The Why Is Found In The Who - The Book of Job

[00:00:00] Well, welcome today. It's good to see everybody as we continue in our survey of the Old Testament. [00:00:08] We're going to stop on the Book of Job before we carry on such an uplifting passage of scripture, isn't it? [00:00:19] Anybody read this before today? [00:00:22] Yes, thank you. So you can question. You can talk to me. Well, you didn't get that. Is that right, Pastor? [00:00:28] All right, let's go ahead and pray then we will get started here. Father, we thank you so much for just you, our salvation, our hope, our faith in you, that is, in God, who is all knowing, all powerful, all present in control of our lives. Lord, you are a sovereign God, as we know. And Lord, we just want to worship you in your word today. [00:00:53] Lord, help me to speak clearly this passage of scripture that you have given us, Lord, to remind us of life, real life, Lord, that we will often face and how we respond. Father. So, Lord, this time is for you, as we want to honor you. This time we want to worship you in your word. Father, we ask these things in Jesus name. Amen. [00:01:20] All right. [00:01:22] The Book of Job. [00:01:27] We often like the word sovereign, right. [00:01:31] When life seems to be falling into places we want it to, that's good. When life is good, God is sovereign right, because everything's going good for me in the moment. And we like that. [00:01:41] But saying that God is sovereign in all things at all times, it really does take deep faith, doesn't it? [00:01:48] One that is cultivated through consistent daily acknowledgment of an almighty God who is actively, actively working in our lives for our good and for his glory. [00:02:01] And I guess the question is, is like God, why are you acting this way? [00:02:06] Did you ever ask that question? [00:02:08] Why? Why God? Why are you doing this today? Why am I right here, right now? [00:02:13] What's the purpose? [00:02:16] The why is found in the who. So we have the story of Job and the basics to begin with as we'll go through this. The author is unknown and it's probably written a little bit earlier than what we think. [00:02:32] Not right before Psalms, but, you know, maybe anywhere from 15 to 500 B.C. but the date of actuality of the Life is around 2100 B.C. around the time of Abraham, down in the land of Uz, where the Edomites. The Edomites lived. That's where this takes place. [00:02:52] Not a lot of history. He was just from the land of Uz. [00:02:57] And so looking at this, it's a story you read commentaries and descriptions of the Book of Job. And it's like a literary masterpiece. [00:03:08] And so we're Going to approach it that way as we look at this literary masterpiece in four or five sections of how a book would reveal itself, or a story or a play or anything that we look at it as a story, a narrative that we can learn from as far as who God is. [00:03:27] So we'll start with the prologue, the setting, and this is Job one and two. We won't read all through that. Just kind of touch bases on a couple things. [00:03:36] But we have this setup. We have the stage set by the author of this book about this man who was blameless. He was upright and he was wealthy. He had everything that a person would want going for him. [00:03:52] Now, blameless means he wasn't perfect, but if someone would describe Job to you from that time, he would say he honored God, he walked with God, he worshiped God. [00:04:02] Yeah, he got angry sometimes and said a few bad words. But you know what? He. [00:04:06] He worshiped God. [00:04:10] He was blameless. [00:04:12] His life was oriented toward God. He was bent towards God. He was a man of integrity, and he tries his best to avoid sinful behavior. And that should. That should describe all of us, right? That we. We are blameless in the eyes of this world. [00:04:27] Was he wealthy? Yeah. I was kind of curious, you know, you do the whole Google thing, and what is the wealth of Job today? Well, the sheep that he had would be about $2 million worth of sheep, camels, about $9 million worth of camels, oxen and cattle, about 4 million. [00:04:46] He had some donkeys, several hundred thousand. [00:04:49] And then land. [00:04:51] Now, unless you live in. Well, we won't say estate, because you might be from there. All right, in the Midwest, the land is cheap. You go to Silicon Valley, the land is expensive. So he had a lot of land. So he had. He was wealthy, he was rich. [00:05:04] And not just rich. He was likely viewed as a powerful patriarch, something closer to a major regional landowner, a business magnet. Maybe you can think of somebody right now, this person, a tribal prince. [00:05:22] That