Suffering Cross Examined Part 2 (Job)

Joshua Kehler: Toward the end of Elihu's speech, a thunderstorm is gathered.

and filled him with awe.

It is though his senses, he senses the approach of God in the storm

and brings his words to a close.

And sure enough, somehow out of the world, when comes the voice of God

to Job, and we come to the climactic dialogue between Job and God, and we

see that the answer to Job's problems was not an explanation about God,

but a revelation of God himself.

Dr.

Paul Turner said, for God's answer is not an idea.

A proposition like the conclusion of a theorem, it is Himself.

He revealed Himself to Job.

Job found personal contact with Emmanuel, God with us.

This is the anchor Job needed to tether himself to see God as He is.

Not as we perceive Him to be when we look around, but God as He is.

A big vision of the majesty and the greatness of God.

The greatest thing we can do in the midst of our suffering.

It's the only thing really to do in the midst of our suffering,

because it's all there.

So the gathering storm, I'm almost done.

Job 38, Then the Lord answered Job, from the whirlwind, this is the best.

Who is it that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words?

That's, done.

That wins.

You win.

Case closed.

he rolls up, we get excited when Taylor Swift rolls up to the

football game, with her entourage.

He rolls up with tornadoes and whirlwinds and stuff, lightnings and thunders, right?

He's just it's approaching as Elihu's talking, and Job's oh, you know.

then he rolls his opening and is okay, looking at the three

friends, looking at Elihu.

Job, who is it who, wants to question me with such ignorant words.

That's the best.

And then he says, brace yourself like a man because I have some questions

for you and you must answer them.

You've been asking questions this whole time and now I have some questions, Job.

I love it.

Gird up.

Gird yourself up.

Get ready.

Be prepared.

God asked Job 77 questions about creation and nature.

It's amazing.

I love it.

What does Romans say?

That the creation of the world reveals.

That there's God.

Yes.

So I love this too.

The point was to humble Job, and to cause him to rest in the

greatness and the goodness of God.

The wisdom and the will of his maker.

to just give him a vision.

Amen.

Of the throne room.

Of the sovereign hands.

Of the feet.

That the earth is its footstool.

the alpha, the omega, the beginning and uncaused cause.

He's never had a beginning, he's always been the creator

of time and spacetime itself.

Quantum physics?

What?

He made it as the building blocks of the universe!

This is What we need to lean into, and he knows that this is what Job needs.

And I love this because God doesn't question Job's sincerity or his integrity.

He only questioned Job's ability to explain the ways of God in the world.

Really beautiful, really gentle.

He's not you pathetic person, righteous.

I'll show you righteous.

No, he just says, okay, Job, you got a lot of questions.

I got some questions.

And he just takes them through creation.

Knowledge of our own ignorance and weakness, like you're saying sister,

is the first step toward true wisdom.

I can't tell you what a comfort these chapters have been in my life,

especially in the midst of suffering.

And that's why it's such a pivotal anchor.

That's why it's changed my life is that I heard you with the hearing of my ear

But now my eyes see you and I reject my former ideas about you and I repent

dust and ashes What is dust and ashes?

I humble myself in the lowest possible way which is the posture that is

only appropriate to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and that is

how we made the warp and woof of the universe to operate and to flourish.

What does he say?

He says, humble yourselves in the hand of God and he will lift you up.

those who exalt themselves, he will abase or crush.

But those who humble themselves, he will exalt.

that is the posture as created one in front of Creator.

The disciples, They're terrified from the storm.

They think they're gonna die.

Jesus is asleep on the boat.

He wakes up.

He says, shut up wind.

And he goes back.

And then it uses a stronger word.

Now they're more terrified, which is great.

It's like the way to conquer fear is greater fear.

Like to be in awe of majesty itself in their presence.

the best Isaiah.

He's fresh out of Bible college too.

First five chapters of the book of Isaiah.

He's woe to you Corazon, woe to you Bessetta, woe to you.

