It's Saturday, January 11th, 2025. Welcome to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. I'm Pastor Rod, alone, still. Pastor PJ is still vacating and leaving me by myself. I'm sure he'll be back at some point, but the question is, when? In fact, as I record this, I mentioned yesterday that it was snowing, and it's still snowing because I'm still in yesterday. I'm still recording the same day that I recorded yesterday's podcast, and I'm not sure if we're going to be able to make it into the office on Saturday. In fact, we have two Bible studies scheduled today, the men's and women's Bible studies. And I'm hoping that the road conditions are sufficient so we can drive to and from the meeting space. And I'm not sure that we'll be able to do that given how much snow that we're getting. I'm serious, folks. I'm looking out my window. I feel like President Biden. I'm serious. I'm serious. Come on, man. I'm looking out my window here. And there's a lot of snow coming down. It's still coming down. It's been hours. In fact, it started somewhere around six o'clock in the morning, give or take, and it's 2 25 PM the same day. So we've been getting snow for a long time. We have several inches. This is really exciting new territory for us, but I'm sure it's not going to be easy to get out of this. So pray for us. If you think about us, that'd be really helpful and pray that we get to do all the ministry that we have planned. It would be a bummer to have to schedule. reschedule or cancel things because of the snow. But the Lord knows what he's doing. In fact, if there's one thing that we've learned from the beginning of job is that God's in control of the weather department. Nothing is happening that God is not ultimately responsible for. There are proximate causes that God may not be touching, but he is the ultimate cause. In other words, God ultimately. Is ruler over all things, but the most immediate cause or the proximate cause might be evil, or it might be something else that mankind is doing. Maybe we're putting something in the air to cause it to do this or that, but God is the ultimate cause of the weather. And for that reason, we can trust him. All right. We're only covering three chapters today, but they're a bit chunky. There are large chapters, Job chapters, 29, 30, and 31. Let's pick it up. Job 29. These last few chapters before Elihu speaks up is Job's final call. It's his summation. It's the end point to all that he said. The ESV Bible puts it like this, Job's summary defense. And in chapter 29, Job laments, The things of the past things, the way they used to be. Uh, so he talks about how things used to be wonderful when God watched over him, when his lamp shone upon his head and by his light, I walked through darkness, job says. And Job looks back at the past and his walk with God and how much wealth he had and how much respect and admiration he had. And he laments the fact that now, Things are so different. Things are not what they used to be. And I want to warn you against this mentality, because while we can look back at the past, and it can be helpful and instructive, and there's lots of benefits to be had, one of the dangers in looking back to the past is that it distracts us and impedes us from making forward progress. Philippians chapter 3, Paul says this, One thing I do, Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. There is such a thing as thinking too much about the past. In fact, probably most people don't spend enough time evaluating and thinking about the past so that they can serve God better in the present and in the future. But Job here is looking back and saying, I used to have all of these wonderful things happen to me, and now God has turned his head from me and things are far worse. This is a bad kind of looking back. This is more like a ruminating. It's thinking about the past in an unhelpful and perhaps let's call it ungodly way. This is not a good situation. And so job chapter 29 is him looking back at the past and how things used to be. And now they're no longer that way. Don't get caught in the good old days fallacy. Maybe the good old days aren't as good as they used to be. And perhaps God was far kinder to you in those seasons than we may remember. In fact, that's one good reason that you should journal and capture the events as they happen, or at least capture them with some reflection so that you can honestly assess things of the past. In Job chapter 30. He doesn't only lament the past, but now he's lamenting the present he says it is the men who are younger than him that laugh at him. Men whose fathers I would have disdained the men who are the lowest of society. ungodly, unrighteous. Their sons, their children are the ones who are mocking Job. The kind of people who despise him is revolting. Job can't believe it. And in an honor shame culture, this kind of disrespect would have been so intensely weighty. In an honor shame culture, this would have been a far more significant insult, which is why Job highlights it. He says, these people are the kind of people that he would himself have despised. But now, this senseless and nameless brood, he says in verse eight, they have been whipped out of the land and now I've become their song. I'm the butt of the joke of people that have no standing and no place in society. Irreputable people are now mocking me. I'm being made fun of by the lowest of low. They don't hesitate to spit at the side of me. They don't hesitate to show me disregard and disrespect. They'd go out of their way to do it, it seems. And he acknowledges in verse 11, this is because of what God has done to me. This is God's doing. Ultimately, again, God is responsible. God is the ultimate cause. There are always proximate causes. Job laments the fact that he is isolated. God has cast him down into the mud and the mire, the dust and the ashes. And so now Job is by himself suffering. Again, one of the reasons that this is especially bad is because Job is doing this seemingly by himself. He has no one to lean his head on because his wife is telling him to curse God and die. His best friends, or I guess are his best friends. Are telling him he's guilty of sin, he needs to repent. And so he's expecting sympathy, but he's getting none. In fact, that's what verses 24 through 31 lament. He's looking at the days when he would show kindness and mercy to