Immanuel Sermon Audio
Job (18:66)
Amen. Thank you guys for leading us in worship. If you have a Bible, turn it to the book of Job. If you don't have one, there should be one in the pew in front of you. Find the book of Job right in the middle of the Bible. We have on Wednesday nights been talking about one book of the Bible each night and we started with Genesis and we have gone all the way up through Esther. And so I just want to remind you of where we've been and what we've talked about. When you go from the book of Genesis all the way up through the book of Esther, you're talking about creation all the way up to right before the first Christmas. That's the overarching storyline of Genesis up through Esther. Creation of the world all the way up to your right on the doorstep of Christmas. Another way of thinking about this is just to try to summarize the overarching storyline of the Old Testament and in the past when I've taught an online Old Testament class, there's 12 words that I have made, the guys in the class or the gals in the class memorize. And I put them on the front of your sheet. These 12 words don't cover everything in the Old Testament. But if you memorize these 12 words or you kind of have them in your mind, they give you some hooks to hang things on when you're working your way through reading in the Old Testament. They give you some framework or some reference for what's going on. So I talked to somebody this week and they were telling me I'm new to the Bible, I've just started studying the Bible and I'm just, I started in the Old Testament and I am just, I have no clue what's going on. And so we talked about that, that's normal. Most people go through that when you start reading the Old Testament for the first time. Things are kind of strange and you don't know how it all fits together. So I said, keep reading. But I said, also, it's helpful sometimes if you step back from the details of the story and you see the overarching picture of what's going on. And then when you read about Abraham, you've got a spot to put him in the story. You know kind of where he goes in the narrative. And so creation, fall, the flood, Abraham, God calling Abraham, that's beginning his relationship with the Jewish people or creating the Jewish people I guess would be more accurate to say. The Exodus from Egypt, God gives his people the law, conquest of the Promised Land, the judges, the monarchy, the division, the exile and the return. That's Genesis all the way up through Esther. And there's a lot more in the Old Testament after Esther. And so just you're putting this in your brain and you're saying, here's the story line. We've covered the whole story line of the Old Testament. If you've been here on Wednesday nights and you read Genesis to Esther, we've talked about all the major events that go on before Jesus was born. Everything else in the Old Testament, the minor prophets, the major prophets in the books of poetry, all fit at different parts in the story. But we've covered the overarching story. So we've talked about, we'll put up, I think I have the two sections of books that we've covered, the books of the law, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Those books go together. The books of Moses, the Torah, and then the history books, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther. And so tonight, we're moving out of this story line and we're kind of stepping outside of the story line almost and we're going to start talking about the poetry books or sometimes they're called the wisdom books and there's five of them. Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs. And these books are each one of them unique and each one of them really challenging to talk about in a one night, you've got 40 minutes to cover the book, really, really challenging to do that. But we're going to do our best tonight. Here's something I want you to understand, especially tonight before we talk about the book of Job. But you also need to know it, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs. You need to get this in your head when we're talking about the wisdom books. There's two types of wisdom in the Old Testament. There is instructive wisdom and there's reflective wisdom and they're very different. They're not, listen, they're not contradictory as if one is talking out of one side of its mouth and the other is talking out of the other side of its mouth and you're trying to have it both ways. They are complementary to each other but they're very, very different. So instructive wisdom, it's general in nature. It avoids specific situations and exceptions and it just talks about what is generally true. It's very basic. It's usually not that hard to understand if you sit down and think about it. It gives you principles, okay, principles, you could say principles or rules are made to be broken. There's always an exception. But instructive wisdom gives you these broad principles and sometimes people make the mistake when they're looking at instructive wisdom of thinking that it's an ironclad guaranteed promise. It's not. It's a general description of how life works but it is not a promise that you just stake your claim out and then if it doesn't happen, if you prove to be the exception to this generally true piece of wisdom, then you get mad at God for not coming through on his end of the deal. That's not how it works. Motive wisdom, general, basic ideas, principles, not promises. Then there's reflective wisdom and this is the other side of the page, okay? It's complex. This is real life stuff, okay? You move out of the abstract theory and you move into somebody's real life and you realize real life is messy. It's not