LIVE DISCUSSION: (Job 15:17-19) "Trusting Tradition & Antiquity" Part 3/4

A tremor runs through the opening: if Christ’s voice shakes the earth, tone and tact won’t matter—truth will. That image sets our path through Job 15, where Eliphaz leans on the “wise men” and their fathers to corner Job with consensus. We press on the danger of mistaking tradition for revelation and show why Job, for all his anguish, keeps aiming at God rather than borrowing authority from the past.

From there we wrestle with experience. Can a powerful vision be real yet misread? We share a candid story of hoped-for healing tied to a long-held tradition, and we talk about how the mind, especially under stress, can assign spiritual weight to impressions. The point isn’t to dismiss experience; it’s to interpret it by Scripture. God will not contradict his word, and discernment grows when we love the Bible more than we love the crowd’s approval or our own expectations.

We also dismantle the nostalgia trap. Eliphaz romanticizes a time “when no stranger passed among them,” as if moral purity comes from insulation. We argue that every generation forgets its shadows. Moral clarity flows from grace and obedience, not from closed circles or majority votes. That brings us to a preview of Job 38, where God’s questions humble Job and heal him at once. A divine rebuke can be a gift when it resets our view of God and ourselves.

Join us as we trace the line from consensus to conviction: measure every claim by Scripture, beware the seduction of the “moral majority,” and cultivate a steady appetite for truth that can weather criticism, confusion, and disappointment. If this conversation strengthens your love for God’s word, share it with a friend, subscribe for more thoughtful studies, and leave a review to help others find the show. What voices are you trusting this week, and how are you testing them?

Transcript

The Terrible Beauty Of Christ’s Voice

SPEAKER_00 0:02

You they're gonna think that my speech and your speech was like toddlers. Was baby talk. When Christ comes back, he's going to come back and he's going to be, his voice is going to be an earthquake in the breast of fallen men. They're going to want to die. They're going to beg for the rocks to fall upon them. They're going to flee to hide themselves from the presence of the awful and terrible Lord who's coming back. And I mean awful and terrible in a glorious way. Suddenly, my tone and your tone and how you said this, how you said that, suddenly they'll be looking, wishing they had heeded what his servants, you and I, say. And they wouldn't have cared. At this point, at that point, they won't care looking back how we said it. You know what they're gonna say? You know what they're gonna wish in their hearts and their souls? They're gonna wish that we have yelled louder. They're gonna wish that we they're gonna, they, they would, they would want to accuse us of holding back. I'm telling you. If you don't know Christ, you don't want to hear his voice. You don't want to hear it. You do not want to hear his voice. It will be a thunderous, earth-shattering, earthquake in your soul, and you will live. And that's just the first minute, and you have to go through eternity to endure it, and you won't endure it. It will be eternal. We have an awesome God.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Amen.

