Lessons from the Life of Job: Week 1

Well, good morning, and it's good to kick off our

summer together. You know what, I just want to praise

God for our school year this past year. You know,

we asked God to change the lives of one hundred people.

During the school year. We saw one hundred and seventy

five people make a commitment to Christ through one of

our services throughout our church.

And that awesome. And I just looked back this week.

You know, we all rested this week, we had a holiday.

But then I looked at our church and Tuesday night

we had celebrate recovery. Wednesday night, the youth group had

a big event. Thursday night we had church. Friday night

was Vision night for the young adults. I don't know

what happened yesterday. I'm sure something happened yesterday. Then today

we're having services all day and you know what, God

is at work.

And let me tell you, it takes a lot of volunteers.

It takes a lot of faithful people to pull off

the mission and the vision of this church. And let

me just give you a little update. We were looking

at this past year compared to some years in the past,

and at the last half of twenty seventeen compared to

this whole school year the church has seen we are

counting the couple hundred people that are online each week.

If you bring all that in together for our weekend

and all the services we are ministering to twice as

many people every single week as we were just seven

years ago.

Isn't that awesome?

Has a lot of lives changed, and that we have

a lot of services every week we got we're reaching out.

We're trying to reach people for Christ, help them change

and see who Jesus is.

In their life. So thank you for your faithfulness.

And it's just amazing to consider all that God has done.

And we had a little thing called a pandemic in

the middle of all that, and so it's just incredible

that one the church, you know, we made it through

a pandemic.

But I believe that the.

Pandemic made as a stronger people, people of grit and

the people who are focused on the mission of Christ.

And so let us take some time now to pray,

and we are jumping into our summer series Job and

ask God to speak to us.

And I'll just say this.

Somebody asked me, James, as we do the book of Job,

is it gonna be depressing. It's like have you read job, Yeah,

it's gonna be know what's depressing summer of our lives?

Uh, in actuality.

As we've spread this teaching out over the summer, what

we've looked at is like, oh, wow, we need that,

we need that.

That's gonna happen in our life. What do we do

when that happens.

It's gonna be one of the most practical series of

dealing with life. So let's pray and ask God to

talk to us today. Jesus, we love you, We thank

you for your faithfulness and your goodness and your love

and your grace. Speak to us today, challenge us today,

and may you have all of us today in Jesus name.

Amen. It was nineteen forty two.

Vienna, Austria, and we enter into the life of a

main named Victor Frankel. And Victor Frankel, he was a

neurologist and a psychiatrist. It's pretty smart, pretty smart guy.

And he had a burgeoning business and he was a

great writer. He loved on people, he cared for people,

he took care of his patience, and he was just

a great man, a great great man. And on top

of all that, his greatest prize was his wife and

his unborn child.

And Victor he knew he was a smart guy.

He knew that things were very uncertain over in Europe

Dinner's time, so he had a life work that he'd

been working on for years in his manuscript. He actually

sewed into the lining of his clothes just in case.

He got picked up one day and was sent away,

and then the knock came, lost his home, all his possessions,

and he and his family were taken to the train station,

and they knew.

Where they were going.

No one talked about it, but everybody knew that they

were going to Auschwitz concentration camp. And he said that

when you got on to the train that you were

so stuffed in that you either stood or you set down.

And this went on not just for hours, but this

went on for days. And he talks about the suffocating

smell of that train car, and he said, for days

you would hear absolute silence, albeit the young mothers who

would weep from time to time.

And as they descended upon.

Their location, the doors flung open and they were greeted

by dogs barking viciously and Germans soldiers shouting out commands,

and that is where he was separated from his father

and his wife, never to see them again.

They did not survive the concentration camp.

And he said that he was taken to another room

and they took his clothes, his identity. He was given

a number, he took his dignity, and then they found

his manuscript. They pulled it out and threw it in

the fire and burned it. His life work, everything was gone.

And he said, what was interesting in because he's famous

for a book that he wrote, Man in the Search

for Meaning of Life. And he said that you would

think that the prisoners when all of this happened, that

they would be filled with emotions like fear or anger,

or be rebellious because they're upset or whatever, that they

would have all these emotions.

