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Beyond the Whirlwind - Sermon
33 Plays6 days ago
In this sermon, Ridley Barron preached about the complex and often perplexing themes found in the Book of Job, particularly why bad things happen to good people and how to respond. He delves into the nature of suffering, urging listeners to understand the character of God even in the midst of trials. Barron educates the congregation on the various genres within the Bible, emphasizing the importance of discerning and interpreting these genres correctly. He highlights Job’s unwavering integrity and trust in God, advocating for daily prayer and intercession for one's family. Through a mix of personal anecdotes and scriptural analysis, Barron provides insightful lessons on dealing with adversity, trusting God's bigger plan, and holding on to faith even when answers are not immediately clear. He calls for a deepened relationship with God, stressing the role of worship and the immensity of God's love and presence in our lives.
Timestamps:
00:00 "Understanding Suffering in Faith"
04:52 "The Law: A Reading Challenge"
09:28 Job's Wealth and Family Practices
11:09 Pray Daily to Protect Family
14:48 "God Lets Satan Test Job"
17:35 Job's Overwhelming Tragedies
20:16 Understanding Suffering and Life's Challenges
26:29 Avoid Presumptions About Others
28:45 Advising Others: A Cautionary Tale
32:48 "Transcendence: God's Unwavering Presence"
36:09 "Worship Aligns Heart with God"
39:36 Divine Guidance and Human Growth
43:21 Finding Strength in Faith
45:51 Morning Prayer of Gratitude
47:18 "Invitation to Transformative Faith"
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Transcript
Introduction to Study of Job
00:00:01
Speaker
Well, good morning, Grove Hill. It's so good to have you here and worshiping with us this morning, especially if it's the first time, thankful that you've chosen to worship with us um and be a part of this, and thankful you all showered last night, or this morning, or some point.
00:00:18
Speaker
oh Man, what a great, great sight to see all of you here this morning. If you got your Bibles, turn to Job chapter one. If you have been following us this year as we're reading chronologically, you're going, hey, wait a minute, weren't we just in Genesis last week? Why are we in Job this week? Well, there's a couple reasons for that. The the very realistic reason is that Job, most scholars believe, falls in this place in the Bible chronologically. actually most likely somewhere around the life of Abraham is where the story of Job unfolds. And and most scholars i actually think that Job was written before any of the other books of the Bible, even though it falls kind of in the middle there. The other reason we jump from Genesis to Job is because we've kind of been slow so far. Three weeks in Genesis, so we're doing one week in Job, two weeks in Exodus, a week in Numbers, and a week in Leviticus. That's how fast we've got to move to try to cover her
00:01:14
Speaker
the 1,189 chapters of this book. So continue to
Understanding Job and Suffering
00:01:19
Speaker
be in prayer for us. Put your seatbelt on, because here we go. um Job is an interesting story, and I've had conversations with many of you this week, just in passing, so many of you who've said, oh my goodness, it's so hard to read this book. it just it's It's difficult, and it is, because it's like Groundhog Day.
00:01:38
Speaker
Once you get past the first two chapters and get into the next 38, the conversation is so cyclical, so repetitive, sometimes you want to flip back and go, haven't I already read this? And that's what the feel is like until you get to the very end of the book. And so we're not going to have the opportunity, obviously, to go through all 42 chapters of this, but we're going to pull some really cool stuff out of it. This book is amazing because it addresses head on probably one of the hardest questions that any believer has to answer And that is, why do bad things happen to good people? And how do we respond to that? And how does that help us to understand the character of our God?
Genres in the Bible
00:02:18
Speaker
So before we do that, I want to take you
00:02:21
Speaker
just into the classroom for just a second, okay? And what I mean by that is I wanna kinda talk a little bit about the eight different genres of scripture that we have. Remember in your English classes, the different genres, there's fiction, non-fiction, science fiction, those kinds of things. The reason it's important you know that the Bible contains all of these is because if you read a portion of scripture thinking it's one thing and it's it's another, it can lead to a whole lot of confusion, a whole lot of misinformation or misunderstanding. And so it's important that you understand the different genres that make up the book so that you don't read the entire 66 books of the Bible with the same um approach to it, okay? Everybody with me on that?
00:03:05
Speaker
Everybody groan because I'm taking you to class, but I promise we'll get to the sermon here in just a second. So here it is. The first genre is the narrative, the narrative. What is the narrative? It's very simply ah the storytelling of of books and things that happened with people in the book. Now here's the important thing you need to know about the narrative parts of scripture. Genesis is primarily narrative, okay? The story of Joseph that Kyle did such a fantastic job with last week is a narrative.
00:03:32
Speaker
But much of the Old Testament narrative, in fact, I would say most of the Old testment narrative old Testament narrative is descriptive and it's not prescriptive.
