Opinions aren't facts

Job Series 
The book of job is broken down into 4 parts 

Prologue - Here we are introduced to the main character Job and then we’re transported to a divine council meeting where God is with his sons. The basis of this part of the book is key to understanding much of what is to come. (Chapters 1-2)
Discourse - Job and his friends get into it, they offer their opinions on why Job is in this condition, and Job reiterates his innocence and questions God. (Chapters 3-37)
The Response - After the 36th time and demanding that God answers him, God responds, sets examples and questions Jobs ability to comprehend the depth and capacity to manage creation. (Chapters 38-41)
Epilogue - Job humbled by the awesomeness of God apologises, God restores him, and gives him the choice to restore his friends. Job receives more than what he lost, trust and relationship wins over the uncertainty of doubt and crisis. 

What do we know - It’s set in the land of Uz which is away from Israel. All characters are non-Israelite, wealth is measured in livestock. The fact he had camels, and the tribal names of some of his friends suggest that regionally we’re looking at a man of great status and position within and among the Arabian tribes.

“Opinions Aint Facts”


Job 4

We see the introduction of job friends. Now their mourning has changed into accusation and opinion. Harbouring the reality of what they suspect to be the real reason of job plight. It also shows us that there was a secret contempt for the blessing God had bestowed upon Job, the reality of what they truly think is now showing itself, and what a time to do it, at Jobs weakest moment. Eliphaz was convinced this calamity was because Job had been engaging in some secret sin.

