Extraordinary Job Job 38:1-11 Darrin Patrick August 10, 2014 Keywords God, suffering, questions Note: This sermon has been edited for readability 2014 Copyright The Journey Good morning. I'm fresh back from vacation, so I've got a lot of stored up preach in me, so get comfortable. We may go until dinner, just cater in lunch or something. No, I want to make you aware though, we put resources on my website so that they're accessible for you, and so we're talking Job. We're talking suffering. I don't want to bury the lead this morning. That's where we're going, okay? Two of my buddies that I dearly love have preached sermons and written books, and we've got on there Tim Keller and D.A. Carson featured in these resources. I serve with these men on the council of The Gospel Coalition. I look to them as mentors, and both have been tremendously helpful to me personally, as I've tried to understand suffering, so we want to make those available to you. Get on the site. Go to 'study.' This is your opportunity to go a little deeper with what we're talking about, and we are talking about the book of Job. The book of Job is maybe the most interesting book in the Bible in some ways, because we are brought in, right in chapter one, with this kind of strange conversation between God and Satan about this guy named Job. It is about suffering, and the issue is not, 'Okay, will I suffer?' No, it's, 'When will I suffer?' Job reaches into the very dark corners of our lives and helps us understand, what it looks like not just to suffer, but to suffer well. When you're suffering, you're going to have one question, and that question has one word, and that word is Why? Job, it's an epic poem that's seeking to answer the question why from an emotional and theological, and even philosophical standpoint. As you think about the book, there's really three movements to this book. There's a conversation between God and Satan. There's a conversation between Job and his friends, and then there's a conversation between God and Job. Those are the three movements. Job is pictured in this book as the most righteous, wisest man in his day, and right when you see that, there's a reason why that is included, because what it's telling us is, your money will not protect you from suffering. It might delay it some, but it will not keep you from your wisdom, your intellect will not keep you from suffering. Your great choices that you make because you're so smart, right? I don't care how smart you are, you can't keep suffering out of your life. It tells us that in talking about Job. Extraordinary Job (Job 38:1-11) 1 of 11
The focus on Job is not on his financial prowess. It's not on his massive intellect. It's not even on his spiritual maturity. The focus on Job is on his emotional confusion because of his suffering. Here's the thing: When you suffer, you're going to get confused. I just had a friend in one of our churches get diagnosed with cancer, and she had eaten everything perfectly, and she had taken care of herself, and yet she gets cancer. It's just kind of the way it is in this world. We don't understand why, but suffering is real, and when you suffer, you get confused. When you're confused, no matter if it's from suffering or whatever, you want simplicity, right? You want things to be like, 'Okay, do I do this or do I do this? I don't want to have all these options. I want to do this or I want to do that.' I made the mistake of going to Target the other day, and I love Target, but not during this time of year. I had to get some toothpaste, and I get to the toothpaste aisle. Let me just tell you, you should've invested in toothpaste, because apparently there's a need for like 7500 different types of toothpaste now. You're looking at this wall of toothpaste, and you're confused, right? I just want to go back to the days, remember Colgate and Crest, that's all we had? Is anybody that old? Raise your hand; help me out here. Okay, that's what happens in confusion. When you're confused by options, when you're confused by life, you just want, 'this or that.' OUR RESPONSE TO SUFFERING What happens then, as human beings, is we try to make things very simplistic. When suffering happens, people tend to fall in one of two ditches. Naturalist Life is random (Suffering just happens) One ditch is what I'll call the naturalist ditch. A naturalist basically looks at suffering like, 'Well, life's random. Suffering happens.' I've got a great uncle who I don't think finished even high school, but he's a really smart guy, and he's a naturalist. He basically just says, when something's going wrong in somebody's life, 'It's just their turn. They're just taking they're turn. That's a naturalist. Moralist Life is cause and effect (Suffering is deserved) On the other side, you have a moralist, and a moralist is a person who basically says, 'Life is essentially cause and effect, so if you're suffering, it's because you deserve it. You've done something to bring it on.' If you're suffering this is the Christian version if you're suffering, you ain't living right. My guess is, all of us tend to lean toward one or the other. You probably aren't going to figure that out if you're personally suffering right now. 