Now, in Job chapter 12, we're back to Job answering his three friends.
In chapter 11, it was Zophar the Neamathite that spoke, and of course, Zophar pretty much
just brings up all the same exact arguments that his two friends have brought up, just
really driving in the fact that, you know, if you're a godly person, nothing bad is ever
going to happen to you, and if you do wrong, everything bad is going to happen to you.
And of course, we know that's not true, because throughout the Bible, there are all kinds
of examples of people who were doing a lot of good things.
They were doing all the right things, and yet they went through trials and tribulations.
In fact, the Bible says, yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer
persecution, and so we're all going to go through bad times, and so it was a pretty
tired argument in chapter 11.
So Job comes back in chapter 12 verse 1, it says, and Job answered and said, no doubt,
but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.
Now obviously, Job in chapter 12 verse 2 is being sarcastic.
He's making fun of them, and this reminds me of the expression that we have today, you
are the man.
You know, that's pretty much what, you know, you're the man, but he's making it plural.
So he says, no doubt, but ye are the people.
I mean, you guys are just, you have it all, and he says, wisdom shall die with you.
So he's being sarcastic and making a mockery that they think that they're the only ones
who know these obvious things that they're stating.
If you do good, good things are going to come back to you, and if you do bad, bad things
are going to come back.
But they're missing a lot of the point there.
They have an overly simplistic view of how the world works, basically.
So it says in verse 3, but I have understanding as well as you.
I'm not inferior to you, yea, who knoweth not such things as these?
He's saying, you know, the things that you're saying are just obvious, but they're missing
something.
Now look what it says in verse 4, I am as one mocked of his neighbor, who calleth upon
God and he answereth him, the just upright man is laughed to scorn.
And I want to focus in on that phrase there, the just upright man is laughed to scorn.
And of course when Jesus Christ was crucified, what did they do?
They laughed at him, they mocked him, they laughed him to scorn.
And often when we do what's right, when we take a stand on the word of God, people will
laugh at us and make a mockery of us.
In fact the world loves to mock Christians, and the world loves to make fun of and joke
about Christians, and in fact a lot of the stuff that's on TV, if it ever involves a
character that's say a pastor of a church, or a character that's a devout Christian or
just a really sold out, fundamental Baptist type, it's a joke and they make them look
foolish and a mockery is made in TV and movies.
Usually if a preacher is ever shown on TV in a TV show or something like that, it's
usually a complete weakling.
He's usually very effeminate, very soft, very weak, and he's a laughing stock because the
world today makes a mockery of that which is right.
And often I remember when I was in school, going to public school as a Christian, often
I would be made fun of for being a Christian and be mocked because I was a Christian.
And this is something that we have to understand that if we want to be popular we're going
to have to compromise our beliefs and we're going to have to water down our stand on the
word of God.
Because you're never going to be popular standing for what's right and loving the word of God
and standing on the Scriptures.
You're not going to be a popular preacher like that.
You're not going to be the most popular person at your job or at your school.
So you just have to decide what's important to you.
Do you want everybody to like you and you want to be popular or do you want to stand
up for what's right and have God be pleased with you?
Paul said, for do I now persuade men or God?
For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.
And we have to decide that it's okay if people mock us.
It's okay if people laugh us to scorn because we know that we're standing on the word of
God which is the truth.
Says in verse 5, he that is ready to slip with his feet is as a lamp despised in the
thought of him that is at ease.
Talking about the fact that it's easy for Job's friends to sit back and talk badly about
Job because they're sitting in relative comfort and ease.
Verse 6, the Bible reads, the tabernacles of robbers prosper and they that provoke God
are secure into whose hand God bringeth abundantly.
And again in this verse, Job is reminding his friends of the fact that God's judgment
does not always come swiftly.
Yes, every evildoer will eventually be punished for their wickedness, but it doesn't always
happen right away.
We often see ungodly, wicked people prospering in this world, thriving, and we look at that
and say, you know, why do they get away with this?
Why are they never punished?
But we know that of course eventually they will be punished.
Usually it comes to them in this life.
Usually you will see it in our lifetime, but we know that of course there's hell to pay
beyond that for those that are not punished in this life.
It says in verse 7, but ask now the beasts and they shall teach thee, and the fowls of
the air and they shall tell thee, or speak to the earth and it shall teach thee, and
the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee, who knoweth not in all these that the hand
of the Lord hath wrought this.
Now here Job is talking about the fact that we can learn things from the natural world
and especially the animal kingdom.
Now flip over if you would to Proverbs chapter 6.
Go to Proverbs 6, Job, then Psalms, then Proverbs.