quite as clean cut as the instructive wisdom made it sound like so it's complex. Sometimes it's difficult to understand. Sometimes you read the reflective wisdom and you come away saying, "That doesn't make a lot of sense to me." I don't really understand that. As opposed to the instructive, you read it and almost always you can just say, "Okay, I get that. That makes sense." You look at the reflective and sometimes you really have to think about it. You have to meditate on it. You have to pray about it. It gives you the counter examples to the principles, okay? In other words, the left column says this is what's generally true. The right column, reflective wisdom says, "But sometimes don't forget this happens." Okay? So the book of Proverbs says, "Look, you work hard, you prosper. If you're a hard worker, you have a good work ethic, you're going to prosper in life." Well, I've seen people in Africa who work really hard and don't prosper. Does that mean that the instructive wisdom is wrong, that there's a mistake in the Bible? No. It just means all things being true, here's how God has set it up to work. You'll work hard, you'll reap the benefits of that. You'll prosper. Then you come over here to the reflective and you say, "Here's the counter example that life is messy and it's complex and sometimes it doesn't work like this." And so again, I've already said that, reflective wisdom tends to show you examples from real life that are the exception to the rule. So take your Bible and let me just show you one example of instructive wisdom. Look at Proverbs, chapter 13, Proverbs 13, verse 21, Proverbs 13, 21, verse 13, verse says this, "Disaster pursues sinners, but the righteous are rewarded with good." That is instructive wisdom. That's God saying to you, this is generally how life works. If you are a conniving, mischievous, deceitful, arrogant, law-breaking sinner, sooner or later disaster is coming. You can run from it all you want, but sooner or later it's going to catch up to you. And you can look at people's lives and you can say, "Look, you can live like an idiot for only so long before disaster overtakes you." We know that that's generally true. But the counter example would be maybe the book of Job, maybe something you read in Ecclesiastes where these things don't prove true 100% of the time in each and every single situation. So what you have in Proverbs is instructive wisdom, easy things to understand, generally true about life. What you have in Job and also when we get to Ecclesiastes, I'll remind you of this, Job and Ecclesiastes are reflective wisdom, the counter example that make you think a little bit harder than the things that you read in the book of Proverbs, and so we're going to look at Job tonight. One last note on this. If you look at that list, there are a lot of preachers everywhere, but you especially see them on television who make a living off of taking instructive wisdom, things that are generally true of how things work in the world, and they turn them into ironclad absolutes that you need to pray and claim and take to the bank, and if it doesn't come through, then something's wrong with you, okay? And do you know why it fools people? It's not because people don't care about the Bible, it's because they show you a verse in the Bible. They say, "Look, here's what I'm telling you about, I was in the Christian bookstore the other day and there was a book on the best seller section, new release." And this is, I think what the title said is God wants you to be rich, okay? And I guarantee you, the book is filled with references to the Bible. But I bet 99% of the references in that book are to passages that would be qualified or classified as instructive wisdom, and that person is taking all these things, probably from the book of Proverbs, instructive wisdom, generally true, and saying, "If it's not true in your life, something is seriously wrong with you, and it's your fault, and God has promised to do these things," and they're totally misusing instructive wisdom. So just something to be aware of and watch out for. Just because somebody gives you a Bible verse doesn't mean that they're really biblical. You understand that? Just because they can quote you a verse does not mean they really know the Bible and they're using it correctly. So let's talk about Job. It's an old book. Most Bible scholars, most Old Testament scholars say that this is the first book written of all the Old Testament books, that the events in this book occurred, and the book itself was written down before any of the things that we read about in the Torah were actually written down. So obviously, Adam and Eve, you know that would be before Job, but then there's debate. So Job comes somewhere between Adam and Eve and Abraham. This is a very, very, very old story, and it's interesting that the book, the first book written in the Bible is a book about suffering. And I think that's interesting because suffering is universal, and suffering in the problem of evil is one of the things that people question and wrestle with and throw in the face of God all the time on every part of the planet, regardless of your culture or your religion or your background, people struggle to understand this when it comes down to real life situations. In the question, you've probably heard it a thousand times that people ask all the time is, why do bad things happen to good people, right? That's the question really being talked about in the book of Job. And really the answer, I'll just let you in on a secret. The answer, the real answer to the question is, that's a stupid question. That's the answer. You may not like that answer, but that's the answer. And the