Job 1:20-22 | Resolved: Trusting God in Trials

Rod: Well, one of the things that Christmas typically offers is the joy and

the, the, the caroling and the excitement.

In fact, just think about most of the songs that we just sang.

All of them have an upbeat.

Tilted them where it feels like, man, Christmas is just this blast of a day.

Uh, Merry Christmas.

Happy holidays, Holly Jolly Christmas.

We yet we sang all these things.

But what about when Christmas isn't merry or when Christmas isn't Holly and jolly?

What about when there are seasons of your life that happen to fall into the

Christmas season where things aren't going as well as they should go?

Now, here's a reality of things.

You might be young or old or someplace in between, but here's

what the Bible promises us.

Every season of your life, you're either in a time of trial and suffering,

or you're going to go into one.

You're between one of those two polls and you're either resonating with this

right now and you're saying, yeah, this particular Christmas is hard.

I lost a family member.

I'm struggling with my spouse.

You know, my kids are having a difficult time.

Or God is preparing you to go back into a season of trial and

suffering because this is the regular rhythm of the Christian life.

Christmas then poses us something of a challenge, because what it does

for us is it removes the immediate context of our family lives and

says, Hey, joyful, happy, excitement.

Go to church and sing these awesome songs.

And, and we should.

We should, right?

But how do we deal with these times?

How do we, how do we actually enjoy our Christmas when there might be a lot

of things pressing for our attention, things that are heavy and difficult

and really challenging to our faith?

Well, I wanna show you this evening.

Through our small passage in Job that your faith in God doesn't

hinder a true and real trust in God.

Even during a joyful season, it informs it and in fact it transforms it.

So I want you to turn in your Bible to Job chapter one.

We're gonna look at just three verses, turn on your Bible or turn

in your Bible, whichever one you got.

Job chapter one, 20 through 22 is what we're gonna look at.

And as you're doing that, I just wanna point out to you that Christmas actually.

Meets us in this place.

In fact, one of my favorite Christmas songs is a song,

oh, come, oh, come Emmanuel.

You guys know this song?

Skillet recently got a little bit of hot, uh, a little bit of pressure

and heat because they revamped the song and they had this really great

breakdown in the middle of it.

People were unhappy about that because they think Christmas song

should, should have violins and cellos and not guitars with distortion

and sound effects like that.

But let me just point to your attention what this song says.

Uh oh.

Come.

Oh, come Emmanuel.

Ransom captive Israel.

And by the way, you should know as if you're a musician.

This song's in a minor key, uh, a minor key.

Unlike a major key, has a yearning to it.

It's begging for resolution.

It feels like it's aching towards something.

And that's what this song is doing.

Oh, come, oh, come Emanuel and Ransom Captive Israel Redeem Israel Redeem Your

People That Mourns in Lonely Exile Here.

You, you remember Israel's history?

Israel was exiled both in northern and the Southern kingdom, and for hundreds of

years they suffered under the brutal hand and leadership of, of a foreign dictator

where m mourning and lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.

And then the song crescendos.

Rejoice, rejoice.

Emmanuel shall come to the O Israel.

Now notice here, that's a yearning for the future.

He's going to come.

He's going to come now.

Christmas is about his coming.

Is it not?

Christmas is about us celebrating.

Jesus has come, he's been born in the manger.

He lives his life.

He dies, uh, on the cross, and then he resurrects himself

and he ascends to the Father.

But this song also sings not just for the first coming of Emmanuel,

but for his second coming.

Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel.

He shall come to the Oh, Israel.

And so the song continues to yearn and beg God, send Jesus back.

Things are broken.

We need you.

And I would argue with you, not argue, I'd argue to you.

This actually is what Christmas is about.

It is because we suffer.

It is because we struggle under the curse of sin and under the difficulty

of this life that we're in, that God sends Jesus to us for Christmas.

He sends it to us to resolve our issues, to meet us where we are, to incarnate

himself into our fallen flesh, our fallen humanity, in order to identify

with us, in order to redeem us, in order to give us hope that transcends

the darkest of Christmas seasons.

Oh, come.

Oh, come Emmanuel.

This is a season of joy.

I'm not.

