The Bible Provocateur
The Bible Provocateur
LIVE DISCUSSION: Job 7:3-9 - An Appealing Death - Part 2 of 4
What are we actually saved from? We open that hard door and walk straight through it—into the gravity of sin, the reality of God’s justice, and the radiant mercy that only makes sense when the cross stands at the center. Rather than trimming the edges off judgment, we explore why an offense against an eternal God requires a Savior whose worth is infinite, and why softening hell empties the gospel of its power to save.
From there, we sit with Job. Not just the headlines of loss—family, wealth, reputation—but the quiet torment of long nights where sleep will not come. Job 7:4 becomes our guide as we unpack the spiritual and even medical anatomy of sleepless suffering: without deep sleep and REM cycles, the mind cannot process pain, and the soul feels stranded in the dark. We talk about how affliction touches every corner of life, why honest lament is not a lack of faith, and how bad counsel from friends can compound grief when they misread suffering as guilt.
Along the way, we draw a crucial distinction between blameless and sinless and revisit examples like Ananias and Sapphira to show that not all pain points to a specific sin. We press into evangelism that tells the truth about God’s justice and His mercy, and we insist that endurance rests on the quality of faith’s object, not the volume of our confidence. A trembling grip can hold a strong Christ. If you’ve wondered how to explain salvation, how to think about eternal punishment, or how to endure the night when rest won’t come, this conversation will meet you there and lead you back to Calvary.
If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs courage, and leave a rating and review to help others find the conversation. Tell us: how do you explain what we’re saved from, and where do you find rest when it’s hard to sleep?
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When he died on the cross and rose from the grave. Right. And to reject that eternal punishment, eternal separation, that is a worthy punishment. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03:It is. Before I get to verse four and in Job, uh Nathan, go ahead, brother. Or Kanan. Kanan, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_06:We're gonna jump on that same idea of the lack of understanding of the seriousness of sin, the implication, and what it really means to us as Christians. We really need to study that uh both with the propitiation of sins through Christ alone, but also why it was it necessary for him to do that and really meditate and reflect on that, because I constantly see that Jonathan as a common denominator, that people don't take the time to really weigh the the heavy and um weightiness of sin and what it really means for Christ to go and do that, why it was so necessary, and why taking away from the gospel by introducing this heresy, uh, which has never been affirmed by anybody of reputation, uh, you know, worth looking into, um it really is important for us to examine this and reflect on it daily uh as Christians.
SPEAKER_03:You know, and I you know, my my my what I've learned to do in my Christian life, brother, and you nailed it, my my what I've learned to do is to look at everything you will always get on any doctrine where you are confused about anything, you will always get the clearest introduction to what the truth really is about the subject matter when you look at the cross. When you look at that cross, when you look at Calvary, when you look at what Jesus did for us, knowing who he was, because remember, he had two thieves, two people on either side of him, suffering the same death. But there's a difference between his death and theirs. And it has to do with the quality of his person. It has to do with the quality of his person. He was the Son of God. He was eternal, the eternal son of God. And it took the eternal son of God to turn away the eternal wrath of God owed to us for the sinfulness of our sins, which have eternal ramifications because of the eternity of our God. People don't understand this. And like brother Laguch Sampocket, it's like what we what man does not understand. He he falters when he misunderstands, when he first when he misunderstands the sinfulness of sin. And that's what this evil teaching is is a misunderstanding of the sinfulness of sin. And just you know, so and you have people like this guy in here with this little happy face crying, laughing, they won't laugh on the day of judgment. There will be no laughing. There's only one person who's gonna be laughing on the day of judgment. And you know who that's gonna be? God himself. You don't see any scripture at all. And I know that people like to have, you know, we, you know, we as Christians get these little cliches, and somehow they, you know, Christian, Christianity just runs with it. One of the things, one of the things that Brother Jeff, man of God, go ahead.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, go ahead and finish what you're thinking.
SPEAKER_03:No, no, no, go ahead. I want you to go ahead and say it because I don't want I don't want you, I want you to hang around.
SPEAKER_04:Well, no, I will. You're teaching me patience, brother. You pass me over again. But uh the uh, you know, sorry, I'm just calling it like it is. You know, uh, I need to start raising my hand 15 times too. But anyway, all I want to say was what we talked about the other day, the crux of it is to me, what makes me so upset about what he said was is that what if if we if hell is just non-existence, then what are we being saved from?