real answer, when somebody throws that in your face, is to say, the real question is why do good things happen to bad people? That's the real enigma because over here, you're assuming that there's good people walking around when the Bible says multiple times, Old Testament, New Testament beginning to end, there are no good people walking around, none. There's bad people walking around. And for some strange reason, good things happen to us. Maybe not as many good things as you'd like, but good things happen to you. And the question is, why do good things happen to bad people? But here's a book of Job answering this question about suffering. Let me give you the outline, really simple book. There's one to two, Job suffers and it's bad. Yeah. Chapter three to thirty-one is Job and his friends talking. Chapter thirty-two to thirty-seven is a young guy named Elihu, who speaks up and talks. Chapter thirty-eight to forty-one, God speaks, and then chapter forty-two, Job repents. Obviously, that's generalizations and we're leaving a few things out, but that gives you the overarching framework of the book. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to work through these sections. And I don't have anything for you to fill out on the outline for a little while, so I just want you to pick up your Bible and we're just going to start in Job one-one. Because there was a man in the land of us whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. That gives you the general description of who Job was. He was blameless, he was upright, he feared God, he shunned evil. Does that mean that he was a perfectly sinless guy that God was just so smitten with and so impressed that he never did anything wrong, said anything wrong, thought anything wrong? He was a perfect human being, no, doesn't mean that. It just means for the most part, Job was a pretty decent guy. He did love God and he did fear God and he did try to do what was right and he was upright, especially when you compare him to the people around him. Verse two, down to verse five, tells us he was a very rich man, he had a very nice family and he was a smart guy, okay? Lots of money, nice family, reasonably intelligent and reasonably wise. Now look at Job one verse six. There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord. Sons of God, by the way, is a reference to angelic beings. Sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came among them. This is how Satan appears in the Bible. We are never given a clear description of his origins and how that all came about. There's some passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel that some people think refer to the fall of Satan, some really smart people think they don't refer to the fall of Satan, excuse me. You can make a pretty decent argument either way and pretty much what happens in the Old Testament is he just appears and you know that he's not a good guy and he's here in the presence of God with the angelic beings and the Lord says to Satan, "From where have you come?" Satan answered the Lord and he said, "From going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it." And the Lord said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant, Job, that there is none like him on the earth, blameless and upright, he fears God and he turns away from evil." That's exactly what we read about him in verse one. And Satan answered the Lord and he said, "Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him in his house and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land, but stretch out your hand and touch all that he has and he will curse you to your face." The Lord said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your hand only against him do not stretch out your hand." So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. Couple of things you need to get in this section. First of all, you need to understand that God had done a work in Job's life. When you read about guys in the Old Testament and it describes them like this, you understand Job didn't just show up with everything, all his ducks in a row and spiritually put together better than the next guy, Job like Noah found favor with God, right? Noah, an upright, a righteous man, blameless in his generation, he found favor with God. Literally, he found God's grace. He didn't earn it. He didn't work for it. He just found it. God blessed him with it and God did a work in Noah's life. The same thing is true of Job, right? This is a guy who has found God's grace. He's found his favor and God talks to Satan and basically God is bragging on his handiwork. He's bragging and it's okay for God to brag, you understand, it's not okay for you to brag, it is okay for God to brag. Some things God can do that you can't do, that's one of them. God is bragging about Job and he's not just puffing Job up, what he's saying to Satan is, look at this good thing that I've done in this man's life. Look at the result of this. And Satan says, what, Job's in it for the money, it's all he cares about. You take all that stuff away from him, he'll look you in the eye and it'll curse you to your face. First of all, Satan is slandering Job, right? And he's saying, no, Job is not an upright man, he doesn't fear you, he just likes the money. So he's slandering Job. Who else is Satan slandering? God. And he's saying, why would he want just you? Who would be happy with just you? No one would be satisfied if they were poor but had you, the only people who are happier are the people who have money. Job would never be a blessed man, a happy man, a content man if you took all this stuff away and all he had left was you. That would not be enough to bring Job joy. So God