Page 60 - Reading Job to Know God
P. 60

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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