I'm not tone deaf.

This is Christmas and I realize we just had this awesome time.

We're having great food, but Christmas is also a time of yearning.

Christmas reminds us that things are not the way they're supposed to be.

In fact, can you relate to this?

You have anticipation and excitement about Christmas, and then Christmas comes, and

Christmas goes and you feel like, wow.

I feel like that should have been more, should have been bigger,

should have been more satisfying.

It should have been better.

I had this itch that I really wanted to scratch, and even

though Christmas was awesome.

I just didn't feel like I got everything out of it that I really wanted.

There's a yearning that Christmas brings to us.

There is a kind of, uh, a kind of itching in our soul that is not gonna be

scratched by the Christmas season, and that's because Jesus coming to us for

the first time is meant to point us to our hope of his returning the next time.

Songs like, oh, come o come Emanuel, this Christmas yearning

help us grieve without unbelief.

They help us hope without denial, and they give us joy without resolution.

The minor key, your life is probably in a minor key, at least at some

points in the season where things are not resolving, things don't feel like

they're fitting in the place, and that's part of what Christmas does for us.

It highlights things are not well, things are broken and they need

to be fixed, and the only one who can do that for us is Jesus.

As we look at Job, I wanna show you what it looks like to trust God

even in the midst of the darkness.

Christmas season, of course, is often very dark, and that's

why we put lights in our home.

The darkness in our world highlights the fact that we need a light that

is transcendent greater than just the temporary lights that we have indoors.

We need a light that is permanent and that changes everything.

Job didn't know about these things.

He had a concept, he had an idea.

He's probably, you know, uh, several years before Abraham.

So before we even have the Abraham Covenant in Genesis chapter 15, you have

Genesis 15 · chapter mention

Job who knows a little bit about Yahweh.

We don't know how.

He has some understanding of who God is and in his life,

you might know Job's story.

He's blessed.

He's called blameless.

He is honored by God as a man who is righteous in his life.

He takes care of his kids.

He's got several kids.

He's got several livestock.

This man has got it all going on.

Until one day, until one day God picks a fight with the devil.

And he says to him, have you taken notice of my servant job?

Now, I don't know about you, but I, I count my godliness as something

that protects me against evil.

And yet it was Job's godliness that thrusted him into that very

season that he was about to suffer.

So God says to the devil, have you taken notice of my servant job?

God, challenges the devil says, have you noticed job?

And he says, well, of course, of course Job's gonna follow you

because you've given him everything.

God, he's got the Porsche, he's got the, you know, he is got the big

house, he's got everything he wants.

Of course he's gonna follow you, but I'll tell you what he challenges

God, I'll tell you what, let me take away the things that he loves.

Then let's see if he'll honor you, if he'll give you the praise that you're due.

Now notice in this, God has to give approval to the devil to do what he

wants to do, and that's what he does.

Surprisingly, God allows a devil to afflict job.

We pick up in chapter one, verse 20, and I wanna show you what happens immediately

after the devil takes away everything that he knows and loves his family.

His kids gone.

His livestock gone.

Everything has just been stolen away from job because he's a godly man.

Verse 20, then job arose.

He tore his robe, he shaved his head, and he fell on the ground.

And notice this, he worshiped.

Here's what he said.

In the midst of his worship, he confesses to the Lord and perhaps to

his wife, who's still alive, naked.

I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return.

Lord gave and the Lord is taken away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Verse 22 says, in all this job did not sin or charge God with wrong.

In verse 20, we see a few things about Job.

He had just had, uh, evil that we typically understand

as natural and human evil.

There was.

Fire from heaven, which could have been lightning, which destroyed his kids.

There was winds that CR caused the house to collapse.

And then there's these marauders that come and kill his family.

They, they kidnap them.

So there's this blend of human and natural evil that takes place in job's life.

And then on top of that, in the next chapter, Satan is

preparing to steal job's health.

So if it wasn't enough that his family's now dead, his kids, that is, and his

wealth has been obliterated now his.

His health.

The thing that allows him to keep living is also gonna be

threatened in the next chapter.

But his response to both of these devastating losses are remarkable

because Joe models something for us that we so we so infrequently see,

and this is deep, profound trust.

