Introducing Job

Father, we thank you, Lord, for the opportunity you give us to study your word We are a blessed people There are so many places that we could be this evening, but we've chosen to be here to spend time with the people of God and the word of God And our prayer, Father, is that you'd instruct us and teach us in the way that we should go, that we might know what it means to honor and glorify your name We realize, Lord, that the study of your word is the greatest treasure in all the all the earth And so we are able to partake of that treasure this evening

So we ask that, Lord, you would teach us and instruct us in the way that we should go, that we might bring glory to your name And that the things that we learn this evening would be with us, not just tonight, but for weeks and months and years ahead as we seek to live for the glory and honor of our great king We pray in Jesus name Amen. I wonder if you have a hero All of us, to some degree, have have heroes, people we look up to, people we admire, people we look to and think, wow, I wish I wish I could be like that And maybe it's because you admire them because of their bravery

They're they're strong They're bold They're courageous Maybe it's their integrity They live a pure and holy life They they stand true on the word of God Maybe you admire them because they're your hero, because of their consistency or their resiliency, their tenacity They're they're the kind of people that never back down There are people that always stand strong and you begin to admire them and and to look at them and they become your heroes

In fact, we're looking at them in in Hebrews chapter 11, right? The Hall of Faith, the heroes of faith and looking at all those different patriarchs and men and women who who stood strong on the word and and lived a life of faith and honored the Lord, they become the heroes of faith And if you go over to Hebrews chapter 12, it tells us that we're surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses and the cloud of witnesses are the ones of Hebrews chapter 11 We are surrounded by people who live for the Lord and honor the Lord

And it says, let us also lay aside every encumbrance in the sin which so easily entangles us And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us so we can run with endurance as these heroes ran with endurance If we set aside every encumbrance and the sin that so easily besets us But they become our examples They become our our heroes Well, tonight My desire is to help you understand One of scripture's ultimate heroes We have been through a study in the Old Testament for as long as I've been here at Christ Community Church, and we've studied men like like David Daniel

We just finished Daniel last last year Men like Elijah, Elisha, Gideon, Samson, Nehemiah, Moses Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, going to great detail to study these great heroes of faith, these great men of faith who who live for the Lord and in honor of the Lord It was a great study They're all great studies, right? But tonight we want to introduce you to one that For lack of a better phrase would not be among people's heroes But he's one whose life needs to be emulated And that's the man Job And we're going to take you way back to the land of Oz That's not the land of Oz It's the land of Oz

We're taking back to the land of Oz to introduce this man to you There's a book that's named after him called the Book of Job Isn't it interesting that nobody ever names their kid Job? Nebraska, it's like naming your kid Jezebel, right? No one needs their daughter, Jezebel No one needs her son, Job Why is that? Well, there's some discrepancy about the meaning of the name Job Some say it means affliction Others say it means persecution Others say it's its name means one One who weeps, it's no wonder no one names their son Job

They don't want to be called one who weeps or one who is persecuted or afflicted, right? But this man Job was was was a man who Who is uniquely different than most people on the pages of the scriptures And over the next many months, we're going to introduce him to you, show him to you as you might come to grips with this man And that he might become your greatest biblical hero When I began this study several months ago and began to dive into the Book of Job, he really wasn't one of my heroes. I always wanted to do the Book of Job, just never did

But as I began to read and understand this man, his behavior, his character, his the way he responds to those who come against him, he became just a great hero of mine So it's so that that I would love to emulate my life after his and follow his example, because his example is is second to none So we're going to introduce him to you We're going to take you through his life with the scriptures Tell us that we might begin to understand this man There are many people who don't like to study the Book of Job They're afraid that if they study the Book of Job, they're going to end up like Job Right

They're going to have all kinds of affliction and persecution and turmoil Disease, tragedy, all those kind of things happen to them So they won't even open the Book of Job to read it because they're afraid that all those things will come upon them And so who wants to experience pain and tragedy and disease and in lengthy debates as to why you're suffering the way you're you're suffering? Nobody wants to wants to do that, right? But that's not what the book is about We get all mixed up concerning what this book, Job, is really all about We look at it from a wrong perspective

