And we have people sitting there, the Lees and others who’ve been here for more than 30 years. And they they broke in the McCrackens and Steve and Debbie were with us 30 years in a pastoral role. And I always include the woman in that because it’s it includes her. And as I got to know Steve and to love Steve, I realized this man is remarkable and his heart and his compassion and love for his body as such. And so I’m thrilled he’s here.

And during this last year and the committee of 12 or so of you that did the pastoral search, now we have the Smith family. And I’ve got to tell you, lightning’s kind of struck twice at Grace Point. We, you know, as a young man in his first sermons, I found myself thinking, I just be transparent for a minute. Well, he’s really good. He’s got got it down, and his preaching style will improve over time, with illustrations and different things.

It just comes as you as you have experience. But he’s really rising to the occasion. And he’s he’s a young what I call old soul. He he has a depth to him that is already reviving and encouraging this church body. And I’m thrilled that now we have McCracken 2.

We have the Smith family here. And thankful to God and for the prayers of the body and the work of that committee to take the year and put up with Rob and me as we transition from Steve to Jason. I’ve also got to make another confession to you. It’s a superstition and it’s one that you’ll probably never hear again in your life, but it’s true. Those of us who’ve been involved in pastoral work realize that there’s kind of this inevitable fact that before we preach on a particular subject, God, usually the week before, but fairly near the sermon, will do something in our life to apply it to our life.

And and so something comes up and we say, “Okay, Lord, I got to trust you for this in my life before I communicate it next Sunday.” So, as I came to the subject of suffering this week, I thought, “Okay, I’m going to pile my car into a ditch somewhere.” Some kind of application of that. But it’s if we had a capriccious God, he would and we’ll talk about Caprician in a minute. He would do that to us.

But he’s a gracious God and takes us where we are and teaches us the things we need to learn and know. Today is the subject of why did this happen to me? Why does good things hap why do why do bad things happen to good people? And the residual questions that come in my life. Why me?

And if it’s for me, how long? So, we all have that experience. We all have life experiences that we can measure up to that. It’s kind of like the, Norwegian folk tale of 1841, Billy Goats Gruff. There were three goats named Gruff, and there was little grass in their pasture.

So every day they had to cross a bridge to the better pasture. And so happens there was a troll under that bridge. And so starting with the youngest, they would tiptoe across across the bridge hoping not to disturb the troll who would then come up and eat them. And as the story goes, they survived and the oldest of the goats put the troll to his demise. But you know, that’s kind of the way we handle life.

Lord. Okay, I’m saved. I’m grateful for that. My eternity eternity is determined by the work of Christ on the cross. He’s my sin bearer.

But can we just go through life kind of easy? I mean, can I sit in my lounger and and without any major crises, major disasters, can can I maneuver my life in a way where that happens? And the answer to that is no. And the reason the answer is no is because God loves you and wants you and me to grow up. And we’re not going to grow up without hard times.

We all have a life experience. Mine was at age 18, 19 driving my younger brother to high school. You know the story. Broadsided. He was killed.

They cut me out of the car. I was in the hospital for a week. Almost died. And I had been foolish in high school and college about anything serious as to the Lord or my life. And God said, “John, I want your attention.”

And he got my attention. And I said, “Okay, Lord. With the days I have left, I’m yours. I haven’t done it perfectly, but that turning point, that pain threshold woke me up.” And you all have that.

We have a number in our church body that are going through things right now. And in fact, if we don’t believe it, it is true even of our savior himself who we have that remarkable phrase in the book of Hebrews where it says Jesus learned obedience through suffering. And if it was a lesson to be learned by Jesus, certainly a lesson to be learned by Job, it’s a lesson to be learned by us. The Rabbi Steve Leer in his book written more beautiful than before has said the following. Every one of us sooner or later walks through hell.

The hell of being hurt. The hell of hurting others. The hell of cancer. The hell of a reductant re a reluctant thinking shovel fell of earth upon the casket of someone we deeply loved. The hell of divorce, of a kid in trouble, of Alzheimer’s, of addiction, of stress, of aging, of knowing that this year, like any year, may be our last.

