Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / June 21, 2015 | Route 66 - Job

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June 21, 2015 | Route 66 - Job · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Great to have you here.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to be inside on a 99-degree day.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: At least that's what I'm told.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we are in uh we're on a route 66 journey through the Bible, 66 books, 66 Sundays, and we have gotten to a large book, the book of Job.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Last week, uh sort of a fun little story, the book of Esther.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: This week, 42 chapters, Book of Job.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think that the theme of the book of Job uh could be expressed as bad things do happen to good people.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a very, very famous book.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's famous in Muslim theology, it's famous in Jewish theology, famous in Christian theology, and it uh is famous because it touches on the single greatest uh felt need of everyone in life, which is that felt need of suffering.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is uh the need which Hank mentioned in prayer is being discussed.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: This morning they had church there in Charleston, South Carolina at the AME church.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you know what happened.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: This last Wednesday at the regularly scheduled prayer and Bible study meeting at 8 o'clock.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh they had their 12 people there.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then uh they uh another fella came in from outside, uh 21-year-old, and he sat there and participated and argued uh with them, with Pastor Pinckney and others.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then after an hour at 9 05, pulled out a gun and shot and killed uh nine of the 12, three men, uh six women, including uh the pastor Pinckney, who's also state senator, South Carolina, Charleston uh librarian, and uh and a woman who is uh uh um track coach and a speech therapist at the high school.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And just uh actu just absolutely shocking and heartbreaking event.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the Fox News headline captures that event and the book of Job in the headline church massacre, Charleston Church Massacre, suspect caught, but answers elude victims, loved ones.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they always do, don't they?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: The answers always elude us for things that seem unfair, undeserved, unexpected, rape, incest, murder, the Holocausts and accidents that happen in life for absolutely no good reason.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't just happen, of course, in our country, it happens all over the globe.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: To the families, imagine how the families feel of those 21 Christian men who were beheaded earlier this year.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And here, right here is where the journey of faith ends for some people.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because the problem of undeserved suffering is the single greatest moral conundrum in the world.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: In moral philosophy, I taught moral philosophy for 10 years, this was the single greatest question that we attacked, that we faced, that we discussed, that we read about.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the question: if God is all-powerful, and if God is good, if he cares for us, in other words, then how can he allow good people, innocent people, to suffer?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the conclusion that many people will come to is that either God is not God, all-powerful, or God is not good.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that choice is a faith killer.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a faith killer.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And more than one uh seeker, genuine seeker, has turned away from God because of this.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, in the recent biography of Stephen Jobs by Isaacson, it points out this is where uh Stephen Steve Jobs lost his faith.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: He struggled with the starvation of so many hundreds and thousands of children in Africa and could come to no religious answer why God would allow that, and gave up his search for faith.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the most famous Bible religion professor in America today, his name is Bart Ehrman.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Bart Ehrman is a teacher at North Carolina.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: When you get that magazine in the mail that offers you courses, you know, that you can uh you can buy the the CDs, you know, you can learn about philosophy, you can learn about history, whatever.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, am I the only one that gets that?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: But they always have a Bible course.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's always taught by this guy, Bart Ehrman.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: He went to Moody Bible Institute briefly, he went to Wheaton College, but then he lost his faith because of this problem, the problem of pain.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, he has a well-known blog entitled How the Problem of Pain Ruined My Faith.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: As he considered uh the uh suffering, a death in his own family, as he considered the Holocaust, he considered the suffering of many people, he could not reconcile the facts of faith with the facts of life.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: That is that is that a God who is all-powerful could at the same time be good.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so some people, as you know, have given up uh the idea that God is good.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, uh, you know, you'll you'll read the books, if you read the books by atheists, they'll say Christians believe God is all-powerful, but obviously he can't be good.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's a violent God, he's a vicious God, he's an evil God.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: More people that you and I know uh have given up the idea that God is God.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his famous book 30 years ago called, or 20 years called Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, talked about his son with progeria growing up too fast and dying, and he decided that God was a good God.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: He had to hold on to that.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: But like other, many other Jewish rabbis, he concluded God couldn't do anything about it.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: God tried, God cared.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is the answer in process theology, uh, answer with a lot of people.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, how does Job, how does this book address this question?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: How does he resolve the question of undeserved suffering?