Now My Eyes Can See You

[0:00] The following message is given by Walt Alexander, lead pastor of Trinity Grace Church in Athens, Tennessee.! For more information about Trinity Grace, please visit us at TrinityGraceAthens.com.

[0:13] ! We're not going to read the whole speech, but want to locate us in it.

[0:37] If you would stand out of reverence for the Word of God as we read it, if you're able. Job chapter 40, verse 6.

[0:51] Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, Dress for action like a man. I will question you, and you make it known to me.

[1:02] Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right? Have you an arm like God? And can you thunder with a voice like His?

[1:17] Adorn yourself with majesty and dignity. Clothe yourself with glory and splendor. Pour out the overflowings of your anger and look on everyone who is proud and abase him.

[1:31] Look on everyone who is proud and bring him low and tread down the wicked where they stand. Verse 15. Behold, behemoth, which I made as I made you.

[1:44] He eats grass like an ox. Behold, his strength is in his loin and his power in the muscles of his belly. He makes his tail stiff like a cedar and the sinews of his thighs are knit together.

[1:58] His bones are tubes of bronze. His limbs are like bars of iron. 41.1 Can you draw out Leviathan with a fish hook and press down his tongue with a cord?

[2:12] Can you put a rope in his nose and pierce his jaw with a hook? Will he make many pleas to you? Will he speak to you soft words? Will he make a covenant with you to take him for your servant forever?

[2:28] Will you play with him as with a bird? Or will you put him on a leash for your girls? Will the traders bargain over him? Will they divide up among the merchants?

[2:40] Can you fill his skin with harpoons or his head with fishing spears? Lay your hands on him. Remember the battle. You will not do it again.

[2:52] Behold, the hope of a man is false. He is laid low even at the sight of him. No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up.

[3:05] Who then is he who can stand before me? Who has first given to me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.

[3:19] Verse 12. I will not keep silence concerning his limbs or his mighty strength or his goodly frame.

[3:31] Scroll down to verse 33. He says, There is not his like, a creature without fear. He sees everything that is high. He is king over all the sons of pride.

[3:45] Then the Lord answered. Job answered the Lord and said, I know that you can do all things. No purpose of yours can be thwarted.

[3:56] Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand. Things too wonderful for me which I did not know.

[4:08] Hear and I will speak. I will question you and you make it known. I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear. But now my eye sees you.

[4:20] Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. This is the word of the Lord. Praise God.

[4:32] Please be seated. There used to be an alligator under my bed.

[4:44] It begins one of my kids' favorite books when they were little. When it was time to go to sleep, the book says, I had to be very careful so I would call, Mom!

[4:59] Dad! But they never saw it. It was all up to me. I just had to do something about that alligator underneath my bed.

[5:11] It goes on to tell the story of a boy going around the house to gather alligator bait. To lure the alligator out from under his bed with a peanut butter sandwich.

[5:25] With fruit, with the last piece of pie. Gives it away to the alligator until he finally lures him out of the room and down the steps and into the garage where he puts out a sign for his dad.

[5:39] Dad, watch out! There's an alligator in the garage. Be careful. Over the last 40 chapters, Job has been proclaiming something very similar.

[5:52] He's been saying, there's a monster under my bed. He's defended himself and he said he did nothing to deserve what has happened to him, but he's lost everything.

[6:03] All that he had. All whom he loved. And his body is covered with sores. His only relief is to scratch himself with shards of stone.

[6:16] He suffered great evil, greater than any man who has ever lived except one. He's appealed for God to speak up to him. But as we pointed out last week, many times the Lord has just been silenced.

[6:29] What has the Lord given to him in response to all that he's suffered? Silence. And as the suffering continues, Job's greatest fear is that it will never end.

[6:39] That there's a monster after him. That he will continue to attack him. That he is unrestrained. His greatest fear is there's a monster after him that's unrestrained and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

[6:56] And there's no one holding him back. Like Christopher Ashe says in his commentary, As Job suffers, his greatest fear and deepest fear is that the monster who attacks him is unrestrained.

[7:07] And the attacks will go on forever with unrelieved ferocity. And that the monster has been given a free hand, unlimited access to Job and his life.

[7:22] That's his greatest fear. Sometimes it seems like he fears that God is the monster. Other times, he seems to say God may as well be the monster.

[7:37] Because he's not doing anything about it. So again and again, Job is saying, Is God really for me? Or is he against me?

[7:48] Now in the first answer to Job, which we studied last week, The Lord thunders from heaven and shows his good rule over everything that he's made. He says, Job, did you really know what you were saying when you said you knew better than me?

