Episode Transcript
Turn to Job chapter five and verse twenty-five.
Job chapter five and verse twenty-five.
While you're turning, I'll share with you one of the wonderful things about having floaters in your eye is that when you read something, it adds a little art to it.
You uh it makes it more of a challenge you don't just read.
Yeah.
So if you see me swatting things, it's because I thought I saw a fly in my periphery Job chapter 5 verse 25.
Now that's not the verse where I left off.
It's the verse I left out.
And uh as I studied for last week's lesson.
I noticed I had gone from verse 24 to verse 26, and in fact, as I studied I made a mental note to go back and put verse 25 and the notes about it into their proper place.
The problem was, as it is with some of you, my mental notebook has pages torn out of it from time to time.
And so I I forgot again.
And when I turn 70 it'll miss a few more pages, just to encourage you.
So let's quickly review Our last lesson, and then we'll give our attention to verse 25.
Verse 24 taught us that Job's tabernacle would be in peace.
And he would visit his habitation without sin.
Verse 26 taught us that Job would go to his grave in a full age.
And we learned that a full age wasn't a number necessarily, but it was determined by whether a person had finished his course.
Before he died.
And that that Hebrew word for the full age, meant one that was completed, one that was finished.
And Jesus, the Son of Man, was in his early 30s when he died, and yet he proclaimed on the cross Tetelestei, which is the Greek word for it is finished.
I would say he lived to a full age.
Now let's see where verse 25 fits in, because it certainly does.
So we're in Job chapter 5, verse 25.
Where Eliphaz tells Job, thou shalt know also that thy seed shall be great.
Not only would Job know that his tabernacle would be in peace, he would know his seed would be great.
And what an amazing prophecy Eliphaz made here, because all of Job's children had been killed by a storm. that collapsed the house in which they were feasting.
So Eliphaz is telling a grieving, childless man that his seed shall be great.
And as usual, we need to learn a little bit more about what seed means here and how it's used in the Bible so we can better understand what Eliphaz meant when he said this to Job.
The Hebrew word translated seed here means that which is sown.
Makes sense, doesn't it?
It's also translated in two places as the word child.
And the earliest word or earliest use of the Hebrew word translated seed is found in Genesis chapter 1 and verse 11.
Which says, and God said, Let the earth bring forth grass Don't forget that word grass, by the way, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth, and it was so.
Now the only way the herb and the fruit tree could yield fruit after its kind was if it had its seed in itself.
The genetic properties that allow a cucumber to reproduce itself are found in the seed it contains.
If you take the seeds from a cucumber. then when I mean when I say take them, take them and and plant them or sow them, then it'll produce another cucumber, not a grape, not an orange, but a cucumber And with this in mind, God also taught us about the seed of man.
Genesis chapter 13, verses 15 through 16 Genesis 13 verses 15 through 16.
Where God said to Abram, For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it and to thy seed forever.
And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth.
So that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.
Now keeping in mind that seed is translated as child in two different places, God made that promise to a man who was childless and whose wife's womb was barren, Sarah.
Eliphaz made this prophecy to Job, a man who was also childless.
And you may recall that Abram, whose name was later changed to Abraham, it's the same fella, that Abram had a son, Ishmael, with his with a handmaid, with his wife's handmaid, Hagar.
A terrible idea with terrible consequences that we are still suffering today.
And then he had Isaac, his only son was Sarah.
And when Sarah died, Abram fathered six more sons with his wife Keturah.
Now I just counted eight sons born to Abram.
So how is it that Abram could have seed that could be numbered only if the dust of the earth could be numbered.
Well, his seed, in an earthly sense, his seed was passed on to his sons.
Through the conception, gestation process, and the birth process, they they came to be.
And then from his sons, their seed was passed on. to their children.
So you have what's called a I wish Stephanie was here.
They and I so appreciate they told me last week we're not going to be able to be here.
We're going to be out of town.
Now that may seem like a small gesture to you but that means a lot to me that somebody didn't just not show up, that they said, hey, we won't be here and here's where we'll be and we're going to tune in online.
So thank y'all, Kent and Stephanie, for doing that.
But she's a math teacher.
And so maybe I could get an amen from her about this.
But the the increase from Abram through the generations would be geometric.
That is, there's a multiplying effect of his sons having children with their wives.
And then those offspring having children, there's a geometric effect.
And so that that's a short explanation of how an earthly man's seed could become so many that it could not be numbered.
But as we've learned, as we've learned about the seed of Abraham It also referred to a spiritual seed.
And that's the great lesson there.
And yes, we're still building up to how this applied. to Eliphaz's statement about Job's seed being great.
