Episode Transcript
Job four verse nineteen And to everyone who's joined us in person or by way of the internet, thank you for your faithfulness.
That's important.
I drove by a church in my area earlier this week, and there was a message on the electronic signboard of that church.
And it said Sermon series in Colossians Now, do you know what most church folks would say if they saw that?
They'd say, well, that doesn't sound too exciting.
Sermon series in Colossians.
But to me it was very encouraging.
That a pastor decided to preach through Colossians.
That's what it sounded like to me.
Verse by verse, I hope.
And that's what I got out of the sign message.
And you know the the problem, and I believe it's the main problem. with most churches is substituting the command of the Lord for the felt needs of the people Some pastors in churches like to survey their members.
What do you all want to preach on?
Well, who's going to want their sin preached on?
None of them, right?
And rather than trying to figure out what the people want, if we'll just do what God commands, then the sheep will love it and the goats won't like it.
Or the goats will want to become sheep and we can go with that.
But when the the the problem is that pastors in churches who respond to what the people feel to be their needs will adjust their programs and their messages to suit those people.
Because when the people's felt needs start to change, that's what emotions do, don't they?
They change Then the pastors start adapting to those needs.
And that's a merry-go-round you just can't ever seem to get off of.
And what that simple message on that signboard showed me is that the pastor of the church already knows what the people need without even having to ask them.
They need to be taught God's word, and that's what God's command is.
Paul told Timothy to do what?
To preach the word in season and out of season.
He didn't say, now ask the people what they want to hear.
He said preach the word.
And I don't ever want to be like Elijah was when he was under the gourd.
Whining to God about thinking he's the only one serving God, because God said there are 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal They're serving God too.
And so that means there are other churches who are faithfully teaching God's word just like he commanded.
And I'm thankful for that, and by God's grace, we'll continue to do that here.
Now to our lesson.
The verses we studied last week.
Contained rhetorical questions that Eliphaz asked Job.
That whole chapter has been about what Eliphaz was saying in response to what Job said in the prior chapters.
And those questions Eliphaz asked were not designed to elicit a response from Job, but to make a point.
And those verses also contained two statements about God not putting his trust in his servants and about him charging his angels with folly.
And we learned what all that meant and who those servants and angels were.
And if you weren't able to attend or watch last week's lesson, I encourage you to watch it later and to catch up.
And our tech team has made it where you can do that.
And if you miss it on Facebook, you can listen to the podcast that Brother Brandon makes.
And that's all for you, and it doesn't cost you anything.
Isn't that wonderful?
But to get a running start in the verse 19 Let me read verses 17 through 18 because verse 19 is actually a part of the sentence that began in verse 18.
So he said, Shall mortal man be more just than God?
Shall a man be more pure than his maker?
Behold, he put no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly.
How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay?
Now this certainly refers to mankind here.
And I mentioned earlier, or at least last week in our study, that I thought the word servants in verse 18 probably referred to the angels who served God.
Because those who dwell in houses of clay here are compared with the servants and angels mentioned in verse 18.
And houses of clay are definitely earthen houses.
So we don't have a problem here, I think, deciding that Eliphaz is referring to mortal man in verse 19.
In fact Rather than referring to actual houses of clay like a building, I believe the meaning here of houses of clay is the body in which man lives.
You're looking at essentially a house of clay here.
And here are some verses to show us that that is true.
Skipping way ahead in Job chapter 33 verse 6, Job 33, 6, he said, Behold, I am according to thy wish in God's stead.
I also am formed out of the clay.
And then Isaiah 64 verse 8.
Isaiah 64 verse 8.
But now, O Lord, thou art our Father, we are the clay, and thou art potter, and we all are the work of thy hand.
Now, I'm not literally made of clay.
So this is the metaphor here.
However, and we'll go back to the origin of man in just a moment to maybe understand why the word clay would be used at all.
But the Apostle Paul wrote of earthen vessels, E-A-R-T-H-E-N, earthen vessels, which are essentially clay vessels.
And he referred to man's bodies as those vessels in 2 Corinthians and chapter 4.
And I'll read a few verses from that chapter to underscore that teaching.
Speaking of the gospel ministry in verse 7, that's 2 Corinthians 4, verse 7.
Paul wrote, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.
And then verses 8 through 11, We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed.