'Which am I?' Although you might. The better thing is, when someone's close to you is suffering, or some atrocity is happening in the world, like it's happening in the Middle East, or like that's happening in our city, as exhibited by terrible violence and crazy distrust and all the things that are happening. If your heart response Extraordinary Job (Job 38:1-11) 2 of 11
is, 'It sucks to be them,' you wouldn't say that you're a naturalist. If you're heart response is, 'I wonder what they did wrong,' then you're a naturalist. Job's problem is that he had both of these people near him. You tend to attract one or the other, but Job's wife is a naturalist. She says, 'Job, in response to all your suffering, why don't you curse God and die.' Now listen, I don't know a lot about marriage; I don't think you should say something like that to your spouse just free marriage counseling for those who are interested. You've got that, and then we've got Eliphaz, we've got Zophar, and we've got Bildad, in case you're looking for baby names. Those are Job's friends. Those are Job's friends, and they're moralists. In chapter 4, Eliphaz gives this great little speech: 'Who that was innocent ever perished? Where were the upright cut off? Those who plow iniquity, sow trouble and reap the same.' What he's saying is, 'Job, your personal sin is causing your great suffering.' This is very popular in the church. It is why most people are voting with their feet not to attend church, because we have given a message a lot of times and it's not just preachers; in fact, I think it's actually less preachers in pulpits and more preachers on televisions and more books in Christian bookstores -- that are telling us this kind of thing: 'Hey, if you're life is hard, it's because you're not following these principles. If you're sick, it used to just be it's because you don't have enough faith. That's what all the faith healers said. Then the faith healers started realizing how important and popular and profitable it was going to be to get into organic food and all that, so now they're doing all that. So now, if you're sick, it's because you didn't eat right, or you're not trusting God. There's kind of two streams. The other stream would be for parents: 'Oh, your kid's rebelling? You must have not parented well,' right? Or, 'You're single? Well, you must be wearing sweatpants in public too much,' right? Which actually, might be true, I don't know. I'm just throwing that out for men, especially, probably not a good look, okay? This is moralism, right? This is, 'You did this, and now you have this.' Is it true that the Bible says in Galatians 6:7 that what we sow we will also reap? Well, it must be there, he quoted a Bible verse. Yes, it's true, but it is not always true, specifically with regard to suffering. When suffering comes in your life, for whatever reason, whether they're religious or not, we tend to draw and attract and encourage these moralistic people who come around our life. Job has three of them. He's trying in the early parts of the book, you'll see this he's trying to defend himself: 'No, no, no really, I didn't do anything wrong.' 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.' 'No really, I get your argument, and it makes sense, and I've seen that, but that's not me.' What happens is, when you begin to defend yourself it happens every time you go from defending yourself to justifying yourself, and we all do this. We all want to make a case why we shouldn't be suffering. We all do it. Job has gone from defending himself to justifying himself, and he essentially is saying to God throughout the text, 'God, I don't want to suffer without vindication. Tell them it's not my fault. I don't want to suffer without explanation. Tell me why. Why am I suffering?' Extraordinary Job (Job 38:1-11) 3 of 11
