LIVE: "I Would Order My Cause Before Him" (Job 22:26-23:4), Part 3/5

Someone throws a threat and a challenge: “I’m going to destroy you.” We don’t answer with panic, we answer with doctrine, because the real fight is never about personalities. It’s about whether God is sovereign, whether salvation has one way, and whether “chosen” actually means chosen. If God can be talked out of His character, then everything collapses. If He cannot lie, cannot change, and cannot fail, then the believer has a reason to stand up straight even when the heat is on. 

We spend time in the Book of Job, watching a suffering man do something many of us forget is allowed: he wants to come to God’s seat, order his case, and speak plainly. That hunger for God’s presence is not rebellion. It’s what a living faith looks like when life hurts. Along the way we talk about how Christians really live with ups and downs, why doubt shows up, and why your assurance can’t be measured by how strong you feel today. The key is the object of faith: Jesus Christ stays the same, so faith in Him doesn’t rise and fall with your mood. 

Then we widen the lens to discernment in a noisy Christian world: the Holy Spirit’s seal, the temptation to trust works, and the danger of comforting lies dressed up as Bible teaching. We challenge popular end-times claims and prosperity-style certainty, and we say out loud what many people only whisper: false doctrine needs a rebuttal, not a shrug. If you’ve ever wondered how to hold onto assurance, pray honestly like Job, and test what you’re being taught, this conversation is for you. 

Subscribe for more Bible-centered teaching, share this with a friend who feels stuck in doubt, and leave a review to help others find the show. What teaching have you heard that you want to test against Scripture next?

Transcript

Confrontation Over Being Chosen

SPEAKER_05 0:00

This guy asked me a question two days ago. He says, I suppose you're one of God's chosen people. I said, You're doggone right I am. And I asked him point blank, do you have a problem with that? And man, he came back with fury. I'm going to destroy you. I'm going to show the world how you are lying to people. I'm going to take every one of your videos. I'm going to rebut them all. What are you going to say? If you're going to take me down, or if this guy's going to take any of you down, he has to make you believe God is not sovereign. That there are more than one way of salvation. That those who are chosen to salvation are not actually chosen to salvation. That salvation is arbitrary. That salvation is left up to the whims and the desires and the intellect of man. If you contradict what I'm saying, you're going to say that God is not who He is. I am that bold and confident about it. In fact, the word of God tells me I should be bold and confident about what my God has done for me. I am not afraid of any man, and none of you should be afraid. Stand on this truth. He can't lie. He can't change. He can't sin. He will never and can't refuse anyone who seeks his salvation. And only those who seek his salvation are those who he has called and ordained and chosen to be in him from before the foundation of the world. I don't care if you like it or not, it brought salvation to my soul and to this and to the souls of all those who are my brothers and sisters in Christ. And I don't need the Greek to tell me this.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

No, I don't.

Job Wants A Hearing With God

SPEAKER_05 2:22

Let me see what saved means in the Greek. Well, no, saved doesn't mean so it's saved eternally in the Greek. Saved means that as long as you do this, you will be saved. If you do this, you will be saved. If this is it makes me, in the words of my famous sister Vanessa, it makes me bum fuzzled. I like that word, bum fuzzled. People are always trying to complicate salvation. Job here, yes, he's stumbling a little bit, but here's what he does: he says, I want to order my cause before my God. I want to come before his seat. I want to fill my mouth with arguments and lay them all out before him. See, this is beautiful. This is beautiful. This is what every Christian should want to do daily. Order your cause before the Almighty. Job has a strong desire for direct access to God. He wants to be face to face with his God. You should want that. He's not longing to escape God. No, he's longing to be in the presence of God. That's a godly man. That's a man of God. The afflicted soul always wishes to present his case openly as one seeking justice rather than hiding from guilt. The true Christian is always saying, No, I know I have reasons to be to be guilty, but I want to declare my case before God, and I want to beg before him at his altar and at his feet to spare me.

SPEAKER_04 4:22

Spare me, Lord.

Law Religion And A God Who Waits

SPEAKER_05 4:28

Keep me. Guard my heart with all guarding. This reveals confidence that if heard, the matter would be judged rightly by God. This is what Job is expecting. Christians always have ups and downs. Every single Christian, David did, Moses did, Abraham did, Job is right here and now. Peter did. John and James did. James and John's mother did. All believers have had ups and downs. Every single one of us. The desire to understand God's answer shows that the heart of Job is not a heart that is hardened, but one that is teachable, one that is docile, one that is willing to receive instruction even in the midst of the greatest heights of distress. This is what Job is doing. Yes, he's struggling. He's having frustration, but his faithfulness is never questioned. You have a right to understand or to not understand how God's dealing is, but what you don't have a right to do is to accuse God falsely and to neglect the idea that He is ever present. Brother Pat and then two witnesses.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

You know, Jonathan, um, what you're preaching is the opposite of what I heard my entire life. What I heard my entire life was that God's a gentleman. In fact, he's waiting outside the door and he's knocking. Right. And if you let him in, if you open that door, then he gets to be in your presence because you chose him and you gave yourself as a gift to him. That's what I heard my entire life. And here's Job yearning just to be in the presence of God, the exact opposite of what religion tells us.