We are perplexed, but not in despair.
Persecuted but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed, always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus. that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest or shown in our body.
For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.
So he mentioned earthen vessels, and then he mentioned our body, our body, our mortal flesh.
Because God formed Adam from the dust of the ground, we who were born in Adam, and that's every one of you, by the way. can trace our birth in Adam all the way back to the dust of the ground.
We came from Adam.
Adam came from the dust of the ground, so by proxy, we came from the dust of the ground.
And speaking of how God deals with man and talking about this dust of the ground, Psalm chapter 104, verse 29.
Psalm 104, verse 29, says, Thou hidest thy face.
This is speaking to God.
They are troubled.
Thou takest away their breath.
They die and return to their dust.
And I think it's pretty clear then that the reference in our passage in Job To these houses of clay refer to the bodies of mortal men.
God doesn't dwell in houses of clay literally.
He doesn't Angels don't dwell in houses of clay.
In other words, that's not what makes up the angel.
The angels didn't come from the dust.
God didn't come from the dust, but man does.
Going back to Adam.
Now in our text, if you're looking back in Job 4. 19, the phrase, how much less in them?
Means this.
If God put no trust in his servants, and if he charged his angels with folly, How could he ever trust in man and not also charge him with folly?
And of that mankind, Eliphaz says, look back in your text, whose foundation is in the dust.
The foundation is the base.
It's the beginning.
The verse that we go back to many times there in Genesis chapter 2 verse 7.
It says, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
That was creation.
That was God making man out of the foundation of the dust.
And after this point, God never used dust to form a man again.
Every man born of Adam's race was then born from the sexual union between man and woman.
And that's called procreation.
We've covered that before.
Jesus was born of the Holy Ghost, so he did not inherit the sin nature from Adam and his race.
It can't be said in that respect that he came from the dust that Adam came from.
He was born of the seed of the woman.
So to describe our foundation as dust means we have to go all the way back to Adam, our beginning.
1 Corinthians 15 verse 22.
1 Corinthians 15, 22 says, For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
So every man born of Adam dies.
And everyone born from Adam came from the dust because God formed Adam from the dust.
That is our foundation.
And having a dust foundation, or having a foundation in the dust, as the scripture said, and therefore we can say that living in clay houses refers to mortal man.
And ever since God made the first man, he has not trusted in that man.
He hasn't trusted in any man who came from Adam's race.
If he wouldn't trust his servants, his angels, how could he ever trust mankind?
And the holy angels who are with God are sinless.
They've never sinned because there's no tolerance for sin In God's presence.
He casts them out.
That's what he did with Lucifer and the host who followed him.
And I like the metaphor of houses of clay when it refers to our bodies.
Because it shows just how fragile we are, doesn't it?
Just like a clay pot.
And looking at the next few words. will reinforce the truth about how fragile we are.
Look back in your text, speaking of this man, mankind, it says, which are crushed before the moth.
Now that describes us.
As clay pots, we break easily I do everything I can to stay as healthy as I can.
Now I don't do everything that other people think I should do.
I remember Abel asked me when he was a teenager.
He said, Brother Andy, how many diet cokes do you drink every day?
And I said, as many as I can, Abel.
He thought that was so funny, but he probably was disgusted at the same time, and I understand.
But I try to do everything I can to stay as healthy as I can And I normally eat right and exercise and try to manage stress effectively by giving it to other people rather than uh keeping it myself.
And do you know why I do that?
Yes, it does make me feel better and it improves my quality of life.
But I know that even in my best health, I am easily crushed by the moth.
I always say when I'm thanking God for my health, when I'm telling my sharing with my wife, I say, you know, I thank God for my health, but I know that I'm one stroke, one car accident, one cancer diagnosis away from losing it.
And I don't ever take that for granted.
And don't you either?
So no, a literal moth can't crush me.
A moth is lighter and weaker than I am, but the metaphor of the moth crushing us is to teach us what David already knew.
In 1 Samuel chapter 20, David was asking Jonathan, that Saul's son, who was David's best friend, he was asking Jonathan, what have I done to offend your dad?
He's trying to kill me.
And you may remember that Saul made several attempts on David's life And here's what David said in verse 3 of that chapter.
It's 1 Samuel 20.
And verse 3.
And David swore moreover and said, Thy father certainly knoweth that I have found grace in thine eyes.
