants
to this before we knew all the things we knew,
I said, if the Lord says this is it, that's fine.
I mean, there's nothing I can really I'll do everything
He's got around me. And then if if this is
not my day to go Psalms one thirty nine thirteen
through sixteen. There's nothing this disease can do to me.
(39:28):
It can humble me, put me through a tough time,
it can give me time to consider things and all
they can serve that purpose. But it can't kill me
unless God allows it to kill me. So mayyor will
be done. I'll either have no issue with this, I
have a somewhat of an issue with it, or it'll
take me. And it turned out that I didn't have
any issue with it, and it wasn't any big deal.
(39:48):
But the time you don't know, you know, and we're
still seeing things that it caused because the problem with
that horrible, clearly manufactured virus is even though the only
thing that that happened to me was a loss of
smelling taste, for a little while. That's the central nervous system.
Still a pretty big deal. You know, you don't really
(40:08):
want your central nervous system to take a hit. But
if you couldn't smell or taste it, did you know? So?
And who knows long term, but there you go. So
and then the only thing worse than that is actually
taking the vaccine. Apparently so so now he talks about that,
But then you get into to seventeen seventeen. He says,
(40:31):
the night racks my bones, and the pain that gnaws
me takes no rest. Anybody ever been there. My body's
torturing me. I can't even sleep. I mean, I'm in
so much pain to me. To me, that's one that's
a biggie for me. If I can go to sleep.
The reason why I'm not having rotator cuff surgery right
now is I can still go to sleep. Okay, when
(40:52):
it gets to where I can't go to sleep, I'll
go get it fixed. But until then I'm not going
to because the rest of it's not that big a deal. Okay,
And it gets me out a lot of movie I
can't know, you know, people say I can't uh so
uh but the uh but but yeah right, But I mean,
aren't you that way? As long as I don't know
what it is, as long as I can sleep, I
won't fix anything. You know. Now you start taking my
(41:13):
sleep away from me, and I'm going to see everybody.
Something's got to change. So uh so anyway, and I
figured out, look, I can go half the night this way.
I get it up like that, and I go half
the night over here and up this way back this way.
And as long as I keep doing that, I won't
have that urger, you know what. So so uh so anyway,
but he says for him, it's not that way. He said,
(41:34):
I I can't. I can't. My body is all over me.
I can't move without something hurting, and I surely can't sleep.
Sleep deprivation gets really on you. Oh you know, it's
one of the worst things that can happen to us.
Uh as far as your on going health. You know,
we you got to sleep. If you're not getting sleep, guys,
you gotta get sleep. Okay. I know that sounds like
the pot calling the kettle black. Just then, sorry about that.
(41:56):
Uh in eighteen with great force, my garments. My garment
is disfigured. It binds me about the collar of my tunic. Now,
this is a visual that really gives us an idea
of where job is physically. He said, it takes incredible
(42:17):
effort for me to even change my clothing, and the
neck of my tunic will now fit around my waist. Ooh,
he's lost a lot of weight. I mean he's a skeleton, okay,
and he's letting us know that's how bad it is.
Verse nineteen. God has cast me into the mire, and
(42:39):
I have become like dust and ashes. Underline this one. Okay.
If where y'all with me, and you got the word
of God with you underline, put brackets around that, do
something with that. Anybody know why? Anybe I ever read
Joe before, Well, trust me, this is coming back right
here at the end when he finally understands what this
(43:02):
is all about, These dust and ashes are coming back,
and he says, right now, I've become like dust and ashes.
That'll be in chapter forty two, verse six, if you
want to go ahead and look at it today. This
is gonna be the words that he uses when repentance comes. Now,
(43:24):
God has cast me here, and I don't know why.
I don't know why I'm in the mire, why is
he put me here? But he knows that God put
him there. But this is going to come back and
be similar words he uses when he finally understands what
this has all been about. So now he wants to
go and address God. Nice little segue since this is
(43:44):
something he's going to say when he finally sees God.
Now I'm going to address God, Verses twenty through twenty three.
I cry for your help, and you do not answer me.
Let's let that sit amentue. You ever been there? Yeah,
(44:07):
I've I've got some things on my on my table
right now that I pray about, and I pray about,
and you know, I've learned. Even though Job says you
haven't answered me. No, even when we say we're not
being answered, that is the answer. It's a it's a
not yet, but it is an answer. I no answer
(44:29):
is an answer. Why Why hasn't this happened yet? Do
you hear me? Anybody dowt he hears us? That's the
thing gets me right? You ever start trying to use
different words, I'm gonna phrase this prayer request a little
different today. Lord. Maybe there's some breakdown in my language.
Maybe you don't speak Calhoun County. I'm gonna try to
(44:51):
be more eloquent this time. You ever prayed more eloquent
to try to get an answer? Let me try. I'm
gonna try this little more elquent this time. I'm gonna
see if I can't be like Oswald Chambers, you know.
And uh and no. The deal is he hears it,
and he's going to do what he's going to do,
and that will be the answer and and it will
be the hardest part is when you get to the
(45:12):
part that you love God so much, you're just so
you're just so intimate with him that you're like, he
just does what's right? Are you disappointed? Rick? I am,
just because I'm flawed, but he's not. So I have
peace in the fact that he's right. That door shut,
didn't it? Sure did? I guess I should celebrate that
(45:33):
since he's always right. That's one of that That was
one of the biggest when I realized I was stepping
forward as I used to just thank God for open doors,
and I learned you might want to thank him for
a closed door. Oh really, so, but I really wanted that. Yeah,
but you didn't. You didn't need it, you know, you
(45:55):
ever said that I prayed about that, though. What I
prayed is that here's a good when I've had this
many times with and just people that I know. I
want to get this job. I need this promotion, I
need this job, I need this to come through. Hey,
I'm up for this. I'm up for this. Let's all pray,
let's repent, let's petition the Lord. Let's stand before him. Lord,
(46:19):
this is what we want. Jesus said, pray his will
be done, right, But we don't really mean that. But
we'll say it, your will be done. And then when
he does this will we're like, well, that's not what
I wanted. I thought you said my will be done. Yeah,
but I didn't mean that. I just knew I was
supposed to say it. Now, when you get to where
you mean it, not just say it. And if you
(46:39):
can get to the point that you think about this,
let's go something really radical. If I got that job,
my income would have increased one hundred thousand dollars. Did
you get it? I did not. Well, then that one
hundred thousand dollars was gonna be trouble. What God didn't
(47:02):
think you needed that, He didn't think you could handle it,
or he didn't think he needed it. That job was
a disaster. Be glad you didn't get it. Now, if
you don't pray and you just kind of making life
up as you go. Now, I don't know whether it's
good or bad. But if I know this, that the
Lord God Almighty said his will will be done. And
if you petition before him and he hears your prayer
(47:24):
and he even says, yeah, talk to me. I'm the
great I am. I'd like to hear from you. That's
amazing to me. So I can talk to you. You
sure can. You're redeemed by my son. You come right here,
talk to me. I'd really like to have this job.
No what I thought you said you trusted me. That
job was gonna be a disaster for you, or that
(47:45):
job wasn't gonna serve my purpose. I wasn't gonna be
glorified in that job. You were gonna be distracted by
that job. I was gonna lose your attention. I like
you more dependent on me. Sudden you get one hundred
thousand dollars, you think you don't need me. I like
kind of keeping you where you know you need me.
(48:06):
That's the best thing for you. Okay, Wow, so start
celebrating those closed doors too, because they're God's hand protecting us.
You know, you ever got a job and then after
you got to see what happened, you're like, well, I'm
glad that didn't happen. Yeah, I mean I've I remember
like having a situation I won't get too detailed where
I thought we need to move in that direction. And
(48:29):
I felt really good about that direction, and it didn't happen,
and it wasn't long after that that company went under.
