Episode Transcript
All right, we're ready to start.
It's 10 o'clock.
Good morning.
Job chapter 3.
And our text this morning is Job chapter 3, verse 18.
Where we left off at the end of last week's study.
And Job had begun to describe what the grave does for the weary.
And for the wicked and then the prisoners.
So let's go right to verse 18 and begin And I'll reread the entire verse.
Job 3.
18.
There the prisoners rest together.
They hear not the voice of the oppressor Whether those prisoners he's talking about were righteously or unrighteously imprisoned, they all had a something in common.
They suffered at the hands of the oppressor.
Now the word for oppressor is also translated as taskmaster.
And we learn about the taskmaster in Exodus chapter 3.
And in that chapter, it has to do with the taskmasters who were so cruel to the children of Israel And perhaps you remember when Joseph and his family were there, they were treated pretty well, given the land of Goshen and all of that.
But then there came a Pharaoh who didn't know Joseph.
He didn't have any respect for Joseph.
And the taskmasters made the jobs of the children of Israel far, far more difficult than before.
And so the voice of those taskmasters was dreadful to the children of Israel And actually that voice was many voices of many taskmasters And because of the unity of all those voices that spoke these unreasonable demands and Cruel words and oppressive things to the children of Israel, then it's called one voice.
It's as though it were one voice Now, when a person is being oppressed, like the children of Israel were for over 400 years, it seems like nobody can hear their cries.
They feel forsaken, even feeling forsaken by God.
When the truth is that God heard The voice of the oppressor long before the oppressor was ever born.
He knew before he created man That man would fall into sin and that he would treat his fellow man cruelly.
We see that all over the world, don't we?
He would treat his fellow man cruelly and unjustly.
And yet we know from reading the Old Testament That in spite of the oppression the children of Israel suffered time and again at the hands of their enemies, God never forgot about his chosen people.
He punished them over and over for walking contrary to him.
And that's what you ought to expect from a righteous God.
But he always heard their cries.
God hears the voice of the oppressor.
And God delivers his people from their oppression.
In fact The offer to deliver all of mankind from oppression is at Calvary, at the cross, where Jesus died.
Isn't it amazing that most people don't want to be delivered from their oppression?
They'd rather stay in sin.
Disregard what Jesus did for them and go on about their merry way And God delivers people from their oppression through the gospel where his son went to the cross and he took upon himself Not only all of our sins, but he endured the extreme oppression and persecution for us.
If you think you know what persecution and oppression are, you don't when you compare what you've endured to what Jesus endured when he shed his blood.
And to his people who were oppressed by the voice of the grave that dares to take and keep a person when he dies Jesus said, arise.
That's how he overcame the oppression of the grave.
And that's how he'll do it for you if you're saved The grave will try to oppress you and Jesus will say, rise, Doug.
Forgiveness is his answer.
To sin's voice of oppression.
His resurrection power is his answer to the oppression of the grave.
And whether a person is resurrected unto eternal life or unto eternal damnation, the grave delivers all earthly prisoners from the voice of the oppression.
For some, it's just a rest from an earthly voice.
But for those who are saved and kept by the power of God, it's a deliverance from oppression forevermore.
Look with me in verse 19.
Speaking of the grave, he says, the small and great are there.
Now to me, this is an encouraging and also a sobering truth.
The small are the least of the people when it comes to their power, their wealth.
Their position in society.
They're not famous.
They're not popular, perhaps.
And in general, the small go about their daily lives unnoticed, disregarded by those in high places The great, on the other hand, that Job's talking about are the mighty, the wealthy, the politically powerful And it's often been the case in the history of man that the great have taken advantage of the small They've often used the small for their own gain And it may seem to the small that the great will always be great, and the small will always be small In Matthew chapter 25, Jesus was teaching about the difference in the works of the sheep and the goats.
When it comes to the people who are the least or the smallest in this world.
And in verses 34 through 36 That's Matthew 25, 34 through 36, he said, speaking of himself, then shall the king say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world For I wasn't hungered, and ye gave me meat.
I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink.
I was a stranger and ye took me in.
Naked and ye clothed me.
I was sick and ye visited me.
I was in prison and ye came unto me.
Now when Jesus' audience heard him say those words, they asked him, How have we done all these things?
You say we have done all these things.
How have we done that?
Listen to Jesus' answer in verse 40.
And the king shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
And although the original word for least here is in the Greek language, rather than in the Hebrew language, such as our Old Testament words are, most of them.
The word is the same means the same thing.
The word least means small.
Same as it does in our text Jesus recognized that he had brethren, Christians who were esteemed as the least of his brethren.