You see there are two things that we know came directly from God that were created by
God, that are the handiwork of God, and those two things are the Word of God, the Bible,
we know came from God, and we know that the natural world was created by God.
Everything that we see in nature we know was created by God.
And so we can learn from both.
Now obviously the most important source of our knowledge comes from the Word of God.
That's the most clear and the most explicit.
But there are also things that we can learn from the natural world.
We can learn from God's creation.
The Bible tells us that the heavens declare the glory of God and that the stars and the
sun and moon, they all show as handiwork and we can learn from all of them.
And God often uses animals in the Bible to teach us various lessons about life and that's
what Job is referring to, that if we look to the animals we can learn things.
Like for example it says in Job 6 verse 6, go to the ant thou sluggard, consider her
ways and be wise, which having no guide nor overseer or ruler, provideth her meat in the
summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard, when wilt thou rise out of thy sleep?
Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep, so shall thy
poverty come as one that travelth, and thy want as an armed man.
Now it's interesting how the Bible is always right, scientifically.
It's always accurate.
For example it says, go to the ant thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise.
So the Bible realizes the fact that the worker ant is the female.
And there are a lot of parallels between the ant and the bee.
If you look at how a beehive works and how an ant hill, I guess, an ant hill, I don't
know what those tunnels that they build underground are called, but that whole network, that whole
system.
It's very similar how these animals operate, whether it be an ant or a bee.
They live in colonies and it's the females who are the workers and they do all this work
and they work nonstop.
They work themselves to death.
You know, bees could actually live much longer if they would just work less.
But because they just work so hard all the time, they literally just work themselves
into an early grave.
And of course, you know, certain bees are selected and handpicked to be a queen bee.
They're fed the royal jelly.
They're fed different food that makes them grow and get huge.
I don't know as much about ants as I know about bees, but I know that they're very similar
creatures.
You know, sometimes you'll find that queen ant, that huge ant that is kind of the mother
of that whole ant hill.
But you see how the ants, they have no guide nor overseer or ruler, but they provide their
meat in the summer and gather their food and harvest.
Now the Bible is saying we can learn something from that.
You know, we can look at the ant and learn how to be a self-motivated person.
Not a person that has to have someone watching us all the time and cracking the whip on us
to make sure that we do our work, but rather we can be someone who self governs and parents
ourselves.
Now in the working world, if you want to succeed as a man at your job, you have to learn how
to do your work without having an overseer.
Some people, unless they have someone standing over them, cracking the whip, making sure
they get their work done, they don't get anything done.
Well that's going to cause you to be paid less because now the company has to pay somebody
to watch over you and make sure you're working and they have to pay you to do the work.
But when you can become independent and you can go and get the job done without someone
babysitting you, then you're going to make more money.
And children, that's a skill to start working on now, children.
To learn how to just get your job done and get your work done without someone having
to walk you through it every step of the way and holding your hand.
And also just seeing a need, seeing a job that needs to be done and just taking care
of it without somebody having to tell you to take care of it.
These are the type of things that we can learn from the ant because the ant, the Bible says,
has no guide, nor overseer, nor ruler.
Because the queen bee, or the queen of that ant colony, is not the boss.
The queen bee, in fact, when she stops producing the requisite number of children for the hive,
she is euthanized by the worker bees.
Yes, they will, because this is what they do, this is how bees work.
They make a few different queen bees, they don't want to put all their eggs in one basket,
so to speak.
So they take a couple of little tiny eggs that become the larvae, because it's an insect,
and they start feeding them the royal jelly, multiple queen candidates.
They feed them the royal jelly.
And as they get older and develop and become mature, then they have them fight to the death.
These queen candidates, and they sting each other and fight each other until only one
is left standing.
So they figure that's the strongest one, so that's going to be the queen.
The queen's job is just to lay eggs, just to produce offspring, that's it.
And it's not really the one that's running the hive or making any decisions or anything,
it's just producing children.
And when it stops producing enough children, they kill it and replace it with someone else.
So there are a lot of things that we can learn from the ant or from the bees that they
work hard and that they don't have a guide or an overseer or a ruler.
It's funny, I was watching this little documentary thing about ants, and it was showing all their
intricate structures that they build underground, and they said, you know, it almost seems like
the work of a master designer.
It almost seems like the work of one mind.
And of course we know that's not true, and so they say, well obviously it is the work
of one mind, God.
But the Bible is scientifically accurate in the sense that there is no guide or ruler
or overseer.
The queen bee or the queen ant is not the boss, there is no boss.
There is no guide or overseer or ruler, the Bible is right.
But we've got to be careful when we're taking examples from nature that we don't just take
every example from nature.
I mean, don't just look at your dog and say, you know, I'm going to go to the dog and be
wise.
