How can man be just before God?
The Book of Job is a mysterious book. It is often linked with how Christians can endure persecution and difficult times, but the book of Job is more than that. The Book of Job, more than anything else, answers this question. How can man be just or right before God? Throughout Job, the question is asked.
Job 9: 1-2 1Then Job answered and said: 2 “Truly I know it is so, but how can a man be righteous before God?
Job 25: 4 How then can man be righteous before God? Or how can he be pure who is born of a woman?
How can sinful man be righteous before God? It is the question of all questions. If you think about it, what characterizes man? SIN!!!! Sin is our nature. Can I prove it?
If you have ever told a lie, whether it be a little white lie or a big black lie, raise your hand high in the air. If you have ever stolen anything, a quarter off the counter that did not belong to you, an answer off someone’s test, an ink pen from work, I mean anything, raise your hand, and raise it high trying to reach the sky. Just wave that hand back and forth.
Do you know what you guys just told me? Even though you look righteous, we have a congregation full of liars and thieves. How can man be right before God? Let me tell you about man’s nature. You are not a liar because you lie. You lie because you are a liar in your nature. You are not a thief because you steal, you steal because you are a thief in your nature. Man is going to sin. Look at this passage in Job.
Job 15: 15-16 15 If God puts no trust in His saints, and the heavens are not pure in His sight,16 how much less man, who is abominable and filthy, who drinks iniquity like water!
Sin is as easy to man as is drinking water. Man is sinful. The problem is that God is Holy.
Isaiah 6: 3 And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!”
God is holy; man is sinful. God will never stoop down to man’s level, and man can never reach the level of God, so how can man be right with God? The only way man can be righteous before God is through Jesus Christ and the salvation He offers. A man’s only hope with God is to believe in Jesus Christ.
John 3: 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
That is simple enough. Believe in Jesus and be right with God. Problems arise when the slimy, sneaky, Serpent from the Garden appears on the scene. People have this misconception about the devil. The devil is very religious. As a matter of fact, his sin was that he wanted to be worshipped as if he was God. The Serpent did not tempt Eve with evil. The Serpent tempted Eve to be like God.
Genesis 3: 4-5 4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Satan does not mind if you are religious. He just does not want you righteous, a righteousness found in Jesus Christ only. Because he does not want a person to experience a new birth, Satan has created many forms of synthetic salvation to keep man away from Jesus Christ. I want us to look at a few of the devil’s attempts at synthetic salvation, and I want to close with what real salvation is, what it really takes to be just before God.
II. TYPES OF SYNTHETIC SALVATION
If you remember, Job had three antagonists that tried to offer him synthetic ways to get out of his situation. Job’s three friends were being used by the devil, and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the writer of Job included these interactions between Job and his friends to show us what Satan will offer.
A. Demonism (Pay Careful Attention To The Passage)
Job 4: 12 -17 12 “Now a word was secretly brought to me, and my ear received a whisper of it. 13 In disquieting thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falls on men,14 fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones shake.15 Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair on my body stood up. 16 It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance. A form was before my eyes; there was silence; then I heard a voice saying: 17 ‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker?
We meet Eliphaz, one of Job’s supposed friends. If you look at it on the surface, you will think that this is God communicating with Eliphaz, but you would be wrong. Look at what God says.
Job 42: 7 And so it was, after the Lord had spoken these words to Job, that the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has.
Eliphaz did not have an experience with God, but he did have a “religious” experience. It made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. It was so real, but it was not from God. Dear friend, in Job 4, we clearly see the spiritual warfare that Paul discusses in Ephesians.
Ephesians 6: 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
I want you to look at the Phillips translation of this verse.
“For our fight is not against any physical enemy: it is against organizations and powers that are spiritual. We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil.”
Dear friend, I want you to know the devil will do anything to get a person’s focus from the Son of Man. He has deceived millions by false religious experiences. The devil has delighted in that millions have died in pursuit of synthetic religious experiences. People fall victim to false religious experiences. Why can I say they are fake? Because they left out Jesus, and there is no salvation apart from Jesus Christ. Dear friend, we are not to be bystanders in this spiritual battle. We are to engage the enemy with the arsenal of God so that others can come to Jesus, the real source of salvation.