00:03:44
Speaker
It's descriptive, it's not prescriptive. What does that mean? it Because the Bible is truth without error, it is unafraid to tell the stories of these characters even though many times what they're doing is wrong and not what God wants them to do. So it's not being recorded so that God says, that's how I want you to behave. In fact, most of the time it's a warning saying, this is not how you should behave, okay?
00:04:08
Speaker
Let me give you, for instance, the idea of polygamy. People who don't understand the Bible, people who don't understand relationships with God and how he works will argue that the Bible supports polygamy. It does not. There's nowhere in scripture where God ever says to a man, go find yourself another woman.
00:04:26
Speaker
or go gather concubines to yourself. God says, man, that's dumb, don't do that, okay? What we see is a kind and compassionate God working with people who have already made bad choices for themselves and trying to take them from where they are to where he needs them to be, okay? So that's the narrative. The second one is, ah whoops, that went way the wrong way, ah the law.
00:04:52
Speaker
The law, this is where we're about to enter into in the next few weeks. The law, quite honestly, is the genre where reading plans go to die. because you get into the law and people go, oh my goodness, i did not ah I did not grow up to be an attorney and here I am reading all this stuff and some of it doesn't make sense. But it's really good stuff because it's commands from God that tell us how we are to relate to him and how we are to relate to each other. And if we can absorb the law and learn the law, then it helps us to be better people towards one another and improves our relationships. The third one, prophecy. Most of you can relate to prophecy, have heard prophecy mentioned.
00:05:28
Speaker
Prophecy is primarily in the Old Testament, mostly towards the end of our Old Testament. It's guys like Ezekiel and Daniel and Isaiah and Jeremiah, all of those great guys. Now, here's a corrective thing we need to understand. When we hear the word prophecy, we think it means foretelling the future, and there is some of that in the Old Testament. Sometimes God chooses to pull back the screen and say to a guy, hey, this is what is about to happen, warn my people.
00:05:56
Speaker
Most, largest portion of prophecy is not foretelling, it is forthtelling. The difference between foretelling and foretelling is foretelling tells us the future. Foretelling is guys who really are just preaching and they're saying the same kind of thing you hear in preaching today. If you don't do this, this is what's going to happen to us. And it's not based on seeing the future, it's based on what God's already told them in the past.
00:06:23
Speaker
Because God says, if you don't honor my covenant, this is what will happen to you. And so they bring that stuff forward for us, all right? Don't worry, there's not gonna be on test on this. Number four, ah poetry. Hebrew poetry is not like our poetry, okay? It's not roses are red, bilets are blue, I love Jesus, so do you. It's not that kind of thing, okay? So many times in the scripture, it's hard to even recognize it as poetry.
00:06:49
Speaker
It's because scholars have pulled it out for us and helped us to understand it. They use different techniques to draw emotions out of us, motions that God has given us so that we can embrace a full relationship with God using all of our senses. And so it's it's an interesting genre. We'll jump into that. Most of what you see poetry-wise is found in places like the Book of Psalms, but there's other places you'll find it as well. The next one is wisdom. Wisdom.
00:07:16
Speaker
The difference between knowledge and wisdom, we've talked about this here before, knowledge is the gathering of facts. Wisdom is learning how to apply them to your life and knowing how to do it in a way that honors God. When you hear the word wisdom as a genre, you primarily think of the book of Proverbs, which is one of them. There's also wisdom in the book of Psalms, there's wisdom in the book of Ecclesiastes, and today you will see that the book of Job actually contains a lot of wisdom.
00:07:45
Speaker
Number six, and these last three primarily are found in the New Testament. The gospels, the gospels, best definition of the gospels is the story of Jesus told from four different perspectives. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
00:07:58
Speaker
One story, four different perspectives. Gospel simply means good news. Number seven, pastoral letters are epistles. These are most of what the New Testament is. It's guys like Paul, Peter, James, Jude, writing to the infant church, saying to them, here's how we behave as followers of Jesus Christ. This is how Jesus intersects our lives. This is what the church should look like. And then lastly,
00:08:24
Speaker
the apocalyptic stuff, the stuff that everybody always wants to dig into, because nobody can figure it all out, right? there Everybody's trying to put their their twist on it. Apocalyptic literature is very simply using word pictures from other parts of the Bible to tell the story of the greatest hope of mankind, and that is eternity with Jesus Christ when it's all over, okay? That's the easy definition for it. Word pictures used to tell us that story. So everybody with me?
00:08:51
Speaker
All right, so we're gonna dive into Book of Job. We're gonna start with chapter one, verse one. oh The first two chapters of Job are narrative genre. In other words, they're telling the story of Job. The last 40 chapters are poetry and wisdom mixed together as they are having these dialogues and these conversations, okay?