You know, the dog returns unto its own vomit, and the Bible says, so does the fool return
to his own folly.
So some animals provide a negative example, do you understand?
So there are some animals that we look at and we can get a positive example, we can
look at the ant and say, wow, what a hard worker, what a self-starter.
Doesn't need to be constantly told what to do, but figures it out on its own.
And we can learn from that not to be lazy, that's what the next verses explain, to work
hard to get things done.
But we can also take bad examples from the bee or the ant.
You know, would you want to live in a society like the ant colony or the beehive where you're
just worked into an early grave, people who aren't productive are put to death.
I mean, obviously this is not a righteous system.
The dog can provide good examples of loyalty, it can provide good examples of love and affection
and man's best friend, but it can also provide a bad example, like when the Bible says as
the dog returns to his vomit, so does the fool return to his folly.
That's why it's so ridiculous when the sodomites try to say, well, oh look, there's this animal
that does it.
You know, I could show you animals that do all kinds of things.
You know, there are animals in the wild that just rip each other apart.
I mean, violent creatures.
And there are all kinds of times in the Bible where God used examples of animals that are
bad examples.
He used the ostrich as being a bad example, a very foolish animal that often destroys
its own offspring, okay?
It uses examples about lions and bears and, I mean, good, bad, everything.
So we need to use wisdom when interpreting what we see in the natural world.
Yes we can learn from nature.
Yes we can learn from plants and animals.
But we have to have the Word of God to guide us and not just blindly choose an animal as
a role model.
Okay?
And just say, I'm going to be just like the dolphin.
You know?
Okay.
That doesn't make any sense.
So when we have the Word of God as our final authority, we can learn more by then looking
at nature, looking at the animal kingdom, and we can gain even further instruction.
You know, there are so many illustrations that we could find in nature.
For example, you think about starting a church.
It's often called planting a church.
Someone's often called a church planter.
Well think about it.
If you plant a weed, it grows really fast.
But it's junk.
It's worthless.
Whereas if you plant a tree, it takes many years to produce fruit.
It's a slow but steady growth.
But in the end, it's much bigger and greater and stronger than that weed.
But it takes time.
And it's the same way when you plant a church or anything else of value in life.
When I was a child, we used to race trees.
Whoever did this, where you find a tree that's your exact height and then you race it.
It was something my grandparents did.
It was a tradition.
Everybody had a tree at my grandparents' house that was there.
They would go into the woods and find a tree that was our exact height and then we'd say
we're going to race that tree.
And then we'd come back a few months later and see who's taller.
You know, us or the tree.
And then eventually the tree's like 20 feet tall.
We always lost.
So there are things like that that we can learn.
If you have wisdom, you can see things like that.
And Solomon spoke a lot of proverbs that involved plants and animals and things.
But we just don't want to just blindly just accept things that we see in the natural world
as being something that we should emulate unless we take that from the Bible.
We should take it on a biblical principle first.
So you know, going out in the woods is great and getting close to God.
But make sure that it is all based on the Word and it's not just a randomness of us
just going out there and just making stuff up.
You know, that we walk around the woods and just make things up that we believe.
That's not something that we should be doing.
So anyway, Job, chapter 12, he's talking about going to the animals and looking to the animals
to see if we can learn things and so forth.
It says in verse 11 of chapter 12,
Does not the ear try words and the mouth taste his meat?
With the ancient is wisdom, and in length of days, understanding.
Now that is a principle that generally holds true.
The longer that we live on this earth, theoretically, the more that we learn.
And theoretically, those who are older have more wisdom than those that are younger.
Now obviously, everyone has a different level of intelligence or wisdom or knowledge.
And obviously, we could find plenty of older people that are fools.
You know, the saying goes, there's no fool like an old fool.
And obviously, we could find young people who have wisdom beyond their years.
But in general, the older we get, the wiser we get, or at least that's the way it should
be.
Now, I will say this, no matter how smart you are, no matter how advanced you are for
your age, there are certain things that just come with time.
And there's really no substitute for just age and experience sometimes.
And I don't care how smart of a 15-year-old you are or 16-year-old or 17, you know, you
don't know everything.
You don't have all the answers.
And there's a lot, and I'll be honest with you, when I was about 21, 22 years old, you
know, I felt like, you know, I know I have more to learn, I know I'm going to learn more,
but I think I've pretty much learned all the main things.
You know, I remember thinking to myself when I was about 21, I don't think I'm ever going
to learn anything again that's just a groundbreaking, life-changing, I mean, you know, I've read
the Bible so many times, I just feel like I have the main truths down.
But you know what?
I've learned a lot of really big things since then.