SPEAKER_03 6:51

Yep, absolutely, brother. Absolutely. Two witnesses. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Yeah, it sounds, man, this guy, Job, right? But uh, like I just went back to read the end of chapter 22, and like correct me if I'm wrong. These guys are presenting the law to Job.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Right?

SPEAKER_01 7:14

It's it's straight up the law. Do this and you shall live. Right. And and uh but we know, right? Perhaps, well, Job, like you say, maybe he knew, but we are we we know for sure that the law doesn't give life and but exposes sin. So I wonder uh how like how was Job receiving that, right? Like because from his per perspective uh he he did no wrong. But they're not telling him nothing that is false. They're saying uh look, this is this is the law, and and like uh I think it was Lisa, I think she said that uh humble yourself, right, under the mighty hand of God, and he will exalt you into time. So do you guys would you say that uh job is humbling himself through all of these responses that he's given to his uh friends?

Peter’s Waves And The Ups Down Life

Providence Politics And Christian Identity

SPEAKER_05 8:20

I think I think he is. I I think that he is, but I also think that Job, Job, I think that Job is flawed, and I also think that Job knows that. I think that Job knows that. And so I don't think Job is a hypocrite. I don't think Job is a sinner who is caught up in some kind of uh scandal, and I think that Job, as the scripture tells us, maintained his his integrity. Job is said to have never charged God falsely, you know. And I think that, and Job even admitted himself that he's it's not that he's sinless, but that he what he's saying is, I have never lost my integrity. I've never lost what God gave to me. I never gave up what God gave to me. So, so I think that as we see here, you see these ups and downs. It's sort of like when Peter was, when when when when the apostles saw the Lord Jesus Christ walking on water, when they first saw him, what did they say? It's a ghost. That's not faith. Christians don't believe in ghosts. They see a ghost. And this was part of Jewish uh um, this was something that they believed. They had this superstition about ghosts. So they say, oh, you know, so when you read the when you read the New Testament, it talks about when they see Christ walking in the water, they didn't when they said ghost, the word is actually a phantasm. You know, and but it wasn't a phantasm. And so what they it was actual Christ. So what they what he's saying is, so now what you see is there is this lack of faith. No, that's not phantasm. And then they realized, no, that's the Lord. That's the Lord. And then Peter called out and says, Lord, is that you? So that was faith. First it was a ghost, and then it was like, Lord, is that you? Exemplifying faith. And then the Lord said, It is I. And then Peter says, and then Jesus says to Peter, um, or Peter says to him, Ash, bid for me to come out. In other words, call me out to the water. So Christ says, Come on out. Peter steps out in faith. He stuck, he gets out, he starts walking, then he says, then he starts looking at the waves and the and the water and the wind, and then Peter starts to sink because he has a lack of faith. The Christian life is always going up and down. It's always going up and down. But it doesn't take away from the fact that our Lord is never, it doesn't take away from the fact that our Lord is always with us. He's always with us. And Job stumbles. He stumbles and he falls, but there's this mixture of you you see his faithfulness, and you see his faithfulness being sort of being mixed with this, the these element of carnality where he somehow sometimes begins to doubt. All Christians do. I'm sure that if we made the rounds and walked around everybody in this group, we will find times, even up to this very day, where we can be, where we can be characterized as having some sort of doubt. Does he hear me? Does he hear me? Does he answer my prayer? Is he gonna show me what my calling is? All these things. But Job never lost his faithfulness. And and and God is giving us his this he is giving us this beautiful mosaic in Job's life, which shows this up and down, faithful doubt, faithfulness in doubt, but it and at the same time, he never he never doubts God. He never questions God's sovereignty. Sometimes he questions, like even here, he's like, God, where are you? Where are you? He's not saying God doesn't exist, he's not saying God doesn't have a relationship with his people. He's thinking that God, for whatever reason, is not willing to show himself to me the way he has in the past. And we don't know all the intricacies of this, but we do know from our own experiences that there are times where we felt, I know there are times in my life where I have felt that God is not paying attention, that God is not looking out for me. There have been times where I felt like that. You know, and very often we feel that when things don't happen in our timing, in our timing, we we start to inadvertently without realizing it, accuse God of not being God. But God never stops being God, he's always here for us in all his dealings that he has going on in the providence on earth is because of and for us. I'm telling you, there is nothing, nothing, that happens in this earth. And I mean nothing. Everything that happens in this earth is for our blessedness and benefit, God's people, you and me. I mean everything. Everything. It's not nothing that happens in this earth is for Benjamin Netanyahu and all these people, Trump and nations. No, everything that happens in this earth is about us. Everything, everything, even in politics, even in our government, they need us. They feel the need that they need to persuade those who call themselves Christians in order to get done what they want to get done. And they have been, and they have been truly effective. See, businesses and companies and billionaires, you know what they do? They spend all these millions of dollars, millions, hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying politicians to give them what they want. But you know what, but you know what's insignificant, Christians? All those people in politics, especially and particularly in American politics, they do not win anything without lobbying us. Think about it, they need us. So if we don't understand who we are, if they don't understand who we are, and if Christians don't understand the power they have with the Lord, a great many of us, as they are doing, they acquiesce to these people. But Christians, let me tell you something, because I'm not trying to get into this whole political thing. What I'm trying to tell you is that the whole world revolves around us. That sounds arrogant, but it's true. The whole world spins continually because God is not doing, is not done with us, and the world continues to spin until he finishes his work with bringing all of us to faith. That's what it's all about. I that probably sounds overly simplified, but in fact, it is the truth. Sister May, go ahead.

