Job 26 – Consider the Nature of God

Hello Project Ezra!  I pray you are doing well.  This week’s suggested reading is Job 26.  It is another passage in which we and the listeners are challenged to consider the nature of God.  It seems that many people, though they may profess otherwise, live as if God is very small.  They act as if He either doesn’t care what they do, or has no power to react even if He does care.  They live as practical atheists, believing only so long as it doesn’t interfere with their personal choices.  I don’t know if that applies to those talking to Job, but it does to many in our day, and because of that the message has impact.  I pray it will impact those who hear it this weekend, and that it will be an encouragement to you as well.  It’s easy for us a Christians to slip toward compromise as well, and we should constantly be in prayer for the wisdom to understand and follow God’s word faithfully.  I pray this is a blessing.

All for His glory,

Dan

INTRODUCE YOURSELF AND PROJECT EZRA

READ JOB 26

In this passage, Job is challenging his accusers to consider the truth of who God is.  He is challenging them to consider His nature.

Today we would like to challenge you to consider the same thing.

Listen to the words of Job, and consider them yourselves

Job asked, “With whose help have you uttered words, and whose breath has come out of you?”

God is the creator and sustainer of life.  It is He who gives us breath.

Job said “The dead tremble under the waters and their inhabitants.  Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has no covering.”

This life, and the next life, are under God’s control

He said “He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing.”

The world and the universe are His creation, and His to control.

He says “These are just the outskirts of His ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him.”

All power is His

"The thunder of His power, who can understand?"

God’s power is indeed beyond our understanding

Look around at His creation, and consider the power it would take to create, and to sustain that creation

You are at the mercy of that power, and on the wrong side of it.

But more than that, look at the complexity of the world and think of the intelligence behind such design

That intelligence sees you, and knows your every thought

Not only does God have all power, but He has all knowledge

And God is good.  He is perfectly good, pure, and righteous.

What should a good God, with all knowledge, and all power, do with people like us?

Imaging you could hook a computer hard drive up to your brain, and download every thought that has gone through your mind in the last week.

Now imagine we took that hard drive, hooked it up to a big screen TV, and invited all your friends and family to come over and watch it.  What would they see?

They would see your lies, exaggerations, and half-truths, all of which are sins before God.

They would see your lust.  All of us have had impure thoughts about those we are not married to. 

Jesus called those thoughts adultery, and Revelation tells us that adulterers will one day be cast into a lake of fire, what we usually call Hell.

They would see your hate and anger.  Hate is murder of the heart, and we know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

They would see our coveting. Have you ever taken a moment to consider how selfish and greedy you really are?

They would see these and much more.  They would see wickedness beyond imagination

Would you be comfortable with that?

No, of course not.  You would never want to see those people again.  You would be horribly humiliated.

You and I have both had thoughts run through our minds in the last week that are so vile, so wicked, that we would not share them with our closest friend.

Yet God sees and knows every one of those thought.  He knows every thought you have ever had, even those you forgot long ago.

And we will be judged by those thoughts, just as we will be our actions.

God is good.  And we are not.  God is a good judge, and we are guilty criminals

We deserve nothing but justice for our wickedness.

Hebrews 10 tells us it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God

But though that power can be terrible, it can also be wonderful

The power that can crush can also heal.

The greatest miracle, the greatest act of God’s power and healing, is the saving of a soul

Ezekiel 36 says God will take out your heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh

2 Corinthians 5 says He will make you a new creation.  He will remake you from the inside.

This change of heart, this new creation, comes when you repent and trust in Jesus Christ.

2000 years ago Jesus Christ came to earth.  God became flesh and chose to live with His creation.

He lived for about  30 years.  He healed the sick, raised the dead, fed thousands with a few loafs of bread, and calmed storms with a word.

Then He went to a cross, and bled and died, that those who believed in Him might be saved.

But He didn't stay in the grave.  He rose again on the third day, as He had prophecied He would.

Christians serve a living God!

Are you trusting in that living God?  Or are you trusting in a dead, or imaginary god?

A god who is not pure, who is not holy, and who is not good can not pay for your sins.

But if you will turn from your sin, and turn to Jesus Christ, trusting in Him alone, you will be saved.

So turn.  Turn to the God who is mighty to save.

Turn to the God who created all, yet who humbled Himself and lived among His creation.

Turn to the God who sees all our sin, knows how wicked we are, and chose to come to save us anyway.

Turn to the only true God, and live!