Page 147 - Job

puzzling over this for years. He gives two more descriptions. Chapter 40,
verse 15. Behemoth. You are familiar with that animal, right? They roam
around all the time. Behemoths. They are all over the place. Chapter 41:1
“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook?” He says, I want to show
you two more things, Job, and then we are done. I want you to see
Behemoth and I want you to see Leviathan. So, what is Behemoth?
Well, it is a Hebrew word that means beasts. Plural. Not beast, but beasts.
There are as many suggestions as there are commentators on the meaning
of this word. Some say it is a water ox or an elephant, perhaps a
hippopotamus. Some a river horse or some extinct animal like a
mastodon. Or maybe a mammoth, which is a hairy elephant that used to
exist. What is a Behemoth? Nobody knows. The descriptions, the details,
do not fit any of those animals.

And then chapter 41:1-34, Leviathan. What is it? Commentators do not
know. They say, well, if you read the description it looks like a crocodile.
Most of your commentators call it a crocodile. Others will say crocodiles
do not breathe fire as this thing does. It is not a crocodile; it is a dragon. A
dragon? Dragons don’t exist. So some say, no, it’s a sea serpent. Others
say it’s a dinosaur. What is it? Nobody knows. And here is an amazing
thing. God is going to give us the answer to the problem of suffering, and
He brings it all to a climax. He uses two animals that do not exist, or at
least that we don’t know anything about. What good is it if we do not
even know what these creatures are?
I think I have one little clue. Not as to what they are. I do not think God
wants us to know what they are, but what they stand for. The principle,
behind each of these creatures. I think that is clear, and that is what we
will look at, but not right now. We will save that for just a little while.
Now we come to the most important part of the study of Job. What is
God’s purpose? What is God really saying through all of this?
In order to answer this, let me show you two things that God is not saying.
They happen to be two things, I used to think He was saying. I know that
it is not God’s purpose to show Job how ignorant he is. I know that for
sure. I believe that Job happened to know a great deal, if not most of what
God was saying. Now let me give you some illustrations of that. I am
going to ask you to actually look up these verses as we go through them.
Keep your finger in chapter 38. Verse 4-6 God tells Job that the earth is
hanging on nothing. Turn back to chapter 26. Job is answering Bildad.
Look at verse 7,

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