Abandoned yet not alone

Job Series | Part 5
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.

Abandoned Yet Not Alone

Job 6

• 6:1-7 - Job responds in disbelief because he’s answering questions from people that should know, he’s defending his integrity to those whom he already believed understood who and what he was. He doubles down on his argument of righteousness, and asks rhetorical questions of those questioning him.
• 6:8-14 - job has now lost the hunger and desire to live, he has seen himself brought to nought and he feels abandoned, yet he’s not alone. He almost questions in a comical what more can I do, what more can I suffer, how much more can I endure.
• 6:14-21 - Sometimes we lose patience, sometimes you get to a point where you no longer have any desire to debate. Job actually asks his friends to put up or shut up, he takes them to task over their inability to answer him or judge him justly or fairly.
• 6:21-25 - Job goes on the offensive, and calls his friends out, sometimes the heat of the trial will burn away civility and leave you with what you truly feel, and he saw past the synthetic sincerity and wanted to proof his friends and the intention from where they’re understanding was coming from.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello everybody and welcome to Rumor Reloaded with me, Sean Williams. It's an honor and a privilege to be able to spend some time with you again. Very quickly, before we jump into our Bible study, do me a favor, like, subscribe, share. The share button's not there, but the like and subscribe is we want to share this as much as possible. Also, do not forget that we have our notes, they're there in the description. And the basis of this is I don't want to be your only point of information, I am merely starting the party so I can leave and you can hang out and have all the fun with the Holy Spirit. All yourself, no third wheeling at all. As you're aware, we've been doing our series on Job, and we are now in the book of Job, chapter six. Um a very quick recap, as you would have seen from our previous Bible study, Job is now in a space where he's the basis of a conversation that's happened that he wasn't present for. The next thing that happens is everything that he, everything that was spoken in the conversation he wasn't present for is now happening to him. Land gone, stocks gone, investments gone, family gone, wife saying, Listen, that God stuff, mate, cut it out. His pals have heard about what's going on, they've come to see him, they're like, bruh. And Job's like, I can't even talk. And they're basically the last place that we left it, his friends were basically telling him, Listen, there is no way that you haven't done something wrong here. And Job is maintaining his innocence, he's maintaining his integrity, and there's nothing worse, right, than when a person says they believe you and then finds a roundabout way to basically say they don't really believe you. Because you sit there and just go, mate, I'd much rather that you sat there and just like, I don't think you're telling the truth, but they're his friends, they listen to everything that he has to say, only to basically wait for him to stop talking and be like, Well, here's what I think. And Job gets to hear the real ideas behind what his friends think about him. We spoke about this in our last Bible study. Sometimes we're not really aware of what people think until we are perceived to be in a position of vulnerability, and then all of a sudden, you now start to understand what people's assertions are, their judgments, their real feelings and thoughts towards you. It's a bit part of human nature that we only really reveal the the negative things we think about people when a we think they don't have the power to affect us, b our words don't have the possibility or the power to come back and judge us, or three, that we're in a stronger or better position than them. They will be the basis by which a person who you think thinks good towards you, you will hear or see the truth of how they really feel. Those three positions. Also, I think, especially on the basis that life is a conglomerate of moments, seasons, and cycles, you can't ever overly invest in one season and expect that to be the only thing that happens. That is not the way that life works. When we look even at the seasons within nature, in spring, everything is born new, in summer, everything's blooming, it's at its best moment. In autumn, it begins to dwindle, it begins to get ready for sleep, and in winter we know everything dies, it's barren, there is no sign of life in the winter time because it's dark. The trees and the flowers they stop yielding of their fruit and their petals. So that leans us into this conceptual thought that every moment is the basis or is the attachment of a season, and every season cannot be completed unless it goes through the cycle. What is a cycle? Four seasons, not one. So you can't try and maintain one season and believe that you're believing you're living the whole cycle. That's just not how it goes. So we're gonna jump very quickly into the book of Job, chapter six. Um, we basically just heard Job's friends basically tell him, like, listen, we kind of think you're a bit of a big head, really, whilst pretending to not be. We we we think your kids are wild. That's why your kids got in that that situation, Job. Them little parties they're having where everybody goes and your sons invite your daughters, and it's all a bit weird, and then you've got to go and sacrifice in case they did something. You know what they've been doing at them, them crazy weird parties. This was the conversation. Yes, it wasn't necessarily happening in that type of speech or rhetoric, but that was the implication. So, Job then in chapter six, he's basically listening to his boys basically say, Listen, this whole holy than thou act you've been putting on, we never believed it anyway, bruv. But you were too successful, too powerful for us to ever say anything. How can we come to your party and you throw the best parts, Job, and then be like, Well, we actually think you're a bit of a crook. They couldn't. So when Job was in this moment, and don't forget, in our previous Bible study, the Bible tells us