They were viewed by others as the smallest of his brethren And he knew they were seen as small by the world.
He acknowledged that.
He said the least of my brethren He knew they were seen as small by the world, perhaps even seen as small by the church.
But the hallmark of those who belong to Jesus, those who truly love him, is that they care for the small, the least of the brethren.
Now, caring for the least of the brethren doesn't make you a Christian, but it identifies you as one who really loves Jesus.
Because if you really love Jesus, you love his church, and his church is not this building.
It's the people.
If you love Jesus rightly, then you will love the least of the brethren, the small, and you'll minister to their needs.
And one day the least or the small will go to the grave, which is what Job is telling us.
And nobody is surprised by that.
But what about the great?
Of whom Job is speaking concerning the grave.
He said back in our text, the small and the great are there.
That is in the grave.
Now, while they're living in this world, the great in this world generally tend to avoid the small in this world.
Oh, they'll let them work in their factories.
They'll let them work in their stores and their coal mines and their fields and everywhere else.
But to actually associate with the small in a personal way, is often, not always, but is often seen as being beneath the great.
After all, the small don't have anything to offer them, so they think.
What is accomplished when a a country club is so exclusive That its members have to pay tens of thousands of dollars annually just to be members.
Well, what that does is it effectively eliminates the plumber who just wants to play a round of golf on a Saturday.
Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, where the Masters is played, charges over $40,000 just for the initial membership. and $10,000 a year after that to remain a member.
So the small, the least of society, can't afford to even park in their parking lot, much less spend that kind of money.
So they don't get to associate with the great in that country club.
And I'm not making a judgment about the morality of Augusta National Club.
That's a private business.
They can charge what they want.
I don't have a problem with that.
But I'm just showing you a practical way that the great separate themselves from the small In Deuteronomy chapter one, God gave instructions about How the judges of the children of Israel now I'm not talking about as in the book of Judges, although that applies too.
But these were the judges who were chosen to govern the affairs of the tribes of the children of Israel.
Moses couldn't handle every problem by himself.
And there came a day when his dad said, hey, or his father-in-law said, hey, you need to get some help.
So there were judges appointed to handle the smaller matters, and Moses would handle the big matters.
But in Deuteronomy chapter 1, verses 16 through 17, I'll read that To give you an idea of how God sees the small and the great.
This is another good look at the mind of God.
He said, and I charge your judges at that time.
Charged your judges at that time, saying, Hear the causes between your brethren, and judge righteously between every man and his brother, and the stranger that is with him.
Ye shall not respect persons in judgment, but ye shall hear the small as well as the great.
Ye shall not be afraid of the face of man, for the judgment is God's.
And the cause that is too hard for you, bring it unto me, and I will hear it.
Now that's Moses speaking.
So Moses said, you're going to listen to the small and the great alike.
It doesn't matter.
And when he says you shall not respect persons in judgment, if you're not familiar with uh some of the uh King James period English you might think well you you're gonna disrespect somebody when you hear them?
No.
Not having respect of persons means you don't play favorites.
That's the best way to put that It doesn't matter to you that the man is the the president of the bank and it doesn't matter to you that the the man is a a deckhand on a boat cutting bait all day for a fishing guide.
They're all the same.
He said, you are not to be afraid of the face of man.
Who are people afraid of in judgment?
Let's take a county judge somewhere in some county and he's hearing a DWI case against a uh let's say it's a President of the bank, let you stay with that man with a lot of money.
And the judge thinks, well He is the president of the bank after all.
Maybe I should go easy on him.
No.
He's showing respect of persons.
He's fearing the face of man instead of just doing what's right, regardless of who the man is.
And notice in particular where God told these judges, you shall not be afraid of the face of man.
So that's what this is about, is a judge. in in Moses' time, or really in any time, but we're talking about Moses' time there in Deuteronomy, a judge who is afraid of man when it comes to judging the great.
He's afraid to judge the great, God said through Moses, don't you do that.
Don't you be afraid to judge the great.
And I want you to notice the qualifications God commanded these judges to have.
Now this is important And those qualifications are actually found all the way back in Exodus chapter 18, verses 21 through 22.
Exodus 18, 21 through 22.
He said to Moses, Moreover, thou shalt provide out of all the people able men.
Such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them to be rulers of thousands and rulers of hundreds. rulers of fifties and rulers of tens, and let them judge the people at all seasons.
And it shall be that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge.
So shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee.
Now, if you listen to the qualifications God gave those judges who were to judge the great and the small.
They were able.
That means they had to be, they have the ability to render a righteous judgment.
They had to fear God.
They had to be men of the truth.
Boy, if a judge is not a man of the truth, you're in trouble.
