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As we come to look in the word of God, I remind you of the principle that only the Holy Spirit, only God can reveal God, and we can learn a lot about the Bible but only the Lord can show us Himself. I’d like to share this verse. We believe in the Bible; the Bible is inspired, every word, but the Bible also mentions some silence. In other words, it’s not in the Bible, but it is still inspired. I want to give you an example of inspired silence, and it’s from Isaiah 45:19, God said, “I did not say to the offspring of Jacob,” so it’s not in the Bible if He did not say it, “seek Me in a waste place.” KJV says, “seek Me in vain.” I just think it’s wonderful that God never says that it’s vain to seek Him. That’s inspiring; that’s silence that we can trust Him, because the Lord is always there. He tells us what He says, but here He says, “Here is something that I never say, ‘Seek Me in vain.’ I’ve never said that and I never will.” I just think that’s precious that the Lord tells us that it’s always profitable to seek Him.
Father, we thank You so much for Your Holy Spirit that lives in our heart. We thank You at this time for the book of Job, but especially for the revelation of You that is given in the book of Job. We just pray, Lord, as we come to the end of our study in this marvelous book, that we would see You again in a fresh way. We commit out little mediation unto You and ask for Your protection on Your people in case I say something that’s just of the flesh, and we know You watch over Your word to perform it. So, we give this session to You in the Matchless name of Jesus. Amen.
Welcome again to our quick look, the overview of the book of Job, forty-two chapters and we’re doing it in seven lessons. So, you see we left a lot out, but most of it was the debates, thirty-eight chapters of human debates. The revelation of our Lord in the book of Job is “El Shaddai”, the God who is more than enough. Two thirds of the time that name appears in the Bible, it’s in the book of Job, because Job needs somebody, the God who is more than enough, with what he’s going through.
Everything in the book of Job, as we suggested, revolves around the conversation that Satan had with the Lord. The Lord initiated it. Job 1:8, “The Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered My servant, Job; there’s no one like him on the earth, a blameless, upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.’ And then Satan answered the Lord, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has on every side? You’ve blessed the works of his hands, his possessions have increased in the land; put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face.’”
I shared the double insinuation in that conversation. Satan made an insinuation against Job, God’s child, and he made an insinuation against the Lord. The insinuation he made against Job was that Job is only in it for the hedge; he’s only in it for the blessing; he’s in it for the money. “If You take away the blessing, he will curse You to Your face.” That was the insinuation against Job, and therefore, against all that Job represents.
His insinuation against the Lord was, “Nobody would choose You apart from Your gifts; You are just a patron saint; You’re just a purveyor of gifts; to them You are a glorified Santa Claus. If You don’t give gifts, nobody is going to follow You because You are not worthy in Yourself, objectively, just who You are. There is not enough beauty, there’s not enough glory, there’s not enough to desire You; nobody would choose You, trust You, depend on You, adore You and worship You. That was the double insinuation, that Job is in it just for the blessing, and God is not worthy apart from the blessing for anyone to choose Him.
Now, the proof for all ages, that a man created in the image of God, does not choose just for the blessing, but for who He is in Himself, if God gives that man created in the image of God, the revelation of who He is, because man is not going to automatically come to see God as He is. This is the part of the conversation Satan didn’t know about. Satan just thought, “Well, Job is going to try to live Godly in his own strength, and I’m an invisible enemy ripping it down, and with those two enemies, Job in his own strength and Satan, Job will never win. But Satan didn’t know that God was going to suddenly give Job a revelation of who He was, and when he saw the Lord, everything changed. So, that’s where we are in our study. God is going to prove for all time that He’s worthy in Himself, and that there are those who choose Him just for Himself, and not for any blessing.
To accomplish this, as I suggested, it was necessary to keep Job in the dark; Job did not know about this conversation in the heavenlies. All of a sudden without warning the hedge starts coming down. Job had no idea of that conversation in the heavenly places. God and Satan are fighting it out and Job becomes a battle field, and he had no clue of what was going on spiritually. As we discovered, he lost his wealth, he lost his children, he lost his health, he lost his ministry, he lost his friends, and he lost everything, and he lost the support of his life partner. She said, “Curse God and die,” and most of all he lost the sense of the presence of the Lord, the sense that he had when he knew Him by the hearing of the ear.