Now, I just want to commend you and challenge you and exhort you: Ask God hard questions. That's a good thing. Our biggest problem is that our prayer lives all suck. Anybody like me might want to confess that sin? Mass confession, it s good for the soul. Here's why: We ask hard questions of our buddies, and some of us God forbid do it on Facebook, but we don't go to God. You want to deepen your prayer life? You want to connect with God? Ask him hard questions. Here's why we don't. One, we're lazy. Two, if we really are honest with God, he might just be honest with us, and that's difficult, but that s what happens with Job. GOD S RESPONSE TO SUFFERING In verse one of chapter 38, "Then the Lord answered Job." Job's got questions? God's got answers, but sometimes God's answers are questions. He answers Job out of the whirlwind and says: "Who is this that darkens my counsel by words without knowledge?" Ugh. "God, I want to hear you. Please speak to me, please show me... Oh, I didn't want to hear that.' Verse 3: "Dress for action like a man, and I will question you." This is the word when guys would go to war. They would gird up. They had these kind of robe things. You'd gird them up so you could run. Another way to say it -- and I don't want to be crude, but this is the best -- put on your cup, Job, we're going to talk. Like, you're serious? You really want to have a conversation? All right. Dress for battle. What God does is he puts us in tension between two truths. No more does he do that in a more palatable, personable way than with suffering, and this causes philosophical problems. When you start talking evil and suffering, there's this thing called the problem of evil. The problem of evil goes something like this: If God is all good and all powerful, why does evil exist? Either he's good, but not powerful enough to stop the evil that's called open theism or he's powerful and could stop the evil, but he's not good enough to want to. I remember when I first heard that, I'm like, 'Oh man, I got trouble. That's a hard one.' It does sound hard kind of on the outset, but do you guys remember when the Cardinals won the World Series in 1982? That's the last time a published academic article has addressed that issue, because it's been denounced. Here's why: If you have a God who's big and powerful enough to allow evil and suffering into your life, then you have a God powerful enough to have reasons that you don't understand. Let me personalize it. I'm not saying this is what God would say, but in this argument, this is kind of what I picture: 'If you believe in me enough to be mad at me when I allow pain and suffering, then you must also believe that I might have a purpose for your pain that's beyond your understanding.' That might be helpful philosophically, but if you're suffering, it's not real helpful. It's not real helpful, and so there's complexity here. You can be really smart; Job was really smart. You can be really educated; Job seemed to be really educated. You can really love your family; Job seemed to love your family. God didn't let him in on the conversation between God and Satan. God didn't show him that, and God never told him why. And so Job is exactly where many of us Extraordinary Job (Job 38:1-11) 4 of 11
are: Confused. We're clueless. We're hopeless, because we just feel like we're suffering for no reason. Let me tell you something: There's a mystery to this that sometimes you will never get. I remember probably the most painful event of my life was when my mom died when I was just starting college. I'd just become a Christian, and so I had all these Christians, I had a bunch of Job's friends come around me. They always seek you out and find you. They said things like this: 'Darrin, you and your mom are the only Christians in your whole family. God's going to use this to rescue your whole family. Your whole family's going to meet Jesus, and I know your family's kind of broken up, and a lot of divorce and a lot of pain and a lot of sin, but God's going to use this whole thing to kind of bring it together, and you'll see!' I'm still waiting to see, and that was 1991. In fact, the opposite has happened. I don't get that. I don't get why my kids don't get to play with my mom. That's hard. I don't get why I can't have my mom there to ask advice, because she always gave such great advice. THE PURPOSE OF SUFFERING Suffering can remind us that God is God. So, sometimes there's mystery, but let me give us a little hope: sometimes we can discern what is happening in the suffering. Sometimes and maybe universally we can understand God is always doing this in suffering. One of those things that I think God is always doing--ai think we can enter in is, God is always using suffering, because suffering can remind us that God is actually God. That is chapter one: God and Satan are having this conversation. God says, 'Hey, my boy Job,' to Satan, 'upright, blameless, he's awesome.' And Satan doesn't disagree. 'Yeah, he is.' Satan just disagrees with the why of Job's integrity. Satan says, 'Take everything away from him. Then let's see how blameless he is. Then let's see how much he fears you. Then let's see how much he's faithful to you.' God says, "All right. Take away everything but his life.' See, Satan actually is pushing on a great reality, and that is this especially for religious people: Is God a means or an end? What I mean is, are we using God as a means to something? If I serve God, if I love God, if I trust God, then he will give me -- and most of us are American -- my version of the American dream. Or is God the end? This is what Satan is saying. 