And he saith, Let not Jonathan know this, lest he be grieved.
But truly as the Lord liveth and as thy soul liveth, there is but a step between me and death.
As mighty a warrior as David was He realized he could be killed at any moment.
There was a step between him and death.
And he did not depend on his own flesh or on his own might And say, nobody can kill me.
No, it was quite the opposite.
He could have just as easily said I am a man who can be crushed like a moth.
That's the same principle.
There is a but a step between me and death.
And I said a moment ago that a moth was lighter and weaker than I.
But if God willed it, a literal moth could be used to literally crush me.
That would be nothing for God to do.
The most, in fact, the most dangerous earthly enemies we face can't be seen with the naked eye. amoeba, bacteria, viruses, some other minuscule form of life, even tiny particles of Dead invisible matter like chlorine gas, carbon monoxide, you can't see those, but they can take you out very quickly.
And with all these things in mind, the question is not only, would God put his trust in me, but could God put his trust in me?
If I'm that fragile, could he put his trust in me?
I'll give you a good example.
Well, I think it's good.
You may not.
I have a home gym And it has built-in safety features that keep me from dropping a loaded barbell on my chest whenever I'm bench pressing.
And whenever I lift heavy weights, well I used to lift heavy weights when I was a little younger, but not so much anymore.
But when I would lift heavier weights in the local gym The bench press didn't have that kind of feature.
So if I were going to attempt to lift a heavy set of bench presses, I would enlist the help of a spotter.
And that spotter's job was to make sure that I safely returned that loaded barbell back to the rack in the event I could not complete my last repetition.
Now what kind of spotter do you think I wanted?
I wanted a strong spotter.
I wanted one who paid attention. who wasn't chatting with somebody when I was over here struggling.
I wanted a spider who was able to do the job.
And for that role, I did not look for an elderly person who was on a walker.
I didn't enlist the help of a child from the nursery to do that.
I found a strong spotter.
And because the spotter was strong and knew how to perform the task, then I could Trust the spotter.
And if I could trust the spotter, I would trust the spotter.
Now the question about whether got did y'all think that was a wonderful example of illustration?
If if you didn't, I'm sorry.
I'll try better next time But the question about whether God would trust mortal man really hinges on whether God could trust mortal man.
Imagine, if you will, spotting God.
Trying to help God do something that he couldn't do by himself.
Now that's about the silliest notion ever, isn't it?
What is there that God cannot perform alone?
Nothing.
What is there that man cannot perform alone?
Everything.
You think, well, I could pick up this book next to me without any help.
Without God's help, you can't do anything.
Well, Brother Andy, what about breathing?
God breathed the breath of life into man.
So there's your answer.
Had God not formed man and woman, then you would not be here.
So no matter the bodily activity or function that you can imagine You could do none of it without God.
And I'm okay with that.
In fact, it's comforting to me that my life and my breath, my health Everything about me is in the Lord's hands.
And that causes me to trust in him.
And I can't imagine ever thinking he could trust in me.
Look now in verse 20 in our text.
Speaking of this man who can be crushed by a moth, he said, they are destroyed from morning to morning. to evening.
This is mortal man in whom God cannot trust.
And the word destroyed here has the meaning of being beaten down.
Or crushed or stamped out.
And that brings up another point about whether God could trust mortal man If mortal man is fragile enough to be broken like a clay pot, and weak enough to be crushed by a moth, then he's also frail enough to be destroyed, crushed, and stamped out.
Now imagine you've decided to have a new house built And one of the first and most important things you want to do before you spend a dime is to make sure the builder is reputable.
And one way of determining the reputation of a builder is to see how long that builder has been in business And to know that if the builder just popped up overnight, he could pop out overnight as well with your money.
And many people have been scammed like that.
And you would probably do some research on the company, check with consumer reporting sources, and maybe speak with some of the customers who've used that builder before.
Now why go to all this trouble?
Well none of us want to be taken for a ride by some criminal Who says he's a builder and just wants to take your money, and that's exactly what that person is.
You can couch it in whatever terms you want.
When somebody just wants to take your money without providing a surface service, that is a thief You don't want some builder who's on the wrong end of lawsuits and bankruptcy judgments.
Because if that builder is easily destroyed, by any of those things, then you would be foolish to put your trust in him.
