When God Shows Up: Speaking Truth to Sufferers, Part 2
Job: Faithful Suffering & The Faithful Sufferer • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 38:49
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· 6 viewsSince sufferers need to hear God’s perspective, we must graciously, prophetically, and impartially speak. God’s perspective is heard when He speaks, and His speech intends to save. God’s perspective is fair even when we cannot perceive it.
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“Therefore listen to me, you men of understanding: Far be it from God to do wickedness, And from the Almighty to commit iniquity.
For He repays man according to his work, And makes man to find a reward according to his way.
Surely God will never do wickedly, Nor will the Almighty pervert justice.
Who gave Him charge over the earth? Or who appointed Him over the whole world?
If He should set His heart on it, If He should gather to Himself His Spirit and His breath,
All flesh would perish together, And man would return to dust.
Prayer
Last week we discussed the importance of speaking the truth to sufferers.
Since sufferers need to hear God’s perspective, we must graciously, prophetically, and impartially speak.
When we think about addressing a sufferer we need to have three distinct categories in mind.
Specifically of people, as saints, sufferers, and sinners.
Saints - The redeemed perspective of our being.
Sinners - The sinful aspect of our being.
Sufferers - The suffering aspect of our being.
Prior to speaking truth in love… Elihu has...
Sat with Job in his suffering and just wept.
Listened with patience.
He allowed room for Job to lament of his present suffering.
Ask questions and pray.
With this in mind, Elihu will now turn to address the sufferer.
The points that Elihu will make are instructive for us as well as for the sufferer.
They reveal temptations that sufferers are prone to.
They reveal important theological categories that we need to speak to when addressing a sufferer.
God is Gracious
God is Gracious
“His Speech Intends to Save”
Jack felt dejected.
He had been married to Joanne for thirty years.
Their children were finally raised, and he retired early to enjoy the “golden years.”
But those retirement years did not prove to be golden.
His doctor discovered intestinal cancer.
He faced chemotherapy, sickness, and no guarantee of recovery.
He withdrew from family and friends.
Brooding over his “bad luck,” he spiraled deeper and deeper into the pit of self-pity.
The Journal of Biblical Counseling: Volume 25, Number 3, Summer 2007 (Spiritual Poison)
The temptation for the sufferer is that God is NOT gracious.
The temptation for a sufferer is to believe that God is somehow silent.
The temptation is to believe that God is NOT gracious.
Words
Words
“Heed the Prophets Words”
This first section represents Elihu’s desire for Job to pay him mind.
“But now, hear my speech, O Job, and listen to all my words.
Behold, I open my mouth; the tongue in my mouth speaks.
Elihu gives several reasons for why he should be listened to.
Because I’m Sincere
Because I’m Sincere
My words declare the uprightness of my heart, and what my lips know they speak sincerely.
He’s not coming to him to show how right he is.
He’s coming to him because he loves him.
Because I’m Made from the Spirit
Because I’m Made from the Spirit
The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
He’s not coming to him in his own understanding.
He is approaching him because God has given him the life to do so. And he says he has an obligation toward Job.
Because I am Your Equal
Because I am Your Equal
Behold, I am toward God as you are; I too was pinched off from a piece of clay.
He’s not coming because he thinks he is somehow superior to Job.
He’s coming to him because he realizes that he also is a creature in desperate need.
Because I Won’t Pressure You
Because I Won’t Pressure You
Behold, no fear of me need terrify you; my pressure will not be heavy upon you.
He’s not coming to Job to lay greater weights upon his back.
He’s coming to him to bring life.
Now, these for emphasis are very important for us, and we could spend whole weeks discussing each of them.
What I hope you do say though, is that Elihu has Jobs best interest in mind.
“Surely you have spoken in my ears, and I have heard the sound of your words.
You say, ‘I am pure, without transgression; I am clean, and there is no iniquity in me.
Correction
Correction
“Why You’re Wrong!”
Job has not said he is sinless.
He has actually admitted that he was a sinner in multiple places.
For you write bitter things against me and make me inherit the iniquities of my youth.
He knows he’s a sinner.
