All right, so we're gonna finish Job up today. 42nd chapter, Job, I think is just amazing because it's such a simple ending to such a complex story. Here's Job, he realizes, golly gee, I didn't know everything I was supposed to know and I'm sorry. I mean, I just, I don't get it. I didn't get it. But man, look, the whole point is, is I wanted to serve you. And the greatest part of Job to me is founded around one word. And that word is grace. This book to me is really amazing because it's the first book of the Bible, obviously. And in the first book of the Bible, man thought that God was judging. But in fact, he was showing his grace. And that's what he always does. God is a God of grace. And when Job realized that, it says, and he repented in dust and ashes. He was like, man. Yet his buddies, you know, Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar, by the way, you know, Elihu is not even mentioned. Did you notice that? It's kind of interesting. They get chastised by God. Now, I was reading the book and I wrote this down. I said, what did they do to so upset God? I mean, really. It's really interesting when you read this section that God's not happy with these dudes, so much so that he says, I want you to take seven bulls and seven rams, and I want you to go sacrifice them. And then I want you to ask Job to pray for you, and I'll accept Job's prayer, which is a whole nother kind of interesting comment. I thought that was fascinating, because we don't understand prayer either. I certainly don't think I understand prayer. I really don't get it. that God would say to Job, I want you to pray for these guys, because sort of my supposition was, well, God, you sort of know what's going on here. Why do you need Job to pray for these? You know what I'm saying? Was it demonstrating grace? I think it was demonstrating grace. That's the point. I'm sorry. Forgiveness, grace, yeah, I mean those two things go hand-in-hand, by the way. Forgiveness and grace always go hand-in-hand. So I wrote down a couple of things here. I said, they make God out to be a judge who punishes bad people and rewards good people, and there is no place for grace. That's the first thing. The second thing is they view God as judging people solely on their deeds without any regard for forgiveness or repentance. and or repentance, I probably should have wrote it. The truth is God sends rain to both the just and the unjust, right? I mean, that's Matthew chapter five, I think. So, okay, that's kind of interesting. But here's one of the things that God gave me last night and I wrote it down. God is first a provider of blessing, not an implementer of judgment. God is first a provider of blessing, not an implementer of justice, or judgment rather. And that to me is a big issue, because certainly the Bible talks about God's judgment upon you, but it's the last thing he talks about. It's always the last thing. It's like when I got nothing else I can do, we go to judgment. Before that, though, he's always standing there with his hands wide open. His hands are open wide, like, come on, man, come on, listen to me. And what do we do? We go, nah, I don't think so. I mean, this is kind of like, I want you to think about this. This is kind of like, and this is gonna sound like a weird example, but it's just something that just happened to me this week, which I thought was bizarre, or happened to somebody I know, but I was involved. Let's assume for the sake of argument, you are terminally ill. You are dying. And somebody comes up to you and says, I will give you a million dollar life insurance policy. You can have it. It's on your life. You die. When you die, the million dollars is going to go to your family. Or you can take $100,000 cash right now. You have a choice. Take $100,000 cash right now, or when you pass away, I'm gonna give your family a million dollars. Which would you choose? It's an interesting question if you think about it. Well, who are you thinking of? Exactly, that's the point. Who are you thinking of? Who are you thinking of? Okay, who are you thinking of? At the end of the day, okay? You get out of terminal disease, you know you are not gonna make it much longer, okay? But in your mind, you're like, I'm going to have to pay for that life insurance, and so forth. But they're giving it to you, man. There's no medical exam. There's no nothing. You die, Chuck. Abby gets a million bucks. Who's going to pay the taxes on you? I'm telling you, this is what goes on. This is what goes on. What is the point of that? The point is that God is giving us a picture of what's important. Do you care about now or do you care about what's coming later? What do you care about? What is your perspective? Do you have an eternal perspective or do you have a very now perspective? Do you have any kind of future perspective at all? And that's kind of what's going on here. So I think it's interesting this final thing because obviously the whole thing about him getting twice as much as he originally had was one verse. It was one verse. It wasn't like that big a deal. I mean, I know, it's a big deal. Everybody who talks about Job, that's like the first thing they bring up. But you know, when he got at the end, God gave him twice as much, you know, and gave him back his kids and did all, and I get all that. I get all that and I don't want you to take this the wrong way. I don't mean it. But it was not the most important thing in the chapter. It was almost like, oh, and by the way, God gave him twice as much as he originally had. That's really kind of what's going on here, and I think that's an interesting point that we