is why the losses in this book and in Job one are so staggering. [00:05:28] Cause in a single day, in a single day, what happened? He lost his children, his wealth, his servants, and eventually his health. [00:05:37] I don't know how I would respond to that. [00:05:41] It's like, wake up and everything is gone. [00:05:45] You have nothing. [00:05:48] And we say, oh, yeah. And it's just. [00:05:51] I don't know. [00:05:53] I don't think any of us know how we would respond in such a situation. [00:05:57] It's kind of like when we do our drills at school for active shooting. The thing is, nobody knows how you're going to respond. [00:06:06] You may think, I'm going to put myself in the way of that person. I'm going to. No, you might just like run and hide and crawl in the corner of yourself and say, we don't know how we're gonna respond, but should we be ready and prepared as much as we can? [00:06:23] I think when you look at this, how are we to prepare ourselves for such a tragedy? Why to even think about it? What should we be doing today to prepare ourselves for this upcoming, that it could happen? [00:06:35] And I think we see it in Job, just in the idea that he was a blameless man. He was bent towards God, his life is oriented towards God. And that's a great question to ask yourselves. [00:06:47] So we have this scene in heaven. [00:06:51] Satan comes up, argues that Job only serves God for blessings. This transactional relationship, you give him this and he loves you. [00:07:02] You take away this, he's not going to love you anymore. [00:07:07] And God says in so many words, you want to bet? [00:07:12] You know that's a modern term. But God knew what was going on here, didn't he? [00:07:21] The idea that the Satan's believed that Job's faith is only as good as the transaction. [00:07:28] You think today that Satan would have a field day with prosperity gospel believers, right? [00:07:35] You take away the goods and where's their faith? [00:07:40] Our faith is in our hope and our relationship with the one true God. [00:07:48] But can Satan understand the power of true faith? Does he get it? [00:07:53] I mean, I think he had already lost this wager even before it began. Because he was delusional himself, wasn't he? [00:08:00] Look at Isaiah 14 describes who this person is. [00:08:05] How you have fallen from heaven, O day star, son of dawn. How you are cut down to the ground, you who lay the nations low. You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven, above the stars of God. [00:08:19] I will set my throne on high. I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will make myself like the most High. [00:08:30] But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit. See, Satan had faith in himself. [00:08:38] He wasn't willing to bow down before the God of creation. [00:08:43] He wasn't about to put his faith in God and trust God because he was all about himself. [00:08:51] So he had no idea what true faith in God was like. [00:08:54] So he does. He makes this wager. [00:08:57] He challenges God through this man, Job. [00:09:02] So what's the test? [00:09:04] God permits God or Job's life to be dismantled fully, taken apart. [00:09:13] His life resembled nothing that it resembled the day that he woke up on that day. [00:09:18] By the end of the day, it would be totally gone, but his life would not be taken. [00:09:27] And for our lives today, we have to think and don't know if Job's mindset was this, but our life may be temporarily dismantled, but our hope of eternal life with God is unshakable. [00:09:42] And if we stand on that, if we have a kingdom mindset, if we have a eternal mindset, and as Paul tells us in the book of Philippians, that we have things and our thoughts are things above, if we keep our thoughts in things of this world, it's gonna be easy to be shaken, aren't we? Because the things of this world do not last. [00:10:03] If our hope is in the things of this world, you're gonna be shaken. [00:10:09] If your hope, or my hope is in my job, my career, my family, my children, my wife. [00:10:14] Those are all temporary and they can be gone at any one moment. [00:10:21] But if our faith is in God, it will last. [00:10:26] It's unshakable because God is the Omni, right? We learned last week. He's omnipotent, omnipresent. [00:10:36] He is omniscient. He knows everything. [00:10:39] There is no risk in this test for God, for God will be the one who will supply what is needed by Job to persevere. Because God is the one who gave Job his faith, isn't it? Cause faith is a gift from God. [00:10:54] And if faith is a gift of God, what kind of faith is it? [00:10:59] It's good faith. [00:11:01] It's