'Job, you're just his means to a low-maintenance, hassle-free life. That's why he serves you.' And so Job starts going through the suffering, and he's like, 'Why?' and God doesn't tell him. If we always knew why, we would never have to trust God. If we always knew why, then God's always a means. What suffering does is it gets right in our face and pulls us close, and says, 'You are not God.' I hate that! I want that kind of input from God, but God does not give it. But it all goes back to how you view God. Elizabeth Elliot's one of my favorite authors, and she has a great quote on this. She says, after much suffering in her own life her husband was martyred for his faith when they were a young couple and she says, 'Now in the clear light of day,' writing about that event and other sufferings, 'I see that God, if he were merely my assistant, he had betrayed me. On the other hand if he was God, he had freed me. For if God is Extraordinary Job (Job 38:1-11) 5 of 11
God and if he is God I will find rest nowhere but in his will. And that goes infinitely and immeasurably beyond my largest notion of what he is up to.' 'Job, I laid the foundations of the universe.' We were on vacation last year this is one of the most embarrassing things that I've had with my children in a while. We were in this place and, earlier, right at dusk, we thought we had seen a mountain lion, and so my kids were a little freaked out, and I'm a little freaked out, because I'm in a place where I can't really do anything about the mountain lion, if you know what I'm saying. I don't have any equipment with me. We're out there in the open, and one of my kids is like, 'Dad, what is that?' I'm like, 'What? What?' I'm thinking mountain lion, right? I see the two of them, they're looking up. I'm like, 'What are you guys looking?' 'What are those lights?' I'm like, 'Those are stars.' Oh my God, I've raised city slickers. I've got to turn my redneck card in. My kids had never because the city lights, right? -- they'd never seen stars. There's a great thing on CBS This Morning, about this place in West Texas, it's called the darkest place in the world, and they literally don't let gas stations even have lights. People from all over the world come, because you can see the stars. They look like clouds, it's so dark. My kids, they'd never seen that. Now listen to this: God laid the foundation of the universe. One galaxy has a trillion stars. There are a hundred known galaxies. You thought there would be no math this morning that's a lot of stars. Scientists say, and humbly confess, we don't even have a clue of what's out there. Our God in here, it's too small. He is so much bigger. He has reasons, and understandings, and he's working things toward an end that we can He is not our bellhop. He does not owe us anything. See, he's not our assistant. This is what happens when we suffer, we begin to go, 'Oh yeah, I kind of thought I was today, and maybe this week, but I'm not God. He is.' Suffering can shape our character. Suffering can also shape our character. This is Job 14. Job is basically comparing himself to the tree, and he's like, 'I get that trees need to be pruned. I get why you're rough with the tree, but God, why are you being rough with me? Can human beings be pruned?' Well, John 15, Jesus says, 'Yep. Exactly.' It's very difficult to understand in the middle of suffering that God is actually using it for our good. That's hard to know. Elizabeth Elliot was in the Highlands in Wales observing shepherds and sheep and by the way, you can learn a lot about God in creation. Get outside. Get away from your stupid smart phone. The world's out here, people. Watch. She's there watching shepherds and sheep, and she's there at the time of year only once a year do they do this there was this big vat of stuff that they were stirring and pouring stuff in, and then all of a sudden, she sees them gathering up all the sheep, and she sees that this vat is full of things that are basically disinfectant, keeping the infection and parasites and flies, to prepare the sheep. And so they're going to put the sheep in there, and she's watching, and she says, 'One by one, the shepherd would seize the sheep, and the sheep would struggle to get away, and many times the sheep would go to the other side of Extraordinary Job (Job 38:1-11) 6 of 11
