Transcription

Connor:
You’re listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun and practical ways.

Chris:
Hey, everybody, and welcome to The Bible Guys. Who do I have here to my right?

Kyle:
My name is Kyle Crenshaw.

Chris:
And Kyle, tell everybody why you’re here.

Kyle:
Jeff’s out of town. I think that’s the main reason why we got reached out to.

Chris:
Yeah, so Kyle works on our staff at a church that we work at called Heritage, and you’ve been on staff for how long now?

Kyle:
It’ll be six years in August.

Chris:
Yeah, and you are the all things guru to our Imlay City campus.

Kyle:
Yeah, the assistant campus pastor, which is just the everything else pastor.

Chris:
Yeah, that’s right.

Kyle:
I think that’s how it works.

Chris:
Yeah, that’s pretty cool. And, uh, so anyway, Jeff is out of town. He’s actually gone somewhere across the country. Uh, you know, the adventures of Marco Polo. And so we are having a different guest, uh, every week just to liven things up. Uh, last week, Jeff was here with Wesley, uh, and all throughout the week. And this, this week I’m here with different guests. So, so Kyle, here is the segment for today from Desiree. Oh boy. Desiree says this, Kyle, meaning you, Kyle is a Kansas City Chiefs number one fan. So here’s today’s question. If you could swap bodies with any celebrity or athlete for a day, who would it be? And what would you do? Did you know this question was coming?

Kyle:
Yeah. Yes, I did. And I’ve been thinking about this. The correct answer is I wouldn’t switch with anybody because I already have an amazing life, the trophy wife, the amazing kids and get to work with you.

Chris:
Hey, listen, now that that’s out of the way.

Kyle:
You know, that’s not the assignment. So I think I’ve got to go with Patrick Mahomes. I mean, he’s just he’s Mr. Everything right now. Most popular guy in the world. 500 million dollar contracts.

Chris:
In the world? You think he’s the most popular guy in the world?

Kyle:
I think so. I think he’s up there when it comes to sports and everything.

Chris:
You think people in Uganda know Patrick Mahomes over Donald Trump?

Kyle:
Well, he’s lost the Super Bowl, so that means there’s Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl shirts somewhere out there.

SPEAKER_00:
That’s true. That is true.

Kyle:
They ship them to other places in the world. Maybe not the most popular person, most popular athlete. And so seeing his house, the thing, he’s got a football field, giant pool, all that stuff at his house.

Chris:
See, I thought you were going to say Travis Kelsey because he’s dating Taylor Swift. No, you’d be like, I just want a chance to hang out with Taylor Swift. Maybe a little kiss on the cheek, maybe.

Kyle:
No, no. I enjoy her music, but I wouldn’t call myself a Swifty. Plus, I don’t know if you know this, Patrick Malmes is the reason Whataburger is in Kansas City. And so the fact is, he probably got the amazing, like all this access to Whataburger. That’s my favorite fast food restaurant. Okay. So my parents actually shipped me Whataburger ketchup from Texas. Holy cow. I got it like all the time. Their spicy ketchup is great, but

Chris:
Wow. That’s amazing.

Kyle:
That kind of access to Whataburger would be cool.

Chris:
That is a commitment there. Shipping ketchup from Texas. Wow.

SPEAKER_00:
Yes. That’s awesome.

Chris:
And it’s that good. Okay. Well, hey, that was very predictable. Thanks for that predictable answer of Patrick Mahomes. Yeah, you know.

Kyle:
There’s only one right answer to that.

Chris:
That’s so great. Well, hey man, today we are, uh, we wrapped up Genesis, uh, uh, two days ago and then last week, or excuse me, yesterday we talked about, uh, Job. And so Job went through this massive tragedy where God, uh, allowed Satan to attempt into it, to, uh, test Job. And, uh, that’s a whole nother topic altogether, but either way, All his servants and his sheep and his cattle and even his family, except for his wife, were taken away from him. And then Job has this incredible response. It just doesn’t even seem natural. It’s supernatural. He shaves his head, falls to his knees and worships God and says, naked, I came out of my mother’s womb, naked I return, praise be the Lord. And everybody’s like, what is happening? Well, today we’re talking about Job’s second test. This is the second thing that comes Job’s way. And so you’re going to read for us?

Kyle:
Yeah, so we’re reading job chapter 2 verse 1 through 10 Um, but it says one day the members of the heavenly court came again to present themselves before the lord and the accuser satan came with them Where have you come from the lord asked satan satan answered the lord. I have been patrolling the earth watching everything that’s going on Then the lord asked satan. Have you noticed my servant job? He is the finest man in all the earth. He is blameless a man of complete integrity He fears God and stays away from evil and he has maintained his integrity even though you urged me to harm him without cause Satan replied to the Lord skin for skin a man will give up everything he has to save his life But reach out and take away his health and he will surely curse you to your face All right “‘Do with him as you please,’ the Lord said to Satan, “‘but spare his life.’ So Satan left the Lord’s presence, and he struck Job with terrible boils from head to foot. Job scraped his skin with a piece of broken pottery as he sat among the ashes. His wife said to him, “‘Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die!’ But Job replied, you talk like a foolish woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad? So in all this, Job said nothing wrong.