Storms Covenants And Salvation Of The Lord

SPEAKER_06 16:54

I would add, even the evil benefits.

SPEAKER_03 16:59

Even the evil.

SPEAKER_06 17:00

I wanted to ask, in the storm with Peter, who brought on the storm? The Lord.

SPEAKER_03 17:07

The Lord did.

SPEAKER_06 17:08

And and he ordained it for that moment when he would call Peter out of the boat. And I am fully convinced that it at any time the Lord could have said, Peace be still, and it would have stopped. But if he didn't say, Peace be still in your storm, then there's purpose in that storm. And that's why it's not stopped. See, the second thing you said was which was very interesting a while back was that it is impossible for God to lose his people. Let's not forget, Abraham was sleeping when the covenant was cut.

SPEAKER_04 17:50

Right.

SPEAKER_06 17:51

And it depended on God alone. He didn't need us, he put Abraham to sleep and said, I have sworn by myself that this covenant is gonna be an everlasting covenant, and this is to the seed, which is my son, and he will not fail because I don't fail. And I am in him and he is in me. And it is so purposeful. There is no reason what there it wasn't just for a reason why Abraham was sleeping, and it was to show us all together. It was him and him alone, and as Jonah said, Jonah chapter 2, verse 9, salvation is of the Lord. Amen.

SPEAKER_03 18:41

Amen, sister. Absolutely correct. Sister Candy, go ahead. Candy, you there?