You are in serious trouble.
They had to hate covetousness.
At no time did God say these judges must be great men.
That's important.
Our political system in this country has gotten so that if you don't have money, you're not going to run for office unless you find somebody who's got a bunch of it and they'll give it to you.
In uh in our county, just to run for sheriff, you've got to come up with fifty thousand dollars, roughly.
For all your filing and your signs and the the different things that you need to do just to get off the ground to run for office.
And you may not get a vote and you don't get that money back But the possibility that what that did, when God did not say these judges had to be great men, that mean they didn't they didn't have to be men of means.
They didn't have to have money So that left the possibility that these judges might be less or might be the small of the brethren.
And that they would someday judge the matters of the great of the brethren, like the elders of their tribe Here's another look at the small and the great.
Listen to what the Apostle Paul wrote about this same situation in the church, about judging matters in the church.
It's found in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 4.
1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 4.
Speaking to the church, if then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.
So Paul straight up said, set the small over those matters in the church Now they have to be able.
They've got to be men of truth.
They've got to be haters of covetousness.
But he said, set the least esteemed in the church.
The one who people disregard and they saw he he's just a, you know, he's just a, he's disabled or he's He's poor or he whatever he is or he's a different color than I am the least esteemed in the church In Moses' day and in Paul's day, the qualifications of a judge never involved being great.
The qualifications were wisdom and fear of God and being a lover of truth and a hater of covetousness and other qualities that are like that.
You read about the qualifications of the bishop or the pastor, both in the epistles to Timothy and also Titus.
And you're not going to see in there that the pastor, the bishop, the overseer, the deacon in Acts chapter 7, you're not going to see in there that they have to be rich or great.
To God, there's no difference between the great and the small, or between the least and the mightiest.
The way he measures a man is not through his status in society, but by that person's position in the kingdom An unbeliever, by the way, is never qualified to judge a matter of the church.
Never, never And looking further at the small and the great who go to the grave, as we're reading in our text in Job 3. 19, look back in the text, it says And the servant is free from his master.
So this is another way of looking at the small and the great, and that is the servant and the master.
The servant would be the small, and the master would be the great when it comes to positional authority.
And that's how the world sees it.
Which of you or which of these kinds of people do you think the the world would honor?
Well, the world would honor the great one, the master.
Who runs this place?
Who owns this building?
I want to speak to your supervisor.
The world is impressed with power and great riches and influence and fame.
God is not Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors and businessmen in our country's history.
He bought his first stock when he was 11 years old And nobody who knows, and I'm boy, I'm just no expert at all.
I mean I'm an amateur of amateurs when it comes to that.
And some of you are much better at it than I am But anyone who knows him at all or knows about him at all would agree he's a great investor.
He's a great business intellect.
The things he says make a lot of sense.
However, as great as he is in what he does and what he's done, I watched an interview with him where he was asked about his religion.
And he said, and I quote, he said, I am an agnostic, end quote.
Now that means he's neither an atheist nor a theist.
A theist is somebody who believes in a divine power and an atheist says, no, there's not one So he said, I have no judgment on religion or people's religions.
He didn't have any opinion one way or the other.
And he he went on to say, uh maybe someday I'll I'll Find I'll I'll know.
And he said, maybe someday I won't know.
So I mean he just put himself right in the middle.
Well, it's real easy to diagnose his spiritual condition.
He's an unbeliever.
Whether he's an atheist or agnostic or whatever he is, he's an unbeliever.
Now, to the business world, Warren Buffett is a great man But he would not be qualified to judge the very least financial matter of Central Baptist Church.
Did you know that?
He knows more than everybody in here combined about money and finances and all of that.
But he's not qualified to judge whether we ought to change the color of our carpet, how much money it would cost to do that, because he is not a believer by his own testimony.
He wouldn't be qualified to judge the very least financial matter of one of our members.
By his own statement, he's not qualified And when he dies, the great Warren Buffett will go to the same grave as the poorest person on this earth.
Not the same plot of land, but the same grave. uh figuratively there.
And that is a humbling truth.
And I pray that it would humble him that as he draws closer, and he's ninety-eight, I believe, he's he's getting close to a hundred.
That uh God would reveal to his heart that he's about to go out into eternity without salvation.
And he so he has time.
But when the Job said, when he said the small and the great will be there in the grave, he said a lot.
And at the white throne judgment in Revelation chapter 20, in verse 12, the Apostle John wrote, And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God.
And the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life.
And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works.
It is very plain that the small and the dead and the great die alike.
And go to the grave alike, and that includes the servant and his master, about whom Job speaks in verse 19.
Now go to verse 20.
Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery?
