Sunday Message: Never do it again

I woke up at 530 Saturday morning to go to the bathroom.  Knowing I wanted to work on this post and a Bible Study post, I said to myself, "God doesn't want me to get up THIS early; He'll be happy to work with me at 700. "  I was half right, because I returned to bed to listen to a message from Tony Evans that impacted both.  And now, here I am at 600 to tell you the two things that impacted this post from that message, that started in Isaiah with the words, "In the year king Uzziah died".  First, that YOU go through "years that king Uzziah died" to get a clearer view of God.  Second, that when Isaiah said that "Woe is me, I am undone...for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts...", the word undone means unraveling, and my story today began with me unraveling.

You see, I am working to apply the lessons of the Fear of Jehovah, and the progression I have been explaining in the Wednesday Proverbs study; and I came to a point the other night in which I felt I was unraveling.  Because, I know that the key starts with humility- and I am learning that humility isn't a straight-ahead thing, it's a 360 degree thing, and I'll never get all the facets of it in this lifetime.  And I confessed that I was getting lost in trying to understand it.  And to my prayer, God answered, "Just see the way that Job did it."

So I went to the passages where God finally spoke to Job.  You have to understand as I tell the story, Job thought he was fighting God- but if you read the first chapter, you see he's fighting Satan.  How Job lost that is how I lost it.

In those passages, God tells the stories of Behemoth and Leviathan.  If you read these passages, you know that Behemoth is a perfect description of what we used to call a brontosaurus- a dinosaur.  And Leviathan is a "sea serpent"- perhaps the World Serpent of Norse legend.  Wait, are you saying... no, you can read about the FACT that God is representing here on your own this time.  What caught me for the first time was the allegory behind it.  You see, one of the Bible verses that I always found the most puzzling was the very last line of God's Leviathan story- "He is the king of all the children of pride."  A sea serpent is this?  But this time I saw a verse very early in the Behemoth story- "He is the first of the works of God."

My friends, the great power and invincibility of the two monsters God describes is an allegory on the monstrous power of Satan.  Ezekiel 28 gives you the impression of Lucifer being one of the "first of the works of God"; and Satan is certainly the true king of the children of pride.  And through this story, God describes the utter impossibility of beating Satan on your own.  About halfway through these two stories is a section on which both stories spin:


Job 41:8  Put your hand on him; remember the battle; you will not do it again! 
Job 41:9  Behold, his hope has been made false; will he not be cast down at the sight of him? 
Job 41:10  None is so fierce as to dare to stir him up. Who then is able to stand before Me? 

This passage tells us two very powerful things:  The secondary is the application to Job.  All this time, Job thinks his struggle is with God.  But we know it is with Satan, and he's getting whipped by Satan.  And God tells Job, "If you can't beat Satan, how do you think you WOULD fare against ME?"  Fact of the matter is, we can't beat God, and we can't beat Satan.

What we CAN do is give the battle to God, which is the main point God is telling Job- and us:  "Remember the whipping you are getting in this battle?  DON'T FIGHT THIS FIGHT AGAIN!"

And this really applies for me.  Not long thereafter I learned a lesson I already knew from experience.  God WILL win your battle with sin.  YOU will not.  And you have the choice whether God fights it or you do.  I think Job 41:9 is becoming my 2nd life verse.

So how does this tie in to my unraveling, and God's response?  Well, this revelation was a gift, for going where God directed to find my answer in this question.  And the answer I got was this.  Job found all of humility in simply seeing how much greater God was than himself.  Job discovered this in the vivid, tangible description of how Job was no match for Behemoth/Leviathan/Satan.  And in the intangible add on:  "But he is no match for ME".  As great as your problems, your demons, your losses, are to you, they are no match for God.  And when you think on how powerful THEY are- and that can be a pretty vivid thought-that tells you how much greater our God is to defeat them so easily.