In Job chapter 20, we're back to Zophar the Neamathite, and I have to say that in this
chapter of Zophar the Neamathite speaking, everything that Zophar says in this chapter
is biblical.
If we look at every single thing that he says from start to finish in this chapter, we can
verify it and prove it with other portions of scripture.
The reason that that's important to realize is that when Job's three friends are talking,
we know that in the aggregate, when God looks at everything that Job's three friends said,
he said they did not speak the thing that was right.
So God says these guys are wrong.
So we know that their words are not the word of God.
It's their opinion.
Now often when people are speaking their own opinion, even people that are not godly people
or not righteous people, they still might say some things that are right.
And with Job's three friends, they say a lot of things that are right, and they say a lot
of things that are not right.
In this chapter, everything that Zophar says is true and biblical.
The thing that's not right about it is that Zophar is applying these things to Job.
Because everything in this chapter is about how the wicked are going to be destroyed and
how it's going to go badly for those that are wicked, and that if they do triumph in
the short term, look at verse 5, it says that the triumphing of the wicked is short and
the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment.
So he's acknowledging that yes, there is some joy and triumph and winning aspect to living
a wicked life in the short term, but that in the long term, they're going to be destroyed.
Zophar is right about that.
What he's wrong about is to apply this to Job and to say, well Job's wicked, Job's being
punished.
In the next chapter where Eliphaz speaks in chapter 22, Eliphaz just comes right out and
starts listing off Job's sins and he just makes up things and all kinds of false accusations.
But let's go through chapter 20 here because like I said, everything here is biblical and
can be verified with other scripture.
Look at verse number 1 of Job 20, it says, then answered Zophar the Naamathite and said,
therefore do my thoughts cause me to answer and for this I make haste.
I've heard the check of my reproach and the spirit of my understanding causes me to answer.
Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth, that the triumphing of
the wicked is short and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment, though his excellency mount
up to the heavens and his head reach under the clouds, yet shall he perish forever like
his own dung.
They which have seen him shall say, where is he?
This is very true what Zophar is saying because the Bible tells us of course what is life,
it is even a vapor that appearth for a little time and then vanisheth away.
What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
So even if the wicked do triumph on this earth, even if they do live in joy and pleasure and
prosperity, if they're not saved, they will perish forever, the Bible says.
He says here, they will perish forever like their own dung and that is very biblical to
say they will perish forever because hell is a place of eternal death and even when
those that are in hell are resurrected for the great white throne of judgment and the
Bible says hell delivered up the dead which were in it and then John says, I saw the dead
small and great stand before God.
They're still dead.
They perish forever.
They shall not live again.
They are just dead and they are in hell classified as dead.
The Bible talks of hell and it says the dead are there.
Now a lot of people will try to use human logic to contradict the Bible.
We should always base what we believe upon clear scriptures, not on our logic.
And sometimes people will try to use logic and extrapolate things out in contradiction
of the Bible.
Let me give an example.
People use logic that makes sense but it contradicts scripture.
Like for example they'll say something like this, well if they're dead, if the people
in hell are dead, that means they're unconscious.
Because obviously we know that people are dead, they're not conscious, but wait a minute,
what does the Bible teach?
The Bible says they're dead but the Bible also teaches that they're conscious.
Because in Luke chapter 16 we see a man who's in hell, it says he lifts up his eyes in hell
being in torment.
It doesn't say he's in hell unconscious, it doesn't say he's fast asleep, it says he lifts
up his eyes in hell being in torment and see if Abraham will fall off.
It says that father Abraham have mercy on me and sent Lazarus that he may dip the tip
of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I am tormented in this flame.
That is a conscious eternal punishment.
The Bible says of the lake of fire, which is the final resting place of hell after the
great white throne and out of darkness, it says that the smoke of their torment ascendeth
up forever and ever.
They have no rest day nor night.
That's conscious.
Yet the Bible always consistently refers to them as being dead.
That's why when the Bible says that you have eternal life and you shall not perish and
you shall not die, that means that you're not going to be in hell.
That is the place of the dead.
We're going to be in heaven and then eventually we will be on the new earth here which will
be a brand new earth, new heaven, and so on and so forth.
But if you look at Jesus Christ when he was dead for three days and three nights, he was
in hell.
The Bible says in Acts 2 31, this spake he of the resurrection of Christ that his soul
was not left in hell, neither did his flesh see corruption.
He was dead.
He said, I am he that liveth and was dead and behold I am alive forevermore.
Amen and have the keys of hell and of death.
It said before he ascended up to heaven, he first descended to the lower parts of the
earth.
And so Zophar is dead on here when he says that the wicked, they might be triumphing
now, they might be partying and having a great time and joyful and rejoicing, but that their
triumphing is short, life is but a vapor, they will perish forever as their own dung.