The Story of Job
00:09:13
Speaker
So stay with me, Job chapter one, verse one. We got a lot of good things to talk about here, because we're covering 42 chapters in 35 minutes.
00:09:21
Speaker
There was a man in the country of us named Job. He was a man of complete integrity who feared God and turned away from evil. He had seven sons and three daughters. His estate included 7,000 sheep and goats, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and a very large number of servants. Job was the greatest man among all the people of the East. His sons used to take turns having banquets at their homes. They would send an invitation to their three sisters to eat and drink with them.
00:09:53
Speaker
um Whenever a round of banqueting was over, Job would sin for his children and purify them, rising early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of them. For Job thought, perhaps my children have sinned, having cursed God in their hearts. This was Job's regular practice." I want to stop there for just a second. I want to say something to you just kind of as a side.
00:10:14
Speaker
Job 1-2 says to us very clearly, Job was an outstanding follower of God. He was a man of integrity. He was described as being perfect, being blameless. When those words are used to describe people in Scripture, they never mean that somebody is perfect. Everybody has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That's true from Genesis 1-1 all the way to the end of Revelation, okay?
00:10:38
Speaker
Job is no exception. When those words are used to describe somebody in scripture, they are saying, here is somebody who is wholeheartedly devoted towards God, is moving that direction. Do they make mistakes? Yes. Are there hiccups along the way? Absolutely. Do they sometimes get selfish or angry or whatever and sin in that process? Yes. But by and large, their hearts are totally dedicated and following after God and his direction for their lives. This describes Job. Now here's what the point I want to make for you.
00:11:09
Speaker
If the description of a godly man includes the fact that he intercedes for his children every single day, then that should be prescriptive for you and I, guys. If you are not on your knees daily for your children, for your wife, for your family, you are making a huge and drastic mistake. Now,
00:11:31
Speaker
If you were standing on the front porch of your house and your kids and your wife were maybe outside just running around and some wild animal, some wild creature or some wild person came running into the yard and threatened them, you would not hesitate to drop what you were doing, make your way in between them and the wild animal to protect them with your very life. So why won't you take 10 minutes a day to get on your knees and pray for your children? Because the Bible says Satan wants to devour them.
00:12:03
Speaker
And when you don't do that very thing, you are leaving your family up to chance. You're basically sending them out the door and saying, good luck. I hope you make it. Just a side note. All right. Verse.
00:12:22
Speaker
whatever. One day the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came with them. Here is a description of something we call um the divine counsel. The divine counsel. Just a phrase used to describe this meeting. There's only about three or four places in scripture where it describes some kind of meeting between God and a bunch of subordinate um creatures, divine creatures, who are part of this conversation. Here it uses the phrase, Son of God, which is used quite often in the Old Testament when it is. Most often it refers to angels. There are other places where it refers to other things. So what we see is that this divine conversation is going on where God is talking with all these angels and Satan, the adversary, comes into the throne room to begin to have a conversation with God.
00:13:12
Speaker
Every indication is that Job has no clue that this conversation has happened because if Joe knew this was going on, he would have done what Ridley would have done and it would have been, God, you can leave me out of this conversation. ah Please don't feel so highly that you need to recommend me for this choice because I don't want to be a part of this. But Job has no clue this is going on and we're about to see what happens when God ah interacts with Satan. He looks at Satan, he says, where have you come from?
00:13:39
Speaker
Again, we said this a couple weeks ago, I'll remind you throughout the Bible, when God asks questions, he's not looking for answers. He already knows the answer. He's trying to point the thinking of the person he's talking to towards a certain thing. The conversation is about to ensue exactly the way God wants it to go, okay? So he says, where have you come from? Satan says, from around the earth, roaming around, answered him,
00:14:02
Speaker
I am walking around on it. First Peter 5-8, later in the New Testament, would say the same kind of language when Peter would say, your adversary, the devil, is roaring around looking and prowling trying to find someone to devour. Satan has been up to the same tactics since Genesis 1. He has not changed his tactics. He's still doing the same thing here today. Man, do not associate with Satan at all. He has nothing good for you.
00:14:30
Speaker
And it amazes me as believers how much we we cave in on that and kind of compromise. Well, this can't be so bad. This wouldn't be so bad. Guys, the only intention that Satan has for you, John 10-10, is that he wants to steal, kill, and destroy you. He's not out to be your friend. He's not out to elevate you. He's out to bring you down.
00:14:55
Speaker
So Satan says, I've been roaming around and the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity who fears God and turns away from evil. Satan answered the Lord, does Job fear God for nothing? Haven't you placed a hedge around him, his household and everything he owns? You have blessed the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land.