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Open your Bible to this great, to this famous, to this wonderful book, the book of Job, Job chapter one.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take us through uh the first chapters, the last chapters, and and and make some comments, and we'll try to resolve this.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: There was a man, the book begins, in the country of Uz.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know where that is, suspect it's Iraq area, named Job.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you're just visiting, it's your first time, you probably have heard it called Job.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Looks like Job.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually pronounced Job.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Say it so you never get embarrassed in the future.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Job.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Say it?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Job.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: All right, it's not Job, it's Job.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: He was a man of perfect integrity.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna say that about him, not once, twice, but three times in the first two chapters.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there are only three men in the Bible about whom this is said, that they are people of integrity, perfect integrity.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: He feared God and he turned away from evil.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: He had, he's not only a godly man, he is a uh he's a father.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: He had seven sons and three daughters.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Total ten, perfect number, seven, also perfect number three, and so forth.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: So he's a family man.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And his estate, and he's a wealthy man.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: His estate includes seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female dogs, uh, and a very large number of servants.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Those numbers are significant when you get to the end of the book.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: 7,000, remember those, 7,000, 3,500, 500.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Job was the greatest man among all the people of the East.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that's this guy.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's a wealthy man, and he's a godly man, and he's a family man.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, he's also the perfect guy to talk about on Father's Day, because he was a great father.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the evidence.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: His sons used to take turns having banquets at their homes.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew of this book is really, really hard.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's over a hundred words that are used only one time in the Bible, and they're in this book.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And in this verse, there is one of them.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think by the word take turns has to do with on their birthday.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think these are birthday celebrations.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: So once a year they'd have a big banquet, his sons, they were, we take it, in their twenties.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: They were pretty young.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: They had three younger sisters who were in their teens who were not married, and they would send an invitation to the three sisters to eat and drink with them.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And whenever a round of banqueting was over, Job would send for his children and purify them, and he would rise early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of them.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: For Job thought, perhaps my children have sinned, having cursed God in their hearts.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: This was Job's regular practice.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: What is going on?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think what's going on is that Job was so spiritual, and yet he didn't want to be this overbearing, dominant, legalistic dad who would force his 20-year-olds, you know, into certain behaviors that he believed in.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: He'd raised them well, and he really cared.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: He was worried that maybe they'd gotten a little tipsy and they had told maybe dirty jokes or had blasphemed or whatever.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so he would offer sacrifices for them in their place.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Just, you know, this, I just think it's a great example.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: I could talk a lot more about this.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: I just think that he was this great example of a dad who cared deeply, prayed for his kids even after they were out of the home, but didn't, you know, it wasn't an overbearing type of a type of a dad.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll leave that there.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, meanwhile, the drama begins.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, up in the heavenly court, one day the sons of God, that phrase sons of God, oftentimes used in the Bible to describe angelic beings, came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: You say, What was he doing up there?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thought he was cast out of heaven.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what he was doing there.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Don't know why God allowed him up there.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, he's there.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord asked Satan, where have you come from?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he gives the kind of an answer that a teenager gives when they come home, and dad, dad, dad, dad says, Where have you been?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And teenager does not want to answer.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Does not want, does not, you know, or or the sergeant asks the private, Where were you tonight?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is the answer given by every sort of rebellious, you know, person to get to authority.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: They don't give an answer.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: From roaming through the earth and walking around on it.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's disrespectful.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: If if Lord ever asks you where you've been, just tell him.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, I I love the pictures that come from the Renaissance about the heaven and God and Satan and all that.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can always tell who Satan is, by the way, in these pictures, because he always has the bat wings, his pointed ears, and his hands always doing weird things.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's that's this famous picture by Berticelli or Bonicelli or somebody else.