The theme of the book is not around the question that the miserable comforters, the friends of Job raised. The question they raised is, “Why is Job suffering?” Many Christians read Job and they look for the answer, “Why does God allow Christians to suffer?” The book doesn’t address that question. The question of the book is, “Is El Shaddi, is God enough when the hedge comes down?” That’s the message of the book, and that’s the message that the book is going to answer.
We come close to the end of the story. We looked at those fruitless debates between Job and his three friends trying to answer the wrong question, “Why do the Godly suffer?” When we left off, I had introduced his fourth friend, Elihu, and the message of Elihu. This became a turning point in Job’s experience, in Job’s life. God used Elihu to change his focus. Job was very Job centered, and he was focused on the hedge, and when the hedge came down, he was focused on the lack of hedge, and then he was focused on his suffering, and then he was focused on his friends, and then he was focused on their arguments, and then he was focused on his own defense or arguments. In other words, he was looking everywhere but not to the Lord, and Elihu is the one that in his message said, “Has anyone thought to look to the Lord?” He had a word from God.
I told you about the other three; one was a psychologist, and that was Eliphaz, and Bildad was a theologian, and Zophar was a philosopher, everything based on human wisdom and logic and books and feelings and emotions and observations. But Elihu, his observations were based on a word from God; he had a word from the Holy Spirit. So, when he, speaking from the Holy Spirit, turned Job’s eyes to the Lord, Job started hearing from the Lord. When he started hearing from the Lord, Elihu goes off the pages of scripture. We don’t hear him anymore; he’s gone. That’s God’s method, even today. He gets a human instrument that has a word from God, and he begins to turn people in the right direction, to look to the Lord, and they start hearing from God, and the human instrument passes away. That’s always God’s plan. And it was illustrated powerfully here. Job 38:1-3, “The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man; I’ll ask you, you instruct me.’” This is still Elihu preaching. It isn’t that Elihu preached, stopped, and God started. Elihu is preaching the whole time, but Job starts hearing from the Lord, even though it’s the words of man, he hears from the Lord.
I made a big point last time of Job 38:3, “The Lord said, ‘Gird up your loins like a man,” and then He repeats it again in Job 40:6, “The Lord answered Job out of the storm and said, ‘Gird up your loins like a man.’” You’ve got to remember that at this time Job was at the heart of his suffering, in fact, it’s right at the end. Job 17:1, “My spirit is broken, my days are extinguished, the grave is ready for me.” That’s his mental state. The scene is of a sick, dying man on a death bed. You go through the descriptions, he’s just skin and bone. He has lost weight, and he hasn’t been able to sleep. The few nights he went to sleep, he had nightmares. He’s in chronic pain, and he has boils from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. He’s gasping for breath; he’s dying and on his death bed. All he has in front of him is the hope that he would die soon. Job 7:15, “My soul would choose suffocation, death, rather than my pain. I waste away; I’ll not live forever. Leave me alone; my days are but a breath.” Job 6:8 we read these words, “Oh, that my requests might come to pass, that God would grant my longing. Would that God were willing to crush me, loose His hand and cut me off.” “Why don’t You just kill me? Why am I in this condition?”
Then, in that condition, now picture that in your mind that this guy is on his death bed, and the first words he hears when he starts hearing from God, Job 38:3, “Gird up your loins like a man.” I’ll tell you, after that, Elihu/God hurled fifty questions at Job that Job couldn’t answer, and then He said it again in Job 40:7, “Gird up your loins like a man.” I suggested last time on the low level of earth, it sounds pretty cruel to go to somebody on his deathbed, ready to die, and say, “Come on; man up. Gird up your loins like a man.” That sounds cruel. If I went to somebody in the hospital and they were dying, close to death, and I said, “Gird up your loins like a man,” I don’t think…. I was banned from a hospital already in Massachusetts and they wouldn’t let me come visit. They said that I was scaring the patients because I was telling them about the Lord.