We don't look at it from the perspective that that God wants us to look at it We need to understand What God is doing The Bible says in Romans chapter 15, verse number four, these words For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction So that through perseverance and the encouragement of the scriptures We might have hope Whatever was written in earlier times, Job, first book written in the Bible, oldest book in the Bible Was written for our instruction For our encouragement For our perseverance

So whatever happens over the next 30 weeks, that we're together studying this book My prayer is that you'd be encouraged You'd find hope in the scriptures Be able to persevere under Hardship and difficulty Realizing that God has called You to do great things When it's all said and done, it would be great to to be able to prepare you For persecution To be able to help you through whatever heartache you experience To be able to teach you how to handle tragedy To be able to help you be steadfast amidst your suffering And Job is a book that sets us on the right direction

But we need to begin to understand what this book is is all about And so the Bible tells us in James chapter five, verse number one, these words. I'm sorry Verse number 11, James five We count those blessed who endured You have heard of the endurance of Job And have seen the outcome of the Lord's dealings with that That the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful James tells us that you have heard of the endurance of Job And most people have Even unbelievers are aware of the the man, Job, right? And yet, just because you've heard of the man doesn't mean you understand the man

Just because you heard of the the endurance of the man doesn't mean you understand how it is he was able to endure Just because you read about the man doesn't mean that everything concerning that man and what God wants you to know is known Because very few people read through the book of Job Those debates between Job and his friends are monotonous They're the same thing over and over and over again They're like rehashing the same story Yet there's so much there that we need to understand So we're going to explain it to you as time goes on No one knows exactly when Job lived

We know that he makes reference to Adam in chapter 31 He makes reference to the flood in chapter 12 So we know that he lived sometime after the flood Sometime after the Tower of Babel, just after 11 Some believe he's a contemporary of Abraham's, maybe so No one knows exactly when Job lived But it's not important when he lived It's important how he lived And how it is that God would would use this man in a unique and special way It was Martin Luther who used two words to describe Job Magnificent and sublime

It was the 19th century Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle who wrote, there is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal to its literary merit Victor Hugo, the French poet and author, concluded that Job was perhaps the greatest masterpiece of the human mind Eugene Peterson, a contemporary of ours, said this about Job It's not only because Job suffered that he is important to us It is because he suffered in the same way that we suffer In the vital areas of family, personal health and material things

Job is also important to us because he searchingly questioned and boldly protested his suffering Indeed, he went to the top with his questions It is not the suffering that troubles us It is the undeserved suffering that troubles us Almost all of us in our years of growing up had the experience of disobeying our parents and getting punished for it When that discipline was connected with wrongdoing, it had a certain sense of justice to it When we do wrong, we get punished

One of the surprises as we get older, however, is that we come to see that there is no real correlation between the amount of wrong we commit and the amount of pain we experience An even larger surprise is that very often there is something quite the opposite We do right and we get knocked down We do the best we are capable of doing and just as we are reaching out to receive our reward, we are hit from the blind side and sent reeling Now think about that with Job As he sits on the side of the hill, overlooking ten graves, his ten children, taken away in just a brief moment of time

He and his wife sitting there, standing there, over ten graves Yes, they lost their home Yes, they lost their livestock That can all be replaced They lost their ten children And as they sit there and they overlook the graves, his wife just says, just curse God and die And think of the amount of pressure upon the man as his wife tells him to curse God and die after he has lost everything that he has Job was not expecting suffering He didn't have a warning that it was coming There was not a telegram that was sent

There was not a pigeon carrier that came and gave him a note that said, hey, suffering is coming right around the corner, look out There was no forewarning, out of the blue He was blindsided And he was the most God fearing, righteous man on the earth Think about that This is what the Bible says in Job one, blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil So here's a guy who's living for the Lord He's honoring the Lord He's a model of Christianity, for lack of a better better phrase He models Christ And yet all of a sudden out of nowhere comes tragedy, pain