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um about the time of the American Revolution.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: So now the Lord brags on Job.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity who fears God and turns away from evil.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And Satan answers, Does Job fear God for nothing?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Haven't you placed a hedge around him, his household and everything he owns?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: You've blessed the work of his hands.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: But stretch out your hands and strike everything he owns, and he'll surely curse you to your face.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, isn't this interesting?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Satan's view, and this is what he argues, I think, to God right now.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody is good for free.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, those people at TBC who work in the children's department, you know, are helping out in Iwana, bless them.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Junior high, high school, the people that serve, a lot of you in here are serving, you're helping, you're volunteering.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Satan's view of that is that we're all in a tit-for-tat business arrangement.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's all for what we can get out of it.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: He does not believe there's any such thing as disinterested piety.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, There's no way Job's good for free.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, nobody's good for nothing.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So he says, you know what?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: You strike everything he owns, he'll curse you to your face.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Very well, said the Lord.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Everything he owns is in your power.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: However, don't lay a hand on Job himself.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: So Satan left the Lord's presence.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And now we move back to earth, for there are five scenes in this first act.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Act one is chapters one and two, Job's disasters, five scenes.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, earth, then up to heaven.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now we're coming back to earth, scene, middle scene, then we'll go back to heaven, we'll come back to earth.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So in the middle scene, we have four catastrophes.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: The first and third are human, the second and fourth are what we call acts of God.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: They are uh like the hurricanes and stuff.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so first one, a messenger came to Job and reported, while the oxen were ploughing and the donkeys grazing nearby, the Sabaeans swooped down and took him away.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: They struck down the servants with a sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: And while that servant is speaking, another messenger came and reported a lightning storm struck from heaven.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: It burned up the sheep and the servants and devoured them.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I alone have escaped to tell you.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that messenger is still speaking, when yet another came and reported, the Chaldeans, now are back to a human attack, formed three bands, made a raid on the camels, took them away, struck down the servants with a sword, and everyone together, I alone have escaped to tell you.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, everything so far has been financial.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Loss of servants, not included.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: What was it?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um Charlotte Huston said, once somebody said to me, cheer up, things could get worse.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: He said, So I cheered up and they got worse.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what's about, that's about to happen to Job.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know, he could say, Well, yeah, I'm losing my bank account, losing my finances, losing all my crops and everything else, but still got my family.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Things are gonna get worse.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now we have the final and worst catastrophe.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's still speaking.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Another messenger came.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly a powerful wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: It collapsed on the young people so that they died.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I alone have escaped to tell you.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's Charleston level.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Then Job stood up, tore his robe, shaved his head, fell to the ground.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And wow, he worships, saying, Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I'll leave this life.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Praise the name of Yahweh.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout all this, Job didn't sin or blame God for anything.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great verse, isn't it?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord gave, the Lord's taken away.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Blessed be the name of the Lord.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't advise that you ever go up to Job right after he's lost his family and quote that verse to him.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let him quote it.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't advise that you take Job 121 with you into a hospital room.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the words I regret most in my entire life are those words.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: I flew back into Portland from Wheaton College, stunned.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was like freshman.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Stunned to find that the van that picked me up there at the airport was filled with nine out of my ten siblings.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Eight out of my nine younger brothers and sisters.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I squeezed in next to them.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thought, wow, they're really here to welcome me.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then I saw that some of them are crying, they're all really quiet, and squeezed in.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I asked where Dougie was.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Dougie, two-year-old little brother.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we're crying.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: He said, We didn't want to tell you till you got home.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't want to ruin the finals week of your semester.