Is God kicking a man when he’s down? Is that what’s happening. You know your God, and He’s not like that; that’s not Him and that’s not what He’s doing. What Job doesn’t know is in his own strength, he’s been struggling with an invisible enemy, Satan. In both you’re losing; you can’t win in your own strength, and you can’t beat Satan. That’s what the battle has been about so far. When God says, “Gird up your loins like a man,” it’s implied “like the man God created you to be”. God didn’t create you to be like a bird and gather a few sticks and build a nest and have a few eggs and build a family and fly away and die. That’s not the life span of a Christian man. Man was created in the image of God, and we have a clear word such as 2 Corinthians 4:4, “Christ who is the image of God.” Man was created to put Christ on display. In the book of Job, El Shaddai is to be on display. In the New Testament, the Lord Jesus is on display.
Now, we’re at the deathbed scene, and here we are and Job is crying out, “Lord, just kill me, crush me.” And then he says something so sad. You know that the best thing you can ever have is the presence of the God. Job says, “Depart from me, so I can a little cheer.” He’s not asking God to be with him and comfort him; he’s asking Him to leave, so that he can get some comfort. Of course, you know, there is no comfort in comfort; there’s comfort in Jesus, and that’s not the same thing. Listen please to Job 10:20, “Would He not let my few days alone; withdraw from me, that I may have a little cheer before I go.” God is saying, “I didn’t create you to die like a victim. You are a man created in the image of God, and you were created to put God on display. Though you didn’t know it, that’s what this contest is all about.”
I can picture a conversation where God says to Job (this is not in the Bible), “Job, here you are and you are begging to die. Why do you want to die?” I think the response would be much like the words I’ve heard over and over again, even from the lips of Christians I have heard these words, “I want to die because I have no more quality of life.” Have you ever heard that, “no quality of life”. I can hear the Lord say, “No quality of life! Job, do you hear what you are saying? I am your quality of life. You are created in the image of God; that’s your quality of life; it’s Me and relationship with Me. You were created to put Me on display, to radiate Me, and you were to publicly demonstrate the life of God to the whole creation.” Displaying Christ, brothers and sisters, IS our quality of life, but we’ll never know it if we’re fighting in the flesh and we’re trying to fight Satan, and we don’t even know it. We need a revelation that He IS the quality of life. You’re not going conclude that and just say, “Okay, now I’m getting ready to die, and I’ve got to make it real. It will become real if I believe it hard enough.” No, no, you need a revelation from the Lord, and I need a revelation, and Job needed it, and he got it. He said, “Now my eye sees Thee. I’ve heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now I’ve got that revelation.”
We can’t win, even up to our deathbed, until we get that revelation. I can hear God explaining to Job, “You didn’t know what was going on. I had a conversation with Satan, and we talked about you, and this removing of the hedge was all about you, because he said that you’d have no purpose to live, and you’d want to die and curse Me if I took down the hedge. And here you are, Job, on your deathbed. Let me ask you a question. Am I enough? Is El Shaddai more than enough? At that point all Job wanted was death. The reason that Job failed is that in his own strength he was trying to fight Satan, but he didn’t know that, but that’s exactly what was happening; he was trying to fight Satan. And God knows that until He opens our eyes to see who He really is, it’s at that point we see who we really are. When God opens our eyes, and we see El Shaddai in all of His beauty and glory, in that moment, He’s more than enough; without a hedge, He’s more than enough.
The Lord is about to give Job that revelation that He’s unqualifiedly enough apart from every blessing. This is my own opinion; you can take it or leave it, but I think if a Christian really, honestly, no playing religious games, gave you a revelation of who He was, God would strike that expression “quality of life” right out of your mouth, and you would never say it again. It’s not about yourself, and not about somebody else. I’ve heard people say, “Why doesn’t the Lord just take that person? There’s no reason and there’s no hope and there’s nothing to live for. There’s no quality of life.” Yes, there is; that is the greatest opportunity to show Satan and the world that He’s enough without anything; the deathbed is the perfect place to show that, when you are absolutely weak and absolutely dependent on others, and when there’s nothing left, except the Lord. Philippians 1:20 the Apostle Paul was facing death by martyrdom, and here’s what he said, “According to my earnest expectation and hope, I will not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness Christ will even now as always be exalted in my body whether by life or by death.” So, this idea of the deathbed, I don’t know if I’m going to fall down and hit my head on a fence post and just die, or if it’s going to be gradual, I don’t know, but I’m trusting God to give me the revelation that He’s enough, and that all the family and whoever gathers around, they’ll see that there’s not one bit of sadness, and there’s all joy and excitement in my life. I’m praying that is true.