[8:08] And Job humbles himself and submits himself to God. But his question is not answered. What about the monster under his bed? In the second answer to Job, the Lord thunders from heaven again.

[8:24] And answers his burning question. He addresses the monster in the room. Now we may have grown out of our fear of alligators. But we haven't grown out of fear.

[8:37] Especially the fear of evil. And that's what Job is drawing our attention. It's when life, when the unexpected and the unpredictable strikes, that life begins to assault us with question.

[8:50] Is God for us? Is God with us? Is God still working? Or have I fallen into the hands of evil? And the Lord answers Job. Job sees something in this final response.

[9:02] It's so different. The first time he humbles himself, submits to God. This time he worships. He sees something that we must see. And a word where we're going is, Fear not, the terrible power of evil will be conquered by our risen Lord Jesus Christ.

[9:20] Fear not, the terrible power of evil will be conquered by our risen Lord Jesus Christ. Fear not, the terrible power of evil will be conquered by our risen Lord Jesus Christ.

[9:54] Is God just? Does he know what he's doing? Is he just letting the wicked go by free? And we know that immediately from verse 8 when the Lord says, Will you even put me in the wrong?

[10:08] Will you condemn me that you may be in the right? Now we said last week that life is not fair. Job did not deserve what had happened to him.

[10:20] It seems as if Job has gotten to a place where he's left with one of two options. Either God is right and Job is wrong, or Job is right and God is wrong.

[10:33] Either God is right and Job is wrong, or either Job is right and God is wrong. That's where it seems to be where Job is. That's where the dilemma has become.

[10:43] If we could take it a step further, we could say either God is my enemy, or I am God's enemy. Either God is my enemy, or I am God's enemy, and we all know which one is more terrifying.

[11:03] Job has concluded the more terrifying option, that it must be that he has somehow become the enemy of God.

[11:14] It's so important that we not throw a flag here, like they do in the NFL, and say, but God works all things for good.

[11:31] God knows how we talk when it all hits the fan. God wants to speak about what we say in those moments, and not the way we cover it up with Sunday school answers.

[11:45] We've said, you don't study the book of Job until you have to. And when you have to, you're studying the book of Job, because you've been tempted to conclude that God is against you.

[12:04] But the Lord doesn't like it. So he says, Lord, he says, if you look back at that, verse 8, will you even put me in the wrong? So when you conclude that you are righteous, and that I must be wrong, you're concluding that I am your enemy.

[12:20] You're concluding that I am wrong. Literally, it's saying you're breaking justice. Instead of being suspicious of your conclusions, you're concluding that the just God is suddenly unjust, and has done things wrong for you.

[12:35] And so the Lord immediately responds, and said, if you know so much about justice, you be the judge. That's what's going on. In verse 10, look there, he says, adorn yourself with majesty and dignity, clothe yourself with glory and splendor.

[12:49] You put on the robe, Job. You take a seat at the bench. You strike with the mallet. You rule the justice. That's what he says. Pour out your overflowing of anger, verse 11.

[13:01] Look on the proud and abase him. Tread down the wicked where they stand. Take the proud. If you can do all this, then I'll praise you. Or not praise you, I'll recognize you are just.

[13:13] Now, we all love to imagine ourselves someone different for a day, right? What would we do if we had $100 million that we won in the lottery? Well, you'd buy us a building, right?

[13:27] What would you do? What would be your first act as president? Now, this is a bit of a hard one for me. It comes down to two things. Jail those who drive slow in the left lane and eradicate eggplant from the face of the earth.

[13:46] All those bloated vegetables, let's get them out of here. Move them out. You know, but what does it mean when the Lord says, you be judged for a day? Job? Now, one thing it cannot mean and it does not mean, he's not saying, look, Job, this whole judge thing is really hard.

[14:06] Cut me some slack. Sometimes I don't get it right, but I'm trying, Job. I'm trying. The Lord is saying, Job, you should doubt your conclusions.

[14:23] If your only answer is that you are right and I am wrong, Job, doubt your conclusions. Did you notice in the proposal when he said to Job, arm yourself, he also, he defined justice, which is bringing down the proud.

[14:42] We know that from Isaiah 2 and so many other places in the scripture. Also, treading down the wicked. So, it's not as if the Lord has forgotten what is just and what is unjust. The Lord continues to be just. He's helping Job see something very important.

[14:55] Maybe God is right and Job is right. Maybe God is just and Job is righteous, a sincere believer.