They will be gone.
They will be held in everlasting shame and contempt the Bible says, and there will be
a resurrection for them known as the resurrection of damnation.
The opposite of that is the resurrection of life for those that are saved.
I think I already went into this a little bit last Wednesday so I'm not going to spend
any more time on it, but I do want to touch on those important doctrines because we need
to understand these truths and today a lot of people don't understand them because there's
just not a lot of doctrine being preached in churches these days and so we need to take
the time to understand some of the deep things of God and to understand what happens when
the unsaved die and what happens when those that are saved die.
The triumphing of the wicked is short and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment.
Another important thing to notice about that is that people who are wicked and unsaved
are often enjoying their wicked and sinful life.
They are enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season.
Now when you are saved, when you are a child of God, you cannot enjoy the sinful life the
same way that the unsaved can.
Why?
Because when you're saved and you've been enlightened and your eyes have been opened
and the Holy Spirit indwells you, you will feel bad about those things.
When you talk to people who are saved but then they went out and lived a really wicked
life, some people will be like, oh those people were never really saved.
Of course they were because any of us could fall.
The Bible says let him that thinketh, he standeth, take heed lest he fall.
We love the potential to go into sin and to live an ungodly life but when you talk
to those people they'll say, you know what, it was miserable, I knew I was wrong, I had
so much guilt living that lifestyle.
You can't enjoy it the same way that the unsaved can.
Now there are people out there who teach that everybody who is not saved is just walking
around with this God-shaped hole in their life and they're miserable and sad and they're
looking for something and they can't find it.
And yes there are people out there like that but to just make a statement like everybody
who's not saved is walking around with a God-shaped hole and they just are miserable and unhappy,
it's frankly not true.
I mean there are some people who just enjoy living a wicked and ungodly life.
It's stupid because it's only for a moment, it's only the pleasures of sin for a season,
and it is vanity and emptiness and many of them do come to a point where it becomes empty
for them, but many of them right now are enjoying it.
But there's going to be hell to pay.
Now those that are saved on the other hand, they don't go through life that way because
if they choose to live a wicked life, God's going to punish them and chasten them on this
earth because they're not going to hell.
They get all their punishment now in this life, that's why they're miserable when they
try to go out and live a sinful and ungodly life.
The Bible says in verse number 8, speaking of wicked people who are triumphing now enjoying
pleasure now, it says, he shall fly away as a dream and shall not be found, yea he
shall be chased away as a vision of the night.
The eye also which saw him shall see him no more.
Neither shall his place any more behold him.
Now this is talking about the fact that when you have a dream, you completely forget what
that dream was.
It's very rare that you wake up and just remember all your dreams vividly.
I mean who remembers their dreams pretty often?
Pretty often.
Very few hands are going up.
Now when I was a kid, my older brother and sister imparted this wisdom onto me because
they were older and more experienced than I was.
So they gave me these concrete truths of remembering your dreams.
They said look, because kids always want to remember their dreams.
It's fun to remember your dreams.
So here's what they taught.
This was just dogma for them.
I mean this was just the way it is.
They said if you sleep on your back, you will remember your dreams pretty much all the time.
And they said if you sleep on your side, you won't remember your dreams at all, and if
you sleep on your stomach, you will remember your dreams some of the time.
And I mean we took this as just gospel.
So we're like okay, lay on our back, lay on our back, you don't want to have cool dreams
and remember them.
And to this day, I'm in the habit of sleeping on my back and that's part of why, you know
this is how I like to sleep, you know just like that.
But anyway, so we were taught that by my older brother and sister.
You know they're like 8, 10 telling us this, but you know when you're a little kid, you
know they're telling us when they're 13, 14, when you're a little kid, I mean they know
a lot.
They're much taller than you.
They're much older than you.
So that's what they taught us.
Usually you don't really remember your dreams that often, and usually right when you wake
up you might remember a little bit.
Five minutes later you have no idea.
And the Bible is saying that the wicked now, that's how they are.
At the time, it's an exciting dream, it's really cool, all these powerful emotions you're
experiencing in the dream.
Five minutes later, what happened, who, what?
But wait a minute, that's the celebrities of today, that's their heritage.
These flashes in the pan, you know these big exciting Hollywood people.
I mean think about it, a thousand years from now, we're not even going to care.
They're not even going to matter.
And that's what the Bible is teaching here.
It says in verse number 9, the eye also which saw him shall see him no more, neither shall
his place any more behold him.
His children shall seek to please the poor, and his hands shall restore their goods.
His bones are full of the sins of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust.
