Page 60 - Reading Job to Know God
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cares and who loves me and who engineers every step. No person can
live under the weight of the lie, God is my enemy. Boy, if you really
believe that, it will lead you to despair and suicide. It would have to. That
unbiblical philosophy can only lead to nihilistic fatalism.
What do we read instead? Romans 8:31: “If God be for us, who can be
against us? He that spared not His own Son but gave Him up for us,
how will He not with Him freely give us all things” He has not set
me up as His target. God is for us. All right, that is the first thing I want to
point out in this section. The basic error of the three men, along with, the
basic error of Job.
Another observation I want to make about this section is that it is one of
the most negative sections in the whole Bible. It is a large section. It is
from chapter 3 all the way to chapter 31. One practical way to study
negative sections of the Bible is to take warnings from them. What I
would like to do is take all these chapters as a whole and give the great
warnings that I see.
Now remember, from Colossians 1:28, it says: “We proclaim Him,
admonishing every man.” God has never called me or any man to
preach warnings. God has never called me or any man to preach the
promises of God. We proclaim Him, promising. We proclaim Him,
admonishing. I am not going to just give you a bunch of warnings. I am
going to proclaim Christ, warning every man. There is a big difference
there because one way puts too much of the responsibility on me and you.
As we struggle to stay Christ-centered, seek Him alone and obey His
voice, we agree with all that He is doing. The Holy Spirit of God convicts
people of their sin not us. So, I call attention to that because I do not
want you to get your eyes on warnings. I want to present warnings, but in
a Christ-centered way.
The first warning is this. Beware of half-truths. You see, they said true
things, but they did not preach the truth. The truth is a person. “I am
the Way, the Truth and the Life”. When you go through this section you
will find a lot of true things, but these men were not preaching the truth.
This is the age old story. When man fell in the Garden of Eden, he fell
under the influence of a half-truth. Satan did not tell the whole story; he
left something out. “Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
That is what Satan said. Here is what he did not say. Ye shall be as gods
and know good, but as men you won’t be able to perform it. You shall
know evil, but not be able to refrain from it. He did not tell them that part.
He just said you will know good and evil. He did not tell them about the
horrible struggle this knowledge would bring to them and then ultimately
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