a lasting faith. It's a faith that will not be shaken. [00:11:06] Hebrews 10:39 says this. [00:11:10] But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and. [00:11:15] And preserve their souls. [00:11:18] That is who you are in Christ. [00:11:21] God doesn't do things halfway. [00:11:26] If he's going to give you faith, he's going to give you eternal faith. [00:11:30] If he's going to give you life, he's going to give you eternal life. [00:11:34] He does nothing halfway. He does everything to completeness. [00:11:40] My dad would always say, in so many words, less never do anything half can't say it. [00:11:49] Just do it the best you can and do it the best you can all the time. [00:11:54] God did it. He's perfect. [00:11:57] And he will give you faith that will last and not fail the test of anything that happens today. [00:12:05] Job's response, right away in verse 21, the Lord gave. The Lord has taken away and the name of the Lord to be praised. [00:12:15] Job chooses faith despite losing his Family, his wealth and his health. [00:12:22] So the lesson here is simply, you know, suffering is not always a result of personal sin. We'll see that sometimes. And this is important, you guys, sometimes it is a compliment to a person's faith that is being tested. [00:12:40] Should have wrote that up there, so you can write it down. I'll say it again. [00:12:44] Suffering is not always a result of personal sin. [00:12:47] Now, we do some stupid things sometimes, and there's consequences, right? [00:12:52] We get that. [00:12:55] But the mysterious things that happen, like, where did that come from? [00:13:00] Sometimes it's a compliment. [00:13:03] It's an act of worship and praise to God. [00:13:06] And as the song said, as the streams. If I get it right, the strings of troubles come, that I ain't gonna go right. [00:13:14] What is it missing? The faith. [00:13:20] The streams of mercy never stops. Yes. [00:13:23] No matter what happens. The mercies of God are new every single morning. Right. [00:13:28] Thank you. I should listen better. [00:13:34] So there's the setting. There's the prologue to the story. [00:13:40] And I added my own little literary word here. It's called pre dialogue. So that's usually the next thing. [00:13:47] You have the prologue, then you have the story, the confrontation, the things going back and forth. But the pre dialogue is really what it is. Because the friends, you know, even though they get a lot of bad rap for what they say and all like almost the rest of Job, they do something right for three verses. [00:14:06] All right? [00:14:08] They get it right. Let's look at that. So they hear about this, and they show up in chapter two, verses 11 through 13. [00:14:19] So now, when Job's three friends heard of all the evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place. El Paz, the Temanite, Bildad, the Shuhite, and Zophar, the Nethanite type. They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him. And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept. [00:14:43] And they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads and toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights. [00:14:52] And what's it say next? And no one spoke a word to him. [00:14:57] For they saw that his suffering was very great. [00:15:03] They said nothing to him. [00:15:08] A lot of times when we find ourselves in the same situation, we want to fix it. [00:15:18] Like, what do we say? [00:15:23] They came and they did three things right. First, they came to him when he was suffering. [00:15:31] They empathized with him. They began to weep aloud. And they tore their robes, just like. And they sprinkled dust. They were with him sitting down, lamenting and crying because of the great loss. [00:15:44] Third, they spent time with him. [00:15:47] They were with him for seven days before they offered their advice. Then they opened their mouths. They said, shut up. [00:15:56] They commiserated with their friend in silence. [00:16:01] We can learn a lot from this. When we are aware of a friend who is hurting, we can follow the positive example of these men. It's a great example. But we seldom do that because we're all quick fixers, aren't we, husbands? You do that with your wives. She's upset or mad, you want to fix her right away. [00:16:18] She basically says, just shut up, leave me alone, let me just deal with it. Then you talk with her. [00:16:26] Going to the person, mourning with him, spending time together. Our physical presence with a hurting friend can be a great comfort in of itself, even when there's no words to say. [00:16:39] I remember in St. Louis pastoring, and I was doing what good