4:1-10 Eliphaz questions Jobs account and his version of events, asking first can I get a word in, the cheek of it. Then proceeds to beat him with the stick of his own annoyance where Jobs concerned - his righteousness. Aint it something that the very thing that had landed Job in this situation was the thing that he was being mocked for, his integrity and his righteousness. (John 9:1-3 ref). 
4:10-20 they question if God has no regard for his servants and his heavenly administration, what does that make job, and why does he feel entitled to some kind of explanation, but what we’re really seeing is there contempt for Gods blessing toward him. (Psalm 3 ref)
4:20-End - he tries to put job in a box of mediocrity and force/goad him into submission according to his understanding of what he believes to be happening. Yet are you not made with purpose, intention and divine design. (Genesis 1:27/Matthew 6:25-34)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello everybody and welcome to Ream and Reloaded with me, Sean Williams. It is an honor and a privilege to have you with us again. We are in week number four with our Job series, but before I go any further, I need you, yes, you to do something for me. Whether you are watching this on our hosting platform, which is YouTube, or you are listening on Spotify, Amazon, Apple, whether you're watching a short Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, I need you to subscribe. Yeah, that little thing down there, there should be a little bell going bing, subscribe to that. Please like, share, set a reminder for yourself, and also start a little group. If there's a group you're just feeling what we're doing and you like the Bible studies and it's speaking to you, please, if you even if you don't want to share the video, please share the Bible study notes because it's minus me visually. You don't even have to hear my voice. Well, you wouldn't want to hear my voice, I don't know, but you don't have to hear my voice. But more than that, we have not built this platform for it to be self-serving. We've built this platform so we can make the word of God and understanding it more accessible for more people in a regular modern way. Um, but enough of that stuff, guys. If you will, we're gonna jump into Job chapter four. Um, I will do a quick recap on what happened in chapter three. Chapter three, we saw actually, let me go right from the beginning of chapter one. We see that God is having a conversation with his sons, his executive heavenly administrative board, and then walks Lucifer, who at this point we now know is Satan. Um, and God's like, Where have you come from? And he's like, Walking up and down, and he's just like loser, and uh God's like, Have you considered my servant Job? Or also let me just put a little disclaimer that I'm paraphrasing God didn't call him a loser. I'm just surmising that how can you be right next to God and then you get in some foolishness and you get kicked out? You are a bit of a punk, anyway. He's like walking up and down, God's like, seen Job, have you? He's just like, Yeah, blah blah blah. If you take Job's stuff or if you do stuff to him that he doesn't like, he will not serve you. And God's just like, go try. So he does. Job loses stocks, he loses money, he loses his kids, and he still, in everything that's going on, he refuses to charge God foolishly and he doesn't, he doesn't crash out. That's a term that the kids like to use this day. Um, and then Satan goes back and crashes another one of God's executive board meetings, and he's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because God's like, Joe, did you see my boy? And Satan's just like, yeah, whatever. And then Satan's like, but it's because you let me touch his stuff, you didn't let me touch him. And then God was like, Alright, you want to raise the stakes of the game? Raise the stakes of the game. I'll let you touch his body, but you can't kill him. And then so he does. And at this point, we get to the end of chapter two, where Job's body has been attacked, and his friends have heard and have decided that they're gonna go run up on Job and be like, Oh my gosh. And in chapter three, we see Job's soul abandoning hope because he's looking at the surrounding environment, he's looking at the external information, and he's going, This is horrendous. And he's now asking himself, would God allow him to get to such a place that he can bring him down to absolute destruction? And Job gets so low that we read him being completely suicidal. Job is sitting there and he curses the day he was born. He says, Why were there shouts for joy? Why was there a wet nurse there to receive me on her knees? Why was I given food to be sustained as a child? Job goes into a super dark place. A super dark place. And the reason I love it is because a lot of the time I think those of us that read scripture and have spiritual relationships, we kind of idolize our Bible heroes and we kind of see them as these fantastic heroes and heroines who never had moments of doubt, fear, indecision. We always see them, oh god, they just trusted you. No, they didn't. No, they did not. Job here is the basis of a conversation that is happening in an intangible, invisible realm, right? And the reason this conversation is happening is because Job's standard of relationship with God is to such a place that it has reached the understanding of those that frequent the heavenly, right? And in Job being good, because there's a couple of things going on here. Firstly, Job's confidence with God is so good that God is just like, I tell you what, I'm gonna put him up for trial. I'm not even gonna tell him that I'm the one that's doing it. So Job is left to battle with his own senses and his own self to understand what is and isn't going on. And then secondly, some of us will sit there and go, Well, if I believe in God, can I have negative thoughts? Should I be filled with anxiety? Should I face depression? Is