I thought, so I would have had a moment that
this would have felt good until I went down with him,
and then I've been back with nothing. You know, sometimes
it can be something as simple as that. You know, hey,
can can can we all admit we don't know what
(48:49):
God knows anybody? Okay, you ever tried to do it
your way? Right? Yeah? I have to. I've messed it
up pretty bad. So so here he is say, I
feel like that you don't answer me, but God will
answer him. Job's gonna learn be careful what you pray for.
Job could have just said, whenever you're done with this,
(49:10):
be done with it, but he demanded to have a
meeting one on one with God. Be careful when you
start getting up in God's face saying you come out
from behind it and you face me, because he just
might and you don't want that, you know. I go
(49:32):
back to Adrian Rogers, who's already there. He said this
Q and a thing that everybody keeps talking about. I
wouldn't be surprised if we just dropped on our face
when we saw him and just said, holy for a
thousand years, and then maybe we can get up. Guys,
(49:52):
when we stand in his presence, everything's gonna change. I mean,
Paul said, even I only see it dimly, but one
day I will see it clearly. And when we see
it clearly, I mean, if the apostle, Paul will come back.
Right now, he goes, you don't know how spot on
I was about that. What I thought I knew was
nothing compared to what I know now. And one day
(50:13):
we'll all be there if you're redeemed. So let's go
now to twenty two. I'm sorry, twenty one? What am I? Damn?
I'm the wrong plassroom? You just man? Where am I?
Twenty two or twenty one? Twenty one? Twenty one? He says,
(50:33):
you have turned cruel to me with the might of
your hand, you persecute me. So he knows this is
coming from God. And you know what he says, I
think you're overdoing it. I think you're being cruel. Have
you ever been there? There's some hard things in life
that you have to know God allowed because he could
have stopped him. Have you ever thought, I think you
(50:55):
went too far. I remember one of the most blasphemous
things I saw. Uh it was and it was a
good book. I'm mis understand, but this person was not redeemed.
Have you Have you ever read Tuesdays with Maury I
forget the sports writer's name, Mitch. Yeah, and it's a
fine book. But there was a man that he went
(51:19):
to see all the time, and the man was a
Jewish man, and they got talking about Job, and he
asked Mary what he thought about the story of Job,
and he said, I think God went too far. I
think God was cruel so right here. And I didn't
care for that, because I see that's that thing again,
(51:41):
when we get into that deal about what we think
we deserve as opposed to what we really deserve. We're
delusional about ourselves, me as much as anybody. Because a guy,
a guy called up when we were talking about this
thing about the woman, and y'all know that the mercy
and grace thing for me I have to really be.
(52:03):
I can be hard nosed and sometimes I need this
be softer than I am sometimes. And so we were
talking about the thing I talked about about the woman
getting destroyed by the world on social media, and the
God called. He said, well, I'm gonna tell you what, though,
and look at the things she was doing. She's been
held accountable, said my preacher was talking about we're all
(52:24):
gonna be held accountable one day for the things we do.
She's just being held accountable for the things that we do.
And I said, well, now hold on it. Whoa whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
I said. So, let me ask you this. When you
stand before the throne of God, are you hoping to
get what you deserve? I said, because the last time
I checked, I almost stand before a holy God and
deserve to be destroyed by his holiness and thrown into
(52:46):
an eternal lack of fire. But because he showed me
mercy and grace to his son Jesus, I'll actually stand
there and not get what I deserve. Now does it
matter what I did after redemption. And apparently because he
says give and takeaway, we're talking about treasures now, we're
not talking about me getting the eternal death penalty I deserve.
(53:07):
If it gets down till we should all be held
accountable for what we do. Then everybody ought to go
to hell, everybody. And I said, but what God is
gonna say to me is I'm gonna show you mercy
and grace because my son paid the price Rick that
you should have paid. And oh, by the way, don't
deny that same mercy and grace to people that I
(53:29):
didn't deny to you. That's actually the gospel. And the
phone line went silent, and I noticed that the narrative
was about getting cranked up on the text line. All
that kind of went away. Say we're forgot for a minute,
we get a little bit of full of ourself, and
we're ready to go out there and tell everybody that
they're gonna get theirs, and we forget. Wait a minute,
(53:50):
I'm not gonna get mine. I knailed Jesus to the
cross that should have been me, and the debt that
was paid for me was enormous. So maybe it's actually
something we should celebrate and remember this when we're ready
(54:12):
to get our torches out and burn somebody else's life down.
The got you was gracious to me. Now, it doesn't
mean that when people have bad behavior, it doesn't matter.
You can't call it bad behavior. I don't mean that.
I mean this thirst for blood and guts and destruction
of people because they were mean to a kid about
(54:34):
a baseball. I mean it's a little we're a little
full of ourselves, and maybe there's a time to remember
what we deserve, and maybe we can just maybe calmly
correct somebody or disagree with somebody, but not wish them
to be destroyed and quartered in front of us, or
(54:54):
beheaded to the gallows with them. All right, So the
next thing he said in twenty two, he is saying
that God's doing this to him. He knows that. But
now twenty two, he said, you lift me up on
the wind, you made me ride on it, and you
tossed me about in the roar of the storm. This
(55:15):
is interesting, he said, because you kind of there was
a storm coming and you have me in the storm
and you're tossing me around like a storm. We know
that Satan was allowed to use a storm to kill
his children. And he's saying, you know it's coming, and
(55:41):
this moment with God is coming. And what does God
appear to Job in a storm? And Job says, you
got me in the storm in here. I mean, yeah,
I'm tossing around in here in this storm. You brought
the storm. You put me in the storm. You won't
get me out of the storm. Suddenly God says, I
think I'll show up in a storm. How you like that?
You want to see a storm? I got one for
(56:03):
you twenty three for I know that you will bring
me to death and to the House appointed for all
the living. I understand that I'm deserving of this. Job
is broken. He's cried for help, and it's distress. He said,
(56:25):
God isn't answering, and I know that I'm going to
get what I deserve. I'm going to die, just like
everybody else is going to die. And then he gets
into to twenty four, yet does not one in a
heap of ruins stretch out his hand, and then his
(56:46):
disaster cry for help. You can't blame me. I'm broken.
I'm crying out for help. Is that so unreasonable? Don't
most people when it's rough cry for help, my help
that I need, me asking for it. That's not unreasonable.
I'm not being unreasonable with God. Twenty five? Did I
(57:08):
not weep for him whose days was hard? Was not
my soul grieved for the needy? What's he doing now?
Now job's running his resume? Was I not a good man?
You ever heard anybody say that before? I don't understand
why these things have He was such a good man,
not compared to God. He wasn't right compared to other
(57:32):
people he was, which is what we're gonna find out
about job. Right. But when I hope for good, evil came.
This is twenty six. When I waited for light, darkness came.
I was. I lived in the light the way I
was supposed to live. And you know what my reward
for living in the light was darkness. I thought I
lived in the light so I would get light. I
lived in the light. Now I get darkness. I don't
(57:53):
understand this. Twenty seven. My inward parts are in turmoil,
and never still, days of affliction come to meet me.
I am suffering. Things are not improving. I assume more
of this is to come. I guess, because you won't
stop it. How about this it's I'm not getting any better.
You ever been there, I'm struggling and it doesn't I'm
(58:13):
not getting any better. When is this gonna stop? When
is this gonna be over? I'm not improving. And then
he goes on and he says in twenty eight, I
go about darkened, but not by the sun. I stand
up in the assembly and I cry for help. Let
me tell you something. I was looking for sympathy. I
wanted a sympathetic audience, but I cannot find one. Nobody
(58:37):
shows me sympathy. Twenty nine. I'm a brother of jackals
and a companion of ostriches. Ostriches, I live like these animals,
which he could see there. I'm more like them than human. Now,
my goodness, I'm just like these animals. I'm not even
human anymore. I become so bad. Thirty My skin turns
(58:58):
black and fall me wow, and my bones burn with heat.
This is that skin disease, the bones referring to I malnourished.
My skin is literally falling off of me. It's rotting.
Thirty one. My lyres turned to mourning, my pipe to
the voice of those who weep, all musical instruments, and
(59:22):
you know what he says, these musical instruments that once
played songs of joy, that once played songs of celebration.