Elihu is confronting a self-righteous attitude in Job.
A self-righteous attitude that is beginning to form within Job.
There’s an attitude that is festering in Jobs heart that needs removed.
Job has clearly shown that he didn’t do anything to deserve the suffering but in the mean time has overlooked his festering attitude of self-righteousness.
Though it may be hard to hear, often times sufferers struggle from this same self righteous attitude that Job is struggling with here.
Which is why they need our correction.
They need us to speak on God’s behalf to them.
They need God‘s perspective.
There are four ways that Elihu addresses Job.
And these for ways reveal four different areas as needed correction.
The first is that God is unfair and secondly that God is silent.
Unfair
Unfair
“God Does Not Treat Me Right”
Elihu has also called out the fact that Job feels as though he has been treated unfairly.
“Behold, in this you are not right. I will answer you, for God is greater than man.
Why do you contend against him, saying, ‘He will answer none of man’s words’?
Since God is greater than all mankind, Job had no right to vent his frustration.
He’s not prohibiting lament, his point is the Job and God are not equal.
Remember how the friends spoke with Job, how they told him that his suffering was a result of sin.
Elihu is rather saying, you are not suffering from sin but have sinned in your suffering.
The sin Job committed is anchored to the fact that he believes that God is unfair toward him.
Application
The same is also true for people who suffer.
They begin to believe that God has been unfair toward them.
Silent
Silent
“God is NOT Speaking”
The sin he has committed is that God does not speak.
Application - Warning to Sufferers
Woe to the clay that strives with the potter; for he gives no account of any of his matters. He is under no obligation to show us a reason for what he does, neither to tell us what he designs to do (in what method, at what time, by what instruments) nor to tell us why he deals thus with us.
At this point, it’s important to circle up and remind each of us of the temptations to come our way in suffering.
When you suffer, there will be a temptation to believe that God is silent.
There will be a temptation to believe in someway.
God is not fair to you.
When these temptations come, brothers and sisters, we must not ignore them.
Do not think that if you ignore these temptations that they will just passively fall away.
No, if we ignore them, they will destroy us.
God’s perspective is heard when He speaks, and His speech intends to save.
He concludes by showing Job that God does indeed speak.
“Yes, God does these things again and again for people.
He rescues them from the grave so they may enjoy the light of life.
God does speak to humans.
And His purpose in speaking to humans is to rescue them from the grave.
He desires to rescue them from the grave that they may enjoy the light of life.
Speech
Speech
“God Does Speak”
God specifically speaks to us through His word.
This means that if we want to know what God has to say about a matter, we open our Bibles.
I never wanna minimize this. This is critically important.
But does God speak more generally to everyone?
How else does God speak to sufferers?
For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it.
Elihu is asserting that God speaks in more than one way to humanity.
He speaks to humanity in ways that are often imperceptible to them.
The two ways that Elihu mentions that God speaks is through dreams and through suffering.
Through Conscience
Through Conscience
Although Elihu uses the word “dream” or “a vision of the night”
The idea here is more of God bringing to bear a kind of judgment upon a sinner.
A similar idea for us would be the idea of God speaking to humans through the conscience.
The conscience is the God given mechanism to distinguish right and wrong.
For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.
They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them
Both believers and unbelievers have a conscience.
Job—The Wisdom of the Cross God Speaks through the Voice of Conscience (vv. 15–18)
It is what we would call the voice of a guilty conscience, that strange terror that afflicts us when we know we are guilty and unforgiven.
It is the internal sense of what is right and wrong in humans.
Elihu is saying that this is one way that God speaks.
In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, while they slumber on their beds,
then he opens the ears of men and terrifies them with warnings,
that he may turn man aside from his deed and conceal pride from a man;
he keeps back his soul from the pit, his life from perishing by the sword.
Elihu says that God “uncovers the ears” of people for them to hear truth.
He makes known things which were once hidden.
God does speak.
He speaks through the terrifying conviction of our sin.
The terrifying conviction which pushes us back from death and judgment.
Elihu goes on to describe a second way that God speaks to humans.