Tradition And The Wise Men’s Consensus

Job’s Appeal To God, Not Antiquity

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Awesome. So he says, the wise men, I'm telling you, the wise men said it, and their father said it, Job. So now he's trying to reinforce his arguments by tradition. And he's pointing out that his doctrine that he's laying on Job at the moment is said to be inherited from the wise men of former generations and times past. They passed it down openly and without concealment. They didn't hide it, they were open with it. And they're telling Job, how can you miss this? How is it you don't see this? We got it, the wise men got it, their fathers got it, but you missed it, Job. You missed it. And their whole argument lies on what they consider to be continuity, this perpetuity, passed down. And so the problem is this is cannot be the measuring the measuring stick of understanding truth. They would have you believe that wisdom is transmitted across all generations and confirmed and ratified by a communal agreement or a consensus. This is what the masses are saying. Again, it's a situation where how can all of us be right, Joe? How can all of us be wrong, Joe? I'm sorry. How can we all be wrong and you be right? Is that what you're saying? You're gonna discredit me and the wise men and the fathers of the wise men? Tradition is going to be, is going to bury a lot of souls, and they're gonna be tossed into hell because they followed the consensus, because they fell in with the larger community. Listen, if you listen, if you're gonna tell the truth, and I say this all the time, if you are going to tell the truth from the word of God, all of it, not just the soft, cushy, mushy stuff, if you're gonna tell all the other things, people are not gonna take it very well. They're not gonna take it. They're gonna call you all kind of names, tell you you got it all wrong. Listen, from the the other day when we talked about the you know, the oneness thing, oh man, I got some words. Don't care. One thing I do not do is trifle with the word of God. Never. I might get it wrong from time to time, but I don't trifle with his word, neither should you. Neither should you. This appeal that Eli Faz is making to Job, it elevates the argument beyond personal opinion, and now it goes into this realm of moral truth. We got this whole thing passed down. We are we have values, Job. We have values that have been passed down, human values. We have a structure, it's been passed down. You know, but there's a difference between what Job is saying and what they're and what they are saying. And you notice Job, when you go back, Job has always been talking about God. Now he you we we can argue, we can argue about his motives, his heart, whatever it may be. But he's talking about God. He's telling he's talking about wanting to have, wanting to hear from God. He's talking about this. You don't hear Job not once, and anybody can correct me if I'm wrong, but not once did Job ever say anything about antiquity. He didn't try to appeal to tradition or what previous wise men have said. Job is dealing with here and the now, and these guys are trying to get Job to sway a certain way, to roll in a certain direction, and they couldn't get him through their own ideas or or their own doctrinal positions. So now they're saying, Well, Joe, you need to listen to us. Because we have the moral majority, the moral majority. This is what they're talking about. All of us can't be wrong, and only you be right, and no matter how valuable tradition could be, like Meg was bringing up, it is not infallible, it is not infallible, and it needs to always be weighed against the word of God, the truth that has been revealed. And the issue that we're talking about is revelation and how much it has been given, because God reveals over time so much truth, and now we have it all. We have all that man can have while he's on earth. But then when we when we leave here, when Christ returns, it says that we will be we will know him even as we are known. I think I got that right. But in other words, we will know all things at this at that point when we leave here. It's an unfathomable, unfathomable goal to be attained, to know all things even as we are known. And even now we struggle with the word of God that we have sitting right in front of us, and so we really have to continue to delve into the word of God. If there's nothing else that I get to contribute to you while I'm on this earth, is to try to enrich in you that desire, that sincere desire to really love God's word, to really love it, to desire it, to consume it, to speak to him about, giving you a better degree of clarity, to give you the desire to articulate it in a way that people are compelled to believe. That's what I want you all to have. That's what I want all of us to have. Experiences are meaningless. We need to rely on his truth, his word, and believe it and to know how to apply it. To know what we believe and to know why we believe it. Sister May, go ahead. You were gonna say something. I don't want to forget you.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

No, yeah, I wanted to back you up in saying that Job never appealed to tradition or authority. Um, and I just want to like, and and if we go back and we look a little bit, sometimes when we're in places like this, we have to look back. Eliphaz, he appealed to tradition, right? He's like, which wise men have told me from their fathers, right? And then Bildad, he's like, inquire, I pray thee, of former age. Yes, and then Zophar, he assumes fixed moral moral formulas rooted in received wisdom. So that was that's in Job 20. But see, what he's what he's they're coming from is that ancient tradition, right? These traditions of their ancestors is bringing them to the verdict of Job, to how they are accusing him. But see, when we look at Job, Job never says anything about tradition, he always consistently appealed to God.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

That's right, right?

Revelation, Scripture, And Loving God’s Word

SPEAKER_01 10:54

He says, he says, um, in Job 16, 19, which we're gonna read, he says, My witness is in heaven. Like these, you know, till I die, I will not remove my integrity from me. That's right. Right? I desire to reason with God. See, he knew again that if he if his friends would just go away, that he could make his appeal known to God. And I think that that verse has stuck with me so much because I think that in our own lives, how we could apply it is the Lord leading us to that dependency that he wants to us to have in him. And it's like, Lord, it I know that if all if all else fails in this world, that I can bring my concerns to you and you will hear me. And I I think it brings me to tears because I think that is just the most beautiful thing that we can do is have an honest dialogue with the Lord. And that's what I've learned so much from Job is that Job, no matter what you were going through, no matter what you thought or felt, you always just wanted to hear from the Lord. And I I feel the same way. I think it's just so beautiful. God is so good to Ushaw. He is.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