But if you knew the builder was reputable, had a strong financial record.
Paid his bills, was well established, and highly recommended by other customers, then you could probably trust that builder about as much as you can trust any man.
And to ask God to trust man is to ask God to trust that which is destroyed morning and evening, as Eliphaz says here.
And in Genesis we learned evening and morning were the first day.
The evening and the morning were the first day.
So another way of saying what we read in Job in this verse is they are destroyed all the day long.
Leviticus chapter 24 verses 1 through 3.
Leviticus 24 verses 1 through 3.
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel that they bring unto thee pure olive oil beaten for the light, to cause the lamps to burn continually.
Without the veil of the testimony in the tabernacle of the congregation shall Aaron order it from the evening unto the morning before the Lord continually.
It shall be a statute forever in your generations.
So we see evening and morning, that's continually Now you get the picture here then that man is always, he's continually destroyed in his flesh from the time we're born Even though our bodies begin to grow and our brains develop and all of that, we, as soon as we're born, we begin our journey toward death, don't we?
Some people take the long road, some people go there as quickly as they can, but we begin our journey towards death.
And in such a one, God will not and he cannot trust Looking back in your text now, he said, Eliphaz said in verse 20, they perish forever without any regarding it.
And that word perish means a wander away.
And so when man dies He wanders away from life, doesn't he?
From life he's separated.
And in fact, in his flesh, he is separated forever when he dies.
In the first death, which is the death of the body, man is separated from earthly life.
And in the second death, which is a spiritual death, man is separated from eternal life.
As long as you live in this body, you have life.
You have life in you.
But the man who is separated from eternal life in the second death Experiences eternal death.
Separation from God and hell in the lake of fire.
And that's why we preach the gospel to people As often as we can, and that's why you hand out sticky tracks and you do everything you can to shine the light of the gospel on people, to expose them to what Jesus did for them.
Because we don't want them to go to hell and die in the lake have that second death, die and go to the lake of fire.
And I believe here in our text, though, Eloh Eliphaz is probably referring more to the earthly death, the first death.
Because he's speaking to a man who is saved.
But we can still learn about the similarities between the first death and the second death.
This is an easy way to remember it.
If you're born once, you'll die twice.
If you're born twice, you'll die once.
If you're born once, that's the birth from your mother.
That's why you say Happy Mother's Days.
There was a lady out there, and if she's still living and you had the opportunity to tell her Happy Mother's Day, that's why you do that.
She gave you an earthly birth.
But if you're born again by the Spirit of God when your faith is put in Jesus Christ and His finished work, then the only death you'll ever die is the one in the body.
You won't have a second death.
Eliphaz says man, and I believe that's mortal man he's talking about, perishes forever.
Now let's look at this phrase, without any regarding it.
That means when moral man dies, nobody really considers it.
They don't take it to heart.
It doesn't matter to them.
Oh, it matters to our family, to our loved ones.
We grieve and mourn, but for most things, most people They see an obituary and they say, oh, how sad.
And put it down and go on with life.
So you might ask, you mean nobody will regard it when I die?
Other than your family and your close friends, nobody on this earth will consider it when you die.
There are people who die every second all over the world and we don't give it a second thought And so for the person who thrives on earthly power and earthly popularity, he may have this imagination that many Will weep and mourn at his funeral, at his passing.
And the reality is that compared to the population of this earth, to the billions of people on this earth, There will be such a small number of people who regard your death that it will seem as though nobody regards it.
The phrase here that Elifaz uses is describing the insignificance of man in the eyes of this world.
Let me tell you, if you ever think that you can't be replaced at work, you are fooling yourself.
The the first government agency I worked with, I was in a a higher position in the particular section that I was working in.
And when I left, buddy, they shut down my position and opened up another one with that salary.
And I mean they didn't even blink an eye and I knew they wouldn't.
I didn't leave that place thinking, oh, they were going to miss me.
I knew they wouldn't miss me.
And I didn't care if they did or not.
And when I retire from the job I have now someday. uh 18 months and 21 days by the way.
But when I retire from that job, I don't have any illusion that anybody's going to regard it.
I'll have a few close friends who'll say, well, we'll miss you.
Enjoy your retirement And within a month, they'll go on.
They won't even think about me anymore.
And that's okay.