says, okay, take it all away. Don't touch Job, here's the limit, but you take it all away. And when you read this back and forth between God and Job, you learn something that I think is pretty important. If it happens to you in your life, it's part of the plan. It's not catching God off guard. And here's God. Job doesn't know any of this. He has no clue what's going on in the heavens. Disaster's about to strike, but we see behind it that God could have stopped it, right? The conversation could have ended with God saying, Satan, you're an idiot. Get out of here. And that would be the end of the book of Job. But that's not how it ends. And God says, okay, you can do this. I will let you do this. He allows it to happen. He could have stopped it. If he doesn't stop it in your life, it's part of the plan. Why? I don't know. Job didn't know. But if it happens, it's part of the plan. So he takes all this stuff and it's disastrous. And look at Job chapter 1 verse 20. All this stuff is gone. Any money, money, all of it. Job arose and he tore his robe and he shaved his head and he fell on the ground. And what? Worshiped. And he said, neck of that came from my mother's womb, neck of that shall return. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. God gave it to me. God took it away. It was his the entire time. It was never mine. And it wasn't what was making me happy anyways. I'm happy in God. I want to bless God's name, whether I have the stuff or I don't have the stuff. And look what it says in verse 22. In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. Now I just want you to, let me just tell you something obvious, okay? Verse 22 is in the middle of a story, not at the end of a story. And I can't tell you how many times I've picked up a Bible study or a book and somebody has quoted this verse to say to me, Job never said anything wrong. Look, verse 22 and all this, he didn't sin or charge God with wrong in all of it. But you understand, because you're smart people, that verse 22 is in the middle of the story. And then when it says in all of this, it means all of this. What he just said, the words that just came out of his mouth up to this point in the story, he has not said anything to slander the name of God yet. Look at chapter 2, verse 1, "There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord, and the Lord said to Satan, 'Where have you come from?' Satan answered to the Lord, and he said, 'From going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it.' And the Lord said to Satan, 'Have you considered my servant Job?' That there's none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil, he still holds fast to his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason. Then Satan answered the Lord, and he said, 'Skin for skin, all that a man has he will give for his life. Stretch out your hand and touch his bone and flesh, and he will curse you to your face.' And the Lord said to Satan, 'Behold, he's in your hand, only, here's the line, drawn the line, you spare his life.' The exact same scenario, he's in it for his health, you didn't go far enough. If we take this away from him, then you will not be enough to satisfy him. Slandering Job, slandering God draws the line and says, 'You can do this, it's part of the plan.' Verse 7, 'Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and he struck Job with loathsome source from the soul of his foot to the crown of his head, and he, Job, took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes. Then his wife said to him, 'Time out.' Remember the last book of the Bible we looked at? Remember Esther and the story of Haman, and Haman is plotting against the Jews, and then the tables get turned on him, and Mordecai's about to get the upper hand, and Haman has to parade Mordecai through town and give him the horse and the robe and everybody bows down and all of that. And Haman goes home to his wife, and you remember what his wife says, 'You're dead.' You are trying to kill this guy, Mordecai, and look what happened. You're dead.' And Haman says, 'Thank you, you are a very supportive wife.' Here's Job's wife, 'Miss supportive, Miss encourager.' I don't think she had the spiritual gift of encouragement. His wife said to him, 'Do you still hold fast to your integrity, curse God and die?' Good advice. He said to her, 'You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil in all this?' Up to this point, you understand, Job did not sin with his lips up to this point. Now look at chapter 2, verse 11, here's a transition, 'When Job's three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place. Eliphaz the team of night, Bill Dad, the shoe height, so far the name of height, and made an appointment together to come and show sympathy and comfort him, and when they saw him from a distance they didn't recognize him. They raised their voices and they wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven, and they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great. That was the best thing they could do. These are good friends, up to this point, they just come and they just sit. I hope you realize that as a believer, when there's somebody in your family or someone in your Sunday school class or someone in your life who is struggling or who is suffering, sometimes Christians get so nervous to go around that person, to be around that person and they're thinking, 'I don't know what to say, I don't know what to tell them, I don't have any good advice, I'm not a very what, who cares, it doesn't matter, they don't need advice, they don't need you to say anything, they just need you to go sit in the dirt with them and just sit there, you don't have to say anything, just