[15:09] Maybe that's what's going on. There's so much comfort in these verses. I think the Lord is saying to Job, the problem of evil is real and the Lord knows it. There is a monster underneath there, Job.

[15:22] And I don't need to sweep him into the closet. I'm going to address him. Point two, the power of evil is terribly great. The power of evil is terribly great.

[15:34] The problem of evil is real. The power of evil is terribly great. We get to the body of the speech with the introduction of these two characters, Behemoth and Leviathan.

[15:47] Behemoth gets nine verses. Leviathan gets 34 verses. All of them get more than the ostrich. Now, some say, Job is just, he's talking, or the Lord's just talking to Job about the hippopotamus and the crocodile.

[16:03] The Behemoth is the hippopotamus and the Leviathan is the crocodile. But that doesn't seem likely to me. In the first speech, the Lord has already talked about all the things he made.

[16:17] Remember? He rules over everything. He micromanages everything. Not in a bad way, but that it's all under his good rule. And he talked about all the animal kingdom being under his rule.

[16:30] And Job bowed in submission. But after the Lord talks about Behemoth and Leviathan, Job worships. So I think there must be something else going on here.

[16:43] He's not just talking again about the animal kingdom to where Job suddenly responds in a very different way. And as George Bernard Shaw said, God really has to do better in explaining the problem of evil than to say, you can't make a hippopotamus, can you?

[17:03] In addition, these beasts are described as something more than ordinary. Animals unable to be tamed, unable to be caught, no one can catch them.

[17:14] That's the whole point. But we've caught hippopotamus and crocodiles. So it seems to me, and smart guys, I say it seems because I've thought through it and landed where I think is right, that Behemoth and Leviathan are drawing on ancient stories and myths.

[17:35] One of the stories quite common in ancient times was a great dragon monster, a sea monster, who comes to attack the chief god of the area. Now these are all stories that came about in a different worldview than ours, like a pantheon of gods with all these different goddesses and goddesses over different aspects of nature and creation.

[17:56] And so this was a very common story. These dragon monsters and sea monsters, they come from the sea, which makes sense because the sea is this uncontrollable, uncontainable, unpredictable mass of chaos.

[18:12] essentially. But we don't have to look outside the Bible to get this view of Leviathan. We see Leviathan in and through the scriptures in numerous places.

[18:23] We saw it right at the beginning of Job, which we have for you in Job's lament in chapter 3. He said, those who curse it, who curse the day, who are ready to rouse up Leviathan.

[18:38] This is not a crocodile that Job is calling up here. It is someone to curse the day. It's someone who's rebelling against it. Who is over the day?

[18:49] The Lord is over the day. And so he's calling up Leviathan, who's over the night, symbolizing darkness and evil.

[19:00] He's calling him up. Curse the day of my birth, is what Job says. But we see this also in Psalm 74 talking about the deliverance of the Red Sea. It says, you divided the sea by your might.

[19:14] You broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan. You gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

[19:26] Again, it seems to me this is not a crocodile either. He's talking about something that happened in the history of Israel, but he's saying, you didn't just go through the sea. You weren't just delivered from the powers of Egypt.

[19:39] You were delivered from all these unseen enemies of God. The sea monsters, the heads of Leviathan, the Lord triumphed over him.

[19:49] We see this type of language again in Revelation, likening the evil, supernatural enemies to dragons and beasts and serpents and a sea monster there.

[20:02] Therefore, it seems to me that Behemoth and Leviathan are meant to represent supernatural evil enemies of God. Supernatural evil enemies of God, most especially the enemy himself, the Satan, the devil.

[20:22] evil. And they're saying, evil is incredibly great, terribly great.

[20:34] These verses alert us to the terribly great power of evil. Look back in verse 15. He says, behold, Behemoth, which I made as I made you.

[20:45] He eats grass like an ox. It's a plural name, but it refers to a single creature. It's a plural name, four creatures, but refers to a single creature.

[20:58] It's referring to a plural name, referring to a single creature to underline his great power. It reminds me of the man the Lord met when he crossed the river or across the Sea of Galilee and the man said, my name is Legion, for we are many.

[21:15] You remember him. The plural name is underlining his great power. Behemoth is not just a great beast. He is the super beast. Though he's a creature made by God, his strength is unlike all other creatures.

[21:33] Strength and power in his muscles, his tail's like a strong cedar tree. His thighs are knit powerfully strong. His bones are unbreakable metal.