We all walk through hell. The point is not to come out empty-handed. The point is to make your life worthy of your suffering. To be human is to suffer. And there is profound power in the suffering we endure if we transform it into an more authentic meaningful life.

Pain is a great teacher, but the lessons do not come easily. So whether it is that rabbi who shared the stories of ministries that he was in in Los Angeles, whether you’re in my office and you see the way I go through boxes of Kleenex with people that I am trying to help solve problems in their life, the fact is we all encounter things that are short of God’s grace potentially devastating to us. The experiences that we have now are the ways in which we learn to ask and answer the question why me? So in the book of Job, which is one of the oldest books in the Old Testament, we have an a remarkable narrative that I I cannot overemphasize the depth and severity of the question of why do we suffer? It is the life of one who lived in the early part of the ages of the Old Testament.

He was lived to be over a hundred. He counted his wealth in cattle and livestock. There are certain phrases. There’s multiple phrases in the Old Testament in this book that mark it out as an ancient book. So God saw fit of the 66 books in the Bible and the 40 plus authors of the Bible who were the Bible was co-authored by both men and I think in a couple occasions women Hebrews and like but but co-authored by the spirit of God breathed God saw fit to saw fit to put this book at the beginning of our Old Testament to teach us these incredible life lessons about understanding hard times in life.

In order to do that, we have to we have to offer a disclaimer. You figure a lawyer would do that, right? The disclaimer is that this book is not about those who suffer because they’ve messed up. If you have consequences in your life because of bad behavior, bad decisions, personal sin, and we all have those consequences, by the way, but if if that’s something that you want to place on the shelf today and put it in front of the book of Job, Job doesn’t apply to that. This is not about ones who are suffering because it’s a natural consequence.

As Galatians 6 says, what we reap we shall sow. In fact, the best illustration of that and of the context of suffering here is the King David compared to King Saul. King David’s failures were colossal. They were breathtaking. For one that had the privilege and honor of the relationship that he had to God, David absolutely threw it away in terms of his own personal lust and goals.

And in that, when David came to grips with understanding what it meant to confess, to repent, we get in Psalm 51 his words that say, “Breathe in me a pure heart. Create in me a pure heart, oh God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. So if we’re encountering in our life things that are consequences because of our sin, the Bible has no tolerance for ignoring that. For figure that I’m somehow entitled, I’m a victim. I have a way in which I don’t need to be I don’t be responsible for my own behavior.

The Bible has none of that. But the Bible has a lot of compassion and forgiveness and kindness for those of us who say, “Jigs up. I admit what I did was wrong and I want God to forgive me and I want to move on.” Saul, of course, was the other example when he incountering his sin in his life and his family’s life sought ways to try to get back into right standing with God without that recorded confession. So the first disclaimer is this book is not for somebody who is going through the results of bad decisions and sin in their life.

The second is a hybrid. There are times and I run into this a lot where something that happens in our life, it’s initially not our fault, but then the worm turns and by Job, we’re going to get even. And those of us who through no fault of our own have been a victim to something that we didn’t ask for, we become instead the aggressor, the one who is the wrongdoer, the wrong who has to pay back. And this book is not for that person either. This book is for the third level of suffering, the one who’s truly innocent.

And those innocent times in our life can come by factors out of our control with those we love. For Job, it came in his family in chapter 1, which we’ll see today and the next time we gather together in chapter two with his health where he was stripped of everything he had and we watch his response. So Job is a resp remarkable book in the Bible that teaches us the pure and pristine subject of why do the innocent suffer? In fact, we know he’s innocent because not only in verse one of chapter 1, in the land of Oz, there lived a man whose name was Job. The man was blameless and upright.

He feared God and shunned evil. We know that about him. And he led his children in worship. And after the experiences that we’re going to see today in chapter one, the text says in all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing. So this is truly a story of why do the innocent suffer.