Chris:
So, so far, Job only has said two things in the first two chapters. Yeah. The first response is like the perfect and most unbelievable response ever. Yeah. And then the second is the same thing. Right. And so he says, shall we, excuse me, shall we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad? That is an unbelievable perspective. So when bad things come your way, do you always have that response?

Kyle:
Oh, absolutely not. Usually it’s anger, it’s frustration, it’s why is this happening to me? A lot of confusion. Yeah. I would say I hardly ever have that kind of response that Job has.

Chris:
Yeah, no doubt. And first of all, let’s address this, the fact that, you know, somebody might read chapter two and think perhaps that Satan has the power to persuade God, because after all, in the first chapter, you know, God and Satan were having a conversation and God said, do not touch his health. Just don’t do anything to him or his health. And in this chapter, God decides to say, okay, fine, all right, do with him as you please, but spare his life. And so the answer is not that God can be persuaded by Satan. The answer is that God already knew the outcome before everything happened anyway. And so really the progression here of learning isn’t from God, the progression of learning is from Satan himself. Because Satan was absolutely convinced that there was no man on earth that would worship God if he had all those things taken from him. And so God said, hey, go ahead and do it and watch and see. And then, and he says, but don’t touch his health. And it was God perhaps reserving Reserving that his health because God already knew that Satan would get to that point and say oh, well, you know It’s only because it’s health, right? Yeah, so Satan is the one learning in degrees not God Yeah, God withheld his health and then and then allowed Satan to attack his health because God knew from the very beginning that Job would never sin and always honor God and

Kyle:
Well that’s what the whole, in verse 4 when he says skin for skin, like that’s what that whole thing stands for. So in chapter 1 we see that he takes his, his kids die, his animals are lost, like basically all of his personal property is gone. And so Satan has his opinion, this is what the note says in here, is that Job’s response to the loss of his family, or Satan still held to his opinion that Job was faithful only because of God’s blessings. And so Satan is believing that if I go after Job’s health, then surely this guy is going to fall. Like he’s not everything that God really says about him. So that’s really where that whole skin, these notes on here are really good.

Chris:
Yeah, which by the way, you can reverse engineer this and actually try to, you know, create a scenario in our own lives today and say, what happens when your blessings are taken away? When your blessings are taken away, will you still praise the Lord? You know, there are a lot of people, a lot of good friends of mine who, you know, when tragedy strikes through the form of, you know, let’s just say like job loss, or, you know, or maybe a big health scare and diagnosis that leads to job loss, that leads to financial strain, and then consequently trickles down to losing things, losing opportunities, losing, you know, the ability to travel and making memories and everything else. And so when blessings are taken away, you know, you can reverse engineer this and say, okay, will I be the person who would still praise God in spite of my blessings being taken away? It’s a great question. Yeah. I definitely think that, um, it’s a good one to, to wrestle with because I think that it’s really tough, you know, it’s, it’s easy to say I would be that person, but when it, when, when the reality comes, it’s hard to know what you’d really do.

Kyle:
Yeah, well, and even in Job’s situation, it’s not like he’s lost his kids, and it’s not like his wife is being the most supportive person either. He even says, you talk like a foolish woman. I would never say that to my wife. Even if she said something that I didn’t think was smart, I’m not going to go out and call her a fool. But Job is so, his integrity is so strong, and he’s so focused on the fact that God provides everything. all those things can be taken away as well. So he doesn’t even have a positive influence around him that is encouraging him and helping him through this. And we’ll see this later on in the book of Job that even his friends kind of turn against him and start saying things about him.

Chris:
Yeah, I like where he says, you talk like a foolish woman. In the King James Version, I think he says, woman?

Kyle:
Yeah.