Now verse 10, I mentioned that the children will seek to please the poor and his hands
shall restore their goods, meaning that all the money that they got dishonestly and robbed,
God's eventually going to bring it back around to the people who should really get it.
Even if it's just the descendants.
Even if it's the descendants of the wicked are going to end up giving it unto the people
who they took it from.
We see this a lot in history and in life, just how the pendulum kind of swings back
and forth and the people who end up being robbed and so forth.
It's funny, I mean it's hard to think of good examples of this necessarily, but if you think
about the, this is something that just popped into my mind, but if you think about the slaves
in the United States, the black African slaves that were brought over here, if you think
about it, they basically did a lot of work for free.
They were basically used maliciously by a lot of people, but a lot of those people,
think about all the suffering that the people who bought those slaves and brought those
slaves over, that them and their descendants went through, through the Civil War.
And again, whatever your opinions are about the Civil War, and I have opinions that are
maybe different than most people's opinions about it, but I will say this though, obviously
the people in the South suffered a great deal, and a lot of people died, and a lot
of cities are burned and destroyed, and probably a lot of wealth that was built up on the labor
of people who were being used in slavery, they probably lost a lot of that wealth, if
you think about it, and then probably a lot of those slaves who came over probably ended
up with some of that money, some of those goods, or at least a better lifestyle, and
so it's just interesting to see how people throughout history have reaped what they've
sown and will always continue to reap what they've sown, so we need to be careful how
we live our lives, because it's going to come back and get us, and if not us, then our children
and our grandchildren, and obviously I'm not trying to get into a big, deep dissertation
on the Civil War, but anybody can see that the people who had slavery suffered as a result
of it, and God brought that upon their own heads in many ways.
The Bible says here in verse number 11,
His bones are full of the sin of His youth, which shall lie down with Him in the dust.
Now what's interesting about this is that if we think about our salvation, part of the
greatness of our salvation is that all our sins are forgiven, and the Bible says as far
as the east is from the west, so far as God separated us from our sins, the Bible says
that their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.
God has put all of our sins behind His back.
The Bible says our sins will not be mentioned unto us, but the unsaved will have to give
an account for their sins.
They will stand before God at the great white throne of judgment, and they will be judged
every man according to their works.
The Bible says, I say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall
give account thereof in the day of judgment, and so thank God for salvation that has forgiven
us of our sins and removed us from our sins as far as the east is from the west.
But the unsaved, the sins of their youth will be imputed unto them.
I mean the Bible is saying here in verse 11, they're going to take the sins of their youth
to the grave with them.
They're going to give an account and be judged for every sin that they commit in their whole
life.
Now a lot of people will wrongfully teach that we at the judgment seat of Christ will
give account for our sins, or be punished for our sins.
That is simply not true, because our sins have been paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ,
our sins are forgiven and forgotten of the Father.
We do not have to be accountable for our sins.
Now the Bible says at the judgment seat of Christ that we will give an account for the
things that we have done in our body.
What you have to understand is that by the time we stand before the Lord at the judgment
seat of Christ, we will already have discarded the flesh and been resurrected or changed
at the rapture, and we will be in our brand new, holy and sanctified body.
The flesh will be completely gone.
And the Apostle Paul made it clear in Romans 7 that when he committed sin, when he did
the things that are wrong, he said it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwelleth
in me.
He said that whenever he's sinning, it's not the new man that's sinning, it's not the spiritual
man, the inward man, it's not the new creature in Christ, it's the old man, the flesh.
See when we get saved, God creates a new creature.
That new man, that spiritual man, lives a life of perfect holiness, but the flesh is
still there.
So if we walk in the flesh, we will be just like we were before we were saved.
But when we walk in the spirit, we won't fulfill the lust of the flesh, we'll do the things
that are right.
Now the wonderful thing is that when we die, or if we make it alive and remaining to the
rapture, our sinful flesh will be gone forever.
So that's why when we go to heaven, we'll never sin again, because no sinful person
will inherit the kingdom of God.
But that's why we're going to be changed.
That's why we have to be resurrected in His image before we can enter into the kingdom
of God and be able to abide in His kingdom forever where no wickedness or anything, sin
full, will be allowed.
So what we need to understand is that there are two completely separate natures, and when
we give an account for the things done in our body, the stuff that was sin isn't stuff
that we did in our body, because the one who performed those sins will be dead, will be
gone.
To say that our sins will be mentioned to us is to contradict a lot of other scripture.
Now if we compare the two scriptures on the judgment seat of Christ, and there are others
in Revelation, etc.
But if we compare the scripture in 1 Corinthians 3 with 2 Corinthians 5, the Bible talks about
how our works are going to be tried, our works are going to be judged at the judgment seat
of Christ, and that our works will be put into two categories, good or bad.