And he said, but all of us shared one emotion.

And almost everybody who ever went to a concentration camp

when they first showed up, they all shared the same emotion,

and that emotion was shock. They went into shock. It

was almost like they were not living in reality.

He said.

You can look over and you could see the smoke

from the crematorium rising up, and you could smell the

burnt flesh, but he said it wasn't real. It just

couldn't register it because you just actually couldn't believe that

this was real. And they entered into shock because their

life had been turned upside down. And that leads us

well into our discussion today, because we're gonna be looking

at a man who imagined unimaginable pain.

Job was a man like.

Froncle who he was respected, He was successful, he loved

his family, He was blameless and upright. He was a

man of faith, wealth and wisdom. And like Francles train,

there was a sudden descent. One servant arrives and says, hey,

your oxening, your donkeys, they're all gone. Another one stopped

by and said, your sheep and your service, they're all

been destroyed, and your camels are gone as well. Then

the blow that breaks the soul is when he found

out that his children, and all ten of his children,

had been killed in a storm, no warning, no time

to prepare, no explanation, and Franco experienced the collapse of everything,

everything that was familiar in his life, that made him joyful,

everything that was meaningful in his life, and he entered

into the valley of shock, and here he is in

the valley of shock, after having everything taken away from

him by the concentration camp and from the ground, in

a psychological state of shock, he does something that makes

Job's life worth looking at thousands of years later. It's

probably the oldest book in the Bible. And the reason

we're going to study Job this summer is because we're

going to look at a man who, after he had

everything taken he falls down to the ground and he

does something spectacular. He was in shock, but he did

something shocking.

He worshiped.

He worshiped the Lord. And so today we're going to

begin this journey not from blessing the blessing, but from

blessing the brokenness, from prosperity to pain.

And here's the big question of the whole series.

Okay, here it is what kind of faith survive when

the world falls apart? And let me tell you something,

my friends, We're gonna journey together as a church for

many years, hopefully. And I've been a ministry for twenty

five years, and I can tell you this, I've hardly

seen anyone.

Escape their life.

Without a day of destruction in their life, a day

where everything falls apart.

And people make two choices. They either draw near to

God or they get angry.

And that's why we ask the question, what type of

faith survives when everything in our world falls apart?

And what type of faith leads to this verse? Let's

look at it.

In verse twenty, it says, then job Barobe rose, and

he tore his robe, and he shaved his head, and

he felt to the ground, and he worshiped. Have you

ever wondered how someone could and your unimaginable pain only

to move into hope. Frankle says this in his book.

He says, you know what, Everything can be taken from

us but one thing. After all of our possessions are gone,

everything in our life is gone. Everything could be taken

from us except for this one freedom, and that freedom

is to choose our own attitude in any set of circumstances.

In other words, when life takes away everything, there's one

thing that we can have. Life think.

The world can take away our clothes, our house, our status,

our vehicles, and our family, but we have one choice left.

The world cannot take this choice away, and that is

a choice to choose how you will respond. And so

with that insight, let's jump into our passage. Today, we're

going to walk through the first chapter of Joe. Let's

jump in, all right. There was a man in a

land of us whose name was Joe, and that man

was blameless and upright, want to fear God, turned away

from evil. There were born to him seven sons and

three daughters. He possessed seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels,

five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred female donkeys.

And he had many servants, so that this man was

the greatest of all people in the east. His sons

used to go and hold a feast in the house

of each one on his day, and they would sin

and invite their three sisters to eat.

And drink with him.

And when the days of the feast had run their course,

Job would send and consecrate them. And he would rise

early in the morning and offer offerings according to the

number of them, all for Job said, it may be

that my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.

Thus Job did this continually. So the very first thing

we learned about Job is he's a man of God.

The Bible says that he was blameless and upright, he

feared God, and he turned.

Away from evil, and so he was a man of integrity.

He was a righteous man, and he didn't.