The only music I can make now, the only music
I hear is the music of mourning, like at a funeral.
This is the kind of music we play for those
who weep. Tough situation, tough situation. Does God hear him? Yes?
(59:51):
Is God going to deliver him? Yes? Is he gonna
be told by Job or any human what the timeline
should be. No. When we come back next week, Job
will make one final appeal, one final appeal. He's looking
(01:00:12):
for an answer, and he is going to get it.
Let's pray, Lord, thank you for this today. Thank you
for our time together. Thank you for these men that
are so loyal and come in and encourage me. Lord,
thank you for Adler and all the hard work he
puts in. And everywhere Lord you allow me to go,
people come up and say, this Bible study matters. It's
(01:00:35):
this hard work that Adler puts in, and how y'all
make this available? It matters? And I know this one
in the study of Job is some of the more
difficult questions that people ask. Thank you for the fruit
that it is producing, and thank you for trusting us
with it, and thank you for the encouragement of those
who listen and watch, and especially for the encouragement of
those that are in the room. And your name we
(01:00:58):
pray Amen. Thank you,
Welcome into the Wednesday Bible Study. We are grateful that
you are here and taking time with us. My name
is Rick Burgess. If we have never met, what a
pleasure to meet you. I actually not only do this
Bible study, been doing it for quite a while. My
day job as a host a radio show, or as
I would probably be more. Probably a better definition what
(00:24):
I do now is I'm a content provider. You can
get them, get it all kinds of a way. I
was on the radio, on YouTube, on podcast, on the stream,
and app, so whatever the case may be. We do
that Monday through Friday. You can find all the details
at Rick Burgessshow dot com. Also, we have a brand
new podcast that is available wherever you get podcasts, and
(00:45):
it is just seems to be growing by leaps and bounds,
not surprising anytime you're dealing with the supernatural. But it's
called Strange Encounters and it is an ongoing podcast studying
and commenting on spiritual warfare from a biblical worldview. So
if you are not following us with that podcast, go
find it. And it's produced by our very own eighty
(01:09):
Van Adler, who produces this and also Blaze Media teinous
on that. So this is the Wednesday Bible Study. It
is something that started as part of a strategy for
reaching the discipleing men in the room. It's all men,
but all across the country, it's men and women on
the various platforms either live or archive the word. I've
been doing it for about a decade. And if you'd
(01:31):
like to find these other Bible studies that what's funny
is we've been going so long now. I actually talked
to a husband and wife in the last twenty four hours.
They're like, you know, we just keep searching for the
study of Matthew and I don't know where it is.
I don't know if you've gotten rid of it. And
I said, well, there's not one because we've never done Matthew.
So so maybe that's God saying we should do Matthew.
(01:52):
I don't know, no, but there are a lot of
books of the Bible that we have done. We're doing
job right now. We'll be in chapter thirty if you
want to go ahead and turn there. And if you've
missed any of that or any of the past studies,
you can get those at the Manchurch. Themanchurch dot com.
That's the name of the strategy. It features high challenge
and the form of gatherings of men events. We send
(02:16):
speakers out for that and then the high equipping with
all of our resources. We have six forty week curriculum
and we also have multiple individual resources in the forms
of devotions and full link book called Men Don't Run
in the Rain. That's one of our newest resources. You
can find that wherever you get books. But if you
are looking for the other devotions, the thirty one day,
(02:39):
the forty day, the curriculum, all that is at Themanchurch
dot com. And if we can help you in any way,
let us know. We also do conferences and we'll be
announcing we'll be announcing tickets will be going on sale
for next year's conferences. We're doing two and those will
go on sell. If I don't know when, you may
be catching this live or on an archive, but we'll
(03:02):
have them on sale by the first of October, late
September first of October, so be looking for those markets
and you can come spend a week in with us
and hear all of our speakers in one big weekend
and also find out about all of our latest resources.
So let's open up in a word, of prayer, and
let's jump right into Job chapter thirty. Thank you for
(03:22):
being with us today, Lord, Thank you for your presence.
May your Holy spirit overwhelm this place. May it be
everywhere as we study your holy word, so obvious to see. Lord,
in the times that we're living, in the spiritual warfare
that's all around us, we see the results of the
rejection of You, and we also see the results of
(03:42):
your grace and your mercy and redemption that you offer
to all who are willing to repent and turn from
faith in ourselves and put our faith in You, to
leave our own authority and to submit to your lordship.
I pray Today's we historical events of this man Job,
all that you're teaching him. We at the same time say,
please teach us in your name. We pray Amen. So
(04:06):
we're getting closer and closer to Job's encounter with God.
He's been asking for it, and he's gonna get it.
But right now he's still in this monologue that he's
taking the floor. We're gonna meet a new gentleman coming
up here, real, real, shortly, matter of fact, about two
more weeks, we'll we'll meet Elihu and we'll see what
(04:29):
he has to say, uh or eli hu and uh
and and it'll be a little different approach. And then
after that we go right into meeting the one and
only living God uh and uh and the Lord will
actually give us his resume. If you've never never gone
through this book before, we we get a real impressive
resume on the creator of all things. So so anyway,
but but last week, if you weren't with us, you
(04:52):
need to go back and catch it. But I'll give
you a quick summary. Uh. Job was remembering when everything
was right between God and him. I remember when I
was respected. I remember when God was good to me.
I remember when my name was held in high regard.
I remember when older men respected me and young men
feared me. And I remember when somebody wanted counsel. My
(05:14):
counsel was considered to be of great value. And I
took care of orphans, and I took care of the needy,
and and when husbands were dying, that they would speak.
I remember all this. But now in chapter thirty, he says,
but now it's just not that way anymore. He's he's
(05:36):
now going to the dark side of the picture, the
plight that that he has been plunged into and he
has been plunged into this. I know some of these things.
Sometimes truth is hard. Some some commentators have used this phrase.
(05:58):
I mean, I almost kind of I'm a little bit
there's a little bit of anks for me to use
this phrase. But you look at it one way. There's
certainly not anything at stake here. But it almost looks
like God and Satan have placed Job in the middle
of their debate. He I mean, have you noticed Job.
(06:23):
I think I want to prove you wrong about Job.
There's a bit of a I don't want to use
the word wager, but there's a bit of a debate
going on. He's going to reject you. God says he's
not going to reject you, and he won't reject me.
I know he won't. And Satan says, well, if you
allow me to do certain things, he will, and Jobs
(06:44):
just caught in the middle of this. He doesn't know
this has happened. He has no idea, he doesn't know
what God is doing. He knows it's not good, and
as we've said many, many times, he seems to be
going to the right source. He wants God to explain
what's going on, and he is he said, I showed
you how my life used to be. I showed you
(07:05):
how my life once was. But now I'm going to
show you how it is now. And it's nothing like
it was. But now, it says in chapter thirty, verse one.
But now and the first first eight verses will be
about in the markers, these these young, these ill bred, undesirables,
(07:27):
that are rejected by society. Even they mocked me. I mean,
I told you that the the high, the most esteemed
of society celebrated me. Not anymore. Now, the lowest of
the low they think they're even better than me. Now
and he says, but now they laugh at me. Men
(07:47):
who are younger than I, whose fathers I would have
disdained to set with, the with the dogs of my flock.
They're not even of good raisin. They're their daddies are
a bunch of evil men. I would have no regard
for even their dads. And here they are, these worthless
(08:08):
youngsters with no standing in society, and they laugh at me.
That's where I am. Now, that's a big drop. That's
a big drop, because think about this, and I thought
about this in my own life. So he looks back
at last week at these esteemed men. There are men
(08:32):
in this room, and there are men in my life
and women as well, that your assessment of my character
matters to me. If I felt like that, you thought
my character was flawed, I would address it. I would
be like, I do care how these men and women
see me, because their opinion to me has standing. Now,
(08:56):
I will tell you there's a lot of people whose
opinion of me has no standing whatsoever. I couldn't care
less what they think of me because I know who
they are, so their assessment doesn't have any standing. So
what he's saying is even that category, the ones that
I would never put any value in. They have a
(09:17):
bad view of me, and I don't even care what
they think about me. But I would normally not care.