suicidal normal? But yet God is showing us here that a man he's super pleased with, that he loves, he's happy with. In fact, he's the guy that God is counting on got into such a dark place that he he convinced himself it would have been better if he wasn't here. Um, and this leads us into chapter four, which I love the crux of chapter four. The reason why I love the crux of chapter four is because chapter four looks like much of what we as humans go through, right? Anytime we're going through a little situation, we generally tend to fall into two spaces, right? As humans, we like to do one of two things. We all isolate in some form or another, or we insulate, okay. Isolationists usually cut themselves off from the world and everything that might require from them an explanation of substance. Okay, that's isolationism. Insulation is we absolutely reduce our circle down to its its most authentic core. So there'll be a couple of people that you don't mind seeing you in such a position in a place. Job's three friends, Zohar, Elphaz, and Bildad, these are these are the insulation pieces of his inner circle. But what is so it's amazing in the discourse of chapter four is that and you'll notice this at your weakest point you will truly learn what people think about you when you are at your weakest, or when the visuality of the world that look to support you to the positive starts to crumble, those closest to you will begin to reveal what they truly think about not only you, but your situation, and whether or not you are deserving of that situation. Um, so what we're gonna look at, and I'm gonna read chapter four for you so you can kind of get a real idea of what's going on. Um, and we're gonna open it up and we're gonna share, and I'm going to present different dimensions and hopefully insights that will allow you, as always, to take away the information along with the notes that we have for you to go into your own private study time with the Holy Spirit, speak to him, or if you have study group with your youth group or whatever departmental dimension in your church it may be with, or even personally, that you can take this information and go ahead. So let's jump into Job chapter 4. I'm gonna read kind of in verse 10 spades of 10 verses, and then we'll keep it going on. Chapter 4, verse 1. Then Eliphaz, the Temanite replied, Don't forget, Job has just come out from absolutely kind of just he's been on the biggest depression rant ever. Ever. Can you say ever? Like a little bit of ever. Um, and his friends now are coming to talk. So uh let me jump into this. Verse 1 of chapter 4. Then Eliphaz the Temonite replied, If someone ventures a word with you, will you be impatient? He's lucky he didn't get a slap. How do you mean if someone ventures a word with me when my whole world is crashed, would I be impatient? And then he goes, but who can keep from speaking? Then he says in verse 3, think how you have instructed many, how you have strengthened feeble hands, your words, Job, have supported those who stumbled. You have strengthened faltering needs, but now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged. It strikes you, and you are dismayed. I don't need friends like this. Should not your piety be your confidence? Verse six is key because now he's revealing to Job what he truly thinks about him. Okay, and if you've got some time, which you should, dictionary.com, go look up what the word piety means. Be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope. I'm gonna read that one more time, verse six. Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope? Consider now who being innocent has ever perished, where were the upright ever destroyed? As I have observed, those who plough evil and those who sow trouble reap it. And at the breath of God they perish. At the blast of his anger, they are no more. So basically, Eliphaz is questioning Job's version of events. He's just like, bruh, listen, I know that you're saying that you walk before God righteously, that you sin not, that when your kids are throwing their little parties, you sacrifice for them because in case they've done anything wrong, you want to make sure everything's okay. He's like, I I've I've heard of what you do, and to be pious is to be reverential, it is to um, it is to walk in an upright way that is reflective to the environment around you. So, what does this tell you? That Job's friends were jealous of his relationship with God, it tells you they were waiting for this moment so that they could sit there and go, so maybe you're not as holy as you think, Job. Maybe God doesn't love you as much as you think, Job. And how would we know that they're measuring Job's success or God's love for Job by what he has? There are certain people in your world, in your life, that are judging your stance or your position based on what they perceive you to have, and they didn't realize that God's value for Job, the currency that God placed on Job, was not because of the external. God didn't love Job because He'd given Job all this stuff, he loved Job because of Job's heart. God loves what people can't see and then blesses you with what they can see. Oh, that hit me. So sometimes, and especially our generation, we find ourselves we're killing ourselves for stuff: houses, cars, money, prospects, so that when we get into social situations, we can tell people about how much we have. But then when we go for a different season and we start losing the stuff we have, all of a sudden we go missing. Why? Because we have connected the basis of our importance to what temporal, material things. Job's friends were jealous of him because what he had was too great, and how he was is not how they would have been if God had blessed them. Otherwise, they would have had no problem with how Job was. The Bible does not tell us at any point that Job was a faker, insincere, or pretentious, right? How do we know this? Because the person that brings Job up is God.