Do the right thing when everybody was watching. He did

the right thing when nobody was watching. He was a

true man of God. Also, it says he was a

very rich man. The text says that he was the

greatest of all the people in the east. So let's

just talk about what he had for a moment. He

didn't have bank accounts like we have today or you know,

stock portfolios, but he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camel,

one thousand oxen, and five hundred dollarkeys. In other words,

back in that culture that day, he would have been

considered a multi billionaire. He would have been the richest

man in his region. And let's just talk about what

businesses he had. So we see they had a huge

shock or a huge flock of sheep. Well that would

have been for wool and for food. So in other words,

he would have had a clothing business, a butchering business.

He also had a trucking business. It says that he

had a herd of camels. Okay, so that's how people

got around back then.

It was camels.

So he sold them and he basically had a transportation business,

had teams of oxen to plow the fields. So he

had a grocery store business. And now the one that

I didn't know about was a little bit interested to me.

Why would he Why would the Bible brag that he

had five hundred female donkeys.

Well, the delicacy of that day.

Was donkey milk.

I would not have known that. And so he also

had a.

Little bit of a bougie business as well, you know,

which like some donkey cheese, you know. In other words,

his portfolio was extreme. Yeah, for all that he had,

he was not a selfish or shallow man.

Matter of fact, what did it say.

It said that the kids would get together and party.

What does that mean.

It means that the kids liked each other and mom

and dad would hang out with him.

They would party together as a family.

In other words, they enjoyed being together. They enjoyed being

a family. They were a close knit family.

And matter of fact, and.

Here's what's truly impressive is after his family would party,

they have these get together as a next morning he

would get up and he would make sacrifices because he said,

perhaps my children have sending curse God in their hearts,

and he prayed over his children continually. He continually, every

day he lifted up his children in prayer. Here's what

I'm trying to say about Job.

He was rich, but.

More important than that, Job was a good dad. He

was a great dad.

He loved his children.

And that makes this story so hard because it's almost

like verse six, like a movie or a play. It's

almost like the lights.

Go out.

On Job's life, and all of a sudden, the play

moves over and God pulls back this cosmic curtain to

give his insight into what's going on in the heavenly

is And the first thing we see is that there

is a heavenly staff meeting going on where God has

brought his angels together, says the sons of God were

presenting themselves before the Lord, and among them was unexpected

visitor in the Hebrew who He's called Hacatan, which means

the accuser. So when you think about Satan, Satan is

not this medieval image that we have of him, of

this devil with a pitchfork and a tale.

No, no, no.

He was a powerful, majestic angel who had fallen because

of the conflict with God, and he and God were

sworn enemies, and he knew that the greatest way to

hurt God was to hurt us. So we see this

scene in this cosmic play, and it goes like this. Now,

there was a day when the sons of God came

to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also was

among them. The Lord said to Satan, from where have

you come? Satan answered the Lord and said from going

to and fro on the earth, and from walking up

and down it. And the Lord said to Satan, and

I love this. Listen to what he says about Job.

He says, have you considered my servant? Job? I love

that he calls him servant. And there is none like

him on this earth who blame us, an upright man

who fears God and turns away from evil. So the

very first thing that God says, he says, what have

you been up to?

Satan?

And it says that he's been roaming around? Well, that's

what the Bible tells us. If first Peter five eight,

what does it say that are it? Amy prowls around

like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Satan

goes around and he's trying to destroy.

Lives and at this point God says, well, what about.

My boy here, my servant Job? And then God brags

on him, and it shows us that God trust him,

that God knows the heart of Job.

God believes in Job.

But this Satan attacks Joe's integrity here what does he say?

This Satan answered the Lord and says, well, 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've blessed the work of his hands and his possessions.

You've increased his land. But stretch out your hand and.

Touch all that he has, and I bet you he

curses you to your face. And here's what Satan the

accuser does. He says, yeah, Job seems pretty awesome. Huh, Well,

who wouldn't be awesome if they were the richest man

in the east, if they have ten kids, an amazing farm,

amazing portfolio. Who wouldn't love you if you gave them everything?

And really, what he's insinuating is that Job is a phony.