But here they are laughing at me as well, even
though they have zero standing in society. They're not good people.
Verse two. What could I gain from the strength of
(09:38):
their hands? Men's whose vigor is gone? They have no vigor.
Even if they were for me, they wouldn't bring anything
to the table. You ever thought about that? You know,
when you ask for help, don't just ask them to
send anybody some people. If they send them for help.
It's not gonna be worth anything. He goes, these are
(09:59):
people that I would never even remotely ask for anything from.
They wouldn't be any help to me. And and yet
here they are. And and then he says, they're not
men of strength. They're they're weak, They're they're pathetic, they're
they're they're scoundrels. Uh three through want and hard hunger,
(10:21):
they gnaw the dry ground by night and waste and desolation.
There's a bunch of scavenders. They don't even they don't
even have they don't even have a home. Uh, They're
they're always hungry. That and then the weird thing about them,
they're they're so hungry, but yet they live in places
where they're never gonna find food. They're not even good
at going to where the food is. You remember the
(10:44):
first time that you kept seeing this And I've heard
comedian a comedian comment on this before. You know a
lot of these people that we see starving all the time.
You almost want to go stop living where you can't
grow anything, go to where the food is. And I
heard a comedian one time say we need to be
raising money for U hauls, not sending move them somewhere else.
(11:05):
This place is never going to produce food. And and
so he says, they they picked salt work and I'll
tell you about that, and the leaves of bushes and
the roots of the broom tree for their food. These
were these were worthless plants there, he said, they're they're
like these gangsters. They're like animals, and they're and they're forging, uh,
(11:29):
you know, for their food, and and and they're they're
they're even going to these unappetizing desert plants that nobody
would want, you know, the the salt of worth, and
the and and the broom roots. None of these things
were considered to be worth anything, and no one would
want to eat them. They're willing to eat even that.
So in five he says, they're driven out from human company.
(11:53):
They shout after them as after a thief. He said,
you know, I was, I was once held in high
regard at the gates. I had standing, and now I'm
being harassed by a bunch of banished outcasts. Can you
(12:13):
imagine that? And what he is realizing is, he said,
I've become so despicable. I'm in such bad shape. My
life is so rotten. They don't see me as an
equal to them. They see me beneath them. You know,
this is a group I would never desire to be in.
(12:35):
And even they say they wouldn't accept me so verse six.
And the gullies of the Torrents, they must dwell in
holes of the earth and of the rocks. They're destitutes.
They don't really call anywhere home. They're no mads. They're
(12:57):
always roaming for some other whatever. I remember, how many
any of you ever been to like India? Yeah, so
you'll you'll know this. I remember when my wife got
back from India. She said the place was so desolate
and the level of poverty so grotesque. She said, when
(13:20):
when when the plane landed and we got back to
where we live, she said, I'd never I've been on
lots of mission trips, I'd never I'd never seen anything
like this, she said. I when we turned on the
street and I saw the trees and the greenery, I
began to weep. When I saw the refrigerator and all
(13:41):
the food and the grocery stores, I began to weep.
I could not believe how bad it was. In one
of the ways, she described how a lot of the
people she saw lived they just went to sleep wherever
the day ended. They roamed around, you know. So she said,
that's first time I've ever been somewhere where adult people
(14:01):
were naked. They didn't have any clothes on, and and
and they would just lay down whenever they got exhausted,
just wherever they were. It wasn't like this is the
place I always sleep. They just would sleep wherever the
day she said. It's like they would move around, and
as it got time to go to sleep, wherever it was,
they just lay down to sleep. And so this is
(14:22):
kind of what he is describing. Uh So, the kind
of people that are laughing at him. They considered their
situation better than mine. That's how bad this is. Uh So.
Then in verse seven, among the bushes they bray. Under
the nettles, they huddled together. The brush is where they gather.
(14:44):
There's really no shelter for them from the from the
the elements, and this bray. When I first saw it,
I thought it is he call them some sort of animal?
Is this some sort of donkey? It's not. It means
to grind into a power, uh it says, you know,
they they they would even grind you know, underneath these
(15:06):
these these bushes, just anything they can they can eat
and consume. It's it's it's a hard life. And then
and then in verse eight, A senseless, a nameless brood.
They have been whipped out of the land. These are
sons of a fool that they're They're a worthless bunch
(15:30):
of nameless people. And the most honorable man in the land.
At one time I was. I was not just hey.
I wasn't just honored in my neighborhood. I wasn't just
honored in my city. I wasn't just honored in my state.
I'm using our the way we are set up. I'm
(15:50):
honored in the region I'm called. I was called an
honorable man of the East Okay. And now I'm being
dishonored by the lowest of the low. That's really what
he's say. That's that's the swing. It's been that big
a swing. You know. It's one thing if you were
(16:10):
kind of somewhat honored and then the lowest of the
low didn't honor you. He's no. I went from the
top of what everybody's trying to achieve, the kind of
character and integrity and respect, and now I'm down here.
I can't think of anything lower than me, that's that's
that's low. Now. I'm sure we've had times in our
(16:32):
life we've been laid low. I'm sure we've had times
in our life that we felt that life was not
going the way we wanted it to go. But the
kind of despair that Job is describing is it's almost
like he can't quite find the words, but he's trying.
He's putting us there. And you know, it was interesting.
(16:54):
I had lunch yesterday with one of the most respected
men in my life and he said something really profound.
He said, he said, we don't really have a choice
when it comes to living in the falling, falling creation.
When it comes to pain, there's not a whole lot
we can do. We're not in control of pain. Pain
(17:16):
is something you can't just say, I refuse pain, and
I mean I would if we could, right. And that's
why you see so many people addicted to drugs because
they're trying to find a way to find some way
around pain. Right. And if you've ever been in severe
pain and somebody gave you something that took it away,
(17:37):
you kind of find yourself putting your arm around it
and say, that's my new buddy. You know. And because
it was during that switch off, I've told you there's
a lot of drug addictions. I don't really understand. I'm
in severe pain now I'm not. I get that. Okay,
that's a hard one. And and but what he said
is said, we don't really have any kind of any
choice in that. He said, But what we do have
(18:00):
a choice in is suffering. I thought that at first,
he said that. I said, I don't know. I agree
with that. He goes, no, no, here, ma'am. We have a
choice on how we see it. We can lament, we
can wallow in it, we can feel sorry for ourselves,
we can woe is me? He said, that's a choice,
he said, He said pain. We then we do about
(18:20):
that suffering? Suffering. We got a little more choice in that,
We got a little more say so in that it
doesn't have to be as awful as we make it.
And what you're hearing right now is not saying that
job is in sin, but but job is kind of
It seems like the window is closing for somebody to say, well,
(18:41):
let's just let's put a positive spin on this job.
This is all great, God's in control. You know, something's
going on here, and and he's going, you know, time's
kind of running out on me being able to say,
but everything's going to be all right. And he is wanting,
as we've seen over and over again, and what just
just let me die? And he's convinced you're gonna see
(19:04):
it in here. He's convinced that is gonna be the
end of this. He he is not at the point
where he thinks God's gonna answer. He's he just said,
I just want to tell you how it is, tell
you what I would like. He's already said that a
thousand times. But I really believe that the end is
only going to come from death. That's what he thinks.
So so he talks about that, and then he said,
(19:26):
all right, there's that. So that's the kind of people
I'm dealing with. That's the kind of people that are
laughing at me. This is how far I have fallen. Now,
I'd like to get specific, real specific about this. I
want to talk about the hostility there showed me. I
want to talk about some things they're doing to me,
some things that are happening, some action that is that
is being taken. Nine and now I have become their song.