[21:44] Oftentimes, when we're afraid, our problems just keep getting bigger and bigger. Who went to bed worrying and their problem got smaller, right? But they're never as bad as we think they are.

[22:04] Well, Behemoth is always worse than you think he is. Worry, worry, worry, and his power is even more terribly great than you can imagine.

[22:20] Leviathan is even more terrifying. Look in verse 14 of 41. Who can open the doors of his face around his teeth is terror.

[22:31] His back is made of rows of shields shut up closely as with a seal. Look in verse 20. Out of his nostrils comes forth smoke as from a boiling pot and burning rushes.

[22:44] His breath kindles coals and a flame comes forth from his mouth. He is like a dragon. Look in verse 33. It says, On earth there is not his like a creature without fear, though he too is a creature of God.

[23:00] His teeth are terror. His back is a row of shields. His nostrils billow with the smoke of rage. His mouth shoots forth flaming torch consuming everything in its path.

[23:14] His evil and evil is terribly great. So great that no man can stop it. No one can oppose or contain or restrain the evil of this world.

[23:27] We see that. Look in verse 24 of chapter 40 when he says, Can one take Behemoth by his eyes or pierce his nose with a snare?

[23:38] Then the Lord introduces Leviathan with this series of rhetorical questions. Can you tie a fly and cast it over the sea and draw up Leviathan?

[23:51] Can you put a ring through his nose like you might some other beast? Will he respond to your whispers and calls? Will you play with him?

[24:02] Will you bring out the girls that they might play with him? No, the point is you can't restrain him. You can't tie him down. No one can.

[24:16] No one can catch him. No one can stop him. The hope of man is false. He's laid low even at the sight of him.

[24:29] No one is so fierce that he dares stir him up. In fact, all run away afraid. That's the end of the speech on Leviathan talking about everybody heading for the hills.

[24:39] Everybody runs away from this beast. Terror dances before him. His teeth are terror. When he rouses himself, the mighty are afraid.

[24:50] Look at verse 25 of chapter 41. He continues, when he raises himself, the mighty are afraid. At his crash, and there beside himself, though the spear reaches him, it does not avail.

[25:00] So he's not going to be taken out by a spear, or by a sword. Nor the spear, the dart, or the javelin. He counts iron as straw, bronze as rotten wood. The arrow cannot make him flee.

[25:12] From him sling stones are turned to stubble. Clubs are counted as stubble. He laughs at the rattle of javelins. This is this great beast that no one can stop.

[25:26] No one can control. everyone runs away. It ends mockingly when it says he sees everything from on high. He's king over all the sons of the earth.

[25:41] The Lord is making a startling point to Job. What's the meaning of all this, right? That's the $64,000 question. He's saying, Job, you do have a monster underneath your bed.

[25:57] you have a terrible enemy. He has superhuman power. He has enormous strength.

[26:10] All his power is aimed at your destruction. And all your power and strength can do nothing to stop him.

[26:22] Now you have to remember, Job doesn't know anything about the monster. He knows nothing about the devil up until this point. He knew nothing about the devil tempting him.

[26:32] He knows nothing about the conversation between the Lord and the devil that began the book. He has no knowledge that there's a devil loose in the world. He seems to think that it all comes down to cause and effect.

[26:44] It all comes down to what you put in, what you get out. It all comes down to reaping and sowing. But there's a monster, Job. There's a monster.

[26:57] And as Gandalf said to the boys, it does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations if you live near him.

[27:11] So too, Christian, does not do to leave the dragon, the Satan, out of your calculation. There's tremendous comfort here.

[27:25] I want you to hear this. The Lord is saying, Job, I know what you've suffered. Why does He detail Behemoth and Leviathan? He's saying, I know what you've suffered.

[27:35] I know you didn't do anything to deserve it. I know who the enemy is. And you are not he. I know your enemy better than you do. I know all that He has done to you.

[27:47] There's so much comfort in these verses. C.S. Lewis says, God shouts in our pain, but sometimes the shout is not what we think it would be. The Lord is saying, as it were, in this moment, I know it is not your fault.

[28:03] It's not your fault that your dad left. It's not your fault that your husband fooled around. It's not your fault that He did that to you.

[28:17] It's not your fault that your child turned away from everything you proclaimed to them since the day they were born. It's not your fault. There's tremendous comfort in these verses that the Lord is saying to Job.

[28:29] There's also tremendous clarity. You know, Job is not suffering because he's wicked. He's suffering because he is a sincere believer. I think this is when the penny drops for Job, you know.

