Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Disgust
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Fear
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Analytical
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Openness
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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When You Feel Like You’re Going to Break
OUTLINE:
Back Around the Throne, vv.
1-6
Suffering Increased, vv.
7-8
Another Choice to Make, vv.
9-10
We live in relative comfort and ease.
But our brothers and sisters in the Lord - so many of them - live in a
Trials and tribulations.
Job has lost everything that he has.
All of his money, his savings, his business .... and worst of all - his 10 children.
He responded to the tragedy in his life with extraordinary faith - -
The committed Christian and critical skeptic of Christianity both have at least one thing in common: The question of pain and suffering is the greatest challenge to believing in God.
God is ALL-POWERFUL: He can do whatever He wants
God is ALL-LOVING: He cares with an intense value for His creation
EVIL IS A REALITY: Suffering has come to saturate this world that God Himself created.
G.K. Chesterton: “When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from him - but in heaven’s name, to what?”
Remember where we are, as the curtain opens on a new act in .
We are at a place in the life of Job that so many of you can identify with.
Satan had made a bet with God.
He charged (because that’s what the Accuser does) - he charges God that the only reason Job worships God is b
____________________________________________________________________
1 BACK AROUND THE THRONE, vv.
1-6
The scene changes again and goes back to where the heavenly court - where chapter 1, verse 6 took us.
If you read these verses and think, ‘Hey, this sounds familiar’, well you’re right.
2:1-6 is almost identical to the picture in 1:6-12.
Again, the angels have come into the throne room to present themselves before the Lord.
Again, Satan is with them.
And again the conversation between God and ‘the Satan’ takes place.
Verse 3, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?”
Those are exactly the same words that He used in chapter 1:8 - the words that started the whole trouble for this man.
Verse 3, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?”
Those are exactly the same words that He used in chapter 1:8 - the words that started the whole trouble for this man.
Then God adds - He still holds fast his integrity, ALTHOUGH YOU INCITED ME AGAINST HIM TO DESTROY HIM WITHOUT REASON.”
That’s terrifying.
That’s terrifying.
And if you don’t have that response when first reading God’s words here - then I would suggest that you aren’t paying attention.
Here is God, speaking to Satan - saying to His archenemy and the one who hates you … God says to him, “… you incited me against MY FAITHFUL SERVANT - to destroy him WITHOUT REASON.”
“WITHOUT REASON”.
… That there could be something in Almighty God that could make Him do something to harm His child WITHOUT REASON.
WITHOUT CAUSE.
Something arbitrary - as though the Sovereign God of the universe is playing some divine game, in the heavens way up there … and you are the poor pawn, caught on the game board, with YOUR LIFE in the balance?
At least to our eyes - that’s what it looks like … that
God is speaking in terms we can understand.
In the history of the universe so far and to time eternal … God has done and will do NOTHING without reason.
But He wants us to think that sometimes He does.
That’s the point here - - the disaster comes down into your life - shakes you to the core of your being … and you lay awake at night, sleepless on your bed, trying to understand: “Why me?
Why this?
Why now?” .... and for the life of you - you cannot come up with a reason why this would happen.
Why a God in heaven who claims to love you … you allow you to find yourself here.
In this place.
Maybe you have found yourself in a darkness that envelops you - - - - - Is God a divine Cat, playing with a mouse - as if my life destroyed is of no concern to Him?
God is as close to evil as its possible to get.
God is talking to Satan here.
He’s giving permission to Satan.
He’s saying, “Have you considered my servant Job?”
And some of us are saying, “With friends like this ....?” Maybe Satan hadn’t even noticed him.
C.S. Lewis, lost his dear wife - American woman whom he loved with all his heart.
Found her later in life - they had found a piece of heaven, here on earth ....
Interesting, earlier in life he had already written a book about suffering.
He called that one, “The Problem of Pain” - and tried to explain why pain and suffering are not good enough reasons to reject God.
After his wife died, wrote another book about pain, this one was titled, “A Grief Observed”.
This one had a very different tone to the one written when pain was just an academic subject for his mind to explore.
In fact, he wrote this book under a pseudonym.
Didn’t want people to know it was the same man.
When his life fell apart, the reflection on suffering became a whole lot more captured by emotion.
In “A Grief Observed”, Lewis Writes about the unimaginable thoughts that went through his mind: That God was some kind of cosmic Sadist.
What’s the point of this all?”
Alfred Lord Tennyson - poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, Crimean war against the Russians: “Ours not to reason why.
Ours just to do … and die”.
Is that it?
There’s no point here?
No purpose?
No plan?
We are just a cog in a massive machine?
Well, the damage is done.
Job has lost everything.
Now at least God knows that Job is faithful - that He can be brought from Riches to Rags and still, he will worship the Lord.
Surely Job has proven himself.
God can gloat.
And we can move on.
Oh, but that’s not how the story goes.
Some time has passed by - we don’t know how long it’s been.
Maybe a few days.
Maybe a few months.
Whatever the time passed, Job has experienced hell.
Now God says to Satan - “Look at Job.
He is still holding on tight to me, in faith.
He still worships.”
The Accuser takes not a single step backwards from his original charge.
Verse 4, “Skin for skin!” he says.
“All that a man has he will give for his own life!”
In other words - “You can take everything that a man holds dear outside of himself and you can hurt him.
But he will sacrifice everything and everyONE - if it means protecting his own body - his own skin.
And until he feels the pain in his own body - you can’t really say that he’s been tested.
Verse 5, “But stretch out Your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.”
Another challenge is thrown down.
And you already know how the Lord responds.
Verse 6, “And the LORD said to Satan, ‘Behold he is in your hand; only spare his life.”
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