pastors do, changing light bulbs out in 20 degree weather. [00:16:49] And got my phone, pick up the phone. [00:16:55] The thing was, I think it was Jim, lest my wife is dead. I go, where are you? [00:17:03] I'm at home. [00:17:05] Where is she? She's in the bed. [00:17:09] I'll be right there. [00:17:11] I drive over there and it's St. Louis. It's very slow. She was. She passed away in her sleep. He was just crying. Weeping place is out there. I go, when will you take the body? Well, it'll be a few hours before the coroner shows up. [00:17:29] A few hours. [00:17:31] So we sit in this one room apartment for three hours. [00:17:37] I didn't know what to say. [00:17:40] Probably a good thing. [00:17:43] Just sat there for three hours with this man as he cried, laughed, all the emotions and I don't remember saying anything at all. [00:17:55] I was just there. [00:17:59] Sometimes being with somebody, the presence that you care for them and you love them is enough. [00:18:09] And this is what they did, right? [00:18:14] But then the dialogue. [00:18:19] The inadequacy of human wisdom. So the author spends the next 32 chapters saying how inadequate we can be when it comes to failure and tragedy in life. [00:18:34] First up is Job's agony. In chapter three, he struggles with this reality that everything is gone. [00:18:41] He's desiring to die and. And complaining about the suffering, which we can't blame him, can we? [00:18:50] It's a normal human response to have agony and lament over tragedy. [00:18:57] We see this in verses 20 through 23. Kind of wrap up or surmise his feelings at this time as he says this. And if you notice, there's a whole lot of why questions here. [00:19:10] Why is light given to him who is misery, who is in his misery and life to the bitter in soul who long for death, but it comes not. [00:19:19] And dig for it more for hidden treasures, who rejoices exceedingly and are glad when they find the grave. [00:19:26] Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in, why am I alive? [00:19:35] And he was cursed in the day that he was born. [00:19:39] So he's lamenting, and his friends hear this, and they feel his pain and agony. But at the same time, they're like, we gotta challenge you on this. But they challenge in the wrong way. [00:19:55] And we gotta realize and understand that agony of the righteous. [00:19:59] It's okay. [00:20:01] I think Job is the epitome of a blameless man who's done nothing wrong, really, in this passage. And he questions the purpose of life and why God allows the unexplainable to happen for the undeserving person to suffer this loss. Why? Why? Why? Why? [00:20:20] And you may have been in that situation where somebody's asked you, why? Why? Why? [00:20:27] And we do several things wrong. We say, just rejoice in the Lord always. And they say, no, I don't want to rejoice right now. I want to cry. [00:20:38] What is going on. [00:20:45] Doesn't mean he lost his faith. [00:20:47] He's just hurting. [00:20:50] And we have this paradox of a hedge that he describes. That he's been hedged in, you know, that he can't. He can go nowhere. There's nothing there. And it's kind of like at the beginning, Satan says, you've hedged him in and protected him. [00:21:05] But perhaps God is still protecting him even in this time of sorrow. [00:21:12] The danger of questioning God. While God can handle human grief and questioning, Job crosses into a dangerous territory here. [00:21:21] By essentially saying he wished he had never been born, Job implicitly calls God's wisdom and goodness into question. That's crossing the line, isn't it? [00:21:33] You're questioning why God created you. [00:21:39] That's a bold question. [00:21:42] Maybe that's where the three men kind of. Wait a minute. Time out here. Job. [00:21:48] It's not all about you right now. Or maybe it is all about you. [00:21:52] But he calls God's wisdom into question. [00:21:57] Lamenting is not an abandonment of faith. [00:22:01] We as believers in our finite flesh can be overwhelmed by unexplainable tragedies in life. [00:22:08] It shows us that even the faithful, righteous people can experience deep emotional and spiritual anguish. [00:22:17] And as friends and family, those who are experiencing these, it can be very difficult just to step back and be quiet and listen. [00:22:26] Because why we Want to make them feel better. [00:22:32] Sometimes you just can't do that. [00:22:35] But you can help them in a way. We'll see so quickly. Even though it's like 35 verses of this or 35 chapters of this book, kind of like the folly of these three men. [00:22:49] We'll look at one pretty close here. The first one, you know, the theme here is they