[28:41] Some of the suffering we experience in this life are not because we're bad people but because we're sincere believers and we've stepped into a war when we follow Christ and the war is between God and the Satan.

[28:57] This is left out of a lot of our welcome to Christianity classes but J.I. Packer helpfully says by becoming Christians, if you become a Christian, we're baptizing two people this day.

[29:08] By becoming Christians, you have walked into a war. Satan's war against the triune God, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

[29:22] This is a war as old as the sons of men. So don't leave him out of your calculations. Christians. I think the Lord is lifting Job above the ash sheet.

[29:43] Remember, that's where we saw Job scratching. He's broadening his horizon. He's helping him to see something different. One of the comedians our family enjoys, and not that I'm endorsing everything that he does, because I don't know everything he does, is Brian Regan.

[30:06] In one of his sketches, they all do the same stick everywhere they go, right? He talks about the me monster, and you know him.

[30:19] He talks about being at a party, you know, like a cocktail party or something like that, talking and eating desserts and the little mini plates and stuff like that. You know, the me monster arrives, and everybody sees him when he arrives.

[30:32] Who is the me monster? It's the guy who always has a better story, and he's here to tell you about it. So you might have a story about two wisdom teeth being pulled, but he has a story about four impacted wisdom teeth pulled, with dry sockets and all the magic.

[30:52] If you had a delicious steak that you're telling some of your friends about, he's going to tell you about a steak dinner in New York City, overlooking the Hudson Bay or something like that.

[31:03] If you had a fun day out at the river, you know, kicking around, splashing, he's going to talk about floating down the Amazon, because he is the me monster, you know.

[31:14] It's all about him. It's always about him. He's always saying, me, myself, and I. Here's my story. Let me tell you. Let me tell you. you. Let me tell you.

[31:25] Now, in suffering, sometimes we turn in to the me monster. We begin to think that all of life is about our comfort.

[31:44] All of life is about our fruitfulness, about our success, about our aspirations, about our joys, our sorrows.

[32:00] I think the Lord is helping Job and saying, as it were, there's a bigger battle going on, Job. There's a battle going on.

[32:11] You've been caught in the crossfire. It is my battle against the Satan. thing. This was never about you.

[32:25] Sometimes it's just good for you to hear. You're all worked up. Guess what? Your life was never about you. Who told you it was about you? Find that person and say, don't say that.

[32:42] there's a battle. Point three, the victory over God is certain. The victory over God is certain.

[32:56] The problem of evil is real. The terrible power of evil is great and the victory over evil is certain. Now, we must turn to Job's response.

[33:08] I've already pointed out the fact that last week, Job responded by just submitting to God, which was wonderful, but this response is different. Look in verse 2 of chapter 42.

[33:28] He says, I know. These are his first words back. I know now. You know that's a key word from the first speech. I know that you can do all things and that no power of yours can be thwarted.

[33:42] He's saying, if there's a problem with evil, it's not because you are not strong enough. But he continues and says, I spoke of things I didn't understand.

[33:57] If you notice there, he's quoting back what the Lord quoted to him. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge, darkens counsel without knowledge? You remember that? Therefore, I've uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

[34:13] At the end of the first speech, Job said, I'm putting my hand over my mouth. I'm going to stop talking. Be quiet now, please. But here he says something different. He says, when I did speak, I didn't know what I was talking about.

[34:29] That's what Job is saying here. Kind of like the Avod brothers, they have a song that says, ain't it like most people? I'm no different, nor are you. We love to talk on things we don't know about.

[34:41] And so that's what Job is saying to the Lord. There were things too wonderful for me, too great for me, too marvelous for me. Mine's of Psalm 131. In other places, he's saying, I try to lift myself above you, so to speak, but I can't think like you.

[34:57] I can't think your thoughts after you. I am not God, and you are God. I should not have said God doesn't know what he's doing.

[35:09] I should not have said God doesn't care about justice. And finally, Job says something deeply moving. In verse five, when he says, after quoting back what the Lord said, the opening of the speech, he said, I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see you.

[35:32] Therefore, I repent and ashes. Now, we know when he repents, and that's probably not the best translation for that word, he's not repenting of sin because he has not sinned and God hasn't confronted him of sin.

[35:51] What he's saying is he's turning away now from what he believed about the living God, what he stated. When he lost everything, if you remember, Job tore his robe, he shaved his head, and he said, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.

[36:09] Blessed be the name of the Lord. But this is better when he says, now my eyes have seen you. I once heard of you, now my eyes have seen you.