be there.' And so his friends do that and they're good friends, Eliphaz build that so far a lee who, and then they open their mouth. And starting in chapter three, you just hold your spot in chapter three and flip all the way to chapter thirty-seven, three, no, thirty-one, three to thirty-one, and you hold that up right there. And you ought to just, you just put a paperclip on that, leave yourself a little sticky note and say, 'Be careful when you read this.' These words are true, they are really, truly the words that these men spoke, they're true. But some of the things that these guys said are totally wrong, some of the things they said are right. And sometimes they just go back and forth while they're talking, they're just running their mouth to Job, giving them all this advice and they say a few good things and then they say a few stupid things, they're just like you and me, they're just like Peter in the New Testament, when he gets nervous, he just starts talking and some of the stuff he says is really smart and some of it's really stupid. Peter on the amount of transfiguration, he doesn't know what to say so he just starts talking. Jesus, it's good to be here, stop Peter, stop right there. Instead, let's build some tints and let's just stay here forever, just have a never-ending camp out, Peter, that was stupid. And you've got Bill Dad and Zophar and Ella Faz and these guys are talking and sometimes they say things that are true and some things that, times they say things that are just wrong. And you've got to be careful if you're going to quote a verse from this to say I might be quoting somebody who's talking like a fool. I might not want to give their advice to somebody else as true advice because I might be quoting somebody who's recorded in the Bible as saying something really, really stupid, okay? It'd be like saying, well look, in the book of Acts, Ananias and Sephira, they went and they told a lion church, so it's in the Bible, that means you can do that. No, you can't do that. How does the story end? They die. Don't do that. When you look at these guys and if you finish the story and get to the end of it, you come back and you say, oh, some of those things are stupid. I don't need to say some of those things. I don't need to quote some of those things. Look over at Proverbs chapter 29, Proverbs 29. Proverbs 29. Look at verse 11. A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back. A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back. The problem when Job's friends start talking is that they don't hold anything back. They just give full vent to their spirit and at the end of the book, they sound like fools and God tells them as much, you guys are a bunch of fools. And the big problem is two problems in this section of Job. On the one hand, you have Job's friends and they take a piece of instructive wisdom and they say, Job, disaster comes on the wicked. We just read that from Proverbs earlier, right? They're saying, Job, bad things happen when people disobey God. Yes, that's generally true, but there's exceptions to that. Don't universalize instructive wisdom. And that's what his friends do. And they say, Job, this would not be happening to you if you had not done something wrong. So repent, repent, repent. And here's Job saying, I don't think I've done anything wrong. I don't think I have anything to repent of. Any big sin in my life that I need to deal with. And Job's right if he stopped there. But what does a fool do? A fool gives full vent to his spirit. And so Job does the same thing with his buddies, all four of them just get in this round and round. And eventually, Job starts to say what? You guys need to shut up and you need to understand that I'm getting a raw deal. I don't deserve this. I haven't done anything wrong. God's given me the short end of the stick. And he even gets to the point where he says, look, fellas, you're a bunch of idiots. And if God would just come down here, he would prove me right. And he would prove that I have done nothing wrong, that I've done nothing to deserve this, that this is unfair and back and forth they go. You need to repent. You've done something wrong, absolutizing, universalizing, instructive wisdom. And here's Job on the other hand, who eventually feels sorry for himself saying, this isn't fair. I don't deserve this. God's giving me a raw deal. Then you come and a lie who speaks. He's a young guy and he's been listening and he sets these guys straight a little bit. And then look at chapter 38. You can read a lie who on your own, we're going to get to what God has to say. Be careful what you ask for, because Job asked for God to come down and have a face to face. And that's what he got. And it did not go the way Job thought it was going to go. These are some of the best verses in all the Bible, so we're just going to read them. Start with me in Job 38 1. The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and he said, "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" That's all you need to know, to know that Job's an idiot. Job, you're darkening counsel because your words have no knowledge. You don't know what you're talking about. A love verse 3. Press for action like a man, I will question you and you make it known to me. Job, where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know. Who stretched out the line upon it? On what were its basis sunk? Who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? You shut in the sea with doors when it burst out of the womb when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors and said, "This far you shall come in no further. Here shall your proud waves be stayed." Have you commanded