And in 1 Corinthians 3 the term that's used is wood, hay, and stubble, or gold, silver,
and precious stones.
I often like to point out to people that there is nothing sinful about wood.
Wood never represents sin in the Bible.
There's nothing sinful about stubble, right?
Amen?
No, I'm just kidding.
That's a different kind of stubble.
But there's nothing sinful about stubble, there's nothing sinful about hay, but those
are things that do not have eternal value.
They don't abide the fire.
Whereas gold, silver, and precious stones will abide the fire, those are things we do
of eternal value.
Let me put it to you this way, if I go out and build a business, that's not a sin, but
it doesn't have any eternal value either, it's wood, hay, and stubble.
Let's say I go out and run a marathon, you know, that's wood, hay, and stubble.
Let's say I have a really beautiful lawn and beautiful hedges and landscaping, you know,
whatever athletic achievement, whatever business achievement, whatever just success I have
financially, socially, the fun that I have, you know, a lot of those things aren't bad
things, they're not sinful things, but they do not have eternal value.
They will not bring us any rewards.
They're not going to matter a thousand years from now.
That's why I want to make sure that we spend our time doing things that are gold, silver,
and precious stones.
Now obviously we're all going to have some wood, hay, and stubble in our lives.
We all have things that we just do.
I mean, we get up, we eat, we brush our teeth, we get dressed, we go to work, you know, there
are things that we do that we just live our lives, but we need to make sure that that's
not all we do, because some people, that's all they're doing.
Just living their life, eating, drinking, buying, selling, marrying, giving, and marriage.
What have you done for Christ?
What have you done that's of eternal value?
Did you win someone to the Lord?
That's one of the greatest things that you can do as a believer in order to bring some
eternal value into heaven with you, bring someone with you.
You can't bring the goods, but you can bring people with you by winning people to Christ.
When we look at the term good and bad, some people will look at that, and I can see where
they're coming from when they see, okay, we're going to be judged on our works good and bad.
They say, well, bad, that's sin.
I see where they're coming from, but there are so many scriptures that tell us our sins
are forgiven and forgotten and separated and that they're not done by the new man and so forth.
One thing I would recommend is just look up every time the word bad is used in the Bible,
because if you look up the word bad, it doesn't mean what we think it means, because when
we see the word bad, we just think, well, if I did something bad, that means it's sin.
We have to let the Bible define words in the Bible.
We can't just assume that we know what words mean, because if you look up every time the
word bad is used, more often than not, it is not talking about anything sinful or wicked
or ungodly.
For example, you go to Leviticus 27 and look it up, you don't have to turn there for now,
but it talks about when you're consecrating things to the Lord, it talks about a house.
Do an estimation of the house to determine whether it's a good house or a bad house.
What does that mean?
You get your house appraised and they figure out the value.
So when you get the house estimated by the priest, he decides whether it's good or bad.
The Bible talks about a sheep being good or bad.
Talks about animals being good or bad.
Talk about the quality and the value.
In Jeremiah, I was just reading, it says that there was a basket of figs that were bad figs,
and if you look up all the times that bad is used in the Bible, you get the picture
that bad just basically usually means that it's just of little value, not worth much,
not really good for anything, like wood hay and stubble.
It's really the same thing.
It's not that you're giving account for every sin that you committed, but you're basically,
okay God, here's all the work I did, and he takes your works and he tests them with fire
and says, what did you do that was of eternal value?
What did you do that was of no eternal value?
And then also the Bible talks about the fact that if we do our righteousness to be seen
of men, that we lose our reward.
That we have our reward on this earth when we become a glory seeking Christian or a glory
seeking preacher, we're getting our reward now, popularity.
And he says, you have your reward, but when you do that which is right, secretly you're
rewarded of the Father which is in heaven.
So when we understand the judgment seat of Christ, it's not a time where God brings all
our sins to remembrance, where he brings out the sins of our youth, the stuff we did as
a teenager, the stuff we did as a child, the stuff we did as a young adult.
It's all paid for and forgiven and forgotten and under the blood.
Rather he's going to look at the works that we perform and judge their value and give
us a reward, and the Bible says that if all of our works are burned up, if it's all wood
hay and stubble, which proves, by the way, you can be saved without doing any works that
have eternal value, because he said if it's all burned up, he says you'll lose your reward,
you'll suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved.
Thank God.
It says, yet he himself shall be saved, yet so is by fire.
You are still saved even if you did it.
No works of eternal value, but if you believed on him that justified the ungodly, your faith
is counted for righteousness.
So again, Zophar is correct when he says about the unsaved, the wicked, that his bones are
full of the sins of his youth, which shall lie down with them in the dust.