Through Suffering
Through Suffering
“Man is also rebuked with pain on his bed and with continual strife in his bones,
so that his life loathes bread, and his appetite the choicest food.
Elihu is a describing a kind of speaking to humans that is through suffering.
The kind of speaking that God does is a kind of rebuking.
“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
C.S. Lewis
What Lewis observed is that God uses pain in the life of humans to make Himself known to them.
This is the same kind of idea Elihu has noticed and is reminding Job.
God is shouting to him through his pain and suffering.
A person who is suffering desperately needs to know that God is speaking to them.
Elihu is calling Job to hear the voice of God coming to him in his suffering.
God is using the suffering to speak truth to Job, and it’s truth that has a purpose of saving Job ultimately.
Job—The Wisdom of the Cross Conclusion: God Does Speak (vv. 29, 30)
I may think that because I am suffering, God is not speaking to me; but he is, and my sufferings may be his voice! And his purpose in my sufferings is gracious; it is that I may be rescued from death and restored to life.
Consider something with me.
If God speaks to us through our conscience which condemns us, and through our suffering.
Think with me how detrimental then a society that desires to numb the pain.
It would be as if a doctor, rather than treating the condition only gave a patient morphine.
It would remove the temporary pain, but numb them to the symptoms.
Without understanding the symptoms, the doctor will never be able to get to the source of what is ailing the patient.
I would argue that this is what people have been doing since the fall.
We don’t live in a special generation that is any worse than any other in this way.
People have been numbing God’s voice through suffering and conscience since the fall.
Now they are able to numb themselves through more money, nicer houses, faster cars, and every new trinket.
All of these numbing effects try to persuade people that everything is OK.
They try to persuade them with feelings of happiness.
Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.
Jesus dealt with a similar situation in His own day.
In Luke 13, there was a situation that took place where Pilot had mingled the blood of Galileans with their sacrifices.
Now this would’ve been a high-handed desecration of the person whose blood was mingled and toward God.
The people were assuming that this took place to the people because they sinned in someway.
No doubt there were relatives and friends of the people who suffered in this way were standing close by.
As we listen to what Jesus is saying, it’s important that we listen closely to what He said to them.
Jesus responded to them…
There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?
No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
Notice what he does here, he corrects there bad theology and then turns the situation to bring about life.
He warns the people in his hearing of the necessity of repentance and faith.
He warns those who may look elsewhere that they actually need to consider their own manner of life.
But Jesus isn’t even done yet…
He brings up another probably common story that happened in the town and said.
Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?
No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
Application
You need to repent and believe upon the Lord Jesus and so receive life.
Because you can point to every bad situation that ever happened to you,
ever happened to your friends,
and ever happened to your family.
And not receive life yourself.
This is extremely important for the person who wants to point to all the suffering in the world and say that’s why they don’t believe in God or that’s why they can’t believe Christ.
Jesus’s response to that person is you need to repent or you will likewise perish.
Since sufferers need to hear God’s perspective, we must graciously, prophetically, and impartially speak.
God’s perspective is heard when He speaks, and His speech intends to save.
Another common temptation for a suffer is to believe that God is somehow not fair.
To believe that in someway, he is withholding from you.
To believe that he’s not treating you as you deserve.
Take Fred for instance....
A truck ran a red light, crushing Fred’s Honda Civic and breaking his back.
The accident put him out of work for three months.
He lived in chronic pain.
“Why me?” he angrily wondered.
He envied healthy people and became more and more depressed.
The Journal of Biblical Counseling: Volume 25, Number 3, Summer 2007 (Spiritual Poison)
Rather than looking at all of chapter 34, I want to give you the central point of this chapter.
God is Faithful
God is Faithful
“His Justice Is Fair”
He is adamant that God does not commit wickedness.
That God does not commit iniquity.
That God is the very definition of just and fair.
God’s Godness
God’s Godness
“What Makes God, God”
If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath,
all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.
God’s Godness resides in the fact that if He removed His spirit from all humanity then no one could stand.
ALL people would perish.
Man would literally return to dust.
