Sermon Tone Analysis
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Strange Encounters Of The 2nd Kind
\\ Scriptures: Job 1, 2
What is the book of Job all about?
I first read the book of Job as a teenager.
I had struggled with God’s call for my life and after a year and a half of struggling, I surrendered, worn out by the fight and resigned myself to God’s providence.
I was not in love with the idea of being a minister but I learned one thing – you cannot prevail over God’s will for your life and find happiness.
And following the surrender, my parent’s rocky marriage began to disintegrate rapidly.
The last time that I saw them together was at my graduation.
I asked God why things should become worse in my life since I had made this step of surrender.
It seemed only fitting that since I had done what God asked me to do, that things should get better not worse.
God should fix things with my Mom and Dad.
I began to search this book because I knew that it was a story of hardship and I thought that I would find answers.
I found comfort and the spirit of God ministered to me but rather than answers, I found wonderful questions.
A good question is always better than someone else’s answer.
We are not at a loss for answers in the world today.
Everyone has an answer.
We are at a loss for good questions.
That really is the way that God lead Job to the truth that He sought.
Not with answers relative to his calamity but with questions – real good questions.
The book starts with Job’s painful justifiable questions and it ends with God’s questions to Job and restoration.
o Is it about what God does to us?
What does God do to us?
Is he the author of our difficulties in this life?
I don’t know how many times I have heard people ask the question, “I don’t know why God is doing this or that in my life?”
Whatever the reason, He is not doing it for himself.
Think about it, if God didn’t love you, he would either ignore you or erase you.
Your very existence is proof of your worth and God’s love.
If birth is merely biological then that is one thing but somehow if it is still a miracle that biological and spiritual processes converge to produce a living soul then it is as it has always been – something “otherworldly”.
The book of Lamentations 3 says:
/33 For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men./
We know that he disciplines every child that He loves – Hebrews 12. We know that he prunes us to makes us more fruitful.
1 ¶ "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes {The Greek for prunes also means cleans.}
so that it will be even more fruitful.
You know one of the major difficulties we encounter when we try to understand what is going on in our lives is not that we don’t suspect what God is doing but we refuse to believe that He may actually be doing it.
It’s not always our limited understanding but our ongoing struggle to let God be God.
You know what else God does?
He takes every circumstance of our lives, bad and good and weaves them all together to create a beautiful tapestry.
!
The Weaver
My Life is but a weaving
between my Lord and me;
I cannot choose the colors
He worketh steadily.
Oft times He weaveth sorrow
And I, in foolish pride,
Forget He sees the upper,
And I the under side.
Not til the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly,
Shall God unroll the canvas
And explain the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful
In the Weaver's skillful hand,
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned.
He knows, He loves, He cares,
Nothing this truth can dim.
He gives His very best to those
Who leave the choice with Him
I love that about God.
I trust Him for that today as well.
He’s at work creating masterpiece in my life just as He is in yours – not because any of us are special but because He is.
o Is it about what the Devil does to us?
What does the Devil do to us?
Like God, he too may receive blame for more than he deserves.
People see the Devil differently.
While he is certainly more powerful than any earthly human being, we are never instructed in the pages of scripture to fear him because he is a defeated foe.
(A Mighty Fortress) I hope that you do not fear him today.
For in fearing him you surrender to him, you bestow him with power in your life.
People who fear the Devil who seem to see him more than those who do not.
What can he do?
Can he afflict us?
I would say only with God’s permission and that is a rare thing.
Are you Job?
He was a big target.
Is sickness from him – no – I don’t believe so.
We suffer in our bodies at times because they are not our permanent dwelling.
We are not meant to live on planet earth forever.
I believe that sickness is a product of bad or forbidden fruit.
It is a part of the sin consequence that we inherit from generation to generation.
It is not partial to anyone in particular and no one is exempt from it.
And God does not guarantee our healing.
o Does it tell us how to overcome every trial that we face?
In principle yes it does.
Specifically it does not.
We overcome our trials in our response to them.
Rather than creating fear and despair in us we can choose to trust God in the midst of the whole experience.
There are times that we will be spared and times that we will not
I think that the essence of the book is found in the */question/* posed by the Devil in chapter 1, verse 9, */“/**/Does Job fear God for nothing?"./*
In other words, is it really possible that a human being could fall so much in love with God that he~/she would serve Him for no other reason than that love?
Even more so – is your own relationship with God based on anything other than your love for Him?
Do we really have this capacity within us? Are we serving God or playing Him in our own self-interests?
Nothing will answer this question like trials and tribulations.
The answer to his question in your own personal life will determine how you weather the storms of life that blow your way.
It will mean the difference between spiritual excellence and mediocrity.
The objective of the Devil in the book of Job was to create sufficient distress to cause this righteous to turn his back on God and curse him.
He would like to do that in your own life today.
He delights when he brings a person to the place where they give up and throw in the towel.
He loves it when he can get us to begin weigh or judge God’s performance by the standard of our comfort, our happiness, our prosperity, our physical well being, our emotional well being.
At that point we are vulnerable.
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