(19:51):
I am a byword to them and now, which is
similar to and but and now I'm I'm the object
of their sarcastic satire. I mean they make fun of me,
that they're they're seeing a little chance about me. They're
they're making, you know, rude comments about me. You know,
(20:13):
they're they're call me names. And I don't I don't
know if you know. Sticks and stones may break my bones,
but words will never hurt me. I don't know who
wrote that. That's crazy. I got news for you. Words
hurt uh. And they may not break a bone, but
they'll break your heart, won't they. I mean, it's rough.
(20:34):
I don't care how tough you are. I consider myself
to be somewhat tough. I don't care how tough you are.
You're lying if you're telling me that was. When people
say awful things about you, it doesn't bother you. It
may it may be to bother you to certain degrees,
again based on the swords, but but it bothers you.
And what is the most frustrating thing to me is
(20:56):
when people say things about you that aren't true, and
you can't seem you keep wanting to get that narrative
cleared up in you and then and boy, now, now
now you talk about a narrative getting away from me.
I mean, did you see the woman the other day
with this thing? With this woman that was mean to
a kid and his daddy about this baseball and of
(21:19):
course we must we must burn her. To say at
the stay I woke up, I want you to listen
to this. This is what I don't like. I don't
I thought the woman acted in a way that was
not not It was not good behavior. I'm not saying
that her behavior is okay. However, I got a real
problem with getting up on Saturday morning, on my day
(21:41):
off and going, all right, I need to put out
the latest strange encounters. Let everybody know that adders put
that out. So I go to my social media to
try to you know, it's part of my job. So
I go there and I'm being assigned. I want you
to know, person looking at this, we've all decided we
must all destroy this woman. Let's make her famous today
(22:01):
and everybody start tweeting this read whatever ex Instagram. Put
this woman on display before the world and let's destroy
her today because she was mean to a kid at
the baseball game. Oh yeah, you were being told go
get her. Now, we don't know her, never met her.
I got a little clip I'm supposed to watch and
(22:21):
then go out and demand that she be destroyed. Now, remember,
if we all become this mob with our torches, okay,
if you're not careful, what will what will happen? We'll
burn the wrong house down. Well, guess what happened about
halfway through this? She must be she she must be destroyed. Okay.
And again I'm not saying what she did was something
(22:42):
you'd go now. It was. It was. It was rude,
But we really shouldn't destroy people over being rude. Okay,
So we're destroying her. I mean we're going off you.
You found I had more assignments about her than the
guy who slaughtered the woman in Charlotte. There was more
about her, okay. And so I'm like, Wow, she's really
(23:04):
in trouble today. And so what happens? They we must
find out her name, we must find out where she works.
Let's destroy her today. Well they pull a name out,
it's not her. This woman comes up. I said, hey,
y'all are all coming after me? I'm a Red Sox fan.
I don't even like the Phillies, y'all got the wrong person.
(23:25):
But the mob's burning houses, right, so they burned somebody
else's house. This is reckless, reckless. So what he's saying
in the version of it right now, these destitutes are
telling all these people horrible things about me, and I'm
becoming a laughing stock. He had no idea that one
day you'd be able to do that by the millions,
(23:45):
you know, But even in his own area, this thing
is getting out of hand, and he's like, no one's
even considering the source of who's saying these things about me.
I haven't done what everybody claims I've done. And I
will tell you that this stuff we're doing, it's the
way we're doing this with social media and everything. You're
(24:06):
really you're really hurting a lot of people. We've just
become mean, we just become heartless. We treat people like
they don't that they're like they're animals now and now
now some people are acting like animals. But I think
that comes from this. We just don't care anymore, you know.
I can't wait to sit there. Who's the next person
(24:26):
we're all going to destroy? And don't forget Anonymously, I
had somebody comment on one of our strange encounter things
and uh and said something about, you know, the Rick's
not doing the show he did before, and nobody really
knows how that all went down. Kind of makes you wonder.
(24:47):
And so I went back and chrise, this person's got
some kind of cartoon anonymous, you know, to gut liss
to breach out to me directly. And I said, you
just posted something that you don don't know anything about
on a public platform, anonymous with a cartoon face instead
of just reaching out to me directly. Makes me wonder.
(25:11):
You know, all you doing is playing the role of
the devil. That's all you do it. You know, what
about your character makes me wonder that you would anonymously
say something about somebody makes me wonder about you. If
you want to talk to me, you can contact me directly,
but you're too gutless to do it because you're a coward.
You hide, you hide behind these things. Well, He's like,
(25:33):
these are the kind of people I'm dealing with. He
was dealing with this law and before we ever dealt
with it. So verse ten. Yeah, this atmosphere we have today,
it is a fruitful soil for cowards. This is the
greatest moment for cowards there's ever been. They can sit
there behind a shroud and say anything about you they
(25:55):
want to, and never have to face you. But God
knows and and and they'll answer for it one day
if they don't repent. Uh. Verse ten. They abhor me.
They they they, they keep aloof from me. They do
not hesitate to spit in the sight of me. I'm
(26:17):
disgusting to them. They keep their distance because I'm so
diseased when they see me. God has allowed me to
be so repulsive. I used to find them repulsive. They
find me repulsive. The sight of me makes them want
to spit. I'm so disgusting, and of course they'll do it.
(26:37):
And uh and then look at verse eleven because God, Ah,
there it is again. I'd underline that because God has
loosed my cord and humbled me, they have cast off
restraint in my presence. Well, look at verse eleven. So
who's he saying has allowedness to go on? God? Satan
(27:02):
can't even get a mention in job other than the
very beginning of it because Joe's never never, Joe's not
blaming the Savan for anything. Now Satan may be the tool,
which that's true, you know, it's the time that I
was having a bit of a theological debate. And we've
discussed this before about this allowing and causing and Satan's
(27:23):
doing it. First of all, can we all just come
off that we're so important to the kingdom that Lucifer
himself has assigned himself to us when he's not omnipresent.
He's not omnipotent. Okay, he's not omniscient. And we really
think that Lucifer has said, I tell you what, I
got an issue in Birmingham, Alabama that Rick Burgess. I'm
(27:46):
going after him. Now. Have I Are there enough demons
that I've encountered that I certainly have? Do I battle
the biggest enemy though my sin nature? Yes, much more
than I battle demons, even though it's important to know
about demons. James kind of kind of gave us a
little bit of humbling there when he says a lot
of your problems just your own sin nature. Yeah, the
(28:07):
battle between my sin nature is probably the hardest battle
I fight, beyond anything else. But Job did rank Satan
because we know that Satan talked to God about it,
so we do know that. But he's never blaming Satan,
even though Satan is the instrument what he knows, and
this is something really incredible that here's job this long
(28:30):
ago and he understands that God's in control. He gets it.
And somebody says, yeah, but Satan's the one doing this
stuff to him. But who drew the boundaries? Remember the
analogy of the pitbull? You know, I come in here
and I've got a chain, and I've got this crazy
dog and he's ready to go after any of y'all
that I let him go after. But I'm I have
(28:50):
the chain, and if I go, sorry Steve, if I
go go get Steve, I let enough change chain for Steve.
And then over here, you know, we're I'm sitting there
and there's there's Greg, and Greg's like, boy, I hope
he doesn't put him over here. And all of a sudden,
he starts going over toward Greg, and I just pulled
the chain back of what he starts marking about halfway here.
But I won't let him get Greg. Who's in control?
(29:12):
But who's biting people? The dog? I'm not biting people,
but the dog. The dog can't bite anybody. I don't
let him bite. You know, I got the chain. Well,
we saw God tell Satan exactly what he couldn't do,
and we saw Satan go back and ask for a
little more chain and God gave him a few more.
(29:33):
So how this shows the faith of job. This shows
you Now he's confused and he's upset, and he feels abandoned.
But you gotta love the fact that he knows that
God has allowed this to happen to it to me,
he was way ahead of his time. You know, it's
(29:56):
almost like we all just can't face the fact that
the person that we need to get right with is God.
God's the one that you know. And and sometimes, as
we've said many times in here, what's difficult because you've
got to be careful because you don't want to turn
into arrogance and pride is to sometimes think, Lord, thank
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you for finding me worthy of the suffering. Now be
careful because that you can get in a bad place.