assume suffering is always the direct result of personal sins. Almost like the Pharisees, right? You're blind because you sinned. [00:23:01] You're blind because your parents sinned. [00:23:04] You have this because this sin, as they attach something that you have done that you earn this type of tragedy, which is wrong. [00:23:15] The first bill of pass says this in job 4, 7, 8 summarized, who that was innocent ever perished. Those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. What kind of love is that? [00:23:34] If you read through that, I mean, it's like they have some good, but it's just like bad theology. [00:23:40] You read through the Job and you read some of the things they say and you say, yeah, you give it to him, guys. But no, in context, they're kind of like pulling things out of the air and trying to blame him for what he is going through. [00:23:55] Job 8, 4, 6. Bildad says, if your children have sinned against him, he has delivered them into the hand of their transgressions. That's your children's fault that they died. [00:24:06] So they're blaming the person as a result of personal sin. [00:24:13] They assume that they understood God's hidden purposes. Can we do that? Can we ever understand why God does what he does? [00:24:22] Will we ever. On this side, do we need to. [00:24:27] Sometimes we think for our own, you know, closure or whatever. God, just tell me why you're doing this. [00:24:35] We're not going to understand how God works. [00:24:40] I don't think we want to know the reasons why all the time. Then we would just be. There's no way God. [00:24:48] But to trust him in each and every moment is what he wants us to do. [00:24:53] So they assumed that they understood. [00:24:56] They spoke with certainty about matters God had not revealed. [00:25:02] Philip Paz in 5, 8, 9 says, as for me, I would seek God, and to God would I commit my cause, who does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number. So he's saying, I would seek God, but he's unsearchable. It's like a, you know, an oxymoron there. [00:25:21] He doesn't understand. He's still claiming to know. He's kind of prideful, saying that I would do this because I can. [00:25:28] He asks later in job 15, are you the first man who was born? [00:25:32] What do you know that we do not know? So they're kind of saying, who are you to say these things? [00:25:42] We too are people who know that they're authoritative on God's prophet, Providence. [00:25:50] They lacked compassion and became accusers instead of comforters. [00:25:55] They began very well, grieving silently with Job, but soon turned to harsh and condemning words. [00:26:05] In Job 2, they sat and mourned with him. Job 16, Job says, you guys are miserable comforters. All of you. [00:26:12] Just go away. [00:26:19] Job 19, how long will you torment me and break me into pieces with words that's harsh. [00:26:26] That's what he's feeling from his friends, the accusations, the blame, calling him a sinner, calling him, what have you done in your private life that would cause all this to happen? [00:26:40] And Job says, have mercy. In job 1921, have mercy on me. [00:26:45] Have mercy on me, O you, my friends. [00:26:55] Instead of bearing Job's burdens, they intensified his suffering. [00:27:00] So what do we do in this situation? [00:27:09] They had no idea because they had no idea about righteous suffering, of God allowing this to happen for God's glory. [00:27:20] And that's hard to kind of swallow sometimes. [00:27:23] But how we respond to tragedy either makes God look very bad, or we give glory to God because he's sovereign, that he's the one who is in control of all things, and he deserves the glory. [00:27:47] They were forcing Job into this formula of, you did bad, you deserve punishment. [00:27:55] And we are sometimes quick to judge as well, aren't we? [00:28:00] Or you deserve what you get because you did this. You acted this way, you treated me this way. [00:28:07] You're not living like you should. [00:28:11] And we begin to point fingers. And we know the story behind that. [00:28:16] We are called to check ourselves first. Maybe they should have checked themselves first before they started giving advice. [00:28:23] Maybe their lives weren't as perfect as they thought they were. [00:28:33] Job, he defends his integrity. Job 28, realizing his friends cannot explain his suffering. [00:28:41] Then we have a little break in chapters 32 through 37. [00:28:46] Young man, Elohim, the younger voice. He enters the kind of sitting back and just listening and suggesting that suffering can maybe be character building or maybe a warning. [00:29:02] He does have some valuable