I mean he's going to die in his sins, as Jesus said, and he's going to be accountable even
for the sins of his youth.
Who here would want to stand before God for the sins of your youth?
You know what?
This is one of the best parts about salvation, and so many preachers are not preaching it
because they think that we're going to be somehow judged for our sins.
People will say to another Christian, you're going to stand before God for that sin someday.
Wrong.
What we ought to be preaching is, hey, God's going to punish you in this life for your
sins.
You will reap what you've sown.
But thank God when we're dead, physically, or when the rapture takes place, it's over.
He's never going to mention those sins to us again.
They're forgiven and forgotten, and again, there are so many scriptures we could turn
to on that.
I quoted you five or six, but there are many more that prove that point.
It says in verse 12, though wickedness be sweet in his mouth, though he hide it under
his tongue, though he spare it and forsake it not, but keep it still within his mouth,
but his meat in his bowels is turned, it is the gall of ass within him.
He's comparing sin and wickedness to something that tastes really good in your mouth, you
know, while you're eating it, while you're doing it, but then when you swallow it down,
it becomes poison in your gut, in your intestine, and makes you sick.
Now who here has had food poisoning before?
Alright, who's had the 24 hour flu?
Well guess what?
The 24 hour flu is food poisoning.
You just thought it was the 24 hour, there's no such thing as the 24 hour flu.
It's called food poisoning.
Food borne illness is very common today because of the farming practices that take place.
Pretty much all meat that's out there at these fast food places has E. coli in it, and that's
why it's so important that they heat the food to a certain temperature and they have really
strict standards about making sure that burger is cooked all the way through.
Why?
Because it has E. coli in it and they have to kill the E. coli.
Therefore if you get an undercooked burger out at a restaurant, you're very likely to
get sick from that undercooked meat.
Whereas if you had a high quality meat and it were a little bit undercooked, it probably
wouldn't even matter.
I mean you should still always be careful because you never know.
But so much meat today is tainted with sickness.
But you know, food borne illness is one of the nastiest illness.
I mean it just hurts.
I mean you get those sharp, who knows what I'm talking about, just the sharp pain in
your stomach.
Oh no!
And you know, you're so sick and it's coming back up and it's really just a sharp, hard
hitting sickness, 24 hours later you're fine.
And that's how you know it's food borne is when you're just fine one day later, pretty
much.
But the Bible says here that wickedness is going to be like that.
It tastes good, but then you're just in agony, in your bowels, it's turning into the gall
of asps within you.
Verse 15, he's swallowed down riches and he shall vomit them up again.
God shall cast them of his belly.
He shall suck the poison of asps.
The viper's tongue shall slam.
One of the things you think of is alcohol.
You know people drink and woo, we're having fun, and then bleh.
You know, the sickness, the hangover, the repercussions of what you've done under the
influence of alcohol come back to bite you.
Sin is like a food borne illness.
It tastes sweet in your mouth and it gives you sharp, stabbing, horrible pain in your
gut when you're done with it.
It says, verse 17, he shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter.
That which he labored for shall you restore and shall not swallow it down.
According to his substance shall the restitution be and he shall not rejoice therein because
he hath oppressed and forsaken the poor because he hath violently taken away a house which
he builded not.
Now it's interesting, it's talking about people that are wicked and dishonest and how they've
robbed the poor, they've taken from the poor, and how as a result God's going to bring it
back around to where their goods end up going to the poor.
But it says at the end of verse 18, he shall not rejoice therein.
It says, according to his substance shall the restitution be, meaning what?
Everything he has he's going to end up paying, but he's not going to rejoice therein.
You see, there's a joy that comes with giving to the poor, right?
When you have abundance of goods and you give something to the poor, that makes you feel
good, right?
You have joy knowing that you're serving Christ and that as much as you've done it unto one
of the least of Christ's brethren, you've done it unto him.
And it feels good to help people that are in need.
It brings joy.
But here's the thing, not when you're doing it against your will it doesn't.
This guy's not choosing to help the poor.
This guy's losing everything he has and it's going to the poor.
There's no joy in that.
And that's one of the tragedies of our society that we live in in America today is that so
much money is taken from us at gunpoint and given to the poor.
And it really robs us of the joy of helping the poor ourselves with our own money.
Because when money is taken from us at gunpoint and given to the poor, that makes us resent
the poor.
It makes us angry.
When we should love the poor and want to help the poor, but when somebody's forcing you
to give to the poor, there's no joy in that.
I think that's what he's alluding to at the end of verse 18 because he's saying he's going
to give to the poor against his will.
Why?
Because he has oppressed and forsaken the poor.
Because he has violently taken away a house which he built a not.
And I couldn't help but think of, when I see that violently taking away a house that he
built a not, both the government and banks foreclosing on homes and taking them away
from people.