And the older you get, you just gain wisdom and experience with things.
And I'm constantly learning new things.
And I'm constantly learning things that really just change the way I look at things in all
areas of life.
Whether it has to do with the food that I eat, you know, I'm constantly learning things
about food and nutrition, you know, eating better food and just living a healthier life.
I'm constantly learning new things in the Bible.
Even when I was preparing for that Revelation series, you know, because I really wanted
to make sure that what I preached was accurate.
And I had to preach the whole book of Revelation and every verse, and I really wanted to make
sure I knew what I was talking about.
And so I spent months and months and months just really just studying deeply in the book
of Revelation.
I went through the whole book of Revelation every day for months, the whole book.
And I talked to everyone that I knew and asked them what they thought about this and that.
And I kept studying and praying and looking at it and writing it down.
And I learned a lot of really new, interesting things that I was able to preach in that Revelation
series that I'd never thought of, even though I've studied this stuff for years.
So I'm constantly learning things in the Bible, I'm constantly learning things about
life, I'm constantly learning things about marriage and about child-rearing.
And so we've got to realize that we don't know everything.
And sometimes you come to a church like ours where you learn a lot and you get to the point
where you feel like, yeah, I pretty much know most of it or all of it or a lot of it, but
you know what, there's always a lot more to learn.
And that's why you should come to church, be humble, be ready to learn.
I learn things at the preaching class when I hear the guys get up and preach because
I don't know everything.
And sometimes there are major, groundbreaking truths that you learn later in life.
My sister told me there's an old Spanish proverb, she said, that goes like this, the devil's
wise because he's old, not because he's the devil.
And what that means is that no matter who you are, even a bad person gains a certain
amount of knowledge and experience just from being around on this earth for a long time.
And the Bible tells us in Ezekiel 28 that the devil is wiser than Daniel.
Now why would that be?
Because the devil lived a lot longer than Daniel.
I mean the devil's been around for thousands of years.
Now obviously he's wicked, he's evil, he only wants to harm and to destroy.
He's pretty smart and that's why he's got so many people fooled and the Bible says that
the god of this world has blinded the minds of them that believe not.
And he's smart about the way he tricks and deceives the world that we live in.
And so when we're young, we don't want to just assume that we know everything and you
should always listen to people that are older than you.
When you're young, listen to people that are older than you and they're not always going
to know more than you.
They're not always going to be right, but you should at least listen and take into account
and say, wait a minute, this person has been around a lot longer than I have, maybe they
know something I don't.
Maybe they've just seen things that I haven't seen.
And the older you get, supposedly, hopefully the more wisdom you get.
Now go to 1 Timothy chapter 4 because you want to be careful that this is not something
that we throw in the face of young people.
We shouldn't throw in the face of young people.
Some young person will speak a biblical truth and then someone will just shut them down,
I'm twice your age, shut up, you don't know anything.
And you know what, when I was younger, because now I'm much older and more seasoned, I'm
not that old, but when I was younger than I am now, people threw this in my face even
more than they would now.
Because even though I'm not that old, I seem old, because I have a lot of kids and I'm
a pastor and I have a beard and everything, but when people would throw that in my face
as a teenager, I remember being a teenager, right?
And I'd go to somebody's door to give them the gospel to win them to Christ.
I had the answer, I had the truth, they didn't.
And sometimes they'd hit you with that, well you're young, you don't know, I'm twice your
age.
And you know what I would always say, this book is older than both of us.
And I said, this isn't my wisdom, I'm just showing you what the Bible says in this book,
this book is older than both of us.
We should both take note of this.
So this is not something that we should ever throw in the face of young people.
It's a really foolish thing to pull out in an argument is, well I'm older, you're young,
you don't know, that's not necessarily true.
Look what the Bible says in 1 Timothy 4 verse 12, it says, Let no man despise thy youth,
but be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit,
in faith, in purity, till I come give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.
So it's not something that we should throw in the face of young people and say, well
you're young, you don't know anything.
It's something rather that young people should take heed unto and just be wise and listen
to those that are older.
If you would have talked to me when I was four years old, I remember when I was four
years old telling my parents I could drive a car if I were just big enough to reach the
pedals and reach the steering wheel.
And I had no doubt in my mind.
And they said, you know, how do you know that you could drive a car?
And I said, you know, I've played pole position and won all these races, I mean obviously
I could drive a car.
You know, the two gears, low and high, right?
Who remembers pole position?
You know, prefer the cool car.
And yeah, exactly, that's what I said the first 500 times I heard it too.
So you know, pole position, I thought, oh I can drive, I know everything.
You know, that's how kids are.
But I remember when I started actually learning how to drive when I was 15.
