Episode Transcript
Good morning.
It's 10 o'clock and you're here and so am I, so we get to begin our lesson.
Last week we finished the 17th verse of Job chapter 5.
So if you want to turn to Job chapter 5 this morning, then you'll have a head start.
We finished the verse, but we did not finish the truth that we began to learn in that verse.
Because that verse began a sentence that has not yet been completed.
Well, it was completed then, but we haven't finished it.
And it ends, that sentence ends in the verse we're about to study.
And some of the things we learned in verse 17.
Made a hard pill to swallow for the flesh.
Somebody just opened that part of their Bible and looked at it, they'd say, Wow, how can you say something like that?
Happy is the man whom God correcteth.
But even for the Christian who hadn't considered what it means To be chastened by the Lord, and why the man who is chastened by the Lord is happy or blessed.
That lesson would have helped them a little bit.
And that's what we want.
We don't want how many of you have read the Leaving Egypt book?
Do you remember the part in there about the bonsai tree that had the shallow roots?
And that you, that's not the kind of Christian you want to be.
That's why you read the book in the first place.
You don't want to be the bonsai tree with the shallow roots.
You want your roots to grow deep.
Well, that's what we do when we study hard-to-understand passages.
Our roots are growing just a little bit deeper, which means the upper part of the tree grows and the fruit is born.
So our knowledge of the word happy was hopefully increased as we studied what the Hebrew word means and how it's used in other Bible verses.
And the question to which we found an answer was the question: Why is a man whom the Lord chastens happy?
And we began to seek the answer to the question about why a man should not despise The chastening of the Lord, because that's what the scripture told us: despise not the chastening of the Lord.
And why should we not despise it?
We had to answer that question, so we began looking at it.
And first, and very generally speaking, the reason that we should not despise the chastening of the Lord.
Is that God loves the ones whom He chastens.
And the fact that He loves the ones whom He chastens Should cause a person who's being chastened to not despise that chastening.
Now we'll look at another More specific answer to that same question: why should I not despise the chastening of the Lord?
And so if you've turned to Job chapter 5, look now with me at our new verse, verse 18.
Speaking of God, it says, for he maketh sore and bindeth up.
Now the words maketh sore apply more to the sorrow that this chastening causes.
And yes, the act of physical chastening causes physical pain.
That's what makes it work.
But there's a sorrow that also accompanies that physical pain.
It's, here's an example: it's the sorrow Of a child being punished by his loving father.
I know when I was a little boy, more than anything else, And especially as I grew older, if I thought I had disappointed my dad, it would got all over me.
I could have took a whooping and been over it in just a little while, but the thought that I disappointed my dad And still would be the case.
He's 84 years old.
And if I thought that I had disappointed him, it'd just tear me up.
And so that would be a sorrow, even as a child, that resulted from being punished by a loving father.
Because the child, the father, it's not just that the father loves the child, the child also loves his father.
And this chastening produces a temporary break in fellowship.
And so the sorrow is experienced on both sides by the father and by the child.
The child sorrows because he's being punished, and the parent sorrows because he's having to punish his child.
The parent would rather the child obey.
It's a lot more fun when you tell your child to do something and they just do it.
And they do it happily and come back for more instructions later.
And you get to tell them thank you, and you should do that when you ask someone to do something.
Don't think, well, that's my kid.
He's supposed to do what I tell him.
Yes, he is.
But you can also be grateful, and you should be grateful and say thank you.
So that's pleasing to both the child and the parent.
And the child would rather the father be pleased with him than to be angry with him.
In Psalm chapter 69, David wrote about those who hated him without a cause.
And we'll learn a little bit about our words, maketh sore.
And in verse 29, he wrote, But I am poor and sorrowful.
Let thy salvation, O God, set me up on high.
The word sorrowful in that verse Is the same or comes from the same Hebrew word as the words maketh sore in our text in Job.