He's pronouncing woes on everybody.

woe.

Like that prophet.

He's just yeah, they're all wicked.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I had their hopes on him because he was a good

king, but he turned bad at the end because he went into the temple thinking, I can

be like a priest, and he got leprosy.

In the year that he died, I saw the Lord lifted up, and the train of the

lobe filled the temple with glory, and its pillars shook, its foundations

removed, and I said, woe is me.

That's the journey.

Woe to you, woe is me, and that humility, and what does God do in that humility?

I have unclean lips, Lord, I can't even speak for you, I've been speaking for

you, and it's unclean, I'm full of pride and self righteousness, he's gotcha, I'll

take the coal off the altar, I'll purify your lips, and I'm gonna send you out.

incredible, like the humility, that's what God is doing in us, that's why, It's pride

that God won't touch with a ten foot pole.

He says, I resist the proud, but I give grace to the humble.

Like it's pride that is so The thing that all, through Proverbs, six things

I hate, yea, seven, an arrogant look, it's pride, they're all rooted in

pride, so God is producing humility in Job and changing Job in the process.

It is his grace.

He whispers in a still small voice to me when I'm in the midst of the

suffering, Where were you Joshua?

So many times in my life, I'm like, God, why would you let this happen again?

It was the one thing I said, no, this isn't, why?

Where were you, Taylor?

I got you.

I got you.

questions about the world below?

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

Tell me if you have understanding.

God compares himself to a builder who surveys the site, marks

off the dimensions, pours the things, lays the cornerstones,

and erects the structured job.

You weren't there.

How can you claim to know so much about the works of God?

8 to 11, God focuses on the sea.

Or who shut up the sea with its doors and burst out of the,

as it burst out of the womb.

The image here is not on building, but birth.

The seas were knit together in secret, then burst forth like

a baby emerging from the womb.

They were clobed with clouds and darkness.

Their limits were set by God.

Who did all of this, Job?

It was I.

I set the limits, not you.

You weren't there and you don't know how I did it.

And he keeps going.

The Lord focuses on the dawn.

Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and cause

the dawn to rise in the east?

My goodness, God pictures himself here as a commander, commanding his troops.

God is so creative too.

He, he's a builder and an architect.

Then he's birthing something, that's precious to him.

And then he's, commander and he's, commanding the army as a son to rise.

Like, it's so beautiful.

Job, you never did it.

You can't do it.

You don't know how to do it.

I've always done it.

And I always will.

God focuses on the depth and the breadth as a son.

Seas.

In verse 16, have you explored the springs from which the seas come?

Have you explored the depths?

Job, you've never even been to the bottom of the ocean or around the world and you

think you know enough to argue with God?

Questions about the world above.

God takes his focus off the world below and turns it to the world above.

19 to 21, he asked Job about the origin of light and dark.

Whew, where does light come from and where does darkness go?

I study that for a living and I still have no idea what electricity is.

Have you commanded the morning since your days began and 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.

The depth of the breadth of the sea and the land have you explored

the springs from which the seas come have you explored the depths?

and the world above, where does light come from and darks go?

God asks him about snow, hail, and rain, and frost in verse 22.

Have you visited the storehouses of the snow and seen the storehouses of hail?

Can you make it rain?

Do you know how to whistle for the lightning?

So it comes and says, here we are.

Can you count the clouds with your wisdom?

One of the amazing things too is this is just revealing how intricately

involved God is with the universe.

Can you count the clouds with your wisdom?

Or do my earthly pastimes stretch your mind a bit too far?

Question after question designed to puncture Job's pride and bring

him into his knees in humble repentance, verse 31 to 33.

God asked Job to lift his eyes higher to the stars, verse 31.

Can you direct the movement of the stars, binding the cluster of Pleiades,

or loosening the cords of Orion?

Do you know how many stars there are, Job?

One galaxy can have up to a trillion stars, and there are

a hundred billion galaxies that are visible to our telescopes,

and we only see a little slice.

Done.