that when they saw Job, like they were a good distance. When they saw him, they were like, Oh wow, I mean we heard, but we didn't know it's this bad. So they've now kind of got to him, sat down, spoken, spouted their foolishness, and here Job um begins to answer them. So let me start off in verse chapter one. Uh then Job replied, If only my anguish could be weighed, and all my misery be placed on the scales, it would surely outweigh the sand of the seas. No wonder my words have been impetuous. The arrows of the Almighty are in me. My spirit drinks in their poison. God's terrors are marshalled against me. Does a wild donkey bray when it has grass? Or an ox, does it bellow when it has fodder? Is tasteless food eaten without salt, or is there flavour in the sap of the mallow? I refuse to touch it, such food makes me ill. So basically, Job is responding in disbelief to uh the accusations of his friends. He's sitting here and he's asking some rhetorical questions. He's sitting there and he's asking, firstly he's saying, if only my grief could be weighed, if only I could give you some metrics that you measure by to make you understand that what I'm going through is not a basis of my own action, but I am a person that is going through something that has been unjustly placed on me. Have you ever been in a situation where you know you didn't do anything to warrant the results or the outcomes of what's happening in that particular situation, but yet everything that is visually manifesting itself is pointing to an arc, a reason, an intention that sits solely at your feet. There are times when I found myself in inexplainable situations, positively and negatively. And there are moments where I'm sitting and I'm asking myself, how do I explain this one? This is why the title of this episode of the Job series is called Abandoned Yet Not Alone. There is nothing worse than feeling like everything that was familiar to you has completely disappeared and evaporated from you. Job is sitting in a place and in a moment where everything that allowed him to feel comfortable, secure, and safe about his life has been dismantled or dissolved right in front of him. Most of us will look to our jobs, our families, our social situations by which we find support, we find peace, we find joy. Because the unfortunate thing that most of us are probably coming to realize, and especially coming out of things like the lockdown and the pandemic, that much of what we made our life to be was built on sand. I'm gonna qualify that. When I say that it was built on sand, it was built on things that you could take away and would instantly devalue our feeling of self jobs, relationships, social interactions, social support mechanisms. When these things were taken away from us, we all felt displaced. Job is going through something far worse. At least with the pandemic and the lockdown, we had the ability to sit here and say, cause, problem, potential solution. Job had no reason or conceptual understanding for the cause of something that he had not bought on himself. He was very aware of the problem because it was stuck right in front of his face. And with all of his emotional and spiritual power, he was scratching and searching for a solution that would not reveal itself. And the solution that he wanted, the Bible tells us, and we'll get to see this as we go through the series. Job inquired of God 36 times. Now, let's be real, you and I will pray once, maybe twice, and if we're feeling real spiritual three times, if God ain't popped up on the phone, we're out. We're like, bruh, you obviously ain't here. And usually we've done some stuff wrong. We we we did some stuff that we maybe shouldn't have been doing. And yet, this man, this just man, full of integrity and faith and righteousness, he finds himself on the sure end of a divine bet. Now, let me qualify that because God is not into gambling. This is not now you sitting going, oh nice, does that mean I'm gonna put a little bit of money on 9C to be awesome? Nah. Nah. God will never make a bet that he doesn't, he won't win. So then if he's betting on something he knows that he can't lose, is it really a bet? Or is it an informed decision? God knew what was inside Joe. God knows what's inside you. But his hope is that your hope isn't anchored in something that can be taken away. His hope is that your hope is anchored in what you know, and what you know is hidden deep in the core of who you are, which is your spirit, and that your spirit then sits on the seat of your soul's consciousness. And what is your soul? Your soul is your mind, your will, and your emotions. Why is that important? Because it's your mind, your will, and your emotions that transacts your physical natural self in the visible world. That's why God was impressed with Job because for everything Job was feeling, for every piece of external information his soul was feeding him, Job did not sin against God. When you're going through moments that don't make sense, that you don't understand, that feel too much, is your testimony that God, for everything that felt like it wasn't you, did you still trust him? Did you believe him beyond what you had the capability to understand? If you're waiting for God to fit in the box of your understanding for you to then believe him, you're never gonna believe him. The first basis of believing or understanding God is first believing that he is. You can't believe that he isn't, and then hope that you're gonna find enough evidence to believe that he is. No, no, no. The Bible says that you first must believe that he is, and he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him. Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 6. Ask first, and it will be given. Seek, then you will find. Knock. Every single one of those instructions are what? They're a verb. What's a verb? It's an action that you have to do. God is looking for your participation. God was watching Job participate in the process, even in doubt. Faith is not faith unless there is a presence of fear and doubt. Why? Because your faith has to eat that fear. Your faith has to eat that doubt. How does it do it? Through belief and action. When you believe, what do you do? You diminish doubt, and when you act, you evaporate fear. Job was sitting here, not being passive, in all the pain he was feeling. The Bible told us he he took sharp instruments of material to scrape the boils off of himself. Imagine scraping boils and defending yourself at the same time. I'm just, I'm getting over a chest infection, and and that first week, I was done. I was done. I didn't have no words for nobody. None. If you'd come to me and said, Sean, it's it's so bad of me. I don't know if I'm gonna carry, I don't know if I can hold on. I would be like, then let go. It's fine. Give it up. And this man is sitting here in the presence of his friends, trying to maintain his integrity, and trying to continue to be who he was and who he is without sinning against the person that he fears and loves most in the world. Okay, I want to take you very quickly to chapter 8, I think verse 8. Um Job kind of turns the conversation, he goes from rhetorical questions and responding to his friends to really putting it on them. In verse 8, he says, Oh, that I might have my request that God would grant what I hope for. Listen to this, because most of us are sitting there thinking, oh, Job just wants God to take him out of this situation and vindicate him and make him better. No, no, no. There are certain trials and tribulations, there is certain pain that you will feel that go beyond you wanting to be vindicated in front of people. There are certain things you go through where you stop caring about people because you're just like, I don't care about them. Job's vindication comes in this form, verse 9, that God would be willing to crush me to let loose his hand and cut off my life. This is a man that is feeling suicidal. He's like, you know what, forget this. Just take me out. But what is the beauty about what we're hearing here? What Job is asking for is the very thing that God used to tie Satan's hands. What did Satan say to him? Listen, Job loves you because you give him everything. Job loves you because you never say no. Job loves you because he is the richest man everywhere. Job loves you because you've put a hedge of protection around him. This is what Satan is telling to God about Job. Satan says, You move that hedge of protection from him and you let me start touching his stuff, he will curse you to his face. And what is it that God says? God says, I'll tell you what, I see your bet, you little punk, and I'll raise that bet. I'm gonna tell you the only thing you can't do. You can touch everything, everything is fair game, everything, everything, but his life, you leave his life alone. You see, Job got to a stage where the touching of everything that had made him who he was, the the inability to understand why such tribulation and why such tragedy had come upon him and put him in a place where his life stopped being the thing that he always knew it was, which was a precious gift. There are some things that you can go through that will diminish your hunger and your desire to live. There is nothing worse than to find yourself going through a moment that makes no sense, that carries no attachments of understanding, and to trust an invisible God that He loves you, He cares for you, and what you're going through is part of the plan. I can't sit here and give you any words that will make you feel better apart from telling you this. You experience time as it happens, God sees time as it is. So though the moment that you may be enduring feels like it's never going to end, I need you to remember that time is the matrix by which God marks actions, activities, and moments. He's looking at it, beginning, middle, and end. When God's looking at time, he's seeing creation, he's seeing Christ, he's seeing now, and he's seeing what's to come. When God is looking at Job, God isn't looking at the moment, God's seeing down ahead, God's watching what he's gonna give back to Job. So then, is there a lesson, is there a hidden treasure in what you're going through that if you can merely endure and trust the God that has not left you alone? That's the real key. Do you lean into the feeling of abandonment? Or do you lean upon the trust and knowledge of knowing that you're never alone? Christ says, Always, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Do you believe what he says, or do you believe what it feels like? Let me continue, finishing um verse 10. So he's just said to himself that he wants God to cut off his life, then it says, Then I would still have this consolation, my joy in unrelenting pain, that I had not denied the words of the Holy One. So he's saying it's easy for me to die having kept my integrity, saying that I didn't do these things against God, but I don't want to keep living in this moment. Why? Because the longer I live in this moment suggests to me that what I'm saying isn't the truth of what is. Trust me, I know what it is to build something and to believe in the thing you've built and have nobody follow. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And you sometimes you have to listen to what people truly think about what you're doing. Sometimes it's it's the it's the comments that come in moments where you're feeling weak. Sometimes it's the backhanded compliment, sometimes it's the look, sometimes it's the disingenuous interaction that seeks to pat you on the head. But what is it doing? It's burning away fleshly ambition, it's burning away ego, it's burning away pride, it's purifying intention, it's purifying faith, it's purifying belief, it's purifying discipline. Why? Because it's burning away all of the things that feel good to the gratification of ourselves, and it's proofing the intention of the ingredient to which you're doing it, so that when God takes it from here to here, you don't then seek to make yourself a God like God. That you understand you are merely an instrument of power, love, and peace. Okay, so in verse 10, then would I still have this consolation? My joy and unrelenting pain, that I not denied the words of the Holy One. What strength do I have that I should still hope? Imagine that. He says that he's lost so much strength that he doesn't even have the ability or capacity to hope. What prospects that I should be patient? Do I have the strength of stone? Is my flesh bronze? Do I have any power to help