the morning since your days began? Have you caused the dawn to know its place that it might take hold of the skirts of the earth and the wicked be shaken out of it? It's changed like clay under the seal and its features stand out like a garment. From the wicked their light is withheld and their uplifted arm is broken. Job, have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare if you know all this. Where's the weight of the dwelling of light? Where's the place of darkness that you may take it to its territory, that you may discern the past to its home? You know, right, Job? You were born then. The number of your days is great, right? Have you entered the storehouses of snow? Have you seen the storehouses of the hail which I've reserved for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war? What's the place? What is the way to the place where the light is distributed or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth? On and on and on. What he's saying is, is he talks about the weather and he talks about the stars and he talks about wisdom and he talks about animals is, Job, you are not God. You have forgotten that. You have forgotten that you are not God and that I am God. Look at chapter 40. The Lord said to Job, "Shall a fault finder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer." Again, all you need to know that Job has crossed the line, "Job, you are a fault finder with me. You are accusing me of doing something wrong." Job answered the Lord and he said, "Behold, I am of small account. What shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I've spoken once and I will not answer twice and I will proceed no further." Basically Job says, "Uncle." I get it and God says, "The lecture is not over yet." The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and he said, "Dress for action like a man. I will question you and you make it known to me. Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right? Have you an arm like God? Can you thunder with a voice like his? Adorn yourself, Job, with majesty and dignity. Build yourself with glory and splendor, pour out the overflowing of your anger, look on everyone who is proud in a basin, look on everyone who is proud and bring him low, tread down the wicked where they stand, hide them in the dust together, bind their faces in the world below. Then when you do that, I also will acknowledge to you that your own right hand can save you. When you do what I can do, then we can have a face to face. And he talks about the behemoth and he talks about the Leviathan and you come to chapter 42 and it says in verse 1, Job answered the Lord and he said, "I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted." Notice in verse 3 that this is a quote. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Job is quoting God. That's what God said to Job just a few minutes earlier. He's quoting God. He's referring to what God asked him about and Job says, "Therefore, I've uttered what I didn't understand, things to wonder, wonderful for me which I did not know." And again, here's a quote. Here in I will speak, I'll question you and you make it known to me. That's what God said to Job and Job's quoting him. Verse 5, Job says, "I've heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore, I despise myself and I repent in dust and ashes." And you can keep reading in verse 7 and following. God rebukes the buddies of Job who gave full vent to their spirit and Job does have his fortunes restored. But when you come to the end, verse 42, verse 17, it's worth pointing out that Job never gets an explanation. Never. God never lets him in on what was really happening in the heavens and why all this took place. God never even says to him, "You ought to be thankful, buddy, that I didn't let Satan do more to you, that I drew a boundary line." You should be, he doesn't say any of that. He just shows up and he says, "Job, you have forgotten that I am God and you're not God." And in this long lecture, he reminds Job of all the things that God can do, of all of his power, of his character, of his abilities, of his wisdom and of Job's smallness. And in the end, Job repents. Three lessons, really, really simple. Lesson one, we will certainly suffer. You see it in Job. If a man that God thought enough of to brag on him suffers, we're going to suffer. And if Job doesn't prove that to you, you can look up John 16, 33, where Jesus says in this world, "You will have trouble." You will. And you can look up Romans 8, 20, where Paul talks about creation itself being broken. The universe we live in doesn't work like God originally created it to work. Things go wrong. Disasters happen. You can look up 1 Peter 5, 8, that says, "You have an enemy, the devil, who prowls around like a roaring lion seeking people to eat, to devour." I think sometimes we get so familiar with that last one, and you see it in Job. You see it in 1 Peter 5, 8. We get so familiar with that, we lose the horror of what that verse says. Satan prowls around like a roaring lion seeking people to devour. I read a story, it's been a while. I think it was about two or three years ago, two and a half years ago. And it was a story of a mom and her son at a zoo. And they were looking at the African dogs. Hyena is basically. And the mom lifted the son up on the wooden rail so he could see better. Little bitty boy. And she turned around to look at something and the boy slipped. He fell on the net that is supposed to keep birds and trash and stuff like that. And he bounced off of the net into the pit with the dogs. And before he hit the ground, they were on him and they killed him instantly. And you read that story and you think, "That