shouldn't just gloss over. That the twice as much stuff was not that big a deal. that when it was all set, I thought this was also interesting, too. They have this big feast. Once this is all done, they have this big feast, and everybody brings a whole bunch of stuff. They bring all sorts of food, and they bring gold, and they bring rings, and they bring all this kind of stuff to Joe. And my question is, where were all those dudes when he was sitting there starving to death? Like, why didn't we have a big party originally? What changed? What really changed? And my point of saying all this is just this. This ending is fascinating to me. It's not necessarily what it appears. It's God saying, Job, I love you. That's what it's saying. It's not saying, Job, you are perfect. He doesn't say he's In other words, he did that at the beginning when he was talking to Satan. The other thing that's interesting about the ending is Satan is not in the ending. That's important. Satan is not in the ending. Job's in the ending. God's in the ending. Even the three dudes that were working for Satan are in the ending. But Satan is not in the ending. And my take on that is really a big deal. And what I wrote in my notes here is, notice at the end, Satan is not in the picture. God and Job are left. Satan has been dismissed. Satan has said, sayonara, I am not in the game anymore. Satan's gone. And that to me is a big, big deal. Big deal. The other thing that's cool about this too, there's another, there's so many little cool things. This is what I like about this section, it just has cool things. As anybody who knows me and knows me well knows, I am a major proponent of the idea that we are no longer, or should never have ever been for that matter, people that are in this, kind of strata of there's these people and then there's these people and some people are high and some people are low and some people are up and some people are down and so forth. One of the greatest forms of repression that I've ever seen is on women. Women over the history of the world have been repressed So much so that often they don't even get names in the historical books. It's like the wife of this guy, or whatever, or the daughter of this guy. As though the guy was important and the girl was ridiculously unimportant. But the Bible... 2.0 is almost always better than 1.0, right? The second shot at that. Yeah, exactly. But there's a verse that God gave me years and years and years ago that has just... been seared in my consciousness. And I think it's probably, if somebody said, what's the most important verse to you in the Bible? This would have to be at the top of that list. And that is that in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free, male, female. There is no class. There is nobody better than anyone else. Yeah, this is a big deal with me. This is a big deal with me. It really is. Because this is the basis of all wars, if you think about it. The basis of all wars is I'm better than you. Right? We have a war going on in Gaza right now. It's all based upon the fact that, you know, we got the Jewish people up there and they're saying, I'm better than the Palestinians. The Palestinians say, no, no, we're better than the Jews. You know, it's like, you know, okay, well, who's better? No, if you guys would work on the basis that we're all peers and we can work this out together as peers, I could actually have a conversation. Oh, there we go. Think about every major war that's ever occurred in your lifetime, or not in your lifetime, but certainly within, you know, your, perspective, they're all based upon someone's better than the Aryan race. That's the whole point of World War II, if you think about it. We're better than everybody else, and we're going to basically supersede our thoughts upon everybody else's thoughts, and we're going to bury everybody. And of course, that's not the way it happened, and not the way it turned out, but World War I was the same way. I mean, the Spanish-American War, think about that war. That was a classic of, we're better than you guys, and we're going to make you pay for it, because we're better than you, and so forth. The whole conquest of the West in the United States was all about, we're better than the Native people. We're not going to give them anything. We're going to take it all away. They don't believe in God. Therefore, boom, we're out of here." How do you know that they don't believe? You never even asked them. It's fascinating to me. Fascinating. In the dark corner. They're starting to mumble. We're repressed. About women. We were pointing out specifically women, right? And we've read John Elkridge's book, Wild at Heart. Yeah. And I believe what he says about women, because they are representative of the beauty of God, like men are. men are typically considered beautiful. Women are, right? And the whole image of God being male and female, to have the completeness of God, the woman who is the beauty, Satan hates women because of that. Because he at one time was this beautiful, maybe one of the most beautiful creatures that God had created before his fall, right? And he, you know, he's the. The Prince of light and but it was his pride that led to his downfall, right? And pride is always about meeting me first, right? And he's just said that is why the women have from the very beginning. That's why he went after the woman in the very beginning. OK, and ever since he has hated women. And it's true, interesting. It's only a relatively recent historical thing that women have any say so mm-hmm I mean in the course of history up until the last hundred or so