Beyond anything you and me can even begin to imagine None of us in the room If we were to add up all of our pain, could come to the same amount of pain that one man, Job, experienced in his life So there's a lot for us to learn. A lot for us to understand. A lot of ways that we can grow and come to understand our Lord So James says, you have heard of the endurance of Job You have heard of the perseverance of Job Maybe your text says you have heard of the patience of Job One who was able to bear up under pressure

When the pressure around him was so strong, so heavy, insurmountable, he was able to bear up under it It was inexplicable There were no answers to his questions And yet he endured He never gave up on his faith He loved the Lord What if I was to tell you that that what you're going through today is going to benefit someone else tomorrow? What if I was to tell you, I know that you've lost your only child But think about it God's going to use that in someone else's life, down the road, because you have received comfort from the Lord to comfort them

What if I was to tell you that the disease that you're experiencing today the disease that's insurmountable, that's causing your life to waste away, is going to be used by God down the road to encourage someone else because of your affliction That probably would not bring much comfort to you if you were in the hospital and just lost your your only son or only daughter But that's what the Bible does say

It does say these words in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, chapter 1, verse 3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all of our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted You could want to say, verse 6, but if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation Or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings, which we also suffer

And our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort Paul tells us that that one of the reasons that we bless the God of all mercies is because He comforts us in our tribulation, so that we in turn can comfort others when they go through similar kind of situations

But if you're going through a heartache, if you're right in the midst of a, of an incredible amount of pain, the last thing you want to hear is that, hey listen, it's okay because someone down the road is going to benefit from your suffering today because you'll be able to comfort them with the comfort by which God comforts you Although it's true, that's not what you want to hear in the midst of your suffering But for Job, that's exactly what was happening James tells us that God dealt with him with compassion and mercy

Romans 15 tells us that these things are written for our encouragement, for our perseverance, that we might have hope Would it be or could it be that what you're experiencing today or will experience tomorrow or next year happens to you for only one reason, so that you might help others through similar kind of situations Job wasn't thinking about that when he was standing over the 10 graves of his children Job wasn't thinking about that when his home had been demolished He was only thinking about how this all happened so quickly

And then on top of that, he would be afflicted with a disease from the top of his head to the soles of his feet He'd have said nashes because he was in so much pain and it went on for days, for weeks, not just for a few brief moments, completely blindsided, had no idea It was all said and done God never told him why Job never received an answer to the why question Why me? Why this? Why now? Why to this degree? That's the question we all ask, right? Why? Because the answer doesn't reside with the why It only resides with the who That's it

You're going to come to grips with that as we study the book of Job You're going to see this unfold in the pages before us Remember we told you on Sunday that in Philippians chapter 1, verse number 29, Paul says this, For to you has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but also to believe in you Also to suffer for his sake In other words, you are saved for Christ's sake You suffer for Christ's sake In fact, everything that happens in you, to you, through you, and for you is for Christ's sake

Once you begin to understand that, once you come to grips with that reality, life will take on a whole new perspective It's been granted to you not only to believe for his sake, but to suffer for his sake Everything is for his name sake Psalm says, Psalm 115, verse number 1, Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory because of your lovingkindness, because of your truth Not for our sake, but for your sake May you be glorified May you be honored May you be put on display May you be seen

Having said that, let me give you six principles by way of introduction that will guide you through the next 30 weeks Okay? Six principles that will help you understand what it is we're asking and we're doing as we study the book of Job Six principles that will set the tone for our time together Principle number one is this You need to be consumed with the revelation of God You need to be consumed with the revelation of God Why is that? Because when it's all said and done, when we come to the very end of the book of Job, God offers no explanation Only a revelation of himself

God gives no explanation to Job God is not required to tell you why God does not answer to you He does not answer to me If he decides to tell you why, that's great He's under no obligation to tell you why he does what he does And the only reason we know what's going on is because we read the book Job was not the author of Job We don't know who the author was because Job was completely unaware of what was happening He had no idea And so even when he comes to the end, he doesn't understand that it was a conversation in heaven between God and Satan And Satan wanted to come against Job