unknown 12:46

Imagine.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

You think God is gonna lie about Job? You think God's got tired to be like, have you considered my God ain't into lying? God brought up Job because Job was already in his mind. There are some things that you're going through that God is allowing you to go through because A, He wants to show himself strong in you and also the substance of relationship, but also he wants to reveal to you the hearts, the minds, and the intentions of some of the people that you keep closest to you, and he is not going to be able to reveal that to you unless God allows life and situations and certain moments to do what? To squeeze you. Because when you get squeezed, then we see what comes out. How do we how is olive oil made? You have to take them olives and you have to crush them. And it's only when you crush the olive that it yields that that precious ointment. So you think that if God is going to have in a nature way the visual manifestation of that process, what do you think your trials are supposed to do? God is not trying to keep the priceless substance that's within you within you. He needs it to come out. Because how you are and what you go through and how you deal with it is going to be the testimony to the next person. Let's jump in a little further. In fact, before I jump in a little bit further, um one of the things that really gets to me is uses Job's weakest moment to kick him when he's down. And what I love about what Job does is he doesn't retaliate to the what am I trying to say? Job doesn't retaliate to the reactive nature of his friend's words. Sometimes that's where we under We undersell or sometimes we undo the work of God in our life at a particular moment because words are what? They're a creative life force. And sometimes people get you to react into saying things, okay, through your creative life force that either stunt, stop, or obstruct what God is trying to do in a particular moment. Oh, God's gonna get his work done, don't get it twisted. But a bit like Israel, you're spent to you're meant to spend 40 days in something and you end up spending 40 years because you end up saying some stuff and doing some stuff that goes completely against what God told you. And God is just trying to see, will you trust me beyond what you can see? Because seeing is not an external thing, it's an internal thing. Okay, cool. Pause, I'm gonna make you do an exercise. I want you to, within what you can see in this background, pick something to look at. Okay, get that mental picture in your head, okay? Perfect. Now, what I want you to do, close your eyes, and whatever that thing you're focusing on, I want you to bring it to your mind's eye. Okay, so with your eyes closed, I want you to reimagine it. I'm gonna give you 10 seconds. You should be able to see it. Now, if seeing is an external thing and your eyes need to be open in order for you to see, how can you close your eyes and bring something to sight in darkness? If seeing then is not an external thing, it must be an intrinsic thing. And there are moments where we substitute our spiritual vision for natural eyesight, and expect God to still work within the shallow nature of what we don't choose to trust him with. And we'll sit there and be like, God, why have you done this to me? Why have you put me in this position? And sometimes we allow the words of people around us and their ideas based on our situation, they're external, right? You know what God's spoken to you, you know what you're trying to do, you know you're living in a way that's acceptable to him, you know you want to please God in all of your ways, but yet you find yourself in this moment, and instead of trusting the God that signed off the process, you want to take the advice of a person that is observing the process from an angle that does not give them the whole viewpoint or picture, and trust that over the person that knew you before the foundation of the world. Let me qualify this. Go with me very quickly to the book of St. John, chapter 9, and we are going to look at verses 1 to 3. Jesus' disciples were in a moment and he was doing something, and um here we saw external people looking at the situation, wanting to understand what was going on. As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned? Imagine this a man's blind, the Bible doesn't tell us that he's done anything wrong, and Jesus' disciples, their first thing is like, somebody did something wrong. So, what does that tell you? Human nature is to suspect that you have done something wrong if you find yourself in a moment of hardship, trial, or tribulation. We completely discount the fact that God might be upscaling our process of proofing. No, it can't be that. Because I'm meant to live in four seasons of summer. For every year you've been born, how many seasons? Spring, summer, autumn, winter. In spring, everything's born, in summer everything blooms, in autumn, everything gets ready for bed, in winter everything dies. But yet you've convinced yourself that you're meant to live in a consistent state and process of spring and summer. Verse 3. Jesus goes, What are you man talking about? He didn't say that as me paraphrasing. He said, This guy ain't sinned, and he said his parents haven't sinned either. But this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming when no one can work while I am in the world. I am the light of the world. So we see the human proclivity to lean into wrongdoing anytime we find ourselves in a position that doesn't look like what we think it should be. And also, more so for Job's friends, this was the perfect moment for them to be able to say to him what they'd always wanted to say to him, right? When we get to let's go back to Job and let's look in from verse 10. I want to open up a couple of more bits for you. Um and it says in verse 10. Oh, I'm in the wrong scripture. Let's get back over there. Now I'm back where I need to be. So, verse 10, chapter 4. He says, This is Eliphaz, the lions may roar and growl, yet the teeth of the great lions are broken, the lion perishes for lack of prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered. A word was secretly brought to me, my ears caught a whisper of it. Amid disquieting dreams in the night, when deep sleep falls on people, fear and trembling seize me and made all my bones shake. A spirit glided past my face, and the hair on my body stood on end. It stopped. But I could not tell what it was. A form stood before my eyes, and I heard a hushed voice. Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Hmm. Can even a strong man be more pure than his maker? If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error, how much more those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust, who are crushed more readily than a moth? This is what I absolutely, this is one of my big pet peeves. Eliphaz decides to almost become an oracle of God. Because what he describes in imagery is something that at that point in time would have felt like how God would have spoken to his prophets or his servants, right? Um, the Bible said when God was speaking of Moses, that he said, Listen, uh others I speak to in dreams and in darkness. Speech, but Moses, we talk face to face, and here elephaz is saying that oh, I had I had a supernatural experience where a form stood over me, and he now begins to speak as though he's speaking on behalf of God. I'm not saying that God will not send a word for you through someone else, but imagine if Job didn't know God for himself or he was believing in the discernment or the perception of his friends in order to remedy his situation. The reality is Job was in the middle of a trial that had nothing to do with him because God trusted him. The trial you are in may have nothing to do with you, and it may only be happening to you because God trusts you. And if that wasn't the case, God has already set up protocols. The Bible says, come boldly before the throne of grace that you can ask anything. Philippians 4 tells us, don't be anxious for anything, all things, prayer, supplication with thanksgiving. Why are you gonna thank him? Because he's already taken care of it. You do not have to figure out what God has already worked out. He said, Let your request be made known unto him. There is no part here where Job has done anything wrong. Irrespective of the picture that is being painted, Job had to hold on to his integrity even when he was hearing things that were completely falsehoods. Complete falsehoods. I want to show you, take you into Psalm chapter 3. Because I think Psalm chapter 3 gives us an amazing viewpoint of some of what Job is feeling in this moment, and it's a psalm of David who was running away from his son. Imagine you killed Goliath. This is the same guy that absolutely brutalized the Philistine army, took the foreskins off the soldiers and threw them down at the King Saul's feet. And this guy is writing a poem about getting as far away from his son as possible. Okay, I want to read it to you. Lord, how many are my foes? How many rise up against me? Many are saying of me, God will not deliver him. But you, God, are a shield around me, my glory, the one who lifts my head. I will call out to the Lord, and he answers me from his holy mountain. I lie down and sleep, I wake again because the Lord sustains me. I will not fear, though tens of thousands assail me on every side. Arise, Lord, deliver me, my God. Strike all my enemies on the jaw, break the teeth of the wicked. From the Lord comes deliverance. May your blessing be on your people. There are moments that you're gonna go through that will not make sense. And when it doesn't make sense, you're not supposed to try and comprehend what you can't. You're meant to trust the God that knows yesterday, today, and tomorrow. There's a reason why the Bible said that he's the same yesterday, today, and forever. Why? Because the consistency of God is what makes God. He doesn't change. His word is farmer than his throne. And the question he wants to know is will you love him beyond what you can see? Will you trust him beyond what you have? Will you follow him when you don't know the way? Let's look at these last two verses. Back in Job chapter 4, and I want you to go to verse 20. And I want you to understand sometimes what happens with people in certain situations. So Eliphaz is still talking about uh what God would and wouldn't do. Let me pick it up from verse 18. If God places no trust in his servants, if he charges his angels with error, how much more those who live in houses of clay? He's talking about Job and us now, whose foundations are in the dust, who are crushed more readily than the moth. Do you see how low he's trying to bring Job? Like he's trying to bring you're mediocre. Like, don't get it twisted. Like, why would God force you into submission if you were doing everything that you were supposed to be doing? Why would he bring you so low if you were doing everything that you were supposed to be doing? Then in verse 20 says, Between dawn and dust they are broken to pieces unnoticed, they perish forever. Are not the cords of their tent pulled up so that they die without wisdom? Let me just explain something to you. Why the Eliphazes, the Bildads, and the Zohars in your life, they know little to nothing about what God is planning, doing, and expecting for you. We're going to finish here with Genesis chapter 1, uh, and I want to take you to verse 26. Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, over the livestock on all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. 27. So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. God blessed them. Don't allow your environment to tell you that God hasn't blessed you because he blessed you from before the foundations of the world. Made in his image, gathered from the dust of the ground and breathed into by the God of all. God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful. Say that to yourself. I am fruitful. Increase in number, say it to yourself, I'm going to increase everything that I have. Fill the earth and subdue it. God has given you dominion to go after whatever He has put in your heart. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. I am telling you that whatever you're going through, trust the God that is sitting right in it with you. Trust the God that signed off on the process. He knows information you don't know. Trust the God that said, I'll never leave you nor forsake you. Trust the God that said, I have overcome the world. My peace I give to you, my peace I leave you. Not as world, give it, give it onto you. Trust the God that said, I am the true vine, and my father is the husband. He that abides in me. That's all you have to do. Even in Job's depression, his anxiety, his pain, he refused not to abide in God. Why? Because he was demanding that God come and talk to him. He didn't run away. When his wife said, You still holding on to him? Curse him. Die. He was like, baby, you're talking like one of them crazy chicks over there. Like, if I knew you were one of them kind of round away girls, I would have never married you. Even though she didn't understand and couldn't explain it, he trusted that she would trust what he knew. God will. Guys, thank you for hanging out with me today. I hope this Bible study has spoken to you. Please go and get those notes. And you know, pass them along. Let me pray. Let's get us out of out of here. Father, thank you for today. Thank you for the series that you're giving us because God, you're opening so many dimensions of thought processes and moments that we all go through. Um let it resonate with us. And I pray everybody that comes into contact with this Bible study, let them come into contact with you. That's the whole point of this, Jesus. Like if they're not coming into contact with you, then I'm failing and we're failing, and we need to stop. Um thank you for this moment. Um, and I pray that everybody that comes into contact, even those that don't, God, they hear about it in whatever way, let it be the cattice of a relationship that will transform their whole life. For anybody that's going through right now, God give them the peace in their heart, allow your Holy Spirit to speak to them. Father Lord, allow them to feel the joy of your salvation and let them always feel your everlasting love. As we say thank you in your name, we pray. Amen. Guys, thank you. Take it easy, and I'll see you next time.