I'm done like five times, you know.

Job's like, oof, right?

Psalm 147, he counts the stars and calls them all by name.

Hebrews 1.

3, he's the radiance, the glory of God, the exact imprint of

his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

One of the beautiful things about the posture of humility and being in the dust

is, guess who also stepped into the dust, was this God himself, the one who upholds

the world and the universe by the word of his power, stooped low into the dust

to wash your feet, to become the servant.

I didn't come to be served, but to serve and give my life a ransom for many.

What?

So mind blown again.

Crazy.

Job is ignorant and impotent.

He doesn't know where they came from.

He doesn't know how to make, how to make them work.

He's utterly surrounded above and below by mysteries.

And so are we.

And we think because we've cracked quantum mechanics and physics that, we

deserve answers to the problem of evil and suffering, but still so much is a mystery.

Job has been saying, your plan is, very dark and doesn't make sense.

God says, how much do you really know?

Again, like the six year old showing up to the rocket launch saying, this

thing will never get off the ground.

God's saying, you have a major knowledge problem here, Job.

if you have a God who's big enough and powerful enough to be mad at because he

isn't stopping the evil and suffering, then you have at the same time a God

big enough and powerful enough to have reasons for why he allows it.

That you couldn't possibly conceive of.

You can say there is no God and everything is a crapshoot.

Or you can say there is a God but I can't see any reason

why this should have happened.

Does that mean there can't be a good reason?

Because you can't think of a good reason?

Yet we do it!

God is saying if you believe in me, I have reasons you can't possibly

conceive unless you are in the same category of knowledge as me.

Is this the kind of person we treat as an assistant?

Treat like an accomplice?

Someone we get upset because they're not answering our emails quickly enough?

You Your God is too small.

therefore, you do not have rest.

If you know that His will is infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably

beyond the largest notion of what He is up to, then you can have rest.

Because then you can say, and here it is, I don't know, but He knows.

Christians do not say, I don't understand you at all, but I trust you anyway.

Rather, we say, I do not understand you in this situation, but I

understand why I trust you anyway.

Those are two huge different things.

Cause we get accused of blind faith.

no, we don't.

It's not blind faith.

We know why we believe we know why we believe because of Jesus in the cross the

historic person Jesus came and lived the perfect life We couldn't live and died to

death we deserve to die and was raised on the third day and testified by eyewitness

testimony to thousands of people and then ascended into the clouds to sit at the

right hand of the Father and then gave the person of the Holy Spirit the third person

in the Trinity to change the lives of

of his followers and of his family and to change the world at that

time and continues to change it now.

I know why I believe.

So again, Christians do not say, I don't understand you at

all, but I trust you anyway.

Rather we say, I do not understand you in this situation, but I

understand why I trust you anyway.

Therefore I can trust that you understand, even though I don't.

Faith does not know why in terms of the immediate, but it knows why it

trusts God's in terms of the ultimate.

But if you say, how dare He do this, and what's going here, God is too small, and

you will not have peace, and will always be nervous, upset, bitter, and anxious.

You'll not have any peace until you get a God sized God.

It's just, Job, look up.

Job, just look at me.

That's why this title's, this, it comes from, the three of me goes, look up here.

Heh, look up here.

then questions about the animals.

God pauses for Job's response and gives him opportunity to respond.

Then the Lord said to Job, do you still want to argue with the Almighty?

You are God's critic, but do you have the answers?

Then Job replied to the Lord, I am nothing.

How could I ever find the answers?

I will cover my mouth with my hand.

I have said too much already.

I have nothing more to say.

Job is getting the point.

This is the best.

Job had told his friends to cover their mouth.

And Job 21.

5, cover your mouth.

You don't know what you're saying.

You're ignorant.

And now he's I'll cover my mouth.

But now he covers his mouth.

A finite creature who has no wisdom to run the world and is utterly ignorant of 99.