And it helps us understand a little bit about what Eliphaz is saying about the one whom God makes sore.
When he chastens him.
Now, in that psalm I read you, or the verse I read you, God wasn't chastening David.
His enemies were afflicting him.
They were bringing tribulation upon him.
And just as the child wishes the chastening father.
We were instead pleased with him, David wished he had no quarrels with his enemies.
He didn't enjoy quarrels with his enemies.
He wished he didn't have any enemies.
I do too.
I wish I had no enemies.
But because of who David was and how God used him, he had many enemies.
He was sorrowful, as the Psalm said.
Or we could say he was made sore because of this hatred and persecution by his enemies.
Perhaps you've said or you've heard it said by someone, I don't care what they think of me.
Do you know that's really not true?
We do care what people think of us.
If I was walking down the street and some stranger Whom I've never met, never heard of, said, That guy's a cheater.
Instead of saying, Well, I don't know him, I don't care what he says, I do care.
I'd want to say, what do you mean I'm a cheater?
What have you heard that would concern me?
And we come to a point worth making here.
When a child is about to be punished, he already knows his father is displeased with his actions.
And at that moment, the child so wishes his father would set aside his displeasure and just forget the whole thing.
But a good father can't do that.
He has to teach the child to obey.
So he has to chasten him.
And here's where things get twisted in the mind of a child.
It's when the father or the mother, but we're sticking with the father here, it's when the father allows the child to do wrong without chastening.
So one day this child hits his little sister and the rules have already been laid down.
You don't hit your sisters.
And so the father is displeased and he punishes the child.
But the next time the child hits his sister, the father does not punish him.
So, in the mind of the child, his most recent interaction with his sister that involved hitting was no longer displeasing to his father.
That's the way he sees it.
He may not be able to articulate that, but he says, I just hit my sister, and dad didn't punish me.
So the conclusion he draws is: well, it must be okay to hit little sister.
And then that same child hits his little sister next week, and the father punishes him for it.
Now, what kind of message does that send the offending child?
That poor child has no idea when his actions will please or displease his father.
Now that'll cause a mental illness right there, won't it?
Never knowing.
Well, that's not the case with God.
There are people who believe, in spite of the many sins they've committed, that they're going to make God pleased with them anyway.
They'll figure out a way to tip the scales back in their favor.
Here's a good question for you.
With whom is God well pleased?
Well, he said it in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.
More than once.
And Peter also wrote about it in his second epistle.
Speaking of Jesus, God said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
God is not well pleased with sinners.
He's angry with the wicked every day.
In fact, I'll read a portion of the Apostle Paul's letter to the Corinthians about this very matter.
And he was referring to the Old Testament fathers.
It's found in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verses 1 through 5.
1 Corinthians 10, verses 1 through 5.
He said, Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant.
How that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
And did all eat that same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink.
For they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.
But with many of them God was not well pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.
So God is well pleased with his son.
He is not well pleased with sinners.
How do you make God well pleased with you?
You have to be in His Son by faith.
He's well pleased with those who are in his son.
And right now, for us, that means that our spiritual man, our inner man, Is well pleasing to God because our inner man, if you're a believer, is in Christ.
You're in Christ, He is in you by His Spirit.
Our bodies, on the other hand, have not been made new like our spirits have.
We're still waiting on that adoption, the redemption of the flesh.
So it's in our flesh that we do things that are not well pleasing to God.
And because of that, he chastens us.
And when he chastens us, we feel sorrow.
One of the late pastors, John MacArthur.
Was being asked about the life of a Christian, and one of the ways he described it was: when you're a Christian and you're growing in grace, he said, You'll sin less.
But you'll feel worse about sin when you do.
See, both things happen.
You sin less, but when you do, you feel worse about it than you ever did before.
That's a pretty good evidence that you're growing in grace.
So just, you know, take that for what it's worth there.
And so when God chastens us, we feel sorrow.
We're sore.
We're made sore.