the vat, but that was where Mac the sheep dog was, and Mac would snarl and snap his jaws, and then the sheep would run aback, and then eventually the shepherd would take the sheep, and he would grab them and force them underneath the liquid -- ears, eyes, and nose, totally submerged. Do you think at that point, the sheep is going, 'I feel so protected. I feel so prepared.' Maybe like the new sheep that had never done it are like, 'Oh cool, a bath.' The other ones are like, 'Oh, pfft.' There's no possible way that the sheep saw that as a loving act, as something that was going to enable them to prosper in their life. When you're going through it, and when I'm going through it, I don't know that we're going to see it always. It's about our character though. I just got back from vacation, as I said, and sometimes you pick up bad habits, and sometimes you lose good habits. Anybody like me? I needed to pick up an old habit that was good that I kind of forgot, and it was called journaling. I was journaling, and basically, taking some time to just really be with God and read the Bible just basic Christianity stuff that it's just so easy for us to get away from. I had no excuses. It was just me and God. I had this thing happen to me when I was on vacation, and I had never had this pastoral confession time. So, Darrin has struggled with depression. Darrin has had problems with sleeping. Darrin has had a host of other maladies, but I had never dealt with this: I got up one morning in the middle of the vacation, and it felt like somebody was sitting on my chest, right? You're kind of in a stupor, you think, 'Oh one of my kids.' Then you're like, 'That's heartburn, what?' It was anxiety. I was talking to one of my friends, and was like, 'I'm not worried about anything.' He was like, 'Yeah, you're worried about everything.' Eight days I woke up with this and went to bed with this, and battled it all day. I'm on vacation! I can't even sleep in, because immediately, my first sign of consciousness, and whoomp. I was just praying, and I just felt like God said don't add this to the Bible; I'm not going to, so don't you. This is just something just between me and the Lord. I'm not trying to be the prophet or the son of the prophet, though I work for a non-profit. This is what I wrote, and this is what I felt like the Lord said to me: 'I'm requiring a new depth of mindfulness and attention to detail both things I'm horrible at: being present, and then being focused on details. I'm a bigpicture guy, being focused on details, this is what I felt like God said to me this will serve you well for what's ahead.' I was tempted to go, 'What's ahead?' but I didn't even ask, because I knew I wasn't going to get anything. Here's the thing, that was like day 4, by the way, so it kept happening. It lifted, eventually. I've still got all the stuff. The worst thing about vacation is coming home from vacation, right? You come back, and you're like, 'Oh yeah my life... This is why I went on vacation.' Nothing has changed, but I have this sense that God is preparing me. THE FRUIT OF SUFFERING You can become a good counselor He's shaping my character, but let me flip it now. Here's the fruit of suffering, if you suffer well: You can become a good counselor for people. I think that part of this and I've gotten to pray Extraordinary Job (Job 38:1-11) 7 of 11
with so many people about anxiety issues, and I'll be glad to do that for any of you; I'll be up here after the sermon. I'm glad to do that, but I think God's doing something in me for my character, but also for other people. I tend to be so judgmental of other people and their struggles. Is anyone else a human being? Like, somebody else is going through something, and we're like, "Well, if they would just...' 'Well, if they wouldn't have...' Right? Job's friends had it right, but then they went off the track. Job's friends, in chapter 2, they came with Job, and they sat with him on the ground Job's probably in the fetal position for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great. If they would've just kept doing that... but then, they started talking, and ruined everything. I heard Tim Keller use this example from this guy named Joe Bayly, who wrote a very enthusiastic, optimistic, encouraging book called The View From a Hearse. Actually, it is encouraging, although the title's interesting. He was talking about two friends that had tried to help him in his suffering he'd suffered some terrible things. Joe Bayly writes: "I was sitting torn by grief. Someone came and talked to me of God's feelings of heaven, and hope beyond the grave. He said things I knew were true. I wished he would go away, and finally he did. Another came and sat beside me. He didn't talk. He didn't ask me any questions. He just sat beside me for an hour or more. He listened. When I said something, when I asked a question, he answered briefly. He then prayed and simply left. I hated seeing him go.' Sometimes people don t need your advice. They just need you. We Christians, man, we've got a lot of Bible verses. We've got a lot of advice. In