Because if you think about it, banks are a fraud.
They are just, basically bankers are thieves.
I'm not saying that the person that's the teller at your local bank is a thief.
They're just going and working and they're getting paid by the hour, they don't understand
the system.
But people who are running the banks are thieves.
It is a racket, it's unbiblical, it's unscriptural how they make money, and the whole thing is
a fraud.
And I'll just really quickly explain it to you if you don't already understand.
Fractional reserve banking.
Now we're taught as children that this is the way the bank works.
This is what I was taught as a child.
They said, you take your money and you put it in the bank.
And you know, let's say 20 people all put in $1,000 into the bank.
This is how I was taught that it works, then I'm going to tell you how it really works.
20 people put in $1,000 into the bank.
So there's $20,000 sitting in the bank.
Well, not everybody's going to show up the same day to get their money out.
So they don't have to keep all $20,000 in the vault at any given time, because they
just have to give people what they need today.
So then what they're going to do is they're going to loan out some of that money.
Somebody over here wants to buy a car for $3,000 and they take out of that $20,000 and
they give $3,000 to so-and-so to go buy his car.
And let's say they do it on 10% interest to him, right?
And then the people that are putting the money into the bank, they pay them like 2% interest.
So they're loaning it out for a high interest, they're bringing it in and paying low interest,
and that's how it works.
They basically only keep a certain percentage in the bank, maybe they keep 10% in the bank
or whatever just to give people what they need or 20%, whatever.
And they loan out the rest and make a profit on that.
Now, let's pretend for a minute that that's how banks actually worked, like I was taught
in school, which is a lie, that's not how they work.
But let's pretend that that is how they worked.
It would still be unbiblical, it would still be ungodly, because the Bible teaches that
loaning out money on interest is a sin.
And virtually no Christians believe that, Islam believes that, Islam says that charging
interest is a sin.
But you know what?
They got that from the Bible.
That's what the Bible teaches.
And the Jews, they're known as bankers, but that's because they look at the Old Testament
where it says don't charge it of your brother in Hebrew, charge it from a stranger.
So that's why they charge everybody who's a non-Jew, they consider them to be heathen,
and so they charge them interest, but not to their fellow Jew.
I'm assuming they don't charge it to their fellow Jew, I don't know.
They probably do that too these days, who knows.
But if we study the Bible, and I did a whole sermon called The Sin of Usury where we examined
every scripture on usury and we determined that it's a sin for us to participate in that.
And so if you ever loan anybody money, you should loan it interest free.
You say, well why would I loan the money then?
Well, because you're being nice, because it's a good deed.
If you can't loan it interest free, then don't loan it, because you should not be
one that charges usury, and I did a whole sermon on that and I don't have time to do
that sermon again.
But here's how the bank really works.
That's not how it works, my friend.
Because what they do is that they literally loan out money that never existed.
It's not like, okay, we've got 20,000, let's loan some of it out and keep some of it in
reserve in case a lot of people show up at the bank the same day, no, wrong.
They loan out, and it's not, they don't loan out 10 times of what came in.
Let's say 20,000's been deposited, you know, they'll loan out 600,000.
And it's just out of thin air, it just doesn't even exist.
It's just on paper.
It's fictitious imaginary money.
And let me just prove it to you.
If you took all the debt that's out there, and then you took all the cash that's out
there, the cash couldn't even pay off all the debt.
There's more debt than there is cash.
Our whole economy is a debt-based economy where virtually every person, I'm not going
to do this, but if I ask for a raise of hand, who here has debt?
Who here has more debt than money?
Virtually every single hand.
You know, I don't want to embarrass you, just go ahead and put your hand up.
You have more debt than you have money, yeah, you liar, everybody has.
Now some people don't, I'm just kidding.
Now thank God our church has no debt.
And our church is debt-free.
And the people who cannot raise their hand are renters.
It's true, because pretty much anybody who owns a home, now some people that are older
and have done well and God has blessed and they've made good money could say, hey I own
my home and it's debt-free.
There are people like that.
But the vast majority of people who own a home do it in debt.
It's a debt-based society, it's very difficult.
And if you say, well I'm never going to go into debt, you may never own a home then.
You know, I mean it's hard, and there are some people who successfully do that.
But here's the thing, if everybody decided to get out of debt tomorrow, it wouldn't work
because there's not enough money in the world to pay off all the debt in the world.
Because it's all just made up.
Now look, wouldn't you love to be able to loan out money that you don't have?
Wouldn't that be nice?
I mean you could probably make a pretty good living doing that, right?
What if I just gave you the power and I said, oh you've got 5,000 in the bank?
Loan out 150,000.
And then you charge interest on it.