But there's a promise on the other side of that sorrow.
And we find it back in our text in verse 18, where it says, and bindeth up.
For he maketh sore and bindeth up.
Now, bindeth up means to wrap firmly.
That's probably not such a strange definition to you.
We do that when we swaddle infants, don't we?
We have this little technique, and we pin one arm in there, and we put a piece of the blanket over it, and then the other arm, and you may have your own way of doing it, but the point is.
To keep them from scratching their little faces up with those nails.
And they are secure when you bind them up like that.
To bind up is to wrap firmly, like one would a saddle.
And you don't just throw a saddle on a horse and get on there and hope that you don't fall off.
You bind that saddle tightly enough so that it won't come loose, but not so tightly that the horse is in pain.
So when God chastens us, it makes us sore, it makes us sorrowful.
Now these two words, bindeth up, come from a Hebrew word that is normally translated as the word saddle, S-A-D-D-L-E.
Interesting, isn't it?
And every time it's translated as the word saddle, it describes the saddling of an ass.
Or we might say a donkey since the world has misused this word.
But I'll tell you what, we're going to claim it back.
In the Bible, an ass is a donkey, and we're not going to be afraid to read it that way.
We're not going to blush.
The world needs to blush about how they've misappropriated the words in the Bible, like love and like the word gay.
Those are Bible words and they don't mean what the world thinks they mean today.
I'll read you a passage that shows us the necessity of a saddle being correctly installed on an ass.
In 2 Kings chapter 4.
There was a Shunammite woman whose son had fallen ill with a terrible headache.
You may remember studying that when we were in 2 Kings, the boy died.
And this Shudamite woman was desperate and wanted to go find Elisha, whom she called the man of God.
Listen to some of the words this Shunammite woman said in 2 Kings chapter 4, and I'll read verses 22 through 24.
And she called unto her husband, and said, Send me, I pray thee, one of the young men and one of the asses, that I may run to the man of God and come again.
And he said, Wherefore wilt thou go to him today?
It is neither new moon nor Sabbath.
And she said, It shall be well.
Then she saddled an ass and said to her servant, Drive and go forward.
Slack not thy riding for me except I bid thee.
So this Shunammite woman was in a hurry to find God, and she had no time to waste.
And when she saddled her ass, she had to bind that saddle so well that it could not possibly come loose during that ride.
Causing her to fall or causing her to have to stop and readjust it.
She had no time to lose.
And she told her servant, Don't slack your writing.
In other words, don't slow down from me unless I tell you to.
That saddle was bound up.
It was sure.
It was made sure.
And this is how God binds up the ones whom he has made sore when he chastens.
He binds them up.
He binds us up.
We're not left to bind ourselves up.
We don't do a very good job of that.
We turn to whiskey and drugs and self-harm and misplaced anger and going to therapists who aren't Christians and give us all kinds of terrible advice.
We go to AI and ask how to fix the problem.
Psalm 147, verses 2 through 3.
Psalm 147, verses 2 through 3 says, The Lord doth build up Jerusalem.
He gathereth together the outcasts of Israel.
He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds.
Now, we too, just like the children of Israel, just like David.
We too can know that the Lord will bind us up when He has made us sore with His chastening.
Now, the next part of this verse gives an even more specific image regarding God's chastening.
It says, look back in your text in Job 5:18.
It says, he woundeth, that is, God woundeth.
Whereas being made sore is being made sorrowful.
It's the wound that brings about the immediate pain.
When physical chastening is being applied, the sorrow of being chastened by the Father takes the back seat for just a few moments.
Because it's there, but the physical pain is the most immediate thing that gets the attention of the one being chastened.
And nobody thinks chastening is joyous.
Hebrews chapter 12, verse 11, and then put the little letter A, lowercase letter A, it's the first part of the verse.
Hebrews 12, 11A, says, Now no chastening for the present.
Seemeth to be joyous, but grievous.