God Strengthens Us When We Plead

SPEAKER_05 18:53

All right, let me move on in. Listen to verses 6 and 7. So Job just gets through saying, Well, we said what we read in the last verse, I would know the words which God would answer me and understand what he would say to me. So right after he says, uh, oh, that I knew where he might where I might find him, that I might come to his, even to his seat, I would order my cause before him and fill my mouth with arguments. And then he says, I would know the words which he would answer me. And he goes, and then I would also understand what he would say to me. I would understand. So he understands that that God would understand him and that he would understand God. And look at verse 6 and 7. He says about God. Job says, Will he, meaning the Lord, will he plead against me with his great power? And then he says, No, but he would put strength in me. Job understands God. He understands him. He says, What one he says, will God plead against me? If I order my cause before God, if I order my cause, my cause against God, if I fill my mouth with arguments and God hears me, Job then says, Well, when I do that, what will God do? Will he plead against me with his great power? And Job says, No. But this is what he will do: he will put strength in me. There the righteous might dispute with him. So should I be delivered forever from my judge. And so what Job is pointing out is that even though God is infinitely powerful, it is believed and understood that he would not overwhelm Job or his people, but he will sustain them. Job understands that when he pleads before God, when he orders his cause before God, he understands and knows without any shadow of doubt that the Lord will hear him and that he will strengthen him and sustain him. And what Job understands is that God's divine power and authority, God, when it comes to his people especially, he does not use it to crush his people. But what does he use it for? To uphold them, to sustain them, to build them. See, Job, he knows God. Some of us don't. Every time we go through any degree, any monicum of hardship, we believe God is against us. He's opposing us. He forgot us. He's not hearing us. How could he let my child die? How could he let my wife get sick? How could he let this happen? How could he do this? What is he doing? And so what here is. What Job understands is that God doesn't crush his people. Everything that he does, he does to uphold them and to build them. We may not always understand the way he does things and why he picks the things that he does. But what we under what we what Job understands is that when God, whatever it is that God does, it is righteous and it is good and it is holy. And his thought here is that God would grant strength to stand in his presence, enabling him, Job, that is, to receive a fair hearing. God is always ready to hear the cries of his servant. He wants you to cry out to him. He wants you to plead to him. He wants you to beg for his attention. He wants you to believe and to respond to him as though there is no one else ever you could respond to you. He wants you to approach him as if there are no other voices clouding his hearing but yours. And as I said earlier, he will. Because his responses to you will be commensurate. Nothing can get in the way of God hearing my cause that I have ordered before him. It is not like my prayers are in line. It's not like your prayers are in line. It's not like we are in a line, waiting, like at the DMV. We don't pull a number and wait for him to call us. He hears us all individually and independently, all at once. Brother 2, go ahead, brother.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Yeah, I just wanna I just wanna read Isaiah 43, 10 to 13. It says, You are my witness, declares Yahweh, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He. Before me there was no God formed and there will be none after me. I even I am Yahweh, and there is no Savior besides me. It is I who have declared and saved and caused it to be heard. And there was no strange God among you, so you are my witness, declared Yahweh. And I am God, even from eternity I am He, and there is no one who can deliver you out of my hand. I act and who can reverse it.

SPEAKER_03 25:31

Right. Amen, brother.

SPEAKER_05 25:34

Amen. You want to ask a comment to that?

SPEAKER_01 25:40

It's pretty clear. I will say we are chosen to have his mind, you know. Your thoughts are my thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

You know, his ways are our ways. And um, he he began a good work and he will finish it in us. We are conform to the image of his son.

SPEAKER_05 26:00

Woo! Brother, brother two, are you sure about that, brother? Yes. I was gonna I wasn't gonna press you, but once I started laughing, I gave it up. But I know you know what I'm saying. I know what you're saying is exactly the truth. Brother Jeffrey, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 26:20

Everything that you've talked about here is true, and it is. Yep. Then why do we doubt? Why do we doubt?

SPEAKER_04 26:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

We know it's true. Lack of trust. How many times does God have to repeat it to us? What's that, Megan? I'm sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_06 26:39

Lack of trust. The question is: do we believe what we read in scripture?

SPEAKER_02 26:43

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yet we know it's true. Yes. And yet we choose to doubt. But Megan's right. We're not in the word. It's that simple. It's that simple.