pastoral training, they call it the ministry of presence, where you just go and shut your yapper, and you just be with people. When I was in pastoral training, the best class I had in my master's degree was a class on chaplaincy, and we literally had to go in the hospital and pray with people. One of the guys came in and this is why this class was so good you had to report what you did that day on your rounds. The guy was like, 'I went into Mr. Drummond's room, and he's in the final stages of cancer, and he's suffering greatly, and he was all by himself, and his family's quit coming to see him, and it's really hard. I read a Bible verse, and then I prayed, and then I went to the next room...' The chaplain, the guy who was teaching the class, stopped him and said, 'Why did you pray? Why'd you read the Bible?' 'Well, I read the Bible, it's just this Psalm really comforted me.' 'Did he ask you to read the Bible to him?' 'No.' 'Why'd you pray?' 'Oh, I just thought that God...' He goes, 'You read the Bible because you thought it would comfort you, but you didn't know if it would comfort him. You prayed because you were looking for an excuse to get out of the room, because you were uncomfortable.' All of us were like, 'Oh, how are we going to tell our story about the rounds? We don't want that to happen.' He was right though. What he was pressing on is not that we shouldn't read Bible verses and pray with people, but he was saying, 'You should've just been there with him maybe, and then let God direct you instead of going into your little religious routine.' Just being with people, counseling people that way. We can see God more clearly Extraordinary Job (Job 38:1-11) 8 of 11
Now, this is kind of all over the Bible, right? When we suffer, we see God more clearly. We can. Two people can go through the same thing, one can get bitter and one can get better, right? We know that. This is all 'can.' It can happen. It might not, but it can, depending on our response. We can see God a lot more clearly. Job never got vindication. Job didn't get the answers that he wanted, but here's what Job got: God. It's bad English, but it's good preaching, He got God. He got God. God showed up in a way that Job prayed that he wouldn't. In Job 9, he's like, 'Please don't show up in a storm.' Job 38, how does God show up? In a storm. See this is our problem: We want God to act right. Do you ever just want the Lord to act right? It's breaking the second commandment. This is what Job did, this is what we do. The second commandment says, 'Make no graven images.' The idea was, you don't want to make an idol of wood, of stone, of metal. God's not against wood, stone and metal he kind of made those things. What he's saying is, 'I don't want you to reduce me to something that you can pull out or put in a drawer. Don't make me into something I'm not.' God had showed his power, but then in Job 38, it says 'the Lord.' Up until that point, it was the first time this word had been used. The word that had been used for God is 'the one who creates,' but in Job 38:1, it's 'the Lord, the one who is personal, the one who is near, Elohim.' He wanted Job to see, 'I'm not just the God out here, I'm the God right here. I'm not just transcendent, I'm imminent. I'm not just the God who is the Creator. I am the God who incarnates.' He had to expand Job's view of who he was. This is what suffering does, to the point that Job got it, right? This is where we all start. We want answers from God. Job wanted answers from God, but in the end, all he wanted was God. He says, 'What's God doing to suffering?' That. 'Shouldn't God answer some questions?' I don't know. Ask him. 'Well God owes me.' No, he doesn't. 'Well, if he doesn't show me, I'm going to quit.' Then you're going to quit. He is the potter. We are the clay. Psalm 115:3. The Lord is in Heaven, he does whatever he pleases. 'Well, I can't believe in a God like that.' Throw your Bible away. 'Well the guy on TV doesn't preach the Bible like that.' Then that's your church. Good luck when you're suffering, because he ain't coming to your hospital. See, we've got to see God people, as he is, not as we want him to be. Job sees God. We know in chapter 42, the last verse, it all culminates. He says, 'Listen God, I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear.' He's saying the righteous, blameless man on the earth is saying, 'I knew a little bit about you.' Let that humble you and me. I just kind of... now I see. What do I do? I retract all of those foolish words that I spoke, and I repent, in sack cloth ashes, dust and you've seen Middle Eastern people mourn, have you ever? You should Google that. They just throw dust on them, they've got itchy, I'm trying to symbolize on the outside Extraordinary Job (Job 38:1-11) 9 of 11