So here, Job is asking this question based upon the premise that he just gave And that is, if every person from every status and walk of life, the small and the great, the servant and the master, if every one of them goes to the same grave, Then why would light be given to a person who is in misery?
Now the word misery is normally translated as the word labor. mothers could probably say amen right there most of the time the word is translated labor in the Old Testament And in fact, I'm sorry, most of the time it's translated in the Old Testament, we find it in the book of Ecclesiastes.
And it's written by the same king who wrote most of the Proverbs.
It's Ecclesiastes chapter 2 verse 20 and through 23.
I'll read that passage.
Ecclesiastes 2 verses 20 through 23, where Solomon wrote.
Therefore, I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labor which I took under the sun.
For there is a man whose labor is in wisdom and in knowledge and in equity, yet to a man that hath not labored therein shall he leave it for his portion.
This also is vanity and a great evil.
For what hath man of all his labor, and of the vexation of his heart wherein he hath labored under the sun?
For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief.
Yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night.
This is also vanity Each time you see the word labor here, you can substitute the word misery Now when we use the word misery, we usually don't think of labor.
We think of a person who's suffering an illness.
When my wife used to have bad allergies during this time of year, she would lay on the couch and you know her eyes would be red and swell and She'd have Kleenex stuffed up her nose.
She'd be upset if I told you all that.
Just pretend like you don't know that.
And I felt so sorry for her.
And she'd taken all the medicine she could take and she just had to lay there and endure it.
But Job's misery here, he's talking about, pertains to the misery from labor.
It's the same word.
Working out in the hot sun, physically toiling just to make ends meet, can be miserable And I've done plenty of that kind of work, and sometimes under the right conditions, it's miserable.
Now, if we consider what Solomon said in Ecclesiastes about this labor or this misery, then We learned that, and this is important for us, we learned that laboring for things other than knowledge and wisdom and equity Is in the end vanity.
It's useless.
It's just a like a rat running in an activity wheel in a cage.
He's not going anywhere.
He's making a lot of noise. exerting a lot of energy, spending his time and his life running in that wheel for nothing.
And that's what people spend the majority of their lives doing.
However, knowledge, wisdom, and equity all come from learning and laboring in God's word And those endeavors are not vanity.
We don't leave that behind.
Leave it like a pile of dirt.
We take that with us.
You don't lose knowledge and wisdom and equity when you die in the Lord.
But to Job's question, that misery, that labor Pertains to the things of this life.
And to one who is in Job's condition As one in misery, he asked this question about why light must be given and not darkness.
This is the same thing he asked of the babe who was still in his mother's womb.
Remember there was a time he said, I wish I would have never been conceived, never been born, that I would not have made it out of my mother's womb.
And so He asked, why light and not darkness?
Look back in verse 20 as we he continues.
And life unto the bitter soul.
In other words, why give life unto the bitter soul?
What does it mean to be bitter in soul?
In Genesis chapter 27, Esau found out That his brother Jacob had stolen his blessing by tricking their father into believing that Jacob was Esau, and his mother helped He went to great lengths to put the hair on the back of his hand and all of that.
And once Esau found out That Jacob had taken his blessing.
He gave quite a response.
It's in verse 34.
Genesis 27, 34.
It says, And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry.
There's our word bitter. and said unto his father, Bless me even me also, O my Father.
Now this bitterness was caused by losing something important that he could not get back.
In Isaiah chapter 38, the prophet tells of the writings of King Hezekiah, whom we studied, one of the last kings we studied there In the book of Kings, in the 2nd Kings.
He was a king of Judah.
And in Isaiah 38, 15 through 17.
We're going to hear the word bitterness used twice.
Speaking of God, Hezekiah said, and Isaiah is quoting him, what shall I say?
He hath both spoken unto me and himself hath done it.
I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul.
O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit.
So wilt thou recover me and make me to live.
Behold, for peace I had great bitterness.
But thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption.
For thou hast cast all my sins behind my back.
Now, Job asked why the bitter in soul should be given life.
Why should they continue living?
And Esau probably despaired of his life.
Excuse me, how about we get a cough drop right here and we'll be right back?
Right back in action anymore.
It's alright.
We don't have any commercials around here.
So that was just dead air time.
Job asked, why should the bitter in soul be given life?
And Esau, as we just read, Despaired of his life in bitterness because his blessing had been stolen.
And we know for certain, if you remember reading further, About Esau.
He was angry and wanted vengeance.
And Jacob was very afraid of him when they met And so to answer Job's question here, let's use Hezekiah's words Why should life be given to the bitter in soul?
Why should light be given to him that is in misery?
Here's the answer.
Because God will recover you and make you to live.