insights, talks about the character of God. [00:29:07] He strongly defended God's absolute justice, righteousness and sovereignty. He emphasized that God cannot sin and that our suffering must never cause us to question God's grace, goodness. [00:29:20] He introduces the valuable perspective that suffering can act as a corrective and protective tool to build character and Keep people from a deeper sin. [00:29:33] But despite wanting or waiting his turn to speak, he displayed the arrogance of youth, claiming superior insight over his elders. [00:29:43] He was good, but yet he wasn't perfect in his own failure to comfort. [00:29:49] He was so focused on being right. Have you ever had that situation, I just gotta be right. [00:29:56] I don't care if I trample all over you. I gotta prove I'm right. [00:30:00] Cause it makes me feel better. [00:30:04] That was L. A Hume. [00:30:06] He was so just. [00:30:09] I'm young. I got it all together. Listen to me. I know what's going on. [00:30:16] Human logic cannot fully explain the complexities of suffering. [00:30:24] We need to trust God when wisdom fails. [00:30:28] So when we don't have the answers, where do we go? [00:30:31] We go to Scripture, don't we? [00:30:35] And this is where we go to the next section, the interlog. It's kind of like you have this dialogue. The tension, the anger, the frustration. [00:30:49] The young guy steps in and kind of plows through and says, I got all the answers and I'm going to disrespect you older men. So there's not a whole lot of good going on. [00:31:01] But when God comes in, it's like a breath of fresh air. [00:31:05] When we turn to God, it's a breath of fresh air. It's a calming. [00:31:10] It's like, let's step back and just listen. [00:31:14] So we have this dialogue, and now we have God stepping in. [00:31:22] God does not explain why Job is suffering, does he? [00:31:26] But he does show who he is. [00:31:31] Chapter 38, verses 1 through 3. [00:31:34] Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? [00:31:42] What do you guys know? Who are you guys beginning or just pretending? You know everything about how I work. [00:31:52] Do we have the capacity to tell God what he's doing? [00:31:57] Do we fully understand how he works everything together for his glory? [00:32:03] How our lives are so. And the actions of the world are so interrelated that there's no way we can even begin to understand how God is working his perfect plan through our weakness. [00:32:21] And God calls him to order. [00:32:24] He says, dress for action like a man. [00:32:28] I will question you. And you make it known to me who's responsible. So we have this tour of creation. When I was going through and thinking about this, it's kind of like. Reminds me of A Christmas Story. Not Chris Orient. I'm sorry, Scrooge. Let's say Scrooge, where the ghost comes. He says, let's go for a little ride. He grabs them by the hand and they Take off and go. And just imagine God taking Job to the top of Mount Everest. Just boom, you're there. [00:32:57] Who did this job? [00:32:59] You put your snorkel on. Let's go down to the depths of the Mariana Trench and see all those goofy little fish floating around, like, who created these? [00:33:09] Going to the rainforest and seeing that and going to the Grand Canyon and say, well, they're going to say, it happened this way, but it really happened this way, all over. [00:33:20] Look at the dinosaurs, these big mammoth animals that are just feeding the rivers. Their tails are as large as cypress trees. [00:33:29] Taking place after place, maybe to the outer stretches of the universe or. Right. It's God. He can do that. [00:33:36] I made this Job. [00:33:39] Jesus holds all of this together. He holds you together. [00:33:45] Who are you to question? [00:33:51] Were you even here when it was all created? [00:33:55] It still amazes me. You see the. You know, the depths of the ocean and these fish, like, how did you. How did God. What, what, what prompted him to make these fish, like this little headlamp out in there, hanging out so you can see. Just gosh, so creative. [00:34:14] And God shows him all this. [00:34:17] Says, who could control the weather or manage cosmic beings like these mammoth animals? [00:34:24] Verse 41 or 38 through. He does the whole thing in those four chapters. [00:34:29] The point is, God's wisdom and sovereignty are vast, while our understanding is very, very, very limited. [00:34:39] So when bad things happen, when tragedy happens, we are not going to understand. [00:34:48] But we can trust God because he holds us. Doesn't Jesus says, those that you give me, I will never let go. [00:34:58] Doesn't matter what the tragedy