It would be like me coming up to you and saying,

you know what, I think you only follow God because

you want his blessings, You want his hand on your life,

you don't really love God. So he says he only

loves you because of what you've give it him. And

then even worse, he basically accuses God of saying, do

you know how you get people to.

Be loyal to you?

You give them things, You bless their life. You dangle

the care in front of them, and if they're good

little boys and girls, they do the right thing, then.

They get stuff.

So people only follow you because they get stuff. You

protect their life, you promise them good things.

You take away this carrot, you take away the blessings

of their life. See how they love you.

I don't think he's all wrong here. Twenty five years

of ministry. I've seen many times the job that somebody

gave somebody, the marriage that somebody gave somebody, the wealth

that somebody, the home, the status that God blessed somebody with,

and then it's taken away and their loyalty to God

is done. So what will God do? God knows job.

God believes in job. It says this, And the Lord

said to Satan, behold all that he has is in

your hand only, and against him, do not stretch out

your hand. So Satan went out from the presence of

the Lord. Now remember here God is still in control

of the situation. But I want this to sinking. I

want you to understand something today. Some of you will

not like this, but this is true theology. This is

not theology that we like, but this is just the

way it is. God allowed Satan to strike job with suffering,

and that reminds us there's a real spiritual enemy out there.

And sometimes God, in his wisdom, allows spiritual battles to

touch your life. And I want you to know something

right now. God allows you to go through pain and suffering.

He can stop it, but he allows you to go

through it. But the purpose of God, see the purpose

of Satan. Satan's hope with suffering is that you will

curse God and deny your relationship with him. God's goal

is more like a jeweler. A jeweler applies heat to

a diamond, because what happens when you apply heat to

a diamond it sparkles even more. And just like that God,

it reminds us. It reminds us that God may allow

us to go through the fire, not to destroy us,

but to reveal what we're really made of. God allows

us to have trials and this fire burns at the

impurities of our life. See here's the interesting thing. And

this is the thing that I want you to understand

today because I think this as a whole other psychological level.

Job does not know the why to his suffering.

He doesn't know why he's suffering.

He doesn't know that God is saying to have had

a conversation.

He doesn't know the why, he doesn't know the meeting.

He doesn't know the purpose behind his suffering.

Now that's a big deal. It's a huge deal because

let me tell you some.

This. He goes, He who has a why to live

can bear almost anyhow. I'll say that again, he who

has a why to live can bear almost anyhow.

What Nets is.

Saying is simply this, If you know why you're suffering,

then that why will turn into meaning. And if you

have meaning behind your suffering, well then you can almost

bear any trial. So if you know the why, the

why will translate into a meaning, and if you have

meaning behind your suffering, you will be able to endure

amazing things, because the human can endure almost anything if

we have meaning and if we have purpose behind our struggle.

But here's what you need to understand.

Job just sees utter catastrophe. He doesn't know the why.

How's he gonna get meaning out of this? But see,

here's what we learn about Job.

Early on.

Job understood that faith means trusting God without even knowing.

All the reasons.

He didn't know why, but he still trusted God. And

sometimes you're gonna have seasons in your life where you're

not gonna understand the reason why you're suffering.

And Joey, excuse me.

Job's story assures us that in the midst of our pain,

we must remember that God is still in controlling and

Job understood that God was still in control. And then

we enter into the trial. Here's what we're going to

see over the next couple of minutes. There's four knocks

on his life, and there are four devastating knocks that

happen in secession, all in the same day. The reports

come to him within minutes of each other. Let's look

at it. The first knock on his life, Sir, we

were out in the field with the oxen and donkeys,

and suddenly a band of raiders, a Savians, attacked. They

stole all the animals, and they killed all the farm

hands working with him.

I'm the only one who escaped to tell you.

So.

First of all, animals are.

Gone, his friends are murdered, huge, huge financial loss.

Than knock Number two happens immediately.

They come. They say, all your sheep and all your

shepherds are killed in a lightning storm. Scholars call this

a fire from heaven. And we've seen these reports where

lightning hits the ground on a farm and the next

thing you know, a whole field of debt animals is there.

