[0:00] Hey, well, good morning. I want to invite you to turn with me, if you would please, to Job chapter 3.! We're continuing our study in this book, Job chapter 3.
[0:13] If you're using the Pew Bible, it's on page 418. Now, the challenge over the next six weeks is that we're going to cover 34 chapters in six weeks' time, which means that we have a lot of ground to cover, and it means that we're not going to be able to go as deep as we would, but we're going to cover these major themes that we see throughout this book and try to address them as those who are also sufferers and observe the things that were true about Job's life, the reason why his suffering was difficult for him, and how we, as sufferers, can learn from his example and follow in the steps of God.
[1:04] Now, those of you who used to sing old hymns may be familiar with the hymn by William Cowper that goes this way. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunge beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.
[1:24] A powerful song about the saving work of Christ, and something that William Cowper, through this song, will testify, happened for him, that the death of Christ, his giving of his body and his blood, his death and resurrection that claimed for him or purchased for William Cowper, and anyone who would come and confess their sins and believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior, the same kind of hope of salvation and relief and freedom from the bondage of sin and a future eternal life with God.
[2:04] But in spite of those strong words of God's saving grace in William Cowper's life, he was a man who experienced a turmoil of highs and lows of emotions.
[2:21] He was born in 1731. He died in 1800. His father was the rector of a village church, one of the pastors of a village church, and his mother died when he was only six years old.
[2:35] Just that crushing weight of loss as a youngster. And as a result, his father sent him to boarding school, which was a very negative time and season in William Cowper's life.
[2:49] He was relentlessly bullied by the older students, older boys in his boarding school. When he finally left the boarding school and he embarked on his occupation at age 32, he was about to be made the clerk of journals in the parliament.
[3:10] This would have been an amazing career advancement for him, but the pressure struck fear into William Cowper, and as a result of it, he had a complete mental breakdown.
[3:21] And he was committed to an insane asylum. Years would go by, and six months into that stay, Cowper would find a Bible.
[3:32] A Bible that was lying on a bench that he read about the story of Jesus. The story of Jesus, who you remember comes to the tomb of Lazarus, and there is Mary and Martha, and Jesus says to them, I'm the resurrection and the life.
[3:50] And as a result of the story of what Jesus had done in raising Lazarus to life, there was hope in William Cowper's heart that there could be freedom from this, this pressure and this bondage, and really this emotional death that he faced himself, and he could experience and enjoy this resurrection power as well.
[4:14] As a result, he says in his journal, he received strength to believe. He saw God's sufficiency, his shed blood in the fullness of his salvation, what Jesus offered through his son Jesus.
[4:32] Two years after Cowper would leave this institution, one of the most important friendships that he would have would be formed. A friendship with John Newton.
[4:45] Newton was a pastor of a church that William Cowper would attend, and Newton had lost his mother when he was six as well.
[4:56] So this formed an immediate connection, kindred hearts, as it were, who experienced a lot of the same pressures. And Newton, if you remember, was the man who wrote the song, Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound, That Saved a Wretch Like Me.
[5:15] He realized this, Newton did, through his experience of growing up with his father and being on a slave ship with his father in this business of trading slaves.
[5:25] When God rescued his heart and liberated him from that occupation and turned himself free to speak the word and to preach to others.
[5:39] Well, Cowper would go through highs and lows through his life and experience several more bouts of depression where there would be times in his life where he wanted to take his life. And Cowper entered his fourth deep depression in 1786 and again tried unsuccessfully to take his life.
[6:04] He becomes an example for us of a man who while had experienced the saving work of Christ in his life, he did also go through periods of deep emotion.
[6:16] And maybe you can identify, maybe you've been there. We're going to look this morning at the life of a godly man. Matter of fact, not just the life of a godly man, but in God's own commendation of Job, we find there in the second chapter that there was no one who was like Job.