When God Feels Absent

Faith’s Object Matters More Than Size

The Seal The Mark And What We Do

Calling Out False Teachers And Taking A Stand

SPEAKER_05 26:59

You know, you we see here in verses six and seven, Job says, you know, I'll read it again. Will he plead against me with his great power? No. But he would put his strength in me. In other words, he would uphold it. There the righteous might dispute with him, so should I be delivered from my forever from my judge. Look at verse 8 and 9. And then you sort of have this idea where well, listen to what he says. Job says, Behold, I go forward, but he is not there. I go backward, but I cannot perceive him. On the left, on the left hand, where he does work, but I cannot behold him. He hides himself on the right hand that I cannot see him. And so you have this difficulty arising that though God is though though God is sought, he is not found. This is what Job is sort of indicating, that he's seeking for God, but God is not found. And he's saying, every direction I've searched forward, backward, left, right, but his presence is not perceived. And so this shows that there is a sorrow that Job has when it comes to spiritual isolation or desertion. He feels that sort of that somehow God has left him. That God has left him. And again, I think this is part of the problem. You see Job's faith going up and you see it going down. But here's the thing that we need to understand, Christians. Our salvation is not based amount, is not based upon the quantity of faith that we have. It's not. It is not based upon the quantity. Because if you if your faith is in Christ and it is a little faith, but that little faith is in Christ, and someone else has a lot of faith and it is in Christ, because the object is Christ and He is the same, then there's an aspect of faithfulness to him that, regardless of whether or not it is small or large, doesn't mitigate against what he will do for you. Now here's the problem: the difference between the perception of a quantity of faith is not really about the quantity. It's really about the quality of it. Jesus is the object of our faith. He is the object of our faith. So whether you have a small faith or a large faith, that faith has one object, Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ. So whatever that appears to be a weakness in faithfulness is a weakness in you, not in the Lord. This is what we need to understand. Our faith, whether it's small or great, if it's in Christ, because he is the object of that faith, he is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. So any problem with faithfulness or the quality of faithfulness has to do with you. He is the same, unchanging. He always functions in the same way. But because you have faith, whether it is the seed of a grain of mustard seed or whether it is like two billion acres, the object of our faith, who is Christ, he is always the same. And he doesn't function in this formulaic way where he says, you know what? I will do more for you if you were just more faithful. He doesn't say, I will do less for you, because you are less faithful. He understands our shortcomings. And that's why he said, if you have faith as the seed of a mustard seed grain, you can tell this tree to be uprooted here and to be replanted over there. If you have the faith of a size of a grain of mustard seed, and so it's not about the quantity of faith. The reality is that our faith has to do with the quality. And the quality of our faith has everything to do with who the object of our faith is. And our object of our faith is the Lord Jesus Christ. We can never forget that. The Lord Jesus Christ. He gives us all that we need. Job understands that he is the one, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one who is who sustains us, he's the one that upholds us. He's our Lord, he's our God. We are his workmanship created into Christ Jesus, in Christ Jesus, unto good works. And we are sealed until the day of redemption. How? By the Holy Spirit. Where do we receive that seal? We receive that seal in our foreheads. The way Revelation puts it, symbolically, we receive the seal of God in our foreheads, but the wicked, they receive the mark of the beast. Where? In their forehead or and or in their hands. We don't receive the seal of God in our hands. Why? Because we're not saved by what we do. We're saved by what is in the inner man, in the heart. We believe and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ after our inward man, the psychological man, the philosophical man, the spiritual man. You can't be saved by your deeds. That's why Christians don't receive a seal of God in our forehands, in our hands, only in our foreheads. Symbolically speaking. This is what the book tells us. But the wicked, they receive the seal of God, or this they receive the mark of the beast in their forehead, meaning that they worship Satan after the inward man, but they also receive the mark of the beast in their hands, meaning that they serve and worship Satan by what they do, their inventions, their creations, their efforts, where they go, where they hang out, what they buy, why they buy it, what they build, what they manufacture. The mark of the beast, Christians, is not coming in the future. It's here now and it has been. Hagee, Copeland, Philip Anthony Mitchell, all these people, they are liars. I don't care what you think about me. I'm telling you what they are saying is lies. They are lies. Not untruths, not fake news, but lies. And every Christian listening to me, you should have you have a responsibility to be able to rebut these lies. These lies. All these places, they are teaching people false doctrine, giving them the comfort of believing that these things that they talk about are true. I am going to make it a mission every day in my life to resist this and fight this with every ounce of power and strength the Lord gives me. And so should you. And so should you. And if you are unwilling to do so, if you're a Christian listening to me right now and you are unwilling to do so, then you need to be ready to tell me what, why I am wrong. You tell me where there's a seven-year tribulation. Show me in the Bible where it says the Lord Jesus Christ wanted to set up an earthly kingdom here on earth and decided that because Jews didn't accept him, that he decided to take plan B. Show me where that is in the Bible. It's a lie. It's heretical. I said heretical. It's a lie. And I can prove it any day of the week to anybody. And I want every single Christian to know. You need to know and understand these things. Be thankful, Christian. That the only way you can be a Christian is to be sealed by the Holy Spirit of God in your forehead. That means you worship the Lord, God, and Him only, and after the inward man, which is all that Christ is looking for. What's in your heart? You got that commercial, I forget which commercial for a credit card. What's in your wallet? What's in your soul?

SPEAKER_04 37:31

What's in your heart? What's in it?

SPEAKER_05 37:42

Who do you worship? Who do you obey? Who do you submit to? Or Jesus Christ. Amen. Christians, you need to ask yourself what you are doing. You can't have one foot in the door of heaven and one foot in hell. That's where you're gonna end up, sister. Sisters and brothers, that's where you're gonna end up. You need to decide that you're gonna take a stand for Christ and you are never, ever turning back. Never turning back. Listen. I know I'm a pain in the butt. I know I'm an acquired taste. But I'm telling you the God's honest truth. The Lord Jesus Christ did not come here to play games. And people think that he, that's what he did. Well, I'm just gonna come down to earth and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna go to the cross and die. And I'm gonna go and I'm gonna, I'm gonna raise myself from the from the from the dead. Not because I have an effectual cause in doing this. Not because there's gonna be any actual efficacy of this, but no, I'm gonna do it because I'm hoping that when I do it, you might look at this and go, hmm, I think I'll go along with that. Christ did not come here to make a provision for sinners to become saved. No, he did not come here to make a provision.