So more likely it was a horrible thunderstorm wiped out

his animals. So another huge chunk of his lovelihood. And

then another messager comes in and he says, a rival

gang has killed your camels. His trucking business is gone.

This is unbelievable. And they killed more of his workers,

and so all of a sudden, his whole portfolio is gone.

He goes from being the wealthiest man in the east.

To being someone who is a deep, deep poverty.

And by the way, I didn't say that these storms

wiped out any debt he might have had. Maybe he

was expanding, maybe he was building, but now he has

left an utter financial room. And then number four comes

on his life master job of your sons and your daughters.

They were all feasting together at your oldest son's house.

It's suddenly a powerful windstorm came out of the desert.

It struck down the house. The house collapsed on them,

and I'm so sorry. All your children are dead, and

I'm the only one who escaped you. And in one

dreadful moment, he loses all ten of his children. And remember,

these are the children that he swaddowed, the children that

he took care of, the children that he played with

on the farm, the children that he had heart to

heart father son father daughter, talks with, They party together,

they enjoyed each other, And in one single moment, he

experiences every parent's nightmare times ten. In addition to that,

everything he had is gone, all of his material wealth

has gone, his life so hot, his servants. In other words,

probably more than likely on that day, probably for some time,

there have been some plans to attack and to steal.

There's just also happened to be.

A huge windstorm that day, and it just reaped utter destruction.

It was like wave after wave crashing without relief. And

there's just no pause in this, this total devastation. And

by the way, it's hard for me to find words

to try to describe what he would have felt like.

But any of you who've ever gotten that phone call.

With the diagnosis, the knock on the door about the

tragic accident, the sudden loss of a job through an email,

a loved one who passed away, or that spouse who

said I'm out, you have a little bit of a

glimpse into job's day. Many years ago, I was hanging

out on a Saturday morning with a former pastor, Dave

called and when we went to go see Save in private, Ryan,

it's even private Ryan. The plot, which I feel like

it's okay to give away at this point, the story

of four brothers went off to war, but three of

them died before they realized that three of them were dead.

So the whole point of the story is to go

and make sure the mother did not lose her whole family.

And what I'm not ready to show you is a

scene that left the whole audience just in utter silence.

And this is the moment when the mom finds out.

At this moment, she only knows that one of her

children have passed. But I want you to watch her

reaction just so that you'll get a little bit of

a glimpse into what Job's day might have been like.

Check this out, a little bit of a glimpse what

Job went through that day. But she didn't lose her house,

She still had a child alive, she didn't lose her business.

Job lost everything in just a few moments. The Bible

says that he ripped off his clothes. Could you imagine

being so devastated that the only thing you can do

in that moment is just to rip your clothes off

and fall down. But while he was down, and this

is why we are studying Job, because while he was down,

the most powerful thing, maybe one of the most powerful

things in human history, happened.

How does Job respond to his avalanche of Greek? He worships.

It says, Job arose and toward his robe and shaved

his head, then fell down to the ground, and he worshiped.

In his heart brokenness, he collapses to the ground.

And here's what Job teaches us that in his pain,

Job turns toward God.

Not away, and listen to what he says through his tears.

He says, neked I came my mother's womb, and that

cold I will depart the Lord gave, and the Lord

has taken away.

Blessed be the.

Name of the Lord, my Lord devastation. And then he says,

blessed be the name of the Lord. There's two statements

of truth that Job teaches us in this moment.

When he says the Lord gave Job who has letting.

Us know that he understood. Here's what he's teaching us.

Everything good in his life came from God. Everything you have,

your home, your status.

Your reputation, your education, your.

Family, everything you have. It's not because you are awesome.

God's the one who gave you the intelligence. God's the

one who worked out things for you to get this

job or this job. God is the one who plays

people in your life.

To mentor you and walk with you.

God has given you everything. Everything we have is a

gift from God. So therefore Job says, hey, all right,

you own it in the first place. And then when

he says the Lord is taken it away, he teaches

us the second truth that God and some people don't

like this.

This is a.