Now we read that verse last week, but we needed to read it again here today.
What makes a person dread physical chastening is the pain that it will surely bring forth.
In fact, that's the case with any kind of chastening, whether it's physical, financial, or any other way.
What makes a normally law abiding citizen Drive the speed limit, even though he wants to just get to his destination as fast as he can.
It's the dread of paying a traffic ticket.
For most of us, a $200 fine hurts the pocketbook.
And what also hurts the pocketbook is when your insurance company sends you your new premium, your newly adjusted premium.
It goes up and it stays up for a long time.
So you're not just paying a $200 fine for your ticket, you're paying the insurance company.
For a long enough time until they see that you've become a better driver.
I'll tell you why there's so much crime.
Because there's very little punishment fear or fear of punishment in the heart of the offenders.
If every criminal offense above the grade of a traffic or a parking ticket Was met with real jail time, a sentence, there would be fewer crimes committed.
One of my deputies stopped a man and his wife one night for a traffic violation, and that man was in possession of a felony amount of drugs, illegal drugs.
And I was speaking with that man as my deputy was completing his search of the vehicle and wrapping up things that had to happen on scene.
And during that time, the man asked me, Can y'all just take my drugs and let me go?
And I said, Well, no, we're not going to be doing that tonight.
We're going to go to the county jail.
Now this man lived in Dallas County, which is one of the most liberal counties in the state of Texas.
Maybe in the country.
And he had been caught with illegal drugs in Dallas County.
In fact, he was out on bond for the same offense that we arrested him for.
So, the conditions of Bond did no good, did they?
Because he was out on the street.
And he was apparently allowed to go on his way on other occasions by just handing the drugs over and not being arrested.
So he had no fear of chastening.
But that night he was in Rockwall County.
And while we were on our way to the jail, he said, He said, I've learned my lesson.
He said, I'm not going to do this anymore.
He was 20 years old.
He was very polite and cooperative.
And we met his mother the next night because we took her to jail for a warrant.
So it kind of ran in the family.
But after hearing the man say that, I truly hope he did learn his lesson.
And if he did learn his lesson, do you know what caused that to happen?
It was the fact that he was actually arrested for his crime.
He wasn't given a free pass like he had been before, and perhaps now he will fear being punished.
And will correct his behavior.
He was wounded, not physically, but by temporarily losing his freedom in his car.
And I hope he takes advantage of the opportunity to be bound up and set back on his saddle.
He's been knocked off for now.
And I hope he begins to live as a law-abiding citizen.
You know, the law doesn't want to knock this man down and leave him be.
Or keep him in prison for the rest of his life for what he did.
We want to knock him out of his saddle, get his attention, and then bind him up again to live as a productive citizen.
That's what we want in law enforcement.
Remember this.
When God chastens you, He's not trying to hurt you.
He's not trying to destroy you.
He's not cutting you off.
And even though there's a break in fellowship, there's never a break in sonship.
You don't lose your relationship with God.
If you're His, you're His through thick and thin, through the chastening and the blessing.
You're His.
We don't disown our children when we have to punish them.
We, just like they, long for that reconciliation, that sweet fellowship that we normally have with them again, and we want it to continue that way.
Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, even every son, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
And the sons of God are the believers, the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
You know, I was after I got here this morning, I was thinking about, and I don't, things come into my mind and don't ask me why, they just do.
But I was thinking about.
When churches baptize people in creeks, and probably was more common back in the day, but occasionally I'll see a little reel come through. on Facebook that shows a church baptiz a pastor baptizing a member out in a creek, same place you run your trot lines.
And there are denominations who believe that you have to be baptized in water in order to be saved.
And I thought, you know what?
There are some people who have conditions that won't allow them to be totally submerged.
What if you had somebody who converted?
Who became a Christian and had to go to hospital, and they just had tubes running all in them, and they were never able to get out, and they died.
That'd be terrible, wouldn't it, if your salvation depended on what happened back here in this baptistery?