[36:22] But what did Job see? What did he see? he didn't see what Isaiah saw when he saw the Lord high and lifted up and the train of his robe filling the temple and the seraphim and the cheraphim saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty.

[36:41] He didn't see the chariot throne of Ezekiel 1, this brilliant, bizarre, ruling God who rules with his wheels and his eyes all over the place.

[36:53] He appears to have only seen two massive evil beasts. And yet he says, now I've seen you. What Job saw is that the Lord's power over evil is sure.

[37:10] Now maybe this is assumed, but that's what Job saw. If you look back in 41, 9, and 10, if you have a Bible, I'd encourage you to look there. He says, behold, the hope of man is false.

[37:20] He's laid low even at the sight of him. No one is so fierce that he dares to stir him up. Who then is he who will stand before me? So the Lord is saying something to Job. Yes, there's Behemoth and Leviathan, but far more there is me.

[37:35] You think you can't stand before these guys. You definitely can't stand before me. And then those questions of can you grab him? Can you bind him? Can you catch him?

[37:45] It's as if the Lord's saying, I can. I can. I can. Bind this evil one.

[37:56] I can rule over him. And so as Christopher Ash says, Satan is God's Satan, God's pet, if we dare to put it like this. This means that as we suffer, we may with absolute confidence bow down to this sovereign God, knowing that while evil may be terrible, terrible, it cannot and will not ever go one tiny fraction beyond the least on which God has put it and it will not go on forever.

[38:25] I think that is accurate. What's he saying about Behemoth and Leviathan, talking about their great power and his superior power over them is that they will not go beyond where he lets it.

[38:40] Satan is God's Satan as Martin Luther famously said. So the power over evil is sure and the victory is certain. Now if we don't think this speech could get better, it gets better.

[38:53] Look in verse 12 chapter 41. After the Lord has made very clear that he rules over Leviathan, he says, I will not keep silence concerning his limbs or his mighty strength or his goodly frame.

[39:13] Leviathan's now why? Why is the Lord going on and on about Leviathan? Why does the Lord say, I will not keep silent about him?

[39:33] It's not just because Leviathan's power is so terrible. It seems to be something else is going on here. The Lord is praising, so to speak, praising Leviathan's greatness, the greatness of his power in order to underline the superior power he has over evil and his victory.

[39:55] This speech is brimming with confidence even though he's pointing out the monster that has been underneath Job's bed all this time is brimming with defiant joy.

[40:06] The Lord is not scared of the monster. The Lord's not scared of the devil. He's God's devil. Why did the Lord remind Job how he adorns himself with majesty and dignity, glory and splendor?

[40:18] What he wants Job to see and what Job sees is that the monster will not rage forever. The Lord is coming. He will subdue him, conquer him and drive him out.

[40:32] And so the Lord goes on and on about the terrible power of evil not so we would live in fear but so that we might live confidently in the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[40:44] It's so helpful to see what Job sees here. The Lord does not say don't worry I work all things for good. He doesn't say Job what that monster meant for evil I meant for good.

[41:02] He doesn't say Job the glory that's going to be coming is going to be greater. than all you've faced. He says essentially Job I know where you live.

[41:15] I know what he's done and I'm coming. His rage you can endure for a little time because the word of the gospel will fill him forever.

[41:30] That's where this is going. the Bible ultimately takes us to the cross where the riddle of the problem of evil is solved.

[41:44] Obviously very similar to Job the good man suffers unjustly innocently but the Bible says in his suffering in this most dark night when the devil thought he had Job cornered and was about to dance on his grave the Bible tells us it was his great undoing.

[42:13] He was lured into a trap just like he was with Job that God might succeed through the weakness of the cross.

[42:25] We might gain the victory. That's what we offer through the gospel of Jesus Christ that for those dead and their trespasses and sin God makes alive not just because God paid the penalty for our sin which is wonderful and true but also because God conquered sin and death through the vicarious and the victorious death of Jesus Christ.

[42:53] He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open chain by triumphing over them in Jesus Christ. So fear not the terrible power of evil will be conquered by our risen Lord Jesus Christ.

[43:07] Let us pray. Father in heaven thank you for this morning. Thank you for the opportunity to sit under these words. Lord I pray that you would help us now.

[43:18] to live in the good of the finished work of Christ. We need you. We love you. We thank you.

[43:28] In Jesus name. Amen. You've been listening to a message given by Walt Alexander, lead pastor of Trinity Grace Church in Athens, Tennessee.

[43:40] For more information about Trinity Grace, please visit us at trinitygraceathens.com. Basil