Saying that causes atheism and people to become agnostic, but

it is a biblical truth. God has the right to

take back what he gave Joe does not blame him

for being unfair. See, Job understood something that I hope

that we all grasp today, that God is still God

even in the loss. And he says it's a truly

amazing thing. He says, blessed be the name of the Lord,

and his heartbreak, he worships. He's still saying God is good,

God is worthy. And this response is almost shocking. He's

grief stricken. Yes, he's human, yet at the same time

he bows his head in reverence and then he worships

the Lord. And then we get one of the most

incredible statements about any human in history. In history, this

would be an amazing thing for any of us that

ever have said about us. He says, through all this

Job did not sin or blame God for doing anything wrong.

Despite all the agony, Job.

Teaches us something that I hope all of us will

hold on to today, that we will truth, that we

will make a decision to trust God's heart even when

we don't understand his hand. Job made a decision to

trust God's heart even when he couldn't understand God's hand.

He was able to worship at a time like this.

Why because he was able to worship because he had

a proper perspective on his possessions and all that he owned.

And I think that here on this earth we have

a lousy perspective on all that we have. We somehow

believe that everything we have actually belongs to us. We

somehow believe that the things we have in this life

that we've accumulated are eternal or something like that. But

everything we have is a loan from God. My former

pastor's wife one time said to me, when Caitlin was

a young child, she says, enjoy every day with her.

You know, you only got her own loan. She had

three boys that are all out of the house. And

he's like, don't you don't get to own your children.

You just get to borrow them for a time and

then they're off. Maybe more appropriate for this story today

would be the story of Corey ten Boone. Her family

was followers of Christ and during the Holocaust, they decided

to hide some of the Jews to protect them from

the concentration camps and the reward for that, they themselves

were arrested and got thrown into concentration camp. Her whole

family was killed. Her sister Betsy and her were moved

over to Ravensbrook, which was a horrible, horrible, nasty camp.

Her sister be beaten, mistreated, starved to death, and finally

pass away. Corey ten Boom after she survived the Holocaust,

which only one in twenty eight people did. She said

this as she would go around and preach to the

churches after the Holocaust.

She says, I've.

Learned to hold everything in my hands loosely and check

this theology out because it hurts when God has to

pry my fingers open. Those words were not just a

theory to her.

They were from her experience.

She lost her home, her freedom, she lost her family,

she lost everything. But she understood that you cannot grip

your blessings too tightly because we break when.

They fall away.

And I've seen so many people hold on to that job,

hold on to the status, this reputation, this bank account,

this reputation, that we have only to break when it's

pride out of our hands.

Hold it loosely, hold it loosely.

It doesn't belong to you. It was probably about two

and a half years into what my wife and I

call the suicide watch in our house. By the way,

my daughter's doing phenomenal. She's listen to this. You're not

gonna believe this. She went to the college kick off

Friday night, and she's over in the classroom right now

with all the young college kids. She turns twenty today.

She's going to Andersen this fall. God is doing something

in her story. Praise God, Praise God. But let me

tell you some eighth, ninth, tenth, and mostly through eleventh

grade that was not our story. And there comes a

certain point where you become so exhausted worrying about somebody,

and you watched a depression for so long that I

remember being down in my office and in this day,

this moment, this clarity with God, and it was like

this moment where I thought, you know what, I've been

in ministry for all these years, I've watched this over

and over again. I don't think I'm going to have

her too much longer. A lot of people who've had that,

they don't make it into their early twenties. And I

just said, all right, this looks like this is gonna

be our lot, because after three or four years, you

just it's hard to have hope. And I remember at

that moment, I having a prayer of God and saying, God,

here's what I want.

Give me.

Help me to be the best father and enjoy these

last couple two, three, four, five, six, I don't know

how long, but help me to enjoy these years and

enjoy her. And then I did something I said, I can't,

I can't hold on to her anymore. You can have

her back. And so I remember, just in that moment,

saying you have my child. Now I'm just gonna I'm

just gonna enjoy her, but you have her. Man. That changed.