He stands in vivid juxtaposition to this sentimentalized trust.

We might see in some of the bestselling Christian books that

you can get today at the bookstore.

Trusting God is sometimes.

Characterized by this syrupy, uh, I don't know, this, uh,

serene and painless surrender.

Uh, you might think about this when you think of the, the terminology.

Let go and Let God, or, or that famous poem, footsteps where the,

the poem says, oh, you know, uh, there was only one set of footsteps.

Why did you leave me, God?

And he said, oh, it wasn't that I left you, it was then that I was carrying you.

And I understand what those are meant to do, but I want you

to see Job's, raw trust here.

He has just been devastated.

I want you to just imagine for just a second, okay?

Just let's just do a thought exercise.

I want you to imagine that God allows job's situation to happen to you.

He steals your family away, and on top of that, the stock market

crashes everything in your 401k gone.

Your savings account is not very, very thick, so you

don't have a lot to go off of.

Your family's gone.

Your, your, your wealth is gone, and then in just a few short hours, I

suspect your health is gonna be gone.

You're gonna have boils all over your body.

You're gonna be incessantly in pain.

How would you feel about that?

You'll also notice here, we don't have a timeframe.

We don't know what season of job job's, life this is.

Maybe it was, you know, a time of celebration.

Maybe there was a holiday they were celebrating.

We don't understand what that is.

And I, I wanna point out to you this, this, because pain doesn't knock

on the door and say, Hey, is now a good time for us to do business?

Is it okay?

Is it fit on your calendar for, for you to get cancer right now?

Is that, is that a right?

No one's asking us, right?

No one's asking us these questions.

For job.

He stands here as a shining example of what a heartfelt trust looks like

in God, even in the darkest season.

The first point I want to give to you is I wanna show you something in Job's life.

I'm just gonna put it this way.

Point number one is to allow trust.

Full expression, allow trust, full express.

Job's trusting God was not one dimensional.

And my fear is that for many Christians today, our trust is one

dimensional and perhaps even slightly, if not largely transactional.

That is when, when things are going well, it's really easy to trust God.

When your bank account is rich, when your friends are many, when your

health issues are few, it is then that you can say, thank you Lord.

I'm so grateful and that's true.

You should be thankful.

But job's trust is not one dimensional and it's not

contingent upon things going well.

He surrenders to God.

He arose, he tore his robe, he shaved his head, fell on

the ground and worshiped God.

Notice the, the, the way that his, his trust works.

It, it wasn't, it wasn't just him saying, well, I guess this is the way things go.

Job does gr he does grieve, he does mourn.

And one book that I read recently, uh, the simple phrase was,

this true hope is realistic.

It doesn't look at life through a rose colored lens.

It allows life to be what life is.

Again, this is what Christmas is about.

Jesus was sent into our pain, into our hardship, into our struggle,

and so you have three, three characteristics of Job's response.

Let me just point them out to you.

Number one, job grieves.

Look here.

Then job arose.

Tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the.

That is not job having a good day tearing your clothes, shaving your head.

These are all signs of mourning of grief.

Lamenting this shows us that true trust is not divorce from grief.

It is okay to grieve.

In fact, you should grieve.

And Paul says, as much to the Thessalonians, he just says, don't grieve

as those without hope, true trust, grieve.

Notice also a, as he falls down on the floor, he is subjecting himself before

God, recognizing God is the sovereign.

So Job falls down.

Another elements of true trust and perhaps one of the biggest ones is humility.

Job recognizes that he is humbled before the Lord, and

it's not like he has a choice.

God has told God has taken everything from him.

Trust doesn't often walk with bravado or swagger.

Like trust is not walking in slow motion as the building behind is exploding.

Christians are not action stars.

Christians are humble, and just like Job here, we need to be able to

say, Lord, you're the one who leads.

Or even as the father said to Jesus, I believe, help my unbelief job prostrates

himself before the Lord in surrender and trust, almost reminding me of what

Peter says to Jesus in John chapter six, when Jesus just gets done talking about

eating my flesh and drinking my blood.

His a a lot of his disciples decided, you know, we can't handle this.

You're saying weird things.