[6:36] There was no one on the face of the earth like him, blameless and upright it says, who feared God and turned away from evil. And yet, and yet through all of the tragedy that Job would experience, we find the beginnings in Job chapter 3, a heart that begins to express itself in raw emotion.
[6:59] This suffocating sorrow and darkness begin to cloud his heart. In Job's case, this was a test of integrity, a test of loyalty to God, a test of devotion and worship.
[7:15] Would Job remain true? Of course, as we've looked at the life of Job, I just want to remind you in chapter 1 and chapter 2, up to this point at least, Job has remained faithful, his integrity intact.
[7:29] Even after losing his property, 7,000 sheep and 3,000 camels, and then 500 yoke of oxen and donkeys, and then the massive tidal wave of losing his family, seven sons and three daughters.
[7:45] This devastating blow and the sorrow upon sorrow that comes on Job's life. And yet, at the end of Job chapter 1, we find integrity intact. Verse 21 says this, Naked I came from my mother's womb.
[7:59] Naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And then this commentary, In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.
[8:16] So in chapter 2, we turn the page, and Satan is unsatisfied. He thinks that God is still holding out on him, and that there's one more test that Job needs to experience before he will truly lose his integrity and curse God and die.
[8:33] Give me his flesh. Let me inflict emotional and physical pain on him, and then it will be over, Satan thinks. And so Satan does. He's given permission by God.
[8:44] He goes out and inflicts this amazing disease on Job with oozing sores, infested with worms, blackened skin, swollen face, emaciated figure, unrecognizable to his friends.
[9:00] And yet, in Job chapter 2, verse 10, we find integrity intact. Shall we receive good from God and not evil, he says? In all this, Job did not sin with his lips.
[9:14] Which also, by the way, means that Job did not sin with his heart. Because out of the heart, the mouth speaks. And so Job, his integrity is intact. But now, in chapter 3, we're beginning to see kind of the cracks beginning to form.
[9:31] Job, who on an appointed day, his friends come for a visit. And this prolonged struggle and suffering that he's experiencing.
[9:43] And we're not given the number of days or weeks or months, but we get some clues as we look at the rest of the book. Job chapter 7, verse 3, says this, So I am allotted months of emptiness.
[9:56] Nights of misery are appointed to me. In chapter 29, verses 2 to 6, he says, Oh, that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me, when his lamp shone upon my head, and by his light I walked through darkness as I was in my prime, when the friendship of God was upon my tent, when the Almighty was yet with me and my children were all around me, when my steps were washed with butter and the rock poured out for me streams of oil.
[10:31] This was not a short suffering. This was a prolonged suffering. And you can better believe that God will get us to our breaking point.
[10:42] That's what he does in order for us to grow in our faith and dependence upon God. He gets us to the point of breaking. And for Job, there was no man like him on the earth.
[10:54] You can imagine that that prolonged suffering would have taken some time. Although we don't know the duration of time that we're talking about. But we do recognize that in especially the first couple of chapters, time has elapsed very quickly.
[11:11] So that even in one verse we find that an entire week has gone by. And what's going to follow is 34 chapters and 740 verses of this discourse that's taking place between Job and his friends.
[11:26] And I want us to just be reminded of the fact that it's not like we can just read through the book of Job and that would be the time that it would take for these discourses to happen.
[11:39] That there's some time that's taking place here. It's clear that the timeline of Job is much slower than just the course of interchange of counsel back and forth, the discussion that's happening.
[11:53] And Job here was near the Lord. So the intensity of his suffering and the duration of his suffering would have corresponded with his faith and his integrity.
[12:04] That's where we find ourselves this morning. We find ourselves in Job chapter 3. And so we shouldn't be surprised that now Job at his breaking point, now this raw emotion is going to burst through.
[12:16] And it's going to begin here in Job chapter 3. It's going to follow its way until we get to Job chapter 37 where God finally shows up in chapter 38 and begins to help inform this emotion that has been so raw and so real and so out there where now God will come in the midst of his silence and will help Job begin to see a better view of himself.