Galatians chapter 3 and verse 16 Galatians 3 verse 16, where Paul wrote, Now to Abraham and his seed, where the promise is made.
He saith not, and to seeds as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed which is Christ?
So when God made his covenant with Abram, the seed of which he spoke was Christ, not just the man Abram.
Later Paul would teach that in Isaac shall thy seed be called.
And so The seed represented the ones whose faith was in Christ.
The seed is Christ.
Now further down in that same chapter in Galatians 3, I'll read in verse 29 where Paul wrote, and if ye be Christ's That's the believer.
If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise.
Now he was talking to the people in the church of Galatia who were No doubt Gentiles racially.
So none of them could say, well, if you go back in my family tree, you'll see that I descended from uh this tribe or this tribe, from from Abraham.
Now you may already be familiar with what is being said, but it still bears repeating for people who aren't, or who absent-mindedly skipped verse 25 last week.
Like I did.
Here's another, Revelation chapter seven, verses nine through ten.
So we've already seen that the seed is not just the physical seed, but the spiritual seed.
And that Elapaz said, Your seed will be great, even though he had no children at this point, even though Job's children were dead.
Revelation 7, verses 9 through 10.
After this I beheld and lo a great multitude which no man could number of all nations And kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands.
And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb.
This is the seed of Abraham.
And John wrote that this multitude cannot be numbered.
What kind of multitude was it?
I just read it to you.
It said it was a great multitude.
John said it was a great multitude.
And if you look back in your text in Job 5.
25, Elipaz said, thou shalt know also that thy seed shall be great.
If God gave Job sons, and they fathered children who bore and fathered many more children.
Well, the the women obviously bore the children.
Then they may be so great a number that no man can tell it.
After all, you don't know how many children, my children and their children and their children will have.
We don't know that.
Only God would know that.
But it's not enough that a man father many children who simply live their lives, reject God.
And go to the grave while their children live on and have more children who reject God and live their lives and go to the grave.
Those lives are not full.
And that seed is not great in any way except numerically.
What's important is whether those children are also the spiritual seed of their father.
Now that doesn't mean their father originated their Their father originated the seed because Christ is the seed that we're talking about here.
He's the one from whom the seed comes.
He is the seed.
If ye are Christ, then are ye Abraham's seed, as we read a moment ago.
But if I'm a believer, and my children are also believers, Then my hope is that their children will be believers.
And if that's the case, each one is of the seed of Abraham, not just of the seed of Andy.
I'd rather have one child who is a believer than twelve who reject the gospel.
And while we know that Job's children all died.
What we're not told is whether their spouses died or if the grandchildren they may have had lived.
I don't know that I didn't see that in the text And going back to an earlier lesson where we tried to figure out when it was Job lived in relation to other people in the Bible.
My conclusion then and now was I'm not certain.
And I don't think the Bible gives us certainty on it, although we get a lot of clues. that might help us put Job in a particular time period.
You can use the origin of uh certain names that were names of people and also names of of lands and other references, customs, things that might sway your view one way or the other I'm a little more certain that Job was born after Abraham.
But again, I'm not claiming any certainty with that view.
But in the event Job were born after Abraham, which seems very likely.
And if he were of Abraham's earthly seed, that'd be a beautiful picture, wouldn't it?
But one thing we can be certain about, and that is that Job was a believer. and therefore of the seed of Abraham.
And by teaching his children the Word of God.
He was trying to persuade them also to be a member of that seed, to be of the seed of Abraham, spiritually speaking.
And in so doing, then his seed would be great.
Believer, begetting, believer, begetting, believer Now going back to our text in Job 5. 25, we read next, and thine offspring as the grass of the earth Now this one reads very much like a proverb as well, or a psalm.
Some psalms do this, where the second part of the verse emphasizes or restates the first part of the verse.
And here we have the word offspring, which springs from a Hebrew word that means that which comes forth or that which comes out.
Now it's a natural progression for the seed that is within to come forth into offspring When we refer to the children of a man and woman, we may refer to them as their offspring.
That's even though you may say, well, that sounds a little cold, it's uh scientific truth that they are the offspring Because they were once in their father and in their mother before conception.
But now what has happened?
They've come forth.
The child has come forth.
Now if the seed does not come forth, then what good was it?
Realistically Imagine if God had put seed in the herbs and in the fruit trees, but that seed had no life in it, no capacity to produce a new plant.
What if it never came forth as a new herb or tree?
Well that would have been a problem, wouldn't it?
Because once the original herbs and trees died There'd be no more of their kind.