years, women were dismissed, and they had no standing, and they had no voice, they had no nothing. And it's interesting, too. And no inheritance. Right. And no inheritance, by the way. That's a big deal. No inheritance. And yet Christ, walking the earth, so favored women, and they so followed Him, and ministered to Him, took care of Him, if you will, His earthly needs, right? First person he told he was the Messiah was a woman. Right. And the first person that went and saw him resurrected was a woman. That's right. That's a big deal. I think it's also a big deal that in Revelation chapter 12, when he's talking about Satan and his, well, I'll read it to you. I call it the abuse of Israel. A great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and her head a crown of 12 stars. And she was with child, and she cried out, giving birth in pain, in labor, giving birth in pain. And another sign appeared in heaven, and behold, a great dragon, having seven heads and 10 horns, and on his head were seven diadems, and his tail swept away the third of the seven." So the point is, is that We see this battle between Satan and Israel, and it's represented as a battle between Satan and a woman. And that to me is fascinating. Look, this idea that his three daughters... Now, I want you to keep this in perspective, guys. This is 4,000 years ago. that this book was written 4,000 years ago. Somewhere in that range. Maybe 3,500. Maybe 4,500. I don't know. Once you got a comma in the number, it's a big number. That's what I'm saying. So this happened a long time ago, long before there was any kind of women's rights or women having any kind of ability to do anything, truth be known. They didn't have any authority, whatever, nothing. Even in Abraham. I want you to think about this. Abraham didn't treat women very well. Didn't. Read the book. It's pretty incredible. The way in which he picked Isaac's wife is pretty Pretty belligerent if you think about it. I mean, I'm not sure that if I were that woman, forget about the father now, but if I were that woman, you mean I don't get a vote? You're going to have a problem if somebody walks up to your daughter and puts a ring in her nose? Yeah, and says, OK, we're taking her. I'm just saying. I mean, come on. I mean, I'm trying not to be rude, you know, but at the same time, I mean, that's really what happened. I mean, read the book. It's pretty amazing what, you know, what Abraham did, you know, our, you know, forefather, you know, whatever. Okay. Okay. There we go. At the, at the, at the root of this whole entire thing, Job realizes something. that he never realized before, and that was his daughters were important. You go back to chapter one, it doesn't even talk about the daughters. All he talks about is the sons. He never praised, just think about this, he never sacrifices for his daughters. Just think about that. He only sacrificed for his seven sons because he said, well, if those boys screw up, man, we better have something going for them, right? He never did that for his daughters. He never did that for his daughters. I went back and looked because I wasn't 100% sure of that. Well, and that's a good point. Okay. And that's well stated. Okay. But look, and then when he named his daughters, Now, in the book, he talks about the fact that he named his daughters such that one was, in the English version, would be Dove, the other was Spice, and the other was Abundance, I believe is what it was. And those are pretty good definitions, by the way. Again, I went and looked them up. Yeah, that's a good interpretation of those names. But I have a kind of a different impression as to what those mean to me. He said Dove meant peace. I say Dove means the Spirit of God. All of a sudden, he saw in his daughter the Spirit of God. When I think of Spice, I think of the Messiah, because it was with Spices that they went when he was born, and it was Spices when he died, you know, to remember this one and so forth. Spices, to me, represent the Messiah. And then the last name is actually the Horn of Abundance. Actually, when I went beyond that, I said, well, you know, that to me is a picture of God the Father, because he provides us with blessings more than any other thing. He is the Horn of Abundance. He is the Horn of Blessing. And to me, this is a picture of God, or of Job, recognizing the tripartite God that we all now serve. I mean, that was just a really, really cool thing that we were able, that I was able to see anyway. Yeah. I'm sorry. No. How do you feel when he revealed that to you? Because that is not in no book. That's not something you just read. That's something you searched out and he revealed. Because that thing is actually saying the Messiah is in Job. Yeah. but it's a prophecy that the Messiah is in Job. Well, to me, it's just a beautiful picture that he revealed it through the daughters. Yes. I mean, that to me is what's... That is three. Yeah, the best part is he revealed it through the daughters. He revealed it through his daughters. And that's what Joshua did when he revealed God through his sons. It will remind him of what God did. doing this whole situation. He named Manissa and Ephraim because he said, this is what God did. And for what you just said, I don't know. Y'all don't look like y'all get what this man said, because this thing is blowing my mind. And what you said, because that's not in the book. Oh, no. Most people just glance over the daughters. But it's so significant when you said Spice, Dove, and Horn. All of that represent the Messiah. Yeah, and to me, that's really what the book is all about. I don't mean just the book