He had no idea He never understood that We do because we can read it The inspired Word of God tells us what was happening in the heavens before it actually happened on the earth in the life of Job And so the reason you need to be consumed with the revelation of God is because God is going to reveal himself to you like he does in every book The book is not about Job's suffering, although he suffers It's not about that It's like every other book in the Bible It's about God, the character and nature of the true and living God

So if you read the book of Job and you come to the end of the book, and you don't have a better or clearer understanding of God, you didn't read it right It's like the book of Revelation The book of Revelation is not about the end times, although it tells us about the end times The book of Revelation is about the revelation, the unveiling of the Christ in all of his glory and splendor So if you read the book of Revelation and you come to the end of the book and don't have a better walk with the Lord and a clearer understanding of who he is, you didn't read it right

That's the way it is with every book of the Bible The Bible we hold in our hand is a revelation of who God is, right? And we are to pursue God We are to come to know who the true and living God is We just seek his face So when you're done with the book of Job, like every other book in the Old Testament and New Testament, you come to a better revelation, a clearer revelation, a clearer understanding as to the character and nature of who God is Job never received an explanation Never In fact, God was silent with Job for a long while because God was doing something in his time and in his way

Job was not like Peter Christ says to Peter in Luke chapter 22, verse number 31, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat Peter's lucky Christ tells him, Peter, guess what? Simon, guess what? Satan demands to sift you like wheat In other words, he's coming after you Peter was forewarned, right? To be forewarned is to be forearmed Not Peter He was too arrogant to think that he could be touched by Satan But at least Christ warned him and told him that Satan had demanded to sift you like wheat

But then what did he say? He says, but I prayed for you that your faith may not fail and when, and you, when once you have turned again, you will be able to strengthen your brethren Peter, Satan wants you But it's okay. I prayed for you Peter could have said, why don't you just step in and stop him? Just step in and say no Why let him come after me? I've prayed for you, Peter So your faith doesn't fail It's what's all said and done

You can come back and strengthen the brethren, show them how to handle the difficulty, how to work through the pain, how to handle temptation in a way that honors the Lord The book of Revelation, or excuse me, the book of Job is a revelation of the character and nature of God more so than anything else If you think the book of Job is about suffering, you're wrong It's about the sovereignty of God and the suffering of man or over the suffering of man It's one aspect of God's sovereignty Very important The Bible says in Psalm 99 verse number one, the Lord reigns, let the people tremble

There's a declaration God reigns He rules He's supreme He's over all Now with that declaration comes the duty Let the people tremble How do you know you know God reigns? You tremble If you don't tremble at God's sovereignty, you don't understand what he's in control of That he rules over everything The Lord reigns, let the people tremble. A.W Pink says this about the sovereignty of God He says the sovereignty of God is the foundation of Christian theology The clear center of gravity in the system of Christian truth Sovereignty of God is is supreme

When it comes to understanding what God is doing The word sovereign means to to be over or to or to be supreme or to be the ruler And God is that So it's so that he either directly causes or consciously permits everything that has ever happened on this planet That's what it means for God to be sovereign He directly causes or consciously permits everything that happens on the planet in the universe for all time If there's one thing he's not in control of, if there's one thing he's not sovereign over, then he's not sovereign at all But our Lord is completely sovereign

In fact, in the book of Daniel, the fourth chapter, it was Nebuchadnezzar who said for his dominion is an everlasting dominion His kingdom endures from generation to generation All the inhabitants of the earth are Canada's nothing He does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and no one can ward off his hand or say to him, what have you done? No one can Nebuchadnezzar had to realize that and through this whole scenario, you're going to see this