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_04:And that's all I want to say.
SPEAKER_03:Right. That's true. That's true. Um we we have to understand what we're being saved from, and that's part of what needs to be conveyed to people when we share with them. Is that understanding? What are we being saved from? Because otherwise, what what is your what is the pure reason for your argument to compel them? Now, I know people will go, well, it's just the love of God. It's the love of God. Well, you know, we've heard that, everybody heard that. I've heard that before I became a Christian for a long time. Jesus loves you. He has a wonderful plan for your life. This is what, you know, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. None of that stuck with me. None of that. Now, there may be certain people who can say, Oh, yeah, it was the love of God that got to me. And I I can't argue that that wasn't the case. But I know to me it was hearing that God was a God of judgment, too. He was a God of judgment. And he loves his mercy and the grace that he imparts to his people every bit as much as he loves the idea. He loves that the fact that he has to exact justice. He told Christians what? He said, Vengeance is mine. You don't worry about dealing with that, I will deal with that. And I will deal with that for you. For you. And so this is the this is the God that we have, and sometimes we misunderstand who he is, and and not understanding his attributes and not understanding our sinful nature is where the problem comes in at. And so when this guy, when people start talking about, well, the crime doesn't fit, the punishment doesn't fit the crime, whose standard are you judging by? This is what we need to understand. Uh, brother Canaan, go ahead.
SPEAKER_06:That example, when they talk about a crime, it it begs the question: if we when we're not believers and we're not regenerate and we're not following God's statutes and his ways, how many thousands of times are you unaliving other people because of your hate? How many times are you committing adultery? How many times are you using God's name in vain? How many thousands of times is a person doing that in a day? And so when you use that analogy and you say, Oh, well, you know, if someone commits murder, you know, they serve their time.
SPEAKER_04:Right.
SPEAKER_06:What if you've done it millions of times? That analogy fails to encompass and cover the amount and multitude of sin that we commit when we are separate, when we are fallen, when we are unalive in sins and trespasses, outside of God's grace, outside of regeneration and guidance by the Spirit and Holy Scripture.
SPEAKER_03:Amen, brother. Amen. Brother Michael, what do you think? Michael, and then forever blessed, then I'm gonna go to uh Job 7.4.
SPEAKER_02:Well, uh even, you know, considering Job lost his family and everything, even you know, we were talking about possession, but even the people in our lives, they don't belong to us. And so this is why it's important that we share the gospel. And make sure, as you were saying before, we want these souls in heaven with us, you know. Uh we don't care about the possessions, but these people that we lose as well, uh, we want them there. So every time we lose someone, and uh we have to question whether or not they've heard the gospel and this and that, that's kind of a hit against us if we have a close uh relationship with them. And uh, I think of my dad when he he passed away when I was 16, and I never shared the gospel with them. And so I know he was an unrepentant sinner uh just because of his life and everything. So uh there are regrets in our lives when it comes to that. So while we do say these possessions aren't a part of anything in our future, uh Job's Job had a whole family that he lost, and so we need to make sure we focus our gospel intentions on them.
SPEAKER_03:Amen, brother. Uh, sister forever blessed. What do you think, sister? What's what's on your mind and welcome.
SPEAKER_00:How are you all doing? Um, I was listening to what you were saying about Job and having the hands of protection around him, and a lot of people look at that hands of protection as being the materialistic thing. Right. Um, what I see from the story of Job is everything that was displayed in his life pretty much uh pulled out the spiritual part of him uh to reflect more of being like Christ or being like God in a sense where yes uh his family members were removed from him and he was vexed with um sickness, a boy.
SPEAKER_03:I think we lost you, sister. Can you can we can't hear you, sister?
SPEAKER_00:Uh we can't hear you more trust in God, and uh more of the Lord's attributes in his life was displayed, and it it reminded me of being rich in the spirit because like someone said the uh the blessings of the world with you when you transition, but you can take the spiritual blessings of the Lord with you because he said to store up your treasures in heaven. So I believe um when we do those who are in Christ, when we do transition, I believe that the things that we endure on the earth that causes us to draw closer to the Lord transform us to be more like the Lord or um reflect God's image more before he takes us home. If that's if if I'm saying that right.
SPEAKER_03:No, it makes total sense. It makes total sense.