Jesus, we don't like this.

We need, we need to go somewhere else.

And then he turns and looks at his disciples and he says to them,

are you guys gonna go away too?

And I love what Peter says, because Peter, Peter expresses my heart in these words.

He says, where else are we gonna go?

Like you alone have the words of life, and that's what trust looks like.

If I had another place to go, Jesus, I might do that.

But where else do I go?

I don't, there's nowhere else to go.

You're it's, you're all, I got true trust.

Trusting Jesus in every season of life is acknowledging your grief,

humbling yourself before him, and recognizing he knows better than

you do, man, for some of you.

You're gonna have a devastating loss this year.

If the statistics bear out, you're gonna lose somebody.

Many of you at some point are gonna find some kind of diagnosis

that's gonna put you in a situation that you don't wanna be in.

Some of you are gonna lose your fortune because of something that happened.

Some of you are gonna have a devastating loss, a devastating issue.

Something's gonna happen in your life.

We know that this takes place, right?

We need to be ready for that.

We need to be ready to grieve as those with hope.

We need to be willing and able, like Job to humble himself.

He shaved his head, fell on the ground before the Lord.

And thirdly, one of job's responses here is that he worships the Lord.

He worships the Lord, he turns to the Lord and he says, uh, he, he shaves his head,

falls down to the ground and worships him.

He opens his mouth to the Lord.

He gives him what he's due.

Even though and later Job's gonna say this, though, you slay me.

Yet, will I trust you, man?

I need you to ask yourself a question.

Am I ready for the Lord to slay me?

If that's what his will is?

If, if the Lord should Terry and he doesn't come back before 2026.

He decides I'm going to send you through a very difficult season.

I'm gonna take away everything that you find comfortable.

If I take the beauty of your eyes away from you, if I afflict you with some kind

of physical maldy, can you trust me there?

Job says, though, you slay me, yet will I trust you?

This is what a genuine and sincere, fully orb trust looks like in God.

It's not one dimensional.

Trust persists even through the challenging times.

So I need you to give yourself or give trust full expression.

Give yourself the ability to trust God even when things aren't going well.

It's not trite.

It's not simplistic, but this is what it looks like.

So that's verse 20.

Let me show you verse 21.

Job's not done responding to this situation.

Let me look at verse 21.

Again, this is so important and this might be the most important

thing I say to you this year.

This is profoundly helpful.

Look at what he says.

He says in verse 21, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I shall return.

The Lord gave and the Lord is taken away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Now you'll notice here, job acknowledges his humble

beginnings and his humble endings.

Naked I came, right?

This is the idea.

You've all been, many of you rather, not all of you have seen a baby born.

You come out stark naked.

Then when you die, your clothes are removed so that they can process your

body and they put you in the ground, maybe wearing something nice, something

that you would've worn, but you're, you're leaving with that at all.

The clothes stay in the box, the mementos that your family gives

to you, they stay in the box.

They don't go with you.

They stay there.

So job is acknowledging a reality for all of us, which is we come empty handed

and we're gonna leave empty handed, save the spiritual rewards that you

and I accumulate through this life.

Here's what's important about this job acknowledges these things, and they're so

important because no notice in the second half of verse 21, he says, the Lord gave,

and the Lord take away, took, took away.

He doesn't blame the weather.

Remember, that's how the, that's how the devil crushed his family.

The four winds, the lightning.

He doesn't blame the marauders.

He could have said, well, those evil people, they came and they did the thing.

He doesn't blame the devil.

He doesn't say, well, the devil did all these awful things to me.

He says, the Lord.

And the Lord has taken away.

This is so important.

This is so incredibly profound because what this tells us then is

that it is the Lord who introduces blessing into her life, and he's

also the same one, one and the same, who takes it away at his pleasure.

I need you to be prepared for that.

The Lord is under no obligation to give us anything more than what he's given us.

Your full belly tonight are a cred, an incredible gift of God.

Your healthy bodies are a gift of God and he's under no obligation

to give us those things with any regularity, even though he often does.

Point number two, I want you to agree with Job that you are owed.

Nothing.

Whew.

That gives a shiver down my spine.

Agree with Job that you are owed nothing naked.

