Page 62 - Reading Job to Know God

These chapters are a great demonstration of how debating can take you
from the truth. Job was more confused after all of this philosophy than
before. It is always that way. Do you know the verse, “The fear of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom?” Here is an amazing thing. If you
start your reasoning anywhere but “The fear of the Lord”, the more logic
you apply, the further from God you get. I remember one time getting
ready for a Bible study and I started buttoning my shirt wrong. The more
I buttoned the worse it got. If you don’t start out right, you’re not going
to end up right. And so, you have to begin with the Lord. Do not ever
think that you are going to win anyone to the truth by an argument. You
will not.

Now I realize what I am about to say might be an unpopular position in a
world where seminaries and Bible schools teach the exact opposite of this.
But as I study my Bible, I do not see any place for what is called
“apologetics”. The idea of apologetics is to create logical arguments in
order to defend the faith. I think seminaries that teach such courses are
wasting their time. It is worthless stuff. God is known by revelation! It is
a miracle of God. God teaches this stuff. No defense of the truth, no
explanation of the truth, no refutation of error, no amount of eloquence or
of evidence, is going to take you one step closer to the truth. The truth is a
mighty miracle of God, and it comes as the Holy Spirit shows you. God
reveals Himself to a willing heart; someone who wants to know.
So, for what that is worth, I hand out a warning against argumentation. Do
not argue the things of God with anybody. It does not work. It has never
worked, and it never will. Especially, with the unwilling. Those who don’t
want to know. “Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion
still”. They cannot/will not change. “God doesn’t believe in atheists!” He
has set eternity in every man’s heart (Ecc 3:11) therefore it is a conscious
act of rebellion, not intellectual superiority, when someone chooses not to
bow the knee to the wisdom God put inside of him.
A third warning I find in this section is; Avoid self-pity. Job did not start
off with self-pity, but little by little he landed there. I think the devil’s
most popular sermon is entitled, “Pity Thyself.” Every good sermon, they
say, has three points and a poem. Well, the devil’s sermon entitled, “Pity
Thyself” has three points and a poem. His first point is poor me. His
second point is poor, poor me. Can you guess what his third point is? And
his poem is: “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, sitting in the garden
eating worms”.
Pity means to feel compassion toward someone, and it is all right if you
are talking about someone else. It’s great to feel sympathy and try to enter
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