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: He's had a home accident, burned terribly, lying close to death.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: He's in the hospital.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're going there now.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: I just had a Bible course at Wedding.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Old Testament.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Book of Job.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: I knew Job 1.21.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna make my parents proud.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sitting right there in second seat in the van, leaning over, squeezing all these other kids around me.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: My father driving to the left, my mother to the right, my father, a Bible school professor, he's gonna be proud of me.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: My mother, most godly woman I know.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I leaned up over and I said, Lord gives.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: To their credit, they didn't say anything.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: But you know we sing that song, don't we?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we love that song.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: You've sung that song, I've sung that song, I love that song.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: You give and take away, you give and take away.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Say it with me.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: My heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be your name.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great thing, wonderful thing, if you are able to say that when Charleston happens in your life.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not a weapon that you should use on anyone else.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, Satan has lost the first challenge.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: God has won.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's the end of chapter one, and now it's Satan versus Job and Satan versus God, round two.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: We come to chapter two.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you have your Bible, we find that chapter two, we go back up to God's court.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: And one day we read the same words again.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: The sons of God came again to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord asked Satan, where did he come from?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he gives the same snotty answer from roaming through the earth and walking around on it.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: We have a lot of uh artists hundreds of years ago loved painting this.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Again, you can tell Satan there, he's the one with the bat swings, the pointed ears, and the hand pointing in funny directions.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the Lord brags on Job again.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: He says what he said before and adds to it.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: He says, The Lord, have you considered my servant Job?
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: No one else on earth is like him, a man of perfect integrity who fears God and turns away from evil.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: He still retains his integrity, by the way, even though you incited me against him to destroy him without just cause.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Satan replies, skin for skin.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: A man will give up everything he owns in exchange for his own life.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he'll curse you to your face.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta give Satan credit.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's right, isn't he?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: You talk to some people, you know, down at the exercise club or whatever, and you ask them what the most important thing is to them, or just chatting with them.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's it's not their money.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: So your home or car?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, it really isn't.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Family?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a lot of them have left me.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: My health?
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: My health.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: On Thanksgiving Day, Christians will stand up and say, I just thank God for my health.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: That really is the most important thing to some of us, isn't it?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, health is really important.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you find that out when you get the bad news that maybe your health is going to leave.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: So let's give Satan credit.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: He actually is right that a lot of really good people, good children of God, value health more than anything else.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord takes the challenge again.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Okay, he's in your power, only spare his life.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: So Satan left the Lord's presence and he infected Job with terrible boils, those breaking, oozing, pussing, itching things.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: I almost showed you some on screen, and then thought I might lose you.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Just thought there might be.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't put any bags in the pew.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: So from the sole of his foot, top of his head, and Job took a piece of broken pottery to scrape himself while he sat among the ashes, outside of town, not in the town, you know, because it's uh you have to go out of town when you get something like that.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: That can catch.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And his wife said to him, his wife turns out to be his bitter half do you still retain your integrity?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Curse God and die.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: You speak as a foolish woman speaks, he told her.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Should we accept only good from God and not adversity?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout all this, Job didn't sin and what he said.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let me say a word for Job's wife for just a second.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know Augustine said she was the spawn of Satan and so forth, but I think we ought to keep in mind she just lost all ten of her children, too.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: She'd just been plunged into sudden financial ruin.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: And now she is facing a life where she is the caretaker of a very sick husband.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: I notice that Job doesn't call her a foolish or a fool.