[12:42] So this morning we're going to look at Job's honest cry. Job's honest cry. And I want to begin to, I want to try to answer this question for us this morning.
[12:52] Is it okay to cry? And we're going to see through the course of our time together as we look at Job chapter 3 in particular that it is right.
[13:03] It is good. It is even godly for us to cry if we're crying in the right way. Let me read for us the first 10 verses as we jump into our study.
[13:14] It says, After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said, Let the day perish on which I was born and the night that said a man is conceived.
[13:26] Let that day be darkness. May God above not seek it nor light shine upon it. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it.
[13:37] Let the blackness of the day terrify it. That night let thick darkness seize it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it not come into the number of the months.
[13:48] Behold, let that night be barren. Let no joyful cry enter it. Let those curse it who curse the day who are ready to rouse up Leviathan.
[14:00] Let the stars of its dawn be dark. Let it hope for the light but not have any. Nor see the eyelids of the morning because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb nor hide trouble from my eyes.
[14:13] This cry of anguish, this cry of torment, this raw emotion that we see as Job is crying in front of his friends. We're going to find and look at two specific ways in which he complains.
[14:29] First, his first complaint in verses 1 to 10 is, I wish I was never born. I wish I was never born. Now, depending upon your generation, you might see this response of Job here in chapter 3 in one of two ways.
[14:49] Either you will see this as a healthy expression of one's real emotional struggles. We're coached in our culture today to let it all out, to be true to yourself, to make sure you don't hold back because we are our emotions and so we need to let our emotions, our true self, be known.
[15:09] That's what we hear in our culture today. Or, maybe you're coming from a different perspective and you see this outburst of emotion as entirely out of bounds.
[15:23] Maybe a departure from faith. Maybe the emergence of the cracks in Job's integrity or perhaps even that Job is expressing opposition to God's clear purposes in his life.
[15:37] Now, I want you to recognize that bad emotion, the opposite of bad emotion isn't no emotion. Rather, that God has designed us and we're going to see this in just a little bit that emotion is good.
[15:51] Emotion is godly if it's directing our hearts in a way that helped us strengthen our faith in God. In these verses we encounter some strong emotion, wouldn't you say?
[16:06] Job lets it all hang out. He is speaking as a man who is under incredible anguish. Verse 1, Cursed be the day of my birth.
[16:17] Verse 3, Let that day perish. Verse 7, Behold, let that night be barren. This word curse, by the way, is not the same word for curse that we've seen in the previous two chapters but it's a different word that draws attention to light and not the color light but that to take something to be light.
[16:40] That it has no value. That it's worthless. It's the opposite of glory or worthiness. It's that which is worthless. Let that day be worthless.
[16:50] It may not ever be counted or considered. Of course, this is easy for us to understand. Simply, I wish I was never born.
[17:02] And then he actually backs up at the end of that verse, verse 1 and he says, actually, let me take that back. I wish I was never conceived. I wish I was never even existed in any way.
[17:17] Job wants it to be over. It's clear. So much though that he wishes his life never began in the first place. And it's clear that he's in utter anguish and he describes that anguish now in terms that we can see where he talks about light and dark.
[17:37] And from verses 4 to 6 he will use darkness, the word darkness five times and different words for darkness. Five different terms for darkness we see to describe the gravity of the situation that he's feeling.
[17:51] In verse 4 he said he longed for the day to be turned to darkness. Let that day be darkness. And then a different word in verse 4 or verse 5 it talks about deep shadows.
[18:05] Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. And then a different word at the end of verse 5 this word for blackness. Let the blackness of day terrify it.
[18:16] And then in verse 6 thick darkness that it would seize the night. Let thick darkness seize it. You know it's significant that Job will use and paint this picture between light and dark because if you remember going all the way back to the beginning of Genesis that by the way wasn't written yet for him but this word of God let there be light.