It was really hard.
It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.
So what I'm saying is when we're young, we need to understand that people who are older
sometimes know things we don't know.
We should look to them for wisdom.
But to the old, they should never talk down to the young.
You don't know anything, you're just wrong because you're young.
Because if you remember what David said, you don't have to turn there, but in Psalm 119,
the longest chapter in the Bible, it says in verse 99, I have more understanding than
all my teachers for thy testimonies are my meditation.
I understand more than the ancients because I keep thy precepts.
So obviously a young person who keeps God's Word and meditates on it and studies it is
going to be wiser than the elderly man who neglects God's Word.
But the exception proves the rule.
In general, those who are older have more knowledge, more wisdom, and should be listened
to and hearkened unto.
But when they contradict the Bible, no, we go with the Word of God, we go with the Bible.
So you see the balance there?
The Scripture teaches both.
There's a balance that we need to understand that we need to respect the elderly, we need
to respect their experience and their knowledge, but they should never use that to talk down
to the young.
Those like myself that are in the middle, you know, I should look to people that are
older and get the wisdom that I can.
And here's the thing, just because people don't have wisdom in one area, sometimes you
can still glean wisdom in other areas.
Like the Bible says, the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the
children of light.
So maybe somebody doesn't know the Bible, but they might have good advice on, you know,
buying a house or buying a car or, you know, something like that, something practical that
they could give you advice on.
It says in verse 13, back in Job 12, with him is wisdom and strength, speaking of God
in verse 13, it shifts to talking about God, with him is wisdom and strength, he hath counsel
and understanding.
Behold, he breaketh down and it cannot be built again.
He shutteth up a man and there can be no opening.
Of course, that reminds us of Revelation chapter 3, Jesus Christ is the one that shuts
and no man opens.
Another proof of the deity of Christ.
Behold, he withholdeth the waters and they dry up.
Also he sendeth them out and they overturn the earth.
With him is strength and wisdom.
The deceived and the deceiver are his.
He leadeth counselors away spoiled and maketh the judges fools.
He looseth the bonds of kings and girdeth their loins with a girdle.
He leadeth princes away spoiled and overthroweth the mighty.
He removeeth away the speech of the trustee and taketh away the understanding of the aged.
He poureth contempt upon princes and weakeneth the strength of the mighty.
He discovereth deep things out of darkness and bringeth out to light the shadow of death.
He increaseth the nations and destroyeth them.
He enlargeth the nations and straighteneth them again.
He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth and causeth them to wander
in a wilderness where there is no way.
They grope in the dark without light and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.
Now in these scriptures, Job is talking about the fact that God is able to destroy any leader
and any nation any time he wants to.
Earlier in the passage, he talked about the fact that in verse 10, glance at verse 10,
it says in whose hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.
So the Bible says that the breath of all mankind is in God's hands, meaning that at any moment
God could just go like this and you would stop breathing.
God could end your life today if he saw fit.
I mean if God was not pleased with you and he just decided to do so, he could just like
that end your life.
And your fate is in God's hands, meaning that God could cause you to succeed and God could
cause you to fail.
God could give you great riches.
God could reduce you to abject poverty.
God could cause you to be promoted at your job.
God could cause you to be fired from your job.
God could cause you to be healthy and well.
God could cause you to be sick and decrepit.
God controls our destiny for better or for worse.
And so if we want to be blessed, we need to understand that the path to God's blessing
is through the door of obedience and really seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness
is going to determine how our life turns out.
The Bible says, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these
things shall be added unto you.
So when we sacrifice our walk with God, sacrifice serving God, sacrifice keeping the commandments
of God for personal advantage, you know what?
You're swimming upstream because you think that you're doing what's best for your situation,
what's best for your finance or whatever, but anytime you're sacrificing your walk with
God, you're moving backwards because God is the one who ultimately controls your success
or failure.
I mean God can make you succeed against all odds or he can make you fail against all odds.
And part of the reason why Job's bringing this up is because, you know, Job has experienced
this firsthand.
I mean at the beginning of the book of Job, Job is on the top of the world.
He has all the success you can imagine and it's all removed from him.
Now what was interesting to me as I was studying Job chapter 12 is the parallels between Job
chapter 12 and Daniel chapter 4 about the story with Nebuchadnezzar because Daniel actually
brings up the exact same thing to Nebuchadnezzar that Job brings up.
He says, God in whose hand thy breath is.
It's interesting that that statement is made both in the book of Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar
and here in Job 12.
Now look at the last two verses of Job 12 and tell me if this reminds you of the story
of Nebuchadnezzar.
It says, he taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth.
Now wasn't Nebuchadnezzar the chief of the people of the earth?