And once the seed comes forth It grows into a mature plant which has its seed within itself, and it can bring forth another generation of its kind.
Now a woman whose womb is barren has seed, but no child comes forth from it.
A man who is sterile has seed, but no child comes forth from it.
Now let's not lose sight of the simile as back in our text where it says as the grass of the earth.
Grass is an herb.
If you missed Wednesday nights, you missed a great teaching on herbs.
In fact, the Hebrew word translated grass here is also translated as herb in the Old Testament. particularly in Genesis 111 from which I read a while ago where God created the earth.
Eliphaz said Job's offspring would be as the grass of the earth.
Now taking what we've learned about the seed, we know the grass cannot grow at all if it does not come forth from the seed.
Remember, the word for offspring means to come forth.
I have lamented to you all more than one time. about the presence of a certain herb in my yard.
It's scientifically known as the oxalus, which is a highbrow name given to such an annoying herb.
Adam and Eve didn't have to deal with Oxalus before sin entered into the world.
I know they didn't, because I toil by the sweat of my face to remove it from my yard.
And what makes me stay on top of Oxalus and try to mitigate it is the fact that it has seed within itself.
And the reason that seed is a threat to me is because it brings forth offspring.
The flower of the oxalus opens suddenly and it can shoot those seeds a distance of up to 10 feet.
And that's all it needs to crawl across your yard.
You start in one corner and before you know it, it's everywhere.
If those seeds just hit the ground and brought forth no offspring, I'd be quite content.
But they do.
I know they do because I see oxilus where there were none before.
And that's how they get there.
Now let's think about the grass Eliphaz mentioned in our text.
He said, as the grass of the earth will be Job's offspring.
So that means the seed must bring forth for his offspring to be as the grass.
The seed has to bring forth I'm going to take some verses from Jesus' teaching on the parable of the sower.
I used this parable last week, I believe And we learn that the seed was the Word of God.
So keep that in mind.
And first I'll read from Matthew 13, verses 3 through 4.
Matthew 13, verses 3 through 4.
It said, And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow.
And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured them up.
So, in a very practical sense, the seeds that were sown here did not bring forth offspring.
In a literal sense, the plant from which the seeds came obviously had seed within itself Because it said it fell by the wayside.
But the seeds did not bring forth offspring because the birds ate them.
It says the fowls ate them.
Now if the oxalus in my yard ejected their seed onto my concrete driveway, I would have no need to spray them with Roundup The birds will eat them or they'll wash into the sewer.
Now, further down in Matthew 13 and verse 19, Jesus taught that the seed that fell by the wayside and was eaten up, was representative of what happens when a certain kind of person hears God's word.
Remember, God's word is the seed.
He said, When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart.
This is he which receives seed by the wayside.
Now the word understandeth there means to consider, to be wise.
So that type of person received the seed, but they failed to consider, they refused to consider God's word or to be wise by it.
Now Our teaching in Proverbs tells us that is what kind of person?
That's a fool.
You have the wise and you have the fool.
If Job's seed were to hear God's word and refuse to consider it then they would not be of the spiritual seed of Abraham if they continued in their unbelief, or thereby the spiritual seed of Job.
Spiritually speaking, the seed that was sown to them would hit the driveway and be caught away by the wicked one.
And because grass cannot grow that way, offspring, Job's offspring could not be as the grass of the earth if they rejected God's word.
They would only be earthly children.
And there may be many of them, especially throughout the generations succeeding them.
But that's not where greatness comes from, the number of children.
And going back to the parable of the sower again there in Matthew 13, let's see if we can find the kind of offspring Eliphaz was talking about.
Speaking of the seed, Jesus said in Matthew 13, verse 8, but other, meaning other seed, fell into good ground.
And I underline that in my notes.
And I bold-faced it.
And brought forth fruit, some in a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.
Now it was the same seed, but it fell into good ground.
And when it fell into good ground, did you see what the text says?
It said it brought forth.
Now what does the Hebrew word mean that we translate it as offspring?
It means to bring forth or to come forth.
In Matthew 13, verse 23 Jesus explained this verse, just like he explained the other situations where the seed is sown and man does something with it and then something happens with it.
He explained this verse as well.
He said, But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word and understandeth it.
That means he considers it or was wise by it.
Which also beareth fruit and bringeth forth.
Did you hear that?
Bringeth forth some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
That's a great seed right there.
Jesus said, he that received seed.
And the Greek word for received is the same as for the word sow.
S-O-W in the New Testament.
The expectation of the sower is that the seed will be received.
Where?