00:15:20
Speaker
But stretch out your hand and strike everything he owns, and he will surely curse you to your face. Very well, the Lord told Satan. Everything he owns is in your power. However, do not lay a hand on Job himself, so Satan left the Lord's presence. Wanna stop there for a second, just wanna make an observation. I'm not trying to start a a war between the sexes. Isn't it interesting that God said, Job, you can touch everything, but I'm gonna leave his wife with him.
00:15:53
Speaker
You see, the wife was already only in her circle with Job. The wife was already in his ear and she was perfectly positioned to be used by Satan to distract him for what he was doing. Guys, I've already gotten on you about praying for your family. Ladies, let me get on you just a little bit. Encourage your man, do not discourage your man. Because what she's gonna do in just a minute is literally look at Job and say, curse God and die.
00:16:25
Speaker
And in that moment, what Job needed was not a needle in his side. He needed a prod at his back, saying, don't quit. Don't give up. Keep on moving, keep on believing, keep on trusting. And while your husband's out leading the family, he needs you whispering in his ear, I believe in you and I believe in God. Let's go. I'm right here with you.
00:16:49
Speaker
Thank you. Man. I thought surely in a crowd this size I'd get one amen out of that. All right. I'm just going to tell the rest of the story because it'll be quicker. So what happens is, because I don't know where I left off, Job is there.
00:17:07
Speaker
Satan misses himself from from God's presence. He goes out. He starts what he's going to do. First, we have a report that all the goats and cows and whatever get killed by Sabians who come down and destroy his livestock. The next story is that the Chaldeans come in and they come in and they destroy um things and take things away from them and all this kind of stuff. There's a place where lightning comes and destroys all of his livestock and and a storm ruins all of that. Basically everything is taken away to the point where the seven sons, the three daughters are having dinner together and a wind comes in and blows over the house and kills everyone in the house.
00:17:46
Speaker
And as you're reading the story, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, messenger after messenger after messenger comes back to back to back into the presence of Job and says, this has just happened to all that you own. This has just happened to all that you own. To the point where if I'm Job, I'm saying to my slaves, don't let another person in this house. I can't handle another word of negativity.
00:18:09
Speaker
because the absolute worst has just happened to him. There are some of you here this morning who are in a place who are going to yourself, saying to yourself, I don't think I can handle one more bad thing in my life.
00:18:25
Speaker
I don't think I can handle one more piece of bad news. I don't think I can handle one more broken relationship. I don't think I can handle one more estranged friendship. My encouragement to you, friend, is to hang on this morning because this book was given to us for some good
Lessons from Job
00:18:40
Speaker
reasons. And we're fixing to pull them out of here like really good fruit off the tree. And when it's all over with, my hope is that you walk out of here encouraged in your walk and that you see, you feel, you understand what God is doing in your life from a different perspective.
00:18:55
Speaker
You with me? All right, so let me just jump down to the things I wanna say to you this morning. First of all, there's three things that I think we can learn from this narrative. Number one, in a fallen world, you will suffer. In a fallen world, you will suffer. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. Job is living this great life, he's living a blameless life, he's living upright, he's full of integrity, and then all of the sudden, boom.
00:19:25
Speaker
The hedges dropped around his life. God opens the door and allows Satan to come and touch him. And it seems like literally Job's world has fallen apart. Job's trials begin and it's like they're coming from every direction. The Sabians were people from the north. The Chaldeans were a people from the east. The winds that from the storm that tore down his house most likely came off the Mediterranean from the west. It's like everywhere he turned, Job was being pressured.
00:19:56
Speaker
So this next statement may seem like a really odd one, but it isn't an amazing testimony to the grace and compassion of God that the first book he gives us, the first recording of anything in human history is the story of how a man deals with suffering because he knew every single one of us would go through suffering.
00:20:20
Speaker
He knew that every single one of us would taste sickness, would taste financial challenges, would taste relationship issues, and would even taste death. So if you have ever, ever uttered the words, why me God, know that you are not alone and that God has heard every prayer you've ever prayed. Every single prayer you've ever prayed. God deals with suffering head on in his word,
00:20:49
Speaker
because we don't like to. We love to avoid suffering. Can anybody even evaluate or calculate the billions and billions of dollars we spend every year trying to cheat death? But you know what the Bible says about death? Your days have already been numbered by God. When it's your time, it's your time.
00:21:17
Speaker
What is our approach? From the moment our children are born, we start sticking them with needles to and vaccinate them against every possible disease that might be out there. We wash them down from head to toe with antibacterial everything. We wrap them in bubble wraps, stick them in a car seat, send them off to school until they grow up and they're no longer our responsibility. And then we worry about them even more.