I mean he was the leader of the whole world and did not God take away his heart and give
him in its place the heart of a beast?
And then look at the next phrase there, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness where
there is no way.
Isn't that what Nebuchadnezzar did?
They grope in the dark without light and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.
Let's look at that story.
Go to Daniel chapter 4.
It's amazing how much in Job 12 parallels Daniel 4 when Job is talking about God taking
down kings and God destroying nations and leaders and causing them to go out in the
wilderness and be like an animal and he takes away their heart.
And of course we know that the book of Job was written long before the events of the
book of Daniel.
So this is something that Nebuchadnezzar could have taken heed unto if he wanted to.
This is something that Nebuchadnezzar had access to.
And of course we know that Nebuchadnezzar was also personally warned by Daniel the prophet.
I mean Daniel the prophet warned Nebuchadnezzar and you know when you read the story, Daniel
did not hate Nebuchadnezzar.
Daniel speaks to him with the utmost respect and he actually pleads with him to change
his ways so that these things will not come upon him.
Daniel in love for Nebuchadnezzar pleads with him to change his ways.
But of course he doesn't listen because look at verse 27 of Daniel chapter 4.
This is where Daniel is pleading with King Nebuchadnezzar to change his ways.
He says in verse 27,
Wherefore, O king, let my counsel be acceptable unto thee and break off thy sins by righteousness
and thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, if it may be a lengthening of thy tranquility.
And truth be told, when God prophesies doom and destruction upon someone, not only is
a lengthening of tranquility available, sometimes God will repent and turn from his anger.
Because remember Jonah preached, yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
But yet when they turned, God turned from his wrath and God did not judge Nineveh.
You can say well Nineveh was eventually judged right but it was probably a completely different
generation a hundred years later or whatever.
That generation was spared.
The generation of Josiah was spared because of the fact that they left off sin for righteousness.
Now go to verse 28 there in Daniel 4.
Let's read the story.
Daniel chapter 4,
All this came upon the king Nebuchadnezzar.
At the end of twelve months he walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon.
The king spake and said, Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of
the kingdom by the might of my power and for the honor of my majesty?
So what is the sin of Nebuchadnezzar here?
Pride.
He's bragging.
He's boasting saying, Look what I've done.
Look how great I am.
Look what I've built.
Look what I've accomplished.
And it says in verse 31,
While the word was in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar,
to thee it is spoken.
The kingdom is departed from thee, and they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling
shall be with the beasts of the field.
They shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee, until
thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever
he will.
The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar, and he was driven from men
and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs
were grown like eagle's feathers.
Have you ever seen people like that?
And his, in Jamaica right, no I'm just kidding, and his nails like bird's claws.
And at the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine
understanding returned unto me.
And I blessed the Most High, and I praised and honored him that liveth forever, whose
dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation.
And all the inhabitants of the earth are computed as nothing, and he doeth according to his
will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay
his hand or say unto him, What doest thou?
Again all these statements Nebuchadnezzar was making are very similar to the teaching
of Job 12.
At the same time my reason returned unto me, meaning his mind returned unto him, and for
the glory of my kingdom mine honor and brightness returned unto me, and my counselors and my
lords sought unto me, and I was established in my kingdom, and excellent majesty was added
unto me.
Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honor the king of heaven, all whose works
are truth and his ways judgment, and those that walk in pride he is able to abase."
And you know another interesting thing about this story is that it's kind of similar to
Job's story.
Now obviously the difference with Job's story is that Job didn't do anything wrong.
Job did nothing wrong, lost everything, and then it was all restored to him double.
I mean at the end of the book of Job he ends off better than at the beginning.
And Nebuchadnezzar is kind of the same way, because he starts out very wealthy and powerful
like Job, he loses everything like Job, and then he gets it back plus more like Job.
The difference is of course that Nebuchadnezzar deserved what came to him.
He was being punished for his sins.
Go back to verse 16 though, you're in Daniel 4 there?
Go back to verse 16.
This is when it's being prophesied that this is going to happen to him.
It says, "...let his heart be changed from man's, and let a beast's heart be given unto
him and let seven times pass over."
See how that's the same thing it said in Job 12 about he taketh away their heart and makes
them go wander in the wilderness?
You know God can punish people by making them insane.
I mean isn't that what the Bible teaches?
We see it here, and he can actually punish someone by causing them to lose their mind.
That's what he did.
We have a perfect example of it.
And in Job 12 we see it as just axiomatic, I mean this is just something that God does.
He strikes some people with madness as a punishment.
That's a pretty severe punishment.
Thankfully for Nebuchadnezzar, thank God that eventually he humbled himself and his
reason returned to him.