We are just too sophisticated to believe in demons, but I am here to tell you demonism is real, and we are in a real battle. The Bible says there are demons. Now, if the Bible does not mean what it says, it should have said what it means. 1/3 of the angels were swept away by Lucifer’s rebellion. Those demons are still on earth except for the few chained in the abyss because of what they did prior to the Flood. Dismiss demonism if you want, but I will not.
Any lost person is subject to demon possession, and any saved person who gives place to the devil by not confessing sin opens himself or herself open to demon oppression. You give place to the devil in your life when you sin, and he will build a fortress inside you if you go without confessing that sin. Demonism can take many forms today, but I want to look at two examples quickly.
1. Spiritualism
Now, we live in age fascinated with spiritual phenomenon, and spiritualism is the devil’s offering of a synthetic salvation. People today want to worship angels. Did you know an angel in the book of Revelation gave a stern warning to John the Apostle about that?
Revelation 22: 8-9 8 Now I, John, saw and heard these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed me these things. 9 Then he said to me, “See that you do not do that. For I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren the prophets, and of those who keep the words of this book. Worship God.”
God did not create angels to be worshipped. He created angels to serve him. When a person dies, that person does not become a created being with wings flapping his wings every time someone else gets their wings. It is absolutely ridiculous. When I die, I am not going to become an angel. That is what I am on earth according to Hope. When I die, I am going to become Christlike. An angel would love to be in your position.
Hebrews 2: 5 For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection to angels.
Angels are not going to reign in eternity. If a person is lured into worshipping or giving special place to angels, they have been deceived by Satan. Along with the fascination with angels, there is a fascination with ghosts and spirits. Dear friend, can I tell you biblically why that lost loved one of yours is not coming back as a ghost to visit you?
Leviticus 19: 31 ‘Give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits; do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God.
Luke 16: 26 And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’
The Bible says that there is a great gulf fixed between the dead and the living, and a person cannot pass from the afterlife to the present life to give you a special message unless the Bible does not mean what it says. People all the time talk about seeing Uncle John as a ghost and claim to talk to him. Well, I am here to tell you that you are having an experience, but it is not from God. I want you to pay attention to Leviticus 19: 31, and I have the words in bold print. Seeking after or communicating with familiar spirits will cause you to be defiled. Can I tell you what that means? If you fall for Satan’s deception and communicate with a familiar spirit, you are risking defilement. If you are lost, that defilement leads to possession. If you are saved, that defilement leads to oppression. I want you to know, dear friend, call me naïve if you want, I believe you when you say you see Uncle John, but I also know the Bible tells me that what you are seeing is not Uncle John. It is a demon spirit disguised as Uncle John trying to deceive you into falling into Satan’s trap of deception. It matters not that Uncle John was a Christian. If you see Uncle John and communicate with him, you are seeing a demon spirit disguised as your uncle.
“Jimmy, it seems so real.” Well, it is real, but it is from the depths of Hell. If Christ says in Luke 16 that there is a great gulf fixed between the living and dead that no one can penetrate or pass, what makes you think that you are actually speaking to Uncle John? It is not the Holy Spirit. It is a demon spirit trying to deceive you, and dear friend, we do not do our children service by telling them it is just fake. We need to tell our children that is a weapon of the devil that he uses in waging spiritual warfare on the world. Can I share with you two passages in the Bible that prove that these familiar spirits, Uncle John, is not Uncle John but a demon spirit?
2 Corinthians 11: 14-15 14 And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. 15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.
1 Samuel 28: 7-11 7 Then Saul said to his servants, “Find me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her.” And his servants said to him, “In fact, there is a woman who is a medium at En Dor.” 8 So Saul disguised himself and put on other clothes, and he went, and two men with him; and they came to the woman by night. And he said, “Please conduct a séance for me, and bring up for me the one I shall name to you.” 9 Then the woman said to him, “Look, you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the spiritists from the land. Why then do you lay a snare for my life, to cause me to die?” 10 And Saul swore to her by the Lord, saying, “As the Lord lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing.” 11 Then the woman said, “Whom shall I bring up for you?” And he said, “Bring up Samuel for me.”