He's amazing. You say good things because, you know, you know, Job, he he has his problems. And and I want everybody here, and I know you do, but I'm just gonna say it just by way of reminder. I want you to really pay attention to what Job, the things Job says, because it's gonna come into play. Because one of the things I'm gonna ask a lot about is when we get to Job, when we get to chapter 38, when God breaks in on Job, you know, and God singles Job out. But when we get to chapter 38, God's gonna break in, and he's gonna ask Job a series of questions. He's gonna ask him 78 questions, 77, 78 questions. You know, you know, and he just goes from one after the X. Where were you? Where were you? Where were you? Where were you when I did this? Where were you when I did that? He's gonna go into this whole thing. And what I'm gonna be asking all of you, so you know in advance. So think about this. Ask about, ask yourself, what was Job's problem? Start asking yourself, what was Job's problem? Don't answer tonight. But, you know, but be ready to deal with that conversation when we get to chapter 38 and 39. Um, because God is going to break in and say some things to Job. And in so doing, by asking these questions, he's going to point out by these questions what Job's, what his flaws were, what his problem was. And I want you to think about it so that when we get to it, we can have a very meaningful conversation about it. So just so start thinking about reflecting on what Job has said thus far and what he will say by the time we get to verse 38 or chapter 38. Brother Pat, welcome, brother. Good evening.

Experiences Versus Truth And Discernment

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Good evening. Yeah, um, so my wife had a run-in with tradition and personal experience. Um, she was uh saved before me, and when she was newly saved, she was part of a very charismatic and very um dispensational kind of church that where with an emphasis on Israel. And they do these Israel trips, which are which is awesome. You know, so she went there and uh she suffers from a disease. And this pastor of her of hers told her that there's a long tradition of the River Jordan having supernatural healing powers and that they're gonna go heal her. They're gonna baptize her in the in the River Jordan and heal her. And so when he told her that, that night, my wife had a vision of Jesus confirming that he was gonna heal her. Right. They went on the trip and it didn't happen. And it it it's it's so hard. It's something that my wife has to trying to talk to me about it, it puts you in an awkward situation, right? It's that's these are different personal experiences and stuff, are difficult matters to discuss with people, they're delicate. Um, but it's just interesting how the mind will play tricks on you. And so you need to be careful about what's going on. If you allow yourself to think all sorts of thoughts, you'd be surprised at what thoughts will pop in your mind. Uh, and they can be they can be pure fantasy sometimes. Uh and the human mind is is it wants to believe things. And yeah, so that was uh tradition can be a uh a really bad thing if you depend on it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Kelly said, wish people think it can get you in trouble. It can. I think that sometimes, you know, it's hard to understand the human mind, and and I'm certainly no doctor in that. My wife is. And you know, like I asked her, I asked her things all the time about the mind, and and uh, and you know, that some of the answers she gives me are are pretty amazing. I I wish I could get her to talk about some of these things sometimes, but she's kind of shy. But but it's amazing because you you you can really you can really become overwhelmed with impressions, you know, spiritual impressions, and and and assign to them um spiritual um significance. Yeah, significance and whisperings, you know, and and you have to really protect yourself from this whole thing, and and it's it's really it's really difficult and and and it's hard, and and and and it's really hard to address because when somebody feels it's like we were talking with Joni, is when somebody feels you know, the issue is not it's not about contesting the experience. It's not about contesting the experience. I will never doubt that somebody actually had an experience. The issue is determining what that experience, how that experience should be interpreted. You know, is it God speaking? Is it Satan speaking? Is it just you desiring it so bad that there's an aspect of you that is manifesting something that you really want, you know, and sometimes you know, you know, and you can hear sounds or hear things, whatever, and you you you you you later to you know give this color to it that probably you didn't really have before, but you start thinking, well, that yeah, now I know what it means. It's hard to say. But what I do know is that God is not going to tell us anything today that is not in his word. Anything outside of that, you are treading in very, very dangerous territory. Saul found that out. He found that out the hard way. Uh, Sister May, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

I would want you to ask Rox a question for me because when it just I would like to know, like statistically, like when it comes to um like uh religious psychosis, is it a real thing? And does it play a part in mental mental illness? I I would really like to know some information on that because I think that we I see it a lot on this app in the way in which people comment and the things that people say. It's almost a delusion that is very detrimental.