That's interesting in verse 16 there it says, "...let seven times pass over him."
And there's been debate, people have talked about, you know, what does that mean seven
times?
Are we talking days, are we talking weeks, are we talking months?
And I've had some people tell me that they were just pretty firm on the fact that it
was seven months.
But if you think about it, in order for your nails to grow like bird claws, I don't think
that seven months is sufficient.
Some of you have gone that long without cutting your nails, but I'm just saying I don't think
that that would be sufficient for him to have the bird claw like fingernails and to have
the hair like eagle's feathers and things like that.
But aside from that, let the Bible define itself.
In the same book of Daniel, we have prophecies about the end times.
And in those prophecies about the end times, we have a very important statement.
A time, times, and half a time.
And in the book of Revelation, the time, times, and half a time is also equated with 42 months.
Forty-two months is what?
Three and a half years.
So we have a time, that's one, times, that's two more, and a half a time, that's three
and a half.
So when the Bible says a time, times, and half a time, it's talking about three and
a half years because it's equated to 42 months.
Now there are always these really cute end times doctrines going around.
And one of these little cute doctrines, and I get stuff in the mail about this all the
time and people are constantly telling me about this, how the 1260 days and the 1290
days are not really days, they're really years.
But let me tell you something.
That doesn't make any sense when they're equated to 42 months.
So they'll try to say, you know, the dome of the rock, Muslim mosque was built in this
year, and Israel became a nation in this year, and it's exactly 1290 years.
They picked two events that are 1260 years apart, 1290 years apart, but I've got news
for you, the 1260 days and the 1290 days are equated with three and a half years.
So they have to be days, not years, because, you know, they are days that add up to three
and a half years.
Now the reason why, and I'm not going to go into a big long thing about it tonight, it's
not really within the scope of this sermon, but if you take the Bible's way of calculating
time, a month is 30 days long, okay?
And because a month is 30 days long, then 42 months would be 1260 days.
And the reason for the 1290 days is that every six years, if you're using that system of
1230 day months, you're not going to stay in sync with the sun.
And again, another prophetic blunder is that people will try to say, well prophetic years
are only 360 days.
So then they'll add up all these weird partial years, you know, and it'll be different than
like a solar year.
Well, sorry, that doesn't make any sense, because in Genesis 1 the Bible says He gave
us the sun to mark out years.
That's what it says in Genesis chapter 1.
So whatever year we follow, it needs to be in synchronization with the sun.
A 360 day year is not synchronized with the sun, and eventually if you stuck with that,
you'd have summer and winter, you'd be skiing in July, and it'd be all goofed up.
I mean, it'd be 90 degrees in January, oh wait a minute, that's Phoenix, Arizona.
But anyway, what I'm saying is, that doesn't make any sense.
So the way that it works is that every six years you have an extra month, okay?
Because if you think about it, how many days are you short if you've got a 360 day year?
You know, it should be 365.
So basically, those five days every six years add up to 30.
So you have a complete month there.
And you can get back into synchronization with the sun.
So every six years, and I'm not just making this up.
In fact, in Iran, to this day, this is the system that they use, and in fact, I believe
that it's the calendar that's been in continuous use the longest on this planet, as far as
I know.
They've been using it, the Persians have used this, which, you know, of course Daniel was
writing part of this while under the Persian Empire.
Really nothing else in the Bible contradicts this.
You know, it always talks a lot about 30 day months and five months is 150 days and stuff
like that.
And that's where you get to 1290, because if you're looking at the seven year period,
seven is greater than six.
And every six years you have to have that extra month.
You couldn't really say that 42 months plus 42 months would be 84 months.
You couldn't really say that that's seven years if the months are only 30 days.
You'd be shy of seven years.
Does everybody understand what I'm saying?
84 30 day months is not quite seven years, but 85 30 day months is seven years according
to this biblical type calendar of 12 30 day months with a, you know, you call it a leap
month, you know, an extra month, every six years.
That's the Persian calendar even to this day in Iran.
That's my understanding of it anyway.
I've never been there, you know, but I'm sure it's a horrible place that should be nuked
off the face of the earth, right?
No, of course not.
But that's what a lot of people think, don't they?
They think we should just kill everybody that, you know, is not a Christian, but that's not
true.
It's you know, just that people get all hyped up and you know, you don't get caught up in
this thing.
You know what?
I don't believe in Islam.
Islam's a false religion, but we should not hate Muslim people.
You know, they're just unsaved people that just need Jesus.
And I'm sure that there are lots of nice people living in Iran.
Just like there are lots of nice people living in the United States and just like there are
a lot of wicked as hell people living in the United States, I'm sure there are the same
type of people in Iran that are wicked as the devil.