myself now that success has been driven from me? Verse 14. Anyone who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty. I love this because this is a backhanded compliment to his mates. He's saying, Okay, cool. You find me in this vulnerable position, and I want you to take this in your own heart and mine as well. That sometimes you're looking for support from people that don't have the capacity to give it. Why? Because they never believed in what God put inside you. That's not Their fault, and it's not for you to blame them for that because God gave you the heart He gave you for a reason. God didn't give you uh uh what's the word I'm looking for? Uh a factory manufactured heart so that I can throw this one out and it's fine because I've got another 20 on the shelf over there. No, God took time in eternity past, he took time so that he knew you. He said to Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 1, before I formed thee in the belly, before you became a physical thing, I knew you. You were in my mind's eye. So then you have to understand that you are fearfully, wonderfully, and uniquely made. You are one of one. So God's plan in your life is for purpose and for reason. And to God, you are perfect. Say that to say that to yourself right now. To God, I am perfect with my imperfect self, my crazy, doubting, fear-ridden self. My can't get right, want to get it right, but can't keep it right. Self, yeah, you perfect, loves you, and if he needed to, he'd clothe himself in flesh again and nail himself again to a cross just to save you, knowing that you may not even pick him. That's love. That's love. Okay, let's round this up. So verse 15, he's verse 14 he just said, anyone who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of your mighty, verse number 15, but my brothers are as undependable as intermittent streams, as the streams that overflow when darkened by thawing ice and swollen with mountain snow, but that stop flowing in the dry season and in the heat, vanish from their channels. Caravans turn aside from their roots, they go off into the wasteland and perish. The caravans of Tima look for water, the travelling merchants of Sheba looking hope. They are distressed because they had been confident they arrived there only to be disappointed. Now you two have proved to be of no help. I love that. I love that. Because it comes a time when you you gotta stop taking it. You don't have to fight back, but sometimes you have to make a stand and refuse to stop taking it. He says, Um, now you two have proved to be of no help. You see something dreadful and are afraid. Have I ever said, give me something on my behalf, pay a ransom for me from your wealth, deliver me from the hand of the enemy, rescue me from the clutches of the ruthless? Then he turns and he says, Teach me, and I'll be quiet. Show me where I have been wrong, how painful are honest words. But what do your arguments prove? Do you mean to correct what I say and treat my desperate words as wind? You would even cast lots for the fatherless and barter away your friend. But now be so kind as to look at me. And Job says to them, Would I lie to your face? Relent, do not be unjust, reconsider for my integrity is at stake. Be careful of a person that's willing to double down when they've lost everything. The vast majority of us would die over the truth. Absolutely almost none of us would die over a lie. When you know what you've done, and when you know who you are, double down in God. Double down in God. It is the only thing that you can walk into blindly and find light. It's the only thing that you can bank on having nothing and know that you'll end up with everything. Job chooses to double down on God. So he says in verse 29, relent, do not be unjust, reconsider, for my integrity is at stake. Verse 30. The most prior question he asks them, is there any wickedness on my lips? Can my mouth not discern malice? You see, integrity goes far beyond your ability to feel triggered by what a person may say or do. Integrity suggests that whatever they say or do, it will not get you to change from who you are. That's why the Bible tells us that it's with our mouth that we make confession, but it's in your heart that you believe. After your mouth stops running, your heart then becomes the model and the reflection of what's really happening within you. Yeah, what happens in the external world it matters, it affects us. But we are we're starting to understand that the reason Job, millennia after a situation has happened, the reason we're still reading about him is because it's not about what was happening around him, but what he chose to protect within him. With the last bits of his physical, emotional, and spiritual strength, he said, the last the only thing I cannot do, I cannot sin against God Almighty. I cannot doubt him in anything that I say, even though I know how I'm feeling. So today, although you may feel abandoned, you're not alone. Let's pray. God, thank you for this moment, thank you for this time, thank you for everybody that's listening to this Bible study. Thank you for moments that we don't understand because that's where you do your best work, God. That's where we learn how to trust you. And trust is the cornerstone of every successful relationship, along with belief and hope. Father, we're praying for everybody today that is listening to this, that feels abandoned. Let your Holy Spirit whisper to them that they're not alone, irrespective of what the visual looks like. God, allow them to feel your comfort, that divine comfort that comes only from heaven. Lord, let them feel your love, but also allow your spirit to use us as instruments that we can model what they can't feel, that we can be a reflection of what they can't see. As we say thank you, protect, guide, cover, and keep everyone that comes into this Bible study, let it speak to them far beyond their natural emotional sense and let it hit them in their spirit, man, in their core. As we say thank you in Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. Guys, have a great day. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and if you love the Bible study, share it with someone that you care about. Someone you don't. Just share it. See you next time.