00:21:39
Speaker
for that
00:21:42
Speaker
We exercise. We eat right. We take supplements. We put voodoo oil all over us. We do everything in the world we can to try to cheat death. And God's word says completely from day one, no one cheats death. When it's your time, it's your time. Years ago, I was sitting in an airport on one of my trips when I was traveling and speaking. I remember i don't remember where I was. like Anyway, CNN was on in the airport TVs, and I remember this story because it just struck a chord with me. A family in New York, outside of one of New York's airports, I don't think it was JFK, but it was a different one, that got killed in the middle of the night because a jet engine of a plane that was landing at the airport fell off, landed on their house, and killed them all in the middle of the night. And the first thought that went through my head was, I bet that dad probably had a security alarm,
00:22:40
Speaker
I bet that dad had gone around and locked all the doors that night and went and tucked his kids in and said, good night, sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite. And he didn't say, don't let the jet engines fall on your head.
00:22:57
Speaker
And I know that sounds like a horrible thing to think, but guys, you may think you've got it all figured out and all lined up so that you and your family are protected to age 85. And God says, I have numbered your days. You don't get to determine the plan. But I want you to trust the plan. And that's a hard thing for us. It really is, right? We all want to stay alive until we're worn out and gone, you know?
00:23:27
Speaker
It's just not the way God works. The Bible says that God has a plan for every single man and woman. And it's our job to plug into that plan, to find that plan. And here's the thing. You can spend so much time, so much energy being anxious about trying to protect you and your family that you never get to enjoy the joy that God gives you in your relationship.
00:23:52
Speaker
Anxiety consumes you. Worry overfloods your heart. Sleepless nights, indigestion, all the things that come with worrying about all the things you can't possibly control. None of them.
Empathy in Suffering
00:24:09
Speaker
There's your word of encouragement for the day. Let's move on to number two. Number two, this is important. With our limited perspective, we will struggle to understand.
00:24:19
Speaker
As human beings, we don't have the ability to see life the way God sees it. Job was not invited into that divine council that day when he was the subject of the conversation. Here's an interesting note I discovered as I was preparing the sermon. There are literally eight verses that talk about the suffering of Job in the story and 40 chapters of questions about how do we figure what this means.
00:24:45
Speaker
8 verses about suffering, 40 chapters of questions about trying to pull apart what's happened and determine what the with the but the nature of this is. What was the cause of this? It's like our lives sometimes.
00:24:58
Speaker
something happens and we become paralyzed because we spend so much time trying to dissect the problem and try to figure it out and trying to get to the root cause. And I'm not against us learning from lessons. I think that's important. When we go through bad things, it's really important to learn. But there comes a place where you have to stop, look back and say, that was yesterday. God wants me living for tomorrow. I've got to keep looking this direction and quit looking in the rearview mirror all the time.
00:25:25
Speaker
because you're never going to embrace everything God has for you if you're living in the past. There comes a place where you got to say, I can't take another jog, I can't sit through another two-hour counseling session. There comes a place where I have to entrust my life to God because I believe everything He has is good for me, even though it doesn't make sense to me.
00:25:47
Speaker
These friends that come into the story, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, they start off pretty good. It says they come in and they sit down with Job for seven days and they do the wisest thing that any person could do in that situation. They shut up. They don't say too much. They don't say anything really. They just sit with him. And then they make the same mistake that all of us tend to make. They begin trying to figure it out.
00:26:10
Speaker
Got to put our finger on what happened here. We got to uncover what the reasons are. And so this begins that cyclical conversation that goes on and on and on. Job, you must have sinned. You must be getting punished. It must be your fault. Job responds and says, no, no, no, no, no. I promise you there's nothing going on. I haven't sinned. There's not anything that's unconfessed. And it starts all over again. And it's that way for 38 long chapters.
00:26:38
Speaker
And then it gets quiet again because they've said everything they know to say. So here's the place for me to give you a really good word of encouragement. We must be careful about jumping to conclusions about what's going on in other people's lives.
00:26:58
Speaker
For us to assume that we know what's going on in somebody's story is very presumptuous at best and downright evil at its worst. It is wrong for me to ride through the cities of Chapel Hill, the streets of Chapel Hill. It is wrong for me to drive down the streets of Chapel Hill and see someone and assume I know what's going on inside their heart, inside their house, inside the details of their life.
00:27:26
Speaker
And what happens is we get invited into those conversations by people who say, hey, I need you right now because I'm going through something very difficult. And the temptation is that Satan, who is the accuser of the brothers, comes in and says, oh, that's dirty. Oh, that's nasty. I can't believe they would act like that. While the Holy Spirit is saying, sit down, shut up, and pray because you don't know what's going on behind closed doors.
00:27:52
Speaker
You don't know what they've been through. You don't know what they're going through right now. You don't know the conversations they've had at night in bed trying to figure things out. You don't know what they've tried to do for that child who's going through that suffering and that pain. So be wise like the first seven days with the three friends and sit down and shut up. And don't try to be wise like the last 38 years of their life.