Don't get prideful about that. But there's a certain I
hope confidence not arrogance. A certain confidence. You know, have
(30:42):
you ever had like there's nothing bigger than having the
approval of God. But you know, we all have had
these people in our life that if they came over
to you and said, I knew I could trust you
with that. Feels pretty good, doesn't it. Well? What about
when God says I can trust you with that? See God,
job's in goods standing with God? And you're like, Rick,
(31:03):
is this what good's standing with God looks like? Sometimes? Sometimes?
And so he says, but God has loosed my cord.
God has humbled me. Now he's getting that because I
will tell you that many times. There's all kinds of
reasons that God allows pain and suffering. I'll tell you
when that's up there at the front, humbling us. Even
(31:24):
Paul said he had to be humbled by the thorn
of his flesh. He said, that's why it's there. Whatever
it was keep me from being conceited. I was allowed
to see the third Heaven. I was a pretty big deal.
God used me to go out and plant church after
church after church after church. But then he lists for
us what and look at all the suffering I had
(31:46):
to do for all this, and all this is just
to keep me humble. The apostle Paul, you know what
he said, if I had done everything I did for
the kingdom, even after persecuting the church and being delivered
from that, he said, my ministry was so powerful that
if God didn't allow me to suffer, I would have
been too arrogant. I couldn't have handled it. How about
that That's one way to keep us from taking God's glory,
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isn't it is? We're so broken down we ain't got
time to right so. And by the way, he's not
gonna share his glory with anybody, not with the Apostle Paul,
not with the greatest heroes of the Bible. He's not
gonna share it with anybody. He's certainly not gonna share
it with us. Okay, and so Joven it seems to
understand this, he said, they've cast off restraint in my
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presence because they see they think I love this, They
think God's left me. I know God's allowing it, but
it's you know what it's done. He's down right now.
You ever had people that didn't like you and all
they could think is, man, if I ever get him down?
Do you remember, young men, we love sports analogies. What
(32:55):
we always told, if you had the opponent down, don't
let up, don't let up. And you know what they said,
We've been waiting on you to be in this situation.
You used to think you were see really something. You know,
you looked at us down here, scurrying around. We got
nowhere to lay our heads. We're all a bunch of scoundrels,
our daddies. They are a bunch of idiots. We have
(33:15):
no standing. But look at you now. You know what
he said. God has humbled me so much. They don't
even have restraint. They don't fear me at all. Picture
that twelve on my right hand, the rabble rise, they
push away my feet, they cast up against me. They're
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ways of destruction. What he's saying here, he says, they
build their path of destruction against me. They plan an
attack against me again because they don't fear me. Thirteen
they break up my path. They promote my calamity. They
need no one to help them. I am this, I
(33:58):
am easy to defeat. Now, I'm an easy foe for
the enemy. And don't miss this one. Just what I
talked about a minute ago. Look at the second part.
Look at thirteen second. They promote my calamity, back to
what I said a minute ago. Not only do they
love it, they make sure everybody else knows it too.
They're celebrating my downfall. They promoted they let everybody you
(34:18):
see what happened to job. Now, I know that never
happens in our society. There's somebody that we didn't like.
You know what do we love the most? Let's just
call it people that convict us. And we think they're
more devoted than we are, and their faith makes ours
look bad. Oh if they could just have a moral failure.
(34:39):
I can't wait to tell everybody. Well, you know you
heard their marriage just having some trouble. Everybody thinks their
marriage is so wonderful. I heard they're having some trouble.
As a matter of what, I'm gonna make sure everybody
knows it. I'm gonna I tell you what. I'm gonna
do it. What the running joke? Oh, here's how I'm
gonna promote it. I'm gonna promote their calamity. How with
a prayer? Quick? We need to be praying for so
(35:03):
and so. I heard their marriages in trouble. Please don't
tell anybody right on my Facebook post. So they're promoting
my calamity. They want everybody to know. And how about this,
he says, But my calamity is so well known they
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don't need anybody to help them with this. It's so obvious.
Fourteen as through a wide breach they come amid the crash,
they roll in. This is all military language. Here. The wall.
What we know about a wall usually is around the city.
Wall protects, he said, the wall that protected me. At
(35:44):
one time I was hedged in by God. But now
that wall has such a gaping hole in it. I mean,
I can't even protect myself against everybody this attacking me.
I'm wide open for attack now, and they know it.
Ever felt that way, terrors are turned upon me. My
(36:05):
honor is pursued as by the wind, and my prosperity
has passed away like a cloud. Let me just sum
up what he's saying right here in Calhoun County. I
have no dignity, I have no hope, I have no safety,
I have no prosperity. Everything that at one time was
(36:26):
a blessing to me, they're all gone. Everything I had
is gone. I'm not respected, I've lost all hope. I'm
not safe from attacks verbally or physically. And I've lost
all my prosperity. I've lost all my money, all my land,
all my kids. I've lost it all. Now comes the turn.
(36:52):
I pointed out that these people have no standing that
are against me. The lowest of the low hate me.
I told you the way they're treating me. Now I'd
like to talk about something else. I'm being abused by God.
So he says this of verses sixteen through nineteen. And
now my soul is poured out within me. Days of
affliction have taken hold of me. Now what does all
(37:14):
that mean. It's very poetic, but let me just simplify
that for you. I'm convinced I'm dying, okay, and now
my soul is poured out within me. I'm dying. Days
of affliction have taken hold of me. I'm not going
to physically survive this. That's what he thinks. Now he's wrong,
but that's what he thinks. Let me put a point
out again, He's wrong, but that's what he thinks. Don't
(37:38):
ever lose hope, you know. You know what. The beautiful
thing that you got to love about this is if
you're if you're in a bond and you feel like
you're dying, and some of you have been there, take
solace in the fact that you your life is not
(37:59):
going to be shut down to God allows it. You say, well,
I'm pretty sure I'm going to die. You know what
you should say, May the lords will be done. If
he wills me to come out of here, I'll come
out of here wide open with a great testimony, ready
to talk. If he says this is the end, then
I'm gonna be in his presence like Paul taught us,
and that'll be all right too. See. Did you feel
(38:21):
that calm come over you just saying I've had that
situation had before? You know, you remember that all daring
the pandemic. We were all terrified that that, you know,
and you know, and it did bother you. I mean
I lost people in the pandemic their earthly life, and
some of them I didn't expect. Now, some of them
I knew were in trouble if they got it, they
had compromised immune systems and things like that. But I
mean I saw some pretty healthy people go down. You're right, yeah,
(38:44):
And I was like when that happened, I had a
whole new attitude. I was like, that person's healthier than me,
you know, And so I thought so really, me thinking
there's no way it could be trouble. And then you
hear in the phone the first time I remember the
doctor when he said that. He said, hey, you're positive,
and I thought, okay, And then all of a sudden,
(39:05):
I just remember, I went, well, if the Lord wants
to this before we knew all the things we knew,
I said, if the Lord says this is it, that's fine.
I mean, there's nothing I can really I'll do everything
He's got around me. And then if if this is
not my day to go Psalms one thirty nine thirteen
through sixteen. There's nothing this disease can do to me.
(39:28):
It can humble me, put me through a tough time,
it can give me time to consider things and all
they can serve that purpose. But it can't kill me
unless God allows it to kill me. So mayyor will
be done. I'll either have no issue with this, I
have a somewhat of an issue with it, or it'll
take me. And it turned out that I didn't have
any issue with it, and it wasn't any big deal.
(39:48):
But the time you don't know, you know, and we're
still seeing things that it caused because the problem with
that horrible, clearly manufactured virus is even though the only
thing that that happened to me was a loss of
smelling taste, for a little while. That's the central nervous system.
Still a pretty big deal. You know, you don't really
(40:08):
want your central nervous system to take a hit. But
if you couldn't smell or taste it, did you know? So?