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: He just says she is speaking like a foolish woman.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like cutting her some slack.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think the real point is here not how bad she was, but how amazing Job was that he somehow would still not lose his faith or sin in what he said.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the curtain falls.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Things go dark.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're at the end of the first of the three acts of the Job three act play.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: The curtain falls, Job's out of town, you know, on an ash heap, scratching himself with a shard of pottery.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we realize that we have learned in chapters one and two for certain that bad things do happen to good people.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: I know that we oftentimes forget that, because after all, all you have to do is turn on Christian TV and you get the opposite message.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: That if there is a wealth, if there is health, if there is a large church, if there is any kind of success, those people must be doing right.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Those people must have given$100 to my ministry for them to get$1,000 back.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's difficult to go through life today without hearing the message that if you're good, you will prosper.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're bad, you will not.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: That bad things happen to bad people, good things happen to good people.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: But chapters one and two make it abundantly clear by focusing on the best person in the world at the time, that bad things do happen to good people.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: And along the way, we also learn three other smaller things.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: First, that suffering is a mystery of life.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, actually, Job's suffering isn't much of a mystery to us because we've been allowed behind the curtain.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: We've gotten to see that the reason for this is that there's this deal going on, this bet, this sort of challenge between Satan and God.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: So we understand, but you know what?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Job didn't understand.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Not now, not ever.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't even told at the end of the book.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, he's sitting there like Charleston, like the folks in Charleston this morning, or like some of us, like all of us are when we suffer.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a mystery.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have a clue.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, we understand from chapters one and two that suffering is included in the sweep of God's sovereignty.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you say Satan does it.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yes, Satan is what we would call the um maybe ultimate cause or the initiating cause.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: But it is really clear, isn't it, in chapters one and two, that the final cause is God, that Satan can't dip one clawed toe over the line without asking God's permission.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: That you can't get, I would say you can't even get sick.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: You certainly can't get attacked by Satan without God giving permission, that God is sovereign.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, Well, that's the problem here.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: How can I love a God who is sovereign when he can allow such awful things?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and I say, well, that is a problem, but would you rather that the other guy be in charge or that nobody be in charge?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, I wouldn't like that.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let's stay with the book for a while and see how it answers.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, suffering does fall under the sweep of God's sovereignty.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: And third, suffering does fall on innocent people, people who don't deserve it.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Two-year-old little children.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so now as the curtain rises, we suddenly see that Job is surrounded by three friends who come from a long ways away.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: They met part way, and like you and me, when you go to a hospital room or somebody's really sick, kind of scared, you meet with somebody else, you want to go in there together.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: So three of them meet with Job and they sit with him, and they sit with him for seven days without even saying a word, just to comfort them.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: And for 35 chapters, then we find that they try to sort of solve this problem.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, they think they know the answer to the problem, so we get in a cycle where Eliphaz, who who believes that that tradition is the answer, he speaks and then Job replies.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next guy, Bildad, who thinks that his experience is the answer to everything, he speaks and then Job replies.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then comes Zophar, who who knows what he's got in mind.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: He gives his assumptions, and then Job, and so you go around and and and and we find as we go around this cycle of speeches back and forth that what starts as a simple discussion soon moves to debate and finally ends to a full-fledged dispute.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the bottom line is we learn there is no shortage of hard questions, glib answers, self-justification, and lack of compassion when people start trying to solve the question of unjust suffering.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: The hard questions come from Job and the self-justification come from Job.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: The first and third.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: The glib answers and the lack of compassion, those come from his friends.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take a look really quickly at some of these.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: The hard questions come from Job.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Why wasn't, he says right off the bat, why did I even have to be born?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is so painful.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Why wasn't I still born?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't God let me die when I came from the womb?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then he asks the question that so many of us have asked when we've been sitting by a parent at hospice or at our home.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Why is light given to one who's burdened with grief and life to those whose existence is bitter, who wait for death, but it doesn't come?