Chris:
And so it’s so funny how, you know, here she is, you know, her life is spared. In fact, the note in the Life Application Study Bible, which we don’t get paid to promote, but we probably should, It says, making a joke there, it says, why was Job’s wife spared when the rest of his family was killed? And then I love this answer. It says, it is possible that her very presence caused Job even more suffering. But then you continue to read on though. And then he says, through her sorrow over all they had lost. So at first, when I read that, I thought, oh, his wife is, a nagger, and she makes his life worse. But that’s not what it’s saying. It’s saying witnessing her grief was actually just as horrific as, maybe even worse to deal with than his own grief, to witness his wife and the loss of her children. And again, it’s a terrible thing to even think about. Like, why would God allow this? And you know, to be honest with you, I have a problem with this book. I have a problem with it. It’s the age-old question, why would a loving God allow evil and suffering in the world? And it’s the why thing that always takes place. And you could really do that for any book in the Bible. Why did God allow that to happen to Joseph, right? Why did God allow the children of Israel to be enslaved only to be delivered by Moses for 300 something years? Why does God allow those things to happen? And a lot of times what God does in the Old Testament is a picture or foreshadowing of what is to come for us. A lot of times we look and we see life lessons, we see a picture of Christ, we see the children of Israel wandering in the desert, you know, going through, and of course that was a consequence of their own sin, but still, it’s just there’s these things that happen and we say, why? And I remember I wrote a message one time, and I think that God gave me this thought, and I’ve never let go of it since, and this was 20 years ago. And that is, when you can’t know the why, just trust in the who. That’s good. Right? So the why is a thing that we’ll never know this side of eternity in a lot of cases, right? Like, why did this happen, God? And I think it’s natural to say, if I just knew why, Yeah. My wife worked on the oncology floor at Beaumont Hospital, a local hospital here in the area. And I remember one time she told me a story about a guy who she got to know their family regularly, but then his wife passes. And then through a series of conversations, he leads a nurse into a relationship with Christ. Yeah. And then he made this weird and audacious comment. And he said, now I know why my wife died. she died so that I could lead this nurse to Christ. And I thought to myself, okay, listen, that was definitely something great that came out of that tragedy, but don’t you dare try to lay at the feet of God the why, right? As if we should presume to know every reason why your wife passed away, right? She could have just passed away because it was a consequence of death and decay, as Roman eights tells us, right? That we’re under the bondage and curse of sin. But just like God always does, God will bring beauty from the ashes. He’ll bring grace from sorrow. The flower is going to bloom in the midst of the chaos. He’s going to do that every time, but that doesn’t mean that that’s why. So whenever you don’t know the why, then just trust in who God is. Trust in the who.

Kyle:
Well, and I think it’s when we look at Jesus’s life and, you know, when he shows up at Mary and Martha’s house, when he goes, because he hears his friend Lazarus is sick. And there’s the famous verse in the Bible. It’s the shortest verse. It was always my favorite one to memorize, like in Awana growing up and everything. It’s just Jesus wept and you know, you always kind of wonder as a kid like why did why is Jesus crying? Like Jesus is God Jesus knows everything Jesus knows that he can heal him and raise him back from the dead which he eventually does but I truly believe it’s because Jesus is fully human as well and feels that exact same emotion that sadness that sin brings on the world the fact that death is a reality because sin is because of our sin, because of our rebellion against God, that we don’t live in a perfect world and things are going to happen. And so Jesus has a very human moment where he feels that sadness because he’s in a world that isn’t the way that God originally designed it. God originally designed it to be perfect. And so when we look at Job’s life and we see the things that he’s going through and we look at our own lives and Troubles that come, problems that come, I think first we kind of have to look like, okay, are these the consequences of things that I’m doing? What is the source of the suffering? Is it something, a decision that I made, a decision that somebody close to me made? The Life Application Study Bible, which isn’t this one, but it has some cool notes on basically looking at the source of suffering and where that comes from. And so is it from somebody, a decision I made, or a decision a friend made, a family member made? And then sometimes, in Job’s case, like, this suffering came from Satan because God allowed it to. And this is something I tell our students on Wednesday nights, is like, when you are at your closest to God. When you are on fire, and usually you see this with a lot of people like after salvation, you know, they’re ready to go, they’re sharing their faith with their friends, their family, they get baptized and have this big public proclamation, that is when they get hit the hardest. Because Satan knows that we are dangerous, that God has chosen us, the church, to be the ones that are going to change the world, that he wants to use us to change the world. And so the fact is, is like when we face suffering, I think there’s there’s hope that we can see in it. Like, yeah, it it stinks when hard things happen, when you lose a job, when a family member, you find out they have cancer. But to look deeper than that and know that as long as it’s not a consequence of your own action, that you are being attacked because Satan knows that you’re dangerous. And God wants to use you to change the world. I think that adds a completely different perspective. Yeah, it definitely does. Gets you fired up a little bit.