is. [00:35:01] You belong to God. [00:35:06] So instead of a simple why from God, Job gets who? [00:35:14] Who is your God? [00:35:16] And what am I capable of? [00:35:20] What have I done already? [00:35:22] What have I shown you? What am I holding together and controlling all at one time? [00:35:30] The universe is big, you guys, And Jesus holds it all together, just as he holds you together, his special creation holds you together, the one that he died for and forgave you of all your sins. [00:35:53] So we get to the epilogue, the closure. Here, job 42. [00:36:00] We have job's repentance. [00:36:03] My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. [00:36:08] Therefore I despise myself and repent. In dust and ashes, Job finds peace by submitting to God's majesty rather than for demanding answers. [00:36:22] But we have to know, don't we? [00:36:26] If we don't know, then we're frustrated. [00:36:31] But is it enough that we know who God is? [00:36:35] Our Creator, our Savior, our. Our refuge, our fortress, our salvation. [00:36:44] So when we're struggling and questioning and doubting. [00:36:51] Where do we need to go on a consistent basis? [00:36:56] Back to God's Word. [00:36:58] Let him give you a tour of his creation through His Word. [00:37:03] Let him remind you of who he is and who is in control. [00:37:08] Sometimes the last place we want to go when things are bad is to church. [00:37:14] We need fellowship. We need people to pray for us. [00:37:17] We need people to remind us with good counsel to let's go to God's Word. Let's see who God is. Instead of giving you some pseudo psychology. [00:37:30] Difficult trying to. [00:37:37] There's restoration. [00:37:39] We know that God restores Job's fortunes twofold. [00:37:45] Now he's a multi, multi, multi millionaire. [00:37:48] But that doesn't matter to Job now because he's been restored to his Creator, to his God. [00:37:57] The goal of suffering is a deeper, more intimate knowledge of God and total trust in his character. [00:38:08] That's what tragedy can do if we allow it. [00:38:14] The Gospel in all this, Jesus is the living Redeemer. [00:38:20] In Job 1925, his famous declaration for I know that my redeemer lives. [00:38:27] Who's he talking about? [00:38:30] It's a direct prophecy of Jesus Christ, a confession of faith in Jesus. It points to a heavenly kinsman, Redeemer that we learned about in Ruth, who guarantees ultimate vindication of what's going on, that the head of the serpent will be crushed through his resurrection. [00:38:53] And if our life is in him and our faith is in him, we too have victory over evil. [00:39:00] It may happen here on earth, but ultimately, eternally, we have 100% victory, don't we? [00:39:07] That's guaranteed. [00:39:10] There's a hope of the resurrection. Job's suffering drove him to realize that true justice requires a reckoning beyond the grave. [00:39:19] His assurance that in my flesh I shall see God points to reality of life after this life here, this life, isn't it. [00:39:31] We don't put our hope and our trust and our value and our joy in this life. Today we put our hope and our trust and our value and hope in Jesus Christ, who is our life after this life. [00:39:42] And we consistently do that. Things are going to happen. Yes, we can lament and cry, but we have to quickly or soon turn back to where our hope truly is. [00:39:53] Because Jesus is. [00:39:54] And as the ultimate soul sufferer. [00:39:58] In moments when Job cried out to God because he fell, there was no arbiter there to help, no mediator between him and the God. Jesus is our mediator. He suffered for us and he understands our suffering. [00:40:14] He cried out, God, why have you forsaken me? [00:40:18] He felt alone because your sins were upon him but he did so so that we could have life eternal with him. [00:40:33] So when your world caves in, will you choose to trust God even in that darkness because he is eternal light. [00:40:46] Let's pray. [00:40:52] Heavenly Father, we thank you for a story of a man who we can identify with but also who we can learn from. [00:41:03] Lord, I pray that we too see the gospel in this, that we can feel alone and shameful in our sin but we can have life in you through his life and his death and his resurrection. [00:41:18] What a wonderful story for us to look at as we reread it and look at the discussions even deeper. Father, we understand that you are always there and we can always rejoice in your presence. [00:41:32] Always rejoice in your son Jesus and your spirit that you've given us. Lord that gives us confidence each and every day. [00:41:41] Father, we thank you. We love you. [00:41:44] In Jesus name amen.