Anwyay, having said that, in our last meditation we were looking at Job 42:5&6, “I’ve heard You by the hearing of the ear; now, my eyes see You, and therefore I retract and repent in dust and ashes. We were beginning to look at, “What does it mean, now my eye sees You.” Of course, the big thing is revelation, that God opens your eyes. You’ll never see Him until He opens your eyes. Job 42:5, “I’ve heard of you by the hearing of the ear; now, my eye sees You.” When we left off last time, I was calling attention to the fact that seeing the Lord requires a revelation, and since He’s a Spirit and invisible, that revelation has to be taken by faith. So, to save time, because I’ve got a lot on my heart, in your notes, the next six passages I’m not going to quote, in other words, from Exodus 33:20 to Ephesians 1:18.
Last time we emphasized the need for revelation and faith, but as I said, here is something that faith didn’t count on. He thought he’d win the battle because he knew Job didn’t have it in him, and was all flesh, and with him invisibly fighting, Job doesn’t have a chance, Satan thought, “I’m going to win.” But just like at the cross, what he didn’t realize was that the Lord was going to step in and give a revelation that would turn everything around. So, He made Satan sweat to make Job and you and me better Christians. I hope you don’t think, “I’d be better off if there was no devil.” No, the devil is a mighty weapon for good; to take you forward in a heart knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I want to develop this a little further, “Now my eye sees Thee.” Notice verse 6, “Now my eye sees Thee, therefore I retrack and repent.” When I was at Bible School they used to say, “When you see a ‘therefore’, look at what the therefore is there for. So, why “therefore”? After God gives him spiritual life and he says, “Therefore, I retrack, and therefore, I repent.” Even though we’re going to look at the Hebrew word for “repent”, and it’s not what you’d expect. We’re going to look at that, but even though it’s not, the “therefore” does contain a spiritual principle, and I want to develop it just a little. It’s the principle of by-product. Certain things are a by-product; this happens, and therefore this… This has to come first, therefore, this. Repentance, as it’s used here, is a by-product, “I have seen the Lord, and therefore I repent.” Many people think repentance comes first, that I need to repent in order to see the Lord. That’s not God’s order. God’s order is, “I need to see the Lord in order to repent.”
Repentance is just a by-product. We have the same idea of by-product in Philippians 3:10, a different illustration but same idea, “That I might know Him and the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suffering being conformed to His death.” Some teach that you’ve got to die to self if you are going to know the risen life of Christ, that death comes first, and then resurrection. Not in God’s economy. Paul, thirty years after he was saved, he said, “That I might know Him in the power of His resurrection, that I might be conformed to His death.” I need His life to die to self; I don’t die to self to know Him in His life. It’s the other way around. If you make a goal out of a by-product, you are going to lose the by-product and the goal at the same time. We need to know what by-products are.
One other illustration from Chronicles 5, I’ve heard people say, “I’m praying that the Lord would empty me; I’m trying to get empty because I want to know God in His fullness.” Emptiness does not come first. I love 2 Chronicles 5:13, “Then the house of the Lord was filled with a cloud, so that the priest could not stand to minister because of the cloud; the glory of the Lord filled the house.” When the glory filled the house, everybody was driven out. So, fullness comes first, and then when I’m filled with the Spirit, I don’t have to worry about the deeds of the flesh; they are going to go out automatically. So, as resurrection comes before death, and as filling comes before emptiness, repentance does not come first. A revelation of Christ comes first, and therefore I repent.