Saul sought out a medium because the Lord would not answer him. He asked the witch to summon Samuel from the dead, and as she was summoning a demon spirit to look like Samuel to deceive Saul, God intervened and sent Samuel to pronounce judgement on Saul. What did Leviticus say? Seeking familiar spirits is a way to be defiled. Having your kingdom ripped from your hands is definitely what I call being defiled. Listen, it you are a Christian and you see a spirit, know it is the devil trying to deceive you. As a Christian, there are two things you can do to insure that the devil will not be able to oppress you by a demon spirit.
a. 1 John 4:1-3 1Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.
It is simple if you are a Christian. Ask the spirit if Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come in the flesh? If that spirit will not answer yes to that, you can do what James says.
b. James 4:7 Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
A Christian can be victorious over these evil spirits by invoking that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come in the flesh and by submitting to God, but if you are lost, these demon spirits can lure you into a synthetic salvation that will only lead you to hell. I just want to say one more thing. There are some of you listening to this message and totally dismissing what I am saying because you do not know enough about God’s Word to realize the spiritual war in which we are engaged. Because you do not take the threat seriously, the devil has successfully deceived you too, and you have opened your children and grandchildren up to an all-out offensive spearheaded by Satan himself. Jesus Christ encountered demon-possessed people on many occasions so did the Paul and Peter. If there were demon spirits roaming the earth at that time, guess what? They are still roaming the earth today. As we get closer to the return of the Lord, those demon spirits under the leadership of our Adversary are going to ramp up their attacks.
Revelation 12: 12 Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.”
Spiritualism is a form of demonism. Another form of demonism is addiction.
2. Addiction
Dear friend, we make addiction a reality by glamorizing alcohol and drugs, and shame on us for doing so. Talk to the mom and dad whose lives have been destroyed by the addiction of their child. I am telling you that addiction is the devil’s attempt to give you a synthetic salvation. Drugs and alcohol are instant heaven that leads to eternal hell.
Throughout the Bible, there are numerous warnings against drugs and alcohol.
Revelation 9: 21 And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
In the Bible, sorceries is referring to, according to Young’s Analytical Concordance and the Bible expositors I read, someone being enchanted with drugs or an enchanter with drugs. Drugs open the mind, and Satan’s goal is to seize upon that openness and create within you a feeling of euphoria that leads to eternal hell.
David Wilkerson (founder of Teen Challenge) did extensive research into Satan worshippers like the members of the Manson family, and this is what he concluded:
“I have yet to find a Satan worshipper who did not first of all open his mind to mystical experiences through drugs.” Satan will seize upon a mind controlled by drugs and mold that mind into what he wants. Listen, dear friend. Who do you think is behind the legalization of drugs in this country? It is certainly not the Holy Spirit. It is Satan because Satan knows that a mind warped by drugs is a mind that can be molded by him into accepting his synthetic salvation.
Listen dear friend. You better be careful when you clear your mind because you do not know who might move in. God deals with you on a conscious level. He does not need your mind clouded by drugs or cleared by meditation or shaped by philosophy, humanism, and mysticism.
The exploding acceptance of the drug culture in America is proof that Satan has convinced so many that drugs are not harmful, but God has warned against them.
Before I leave addiction, you must understand that alcohol is a drug too, Alcohol is just as if not more dangerous than drugs. People glamorize social drinking today like it is just the thing to do. In our society, we have gone from alcohol and drugs being illegal and marriage being between a man and a woman to drinking is accepted, marijuana is legal, and marriage is a union between whatevers. Why? Because of the deception of Satan. Satan can convince an unsaved mind that the earth is flat.
The Bible gives specific warnings about alcohol. I do not have time to get into a full discussion about drinking alcohol being a sin, but I will one of these days, and I will use the Bible as my weapon, but look at these two passages.
Proverbs 20:1 Wine is a mocker, strong drink is a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.