what's going on inside He is miserable, but he's saying, 'Listen God, I've moved beyond trying to use you as a means to my own end. I'm going to trust you as the end. Please forgive me for making you into something that you're not. Please forgive me for trying to domesticate you. Please forgive me for laying my view of who you are over what your word says you are.' By the way, we get to do this the rest of our life. 'I got that one, I figured that one out.' There's always going to be a kid that rebels. There's going to be cancer that comes. There's going to be a job that is lost. You're always going to have to go back and go, 'Okay God, who are you again? I thought I knew you, but my category just kind of got exploded, so I need to repent and say, I thought you were this. Forgive me for making an idol. Forgive me for making a graven image. Forgive me for thinking that as an American, you owe me something. You're God, and I'm not.' That is our great, lifelong pursuit, people: to know and see and worship God as he is. That's only possible if you are transformed by grace. We can be transformed by grace. Here's what's funny: Job got this in chapter one. In chapter one and that's why I love the Bible; it's always like bookends, right? Even the whole Bible's like that. Genesis one and two? The bookend of Genesis one and two is Revelation 21 and 22. Read them together. Job says in chapter one you've probably heard this at a funeral: "Naked I came away from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord..." Actually, let's say this together. "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." You know what he's saying? 'I didn't bring anything to the party. I got nothing. Naked, no teeth. That's how I came in the world. Slimy.' Anybody like Job? Yeah, all of us. 'Well, I've worked a lot in my life.' So you decided who your parents are going to be? What country you were going to be born in? No, none of that. 'Well, I'm going to decide how I go out.' You going to take some stuff with you? No. It's all grace. It's all grace. He got it in chapter one, but he didn't get it. I understand grace right now because I'm preaching to you, but I don't understand grace, right? Not like I will next time I suffer, and then the next time and the next time. Transformation happens when you realize you have nothing but grace in your life. The very breath you take, the very country you're born in, the reality that you're here right now it's all God's grace. He owes you nothing, but he's given us everything. This is where Christianity -- and I'll debate anybody on this -- has greater resources for suffering than any other religion. Why? Because we have a God how suffered, who gave all. He knows, the father knows what it's like to lose his son. The son knows what it's like to be confused. 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' He knows. He's been there, and he wants to be there for. Job is awesome, because we have a guy who's almost blameless that suffers, and yet gets blessed, but now Job points to Jesus, who was perfectly blameless and innocent, and suffered Extraordinary Job (Job 38:1-11) 10 of 11
for us. You may be still trying to rearrange the furniture on all that, but those of you who know Jesus, this is resonating in your heart. You have a God who suffered. You have a God that's near. You have a God that is far beyond you, but he has been made personal, because of the person of Jesus Christ. He loves you, and he's with you, and he's a very present help in time of trouble, and so if you're in trouble, he's ready to help. Our problem is, we don't think we're in trouble. We're always in trouble. Remember when you were a little kid, and you were always in trouble, and you tried to fake it and play it off, but you were always doing something wrong? We're all in trouble. We're all in trouble. We're in trouble because we live in a broken world. We're in trouble because we live around a bunch of broken people, and we're in trouble because there's brokenness inside us. That's our opportunity at the table in just a minute. Let's pray, and let's seek God in our suffering. Lord, graft our hearts to your grace through the person of Jesus Christ. I can't even imagine all the needs, all the hurts, all the unanswered questions, but I can imagine Jesus on the cross, taking all of our sin, all of our shame, all of our injustice, all of God's anger against our sin and the sin of the entire world out on him. We look to him. We have nothing to offer suffering people but Jesus. Principles for living won't do. Blaming others won't do. Getting into theological weirdness won't do. All we have is Jesus, so help us to look to him. Friends, take a moment in silence. Ask God questions. Process your heart, your suffering, with God. Then we'll continue to worship together. Extraordinary Job (Job 38:1-11) 11 of 11