I came from my mother's womb and naked.

I shall return.

The Lord gave and the Lord is taken away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord is what he's gonna say.

We don't,

can't demand of God to give us things that we want.

I was thinking about this.

I was thinking, okay, in the New Testament.

We're looking at the Old Testament Bible's in two parts Old Testaments,

under largely Israel's book.

It's how God communicated to them under the Old Covenant.

The new covenant is obviously for Christians, those who are under the new,

uh, arrangement of things through Christ dying in the cross, rising from the dead.

So I started asking myself, okay, what does a Christian expect?

So does God promise to the Christian under the new covenant?

'cause this point's a pretty big deal.

Agree that you are owed nothing that's saying a lot here.

Here's two things that I think the Bible gives us.

Regular reason to believe that he'll provide for us.

But even then it's qualified.

Jesus says he, he says, um, even the flowers of the field,

they're, they're clothed.

Right?

And how will he not much more cloth you, owe you a little faith.

So God does through Jesus promise that he'll give us clothing, right?

It's promise.

Um, Jesus also says, uh, to pray.

Give us this day what Or daily bread.

So at least clothing and food Jesus promises to give us.

At least with some regularity later in the New Testament.

Paul the Apostle in one Timothy chapter six, is gonna say, but if we have food and

clothing with these, we will be content.

And yet Paul was also able to say in Romans chapter eight, he says.

We've been persecuted and we're going around naked and you know

we're in first Philippians four.

I know how to abound.

I know how to be having needs.

So even Paul, even though he says if we have food and clothing,

let's be content with these.

He recognizes that God can sometimes say, I'm gonna give you a lot of food

and, and have a lot of resources in the bank account, and have wonderful

relationships with your family.

And there's other times where Paul knew what it was to be

hungry and naked and shipwrecked.

This was Paul the Apostle.

This was one of God's favorite guys.

Yet.

To go back to a prior point I made, it is Paul's godliness that

actually led him into that direction.

I need you to see that if I, if we're gonna agree with Job and God, that we

are owed nothing, that means everything in our lives that we so frequently

take for granted are not permanent.

The temporary blessings that God gives us are qualified temporary blessings.

Your food and your clothing are what God.

Ordinarily promises to provide to you.

He does.

And and you'll notice today, he's fulfilling that promise.

He's given you your daily bread.

He's given you close to where, and for many of us, he's

given us a lot more than that.

Now, if we endorse this idea, if we take in this idea, agree that we're

owed nothing from God, what will that do to the way that we perceive

the blessings that we do enjoy the people that God has put in our.

The things that into the car that you're driving, the shoes that you're

wearing, the job that you have, what would that do if you believed God owes

you nothing and yet gave you so much?

What would that do to your response this Christmas?

Grateful man, you would be grateful.

Feels like that.

Puts it too mildly, doesn't it?

I would be beaming with gratitude toward God and saying, thank you,

God for these people in my life.

Thank you for my wife.

Thank you for my kids.

Thank you for my car.

Thank you for my socks.

I'm not owed anything, Lord, and yet you give me everything to enjoy.

Now, God's not a miser.

He's not Scrooge.

He's very generous.

And I, I know you know that I hope, hope you do.

But I'm trying to point out to you here is that everything that you enjoy, these

temporal blessings are often means that God uses to deepen your trust in him.

And that will often mean that he'll give them to you as often

as they will benefit your soul.

And he'll remove them as often as he thinks that will also benefit your soul.

And of course, he knows better than we do.

We trust him.

Trusting God means to agree, I, I owe nothing.

And he knows better than I do.

God knows better than I do.

And we can say that verbally.

It's different to believe that, especially when he says, okay, now's

the time I'm taking these things away.

I want you this, this year meant to, to trust God and prepare

for whatever God has for you.

Whatever God decides to diagnose you with, or whatever affliction he

decides to bring into your life, I need you to be prepared for that.

Prepared to say, I owe nothing.

I can smile in this because I know that the God that I serve is not a bad God.

He's not a miser, he's not a scrooge.

He's not this, uh, tyrannical, evil dictator.

And that's really what changes the equation for us.