Proverbs 23:30-33 30 Those who linger long at the wine, those who go in search of mixed wine. 31 Do not look on the wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it swirls
around smoothly; 32 At the last it bites like a serpent, and stings like a viper. 33 Your eyes will see strange things, and your heart will utter perverse things.
We are casual with our kids about alcohol when we should be sternly warning them about its dangers. One out of every four people that try alcohol the first time become hopeless alcoholics. I wished for my life that I had never tasted it. The Bible says that anyone led astray by alcohol is not wise, and I guarantee you, young person, that if you ask any Christian that was trapped by the deception of alcohol who finally handed it over to God, they will tell you to flee the deception in a bottle that Satan will try to push on you. Adrian Rogers calls alcohol “embalming fluid in a bottle.”
It is east for us to talk about addiction and spiritualism as forms of demonism, but there are many more. If I had time, I would show you that politics is a form of demonism. How do I know that? Because people today, even some Christians, believe that political parties are the solution over God Almighty. BY the way, have you ever heard of George Washington? When he gave his farewell address in 1797, do you know what he warned against?
He warned against involvement in foreign wars. He warned against permanent political parties, and he warned against not celebrating America’s achievements. We ignored his warning, and you see what it has gotten us. We have soldiers stationed all over the world, political parties run for elected offices today instead of candidates, and our history has been neglected, and as a result, Satan is deceiving lost souls by the millions.
Humanism is a form of demonism. Humanism stresses the accumulated knowledge of the ages as well as philosophy. We see it on bumper stickers as Co-Exist. We must accept what anyone believes, and those believing in something or someone other than Jesus Christ are deceived into thinking they are going to Heaven when in reality, their souls have one foot in hell already. Materialism is a form of demonism. The deception of pursuing financial gain and security at the expense of eternal security is paving the wide road to eternal damnation.
Satan has been successful in creating a synthetic salvation that takes many forms, and because of Satan’s success, Job asks an incredibly pertinent question.
Job 25: 4 How then can man be righteous before God? Or how can he be pure who is born of a woman?
How can a man be righteous before God, and then Job answers is on question.
Job 9:33 Nor is there any mediator between us, who may lay his hand on us both.
III. REAL SALVATION
Job said there is no way man can be righteous before God unless man has a mediator who lays his hand on man and God. Man could never be the mediator that man needs to be righteous before God because man and God are separated by sin. God could never be the mediator man needed because God is holy and man is not.
There was only One who could be the mediator that could make man righteous before God. That One had to be man, and that One had to be God, and that One is Jesus Christ. Jesus came to earth with His glory veiled in flesh to be born in a manger in Bethlehem. His mother was a virgin, and His Father was the God of Creation. He had to be born of a virgin. It is the Father’s blood that coursed its way through the veins of Jesus Christ. It was special blood that made it possible as Isaiah said to make the crimson-stained soul as white as wool. That blood had special qualities. That blood as Hebrews says has perfected me forever. Because Jesus Christ did not have a human father, He was able to live a sinless life.
You see God is still holy. For me to become righteous, someone had to span that gap between sin and holiness. Jesus Christ was that someone. Because He lived a sinless life, He became the mediator I needed. As God, He was able to bear my sin. As man, He redeemed me before the Father. Jesus Christ was the One Job knew that man needed. Because of Jesus Christ, I can have eternal life. Because of Jesus Christ, you can overcome Satan’s deception and experience real salvation. The Bible says this:
John 3: 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Romans 10: 13 For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
TO be saved, God has done all He can for you. All you have to do is believe in Jesus Christ and call on His name, and you will be saved and no longer deceived. When you do that, you will be made righteous before God, and God will give you His stamp of approval by sending you the Holy Spirit to live in you.
The Holy Spirit in you will open your eyes to Satan’s deception. Jesus Christ and salvation is the only way a person can escape demonism. Jesus Christ and salvation is the only way a person can escape addiction. Jesus Christ and salvation is the only way a person can escape Hell. Dear friend, if you are breathing, you know whether or not you have asked Jesus to forgive you of your sins. You know whether or not you have invited Jesus into your heart. Will you call on Him today, or do you want to continue living in deception and Satan’s synthetic salvation?