In love, God will deliver your soul from the pit of corruption.
He'll cast all your sins behind his back.
And this is your answer too, if you're in bitterness of soul as Job was.
And about those who are in misery and bitterness of soul, Job says, look now in verse 21.
Which long for death, but it cometh not.
Now this may not mean exactly what it appears to you to mean.
The Hebrew word for long means to wait or to tarry.
So it doesn't carry the same meaning as other Hebrew words that mean to desire or to have an appetite for.
It's not very far off.
But the bitter in soul, if you look at what that word long means, the bitter in soul and those in misery long for death.
And what that means is they're just waiting to die.
It's slightly different than them being suicidal.
Because they're not making an attempt to take their own lives.
The ones whom Job is describing Wish God would just take them.
Maybe you've even said that before, and then that's okay.
Lord, I'm ready to go right now.
Maybe you've been in despair like that.
And so that's kind of what the longing for death is here.
Job's saying, I just wish God would take me.
But they continue living.
They're waiting on God to take them, and if Job had been suicidal at this time, he would have just taken his own life or said, I'm going to kill myself.
So it's just slightly different from that.
Let me read another passage that uses the same Hebrew word translated as long in our text.
Proverbs 3320.
Proverbs 3320, he said, our soul waiteth, there's the word, for the Lord.
He is our help and our shield.
So Job's words could have been translated as, which wait for death, but it cometh not, instead of which long for death, but it cometh not.
A person waiting for death has at least temporarily, maybe even permanently, lost the will to continue living.
And we sometimes see this in the case of couples who've been married to each other for 50, 60, 70 years, maybe even longer than that.
And one of the spouses passes away, and the other one sometimes says, I'm ready to go too.
They've lost the will to live.
And so the surviving spouse may be said to be waiting for death or longing for death in that context.
They may stop eating In some cases, get sick and and die very soon after their spouse.
Neither of my grandmothers did this after my grandfathers passed away, even though they grieved sorely for their husbands.
And it's sad to watch someone wait for death when there's more life to be lived.
And not only do those And I'll tell you, I had a highway patrol partner whose grandmother passed away, and she'd been married to his grandfather for over 70 years.
And when she passed away, he he was right behind her.
He was just a few weeks behind her.
He just stopped stopped eating.
And that's sad to watch.
But not only do those in misery and bitterness of soul long for death or wait for death, but look back in the text.
It says, and dig for it more than for hid treasures.
So the image here is that death has hidden itself from the people who are in bitterness of soul. in misery.
So figuratively, because death has hidden itself, they dig just like a person digs for a well of water.
Or in search of the water.
In Genesis 26, 32.
Genesis 26. the well which they had digged and said unto him, We have found water.
So there's our word digged.
Finding water was a relief. to those who had dug for the well.
They were thirsty, and their labor or their misery was finally rewarded when they found the water.
And for the bitter in soul and for the one in misery, they dig for the relief of death, just as the servants dug for the water.
Which is among Earth's greatest treasures, by the way.
I promise you, if you're thirsty in the desert and somebody gives you a nugget of gold and a glass of water, you're not going to drink the nugget of gold.
But until it's found, water is the treasure that is hidden.
And death until it is found Is the treasure that is hidden from the bitter in soul and those who are in misery as Job sees it.
And then verse 22.
Speaking of those, he said, which rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave.
Now that's actually a question mark at the end, which rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave.
The reason for the question mark here is that this is part, this verse is part of a single question That began all the way back in verse 20.
It's just that the question lasted for three verses.
Can you imagine death being such a relief that you rejoice and are glad on the day you go to the grave?
On a normal day we wouldn't think such thoughts.
And going back to the thirsty man digging the well, that man is desperate and more desperate for water as time goes on.
And he's working, which causes him to tire.
He's digging.
And when he finds the water, he rejoices and is glad, even though he's worn out from the journey.
And the thirst he once felt has been quenched, and now he rejoices exceedingly.
And for the bitter in soul who finds the grave, Job says there is this same rejoicing.
And we'll pick up right there next week when we meet again.
Father, thank you for these words that have provoked much thought in us this morning.
And caused us, Lord, to consider our own misery.
And Lord, what a hopeless life it would be without Jesus Christ to just come. into this world and toil and labor and be in misery and bitterness of soul and then go to the grave condemned.
And we thank you, Father, that you've delivered us from that And that Jesus toiled for us.
Because our toil was not sufficient.
And we thank you we get to celebrate that and study the word of the one who loved us and died for us.
And we pray now as we go into the next hour, the singing, the praising, the preaching of your word would be edifying to us and also pleasing unto you in Jesus' name.
Amen.