You'd sit back and rake in so much interest on that 150,000 without doing anything.
And that's what these banks are doing.
They're loaning out money that doesn't even exist.
They're loaning out money and paper currency, the Federal Reserve System, is what allows
that to even happen.
Because if our money were actually coins, gold, silver, copper, you couldn't loan out
money that didn't exist.
I mean the money's either in the vault or it's not.
But they just print more or it's just all electronic, credit card, debit card, and it's
all just numbers floating around and then people in the stock market just move numbers
around, just make multi-million dollars.
Not working.
And it's sin.
It's wrong.
It's dishonest gain.
And so bankers are thieves and they foreclose on people's houses often wrongfully and they
rip people off, they charge usury and abuse the poor, and not only that, but even if you
say Pastor Anderson, my house is totally paid off, you still have to pay rent to live in
your house called property tax.
You own that house, you've already paid for it, and you're paying rent to the government
to live in your own house.
Now here it's not that much in Arizona.
Is it six hundred bucks a year, five hundred bucks a year I think for my house?
But if you're over in the Midwest, your property tax would be three or four hundred bucks a
month to live in your own house.
It's crazy.
And so then the government will come violently take away your house that they didn't build
if you don't pay that.
So that's what I thought of when I read this verse about violently taking away a house
that you didn't build.
There's nothing new under the sun.
And bankers are thieves, and just to show you that we live in such a debt-based system,
if you just pull out the dollar, it says this note is legal tender for all debts, public
and private.
You know, when your bills are mentioning debt on the bill, that's a pretty bad sign about
the economy that you're living in, and that's why this dollar gets worthless, it's worth
less every year than it was last year.
Oh, it's just inflation.
Yeah, but why is it happening?
I mean, a loaf of bread is still a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk is still a gallon
of milk.
It's not that things are getting more expensive, it's that this is worth less all the time.
And this used to be worth a hundred bucks of value today.
I mean, literally, if you go to a price from about a hundred years ago, if they say I had
three dollars, multiply it by a hundred.
And if you go back further, it's even more than that.
So this Federal Reserve note is a fraud, it's a piece of paper, it's not real money, and
that's why they can just fictitiously make it on a computer screen and get everybody
in debt up to their eyeballs, and certain people are just multi-billionaires, and then
the rest of us are slogging away at our jobs, trying to make ends meet, giving them a huge
amount of our money, and then when we save up our money, it gets worth less every year.
Our raises can barely keep up with the cost of living as inflation cuts into our income
and cuts into our earning.
And so the whole system is a fraud.
And they taught us in school too, they showed this African guy with some stone that was
like eight feet in diameter.
This is what people use when they don't have paper money, kids.
You know what I mean?
It's like this guy in Africa, it's like the world's largest coin, who's seen that picture
before?
It's like a guy in Africa and he's got an eight foot diameter stone thing, it's like
this is money, kids, and then they show an American guy with a grocery store cart filled
with quarters and nickels.
This is what you'd have to do, kids, if you didn't have paper money.
You know, you'd be taking a whole wheelbarrow full of quarters and dimes just to go shopping,
just to go buy a cart.
You know what?
That is a lie, it's a fraud, it's deception, it's brainwashing, because you know why?
You'd need a whole wheelbarrow of quarters to go buy that car because the quarters are
not made of precious metals.
They're all made of junk metal.
But if you used real precious metals like gold, silver, copper, those actually would
have value and they'd be very easy to transport because they'd say, oh, it's just so much
easier to carry paper money.
Wrong.
A gold coin that is worth about $1300 is, you know, what, about the size of a quarter?
If you have a gold coin that's about the size of a quarter, that coin is worth, you know,
maybe 50 cent pieces, a tiny little coin, sorry I don't handle a lot of them to know
exactly how big they are, but you know, that coin is worth about $1300.
So if you needed to buy a car, you could have 20 little coins, it would go in a little pouch,
boom, hand it over.
I mean, if you were to buy that same car with $100 bills, the $100 bills would be bigger.
Because you'd still need, in order to buy a car for 30 grand, you'd need 300 $100 bills.
So you'd still have a big stack, I mean, the coins would be smaller.
If anything.
If it's $26,000, you got 20 coins, I mean, that's not really a big deal.
You know, versus 260 $100 bills, it's a fraud.
They want to use paper money because you can manipulate it.
Because when you run out of money as the government, you just print more.
And then you're like, we're never going to raise taxes, we just print more money.
But then your money is not worth as much.
So it's like you're being taxed out the back door when they inflate the currency.
And so, you know, coins are what the Constitution said was going to be our money supply when
this country was founded.
They violated that.
They've left that behind.
They amended the Constitution, you know, to do paper money.