It's one thing to say we believe in the sovereignty of God until suffering comes our way and then we question God's sovereignty We question his oversight We question whether or not he's really on the throne still or not When tragedy happens, we begin to scratch our heads and say, wait a minute Did you step off the throne just for a moment? Did you take a break from being ruler? For a moment, did you not know what was happening in my life? It does And for the scenario in the book of Job, we're going to see how Satan comes after Job And that God allows Satan to inflict them

God is so sovereign that Satan has to ask permission to do whatever he does God is so in control of everything that without Satan asking permission, Satan can't do a blessed thing He's still under authority The authority of the living God Because God's in charge He does what he wants and how he wants it What he wants to do So the very first thing that will help you through the study is to be consumed with the revelation of God When I talk about being consumed with it, I mean being overwhelmed by it Entrenched in it

Looking and seeing God on every word and every dialogue between Job and his friends, between the dialogue between God and Job and Job and God and all that's happening Even with his wife God is in complete control God had a plan The plan ran right on course It never faltered So principle number one, be consumed with the revelation of God Number two, be compassionate with the affliction of Job Be compassionate with the affliction of Job And you will be You're going to feel really bad for the man After all he goes through

And then you feel really bad for him when he has these conversations with his friends that really can't help him out But when I talk about being compassionate with the affliction of Job, I want you to understand Job says in Job 5 verse number 7, Man is born under trouble as sparks fly upward Job recognizes that So too should we But everything about the affliction of Job centers around a belief that they all had at that time. A belief that carries itself even to the times of Christ And his friends will come back to this time and time and time again

And that is you are suffering the way you are suffering because you are a terrible sinner You have sinned You sin greatly And the more you have sinned, the greater the suffering That was their belief They were not convinced that Job had not committed some great sin They could not be convinced of that They believed it up to the very end But Job, before his affliction, and after his affliction, God says he was a blameless man It doesn't mean he didn't sin No, he confesses a sin He knows he's a sinner

But he also knows he doesn't have some secret great sin that's caused this great affliction to come upon him Now, is it true that when we live in sin, there could be great suffering? Yes Could very well be It also could very well be that you could live in great sin and suffer, not at all. I mean, look at the unbeliever They live in sin and don't suffer very much at all That was the psalmist's cry, right? But yet, yet, just because you suffer, doesn't mean that you sin This was a belief even during the time of Christ Remember the story, John 9? As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth

His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind? So the disciples had a belief, like everybody else did The man was born blind because he sinned, which is very important to realize that how can you sin if you're in your mother's womb, unless you're a real person, right? And so they were thinking that either he sinned or his parents sinned as to why he was born blind But Christ makes it very clear Jesus answered, it was neither that this man sinned nor his parents His blindness is not a result of his sin or his parents' sin

But it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him This man's suffering is the way it is for this day This man was born blind so that on this day, the deity of Christ would be seen by all those people at the Pool of Siloam They would understand that he was the Messiah sent to them Would God make a person be born blind so that his glory would be put on display at one moment in one period of time? Yes Yes He did Made it very clear The man would go and wash in the Pool of Siloam and he'd be able to see The Pharisees and Sadducees had real trouble with that

But it was all about proving the deity of Christ, that Christ was the true Messiah who had come to save his people Israel So you need to be compassionate with the affliction of Job because you're going to come across people all throughout your life that are afflicted and you will need to be compassionate with them Job's friends were not compassionate with him They were exhortive, which leads me to point number three Number one, be consumed with the revelation of God Number two, be compassionate with the affliction of Job

Oh, by the way, Psalm 34 verse number 19 says, many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them from the mall So you can be righteous and have many afflictions Psalm has made that very clear So outside of being consumed with the revelation of God and being compassionate with the affliction of Job, be cautious with the exhortation of Job's friends Be very cautious They say some good things They say some right things They say things that are true, but they misappropriate them with Job

You're going to see in the conversations that they have with Job, and there are many of them, and they are lengthy And you're going to see that they, they're going to say some right things about who God is But they misapply them to Job's life, which tells us that we have to be very cautious about how we deal with people who are suffering In the words that we say, yes, they would sit in silence for seven days, but they were so concerned about teaching Job where he was wrong They didn't hear Job They didn't listen to Job