If we were Christians who simply believed God was a maniac, just

kind of sending lightning bolts here and there, it'd be terrifying.

But that's not what's happening in job's life.

In fact, what's happening, the reason Job can respond in these ways is

because job, job knows something that we need to never forget.

Verse 22 verse 22.

Job says it.

I just wanna point it out to you.

This is so critical to understanding how this whole thing fits together.

This hope that we have in the Lord is not air, uh, airy fairy.

It's not pie in the sky.

It's built on something critical to your theology as you prepare for 2026 verse

22 in all this, that is in all of job's losses, in all the things that he just

suffered in all this job did not sin.

Or charge God with wrong.

And the critical part of that verse there is that he didn't charge God with wrong.

Let's start off with the sin part.

He didn't respond in sin.

He could have, he didn't have the Bible that you and I do.

We don't even know if Job had any written revelation from God.

His book is so early before Abraham that we don't know what joke knew.

In fact, we don't understand how Job has a theology that he does have, which,

which makes him even more remarkable.

But here's the thing, you and I have the riches of the word from Genesis to

Revelation available to us where we can build our hope on what's true about God.

So Job doesn't charge God with sin, and yet we wouldn't hold it against him.

If he did, we wouldn't hold it against him.

We'd say, well, that makes sense.

He didn't have the Bible.

He didn't have an angel telling him what to do.

So Job doesn't charge God with wrong.

It doesn't say he's a sinner.

In fact, his wife, just one chapter later.

Famously says something that I hope your wife never says, says

to you, what does she say to him?

You know this one right?

Curse God and die.

Now, if your beloved is at the place where she's telling you to

curse God and die, that's a bad day.

That's not a good day.

That's gonna cause an argument later on.

I'm sure you don't want that happening, but here's the thing.

Job didn't worship God for the prosperity.

Job is not coming to God just because God would give him happy times.

Second part is so important.

Job didn't sin or charge God with wrong.

He could have easily done so and yet in Job's faith, the the cause

of his agony was not just the loss of his family and his wealth.

It was precisely because God knows, because Job knows God is good and

trustworthy that he faces this trial.

It's because Job knows God is good.

He's now at a loss and say, what do I do with this?

If God is good, how can all these things take place?

He had to surrender his position and his trust that God would

be good even in this scenario.

Point number three.

I want you to surrender to the good purposes of God.

If you're going to make it through this next year, and you're gonna have joy and

you're gonna worship God the way that you should, you need to have the kind of joy

that is bigger than your circumstance.

That comes from a confidence that you know God is good

despite everything that happens.

Irrevocably good.

That is everything God does is good even in your pain.

I trust him to be good.

One of the things that Job does here, and again we don't know how he knows

is theologically, but he confesses to himself, I'm guessing as much

as he does to us and everyone else.

That God can't be wrong.

Whatever happens in your life, God can't be wrong.

You understand that, right?

Even if the worst evil takes place, God can't be wrong.

It's our job to trust him in these things.

Well, what that means for us then practically, is that we're, we're,

we're not gonna compound the problem.

Um, I'm not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but, but when

God brings difficulty in your life, you compound the problem.

When you say, well, God.

You just, if you, if you would just, why don't you, if, if God,

ah, you know, why don't you just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

We, we, we get worked up, we complain, we bicker, we talk to other people

about our complaints, and we really compound the problem by encouraging

God to make the trial longer.

If we're not gonna learn, God's gonna respond to us and say, well, if you're

not getting it, let me increase the circumstances and turn up the heat

so that you're humbled by this.

Um, the response that God often wants is the job, job response.

Now, lemme qualify that.

Did job's trial end after job confessed that God was good?

No, it got worse before it got better.

So this is no guarantee that God's gonna change your circumstances.

You understand?

But he will change you.

And that really is the point.

Don't compound the problem by complaining or responding and sin.

That's one thing that Job teaches us.

The second thing that Job teaches us that I think is helpful for.

That we can always affirm God's good plans.

Romans 8 31 and 32 are, are such a, are such a famous passage

together because they've given Christians hope for millennia.

This is the, the truth that we confess, that all things do work together for good.

That's Romans 8 28 and verse 32 says, he who did not spare his own son but gave

him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things.