SPEAKER_00:So it's so it's like with Job, the story of Job, I mean personally crave more of God's um blessing or to be more like Christ than like the world, you know, and it it was showing me not to focus so much on the materialistic things of the world, but to desire the more of God, teach me how to love more, even if I have to be hated in the process. And I went through uh just a short testimony, I went through something to that sort. And you know how people say, be careful what you ask for, and I asked God to help me to love his people more. And um, on one of my jobs as a leader and it's sitting in the leader position, you know, I had almost a whole shift. I'm in security, and I had almost a whole shift to go against me because they didn't understand or they did not want change. And I brought about change for the good, but because they were so complacent in doing what they were doing, they didn't want change, so they pushed against me. And the hatred that I felt from them pushing against me caused me to be emotionally, you know, to cry out to God even more because I really didn't understand, but he brought me back to, but you asked me for love, you asked me for more of my love, which in turn, you know, I understood. Sometimes you may you're you're gonna have to go through somebody hating you in order to pull out the true agante love that God has put in you for them. Because going through that, you still want to love God's people irregardless of what they do. And it's gonna take God to give you that love and and have you to um to um bring it manifested and truly love them in spite of opposed to hating them or coming against them because they're coming against you. So Job's life taught me and is teaching me, you know, a lot about how to trust God even when it hurts.
SPEAKER_03:Amen, sister. Absolutely. And that and what you what you what you're expressing that you've gone through is exactly what Job is going through right now with his friends. You know, their their resistance um against his complaints about his where his misery is sourced. And and so, and and I feel like Job is like he at this point, he has no idea what's going to happen. We know what's gonna happen later on. But this is a big part of it. How do we, you know, with all of the stuff that he's already gone through, now he's dealing with the with these friends of his that are supposed to have the sort of mental and spiritual acuity that he is accustomed to exercising and benefiting from on on his own. And so even his even his religious affiliations are betraying him. And so that's what we see here. Um, and so now in verse 4 of Job 7, he says, When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise and the night be gone? And I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day. Brother um, man of God, what do you think this means?
SPEAKER_04:Uh well, you know, when I'm tossing and turning at night, usually there's something on my mind that's plaguing me, that's bothering me. And uh, I think Job is trying to sort all this out and he's carried it into his sleep. And uh, you know, because that's what that's what it means to me.
SPEAKER_03:Right. And I think that's absolutely absolutely the truth. Lisa, let me ask you a question. So he he he goes, when I lay down, I ask, when shall I arise and the night be gone? And you know, and so when we sleep, what what what is our expectation? What is our benefit to sleep? To get rest. And and so the whole idea is so you got two things going on here. He says, when I lie down, I ask, when shall I arise? In other words, he's anxious to arise because he's not finding comfort in his sleep. When will the night be gone? I'm looking forward to the morning because my light is my light, my sleep is not comfortable, like Jeff pointed out. He's tossing to and fro until the dawning of the day. And so what he is saying is that what he's saying is that sleep is when we are supposed to find refreshment. That is where we get, like Pocket says in Psalm 6, he said he quotes the verse. I'll read it. I am weary with sighing. Every night I make my bed swim, I flood my couch with my own tears. This is what Job is going through. This is exactly what he's going through. And that verse was completely apropos. Psalm 6, verse 6. Because what he's saying is that sleep, which is designed by God to have a regenerative function. It is to, it is to give us refreshment, it is to give us the ability to wake up the next morning, reinvigorated, to take on the challenges of the next day. But he's saying that his nights are restless, filled with tossing to and fro, longing for the morning. Brother Jeff, man of God, go ahead.