[18:42] And so Job in saying let that day be turned to night essentially is Lord reverse all of the creative order on that day so that I don't exist anymore. Just undo it entirely.
[18:55] Let it be forgotten. Let it not even be considered. May light my light the light of my life be turned to darkness. This of course is the way that suffering is often described right?
[19:09] We talk about we can't see the light of day or we talk about the glimmer of hope that's gone or we talk the darkness that presses in or we talk about the dark clouds of depression that have kind of taken over taken hold of us.
[19:25] Here Job expresses what's on his heart. and I want us to understand that while he expresses emotion that is raw and seemingly unfiltered and for those of us of the older generation might begin to think well Job is just kind of losing it right now and he is sinning against God but I want you to recognize that he has not yet accused God of wrongdoing.
[19:52] He's not accused God of wrongdoing. He's not blasphemed God in any way and we know that especially because of the accounting of Job's life at the end of the book by God himself.
[20:05] This raw emotion this deep anguish and it raises some questions right? It raises some questions for us is it appropriate to express our emotion in this way?
[20:19] Did Job's integrity just take a hit because of this raw emotion this outburst of feeling that comes now out into the open? And I want to just briefly pull away from Job chapter 3 to try to answer that question what does the Bible say about emotion?
[20:37] What does the Bible say about our emotion? There's several things I want to work through briefly this morning but we can't cover it all and I want to just commend to you this book I'm going to put a picture of this book on the screen it's called Untangling Emotion it's by Alistair Groves and Winston Smith we have a few more copies in the resource center I would commend it to you it provides a much fuller discourse of this subject that we can cover this morning but in there in this book we find the clues that we find in scripture that help inform us in our emotion first God made us as emotional creatures God made you and God made me as emotional creatures and it teaches that we are the indispensable part of our human nature is that our relationship with God must be built on some kind of emotion we get to the first in great commandment right we're gonna get there in just a little bit to love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind with all your strength your emotion is a critical feature of your relationship with God and that should not be a surprise to us because we're made in
[22:08] God's image and so he built in us and wove in us this emotional part that is meant not to take us away from him but is meant to lead us towards him and not just that it's meant to be a comfort and encouragement to the people around us as we're expressing the kind of right godly emotion that reflects the image of God to them like we rejoice with those who rejoice we weep with those who weep why do we do that because we have a weeping God we have a God who is the God of all comfort we have a God who cares he was moved with compassion we saw that through Christ's ministry and so emotions are an essential way that we bear out the image of God to to this world now I want you all to understand that you are an emotional person and you might say wait a second I'm pretty steady I'm kind of stable
[23:09] I'm not an emotional person except when you're behind somebody who cut you off who's going too slow who's not making the turn who's on their phone they are distracted or they went through the light because they're not paying attention and all of a sudden emotion comes through right what are they doing now it's not the same kind of emotion perhaps that you would think it's not the weeping or the crying or the compassion but it's emotion nonetheless that frustration that anger that flash of emotion that you might feel fear and anger and frustration and sadness are emotions too along with joy and happiness and gratitude and love and so you are an emotional person because God made you that way and so it's not to tamp down that emotion but to point that emotion in the right way and to steer it so that
[24:10] God is glorified through our emotional responses second our emotion needs to be evaluated our emotion needs to be evaluated you see not all negative emotion is bad and not all positive emotion is good for example I just quoted this already rejoice with those who rejoice weep with those who weep we might consider that weeping is kind of a negative emotion and we don't really want to weep we want to kind of pass over that but you understand that the command is in place so that we can not just express the heart of God towards people who are struggling but so that we can so that we can grow in our own compassion and unify the body as you are sympathizing with their circumstances it's a way to unify it's a way to strengthen the connection that God has made among us because of the work of Christ you see not all negative emotions are bad but they can be a signpost to us of something deeper inside and just the same way all positive emotions aren't good that sometimes the fact that we're happy about the good things that are happening in our life actually distract us we think about the happy things the gifts that