A lot of Christians are just tied up in that Old Covenant repentance, “You want to walk with God and have a close relationship with Him, then you’ve got to repent; you’ve got to keep repenting. Jeremiah 31:18&19 is a New Covenant passage, “Bring me back, that I may be restored; You are the Lord my God; after I turn back, I repent, and after I was instructed, I smote on my thigh; I was ashamed and humiliated.” First, we see the Lord, and then we repent. I think the great illustration, of course, is Isaiah 6:5, “He has seen the Lord high and lifted up. Then I said, ‘Whoa is me; I’m ruined; I’m a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.” Why did Isaiah see himself as a moral leper living in a leper colony? The answer is because he saw the Lord, and once you see the Lord, then you see yourself. Job is about to experience this.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Jonathan Edwards. He was the third president of Princeton University. He was known strangely as a Congregationalist for starting the Great Awakening. He has a sermon that everybody seems to know, “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God,” and so on. I enjoy biography, so I’ve been reading Jonathan Edwards’ biography, and here’s a quote from him, “I had a view that was for me extraordinary of the glory of the Son of God. Then, my wickedness as I am in myself looked like an abyss infinitely deeper than God.” He saw the Lord, and then suddenly he saw Himself. But there’s more to this word “repent”, so let’s go back to Job. “I saw the Lord, and now my eye sees Thee, therefore, I repent.”
I’m going to give you the technical, but I think we lose a great deal of this because of our English translations. In almost all the translations across the board, they just say that Job repented. That registers something in your mind because you know what repentance is. Basically, the word is “turning around, turning away from sin” and it’s a moral concept. “I’m not going to disobey God; I’m not going to sin; I’m going to repent and turn toward God.” I think it’s logical if that word is used to ask, “Is there any record of sin or sins that Job confessed?” He said, “Now I repent.” If he confessed sin, which sin did he confess?
I went through the book of Job, and it’s a terrible way to go through the book, looking for sins, but I went through the book of Job, but I wasn’t really looking for sin but looking for something he could repent of. Anyway, I went through the accusations of the three, and the actual words of Job, and I came to Job 29-31 and I said, “Well, there is something you can repent of.” Those chapters are just filled with self-righteousness, and Job is just bragging on how perfect he is, and so on. In fact, he said, “I’m going to die claiming my innocence.” Job 33:9, “I am pure and without transgression. I’m innocent. There is no guilt in me. He invents pretext against me; He counts me as His enemy.” And of God Himself, Job 40:1&2, “The Lord said to Job, ‘Will the fault finder contend with the Almighty?’” He calls him a faultfinder; he could confess that. He made some terrible accusations against the Lord. Job 9:17, “He bruises me with a tempest; He multiplies my wounds without cause.” He’s arbitrary and there’s no reason for this. Job 19:6, it comes to a climax, “Know that God has wronged me. He has closed His net around me.” “What is going on in my life? God did it and He’s wrong; He shouldn’t have done it.” That’s where Job is at this point. Job 4:2&5, “If one ventures a word, you become impatient. Now it’s come to you, and you are impatient. It touches you and you’re disfavored.” Eliphaz accuses Job of impatience. Was he impatient? I know when you come to James 5:11, if you have KJV it says, “Do you consider the patience of Job?” But the real word is long-suffering. There’s a difference and we’ll get into that next week, Lord willing.
What did Job repent of? When I went through, I said, “Well, lack of repentance, despair, frustration, rebellion, despising the discipline of the Lord, harsh words against his friends, sarcasm, and certainly complaining that God is at fault. There is so much to confess. The Bible says that he repented but I don’t see him confessing any of those things. Then, what does it mean? It says that Job repented. The answer is not in your English word; it’s in the Hebrew word. There are two different words in the Hebrew for repent. One is the one that is used most often, 108 times. It’s shuv. That’s when sinners repent, and they turn from their sin. There’s another word, nachan. That’s the word that’s used, and it means “the Lord repented”. God can’t repent of sin because He has no sin. That word, nachan, when it’s applied to God, it’s just sorrow; it’s regret and He’s moving in another direction. He turns, not from sin, but from His anger; He turns from His decision to judge somebody. God repents. I bring that up because that’s the word that’s used here. It’s not the word that refers to turning from sin, but it’s the word “I am sorry that I made man. I just discovered something.” And Job is saying, “I saw the Lord and now I am so sorry that I never saw this before.” That’s the repentance, “I regret that I didn’t see me as I really am. I’ve been fighting in the flesh, and I’ve been fighting an enemy I didn’t even know had been there. But now I see Thee.” He regretted something; he was grieving over something, and it’s because of that uniqueness, that this word is different for Job when it says, “I repent,” that I have to make an issue of it because it’s so unique.