SPEAKER_04:Well, medically, uh at night, uh roughly about every 90 minutes is when we we experience REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, but rapid eye movement sleep is when dreams occur. And we need that to sort of have a catharsis for our brain. Uh stage four sleep is also deep sleep that accompanies REM sleep. And the thing is without it, you're not healthy because your your brain just essentially cannot it cannot rest, it cannot reboot, it cannot deal with uh the anxieties and troubles. And so, you know, when you're tossing turn on light, you're it's just a sickening. I mean, you just don't you don't have access to that which God has given us in order to uh you know to uh keep us going.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Absolutely. You know, what here here's the picture. Here's the picture. So we know what Job was going through from the very beginning. He lost his business, he lost his home, he lost his wife, more or less, he lost his children, he lost his reputation, he's sitting in front of he lost his health with the boils, and now he's losing his compot his relationship basically with his friends. And so now Job is saying, I've lost everything, and now he's saying, now I even lost sleep. The one thing where I ought to have been able to expect some monicum of peace, sleep. Even comfortable sleep has escaped me, and so not being able to sleep comfortably is also adding to his misery. He's not even afforded the comfort of sleep. This is what he's saying. You see, step by step, that everything that he he had for any kind of comfort, God has put it in Satan's hands to impose it upon Job. Upon Job. Not even his sleep is comfortable. And this experience that he's having is showing exactly how affliction can invade every single part of your life. Every single part. It makes your food not taste well. It makes you not even hungry. It makes you not want to sleep. It makes you not want to hang out, it makes you not want to um to work, it makes you not it makes you want to just dull your senses. This is a frustration that none of us, I don't think, well most of us never get to experience all at once. And I don't say it in the sense of you should look forward to that one day, but he is saying that he that every single comfort that a man can go through has been dismissed from his experience. Brother Canaan, go ahead.
SPEAKER_06:I would say also with that in mind, when we are in sin and when we are away from God doing what we want to do instead of what's pleasing and following his statutes and being led by the Spirit and not quenching and resisting, I would say that's compounded by like a million fold. Because you find no joy, you find no good, you find no comfort, you find no rest when you are a believer, but you are habitually caught up in this sin and this entanglement, whatever you want to call it. And I would say it's the same, but even more so because you have nothing to look forward to when you're living like that and when you're conducting your life in that way, when your walk is a soup sandwich.
SPEAKER_03:Soup sandwich. I was never gonna get old. I like that one. The soup sandwich. Oh, I think I missed somebody here. Uh, brother Jeffrey, encouraging serving. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:Jonathan, uh, I just want to say that as Job is describing his situation here in verse four. A lot of times it would be easy, I think, to think that maybe Job's going a little bit over the top in describing what's wrong with him. Jonathan, he's not. No, he's not. He is not. He is going through this. He, like you said, he has lost that one thing, a good night's sleep. He may not even have a bed to lie down in at night. He may be out sleeping on rocks somewhere, but he is not over-describing or being overly uh pessimistic about his situation. This this is really happening to him, right? And yet, how much do Eliphaz and his friends understand so far?
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Zero. As that we're going to find out in the next chapter, and Bill, his friend Bill dead. Well, we'll get to that. But my point is, Job is being absolutely honest and forthright here. He's describing exactly what he's feeling. And that's what I wanted to say.
SPEAKER_03:He is. And I think that I think that another thing that we should always think about, look at, you know, as we're going through these, look at all the different ways that these things he's going through aggravate his misery. And so right now, you know, one of the aggravations that he has with his friends is that they are not properly diagnosing his spiritual condition. But but secondly, what another thing that aggravates it is that Job himself doesn't understand what's going on. He doesn't know. You know, he he he he he doesn't he doesn't recognize anything that he's done that was flagrant uh against his God. He doesn't. And we know that there was nothing like that that warranted. If you go and you read the book, you go to Acts, I think it's chapter five. When you go to Acts, Acts and you deal with Ananias and Sapphira. Now they had committed to selling their property and to lay all of their the the what they had made off of it at the apostles' feet to be distributed among the the people that were poor. And this wasn't communism, this was something that they offered up. And what they did, Ananias and Sapphira, they both lied to God about what they earned. And as a result, it is said that they tempted God by this by this lie. And we know what happened to both of them. They both dropped dead in the presence of Peter. And the first time, when when when when uh Ananias, when when Annas died, the husband, Peter had no idea that was coming. He had no idea that was coming. That was a shock to him. He had no knowledge about this, but he did have a knowledge about it when it happened to Sapphira. And he says, Behold, the feet of them that took your husband out, they're gonna take you out right now. Now we can look at them and we can say, Peter can say, We know what they did. We know what they did that warranted the condemnation of God. We see that. They had some with some they had something they they had wherewith to be blamed. However, Job didn't have this. And there's a there's a dis there's a there's a distinction between um sinning and being blameless. Blameless doesn't doesn't mean that you are without sin. It just means that you are without any judicial charge that that you are owed to. And so, in other words, when you talk about blameless, that that a man must be blameless to be called to a ministerial role. Blameless doesn't mean he hasn't sinned. Blameless means there's nothing to bring, there's no sin to bring to his charge. There's nothing blatant, there's nothing flagrant, there's nothing out there. He's been living a godly life, he's been a faithful in all of God's house. But Job is this man. So he doesn't understand what's going on. We know he now knows that this had everything to do with the dispute between God and Satan. It had nothing to do with anything about no matter what we see, read about Job, the reason why he's going through this has nothing to do with sin on his part. Nothing. That is not what this is about. Although there are things like Brother Michael talked about the other night that we're going to find out about Job that he that he himself miscalculated in his responses to his friends. And God is going to correct him about those things. Um, Brother Pat, go ahead.