00:28:15
Speaker
the 38 chapters where they just keep going on and on and on and on where you're ready to just vomit because you're tired of hearing them. Now here's what's so interesting about the book of Job. Everything those friends said is actually right for the most part. It's actually true. The problem is they misapplied it to Job's life because they thought they knew what Job had done when they didn't have a clue.
00:28:42
Speaker
So when somebody comes to you and says, hey, I'm going through a difficult season, can you help me? Don't try to figure it out for them. Don't make these decorative statements of, I think God is telling you to do such and such. Let God tell them if he wants to tell them. You have permission to look at them and say, hey, have you considered that maybe God wants you to do something?
00:29:05
Speaker
But it's wrong for me to make statements of declaration over people's lives when I don't have a clue what you're going through inside your home.
00:29:17
Speaker
It's kind of like a preschooler telling a parent, let me tell you how life works. I mean, it's that bad, it really is. And by the way, if you got but how many of you have preschoolers? And they will stomp their foot at you and tell you exactly what needs to happen inside the home, right?
00:29:34
Speaker
and then they become teenagers and they get worse at it. Right? And it just gets worse and worse and worse until one day they go off to college and this amazing miracle happens. They come back in the door after graduation from college and look at you and go, you are right. You are absolutely right.
00:29:54
Speaker
but But in the meantime, from age four or so, maybe even age two when they start to talk, but maybe from age four all the way up to age 18, it's like they have this attitude, oh, it is so good that God gave me to my parents, they wouldn't make it without me. They wouldn't know how to dress, how to eat, how to talk, they wouldn't know who to watch. I mean, they would be lost without me.
Trusting God's Plan
00:30:17
Speaker
And isn't that the approach many times that we take with God? We we we say, God,
00:30:24
Speaker
I've got a really good plan for my life, and I'd like to invite you to endorse it. And and that's what we do. We would never say those words, but that's literally what we're praying. God, here's my plan, four-year plan. I find the man. I get married. We're at $150,000 a year. Our house is perfect. Our kids are even more perfecter.
00:30:47
Speaker
And we have a white picket fence and two dogs and man, we go on live life. And God's going, yeah, I gave you that, you'd walk away from me in a moment. If I gave you that, you'd forget I was even here. So I have a different plan and you may not like it, but it's for your good.
00:31:08
Speaker
All right, I gotta move faster. All right, number three. Golly, I just love this book. so It's a love-hate relationship, it really is. Number three, we can always trust that God has the big picture in mind. We can always trust that God has the big picture in mind. I wanna introduce you and for the second time I'm not gonna read it, right? Job 38, one through six. Go back and read it later. Oh, this is a great place to make this note. Just because I'm preaching in Job and y'all aren't yet finished reading it if you're following the reading plan does not mean you now get to skip the rest of Job.
00:31:45
Speaker
you You still have to finish it because it's a great ending. Better than Disney could do. It's a really good thing, okay? So you got to keep reading it. Write 38-1-6, but I'm going to explain something to you. Two new terms. Maybe you've heard them. Eminence and transcendence.
00:32:01
Speaker
Eminence and transcendence. Eminence and transcendence are both characteristics of God, okay? Eminence is the idea that God, being everywhere and all knowing and all compassionate, that he is very intricately involved in the details of your life.
00:32:21
Speaker
When you say, hey God, did you know? The answer is, oh yeah, I was there. Hey God, did you see this coming? Oh yeah, I saw it before you did. God, did you know I'm experiencing these emotions? Oh yeah, I've been feeling them right along with you. I'm there, I am with you. That's an amazing concept, guys. That alone is incredible that the God who created all of this is there for you tomorrow morning when you wake up.
00:32:48
Speaker
But the other one, the transcendence, that's this concept that God is above all of his creation is not infected by, or infected either one, by his creation so that when things happen, God's above it and he does not get moved or redirected by it. If you go read Job 38, the passage I gave you, it says that God spoke to Job in his pain out of a whirlwind.
00:33:14
Speaker
So God manipulates a whirlwind to show up where Job needs him. And if he would do that for Job, I want you to just contemplate this idea. What would God do to show up for you? What would God do to show up for you? The transcendent God of the universe who wants to take care of the details of your life, what would he do to show up for you? And do you trust him to do that?
00:33:38
Speaker
All right, so but let me say one other thing there and and then we'll we'll get skip to the last part of this. um Our greatest temptation, our greatest temptation is that we make ourselves big and we make God small.
Faith and Worship in Trials
00:33:51
Speaker
We make ourselves big, we make God small. we We think we know more than we do, we give ourselves way too much credit about how we handle the things of life and yet because we want to relate to God, we try to bring him down and put him in the box.