Chris:
You know, I had mentioned before that so far in two chapters, Job really only talks twice. Yeah. And he has these unbelievable, inspiring, and almost perfect responses. And you know what I always think when I read this is I always think to myself, I wonder if I would be that guy. Like, if that were me, would I react and say the same thing? And I remember one time, you know, because you always hope to be that guy, unless you’re in that situation, you don’t know how you’d react. Whenever I watch movies, and there’s always like a brave hero that runs into the burning building. And, you know, I always like to think like, gosh, I hope I would be that guy, right? I remember I was in a car with a person. I was actually a used car salesman at the time. And I was with a guy taking a test drive. Anyway, he gets in a massive wreck. We just get in this massive, huge wreck. Airbags go off. And airbags actually have like a chemical, like a powdery, smoky chemical that shoot out. And to me, it looked like the car was on fire. So we get in this massive wreck, we T-bone this other truck, and then these airbags deploy. The car fills up with this smoke, right? And so I started screaming, and I said, the truck’s on fire. And I unbuckle my seatbelt, and I run out, and I run all the way across the street. And the guy who’s driving, who’s like a customer, he’s stuck in the front seat. Well, his window was halfway down, so I could see the smoke, which wasn’t really smoke, it was this chemical gas, but it was coming out of the window. I said, I go, hurry up, I go, unbuckle, get out, get out, the car’s gonna blow, right? And he shouts out the window and he goes, my seatbelt’s stuck. Now, you would think that I would be the person, like, wouldn’t you like to be the person that runs over, opens the door, reaches in and helps him? You watch the movies, you see the superhero do all those things? I stand on the other side of the street and I yell, just mash it really hard.

SPEAKER_00:
Just, just mash it. Good luck.

Kyle:
As if he’s not doing that already.

SPEAKER_00:
Right, right, right, right.

Chris:
And so I, and then, and then afterwards he gets undone and I find out that the car really wasn’t on, the truck really wasn’t on fire. And I actually then, it was only then that I realized, I’m like, I can’t believe I was that guy. Like, I wasn’t the guy to run into the flaming truck, which was not on fire, and help the guy. And it was like, I just was so embarrassed. I thought to myself, gosh. Real quick, I’ll tell you another 30 second story. One time I visited a guy at the hospital who I knew was going to pass away. He was just three, four days away from dying. And he was there with his wife. And I’m the pastor and I’m supposed to show up and I’m supposed to encourage this guy, pray for this guy. And I showed up and I thought to myself, what am I going to say? Like this guy is literally going to be dead in like three or four days. And we all knew it. And so I walked into the hospital bed. his wife was shampooing his hair, he was leaned over into this, you know, cup, and she had a bottle of water, like I have right here, and she’s pouring it over his head, and they’re both cracking up. They’re laughing, they’re having so much fun. And he’s laughing about the soap that they’re using, it’s in his eyes, he’s like, it’s in my eyes. And I walk in thinking, oh, this is different than I thought it was gonna be. And then we talked and he looked at me and said, well, he goes, he actually said this sentence. He goes, well, he goes, I will expire. In a couple days, he goes, and my wife will carry on and she’ll be well taken care of. And he goes, I’ll pray that this is the way she’ll live. And he goes, I’ll be with Jesus. And in the blink of an eye, honey, I’ll see you again. And they both smiled and hugged each other. And then we just joked and laughed. Yeah. And he could tell that I was uncomfortable because I’m supposed to be the guy encouraging him. Yeah. But he’s encouraging me. So then he perceives this and then he stops and he looks at me and says, Chris, you know, he says, it’s times like this that, you know, and he just starts encouraging me. You know, we should have this perspective. We should lean on God. We should believe and trust him more in times like these more than ever. And I thought to myself, is he encouraging me right now?

SPEAKER_00:
I’m like, that’s not his job. It’s my job to encourage you. It’s my job to pray for you, you know, but he saw that I was distraught.

Chris:
And I’ll never forget that, Kyle. To the day I die, I promise you, unless I get a disease that causes me to forget, I will never forget that. Because on my deathbed, if I am confronted with death, just like Job surely thought that he was, I want to be the guy. that everybody talks about long after he’s gone. Yeah. And says, what a faith. Yeah.

Kyle:
Right. Yeah. Well, and that this integrity that Job had, it just didn’t happen. This relationship with God, it just didn’t like just pop out of nowhere. Right. It was years of his life cultivating that relationship, digging deeper, growing closer to God. That’s right. Communion with him. And we have the same opportunity every single day. So when we’re in that situation where somebody comes to encourage us, when we’re going through hard times, we have the chance, if we have that close relationship with God, to turn it around and, you know, do what happened to you.

Chris:
Right, right, right, yeah. Well, Jeff always says, you can’t threaten a Christian with heaven. Yeah, that’s true. Right? So you can’t do that. And then also, you know, that whole idea of like, whenever you can’t find the why, you so desperately are looking for it and you can’t find it, just lean into the who. Who God is. God is still a God who loves us, who wants what’s best for us. He’s faithful. He’s just. He is a God who is righteous in every way, and He is worthy of our trust, even without the why. Yeah, absolutely. Well, hey, listen, that’s our time. And so we will see you next time on The Bible Guys.