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Up until her death last August, I fly out to spend days with my mother in Oregon, and she'd look at me and say in that weak voice, Tim, why won't God let me go to heaven?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why won't he let me die?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it that God, I mean, yes, we have a huge problem with children being stillborn, but we also have a problem at the other end of life when the period at the end of the sentence never seems to come.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that's Job's question.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then he asks, What is man, God, that you think so high?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you pay so much attention to him?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Which is, by the way, a takeoff Saul, mate.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what is man that thou art mindful of him?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Son of man, you visit him, which is, wow, God, how cool that you pay so much attention to us.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: What are we so insignificant?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's so neat.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's all, mate.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Job goes, that's not neat at all.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: I hate it.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: God, why are you paying attention?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: You inspect this, you put us to the test.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Please look away from me.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Please would you leave me long alone long enough to swallow or die, you know.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: So those are hard questions.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the glib answers, uh, and they're all pretty much the same between these three guys.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: They all assume, you know, they say that the answer is, Job, you're just a dang bad person.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're just a sinner.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: You deserve this.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's see if we can figure out what you've done.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: LFS.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Consider, who's ever perished when he was innocent?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh um a lot of people.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh where have the honest been destroyed?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Olivia?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: In my ex Charleston?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: In my experience, those who plow injustice on those who sow trouble reap the same.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, really?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, though, this is what what's called the doctrine of theology called the doctrine of retribution.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Doctrine just that is you get what you deserve.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: Good people get good, bad people get bad.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, now, let me say a good word for the three friends.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: For just a moment.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, they sat there silently for seven days.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: I've never seen anybody do that.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't ever sat silently for seven minutes.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, seven days of comfort.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's incredible.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, they had to be shocked at their friend who's going, just kill me, God, what is your problem?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let me die.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: And third, they are actually quoting a biblical doctrine.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: This doctrine is a doctrine you find throughout the Bible, especially in the Old Testament.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, didn't David say, When have we ever seen the godly forsaken or the righteous person begging bread?
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Really, David?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Quite a few times, maybe.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or the book of Proverbs, chapter three.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: The whole book of Proverbs, by the way, is full of this doctrine that all other things being equal, the righteous person will succeed.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 3, trust in the Lord with all your heart.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Lean not on your own understanding, and all your ways acknowledge him, and God will make your path straight.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Man, he'll he'll give you a successful highway, you'll slide right down.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 7, your barns are gonna be filled with plenty, you're gonna have good health.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: Children obey the Lord, for that is right.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: You want a long life?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: Long life.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: The disciples, didn't they say to Jesus, who sinned this man or his parents, that he was born blind?
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is a doctrine you find throughout the Bible, but Jesus did say, not in this case, neither one.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, so let me just keep you on the tenor hook a little bit more.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've come up with a sort of a triangle way of looking at this.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you have God and you have Job and you have doctrine of retribution.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's impossible to have a good God, a good Job, and a good doctrine of retribution all at the same time.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't fit with the facts of life.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, Job's friends, they say the doctrine of retribution are, that's definitely true.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Good people get what they deserve.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: So do bad people.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: And God, we know God's righteous, so therefore, Job, you're the problem.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: You've sinned, you've done wrong, you deserve this somehow.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Job's reply is whoa, whoa, hold it.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm with you.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: The doctrine of retribution is right, but I'm righteous, and therefore the problem's with God.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm getting madder at him all the time because there's something really messed up in heaven, and I'm just demanding that he come down, that he answer my questions.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's more and more Job gets a little bit disturbed at God and just keeps saying, I wish he'd come down so that I could accuse him.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: I want to hear what he says, because his moral compass has gotten a little screwed up.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a true doctrine, but now I'll give you a little hint.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: You and I know that God is righteous and that Job was righteous, that the doctrine of retribution is not always true.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's generally true.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's generally true.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Take two people, two sisters, if the one of them who obeys her parents and studies hard in school and doesn't get pregnant before wedlock, that girl's gonna do a lot better than the one who rebels against her parents, drops out of school.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you take two guys, all of the things being equal, two brothers, one of whom goes to bed at 10:30 every night after working, and the other one who closes down the bar every night, especially that bar over there in Fairline where they use knives a lot, that this first, this first guy, he's gonna live generally a lot longer than the second one.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Generally, the law of retribution is true.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's why, as parents, you try to raise your children well, because generally, all of the things being equal, the good boy or good girl will do better than the bad boy or bad girl.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's also ultimately true, as you know, in the end, God says judgment will come.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: The person who's believed in me and my son Jesus for salvation, I'm gonna let them into heaven.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the person, the Christian who's obeyed me, I'm gonna give them rewards.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, it is absolutely 100% true.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: However, it is not always true.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many exceptions to this rule.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Charleston being one, my little two-year-old brother being one, and you can give me right now, if I ask you for testimonies, we could come up with a hundred stories of family members in here, of people who are innocent who suffered.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: They lost their job, they are not able to have children, they had got in a car wreck because somebody got drunk and ran over and ran into their car, killed a family member.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this stuff happens all the time, am I right?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that's when the curtain falls on chapters 2 through 37.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: We have come down to a place where we need God to appear, and thank the Lord He does.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we learn from the last five chapters of this book that when bad things happen to good people, good people learn to trust in God.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: So God does what Job's been demanding.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Job said, I demand that you come down here.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: I want to accuse you, I want to put you in the dock, and God comes down.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord answers Job from a whirlwind and said, Who is this that obscures my counsel with ignorant words?