I didn't know it was gonna change my life that day,

because that prayer changed my ability to cope. I was

no longer an emotional agony. I was no longer paralyzed

by fear. And I can't explain it, but there's real

power in loosening your grip on things in his life

and hand them over to God. And see, Job came

to that same place. He held his blessings open hand

and not closed. And he never considered himself the ultimate

owner of the wealth of his family, and he knew

that God was a true owner.

And because he held.

Everything loosely, we could definitely say this when Job lost everything.

Here's the thing that we learn about Job, that I

hope every.

Single one of you will have this set about you

at some point in your life. Job loved God for

who God is or who God was, and not merely

for what God gave him.

And that's my prayer today.

That the people a Church of the Crossing, that you

will love God.

For who he is, not for just what he gives you.

We are a blessed people.

But it can all be gone tomorrow and this is

gonna be you standing before God again. And do you

love him just because you love him? Or do you

love him because you need things from him? Job made

a choice earlier I mentioned Frankle said, we have one

last freedom, and that's we get to make the decision

of how we're gonna respond. And here's what he does.

He chooses to worship over bitterness. He says, I still

love God, not because of his gifts. And this, by

the way, was a smack right in Satan's face. And

we learned two last lessons as we head out today

from Job's life. One, no one is exempt from suffering.

He was a righteous man and he was a man

of God. But sometimes faithful people suffer for reasons only

God knows. Sometimes you will suffer and you won't know

the why. Number two, you get to choose your response

to suffering. And here's a big thing. When you suffer,

you get to choose whether you're gonna draw closer to

God or if you're gonna grow bitter. And that will

basically determine the trajectory of your life. Will you draw

near to God or will you grow bitter? And maybe

you're listening right now, and here said James. You don't

know about my health crisis, my broken relationship, or some

other painful situation. And you might say, I don't understand

why all this is happening.

I didn't do anything.

Well, they're nearing a place much like Job. And so

the message of Job one is not some trite little like, hey,

cheer up. No, it's okay to grief. He tore off

his clothes. But here's what I am saying today, in

your pain, do what Job did. Turn toward God, not

away from him.

Trust it. He's big enough.

And let me tell you, we don't understand what all

went on with Job until chapter forty two. Today we

start the beginning. God is writing Job's story. But I

want to tell you something right now, God is still

writing your story. God is still at work writing your story.

And you might not know the why of why you're suffering,

but man, just draw close to the who that you

can trust. And I'll close with this. I've heard this before,

but it's this beautiful image of a There's this oak

tree that was planted close to a lake that often

had big storms. And this old oak tree would often

during these big storms that would her eyes up, but

often bend over heavily, but it never broke. And a

Taurus asked one time, he goes, how can this tree

withstand all these horrible storms? And a local simply said, well,

the the tree is holding on to something stronger than

the storm. Make sure that when life falls apart or

you come upon a day of days, make sure that

you are holding on to something or someone stronger than

the storm. We're going to shift into a time of

prayer now, and here's what I'm going to ask you

to do. I'm going to ask you to do a

prayer today where you open up your hands and I

want you to hand your life and your everything, your possessions.

I want you to open up your hands and say, Lord,

everything I.

Have is yours.

I trust you, I know who you are, and I

give you.

Everything. Let's pray that prayer now.

Yah h h m hm m m hm hm h

m hm hm.

Hm hm.

Hm. At this time, we're gonna transition into a time

of communion and we're gonna do something a little bit

different today. We're gonna do a thing called intinction. Are

uh in Layman's term rip and dip. Uh.

Here's what we're gonna ask you to do.

I'm gonna ask you to come forward with your hands

like this because you're gonna receive the bread that's been

dipped into the juice. And what we want to do

is just, uh, you know, when you're ready, come down,

grab the elements, and feel free to take the elements

at the time of your own choosing. I want to

remind you that the night before Jesus Christ was betrayed,

he took the bread and he broke it and he says,

ethis represents my body which will be broken for you.

And then he took the wine and he says, this

represents my blood being poured out for you and for many,

for the forgiveness of sins.

And so we always take a moment.

Before we partake in communion to confess our sins before

the Lord. So let us go before the Lord, and

let us confess our sins.