is horrific to think about." One mistake, one slip of the attention, one not paying attention to what you're doing. And just disaster. Listen, 1 Peter 5.8, Satan is waiting for you to slip so that he can devour you. Not so that he can just give you a hard time and knock you around a little bit so that he can devour you. And you see it in Job that Satan comes and he's slandering Job and he's slandering God and he wants the absolute worst for Job. So we will certainly suffer. When you think about that, it is also worth mentioning and just thinking of that when you look at the book of Job, no one goes around blaming Satan for everything. And sometimes we do that as a mistake too. You blame the devil for everything, well, the devil's after me, Satan's after me, just trying to ruin my day, he's just trying to mess everything up, he's just trying to, no one does that in Job. Job doesn't ever get an explanation that Satan's the one behind all of it, he just knows bad things happened. And you and I need to be very careful when we begin to blame Satan for this or for that. Okay? But we will certainly suffer. Listen to, we will sometimes understand sometimes. Sometimes means that in the moment, you will almost never understand. In the midst of your suffering, whatever it looks like, whether it looks like Job's or somebody else's, in the middle of that, you will probably not understand. Maybe sometimes in hindsight, you can put some of the pieces together and realize what was going on. And maybe with a little bit more wisdom under your belt down the road, you look back and you say, you know what, that suffering was my own fault. I brought that upon myself or maybe you look at it and you say somebody else's bad decision brought that suffering into my life, or maybe you look back and you say, I have no idea why that happened. Why did God allow that to happen? Job, that was him. He looked back at the end and said, what was the point in all of that? God didn't ever give him an explanation. He didn't ever tell him. Instructive wisdom gives you the general rules, reflective wisdom gives you the exceptions, and when you put those things together, it can help somewhat in understanding. Last lesson is this, we must always trust. Always trust. He started off good, but eventually he listens to his buddies. And eventually, think about this, eventually he listens to himself. That's a dangerous thing to do, to listen to yourself, because you understand that the Bible says your heart is deceitful and wicked and beyond understanding. And what our society tells us to do is what, follow your heart, listen to yourself, look for inner guidance, inner wisdom, inner whatever, inner inner inner, it's all you, self-self-self. Don't listen to yourself, preach to yourself. Job needed to preach to himself more than he listened to himself. He listens to his buddies for a while, and he knows that they're a bunch of idiots, but then he starts to listen to himself. And he begins to think that he's got it all figured out. And he makes a mistake of not preaching to himself and not trusting God. And God shows up and he says, "Look, the real problem is that you have forgotten me. You have forgotten who I am, and you have forgotten who you are, and you've missed our relationship here." And he calls Job basically to trust. That's what he's asking Job to do. Just Job, would you please remember that I'm God and I'm in control? Would you just please remember that? You don't need to understand, you don't need an explanation, you don't need to ask questions, you just need to trust me. This is who I am, and he describes it in these final chapters. Job, this is who I am, this is who I am, this is who I am, please trust me. And for some reason, when it comes to God, we have a hard time doing that in the midst of suffering. We have an easy time doing it in other areas of life that are really strange if you think about it. How many of you have ever flown on an airplane, went on an airplane? Anybody right now qualified to come up here and give a lecture on aerodynamics and thrust and lift, and you saw the plane crash in Taipei today? Anybody want to stand up here and tell us why that happened, what the pilot did wrong, what the controls, anybody? But you got on an airplane, you get on the plane and you say, "Well, I don't think they would let Jim Parris fly this plane." I think they would have to be qualified, and I don't think that they would let Mr. Matt work on the plane if he didn't know how to work on a plane, so I'm trusting that the mechanic checked the pressure in the tires and the pressure in the hydraulic brakes and all of these things. I'm soon, they did that, right? I don't understand the laws of aerodynamics, but smart people tell me that that's how it works, and so I guess I'm just going to believe that this 10 ton plane is going to go up in the air. I just believe it, and you get on and you don't worry about it. We went on vacation in Arkansas a couple of years ago, and we're driving through roads that look like this, up and down and around and backwards, and we're out in the boonies. I mean out in the middle of nowhere, just up and down. In this thought comes into my mind while I'm driving through these hills, what if the road stops around the corner? How do I know it doesn't? What if I get to the top of this hill and it just stops? What if it's a cliff right there? I've never been on this road. I don't see anybody coming this way on the road. What if it just ends and I crash? My family dies a fiery death because this road just ends, and I'm thinking about this driving, and I say to myself what, that's ridiculous. Nice people build roads, and they don't just stop at the