In the good ground For Job's offspring to be as the grass of the earth, the seed he sows must fall onto good ground and be received.
When Job taught his children God's word, they had to receive it rather than turning from its wisdom. rather than rejecting it for consideration.
And the bearing of fruit would then be the evidence that the seed was sown and received.
It was considered.
It was understood.
And the spiritual offspring that produced would be just as evident as the offspring of grass that is produced when its seed is received into good ground.
Now here's another thing to think about Job's spiritual offspring were not limited to his own children who received the word, or to his grandchildren who received the word.
Because the seed is spiritual, it means that anyone who has received the Word of God is a beneficiary of that, is an offspring of that.
So if they received the word of God from Job and believed on it, that would be a continuation of Abraham's seed, and in that respect, a continuation of Job's seed.
There's no difference there.
Job can't say, well, I've got my own seed of believers, and Abraham had his.
No, to be of the seed of Abraham, you have to be in Christ.
That's it.
Now, here's another example.
We know the Apostle Paul, as far as the Bible records, he never married and had no biological children.
But I want you to listen to his words in several different places where you'll see that he not only understood this principle, but he taught it.
Titus chapter one and verse one he refers to himself as Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ.
And down in verse four, he wrote to Titus mine own son after the common faith.
Now a man without any earthly children just called a man who already had his own parents his own son You can't have two mamas and two daddies.
I mean the the divorce, remarriage, and all those things, you just still had two a mama and a daddy.
That's it.
That's a guarantee.
And so Titus already had parents, whether they were living or not at the time, I don't know.
But Paul said he's my own son after the faith.
Why?
Because the seed of the Word of God that Paul preached to Titus was received into good ground and bore fruit.
Paul was racially of Abraham's seed.
Not because, well, racially he was of Abraham's seed and was a Jew, but spiritually It was because his faith was in Jesus Christ.
Titus, an offspring of Gentile parents, was now of the same spiritual seed as Paul and the same spiritual seed you are if you're a believer.
Who was of the same spiritual seed of Job.
And that seed fell on good ground.
That seed that Paul sowed and Titus and Titus received in good ground.
And bore fruit.
That seed fell on good ground, and it brought forth offspring, which is what we're looking at here in our text in Job.
Now Paul would also say this same thing about Timothy in more than one place, but in 1 Corinthians 4 verse 17, he called him my beloved son, called him Timotheus, my beloved son.
And in fact, in verse 15 of that same chapter, 1 Corinthians 4.
15, Paul said this, listen to this.
He said this to the whole Corinthian church.
For though ye have 10,000 instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers.
For in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.
Begotten means to bear as a mother bears children.
Paul doesn't claim to be the originator of the seed, and neither would Job or even Abraham Because that seed is Christ.
It's his Word.
He is the Word who became flesh.
He was the Word in the beginning.
It's the same thing Okay, now because we did not skip verse 26 last week, we'll skip it today.
That was fun, and go to verse 27.
The final words Eliphaz would speak during this round.
He said in verse 27, Lo this.
Now that means behold.
One day I stopped an elderly gentleman from Louisiana.
And when I asked him the reason for whatever his violation was, he said, look at him.
Now that's one word in Louisiana.
Somebody else might say, looky here.
He said, look a here.
And then he proceeded to explain himself, and I had a hard time keeping a straight face.
But he was quite serious because it's been a long time since somebody had told me, look at him.
But I maintained my compassionate but stalwart countenance and listened to him.
Now perhaps if he would have said lo this, I wouldn't have been able to resist the urge to chuckle.
And that's what the word lo means.
When the Bible says behold or lo this It's not just a word to fill a space.
God's telling you to listen intently to what is being said.
And Eliphaz wanted Job to do the same to those many words he had spoken to him.
After all, Eliphaz was the first one to speak.
After the seven days of silence he and his friends had spent with their distraught friend who was on the ash heap.
And Eliphaz further told Job in this verse, verse 27, he said, we have searched it.
Look at him, we have searched it.
Now let's look at, that means we've investigated it.
Let's look at how this Hebrew word for we have searched it is used in another place in the Bible.
While giving God's law to the children of Israel before his death, Moses said these words in Deuteronomy chapter 13.
Verses 12 through 15.
Deuteronomy 13, verses 12 through 15.
Now listen for the word search in here.
If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities, which the Lord thy God hath given thee to dwell there, saying, Now here's the thing you would hear, certain men, the children of Belial are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods which ye have not known Then shalt thou inquire and make search, there's our word, and ask diligently, and behold if it be truth And the thing certain that such abomination is wrought among you, thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly. and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof with the edge of the sword.