We can be so consumed with exhorting people and teaching people what is right and what is wrong that we don't listen to where they're at And so with the conversation between Job and his friends, you must be very cautious to their exhortation Because although they say right things, they say them at the wrong time and in the wrong way So many times we can do the same thing You're going to learn how to talk with people who are suffering You're going to learn what not to say with people who are suffering Because all of us experience people, friends, associates that suffer

What do we say? How do we say it? What do we do? Well, when you listen to Job's friends, you'll learn what not to say So you can better say what you need to say So be consumed with the revelation of God Be compassionate with the affliction of Job Be cautious with the exhortation of Job's friends and be careful about the denunciation of God Satan denounces God He criticizes, he maligns God in chapter 1 And you got to be very careful about that Because you see, whenever we attribute something to God that isn't true, we denounce him We malign his character We got to be very careful about that

We say things like this, very common phrase, right? Why do bad things happen to good people? That's just a false statement Bad things don't happen to good people Because the Bible says there is none good, no not one The question is, why do good things happen to bad people? That's the right question But to go to God and say, Lord, why is it this bad thing has happened to me, a good person, is to malign the character and nature of God Is to speak against God His sovereign control, his justice, his mercy, his grace, his loving-kindness His mercy? But God's not that way Not at all

But there's none good No, not one And yet we can be so quick to question God When you begin to question God, you denounce his character So you must be very careful about the denunciation of God Let's know what Isaiah the prophet said, or God said to Isaiah the prophet, Isaiah 45 Verse 5. I am the Lord There is no other beside me There is no God. I will gird you though you have not known me That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one beside me. I am the Lord and there is no other

The one forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity. I'm the God who does this Amos 3, verse number 6 If there is calamity in the city, it is the Lord who did it Then it says, Woe to the one who quarrels with his maker An earthenware vessel among the vessels of the earth Will the clay say to the potter, what are you doing? Or the thing you are making say, he has no hands Woe to him who says to a father, what are you begetting? Or to a woman, to what are you giving birth? Be careful God says, don't quarrel with your maker

Don't be angry at me. I am the one who created you. I am the master architect of all things But we got to be careful about denouncing the character and nature of God, maligning his character, speaking against him What you'll find in the book of Job is how it is we are to converse and commune with the true and living God Misdefliction Hardship Pain Loss It's so easy for us to quickly criticize God for the way he does what he does As if, as if we know better As if we're sovereign As if we should be on the throne and not God himself We love to question God's purposes and processes

But we got to be careful about that So number one, be consumed with the revelation of God Number two, be compassionate with the affliction of Job Number three, be cautious with the exhortation of his friends Number four, be careful about the denunciation of God Number five, be captivated with the confessions of Job Be captivated with the confessions of Job Job makes some of the most supreme confessions in all of Scripture about God And we need to be captivated by those things Listen to what he says Job 23 He knows the way I take When he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold What a statement

What a statement Sitting in an ash heap, filled with pain, having lost everything He knows the way that I take When he's tried me, I'm going to come forth as gold He is already confessing the providence of God He's already confessing the pathway of God He says this, my foot has held fast to his path. I have kept his way and not turned aside. I have not departed from the commandments of his lips. I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my necessary food But he is unique And who can turn him? And what his soul desires that he does

For he performs what is appointed for me and many such decrees are with him What a statement He performs that which has been appointed for me Can you say that? In the midst of your greatest pain, can you say he has directed me this way? He has appointed what is best for me He says earlier in Job 19, verse 25, I know that my Redeemer lives He confesses the person of God that he is the Redeemer and then he confesses the plan of God And at the last he will take his stand on the earth What a confession

What did Job know about the return of the Messiah? What did Job know about the coming of the Messiah? What did Job know about the death of the Messiah? That his Redeemer still lives More about that as we go through the book of Job Over in Job 31 Remember this? Job says this, verse number one, I have made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully upon a woman What a statement This is his confession He makes them all throughout the book of Job So you know where he's at, what he believes, what he stands on This is his man's character when he's gone through such great loss and pain