And who knows long term, but there you go. So
and then the only thing worse than that is actually
taking the vaccine. Apparently so so now he talks about that,
But then you get into to seventeen seventeen. He says,
(40:31):
the night racks my bones, and the pain that gnaws
me takes no rest. Anybody ever been there. My body's
torturing me. I can't even sleep. I mean, I'm in
so much pain to me. To me, that's one that's
a biggie for me. If I can go to sleep.
The reason why I'm not having rotator cuff surgery right
now is I can still go to sleep. Okay, when
(40:52):
it gets to where I can't go to sleep, I'll
go get it fixed. But until then I'm not going
to because the rest of it's not that big a deal. Okay,
And it gets me out a lot of movie I
can't know, you know, people say I can't uh so
uh but the uh but but yeah right, But I mean,
aren't you that way? As long as I don't know
what it is, as long as I can sleep, I
won't fix anything. You know. Now you start taking my
(41:13):
sleep away from me, and I'm going to see everybody.
Something's got to change. So uh so anyway, and I
figured out, look, I can go half the night this way.
I get it up like that, and I go half
the night over here and up this way back this way.
And as long as I keep doing that, I won't
have that urger, you know what. So so uh so anyway,
but he says for him, it's not that way. He said,
(41:34):
I I can't. I can't. My body is all over me.
I can't move without something hurting, and I surely can't sleep.
Sleep deprivation gets really on you. Oh you know, it's
one of the worst things that can happen to us.
Uh as far as your on going health. You know,
we you got to sleep. If you're not getting sleep, guys,
you gotta get sleep. Okay. I know that sounds like
the pot calling the kettle black. Just then, sorry about that.
(41:56):
Uh in eighteen with great force, my garments. My garment
is disfigured. It binds me about the collar of my tunic. Now,
this is a visual that really gives us an idea
of where job is physically. He said, it takes incredible
(42:17):
effort for me to even change my clothing, and the
neck of my tunic will now fit around my waist. Ooh,
he's lost a lot of weight. I mean he's a skeleton, okay,
and he's letting us know that's how bad it is.
Verse nineteen. God has cast me into the mire, and
(42:39):
I have become like dust and ashes. Underline this one. Okay.
If where y'all with me, and you got the word
of God with you underline, put brackets around that, do
something with that. Anybody know why? Anybe I ever read
Joe before, Well, trust me, this is coming back right
here at the end when he finally understands what this
(43:02):
is all about, These dust and ashes are coming back,
and he says, right now, I've become like dust and ashes.
That'll be in chapter forty two, verse six, if you
want to go ahead and look at it today. This
is gonna be the words that he uses when repentance comes. Now,
(43:24):
God has cast me here, and I don't know why.
I don't know why I'm in the mire, why is
he put me here? But he knows that God put
him there. But this is going to come back and
be similar words he uses when he finally understands what
this has all been about. So now he wants to
go and address God. Nice little segue since this is
(43:44):
something he's going to say when he finally sees God.
Now I'm going to address God, Verses twenty through twenty three.
I cry for your help, and you do not answer me.
Let's let that sit amentue. You ever been there? Yeah,
(44:07):
I've I've got some things on my on my table
right now that I pray about, and I pray about,
and you know, I've learned. Even though Job says you
haven't answered me. No, even when we say we're not
being answered, that is the answer. It's a it's a
not yet, but it is an answer. I no answer
(44:29):
is an answer. Why Why hasn't this happened yet? Do
you hear me? Anybody dowt he hears us? That's the
thing gets me right? You ever start trying to use
different words, I'm gonna phrase this prayer request a little
different today. Lord. Maybe there's some breakdown in my language.
Maybe you don't speak Calhoun County. I'm gonna try to
(44:51):
be more eloquent this time. You ever prayed more eloquent
to try to get an answer? Let me try. I'm
gonna try this little more elquent this time. I'm gonna
see if I can't be like Oswald Chambers, you know.
And uh and no. The deal is he hears it,
and he's going to do what he's going to do,
and that will be the answer and and it will
be the hardest part is when you get to the
(45:12):
part that you love God so much, you're just so
you're just so intimate with him that you're like, he
just does what's right? Are you disappointed? Rick? I am,
just because I'm flawed, but he's not. So I have
peace in the fact that he's right. That door shut,
didn't it? Sure did? I guess I should celebrate that
(45:33):
since he's always right. That's one of that That was
one of the biggest when I realized I was stepping
forward as I used to just thank God for open doors,
and I learned you might want to thank him for
a closed door. Oh really, so, but I really wanted that. Yeah,
but you didn't. You didn't need it, you know, you
(45:55):
ever said that I prayed about that, though. What I
prayed is that here's a good when I've had this
many times with and just people that I know. I
want to get this job. I need this promotion, I
need this job, I need this to come through. Hey,
I'm up for this. I'm up for this. Let's all pray,
let's repent, let's petition the Lord. Let's stand before him. Lord,
(46:19):
this is what we want. Jesus said, pray his will
be done, right, But we don't really mean that. But
we'll say it, your will be done. And then when
he does this will we're like, well, that's not what
I wanted. I thought you said my will be done. Yeah,
but I didn't mean that. I just knew I was
supposed to say it. Now, when you get to where
you mean it, not just say it. And if you
(46:39):
can get to the point that you think about this,
let's go something really radical. If I got that job,
my income would have increased one hundred thousand dollars. Did
you get it? I did not. Well, then that one
hundred thousand dollars was gonna be trouble. What God didn't
(47:02):
think you needed that, He didn't think you could handle it,
or he didn't think he needed it. That job was
a disaster. Be glad you didn't get it. Now, if
you don't pray and you just kind of making life
up as you go. Now, I don't know whether it's
good or bad. But if I know this, that the
Lord God Almighty said his will will be done. And
if you petition before him and he hears your prayer
(47:24):
and he even says, yeah, talk to me. I'm the
great I am. I'd like to hear from you. That's
amazing to me. So I can talk to you. You
sure can. You're redeemed by my son. You come right here,
talk to me. I'd really like to have this job.
No what I thought you said you trusted me. That
job was gonna be a disaster for you, or that
(47:45):
job wasn't gonna serve my purpose. I wasn't gonna be
glorified in that job. You were gonna be distracted by
that job. I was gonna lose your attention. I like
you more dependent on me. Sudden you get one hundred
thousand dollars, you think you don't need me. I like
kind of keeping you where you know you need me.
(48:06):
That's the best thing for you. Okay, Wow, so start
celebrating those closed doors too, because they're God's hand protecting us.
You know, you ever got a job and then after
you got to see what happened, you're like, well, I'm
glad that didn't happen. Yeah, I mean I've I remember
like having a situation I won't get too detailed where
I thought we need to move in that direction. And
(48:29):
I felt really good about that direction, and it didn't happen,
and it wasn't long after that that company went under.
I thought, so I would have had a moment that
this would have felt good until I went down with him,
and then I've been back with nothing. You know, sometimes
it can be something as simple as that. You know, hey,
can can can we all admit we don't know what
(48:49):
God knows anybody? Okay, you ever tried to do it
your way? Right? Yeah? I have to. I've messed it
up pretty bad. So so here he is say, I
feel like that you don't answer me, but God will
answer him. Job's gonna learn be careful what you pray for.
Job could have just said, whenever you're done with this,
(49:10):
be done with it, but he demanded to have a
meeting one on one with God. Be careful when you
start getting up in God's face saying you come out
from behind it and you face me, because he just
might and you don't want that, you know. I go
(49:32):
back to Adrian Rogers, who's already there. He said this
Q and a thing that everybody keeps talking about. I
wouldn't be surprised if we just dropped on our face
when we saw him and just said, holy for a
thousand years, and then maybe we can get up. Guys,
(49:52):
when we stand in his presence, everything's gonna change. I mean,
Paul said, even I only see it dimly, but one
day I will see it clearly. And when we see
it clearly, I mean, if the apostle, Paul will come back.
Right now, he goes, you don't know how spot on
I was about that. What I thought I knew was
nothing compared to what I know now. And one day
(50:13):
we'll all be there if you're redeemed. So let's go
now to twenty two. I'm sorry, twenty one? What am I? Damn?