What is meant by Job 4:6, “Therefore, I retract, I repent in dust and ashes.” When Job first started hearing from God and the revelation began, he said in Job 40:4, “Behold, I am insignificant. What can I reply to You. I lay my hand on my mouth.” “I am insignificant.” He didn’t say, “I was impatient, I was angry, I was bitter, I was judgmental, I was rebellious.” He said, “Wow, I see I am insignificant.” The word “insignificant” in the Hebrew is “of a light weight”, in fact no weight and it’s air and it’s nothing. Job saw, compared to the glory of God, standing next to God, God had all the weight and he had none, “I’m just nothing and I’m insignificant.” He didn’t confess sins, “what I did”; he confessed who he was, and he regretted. He repented and said, “I am so sorry. I never saw who I am.” It’s the Old Testament counterpart of Romans 7:18, “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.” Sometimes we say, “Flesh is something that rises up in me and now and then gives me trouble.” No, no, no. “I know nothing good dwells in me, that is my flesh.” What is the flesh? It’s me and it’s you; that’s the flesh and that’s what gives you problems. It’s not something you’ve got to deal with that comes up once in a while. It’s you, and you are the one, so his repentance doesn’t bring him to as much guilt and confessing sins as it brings him to humility, and he is now a proud man made humble. Job 42:6, “Therefore, I retract and repent in dust and ashes.”
Job thought up to this point that it was all about him, everything was about him. Now, he says, “I agree; I didn’t see it before. I have no weight with the Lord, and I am zero and less than nothing.” That was Job’s response after he saw the Lord, that he saw himself as nothing.
Hold that, please, and let me show how God brings home the climax of this vision, “Now I see You.” I think, before I get to that, that many Christians confess their sins, “I did this, I blew it, and I was angry at my wife, and all that kind of stuff,” and yet they’ve never seen who they are. They haven’t seen the flesh. Romans, “In me there is no good thing.”
Let me show you how the voice of the Lord through Elihu brings him to this place of revelation. When one reads the message of Elihu, Job said, “I need an answer.” Well, how about getting 79 questions instead of an answer, and that’s what happened. He said, “I need an answer,” and God just peppers question after question after question. I’m going machine gun them at you. I’m not giving the verses. “God is perfect; are you, Job?” “Everything is in His hands. Job, can you control everything?” “He sees every way of man. Job, can you see the heart of man?” “Job, did you ever bring the morning to come?” “Did you ever let the evening come?” “Can you control the weather?” “Are you in charge of the lightning, the rain, the storm, the wind, the hail, the dew, the snow?” He asks him all these questions. He said, “I’ve created the earth. Were you there? Did you lay the foundations? Do you know the measurements when I hung the earth in space, hung the earth on nothing? Are you familiar with the galaxies, Pleiades, the Bear? Are you familiar with all of that?” “Who gave the sea its boundaries?” “Who made sand the boundary of water? That’s a very strong boundary.” “Who gave man a brain?” “Who commands the animals and the birds and the fish and the eagles and all of that.” “Job, can you do any of those things?” And then He says, “Now, I’m going to give you the hard work. That’s the easiest, to control the galaxy. That’s not hard, Job. Only I can do that, but you’ve been trusting the flesh, and you’ve been trying to fight satan.” So, here’s what God says to Job. This is amazing, Job 40:12, “Look on everyone who is proud and humble. Tread down the wicked where they stand. Hide them in the dust together. Bind them in a hidden place. Then, I will profess to you your own right hand is safe.” “Job, when I talk about the universe, I can only do that. Here is My quest to you—can you make the proud man humble? Because if you can do that little thing, just make a proud man humble, you can save yourself.” That’s an amazing statement, “I’ll confess to you that you can save yourself.”