00:34:06
Speaker
and we try to like have him in that box and carry him around so that when things get bad or things get difficult or we we need answers, we pull him out of the box and say, okay, God, it's time for you to show up. And God says, uh-uh, that's not the way I work. That's not who I am. I can't even fit in the biggest box you could ever find. I am not that, that's not who I am. And by the way, when you do that, you're actually committing idolatry because you're creating a God in the image you want rather than the image of who he is.
00:34:37
Speaker
Okay? All right, so every one of these books in this Bible are incredibly, incredibly relative for us. Every single one of them have incredible lessons for us. Here's three that I have for you today to apply to your life from this story. Number one, Job's response to his suffering is worship. Job's response to his suffering is worship. You see, God invites us into these really hard conversations. Nowhere in the scripture does God ever discourage us from questioning him.
00:35:09
Speaker
The difference is if you're listening to him. If you're questioning just to throw questions, not going to do any good, but you've questioned him with an open heart to hear what he has to say, that's when you grow the most. So God invites those questions in, but he doesn't always give us easy answers. He doesn't always give us easy answers. Sometimes there aren't easy answers.
00:35:30
Speaker
It's only because he's God that he has the mind to comprehend and understand how all these things are working and how all these things are pulling together in different directions at different times to to make his will happen. So there's not sometimes easy answers, but there is always worship.
00:35:51
Speaker
There's always worship. What do you mean, pastor? um Later, go read the ah Psalm 73. It's a Psalm by Asaph. And in that, Asaph could have been reading our minds, could have been reading our hearts when he wrote this the Psalm. In it, he says, man, I see the wicked prospering. I see things happening good for them. I see things lining up for them, and it makes no sense to me. And then by the end of the Psalm, he says, and then I went into the sanctuary, and it all made sense.
00:36:25
Speaker
What was Asaph saying? He was saying worship is necessary for us to keep our hearts aligned with who God is. You get out in the world and you listen to three million voices every single day, advertisements about what you deserve and where you should go and how you should spend your money, what should be the values of your life, and all of those voices are competing for one still voice that will only be heard when you put your heart in a spirit of worship before him.
00:36:55
Speaker
Listen to me Grovers, worship is not a time to get here on Sunday morning to find your seat and say hello to your friends. Sing a few great songs and then get out of here before the pastor gets carried away.
00:37:08
Speaker
Worship is aligning your heart with the God who's given his all for you. And when we align our hearts with him, it begins to make sense. Hear what I said, it begins to make sense. You don't get all the answers,
00:37:26
Speaker
Nobody in the history of the world's ever had all the answers. Because if you had all the answers, you would literally fall over dead with the information that you had. There are moments where Job in one moment is going, God, I trust you, I believe in you, I think you're still there. And in the next moment going, I can't figure you out at all. One moment he is blessing him and saying, you are the God who's given me everything and I trust you. And in the next moment going, I'm not sure I can trust you.
00:37:54
Speaker
I don't understand this. This makes no sense to me. And I wish there was a switch. You could flip on and off where your trust level just goes up. But if you're in the middle of a desperate situation, God doesn't always make sense. And because he's a loving God, he doesn't overwhelm you with the answers in that season. April the 10th, 2004, I woke up in a hospital room looking into the face of my two sisters and my two brothers-in-law.
00:38:24
Speaker
And I asked the question, I didn't really want the answer to, I said, is my wife dead?
00:38:32
Speaker
They confirmed my worst fears. And in that moment, I began pleading with God, what in the world are you up to? How in the world could you do something like that to somebody like me? This makes no sense and I don't see how a good God would ever do anything like this.
00:38:54
Speaker
And four days later, I got the phone call that my son had been put to death by a mistake in a medication error at a hospital. and the And the questions went from here to here. And I was overwhelmed and I was worn out and I was tired and I was looking for answers and God was completely silent.
00:39:18
Speaker
And I wish I could tell you that in the middle of the night, one night, this light bulb came on and suddenly, whoa, there were answers. But here's the truth, I still don't know what he was up to. And this next part may not go according to your theology, that's okay, we can talk about it later. But in my head, I pictured a day when I step into heaven that Jesus is gonna walk up to me, he's gonna put his arms around me, he's gonna go, sit down, we need to talk.
00:39:50
Speaker
It's time to explain why what I did for you was necessary and how my glory was achieved by what happened.
00:40:07
Speaker
What you see when you read the book of Job, chapter one is a good man full of integrity. By Job 42, you see a better man who's even more full of integrity. Now how many of you want to sign up for that class? Not a one of us because we're sane people, right? None of us would volunteer for that. That's why God sometimes has to impose his will instead of saying, how do you feel about this? Because we wouldn't choose what's good for us. God always does.