“Therefore listen to me, you men of understanding: Far be it from God to do wickedness, And from the Almighty to commit iniquity.
When I say Gods Godness, I mean his utter distinctness from us.
He is not like you and I.
He is different than we are we don’t even understand goodness and rightness apart from him.
Which leads Elihu to make the claims that he does.
God is NOT Wicked
God is NOT Wicked
“God is Good”
For according to the work of a man he will repay him, and according to his ways he will make it befall him.
Of a truth, God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice.
God is NOT Wrong
God is NOT Wrong
“God is Just”
Who gave him charge over the earth, and who laid on him the whole world?
God’s perspective is fair even when we cannot perceive it.
All of this begs the question..
“Where is God’s justice?”
“Where do we see the justice of God on display?”
The people of Israel had broken their end of the covenant with God.
God allowed great suffering upon them.
Malachi says to the people in verse 17...
Malachi 2:17 (ESV)
You have wearied the Lord with your words.
And the people respond...
Malachi 2:17 (ESV)
But you say, “How have we wearied him?”
The people wonder how they wearied the Lord.
Malachi 2:17 (ESV)
By saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them.” Or by asking, “Where is the God of justice?”
The people were asking and wondering, “Where is God’s justice?”
“Where is God’s mighty hand of action to save His people?”
“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.
This messenger is picked up in the NT and is declared to be John the Baptist.
And the message of JTB is simple....
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
This is the same Jesus of Nazareth who cried out from the cross…
John 19:30 (ESV)
“It is finished”
The sufferer needs to hear this for the same reason we all need to hear this.
This is the message of hope.
This is the message of salvation in no other name.
this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.
God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.
God’s perspective is fair even when we cannot perceive it.
Child Dedication
What are we doing today?
The word dedicate means:
to set apart;
to consecrate to the Lord;
to devote wholly and earnestly to Christ.
It’s NOT mandated in Scripture.
It’s NOT declaring that these children are saved.
There is no salvific merit in this!
It IS meant to be a public display of covenant accountability and humility.
It is just as much a parent dedication as it is a child dedication! (God I need you…Church I need you)
Isaiah & Anna, if you agree with the following vows, would you be willing, as promises to God and promises to your children to signify such by saying, “We do” after each one?
· Do you today recognize YOUR Children as a gift from God and give heartfelt thanks for God’s blessing?
· Do you dedicate YOUR Children to the Lord who gave them to you, surrendering all worldly claims upon their life in the hope that they will entirely belong to God?
· Do you pledge as parents that, with God’s Fatherly help, you will bring YOUR Children up “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord,” making every reasonable effort, with patience, grace, and love, to build the Word of God, the character of Christ, and the joy of the Lord into their life?
· Do you promise to provide for YOUR Children, through God’s blessing, nurture, and support for the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual care of their soul, looking to your own heavenly Father for the grace, wisdom, and strength to serve, guide, & love them?
· Do you promise, with God’s help, to make it your regular prayer that, by God’s grace, YOUR Children will come to trust in Jesus Christ alone for the forgiveness of their sins and for the fulfillment of all His promises, even eternal life; and in this faith follow Jesus as Lord and obey His teachings?
If you agree with the following vows, answer “We will”
· Will you obey the biblical commendation to come alongside the Saints of God in the visible church and will you remain connected to, serving in, worshipping with, and accountable to the people of God in a local church?
Will you purpose by the grace of God to make it your ongoing practice to demonstrate to your children a love for the bride of Christ, His church?
Will you make every attempt to be in close fellowship with the saints and seek to love the church as Christ loves the church?
To the Church & witnesses:
Do you Church promise to pray for God’s grace to work in the life of the Smith children, and promise to help guide them in the authority of the scriptures, and love them unconditionally, trusting the Master to use them to reflect His glory?
If so answer, “We will”.
Anne Kathryn, together with your parents, who love you dearly, and these people who care about the outcome of your faith, I now dedicate you to God, surrendering together with them all worldly claims upon your life, in the hope that you will belong wholly to God, finding your joy in Him, and live for His Glory!
Prayer