99999999 percent of its processes Has no business instructing his maker and ruler

how to run the world much less condemning God for the way he runs it God did not

simply say might makes right so he's not just might makes right Stop condemning

my ways, because I'm more powerful.

He said in the first place, there are 10 million things about running

the world of which you don't know the first thing, but I know perfectly.

So Job, it's presumptuous to assume you can counsel me about

how to run a more just world.

You can't begin to know all that has to be taken into account in making

decisions about how to run the world for my glory and for the joy of my people.

And in second place, God showed that his might is not arbitrary,

But purposeful, and the purpose is to uphold his glory and bring about

lasting joy in his beloved children.

Therefore, Job should not presume to accuse God of being arbitrary

or capricious or irrational.

He should submit to the wisdom and goodness of God's dealings and hold

fast to the promise of Psalm 84 11.

God withholds no good thing from those who walk uprightly.

And we lean into Jesus because he was the only one who walked

uprightly on our behalf.

So he blesses us without reservation.

I hope we know that God continues this case against Job and said of confronting

Job with the vastness of his creation God selects two creatures and then

finally How do we know God loves us and uses his power and might for his glory?

So Job is undone and those 77 questions

How do we know that God loves us and uses his power and might for his?

Glory and our good and Job 9 16 17.

He said and even if I some summoned him and he responded You I'm

not sure he'd listen to me, for he attacks me with a storm and

repeatedly wounds me without cause.

If God shows up, he'll crush me like a storm.

And to Job's horror, I think, as he watched the approaching clouds, God shows

up as a storm, a hurricane force storm.

God shows up in his infinity and his majesty and justice and holiness.

And if Job, the righteous one, couldn't stand in his own goodness, how could we?

Why isn't he destroyed?

This is one of the first places where God is referred to as Yahweh and not Elohim.

The personal name of God He already accepts Moses at the burning bush.

I give you my name.

It's Yahweh.

I am that I am.

When God speaks to Satan, the word means to speak as a superior to an inferior.

When God answered Job, it's a word that means to reply or answer.

it means a dialogue between friends.

So as you're reading this in Hebrew, you'd see the difference.

You'd see, God is talking down to Satan.

And then when he comes to Job and in the storm, he doesn't crush him.

He doesn't But he says, Hey friend, let's chat.

And you'd be reading, Oh, he's his friend.

What?

How's that possible?

And it's deliberately to startle the reader out of the voice of

the storm comes a voice of love.

Will you discredit God asked my justice and condemn me just

to prove that you are right.

Must I be condemned so that you will be justified?

God asks.

Must I be condemned so that you will be justified in order to justify yourself?

You've been condemning me at that moment.

The answer is no job needs to be quiet and rest in God.

But the storyline of the Bible, the answer is yes, unless Jesus went to the cross

and was condemned, then we couldn't be justified as we've been talking about.

The theme has been storms.

Jesus was thrown into the storm.

He comes as a storm and then he, the Lord of the storm, takes the storm

into his heart as he suffers for our righteousness and our goodness.

The cross means that God is infinitely holy and infinitely loving.

God loves you.

God knows you.

God is not deaf to your suffering.

He is grieved by the world's trauma as you are and more.

None of us can sink so low that God has not gone lower still.

His only son died here, but God has promised to set things right.

Let history finish.

Let the orchestra scratch out its last mournful warmup note of discord

before it bursts into the symphony.

The whole of creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the

children of God coming into their own.

So then Job 42, what did to answer the Lord said, I know that you

can do all things that there's no purpose of yours could be thwarted.

He submits to God's absolute sovereignty that you could do whatever

he pleases and is not constrained by anything outside of himself.

Believe with all your heart in the absolute sovereignty of God.

Pray that God would Give you a vision and a revelation of that.

Joe423 you asked, Who is it that questions my wisdom with such ignorance?

It is I.

I love it.

Joe answers, It is I.

I was talking about things I knew nothing about.

Things far too wonderful for me.

So beautiful.

He submits to God's infinitely greater wisdom and knowledge.