The requirement God put on the children of Israel in this situation was not just to act prematurely on an unsubstantiated rumor.
The rumor was that there are certain children of Belial who've drawn away inhabitants out of the city and said, hey, let's go serve other gods.
If you hear that that has happened, don't be hasty to take action.
You search it out.
They had to investigate whether it was true.
And he told them how to investigate it.
Ask diligently.
After all, the action God told them to take if this thing were true was predicated on whether they had first searched to see if the allegations were true.
Because those actions, those consequences were very serious.
Kill everybody and everything and destroy it all in that city.
And what Eliphaz is telling Job is that we, probably meaning he and the other friends who came with him, we have investigated this whole thing, Job.
From what's happened to your kids, your servants, your livestock, even your own health.
We've investigated this.
We've made a diligent inquiry And in doing that, they had considered what God's word said about those kinds of events and situations, and they had come to a conclusion about it all.
Elifaz is saying we didn't come to this decision lightly.
We searched it.
We're not shooting from the hip.
We're not just trying to make you feel better with some shallow words or cute sayings.
We can appreciate that.
But they had investigated the matter and were now quite serious about the words being spoken.
And Edelphos must have known that Job very well may act upon those words.
So there has to have been a search or an investigation that allowed Job's response to be based upon truth.
Eliphaz continues in verse 27, so it is.
Behold, we've investigated this and this is how it is.
You have to have a lot of confidence in your investigation to be able to say this is how it is.
I've been involved in thousands of investigations in my career.
And in many of them, people have been arrested.
Based upon probable cause.
Now that means we weren't 100% certain We couldn't say we saw everything.
It was in front of our eyes.
We're absolutely certain about what happened We weren't there.
We didn't have the video, perhaps.
We had circumstantial evidence, witnesses and physical evidence, victim statements, all of that.
And probable cause, which is what we base the arrest of a person on, or the warrant that we apply for. is simply when all the facts and circumstances that exist would lead a reasonable person to conclude that criminal activity has occurred.
That a crime has been committed.
And when the person is arrested and goes to court, the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
There's another term That the person is guilty of the offense for which they've been charged.
This doesn't mean their case has to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
And the judges give instructions to jury pools whenever they are instructing them on these matters.
Because that rarely happens, that you can prove something beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Most of the time, the criminal justice system gets it right.
Most of the time In fact, because of probation and early release and all of those terms, you can be sure that the benefit is actually gone to the accused in many cases, to the convicted.
Or they don't have to serve their whole term.
Or perhaps they don't have to go to jail or prison.
They can get probation.
But it works most of the time.
Occasionally.
There is a wrongful conviction, which is a travesty.
Because we're not able to say in every case Lo, this.
We searched it out, and so it is.
We try to get as close as we can.
And many of those wrongful convictions can be traced back to a violation of what God told the children of Israel to do, and that is to a poor investigation.
Not all of them, but many of them can.
I lived in and worked in Williamson County when Michael Morton was wrongfully convicted of murder.
And we had a crooked district attorney, we had several crooked people, investigators involved in that case that put an innocent man in prison for 25 years until he was exonerated.
Wouldn't it be nice if during any kind of investigation, whether it was criminal or otherwise Parents, in the home, something that happened when you were away, if you could say, lo this, we have searched it and so it is.
And that's what Elifaz said And as we close, when we preach the Bible, we can say this about scriptures that we read.
We can read, neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.
And I can say about that scripture Lo this, I have searched it out, and so it is.
Not because I say so, but because it's God's word.
And this is our investigation.
This is our search about how to be saved.
We search other verses that say the same thing, written by different human writers in different ages, but all authored by the same God through his Spirit, which moves upon these writers, these holy men of old.
To the Jews who sought to kill Jesus, you know what he asked them to do or what he told them to do in John 5.
39?
He didn't say, spare me, spare me, he said, search the scriptures.
Search the scriptures.
For in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me Had the Jews done that diligent search in the scriptures, they would have never come to the conclusion that Jesus was a blasphemer.
They would have said, hello, this.
We have searched, and so it is.
Jesus is the Son of God.
Father, thank you so much for your words today and for the people who desire to listen to them.
And Lord, I pray that we would take What we studied here today, meditate upon it.
And Lord, continue to be open to your teaching.
And as we gather again during the next hour, I pray you give our pastor the same grace and liberty that you gave me.
And that everybody here, Father, would just feast their eyes upon your word.
And may our divided thoughts and carnal things that we brought in here be set aside.
In favor of truth, in favor of that which will build us up and which has eternal consequences.
In Jesus' name.
Amen