And so it gave me a kingdom truth.
My salvation is tied to the cross, not the creek.
Now, that one is not as sophisticated as the one Brother Fulton gives you.
When God makes sore, He binds up.
He doesn't leave us sorrowful.
He doesn't leave us wounded.
He puts us back in the saddle and secures it for us.
He binds it up.
And it says, when he woundeth, look at the next part of verse 18.
It says, and his hands make whole.
Now what a comforting image, God's hands.
I love this.
Remember, the Bible says God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
Not through idols that we can see or that we make with our hands, like many religions do, but in spirit.
So when we read about God's hands knowing He is a spirit, When we read about his hands, what we're reading about is not some physical aperture that you can, or appendage that you can see with your eyes.
We're reading about his strength.
About his power, his ability, how he smites the wicked, how he gives things and how he takes them, and so forth.
The right hand of God is a place, even.
It's the place to where Jesus ascended and sat.
And we can't see God, so the Bible gives us many images.
That helps us understand the nature of God.
So, the eyes of God, when we read about God seeing things, God doesn't have eyeballs like we do, He's a spirit.
But to teach us what that means, what the hands of God are, then we are given those metaphors.
In our text, these hands are doing a specific thing.
They're making whole.
The words are, and his hands make whole.
In fact, these hands.
God's hands are making a wounded man whole.
Now, what does it mean to be made whole?
It means to heal.
And most of the time, it is translated as the word heal, H-E-A-L.
In fact, the Hebrew word is also translated on five occasions as the word physician.
Physician.
What a great example.
What is the job of a physician?
It's to make the wounded whole.
It's to heal the wounded.
How many of you in here have ever Been bored enough to read the Hippocratic Oath, to actually read it, not what someone says about it.
We can fellowship, y'all, because I've been just that bored.
I was that bored as I studied for this to read that.
No, I wasn't bored with studying for my lesson, but the Hippocratic Oath, of course, it's in Greek and it has to be translated.
But you may have read the English translation, and I'm going to read you a few selections from it.
And in fact, it might shock you.
He said, Now this is not the entire oath.
He said, I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgment. and I will do no harm or injustice to them.
Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so.
Now that's euthanasia, by the way.
Nor will I suggest such a course.
Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.
But I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.
I will not use the knife, not even verily, on sufferers from stone, but I will give place to such as are craftsmen therein.
Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick.
I will abstain from all intentional wrong doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free.
Now, if I carry out this oath and break it not, may I gain forever reputation among all men for my life and for my art.
But if I break it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me.
Now, the reason I didn't read all of this is he talks about his teachers and how he views them as parents.
And in the beginning, he swears to Apollo and to these false Greek gods.
That he worshiped.
But his oath, this part of the oath I read, is highly ethical.
And much of what he swore is also biblical, though he may not have meant it to be.
So, if we were to compare these portions of his oath with the scriptures, we'd say that agrees.
Those agree with each other.
And some medical schools to graduate these men and women who become doctors will administer the oath, but of course.
The oath has been modified because if it hadn't been modified, no physician would ever euthanize someone.
No physician would ever perform any act that would abort a baby.
And when we're sick or injured, we go to a medical facility.
We want to be made whole.
Now, sometimes we can't be made whole.
Now, I am nobody to complain.
I have Compared to some people, I have so few physical ailments, but I have a few, and since I'm 60, I get to complain just a little bit about them, not much.
I've got scar tissue and arthritis and visual problems that prove that I am getting older.
I can't straighten out my left leg.
I have to use glasses at night to read license plates, and those glasses don't make my vision whole.
The underlying physical problem of aging is still there.
And many of you in here, and many of you, and other, many of you who are watching.
Have far worse physical problems than that.
And I know every one of us, whether we have a little sniffle or we have something really serious, would like to be made whole.
But in most cases, it can't be completely done, even by the best physicians.