00:40:46
Speaker
All right, um second thing. Job doesn't doubt in the dark what he knows to be true and the like joe doesn't doubt in the dark what he knows to be true in the light. Job Job asks that question and says, I don't understand, but I do know that you are good, and I do know that you can be trusted, and I do know that I have seen you work in the past, and I refuse to give up on the belief that you are a good God who's looking out for me.
00:41:13
Speaker
You see, when suffering comes, it tests our beliefs. It rocks us to the core. And if you don't know what you believe and why you believe it when that suffering comes, you're gonna struggle. So the time to figure out what you believe, why you believe it, how valuable it is to you is not when you're in the middle of the suffering, it's now when you're on this side of it.
00:41:36
Speaker
it's the It's the time now to figure out what you believe. Now is the time to make that sure and concrete rock hard in your heart.
Conclusion: Seeking God in Suffering
00:41:46
Speaker
Don't form your theology in the middle of a crisis. Can I say that to you again? If you're tuned out, wake up real quick. Don't form your theology in the middle of a crisis because you will always get it wrong. thats good Lastly,
00:42:05
Speaker
God doesn't always give us the answers we want, but his answer to everything is Jesus. I used to teach a kid of fourth graders, my wife and I did, the church we were previously at, and it was funny because we would ask questions, and if nobody knew the answer, they would go, Jesus.
00:42:28
Speaker
You know, that that was their answer, Jesus. that If you didn't know, Jesus was a good bet. And I acknowledge that to them. I would say that's that's pretty cool. I appreciate you taking the safe route. Jesus is probably a good answer. Because in this case, in this classroom, the classroom of life where suffering touches us all, the answer is Jesus. It is. You see, God, perfect, holy, immutable God, wrapped our flesh around his spirit so that he could walk this earth and experience everything we've experienced.
00:43:02
Speaker
Later in the book of Hebrews, it would say, we don't have this high priest who does not understand our suffering. We have one who has walked through everything we've walked through and died so that we could have a restored relationship with God. My invitation to you today is to do one of two things.
00:43:21
Speaker
Number one, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ this morning and you're in a situation that you would describe as being Job-esque, maybe not you've had all of your life ruined, but you got some really rough stuff going on in your life, I would invite you to do nothing else until you get on your knees and say, God, give me what I need to get through this. I may not need all the answers, I may not have all the answers, but what I do have is you and you are good enough. Say that with me, you are good enough. Do you believe that?
00:43:52
Speaker
Do you believe that? Do you really believe God is good enough? Because sometimes it's easy to say it in the good seasons when you're on the mountain top and go, yeah, God is good. But you hit that valley and going, oh, I don't know about this. I just don't know about this. And there are some of you this morning who are going, you know what? don I don't want understand anything you've talked about this morning because I don't think I have a real relationship with Jesus. I don't ah don't understand what it means to have a God who looks out for me because I've never entrusted my life to that God.
00:44:22
Speaker
and we would love the privilege of talking with you. Now here's my invitation to you. You don't have to make a decision today to do it. The really cool thing about God is he loves questions. So my encouragement is take those first couple of steps by asking some questions. Not of me, I don't know the answers. I told the first service when it comes to theological answers, I'm as lost as last year's Easter egg. um It's true.
00:44:52
Speaker
But I can point you to the one who does have answers. I can sit down with you and open up this book with you and point you to the one who has put this all together for us. Pastor John, Lori, Pastor Kyle, anyone that'd be happy to sit down with you and just walk you as you move towards Christ, as you move towards the heart of God. Your suffering is not in vain. I can promise you that. God has a purpose for it.
00:45:21
Speaker
And this morning I invite you to discover that, same way Job did. And get to that place where as the end of Job, we get to the end, this is really, really cool, y'all. Get to the end of Job, it says that Job blessed, excuse me, God blessed Job's life, the latter part, more than he did the first. Amazing. And that's because with dogged determination, Job held on to the robe of God through the entire thing.
00:45:51
Speaker
You prayed with me this morning. Lord, thank you for inviting us on this journey.
00:46:09
Speaker
Thank you for giving us instructions on how to manage it, how to walk it, how to engage with you as we go down this path.
00:46:26
Speaker
Sadly, Lord, we do sometimes try to bring you down to our level instead of trusting that where you are and what you're up to is good.
00:46:37
Speaker
That every suffering, every trial, every bad thing in our lives can have purpose and can be for our good and more importantly, for your glory.
00:46:55
Speaker
So thank you for sending your son to walk this earth the way we've walked this earth, to experience what we experience, and then giving us this open invitation to step into a relationship with you. It's mind boggling.
00:47:15
Speaker
So this morning, I pray that's exactly what we do. Yet we receive this invitation, we accept what you offer us, we embrace this truth that changes lives, and that we step into a joyful journey with the one who created us. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.