But let’s introduce you to the main characters in the book before we look at Job. The first player in the book is God. And Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” So, as the pages of our Bible open, we have God who is in the heavens. And the text tells us, he was in the beginning.

John 1:1 says that Jesus said, “I am the word and I was with God before time began.” John 17 verse 5 says and the impre the prayer of Jesus in the garden Lord restore me to the position that I had before time with you. So clearly God is stretches from eternity past into eternity future and that is the main presence of the heavens in the book of Job. You probably know that about God. You may not so know so much about Satan.

Satan is an accuser. He’s an adversary. That’s what Satan means, the word Satan. He is one who is seeking to do evil to those who are followers of Jesus. He is one who the scripture says in Isaiah 14 that he was a created being in heaven.

He was among the most beautiful of the angels of heaven and he sought through the capacity that God created in him to rebel. He chose to usurp God’s position. And so Isaiah 14 says, likening not only the king of Ty, but we know that we believe it’s to Satan as well. I will ascend to heaven. I will raise my throne above the stars.

I will sit enthroned in the mouth of the assembly in the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds. I’ll make myself like the most high, but you were brought down to the grave. So Isaiah 14 talks about the fact that Satan and a certain legion of angels that followed him were ones that were committed to usurping God’s position in heaven. And so Ezekiel 28 goes on to say to us, in the pride of your heart, again speaking about Satan, I’m a god.

I sit in the middle of a god in the heart of the seas, but you’re a man. You’re not you’re a man. You’re not a god. And so the text says, you are the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect and be beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God.

Every precious stone adorned you. On the day you were created, they were prepared. You were anointed a guardian. So I ordained you. You were blameless in your ways, but then through your widespread trade, you were filled with violence and you sinned.

So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God. We know in that passage and in Revelations 12, speaking of the dragon who with a tail swept a third out of heaven, that Satan, Lucifer, the light, the lit lit one, was thrown out of heaven with a third of the angelic hosts. And we find them by Job 1 roaming the earth. Satan is not omnipresent. He is a localized being and he is our adversary.

He seeks to destroy and kill believers. And we have the consolation in Job chapter 1 of how God intercedes on our behalf in terms of that. So in Job chapter 1, we find Job as upright and brainless, fear, fearing God and shunning evil. And he had the stage is set. He had seven sons, verse one, verse three, and three daughters.

And he owned 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yolk of oxmen, and 500 donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among the people of the east. So, the test plot comes to Job. You know, in Genesis chapter 3, when Satan tempted Adam and Eve, he wanted to try and destroy Adam and Eve’s relationship to God by encouraging disobedience. Here in Job one with the attack of Satan, he wants to destroy God’s relationship to man, to Job by saying, “Take this away and he’ll curse you to your face.”

So the first test for Job in chapter 1 is when the angels came verse six to the pres to present themselves before the Lord and Satan came with them. We don’t know how much to make of that verse, but I can tell you that it’s an accountability context that from time to time, periodically, Satan and his evil de demons give an account to God, at least during this time. And so, they came before God and they had a scheme. They had a plot in order to prove that God’s purposes among us could would not prevail. And so as they came, the Lord said, “Where have you come from?”

It’s a redundant question. Of course, the Lord knew where he come they’d come from. Satan answered the Lord from roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it. The New Testament says Satan seeks and and travels and seeks seeking those he will destroy. This is true that we have we have an whole et we have no international heavenly and earthly scene around us that says that we not only have angels that are our protection and you’re shortly going to see a hedge but we have evil spirits who want to do us harm and it’s God’s hand that is a protection on Job here and certainly on us as Well, so Satan said from roaming throughout the earth and going back and forth, the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job?

Stop. Hard stop. What’s going on?” Well, there is a cataclysmic test that’s coming and it’s initiated by God. We don’t know what Satan’s devices were, but but init but but God said, “Have you considered Job?”

There’s no one on earth like him. He’s blameless and upite upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. Well, that’s all the invitation that Satan need. So he snarled, “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied, “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has?

