Untitled Sermon

Introduction

We all experience difficult times in life

o Social isolation here in the US

o Presidential election year

o Many unemployed

o Civil unrest

o Suicide and overdoses are at an all-time high, people are just not in a good place

§ Given all of these, it certainly has posed some challenges for the church.

“Uncertain Times calls for Certain Measures”

o It is vital that even in the midst of hard circumstances the church relies on God to carry us through.

o We can be certain in God to carry us through!

Why do bad things happen?

· Some would say:

o Is it all Karma?

o You reap what you sow?

o Stupidity?

In this book, a man named Job has everything taken away from him:

Unpack (Job 1:1–22) (Divine Council appear before Yahweh-God) The Satan (Hebrew for the Accuser or the Adversary or challenger) No more hedge Job 1:10-11 (losses family, wealth, and health)

o God allows Job to suffer, and Job wrestles with why all of this happened to him.

o While everyone around him loses faith in God or blames Job for his troubles, Job remains faithful to God and everything is restored to him.

Job wrestles with something called theodicy, an area of theology that tries to answer how a “loving, all-powerful God could allow people to suffer?” [1]

DON’T PUT YOUR TRUST IN MANKIND

2 Corinthians 1:9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.

A common struggle between Job and his friends as he suffers is the question whether he is at fault

“Remember: who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? 8 As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. (Job 4:7–8)

Retribution theology: if evil or sickness happened to someone, it was because of sin in their life[2]

· While this is true for some situations, it doesn’t seem to apply to Job…(or the man born blind (the disciples asked who sinned this man or his parents)

o Now Does God sometimes send punishment? Yes. Read the Prophets

o Does God reward and punish? Yes…of course, read the Psalms

§ Yet not all suffering is a direct act of God which we must swallow as punishment.

· Job continues to justify his innocence and to insists that his troubles are not because of some hidden sin in his life.

GOD ANSWERS JOB (Read Job 38:2-7…)

· By the end of the story, God reveals that Job was not being punished for sin (Refer to Job 42:7–17)

Why do bad things happen to good people?

· There is only one person to ever walk this earth that is good.

· I can’t completely answer it though but what I will say is that we aren’t in Eden in more and we haven’t walked fully in God’s new creation yet.

o There was once a world without pain and suffering – in the garden…and what we learn from the creation story is that even in a world without suffering man chooses against God.

o John 16:33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

PUT YOUR TRUST COMPLETELY IN GOD ALONE

Job 1:21 “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Job 23:10 But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.

Faith is the one constant thing that Job has throughout his suffering.

1. His faith wavers and is frustrated.

2. He complains to God

o As for me, is my complaint against man? Why should I not be impatient? Job 21:4

3. Wishes that he was never born

o Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’ Job 3:3

4. Job questions God but still comes back to a truth in the Creator of all

The faith of Job isn’t pretty, but it is persevering.

o The answer to suffering is faith.

o Trusting completely in God

o Trust that God is good, powerful, loving, merciful, and wise.

o However, the God that Job had faith in was not an abstract concept, but a personal being with whom he had cultivated a relationship with before the calamity happened.

o As Christians we know what Job didn’t know yet: that God revealed himself in his Son, Jesus. Christ’s sacrifice didn’t just atone for sin but gave us the right relationship with God. Hebrews says, “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

When you suffer, what or whom do you put your trust in?

o When we are in pain, we sometimes reach for anything that will bring relief.

o We eat too much.

o Turn to alcohol or other substances.

o Buy things we don’t need.

2 Cor. 12:9

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

[1] (Stephen J. Lennox, God’s Story Revealed, 170).

[2] (Stephen J. Lennox, God’s Story Revealed, 171).