He has spoken about things he is very ignorant of.

Believe with all your heart that everything he does is right and good.

Pray that God gives us this revelation.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, Romans 8, 28, we know that God causes

everything to work together for good, for those who love God and are called

according to his purpose for them.

R.

C.

Sproul said this verse is not merely biblical expression of

comfort for those who suffer affliction, it is far more than that.

It is a radical credo.

For the Christian worldview, it represents the absolute triumph of divine

purpose over all alleged acts of chaos.

It erases misfortune from the vocabulary of the Christian.

Herein I will speak, I will question you, and make it known to me.

I had heard you by the hearing of my ear, but now I see you, and therefore I despise

myself, and repent in dust and ashes.

We repent of pride in thinking that I know better than God.

We change our minds.

I'm suspicious of you, Lord.

In light of his majesty and who he is, the revelation of his greatness,

of his goodness, of his for us, that he's with us, that he's Immanuel,

of his power, of his love, of his control, we go, I'm changing my mind.

Yeah, that was, I'm rejecting that.

In fact, I'm gonna reject it so hard, I despise that I even thought it.

That is a good way to reject a premise.

I had held onto this for so long, I'm going to reject that premise so hard,

it makes me vomit when I think about it.

that is so great.

That is so great.

And then he just takes the posture.

He's and now I'm going to humble myself.

He gets a vision of his God full of majesty, beauty and splendor.

I heard you with the hearing of your, and I think that's the hardest thing in

suffering is, when you, have the radio on, but you're also Watching the game, there's

something on audio, but it fades when all of a sudden the action takes place on

screen and you're like, Oh, he's running.

You just got the past and you're in and you're like, yeah, go.

Everything else on audio fades.

And that's what he's saying.

he's saying so often God is audio.

We know he's there.

We know he's true.

We know he's good.

but his audio and what is on visual, what's got our attention and focus

is the circumstances, the trauma, the suffering, the difficulty.

That's what's real to us.

That's what's present.

That's right before us.

That's what we're looking at.

And God wants to simply rescue us by reversing that.

He says, don't bury your heads in the sand and pretend like suffering doesn't exist.

Or you know that, just buck up or, He says, no, it's there.

But what you need is you need to see me, King Jesus standing as the

suffering servant who took the only suffering that could truly destroy you.

And I took suffering and I wrestled with it and I took it down and I crushed

the head of the snake in such a way that now the suffering that happens

to you can only make you more like me.

It can only serve your joy.

It can only defeat itself in your life.

Suffering will never, ever have the last word in the life of a believer.

Jesus has the last word.

He's already won over suffering, and he will weaponize it against the snake.

He'll take the very thing, the very weapons of the enemy, and turn it against

him, and turn it into crowns of joy.

God brings restoration in Job's life.

He doesn't do that to everybody.

C.

H.

Spurgeon said, we're not all like Job, but we all have Job's God.

Though we have neither risen to Job's wealth, nor will probably ever

sink to Job's poverty, yet there is the same God above us, and the

same God with His everlasting arms beneath us, if we're brought low.

And what the Lord did for Job, He will do for us, not precisely in the

same form, but in the same spirit.

And with like design, He looks forward to blessing you.

So, let's take communion.

And, I just want to say that there was only one truly

innocent sufferer on this world.

And it wasn't Job.

It was the greater Job.

Who did suffer, the cataclysmic suffering that we're all scared of.

The only one that could destroy us.

He was destroyed so that we wouldn't be.

he loves you.

He's good.

God, give us a revelation of you

and Lord, we take our posture and humility for you.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you for rescuing us.

Would you ever live in our vision?

Would you ever be before us?

Holy spirit, like

Elisha's servant, open her eyes.

To see the armies of the Lord, a host to see the majesty and the glory of the

King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, like John, the beloved who saw you and

revelation one, he got such revelation.

he passed out as dead.

Maybe not that much, maybe 50%, but Lord, we ask for that now in Jesus name.

Amen.