It almost makes us kind of embarrassed, doesn't it? Does me Because I don't do, I've faced anything in Job's face And I complain about this and that ache here, pain there. I mean, come on people Think about this Look at this in light of, look at your situation in light of Job's situation and look at the confessions he makes about God's sovereign control over his life and God's purpose for his life and God's plan to purify him and to make him come forth as gold What's all said and done Great man of God, this should be your hero This is your hero

Look at this man and see what God does in his life Be consumed with the revelation of God Be compassionate with the affliction of Job Be cautious with the exhortation of his friends Be careful about the denunciation of God and be captivated with the confessions of Job Lastly, be challenged Be challenged with the implications of this book Be challenged Number one, rest in his sovereignty This is going to be a great challenge for all of us To be able to rest in his sovereignty To quiet our soul amidst his control Remember what the Bible says in the book of Romans, the 11th chapter

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways For who has known the mind of the Lord or who became his counselor? Or who is first given to him that it might be paid back to him again For from him and through him and to him are all things To him be the glory forever and ever Amen Everything is from him Everything goes through him so that it only comes back to him again In other words, everything is about God Everything and nothing is about you It's all about God

That perspective there will revolutionize the way you see tomorrow The way you drive home tonight You need to rest in the sovereignty of God and then to be able to realize the sufficiency of God because God's grace is sufficient That's what Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, right? My grace is sufficient for thee God makes his grace to abound in our lives When you rest in his sovereignty, you must realize his sufficiency God's grace is sufficient to help you through and in every situation The grace that saves you is the great that strengthens you

The grace that strengthens you is the grace that sustains you It's the same grace that God bestows upon his people Rest in his sovereignty Realize his sufficiency and then refocus your dependency upon him because in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul says this He says in verse 8, In other words, everything happened to us so we would refocus our dependency upon God for everything because we live independent lives And Job would have to throw himself on to the mercy of God to depend upon God for everything because he had nothing He lost everything

So he had to totally depend upon God for even his very breath And so when you are challenged by the implications of the book, the challenges are to rest in a sovereignty, to realize his sufficiency, to refocus your dependency And then number four, to radiate his glory It's all about the glory of the Lord It's all about putting God on display Whatever it is you go through, when you go through it, because it's all about God and not you, the question is how is God being seen in and through my life at this particular time? So when people see me, they don't see my affliction They they see God

They don't see my loneliness They see God They don't see my pain They see God They don't see me, but they truly see the true and living God Malcolm Ruggage was an atheist most of his life He got saved toward the end And in his book, A 20th Century Testimony, he says these words, contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction

Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my 75 years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained In other words, if it ever were to be possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo-jumbo, the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal and trivial to be endurable And he's right Absolutely right

What you learn in the midst of pain and affliction and turmoil, are the greatest lessons you'll ever learn As the psalmist said, before I was afflicted, I went astray But now finally, I keep your word Through the study of the book of Job, we will see affliction at its worst But see what God does in the life of a man because God is being put on display in his life And when it's all said and done, you're going to see God That's what Job says, right? Job 42. I have heard of you with the hearing of my ear But now finally, I see you

The most blameless, God-fearing man on the face of the earth had heard about God, but it wasn't till affliction that he actually saw God My prayer for you and me is that we would see the true and living God for who he is and worship at his feet Let's pray Father, we thank you for tonight The opportunity you give us to study your word What a joy What a pleasure What an opportunity What a man, Job Wow. I am absolutely taken by this man And Lord, I pray that all of us through our study of this this great biblical character Thank you for the Lord for putting them on the pages of Scripture

That we would better see you, how you operate, how you work, what you do My prayer for every person in this room, Lord, that you would do a mighty work They would truly rest in your sovereignty Realize your sufficiency Refocus their dependency only upon you That they might radiate your glory forevermore We pray in Jesus name, Amen.