You’ve blessed the work of his hand so that his flocks and his herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has and it’ll surely curse you to your face. So here’s the connection. This book clearly establishes that the blessings of God lead to the prosperities of life. True.

True. None of us woke up this morning and said, “Hart, time to beat.” The days that we have, the provisions that we have, and in this incredible country, the wealth that we have is from God. And Satan wants to sever that, that severance between blessing and prosperity. He says, “We sever that and they’ll curse you to your face.”

So Jesus, excuse me. So God says to Satan, “Very well, everything he has is in your hand, but on the man do not lay a finger.” Well, the the first complaint Satan has here is that God has put a hedge around Job. You can take that to the bank. That as you enter into the kingdom of God through the grace of Christ and become a child of God, God surrounds you with a hedge and he’s going to let things in that are going to make life hard.

And we’ll find out why. But he’s not going to let anything happen to you that’s outside his design and purpose. Spurgeon has said correctly, God’s man is invincible until his life’s work is done. And after that, there’s no power on earth that’ll keep him here. We have our days numbered.

We have the hairs on our heads counted. God is in control of us. And he’s hedged us around and protected us and monitors the things in our life for our good, for our maturity, for our growth. Satan takes him up on that. And so the text goes on in the narrative to say there is a series of spiritual losses that Job goes through.

A messenger comes and says, “The Sebian came and your donkeys and your oxen are dead and only I’ve survived.” One servant, the next servant comes. Fire from God came, burned up the sheep. And lest we think that God is out of control in chapter one, this is a fire from God. And Job will understand that by the end of the chapter and I alone have left.

The servant says three, the Sebian came and camels and donkeys are all gone and I alone have survived. And so these series of things began to happen to Job. And and as if that’s not enough, they kept happening to him. And it was circumstance after circumstance. And you might say, “Lord, how can you survive that?”

I mean, you may ask that in your own life in terms of the trials that God has put you through. Why another one, Lord? And finally, a servant came and said, “A great wind came.” As if we wonder whether it came from God. Only God controls the the storms and heavens.

And the walls fell and your sons and daughters are dead. Devastating. Absolutely stripped of everything that he owned to challenge that premise. The blessing of God’s leads to the prosperity from God. So, Satan did his work and he operated outside the hedge of Job in a way to follow through with God’s instruction.

Just don’t lay a finger on him. And with that alone and Job hearing of all of that, the text says in verse 20, Job got up, tore his robe, shaved his head, fell to the ground, and worshiped. We’re not supposed to bury our kids, much less be stripped of everything through no fault of our own. And in America, in this wonderful country, we actually have legal devices for protecting you in the course of those losses, things like bankruptcy and that sort of thing. But Job was absolutely stripped of everything that he had.

And you find yourself saying, God, what possible good can come out of that? In 2024, 4,958 Nigerians were killed for their faith, not because they did anything wrong, but because they were gathering in local churches and worshiping Jesus. And so in 2024, 5,000 of them that we can count were swept into the portals of death because of the enemies of God. If you’re following the the ministry of Rich Gardener today and the ministries he’s involved in Ethiopia, the same thing is happening there today. And you find yourself saying, “God, I’ve got my limits.

I don’t understand how I can even persevere and stand this.” And Job’s response, verse 21, naked I came from my father’s womb, naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised. We learn three things about Job and his life of faith from Job chapter 1.

The first is life is temporary. I know I’m telling you something that you know, but you can plan on the fact that one out of one people die. It just happens. And Job said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I will depart.” Life is temporary, and the things that we have are temporary.

And at most, we are stewards of the kinds of things that God’s placed in our lives, whether it’s our marriages or our children or our possessions. And Jacob was so detached from his possessions in a good sense that he didn’t let that bring him down. The rich young ruler in Luke 19 came to Jesus and said, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said, “Keep all the commandments. Honor your father and mother.

Do not commit adultery. Do not steal.” And that young man said, “I’m good. I do that.” And Jesus looked at him and said, “Sell everything you had and go and give it to the poor.”