Romanticizing The Past And Moral Purity Myths

Eliphaz’s Argument And The “Moral Majority”

Preparing For God’s Questions In Job 38

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Yeah, she is is uh I'll ask her about that because you know, and and truthfully, you know, she's privy. Like I give her, like, I have to, I have to like, whenever I get off the live, I have to go and debrief with her. So, you know, and and you know, and she sees how some of sometimes when people say things, not even just on the lives, but even in posts and whatever, and I'll explain to her, and she'll be like, Oh yeah, this person, you know, you you know, her her thing with me is just like, and so you know, like I I wrote to you, uh, Meg, you and Mariah, about you know, how I wanted to handle things going on on his life, and and a big part of that came from her. A big part of that came from her. And and it was it was wise. It was wise, it was it was uh it was sage advice, and especially if for no other reason to prevent me from getting caught up in this emotional whirlpool because it can be very difficult because I'm the kind of person that really wants to like land things with people when it comes to God's word. I I really, truly love being around God's people. I really love truly doing just what we're doing right now. I love it. And so when something goes sideways, it really messes with me. It really does. It probably shouldn't, but it does. And it gets to me. It really gets to me. And so, because it gets to me, it then gets to her. And she tells me, you have to deal with these people in a certain kind of way because there's too many people, and and and you get too emotional about it. Which is why I told some of you that when I have a bad day, you probably won't see me the next night because I have to regroup and have to purge whatever it is I'm feeling, bitterness or whatever. I have to purge it. And the reason why is because when I come back the next time, I want to give you my all. I don't want to have my next presentation tainted with this, with this moss. I want to be able to talk to you guys and really engage with all of you and and and and and be present fully with my whole mind and my whole heart, and uh so we can have an enjoyable fellowship and and and what whatever. So that will be that that will always be a reason why I'm not live if something like that happens. But you know, just so you know. Um I'll finish verse 19 and wrap it up there, which is perfect because the remaining verses are gonna deal with um the wicked man. Um, but in in verse 19, Eli Faz goes on to say, Did I miss it? Anybody before I go on? Did anybody have the hand up that I didn't get to? Um, because sometimes if it scrolls and I don't see it, I won't know. All right. So, verse 19. You know, he just got through saying that he talked about the wise men in antiquity and their fathers and how they haven't hid these things. So, and basically it's a backhanded way of telling Job, how is it that you missed it? How is it that you missed it? You know, we got it. The wise men up above us, they got it, and their fathers got it. So how come, Job, why don't you have it? We're in Job chapter 15, uh, Miss Moe, Job 15 and verse 19. So now he goes on to say about these wise men and whatnot. He says, unto whom, unto whom alone the earth was given, and no stranger passed among them. So what is he saying? Here's what he's saying. He's go, he's like saying, listen, here's the best way to put this. You know how when, like some of us, I'm I'm I'm 61, all right? Some of us, some of us are older, some of you guys are younger, but most of us are pretty much mature adults. But we may look at things today, and we go and we may think, this is crazy. This is nuts. And then we start pining over the good old days. This is what we do. Everybody thinks their era, when they were young, was the best there was. I'm no different. I kind of missed the 70s. But but but you see what I'm saying? We are always pining over antiquity. The good old days, when things used to be good, when things used to be great, when people had morals. This is what this is what people this is what he's talking about. He's he's he's he's saying, you know, he's saying that he he's idealizing these old school, these old days. The old days. And he's portraying these old days as being morally pure. You know what I'm talking about. We always think, we, we say that, man, you know, like there's they had this, uh, I'm sure all of you have seen it, some girl on the Grammy Awards, topless with a chain. You some of you guys probably saw it. And you had Justin Bieber. I saw him on the on the on the show, on the on the uh on the TikToks, where he's on stage performing in his boxers and socks, and that's it. Now we will look back and we'll go like, man, it was so different when we were younger. We see today crazy things, and we start thinking about how it was in the old days, but we forget how it was back then. We really do forget. Because remember, if you take, like for me, for instance, if we go back to the 70s, you know, I'm always thinking about, I'm always looking at that period as like a time when I was the happiest. But it's so easy to forget two things. One, we totally block out everything that went wrong. That's number one. And number two, we failed to realize that there were people like our grandparents and great-grandparents back then who thought that what they were seeing at the time we thought everything was hunky-dory, they will tell you this is a wicked time to be alive. And like Jeffrey says, the good old days weren't. It is so true. There has never been good old days. Never. Never. Whenever America was great, I can tell you right now, I don't want to go back to that. I don't want to go back to when America was great. I understand why some would. But not me. Not my family. So we we start getting, we start, um, I forget the I can't think of the word. Romanticizing. We start romanticizing about the past. Because we're just juxtaposing the old times and are reminiscing, that's right, and we're comparing it to today. Today, I'm like, I'm understanding, Christians. I'm I'm understanding why God restricts the number of years that we live, because we couldn't take it. We couldn't take it. My mom is 81 years old. And I gotta tell you, I want my mom around me as long as possible. But the way current things are happening in this world, the way it affects her, I don't want her to see too much more. I'm not saying I don't want my mother, I want my mother gone. Nobody think that. I love my mother, I want her around. But man, what's happening today really affects her like really bad. And I get it. These guys are taking Job back to the past. And there's this whole idea that back in the old days everything was morally pure. And then he says here in verse 19, unto whom alone the earth was given, the earth was given. And he says that in no stristen to this. Listen to what he's saying, and no stranger passed among them. In other words, these group of people that he's talking about that he's referring to in antiquity, the wise and their fathers, he says that unto whom alone the earth was given to them. And notice what he says, and no stranger passed among them. And what he's saying is that they had this purity, they had this moral virtue, they had this pure, idealized, romanticized perspective that we should capitalize on today. And he says that the reason why, another reason why it was so pure and so beautiful and righteous and holy, the way Eliphaz is painting it, he says also because no stranger passed among them. In other words, there were they weren't, their views, their ideologies, all these things, they weren't contaminated by foreign influence. You know, the the word of God is no joke. It's no joke. They weren't contaminated, they weren't their their purity, their moral purity wasn't contaminated by foreign influences. That's what he's saying here. No stranger passed among them. The absence of strangers suggests simplicity, it suggests unity, an uninterrupted, unbroken chain of unity, and moral clarity. The foreigners didn't mess it up. I'm laughing because the word of God is always on time, it is always dealing with whatever we are going through. We are always in context. Always. What they're saying to Job, it sounds very relevant today. If I were to say what I really feel, I'd probably lose half of this group. I think, I don't know. Maybe.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