Now, you need to understand that Job needed this revelation because he has been a proud man, “Can you humble yourself, Job?” At this point, God gives two illustrations, and we’ll wrap it up with this. You might not agree with my application. My illustration is Biblical, but I think Job illustrates what I’m about to say. You might say, “I don’t accept that illustration.” Here is God’s order, “Job, I’ve done all this and you can’t do it. If you can make a proud man humble, and Job if you can humble yourself, I’ll confess that you can save yourself.” Then He gives two strange illustrations. You’ve heard the words — Behemoth and Leviathan. Job 40:24, “Can anyone capture him when he’s on watch with barbs? Can anyone pierce his nose?” The same with Leviathan, Job 41, “Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook, and press down his tongue with a cord? Can you put a rope on his nose, pierce his jaw with a hook? Will he make supplication to you? Will he speak to you soft words? Will he make a covenant with you?” Later, He says, “If you try, you won’t try again.” You can’t. They are two enemies.
Behemoth is a huge creation, probably literal, something or another. My commentators, in my opinion, are missing the point, and so I had to do a study on, “What is Behemoth? Is it a hippopotamus, is it an elephant, is it a dinosaur, is it some mythical creature, and then what is Leviathan? Well, is that a crocodile?” Some say “No, that’s a shark.” Some say, “That’s a whale.” Some say, “That’s a dragon.” Some say, “That’s a serpentine, something that’s in the sea.” Others say, “No, that’s just made up. That’s a mystical animal. It doesn’t exist.” I’ve read the arguments on all those things. The point is that God said, “I can do all of this. I’ll take care of the universe, if you can humble the proud. But, Job, there are two enemies. Are you ready to fight Behemoth? Are you ready to fight Leviathan? I think Behemoth pictures the flesh, and I think Leviathan pictures Satan. These are the two enemies that Job was dealing with the whole time and why he was failing, why he needed a revelation.
The context is making a proud man humble, and the power to subdue the flesh. If you’ve ever gone to war with the flesh, you know that you are not going to win. All who have tried to go to war with Satan certainly are not going to win. It’s interesting that the first mention of Leviathan is in Job 3:8, Job says, “I wish I were never born. I wish I died in the womb, a miscarriage. Then he gives a reason, Job 3:8, “Let those cursed who cursed the day who are prepared to rouse Leviathan.” “If I’m born, I’ve got to fight Leviathan.” That’s the first mention of Leviathan.
Listen to Isaiah 27:1, “In that day the Lord will punish Leviathan, the fleeing serpent, with His fierce and great and mighty sword, even Leviathan, the twisted serpent, He will kill the dragon who lives in the sea.” Those are titles used for Satan, and they appear at the end when God conquers them. So, I just think that these illustrations, and there are other illustrations, but man struggles with the flesh, and he struggles with the devil, and there are many metaphors to describe the flesh – the old man, the old husband, the old nature, the carnal man, carrying about a corpse, slavery. There are so many pictures, and I think in Job, Behemoth is a picture and when you come to the end, Babylon the Great, the harlot, I think that’s a picture of the flesh, and that’s why there are hallelujahs when she goes down. Just read it in terms of your flesh.
Anyway, Job finally responds, Job 42:2, “I know that You can do all things, and no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.” Job 42:5, “I’ve heard of You by the hearing of the ear; now my eye sees You. Therefore, I retract, I repent in dust and ashes.” His eyes have been open and now he says, “Lord, thank You. Thank You for opening my eyes; I was on my deathbed ready to prove Satan right, and You gave a revelation, and I discovered my own flesh, and I discovered Satan and I can’t handle it. Now, I see You, and You’ve said that You would take care of my flesh, and You would take care of Satan. Now, I see You as desirable; now my eye sees You.”
We’ll stop there and we’ll pick it up next time, and we’ll bring it to the climax that God brings to the book of Job.