I'm not worried about whether man regards my life, my death, my employment somewhere, my status.
It doesn't matter.
Because a Christian, on the other hand, here, is not concerned about whether any person regards his death.
His mind is on whether the Lord regards his death.
In Psalm chapter 116, verse 15, Psalm 116 and verse 15 says, Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
Precious.
That means valuable, costly, excellent.
God does regard the death of his saints, even though mankind does not I was counseling with a couple earlier this year, and I mentioned in our conversation, and I've said this up here before, That I'd rather rather preach a funeral than a wedding any day, especially if it's a funeral of a Christian.
And do you know why?
Because precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
And at the funeral of a saint, I get to tell the audience that the saint's death was precious.
Not because they regarded it, but because the Lord regarded it.
I get to preach the gospel to them.
I preached the funerals of both of my grandmothers.
At my paternal grandmother's funeral, now if you don't do Friday cross-word puzzles, that means that was my dad's mom.
At my paternal grandmother's funeral, there were so many people that they had to extend the seating into the fellowship hall of that little church in Alney, Texas.
At my maternal grandmother's funeral, now who's that?
That's my mom's mom.
There were fewer than 10 people.
She'd been in a nursing home for a long time, and most of her friends had died, and most of her family had died, her brothers and sisters.
And that fewer than 10 people included the funeral director.
Very few people regarded her death compared to the death of my other grandmother.
But because they were both Christians, the Lord regarded their deaths as precious.
So Eliphaz here does not mean that God Does not regard the death of a mortal man who is a Christian.
He doesn't mean that.
Only that mankind in general does not regard the death of any person, regardless of their spiritual condition.
And that brings us to another reason why God would not put his trust in man.
Man's life is fragile.
Man's death is not regarded.
How then could God put his trust in a fragile, easily destroyed man whose death nobody even considers?
He could not, and he would not.
Verse 21.
Speaking of this same mortal man, doth not their excellency which is in them?
Go away.
Now this is an interesting question.
What does Eliphaz mean by excellent their excellency Of course, he doesn't mean that these mortal men are anything special or perfect, because he's just gotten through telling us how fragile they are, how they can be easily crushed by the moth, how when they die no man regards it.
Excellency, the word here, is normally translated as the word rest or remnant.
And by rest It doesn't mean your Sunday afternoon nap that most of you will take.
You might start it while you're here, but at least wait till you get home if you can.
It doesn't mean that.
And by the way, Charles Spurgeon told his students not to be upset at their congregants who fell asleep during his sermons.
He said, it's your job to preach something to them that'll keep them awake.
Well, that was pretty humbling to me, and I thought, well, that's my job.
Now, if you look at the Hebrew word translated as excellency here in this text, you'll see that the idea behind the word is that of a cord or a rope. especially the part of the rope that hangs over.
Now there's probably not anybody in here who won't understand this illustration.
When you have to tight let's say you you're transporting a mattress in the back of a pickup.
What do we know about mattresses and velocity?
You get your truck up very fast, the wind gets under it.
And you've seen all those mattresses on the side of the road, somebody didn't tie them down right.
And so you run a rope across those those little eyelets that are on your your truck And you tighten it down, and somewhere along the way you're going to have some rope left hanging over, aren't you?
None of us are that good to be that exact and to have just the right amount of rope, especially not me.
But that remnant or the rest of that rope, that's the idea here of the word excellency.
So excellency is the rest of the rope.
It's the remnant of the rope that's hanging over as it would when you tie down a mattress.
So man's excellency is, in this case anyway, is any abundance of things that he may have.
It's the rest of his stuff.
It's the remnant of his stuff, the overflow.
And in this case, the text says their excellency is in them.
So that excellency is some personal attribute man has during his life.
Alright, here's an example.
How many of you know what a statistical bell-shaped curve is, or have ever seen one?
It's you'll see it if you if you've ever taken statistics, and basically what it says, uh a true bell-shaped curve set shows you that There is a small percentage of people who do not have it.
Whatever that thing is you're measuring.
Let's say intelligence There is a small percentage of people, and I'm not talking about how we clown or rally each other and say, well, you're you're dumb.
No, it's not like that.
There are some people who intellectually from the most profoundly mentally retarded people to the severely, the moderately, the mildly, who have uh less of an intelligence function, and it's because they have some birth defects, they have some things that just didn't allow that to happen.