of Job, I mean the entire book. I believe everything about the scripture is there to reveal Jesus. So when you're looking at the scripture, early in my life, very early. What he talks about is the Redeemer, too. Yeah, yeah. I mean, everything in the book I remember Ray Cohen saying to me once, he said, Donald, he said, look, look, very simple. Every time you read scripture, the first thing you look for is Jesus. Just look for Jesus. Amen. Just look for Jesus because he's going to be there. He's going to be in the, he's going to be in the fine print. He's going to be in the bold print. He's going to be, he's going to be there. You just gotta look for him. And it's amazing to me how that has resonated in my life now for 50 years. It's just amazing how that has continued, because that message was given to me nearly 50 years ago. It's just an incredible thought. I have some final thoughts on Job, and I just thought I'd share them, and then we'd open it up for some discussion. These are my final thoughts. The first thought was that Job learned about the true God even though he didn't have a Bible. He knew about the true God, even though he didn't have a Bible. So somewhere along the line, Moses came along and wrote it, but this happened way before Moses ever got involved. So Noah must have told somebody, because he was the only one left after the flood. So Noah must have told somebody. Well, who did he tell? He must have told his sons. Well, his sons must have then told somebody, and then they all told somebody, who told somebody, who told somebody, who told somebody. And I think to myself, boy, if you really want to get something screwed up, just keep telling somebody, telling somebody, telling somebody, telling somebody, okay? But somehow through the oral traditions, they knew that God was real and so forth. And his perspective of God, albeit somewhat flawed, was a lot better than... I mean, he knew about the Redeemer, for example. I mean, he understood that that was going to happen. Second thought, Job shows us we rarely understand the trials and the tests that we experience. When you're going through something, I'm sorry, for the most part, you'll never understand why you're going through it. Just ask anybody going through something. Their first question is inevitably, dang, why is this happening? Right? I mean, why? Third thing I realized was we want God to remove our pain, not to teach us lessons through our pain. Hear that? We want God to remove our pain. We want God to remove our pain, not necessarily just to teach us lessons through that pain. And that to me is a big deal. because we never really know the whole story. That's the reason. We really don't. We just don't want the pain anymore. This is why we sell more pain medication than any other single medication. We want to get rid of the pain. We want to numb it somehow. We want to dull it. We want to do something. Look, when my back hurts, the first thing I do is reach for Advil. I mean, that's just a fact. I mean, I'm not proud of that fact, but that's just where it is. The thing I do is, I'm gonna pop a couple of Advil here. Maybe that'll help dull it a little bit. The fourth thing I picked up was, being good does not earn your relationship with God. It only comes by faith. And what people determine as a, I'm gonna add this, what people determine as being a New Testament concept has never really been a New Testament concept at all. It's always been the way God does things. It comes by faith, true faith. When we trust God, that He is going to supply our needs and do what's necessary. The fifth thing I picked up was there is no one, there is no one who deserves God's blessing. No one. If anybody was gonna deserve God's blessing, it would be someone who was always out there trying to do what was right, that's Job. But no one deserves God's blessing. We are all sinners in need of grace, which is what this book is all about. Suffering often accomplishes God's purposes. And I was reminded of a verse that I've memorized for years. He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised and we esteemed him not. Isaiah 53. Suffering often accomplishes God's purposes. That's hard. That's a hard lesson. Would you agree? That's a hard lesson. Seventh thing that I picked up was God never changes, nor changes his mind. And there's a difference, by the way. God doesn't change, but he also doesn't change his mind. We change, and we also change our mind all the time. But God never changes, nor does He change His mind. And as a result, He is never unfair. He is never unfair. Most of all, there is not a separate God of terror and a separate God of grace. He is the same. He is there. And that, to me, is big. You know, this idea that God is somehow the God of love to one person, but the God of terror to another person is absurd. He is the God of every single person. He never changes. And then finally, the last thing I wrote was, our present sufferings don't compare to the glory that is yet to come. we have a temporary perspective, God always has an eternal perspective. We always pay attention to what's going on right now, because that's where we're at. And God is always paying attention to where we're going, because he has an eternal perspective. That, to me, is powerful. So those are some of the final thoughts that I had. I thought I'd just open it up, hear what you all had to say and think or whatever. That was kind of some of the things that I got from this last chapter. One of the things that still doesn't sit right with me in the story is I feel like Joe got into it with those guys rather than rise above it. They're