But you know what?
I'm sure there are lots of good people there too.
So don't get brainwashed by all the propaganda that wants to dehumanize the enemy.
We're all human.
Okay?
But anyway, that's a little bit off topic.
Go back to Job chapter 12, but I just wanted to point that out about Daniel chapter 4.
You know, you can do some further study, but a lot of parallels between Daniel chapter
4 and Job chapter 12.
The consistency of the Bible is amazing, isn't it?
How consistent it is when we go to one book separated from the other book by at least
many hundreds of years.
We don't know exactly when the book of Job was written, but we know that the events of
the book of Job took place between the time of Esau and the time of Moses.
So we can get a time frame of when the events took place, sometime between Esau and Moses,
but we don't know exactly when it was written because it was written a few hundred years
after that.
It talks about Job getting really old and dying and on and on.
So all that to say this.
Look down at your Bible again quickly at verse 22 and we'll be done.
It says in Job 12-22, he discovered deep things out of darkness and bringeth out to light
the shadow of death.
He increaseth the nations and destroyeth them.
He enlargeth the nations and straighteneth them again.
Straighten there means he narrows them or makes them smaller.
It's the opposite of enlarging.
Notice the lack of a GH.
It says he straightened them again.
He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth.
That's what he did with Nebuchadnezzar.
And causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way.
They grope in the dark without light.
He maketh them to stagger like a drunken man.
And often the Bible uses drunkenness to be symbolic of one who is in darkness or asleep
or just not aware of what's going on in the world.
First Thessalonians chapter 5 is a perfect example.
It says, but we brethren are not in darkness that that day should overtake us as a thief.
Ye are all the children of light and the children of the day.
We are not of the night nor of darkness.
Therefore let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober for they that sleep,
sleep in the night, and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.
Those that are drunk sleep in the daytime?
You've known people like that?
We're quoting the scripture here, okay?
They that sleep, sleep in the night, and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.
Therefore let us not sleep as do others, let us watch and be sober.
He says, you know, for God has not appointed us to wrath but to obtain salvation by our
Lord Jesus Christ.
So the Bible describes people that are watching, people that are paying attention, people that
are knowing the truth of God's word about what's happening in the world we live in as
being awake.
And people who don't understand the truths of God's word as being asleep or in darkness
or drunken, the same language is used in Matthew 24 as in 1 Thessalonians 5 that I just quoted.
And we need to be, we need to not sleep as do others, but watch and be, we need to be
awake.
And the best way that we can be awake, and that's a term that you hear a lot, that's
kind of a buzzword today, you know, being awake.
Usually when somebody says, you know, they're awake, it usually means that they know that
the government is run by criminals and wants us all dead.
So that's what they mean by being awake.
Usually when they talk about being awake, they just mean that they're aware of the fact
that the devil has got a lot of people deceived and that there's a lot of corruption in our
government and they realize about the fact that there is a kingdom of darkness taking
us into a new world order and a one world government and a one world religion.
And honestly, a lot of people that call themselves awake are not Bible believing Christians.
Guess what?
They're fast asleep.
You know, I don't care how into conspiracy theories they are and the new world order
and how many episodes of Alex Jones they've listened to.
You know, if they are not a Bible believing Christian, they're fast asleep, period.
I mean, this is what wakes you up.
This is being awake.
The definition of being awake is knowing this book.
That's what the Bible teaches.
And you can sit there and know about all this stuff off the internet, but if you're not
believing and reading and understanding and knowing the Bible, you're asleep.
And when you know what the Bible says, you're awake.
You're aware.
And look, when people are drunk, they do stupid things.
They say stupid things.
Well, guess what?
When you don't know the Bible, you're like a spiritual drunk.
You're like a spiritual Rip Van Winkle that's just perennially asleep.
When you're sober and you're around drunk people, they say and do things that just make
them look completely stupid to you.
But that's how it is when you don't know the Bible.
You say and do dumb things.
When you know the Bible, you're sober.
You're awake.
You know the truth and you speak and you open your mouth like the virtuous woman.
You open your mouth with wisdom and then your tongue is the law of kindness.
And so let's be awake and let's realize that God is the one who controls the outcome of
our lives.
Let's make him happy, first and foremost, if we want to succeed.
Because if he's not happy, then we're doomed.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord, and we thank you for this chapter that
we could learn from.
Thank you for the example of Job, a great man of God.
In the midst of his suffering, he's still speaking a lot of wisdom in this chapter.
And Lord, I pray that it would sink down into our ears, help us to know the word of God,
to be wide awake and to realize that you are the one who controls our fate and our destiny.
And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.