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: First thing he's going to accuse Job of is being ignorant.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Job thinks he understands the doctrine of retribution.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow God's lost his moral compass.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's an ignorance to that, and there's an arrogance he's going to accuse him of.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: On what basis do you demand that the God of the universe come down and answer your questions?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, notice God says, you get ready to answer me like a man.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: When I question you, you inform me.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: When Herod said in Jesus Christ's superstar to Jesus, he said, walk across my swimming pool and then I'll believe you.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Did Jesus walk across his swimming pool?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Of course not, because God refuses to allow himself to be the defendant in the play.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: But God will always, always be in the place of the person who asks you questions.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so he asks, Where were you when I established the earth?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me if you have understanding.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Who fixed its dimensions?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly you know, if you know everything.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you know my moral compass is off, you must know things like this.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Who stretched the measuring?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Who support?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: Who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes on to say, Do you know anything about the morning and the night and the stars and the ocean which I put in place?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any idea about all these animals that I've created that I had loved so much, like the horse and this and that?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: And God just goes on to say, basically, you have no idea about the wideness of the universe and how small you are in it.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you think you understand because of something that's happened to you, that the whole universe is out of kelture, but I'm telling you, it's a beautiful universe, and there is a moral order which I'm not going to reveal to you.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to give you answers, but I am going to tell you that it is ignorant and arrogant for you to assume the worst and to demand that I answer you.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, notice, by the way, will you notice that God never ever condemns Job for the hard questions, for yelling at him?
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: I get really worried when someone, when someone who's had a Job-like thing happen to them when they're really pious, you know, you know, when they, oh, everything's fine.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think of Beth, doesn't live in town.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: Great Christian girl, grew up, went to Christian college, became a teacher in a Christian school, had two children, then at age 28, the Lord told her, or not the Lord told her, the doctor told her, You've got cancer and it's terminal.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you talk to her and she goes, Everything's great.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: I love Jesus, trust him.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: She sounded just like Job.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: We were only to find out later that insight, insight, that was on the surface, but insight, she was a swirling mass of anger and indignation and unresolved and so forth, and it just exploded one day.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: Just, just, just awful.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think that God really, really, really wants you to be honest with him.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you put on a front at church, that's one thing.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: That might be okay, but at home, make sure that you dump your hard questions on God.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure that you talk.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: One of my devotional uh books that I uh I have all these devotional books that I'll just grab and choose.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: One is by Saint Teresa of Avila, lived hundreds of years ago, Catholic nun or something, but she has a great story.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta quote to you.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: She's riding this donkey, true story, hundreds of years ago, and all of a sudden the donkey steps on a hole.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: She falls off hard in a mud puddle.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: She looks up at heaven, and if I can quote this right, she says, God, if you treat your friends this way, it's no wonder you have so many enemies.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I think God appreciates that, okay?