people. And yet today when he would expect the same, he gets none of that. And on top of that, he's still suffering some physical maladies. We haven't talked about this recently, but physically, job is still suffering. God allowed the devil to afflict him with physical maladies, and one of these maladies is black skin. Black skin falling off his body. So I would assume here that what's taking place is that skin is dying. He has unhealthy skin, and this skin is falling off of his flesh because it's dead. What an awful place to be, and I bet, what an awful smell. Imagine that for a second. If you've ever been around rotting flesh, or the smell of rotting flesh, you get a sense of what Job might be going through here. Imagine being in his position. Job chapter 31, Job's final appeal. It says here in the ESV really interesting because in this chapter, he goes through the Rolodex of his life and it says, if I'm guilty of this, then God do that. He is calling down curses upon himself based on his character and his integrity. If I've been guilty of A, then Lord, please give me B. And so he goes through a long laundry list of things that he believes himself to be innocent of. In fact, again, Scripture would affirm that. Job chapter 1, verses 1 and 2 tells us that Job was an upstanding man. He's righteous, he's blameless, he fears the Lord. So all of these things that he's saying, we'd have to contend with Job and say, yes, this is likely true of him. Now, again, we're not talking about absolutes here. There's no such thing as a perfect person, and Job is no exception to that rule. We're talking about generalities. And in general, Job kept short accounts with God. But that didn't mean that he was compromising. By and large, on the whole, Job is a man of integrity. So he doesn't trust in wealth. He's not oppressing the poor. He's not rejecting the cause of his maidservant. He's not being unfaithful to his wife. He is calling down curses on himself if he's not saying what is true. He ends his words by saying, If my land has cried out against me, And its furrows have wept together, If I've eaten of its yield without payment, And made its owners breed their last, Let thorns grow instead of wheat, Foul weeds instead of barley, The words of Job are ended. That's all he can say. It is the strongest and highest appeal that he can make. In other words, men, I'm so confident of my standing before the Lord that I am willing to call down curses. It's like when someone says, may God strike me dead. If they put their hand in the air and they gesture loudly with their limbs, this is what job is doing. So confident of his integrity that he's willing to put it all in the line. And I think it successfully quiets all of his friends. To the point where we get introduced to a new character tomorrow, one who's been there the whole time and yet has reserved his speech until then. We'll look at him tomorrow together. But for now, let's make a couple quick observations. Number one, looking at our last chapter in Job 31, I want you to ask yourself if you could do the same. Now again, I recognize, as much as the next guy, that there's no one who's perfect. But could you say, my life is by and large one of integrity? On the whole, people acknowledge that I am a Christian, they know it, and my life testifies to that. If you're not that person, This ought to be something that you and I really aim for. We want people to think highly of Christ, our individual lives will impact how people think about Jesus. And therefore it's worthy of our time and attention to say, how can I live more faithfully to Christ? How can I live in such a way that it is above reproach? Assuming that we make it to church for our men's Bible study, we'll be talking about that very topic today. God willing. So that's the first thing, living a life of integrity, living in such a way where people can acknowledge that our words match our actions, not perfection, but striking consistency. Second, I want to encourage you not to make an idol of the past. Job says in chapter 29, man, things used to be wonderful and amazing and how glorious it was. And I'm not going to deny the fact that he was blessed. God acknowledged this. The devil acknowledges. So he likely had a really fantastic life, but I wonder how helpful this was for him. I would suspect that this was not a worthy exercise of his mind and perhaps it would have been better spent acknowledging God's faithfulness and entrusting everything that he had just gone through to the Lord. So here's my encouragement to you, as they observe the fact that there's a good way and a bad way to look back at the past. I would encourage you to make good use of a journal. Some people think about the word journal or diary and they overcomplicate it and make it more significant than it needs to be. Something small and simple is really all it needs. A few sentences, a few brief prayer requests jotted down to mark what God has done or even just to thank God for what he's already doing in your life. That would be a great use of your time and something that would be easy to reflect on when the need arises. If something, befalls your family or your life, you now have a record of God's faithfulness in your life that's strikingly accurate because you took the time to do it. Okay. That's it. Thank you so much for joining me again today for another edition of the daily Bible podcast. If you have any questions or thoughts, we'd love to hear from you. We always do. And again, we do have, I think a couple of questions in the queue, but I wanted to wait for pastor PJ to come back, which I think is going to be tomorrow, God willing. And so we'll get back to some of those questions until then. Thank you for listening. Well, hope you keep reading your Bible and that you'll join us again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast.

Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of the daily Bible podcast. We hope and pray this has been a blessing to you and your time in the word. If it has, if you would subscribe to this podcast, leave a like, leave a comment and share it with some friends and family. That would be awesome. If you need more information about Compass Bible Church here in North Texas, you can go to compassntx. org. Again, that's compassntx. org. And we'll be back with you tomorrow for another episode of the daily Bible podcast.