And then that bell-shaped curve goes up, and most of the population is somewhere in that bell-shaped curve.
You may have an IQ. of of a hundred and the next person may have a ninety-five and a and a hundred and three.
Most of us are in there.
On the other end of that bell-shaped curve is the small, is the remnant of the people.
Who are geniuses.
And for some reason the cutoff is 140.
I scored a 139 online one time and I said, I'm never doing it again.
I knew one thing about before I ever took the test.
I knew I was not a genius.
I knew that.
And I don't want to take another test because I'm afraid it might be lower.
But the excess, the the personal attribute that a man may have, that which could be called his excellency. could be an an amount of intelligence that the rest of us don't have.
So somebody who has a 210 IQ, they have an excellency of intellectual quotient that I don't have.
So what happens with this excellency which is in them, look back in your text, Eliphaz says That goes away.
It says, go away.
Those are the words.
In other words, that excellency departs.
It takes a journey.
Your intelligence, your ambitions, your attitude, your health, your abilities, and any other thing that is in you departs from you when you die.
And I've long thought on this verse and its application to unrepentant sinners as they stand before the white throne judgment in Revelation.
Matthew seven verses twenty-one through twenty-three.
Matthew seven, twenty-one through twenty-three.
Jesus said, Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, which is in heaven.
Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?
Now see, there will be some who can't say I've prophesied in your name.
So for these people, prophesied in your name, that's an excellency.
And in thy name have cast out devils, and in thy name have done many wonderful works.
And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you.
Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
So what is the excellency, the remnant, the rest of the rope, that those people will have when they stand in judgment before the Lord?
Their excellency is that they've cast out devils.
They prophesied in Jesus' name.
And that just means that that they Old Testament generally is forthelling as well as foretelling.
And New Testament is normally foretelling, although there is some forthelling in there as well.
In other words, uh what we think of as prophecy is predicting the future.
You'll see it both in the Old and New Testament.
But Prophecy is also preaching.
It's fourth telling.
That is telling you what the truth is.
I've prophesied in Jesus' name, but that just means I've preached.
But I've never predicted a future event.
God's never spoken to me and said, Andy, next week, this is going to happen I've never predicted a future event unless it's clearly stated in God's word, and then I'm just reading it to you.
I've never cast out a devil.
Like the apostles.
So those men who appear before Jesus, these are lost people now, will have done something to which I cannot lay claim.
They can claim they prophesied.
They can claim they did wonderful works.
They can claim they cast out devils.
Now what did we learn about the words go away in our text here?
We learn that it means to depart, to take a journey.
Listen again to what Jesus will tell these people who bring all this excellency before him.
I never knew you.
Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
He will say, Depart.
So both themselves and their excellency will be commanded to depart, and it will.
It will go away, just as Eliphaz stated here.
So we now come to another reason why God cannot possibly put his trust in mortal man.
Here it is.
Even when mortal man who has all this excellency in him dies, that excellency departs.
Now, how could God trust someone who cannot overcome death?
and whose excellency goes away when they die.
He could not, therefore he would not He said, they die even without wisdom.
And we return again to Genesis 2. 17, where God told Adam.
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it.
For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
The wisdom of God said not to eat of that tree.
The wisdom of man said, well, Satan's wiser than God, and that man should be free to eat of that tree.
When people sin, sometimes they'll say, well, that's the way God made me.
No.
That was your decision.
Adam departed from the wisdom of God, so the wisdom of God departed from Adam.
Adam embraced the wisdom of man, but as Eliphaz said, they die even without wisdom.
If you die without the wisdom of God, which is what happens when you reject God's wisdom as it's revealed in the gospel, then you die without wisdom.
Nothing you say, no arguments you can make, no excellency that you bring to the white throne judgment will help you.
And again, applying this to Eliphaz's theme about mortal men, God could not and would not trust a dead man from whom excellency departed upon death.
And we'll begin chapter 5 next week.
Let's pray.
Lord, we're so grateful for your word and for what you've taught us this morning.
And I pray each one of us will embrace this truth, some of its hard preaching.
But Lord, it's what we need to hear, and that we not put our trust in ourselves, nor consider whether any man regards us, but take comfort knowing that precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
And that you regard us through your son Jesus.
And it's in his name we pray.
Amen