entitled to what they're saying. I mean, maybe they're ill-advised. But if I did that, if I went back and forth and back and forth, and no, no, that's not it, and then I feel, that feels uncomfortable to me. Like there's something about that. I don't know what that is saying to me, but there's just something about what he did. Three rounds back and forth. I mean, enough already. Anybody else feel like? Well, but isn't, I think, you know, I thought it was interesting that God said to Job, I want you to pray for these guys. And I want you, I want you three guys to make a sacrifice to me. Because what God is saying there is the relationship with these brothers, I want to reestablish that. I want it to be a relationship of grace. And by the same token, I don't want it to be broken. I don't want it to be broken. Exactly. And that the relationship with God is restored by making the sacrifice. And so God's about restoring, not breaking down. And, and that's, I mean, it had to be hard for Job to pray for those guys too. You know? And, and so God is bringing restoration in all dimensions. And I thought that was the beauty of of the way that it ended. Joe didn't hold any resentments against him. He didn't really hesitate to break for them when he got to that point. Oh, after he had repented? I agree with that 100%. He was being obedient. But Kent's point is very well taken. It's a really good point, and it's a very important point. But I want you to think about something. I want you to think about this from a different perspective. The word righteous in Hebrew is the word tzitkaner. Tzitkaner. The word honest in Hebrew is tzit. You can't have righteousness without honesty. They're completely intermingled. That's what righteousness is. It's about being honest. And so What Job did is he expressed honestly what was going on in his brain, what he was honestly feeling, and so on. Was it right? As it turns out, it wasn't. But it was honest. And you see, we mix up righteousness with being right when it's really not about being right, it's about being true. It's about being honest. So we could definitely find all sorts of things to criticize Job about in that whole foray. Look, there's enough there to go around, right? Which just proves the point that we made here that no one is deserving of God's blessing, even Job. Because we're all sinners. We all are. But what I love about this book is it allows us to see the honesty of these people. And it allows us to see what they really actually believed. Even the three criticizers, or whatever you want, critics, higher critics as I have started to call them now, and they actually miss the point, including Joe Biden. And that's what he realizes when God comes back to him. He missed the point. He missed the point. The point is that it's not about God judging you, Joe. It's about the fact that there are things that are going to occur either by the flesh or by the world that are going to beat you down. They're going to do certain things, but at the end of the day, you've got to have an eternal perspective. That's really the message of this whole entire thing. So, did he do things? Did he say things? Did he, did he? Of course he did. Yes, no question about it. That, to me, shows us the honesty of the word of God. It really does. Which I love, by the way. Truly, truly do. But I don't stand in judgment over any of them. Because I find, like, they're, but by the grace of God, go on. Let's listen to Randy and then definitely you, Crafty. Yeah, see, I look at the three friends. First of all, they had a just a Their theology was in error. Yeah, okay number one, but number two, especially they did what we often like to do that they judged And I think that's what God had a real problem with because they don't know it's hard Okay, they jumped to their theological errant conclusion Must be sin in your life, Job. Yes, because of the bad that took place in his life, the hardship and suffering pain. And I think that's why at the end, and Job wasn't, you know, Job was also off in his theology. Of course he was. And God showed him that. His core issue was more prideful, actually, because it was pointed out to him, you know, who are you, right? But I think at the end, that's why God had the three go to Job. And if he would pray for them, he would accept that. Okay, because they judge that man, and we do the same thing. And I think the message is, don't judge your brother. Okay, when you don't know. Okay, that's one thing if Joe was living with a woman, He's not his wife, and it's very blatant and open. Yes, they can go and approach him in love and point this out, right? We are called to face obvious issues. But that's not what they did. They just drew a conclusion. Pain, suffering, you did something wrong. You screwed up. Your life, there's some hidden, some secret you're not revealing, being honest about. And I think God had a real problem with that. Mr. Crafty, what do you think? Can you imagine how Job felt when God revealed to him that he was wrong all along? How he felt at that moment. I remember how I felt when he showed me the errors of my ways and opened my eyes. All I wanted to do was repent and just chase after him. And if right at that moment, even today, he says, well, I need you to go forgive those guys now, after you've just been forgiven, after you just got shown your dirty stuff, and God's like, whatever, I love you, you know? It's just another picture of, you know, doing it to others. And, you know, there's somewhere it says, you'll be judged. Be careful how you judge because you're going to be judged the same way you judge others. Yeah, exactly And I think it's that picture of He showed Job and now he's right away. He's like, okay job now you go do that Yeah, and so much, that's such an interesting point, because we don't know the whole story, we want to stop things from happening oftentimes, and God doesn't want it to be stopped. I'll give you a really good example. Jesus is talking to his disciples, John chapters 14, 15, 16, or 15, 14, 15, 16, when they're at the Passover dinner, And he says, hey, I gotta go away. No, God, no, no, Lord, we don't want you to leave. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And he goes, well, dudes, you don't understand. If I don't go away, you don't get the comforter. And if you don't get the comforter, you don't do nothing. Think about that. And so they're sitting there and they're going, well, we don't want you to go. And he goes, oh, I got to go. Because you don't see the whole picture. You don't see the whole thing. You don't get the million dollar life insurance policy. Yeah, you don't get the million dollar life insurance policy. I mean, you know, what I'm trying to express is we don't know what we don't know. That's the problem. And that, of course, is always the issue. We just don't know what we don't know. And so I love the idea that Job is dealing with those issues. Those are some of the key kind of things that Job's talking about in this conclusion. Who else? For me, I think the message of grace and the theology of good works is what's really standing out in Job late. We're doing a study in Romans on Tuesdays, and there's just so much in that that is drawn from Job. Chapter 11, especially. Yeah, right? And just being able to have maybe both of those happening at the same time in my mind, a little bit of it overlaps, but it's... the thought process, you know, we say that the theology of the Friends was wrong, or the theology of Job was wrong, and the question is, what was wrong about the theology, right? Like, here they have this oral tradition of what God was and what they should believe, but what we see in the end of this is that the theology that was wrong was not about how great God was or that they needed to do good works or any of that, but that there was a difference between them. Because there is no difference. Because no matter how many good deeds they do, their tally of good deeds that they did never gets them to a point of equality with God. But the mindset starting out, the theology issue that is wrong is all for them. had in their heads that their good deeds were enough that they were as good as God, right? And that they had made that scoreboard a tie game, so they were on equal footing with God, where Job was able to have a conversation with God and say, I can justify myself, right? Until God said, can you justify yourself? Right? And then he had to look at it. Where were you when? Exactly. All your good deeds, they mean nothing. I mean, you started the game at zero, but I started the game at a billion. Just because I did 10 and you did 10 at the same time, a billion, 10, and 10 are not the same. Well, let's take it even further. God starts at infinite. Exactly. Okay. So you have this mindset, and it's just so true in the world, right? Just even now, and even in ourselves, where we think, boy, I've done everything right. I, I don't deserve this. What do you mean? You don't deserve anything, right? Like you're, you're so far down in the sty that, that compared to God, that anything that you get is a blessing and anything that he takes is a blessing. So it is, everything is a blessing. And, and so when it, when it, you get rid of that mindset of works and it becomes about grace, like, For me, that's the part that stands out in that you have the oldest book in the Bible that we have of written evidence of this faith, and it's talking about grace from that perspective. And that's what stands out for me. I can never score enough points that anything I could ever do, no matter how good, no matter if I never did anything bad, no matter how much good I did, I'm not good enough. Right? I never did anything bad. I don't need to have a story of how I betrayed my wife. I don't need to have a story of how I beat my children. I need to have a story. I was born. I started not good enough. And if I spent my whole life just doing good, I'm still not good enough. Yeah. It's, it's fascinating that right in the heart of Romans chapter 11, Right in the heart. Well, maybe not necessarily the heart, because I think it's the sixth verse. It basically tells us, but if it is by grace, then it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. I mean, that's a pretty amazing statement, if you think about it. Otherwise, it's no longer grace. Now, he's not talking about New Testament principles here. He's talking about Israel. That's who he's talking about. And he's talking about the fact that God is gonna do what he's gonna do, not because it works, because there is no work that they have done that would ever qualify them. That's what he says right at the beginning. There's no work they can do. There's no work they did. There's no work that anyone has ever done. It's gonna qualify you. Nothing qualifies you. That's the message of Joe. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. You gotta wrap your arms around that concept, guys. That's a big time concept that is the whole, in my opinion, message joke. There's something with the friends, right? That's part of that grace message, right? I don't know that I have that fully fleshed out in my head, but the fact that they had to go and sacrifice the bulls and then ask Job to pray for them, it's the issuance of grace, but that action wasn't about Job and it wasn't about God, it was about their hearts. Precisely. They had to repent and they hadn't yet. Right. And did you notice there is no evidence they ever did repent? For them to ask for the prayer, I think that forces them to repent. But it doesn't actually say they repented. It clearly says Job repented. I'm not trying to be nitpicky. Please don't take it that way. I don't really have an opinion one way or the other, if you want to know the truth. I've read Job several times, and I think every time I read it, I'm more amazed at the just the depth of knowledge that you get, that you see in other books of the Bible, that here it's a joke. But you wouldn't get it if you're not really nitpicking what's there and trying to understand what's that language? What's the arc of this section? What's the allegory that could be implied? What's the context of this conversation? What might be happening? I love that in this study was the direction you know, the thought of it being like a play, and you're trying to think of who's on stage, and you get to that mindset of, well, okay, Satan disappears. After he causes the boils and whatnot, we go, you know, Satan again. So what is that, like chapter six he's done? And then you got, you know, the remaining 30 or 28 chapters that you don't see him. And is he there the whole time? Is he listening in, in the back room with God, just observing casually, making comments? You know, oh, oh, it's starting to feel like he's turning. He's starting to turn. And then he walks away? Or did he get done? establishing that pain, suffering, not getting his immediate result, and he's bam, out of here. And then it was really just, Joe, without the tempter, without somebody else. I mean, these are all the idiosyncrasies that I think make it such a valuable book. Yeah, Andrew. My favorite novel is The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky, in which he says, if God is dead, everything is permissible. And Dostoevsky's Panamazov, as well as Crime and Punishment, deal with the issues of the origin of evil, the search for freedom, morality issues, the search for faith. And it's interesting how Job has influenced so many writers, movie makers, Archibald MacLeish, Terence Malick, the Coen brothers. Remember those sarcastic movies by the Coen brothers? Yes, yes. A lot of influence of this book on people's artwork or literature or movies or whatever it is. It's all in there, dealing with the fundamental issues of morality and the origin of evil. Yeah, look, we could go for hours. We're not going to. We're going to try and draw this thing to a conclusion. Can I say one thing? Yeah. I mean, Job is each of us. It's our journey. Gosh, that's so well said. Thank you And sometimes we screw up just like Joe sometimes we're not you know, right sometimes we are completely wrong sometimes we make sometimes we make the most absurd and decisions based upon bad information, right? And the reason that's important, because when I read this, I mean, I put myself in, you know, in his character. I would have tapped out when they took my kids. Yeah. You know, this gives you hope. Yeah. Yeah. You know, to endure, you know, what's coming. And I've always appreciated, because I had never thought of this before I read this particular commentary by Stedman. I had never thought about the fact that he did give him twice as many kids, because his kids, even though they were gone, were not. I hadn't thought about that before. So he gave him... double of everything, including his kids. And his age. Oh, and his age. He's 70 years old, so he lived, what, 140 more years. He lived 140 more years, so he lived a couple hundred years. Look, this book is so interesting. I don't know how many times I've been through the book. I've actually taught it three times, or twice, excuse me. This is the second time I've taught it. And I don't even remember what I taught the last time. That sounds crazy, but I really don't. I don't remember teaching it at this level. Because you have a whole different perspective. I have a whole different perspective. I'm way older. You know what I mean? A difference a year makes. A difference a year makes. Yeah, exactly. Way older. Look, oh, that's right. We went through it on, I forgot about that. There was three times. OK, so never mind. But I've read the book. a bunch of times besides that. And the truth of the matter is that what I liked about this particular way we went through it is we did it in bunches, which was very powerful for me, that we did this in bunches, like we did seven or eight chapters at once. to kind of get a perspective of that whole entire concept of thought. Because when you view it as a play, you've got to do it that way. When you view it as, you know, kind of a different kind of perspective. So anyhow, I had some other things I was going to read, but they're not important. Look. Keep this book. I would suggest you keep this. Don't give this book away. Keep this book. Go back to it occasionally. Read it. Think about it. When you're going through pain, maybe you ought to read it again. And so on. Because we're all going to suffer eventually. It's not a question of if, it's a question of how many times and how bad it's going to be. And so the truth is, is that we need an internal perspective. And that's not as easy as it sounds. So next week we'll get together, we'll start this book in Titus, talk about some godly foundations, which begins with dominion, which is not dominance. You know why I said that? And then we'll go from there. All right, let's get out of here.