But it's not the hands of a human physician Eliphaz is describing here.
He's telling Job about the Lord's hands.
About God's hands and how they make whole the ones whom He has wounded during chastening.
And in keeping with Eliphaz's pattern up to this point, He's making the point that, or he's making the assumption here, I believe, that God has made Job sore, sorrowful.
And that he's wounded Job, and that he will bind him up and make him whole.
And it's not God who made Job wounded, it was Satan, but Eliphaz doesn't know that.
Now, can God make whole those whom Satan has wounded?
I mean, we've read that when he wounds, he binds up.
He makes whole.
But what about the ones whom Satan has wounded?
Well, he surely can make them whole, and he does, and he will.
In Luke chapter 13, Jesus came upon a woman who had been bowed together, bowed together.
I picture her as having the absolute worst kind of.
Arthritis and maybe muscular dystrophy, or something that could just wad you up and leave you unable to straighten out.
Because the Bible says she couldn't lift herself up.
Listen to the interchange between Jesus and the ruler of the synagogue.
Concerning that event where Jesus healed her.
It's found in Luke 13, verses 14 through 16.
And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath day, and said unto the people, Now, this is what the ruler says.
There are six days in which men ought to work.
In them, therefore, come and be healed, but not on the Sabbath day.
Then the Lord then answered him and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall and lead him away to watering?
And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound Lo, these 18 years be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day.
If you can take your ox to the water trough, why can't I heal this woman?
Jesus, who was the great physician, healed a woman whom Satan had bound.
It wasn't God who bound her, it was Satan.
And not only did Jesus heal her, but he healed her on the Sabbath day.
And the ruler of the synagogue, also a Jew, said, The healing business is closed on the Sabbath.
Now, how ironic is that?
The Sabbath day was a day of rest from their labors.
But Jesus taught that it was not a day of rest from doing good.
In Luke chapter 6 and verse 9, Luke 6, verse 9, when the Pharisees sought to accuse Jesus of blasphemy for healing on the Sabbath day, he said, I will ask you one thing.
Is it lawful on the Sabbath days to do good or to do evil?
To save life or to destroy it?
Was there a time when doing good when healing the sick should have been against the law?
And according to Jesus, there was not.
And the Sabbath day being a day of rest teaches us about our rest.
The Jews were to work six days and observe a day of rest, the Sabbath.
On the seventh day.
The seventh day, that Sabbath, was not a time for them to go to the synagogue and have all sorts of religious gyrations and do all these things.
It was a day of rest from their labors.
And in their work they labored and were heavy laden, but they could be sure to find rest on the Sabbath day.
No matter how hard they worked during the week, they knew that Sabbath day would be a day where they didn't have to go out the door, kick their feet up, do whatever, however they relaxed at home.
In Matthew 11:28, Jesus said, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
You see how that goes together in the Sabbath?
Was a day of rest from their labors, from their heavy burdens.
And in Jesus, he said, All ye who labor and are heavy laden, come to me and I'll give you rest.
He is our Sabbath, He's our rest.
And how ironic was it that the very one who came to give Israel rest from their labors Was hated and accused as a blasphemer when he healed on that day of rest.
And those same unbelieving Jews Would trust in their labors and the carrying of their burdens to save them.
Remember, Jesus told them, you bind.
Heavy burdens upon men and grievous, and yet with one finger you will not lift them and they trusted in their labors and in the carrying of these burdens, all the religious acts they did.
While ignoring the true rest, they could find only in Jesus.
The law wounds, but it cannot make the sinner whole.
And we'll stop right there and pick back up with that truth and try to finish it out before we go into verse 19.
Father, we're so thankful for your word and thankful for all those who.
Came and those who tuned in, those who listened to the teaching of the Bible.
And Father, we know that your word will not return void, but will accomplish the purpose whereunto you sent it.
And we're trusting that to happen in our hearts today and to help us to grow as Christians.
In Jesus' name, amen.