top of a hill and they don't just build a wall around the corner, and they know how to grade them and the angles and the degrees, and they know what they're doing, and I trust the government to build good roads. That's a scary thought, but it crossed my mind. I think they can build roads, I think they know what they're doing. Here's the biggest example of this, if you want a Bible example of somebody who did this, and it's even more extreme than Job is Jesus on the cross. Job finds himself in the midst of suffering, and it's bad enough that he doesn't understand it. Jesus in the garden and Jesus on the cross finds himself in the worst suffering ever. The wrath of God being poured out on his shoulders, and there's no question about what's happening. He knows exactly what's going to happen in the garden. There's nothing unknown about it. He knows what's coming and why it's coming. That's even scarier than Job's situation where he doesn't know, and in the garden what does he say? My paraphrase, I trust you, God. If there's any other way, but your will be done, not my will be done, and he trusts God in the midst of the worst suffering that anybody has ever experienced. On the flip side of that, you and I have hope. One more verse I want you to see, Romans 8. We understand that Jesus trusted his Father in the midst of suffering. We understand that because Jesus did that, our penalty has been paid, our debt has been erased, we've been made right with God when we were enemies with God, now we're friends of God, we're children of God, and look at Romans 8.31. What then shall we say to these things if God is for us who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son. He did not spare Jesus, but he gave him up for all of us, for us all. Now will God not also, with Jesus, graciously give us all things. He gave us Jesus when we deserved the opposite. Now that he's done that and brought us into his family, why would we question him and doubt him and interrogate him as if he was doing something evil in our life? If we can trust him to bring Jesus through and we can trust him to bring us through into a relationship him with Jesus, don't you think we can trust him for everything else? And look how it goes on. Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It's God who justifies who is to condemn. Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that who was raised. He's at the right hand of God, indeed he is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword, as it is written for your sake we're being killed all the day long, we're regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. And all these things, and when you see that word in verse 37 things, you draw it back up to 35, what things? And all what things, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword. And all those things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, even Satan himself, nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And you look at Job, Jesus is not mentioned, maybe there's a hint in there somewhere pointing us to Jesus, people can debate that and argue about that. And if you don't see hints of him, the bigger picture is all about him, trusting God in the midst of suffering, Jesus did it for us and because Jesus did it, Romans 8, we have confidence that nothing will separate us from God, any suffering that we face that we deal with, nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. So let's pray and we will put it into the book of Job tonight. Father we love you, you're a good God and you're a faithful God. And we're like Job, Father, if the description of our life is that we are upright and that we fear you, it is because you have done a work in our life. And so we thank you for that tonight. Those of us who fear you, who love you, who have a relationship with you, we know that it is because of the grace that you have extended to us, Father, we all face suffering and difficulty and trials and tribulations and we're all tempted to wonder and to question and to doubt. Father truth be told, we all face situations where we become a fault finder with you and maybe we don't question you or your character, but maybe we question your plan or maybe we question your timing. Maybe we forget that if you allow it to happen to us, it's part of the plan. And Father we need faith to trust you. We're not asking for you to explain, we're not asking for you to pull back the curtain and show us unseen things in the heavens and explain your reasons and your motives and your timing, but Father we do pray that you would give us faith to trust you, that we would remember who you are and we would remember who we are and that we would be humble before you, that we would be slow to speak, that we would not give full vent to our spirit in trying to justify ourselves before you, but that we would trust. Father, we thank you for Jesus who shows us what this looks like in its most extreme situation, and we thank you for Jesus who gives us confidence that whatever suffering we face, that it pales in comparison to the glory that you will reveal to us and to us, that nothing can separate us from you because of what Jesus has done. Father, I pray tonight for the people who are here and Father, for any who maybe do not know Jesus and don't love Jesus, don't have a genuine relationship with your son, and I pray that you would begin to work in their life tonight, that you would open their hearts to understand and to embrace the truth, and Father, that they would have the confidence that is available through your son, that nothing can separate us from your love, nothing that we face on this earth. We love you, and we pray tonight in Jesus' name, amen.