I'm the wrong plassroom? You just man? Where am I?
Twenty two or twenty one? Twenty one? Twenty one? He says,
(50:33):
you have turned cruel to me with the might of
your hand, you persecute me. So he knows this is
coming from God. And you know what he says, I
think you're overdoing it. I think you're being cruel. Have
you ever been there? There's some hard things in life
that you have to know God allowed because he could
have stopped him. Have you ever thought, I think you
(50:55):
went too far. I remember one of the most blasphemous
things I saw. Uh it was and it was a
good book. I'm mis understand, but this person was not redeemed.
Have you Have you ever read Tuesdays with Maury I
forget the sports writer's name, Mitch. Yeah, and it's a
fine book. But there was a man that he went
(51:19):
to see all the time, and the man was a
Jewish man, and they got talking about Job, and he
asked Mary what he thought about the story of Job,
and he said, I think God went too far. I
think God was cruel so right here. And I didn't
care for that, because I see that's that thing again,
(51:41):
when we get into that deal about what we think
we deserve as opposed to what we really deserve. We're
delusional about ourselves, me as much as anybody. Because a guy,
a guy called up when we were talking about this
thing about the woman, and y'all know that the mercy
and grace thing for me I have to really be.
(52:03):
I can be hard nosed and sometimes I need this
be softer than I am sometimes. And so we were
talking about the thing I talked about about the woman
getting destroyed by the world on social media, and the
God called. He said, well, I'm gonna tell you what, though,
and look at the things she was doing. She's been
held accountable, said my preacher was talking about we're all
(52:24):
gonna be held accountable one day for the things we do.
She's just being held accountable for the things that we do.
And I said, well, now hold on it. Whoa whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
I said. So, let me ask you this. When you
stand before the throne of God, are you hoping to
get what you deserve? I said, because the last time
I checked, I almost stand before a holy God and
deserve to be destroyed by his holiness and thrown into
(52:46):
an eternal lack of fire. But because he showed me
mercy and grace to his son Jesus, I'll actually stand
there and not get what I deserve. Now does it
matter what I did after redemption. And apparently because he
says give and takeaway, we're talking about treasures now, we're
not talking about me getting the eternal death penalty I deserve.
(53:07):
If it gets down till we should all be held
accountable for what we do. Then everybody ought to go
to hell, everybody. And I said, but what God is
gonna say to me is I'm gonna show you mercy
and grace because my son paid the price Rick that
you should have paid. And oh, by the way, don't
deny that same mercy and grace to people that I
(53:29):
didn't deny to you. That's actually the gospel. And the
phone line went silent, and I noticed that the narrative
was about getting cranked up on the text line. All
that kind of went away. Say we're forgot for a minute,
we get a little bit of full of ourself, and
we're ready to go out there and tell everybody that
they're gonna get theirs, and we forget. Wait a minute,
(53:50):
I'm not gonna get mine. I knailed Jesus to the
cross that should have been me, and the debt that
was paid for me was enormous. So maybe it's actually
something we should celebrate and remember this when we're ready
(54:12):
to get our torches out and burn somebody else's life down.
The got you was gracious to me. Now, it doesn't
mean that when people have bad behavior, it doesn't matter.
You can't call it bad behavior. I don't mean that.
I mean this thirst for blood and guts and destruction
of people because they were mean to a kid about
(54:34):
a baseball. I mean it's a little we're a little
full of ourselves, and maybe there's a time to remember
what we deserve, and maybe we can just maybe calmly
correct somebody or disagree with somebody, but not wish them
to be destroyed and quartered in front of us, or
(54:54):
beheaded to the gallows with them. All right, So the
next thing he said in twenty two, he is saying
that God's doing this to him. He knows that. But
now twenty two, he said, you lift me up on
the wind, you made me ride on it, and you
tossed me about in the roar of the storm. This
(55:15):
is interesting, he said, because you kind of there was
a storm coming and you have me in the storm
and you're tossing me around like a storm. We know
that Satan was allowed to use a storm to kill
his children. And he's saying, you know it's coming, and
(55:41):
this moment with God is coming. And what does God
appear to Job in a storm? And Job says, you
got me in the storm in here. I mean, yeah,
I'm tossing around in here in this storm. You brought
the storm. You put me in the storm. You won't
get me out of the storm. Suddenly God says, I
think I'll show up in a storm. How you like that?
You want to see a storm? I got one for
(56:03):
you twenty three for I know that you will bring
me to death and to the House appointed for all
the living. I understand that I'm deserving of this. Job
is broken. He's cried for help, and it's distress. He said,
(56:25):
God isn't answering, and I know that I'm going to
get what I deserve. I'm going to die, just like
everybody else is going to die. And then he gets
into to twenty four, yet does not one in a
heap of ruins stretch out his hand, and then his
(56:46):
disaster cry for help. You can't blame me. I'm broken.
I'm crying out for help. Is that so unreasonable? Don't
most people when it's rough cry for help, my help
that I need, me asking for it. That's not unreasonable.
I'm not being unreasonable with God. Twenty five? Did I
(57:08):
not weep for him whose days was hard? Was not
my soul grieved for the needy? What's he doing now?
Now job's running his resume? Was I not a good man?
You ever heard anybody say that before? I don't understand
why these things have He was such a good man,
not compared to God. He wasn't right compared to other
(57:32):
people he was, which is what we're gonna find out
about job. Right. But when I hope for good, evil came.
This is twenty six. When I waited for light, darkness came.
I was. I lived in the light the way I
was supposed to live. And you know what my reward
for living in the light was darkness. I thought I
lived in the light so I would get light. I
lived in the light. Now I get darkness. I don't
(57:53):
understand this. Twenty seven. My inward parts are in turmoil,
and never still, days of affliction come to meet me.
I am suffering. Things are not improving. I assume more
of this is to come. I guess, because you won't
stop it. How about this it's I'm not getting any better.
You ever been there, I'm struggling and it doesn't I'm
(58:13):
not getting any better. When is this gonna stop? When
is this gonna be over? I'm not improving. And then
he goes on and he says in twenty eight, I
go about darkened, but not by the sun. I stand
up in the assembly and I cry for help. Let
me tell you something. I was looking for sympathy. I
wanted a sympathetic audience, but I cannot find one. Nobody
(58:37):
shows me sympathy. Twenty nine. I'm a brother of jackals
and a companion of ostriches. Ostriches, I live like these animals,
which he could see there. I'm more like them than human. Now,
my goodness, I'm just like these animals. I'm not even
human anymore. I become so bad. Thirty My skin turns
(58:58):
black and fall me wow, and my bones burn with heat.
This is that skin disease, the bones referring to I malnourished.
My skin is literally falling off of me. It's rotting.
Thirty one. My lyres turned to mourning, my pipe to
the voice of those who weep, all musical instruments, and
(59:22):
you know what he says, these musical instruments that once
played songs of joy, that once played songs of celebration.
The only music I can make now, the only music
I hear is the music of mourning, like at a funeral.
This is the kind of music we play for those
who weep. Tough situation, tough situation. Does God hear him? Yes?
(59:51):
Is God going to deliver him? Yes? Is he gonna
be told by Job or any human what the timeline
should be. No. When we come back next week, Job
will make one final appeal, one final appeal. He's looking
(01:00:12):
for an answer, and he is going to get it.
Let's pray, Lord, thank you for this today. Thank you
for our time together. Thank you for these men that
are so loyal and come in and encourage me. Lord,
thank you for Adler and all the hard work he
puts in. And everywhere Lord you allow me to go,
people come up and say, this Bible study matters. It's
(01:00:35):
this hard work that Adler puts in, and how y'all
make this available? It matters? And I know this one
in the study of Job is some of the more
difficult questions that people ask. Thank you for the fruit
that it is producing, and thank you for trusting us
with it, and thank you for the encouragement of those
who listen and watch, and especially for the encouragement of
those that are in the room. And your name we
(01:00:58):
pray Amen. Thank you,
Host
Rick Burgess
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