What you feel? I want to hear it.

Final Reflections: Grace, Rebuke, And Blessing

SPEAKER_00 32:25

No, I'm not saying what I feel. I'm just trying to tell you, when we read these verses, we need to be able to see these things, make these a lens by it so that we can see what's happening today. Because he's telling, he's telling Job, Job, you've lost touch. You sold out, Job. I need to remind you about what it used to be. You've lost your way. We need to go back to antiquity. We need to go back to the forefathers. We need to go back to the forefathers of our forefathers. This is what he's talking about. That's when things were pure. There were no strangers to contaminate, to contaminate our moral agenda. Read it for yourself. Read it for yourself. Go ahead, Meg.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

I would have said something being Job at that point. I would have been like, so your antiquity, does it guarantee your correctness? Right. Does it guarantee what you think is true? And I think that I think that in this verse too, I feel like Eli Faz is speaking for everybody at this point. You know, like he's saying, what we're telling you, Job, our theology, it is pure, and it is from our ancestors, and no strangers passed among them. That means that it's pure. And therefore, Job, we are correct, and you are wrong.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

No, it it you know what what this verse is doing, and Lisa, to answer your question, if it it it appears that Job is probably the youngest outside of Elihu, who is the last guy. And uh, and perhaps somebody you might be able to correct me, but if I remember right, I think for from all estimations, Job is the youngest, um, except for the fourth guy that breaks in in this conversation. He ends up being the youngest of all of them. Um, and by the way, Elihu, he's also the one character of these of these four in total that God says nothing about. Later on, he never says anything about him. And so you kind of get the idea that he got a little bit of a pass, whereas Eliphaz, Zophar, and Bildu, Bildad, don't. So, but anyway, what he what what we what we have here is that, again, just putting another emphasis on it, Eliphaz is now attempting to strengthen the authority of what he's saying by romanticizing antiquity. This is what this is what he's doing. And it's subtle. It's subtle. And it and it and it overstates human morality and the clarity of it. It totally just overstates it. And what it does is it separates the it separates human morality and human clarity of that morality from grace. What job, Job understands something that these guys do not understand. And I don't want to give too much away of what I'm thinking about this because I want to save it for when we get to uh chapter 38 when the Lord comes in. But because it's really going to be this beautiful picture that is painted. Because even though God is going to really come at Job pretty hard, he's going to come at Job really hard. And then it's important for us to really continue to reflect on the things Job is saying so that we can understand how God or why the Lord is addressing him the way that he does. Because Job gets a complete and total dress down from the Almighty. And even in that, even though he got that, it was a total blessing. Let me tell you something. It is better to receive the thunder of the Almighty than to receive the rain of prosperity that comes from man. I rather have God yell at me than to be kissed by man. You know, this is something that we all.