SPEAKER_05:Is it wrong for me to see a parallel with Peter walking on water? That like when the storm comes, it's not easy, but you still need to walk by the spirit, by the unseen, even when you're in the midst of the storm. Is it wrong for me to see that Job, this is his storm? He doesn't know why, but he needs to walk by the by what's unseen and not what's seen. If you get what I'm saying, it I almost see a parallel of two worldviews where Satan is that carnal mind. He's thinking all carnally on what's seen. Oh, Job only has a good life because you've given him this great life, great wife. Who wouldn't go along with that? All the things he sees. And and Job here needs to live by faith.
SPEAKER_03:And see, this is where this is where this is where a really healthy conversation is is had here. And I think and I think that this is what part of what we talked about the other night when Michael brought this up. Um because the issue is with Job, in spite of what he's going through, is he being faithful or not? Do we believe he's do we believe that he is being faithful or not? Pat, what do you think? Do you think he's being faithful or not?
SPEAKER_05:I think that, wow, that's a tough question to answer. Was Peter being faithful when he was walking on water or not? Um we fail and God doesn't let us fail. He upholds us. That's what I believe is that even in our weakness, he makes us strong. Even when we are weak, he he doesn't let us fall. He'll come to our aid. It's a difficult question to answer.
SPEAKER_03:But if I but if I pick if I pin you down, what are you gonna lean to? What are you gonna say if you're pinned down, gun to head, what was he was he faithful or not? If you had to throw it out there, what would you say?
SPEAKER_05:He was pretty faithful for a fallen human being. I would I would lean on the side of faithful.
SPEAKER_03:That's a good question. Let me ask a few other people. Brother Canaan, what do you think?
SPEAKER_06:I was gonna comment on something else. What's the question? Was he was he faithful?
SPEAKER_03:Do we think Job was you can comment on what you were gonna say also as well, so that's fine. But the issue was that what I was asking was in in the situation that Job is in, do we see him exhibiting no faith? Do we see him being faithful?
SPEAKER_06:I I think faith was the only thing that he was holding on to because everything else was there was nothing else to to to grasp at to lean into. He literally had nothing. If he didn't have faith, he had nothing, literally. And then he would obviously he would forsake the Lord or he would um you know turn away from the Lord or you know, whatever you want to call it in that situation, but he didn't, although he did um obviously later on in Job, we see that he he repents uh for something, but I don't want to you know get too far ahead of myself. But but I for some reason I was drawn to um the passage in uh John 9. Uh as Jesus passed by, he saw a man who had been blind from birth, and his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he might would be born blind? Jesus answered, it was neither that this man sinned nor his parents, but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.
SPEAKER_03:And in very good, uh, very good um verse to pick up, because that is exactly what took place at the tribunal of God when Satan appeared amongst the sons of God, because we know from that experience that it had nothing to do with Job. Now, it doesn't mean that Job is not without sin, because we we know, and as you're as you were sort of intimating, we know that Job is gonna have issues that he's gonna have to repent for later. We know that. But is not isn't repentance a part of faithfulness? Can an un does an unfaithful person repent of anything? I answer to that. I would my answer to that would be no, it's part of the whole process. Man of God, go ahead.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I think at Job we're seeing the first uh impartation of righteousness by Christ. I mean, when he says what he says, he's imputing righteousness to Job. And that's the first time in the in the Old Testament that we actually see that. In other words, he is considered without sin because Christ has regarded him as being without sin through his future sacrifice for his sin.
SPEAKER_03:Right. See, we and we also have to understand that when we talk about faith, when we talk about faith, even in our own lives, we can't lose sight of the fact that that what preserves are enduring has to do with the fact that it stems from the quality of faith, not the quantity. It's not the quantity of faith, it's the quality. And the quality of faith respects the object of our faith. So if you have a little bit of faith in Christ, or a lot of faith in Christ, the quality of that faith doesn't change because Christ is the object. He's the object.