God gave us his son to live and die in our place to be born of a

virgin, only to die 30 years later.

If God would give us his own son, what else should he give

us to prove His love for us?

What else can he do to demonstrate that he cares about us?

This is where we have to stand.

This is where we have to stake our eternity this Christmas.

I don't know what's gonna happen to your life.

I don't know what God is doing in you, but I do know at any season there's

always people suffering and there's always people preparing to suffer.

Some are graciously exiting outta suffering for a season, and maybe

God gives you a reprieve, a time to breathe and come up for air,

but you're always going back in.

You know that, right?

It's like being the boxer or or being one of the fighters in the octagon.

The bell rings.

You get a few, you get a minute to breathe before you have to get back into the

ring and start slugging it out again.

Christians are promised that we, we have everything we need to endure

through the duration of our lives.

Remember how Paul describes the Christian faith?

He says, fight the what?

Good, fine.

He doesn't use any analogies about re relaxation, you know, hanging up your

hat, you know, sitting on your lazy boy.

It's fine.

God gives us rest and we praise God for those things.

But I just want you to know, even though we will suffer and we're all

gonna go through it at different times and in different ways, God is good.

And you have to believe that and trust that Christmas is

a reminder that God is good.

He sends Jesus into our sin, into our darkness, to be

our light, to give us hope.

That transcends any time of season, any time of year, Christmas,

new Year, Easter, all of that, it points to Jesus being good.

I need you to feel in your heart of hearts that Jesus is good and he is trustworthy.

This is what's gonna guard you and protect you against the seasons of suffering

that you are inevitably gonna face.

Christmas reminds us that God is good to send his son on our behalf.

There's more than one yearning Christmas song.

Oh, come.

Come.

Emanuel is one of them.

There's actually several.

I was looking them up because I started to become fascinated.

How many Christmas songs are there that show yearning for Jesus to return?

Oh, come.

Come.

Emanuel is probably the most famous one, but there's others out there.

Uh, what they teach us though is that some of the yearning is a good yearning.

It's good to yearn.

It's good not to be satisfied.

That's what I'm trying to say.

It's good not to be satisfied with the Christmases here and now.

It's good to love and appreciate all the good gifts that God has given us.

Again, 'cause we're owed nothing.

But it's good to feel a yearning in your soul to say, this isn't it.

This isn't everything.

Ecclesiastes tell us because God has written eternity on our hearts.

That's part of what makes us up.

That's part of what gives us the yearning that Christmas

doesn't quite scratch the itch.

Christmas teaches us to yearn.

I'll just end with that.

Teaches us to yearn and to trust him.

Whatever's coming this, this year, man, I hope that you'll.

Take advantage of the, the resources and the ministries that we have here.

Men's Bible Study is a resource that we do monthly for your sake, where sermons like

this are preached because we care that you are equipped and empowered to live

the life that God has called you to live.

So if you're with us for the first time or the first time in a

long time, thanks for being here.

Grateful for you regulars as well, that you're here all the time.

We encourage you to be here with regular.

We do this once a month.

Usually it's up in the lofts, but we're not gonna be here any longer.

We're gonna be at a new place, uh, lighthouse, right next

to the school and prosper.

We'd love to have you join us for that, uh, so that whatever happens this year,

God can continue to encourage you and deepen your love and affection for him.

And with that, let me pray for us as we finish up the night together.

God, thank you so much for giving us a, a lesson in hope from our brother Job.

At least we trusted our brother Job.

I asked Lord that you would help us to take nothing for granted.

But to recognize that we are yours.

We belong to you, body and soul, and that every aspect of our lives,

from the very first time we draw our breath until our dying breath

is all under your sovereign control.

Your leadership, this gives us great confidence and trust because you are

good, so that even if you were to take everything away, we can sing that song.

Yes, I will give you, I'll give you praise even in the lowest battle.

I can trust you.

Help us to possess that mentality, Lord, all year long Christmas

New Year, every time of the year.

Let us love you and trust you because you're good and because you're worth it.

Thank you for demonstrating your reliability and your goodness by sending

Jesus to live and die in her place.

It is in His name that we pray.

Amen.