And it's been a disaster for everybody who actually works for a living.
It's been great for bankers and people like that.
But it says in verse number 20, surely he shall not feel quietness in his belly.
He shall not save of that which he desired, there shall none of his meat be left.
Therefore shall no man look for his goods.
In the fullness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits, every hand of the wicked shall
come upon him.
When he's about to fill his belly, God shall cast the fury of his wrath upon him and shall
rain it upon him while he's eating.
He shall flee from the iron weapon and the bow of steel shall strike him through.
I like verse 24, it just shows that when God's going to punish you, you can't get away.
You cannot escape.
He will come after you and he will get you.
It says, it is drawn and cometh out of his body, yea the glittering sword cometh out
of his gall, terrors are upon him, all darkness shall be hid in his secret places.
Look at the next phrase, this is an interesting phrase, a fire not blown shall consume him.
What does that mean?
Well if you know anything about fire, when you bring in more oxygen into the fire, the
fire gets much hotter.
So basically what the Bible is saying here is, you know, it won't take much fire to consume
this guy.
A fire not blown will consume him, meaning a fire that's not burning as hotly as one
that is blown.
Bellows, who knows what bellows are, right?
And when you make a fire, you've heard of fanning the flames, and sometimes you'll look
at an old blacksmith or something and they'll have one of these things like this, where
they can just pump a lot of air in, and they can make that fire get much, much hotter because
when you're doing blacksmith work, you have to have a really hot fire to melt down those
metals.
So they really bring in a lot of oxygen with the bellows, that's what that blowing is referring
to there.
It says in verse 27, or at the end of verse 26 it says, it shall go ill with him that
is left in his tabernacle, meaning that even when he's gone, the people that are still
living in his house after he's gone, meaning his children, his descendants, it's going
to go bad for them.
The Bible teaches that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children under the third
and fourth generation.
That's a hard truth, but that's what the Bible says.
It says in verse 27, the heaven shall reveal its iniquity and the earth shall rise up against
him.
The increase of his house shall depart and his goods shall flow away in the day of his
wrath.
This is the portion of a wicked man from God and the heritage appointed unto him by God.
So in this chapter we see that Zophar preaches biblical truth in this passage, but he's misapplying
it.
He's right about everything he said, the thing he's wrong about is that Job falls into this
category.
Job is a perfect and upright man.
He's a righteous man.
So again, some of the highlights here, obviously the whole chapter is just about how the wicked
are short on triumphing, and how they're going to get what's coming to them this day.
So how do we apply this to our lives?
Number one, we should never be envious at the wicked.
We should never look at the wicked and say, oh man, I wish I were them, it must be nice.
You know, you might look at the multi-millionaire banker who's got the yachts and he's got all
the money and the fun and the frills.
Just remember, he's going to perish like his own dung, the Bible says.
He's going to burn in hell.
He's wicked as hell.
So keep that in mind, don't ever envy the wicked.
Don't have the posters up of the Hollywood idols and look up to them and say, oh wow,
they're so cool, they're so glamorous.
They should not be a role model unto us.
Should not dress like them, we should not admire them, we should not take pleasure in
them because the triumphing of the wicked is short.
Number two, we can apply this by being encouraged that we are on the winning side and that we
will triumph for all eternity, we will rule and reign with Christ forever.
So we can take great joy in the fact that even if we're suffering now, God's going to
reward us and we're going to be in everlasting habitations with Him.
And then the other thing we get from this chapter is that we can be very thankful that
our sins are gone.
Don't let anybody tell you otherwise, it's not biblical.
And again, it deserves its own full sermon, which I've done many times, but just study
forgiveness.
Study what happened when we got saved and how He saved us from our sins and how our
sins are gone.
Woe unto the wicked who act to actually be confronted with their sins.
That's a great reason to be saved right there, just to get your sins gone.
That's the reason to get saved.
Not to be humiliated with your sins and ashamed.
Would you want everybody to know every sin you've ever done in your life and just be
humiliated with it?
Of course not.
Thank God for His forgiveness, that it's gone, and thank God for the fact that we're not
going to be punished in hell for our sins, but that we've been saved through the blood
of our Lord Jesus Christ, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according
to His mercy, He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing the Holy Ghost.
Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, thank you for this chapter to remind us that the triumphing of the wicked is short,
that those who are unsaved, they may be having a good time now, but it's not going to last.
Help us to work hard in our lives to make sure that we have gold, silver, and precious
stones in our lives, that we are doing something with our lives of eternal value.
Yes, we all have wood, hay, and stubble in our lives, there's nothing wrong with that,
because we must live and exist and do menial things in our lives, but Lord, help us to
make sure that we're focused on that which is eternal and not that which is temporal,
and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.