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think God condemns Job at all for the hard questions.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, but what he what he scores Job for is even while calling him a man of integrity, he says, you know what, you were ignorant.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't understand this thing about retribution.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: And not only that, you were arrogant to demand that somehow I answer you.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: After giving Job this picture of all the mysteries of the universe, then Job replies finally to the Lord.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: You ask, Who is this who conceals my counsel with ignorance?
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Surely I spoke about things I didn't understand, things too wonderful for me to know.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: I take back my words, I repent in dust and ashes.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's a righteous man who repents.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, the Lord says to Job's friends, you guys, low on compassion, high on glib answers, I'm really ticked at you.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: You better beg Job to pray for you.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: If Job prays for you, then I'll I'll let you go without squashing you.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: And they ask, Job, please pray for us.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: And Job prays for him.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean it's just really, really interesting.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: He puts Job in a place where they understand Job was right.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then he turns to Job and he says, The Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: 14,000 sheep.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Remember he had 7,000?
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: 6,000 camels.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Remember he had 3,000?
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thousand yoke of ox, thousand ox.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: He said 500 of each.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: Also, it's the Lord gave him seven sons and three daughters.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold, hold it, God.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: He had he lost seven sons and three daughters.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't you give him fourteen sons and six daughters?
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord says, because the first seven and three are still living.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: Unlike the cattle, unlike the sheep, unlike the oxen.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: See, Job ends up with double the children.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is a great way of letting us know that those first ten children were in heaven.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: After this, Job lived, having lived 70, he now lives another 140.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: He saw his children the fourth generation and he died old and full of years.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, friends, Job comes to realize that even though he's not given answers, he is given something more important.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: He is given God himself.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he learns that he can trust in God, even though he cannot trace what happened.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: He can trust.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: The one who brought it about.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Heard a voice, then it was God, and he had his friend with him.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the voice said, Aquinas, or Thomas, you have written so many good things you've done.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: He'd written pseudo theologica.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you, what would you like?
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Thomas's answer was, only you, Lord, only you.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you were asked, what do you want more than anything in life?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: What's at the center of your universe?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: What's really important to you?
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you wouldn't answer money.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you wouldn't answer family, even.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you wouldn't answer pleasure.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, a lot of people that you and I know would give answers something like that.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: Really love my car, my house.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Really love the ability to take vacations anywhere I want.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: Really love the fact I have children on my lap, grandchildren on my lap.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if there's anything, anything other than God that is at the center of your universe, then if that is removed from your universe, then your faith may go.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's only when you say, the only thing that is of supreme importance to me is you, God.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: That you can survive the question why when unjust suffering comes your way.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: Twila Paris, I think it was, saying it a long time ago.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: There are times she says, or I don't understand times I want to ask the question why.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: But then she says, Do I trust you, Lord?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: And she says to the Robin saying, Do I trust you, Lord?
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Does it rain in spring?
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: I would rather die than lose faith in the one I love.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: Most important single thing in life for those dear folks in Charleston and for you and for me is to understand that while suffering is a mystery, God is in charge of that mystery, and God gives us Himself.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so though the fig tree doesn't blossom, and though there are no grapes on the vines, no cattle in the stalls, no sheep in the field, yet we can rejoice in the Lord, we can trust in God our Savior.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: Our Father, we pray for those dear folks in Charleston, and I pray for folks right here who have lost their bank account or have no children on their lap or have lost dear friends or have a broken heart for any other reason and it doesn't seem to make sense, and they look up to you, and the heavens are brass, and there are no answers, and they can't figure out why you would allow something like this to happen.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: I pray for that person this morning that you would come to them, that you would surround them, hug them, enclose them in your arms in a way that they can actually feel and let them know as you whisper by the Spirit into their heart, I love you.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: I have always loved you.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: Just trust me.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.