And the text says that man left sad because he was very wealthy and he decided to trade the possibility of eternity and disregard that for the benefits of life in this world. And that’s what possessions can do to us. It can cloud our thinking and our heart in a way that says, “I’m living for this instead of God.” And Job said, “Not going to do that.” As devastating as this is to lose my family, all my possessions, everybody but my wife, and a few servants, I understand.

Naked I came from the womb, and naked I will return. As many of you have said, there’s no U-Hauls at a funeral service. The second thing that Job learned is in the phrase, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” You’ll notice he didn’t blame God. This clearly came from God.

There’s no question in the text. Whoever wrote, we don’t know who wrote the book of Job. But whoever wrote the book of Job understood that life itself, the gains and losses of life come from the Lord. Fire from God wins that destroyed his family. And Job says, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.”

One of my friends from a few years ago, a pastor who some of you heard the story, went for a normal checkup and the blood work came back and the urologist forgot to check the blood work and it came back with an alarming statistic that triggered a warning sign in his body. But nobody said anything because the urologist didn’t see it. Two years later, he came back for another exam, same blood test, and the numbers had spiked up even farther. Such that now the urologist saw it, the urologist with integrity admitted it, and we dealt with it. But our expert who was in consulting on the case said, “That man has a death sentence.”

Now, there wasn’t anything he did that was wrong. In fact, he was a pastor. He tried to devote his life to serving the Lord and doing the right thing and this thing just walloped him upside the head. And if you were to ask him, have you asked the question, why me? Vern would say, why not me?

If this is the course that God has my life on to grow me up in him, then I accept that. Job said, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.” And then he makes the remarkable final exclamation, “May the name of the Lord be praised.” He bowed his knee. He said, “Okay, Lord.

I’m not going to stop being devoted to you and praising you and following you regardless of the losses in my life.” That’s true worship. Some of you have heard the story of Rick Warren who had a son, Matthew, who was pretty evidently mentally ill. And so Rick and K. Warren over the years attempted to raise him in a way that address it.

They prayed for miracles that he’d be healed or they prayed for wisdom and discernment that he could live in the midst of his struggle. And Rick, Pastor Rick, notes one particular conversation they had when he was 18. And Matthew said, “Dad, I’m so tired. I just don’t feel like going on.” And of course, as any good parent, they encouraged him to keep going on.

So he got older and he went and lived in his own home. And they had an evening with him when he was 27. And he said it was uneventful by any measure. And Matthew went home that night and they the next day could not raise him. And so they went over and they didn’t have a key to his house.

So they had to call for the authorities to come and open the house. And Matthew had taken his life. And so this stard of the Christian faith who had assisted thousands of others in their walk of faith now was put into a new crucible, his job crucible. And he said, “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

You know the the fact of the matter is as CS Lewis has said that pain plants the flag of reality in the fortress of a rebel heart. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but he shouts to us in our pain. It’s the megaphone to raise a deaf world. C. Lewis knew something of that same pain who married later in life married the love of his life who shortly thereafter died and he wrote a book called severe mercy and said but for the grace of God I wouldn’t understand God’s purposes in my life.

Job passed this test with flying colors and you want to say done. Woohoo! That’s my test. I’m gonna go be with him. God wasn’t done with Job.

Next time we meet, it’ll be Job, too. And of the few things left for remaining, his health, God strips him of it again with Satan’s devices. And he is devastated. And we find him actually struggling for perspective because in this book, while Job will never sin, we’ll never see him in the book, there’s restoration and repentance by the end of the book. In other words, there are things for all of us to learn.

And CS Lewis is right. That megaphone of pain is a thing that teaches it to us. As we bow our knees to God’s purposes in life, may God be praised. Let’s pray. Lord, we’re grateful for the confidence we have in your hand that even as you brought your son to this earth and showed us the way and to be restored to you through grace, we’re thankful, Lord, that his life was also a life that measured every temptation, every struggle in a way that relied o

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 4,982 words.