God has given to us rather than thinking about the giver of those gifts we can celebrate those good things those great promises those great blessings that we enjoy and they can completely derail us from thinking about the giver of those gifts so happiness can be negative as well third we need to understand that emotion reveals our worship emotion reveals what we worship emotion really is like lights on a dashboard those of you who are interested in that it's meant to indicate what's happening beneath the surface and that emotion whether it's good or bad tells you what's happening deep down inside it is that indicator that helps you know what you worship what you enjoy what makes you afraid what you value and so every emotion that you've ever felt reflects what you love it reflects what you worship and that's why we need to steer our desires that's why
[26:44] James talks about in James chapter 4 it talks about where does war and conflict come from you it comes from the desires that are in you that rage against yourself and so those desires those emotions those expectations that we have reflect what's truly important to us and so we need to steer that emotion that's why Deuteronomy 6 verses 4 and 5 hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your might and so as we steer our emotion we steer our loves we steer our affections we steer our desires in the way of God then we point ourselves to the kind of worship that exalts him that's appropriate that's pure that's right we are to the mentality of our being which includes our emotions fourth emotion is meant to lead us to
[27:47] God emotion is meant to lead us to God it's meant to strengthen your faith to help you wrestle with your feelings and put them in alignment with the truth that we find from scripture and by the way God is big enough to handle your emotions God God is he knows what they are anyway!
[28:09] And so when we express our emotions to God he is big enough to hear them and to respond and he responds of course through his word right so even those strong raw and unfiltered emotions that we might have he doesn't expect us to try to refine them he doesn't want us to fix ourselves and then come to him no no emotions are meant to lead us to God so that he can fix our emotions he can help direct and inform our emotions it is God's design that great suffering brings great sorrow and in our sorrow in our suffering that emotion is meant to lead us to the only one who's able to help us in the midst of sorrow and suffering the longer the suffering the harder the struggle will be and so we have this story of Job and finally in Job chapter 3
[29:10] Job is at his breaking point and by the way that is really good news for us it's bad for Job it's good for us because if the story had stopped at Job then the rest of us who have real unfiltered emotions and we don't experience nearly the pain that Job experienced was like well there's no hope for me but now we get this breakthrough this glimpse of what really truly godly people will do at times and Job here responds in this first ten verses I wish I had never been born and now moving into verses 11 to 19 he changes it a bit but it has the same outcome I wish I was dead I wish I let me read this for us it says why did I not die at birth come out from the womb and expire why did the knees receive me or why the breast that I should nurse for then I would have lain down and been quiet
[30:10] I would have slept then I would have been at rest I would have with the kings and with counselors of the earth who rebuilt the ruins for themselves or why was I not hidden as a stillborn child as infants who never see the light there the wicked cease from troubling and there the weary are at rest there the prisoners are at ease together they hear not the voice of the task master the small and the great are there and the slave is free from his master Job continues this raw emotion and he sees that death is the answer in his mind he believes that if he were not to be alive anymore he would finally be at rest but there's a problem of course with Job's thinking the problem is that he lacked information he lacked special revelation he lacked the truth he didn't have
[31:13] God's word he didn't have the scripture he didn't have any knowledge of life after death you see God had been silent up to this point God had not spoken in a way or written truth down in a way that could be passed on to others but all the truth that they would have would be truth that was observable truths that were established from the beginning things that they would see like in creation or the fall or the flood or the tower of babel these are the observable truths that they would know about the almighty the creator of all is used so extensively throughout the book of Job that God punishes sin they would have known that from the story of Noah but also that he rescues his people that God delights in proper sacrifices they would have known that through the story of Abel and the story of Noah that God will not tolerate improper worship but there was no testimony or observable evidence of life after death in their estimation when somebody died that was the end they didn't return it was over for them and that's what comes through in these words
[32:29] Job's main problem here is a faulty inaccurate view of life after death in his mind it's a place of rest notice for then I would have lain down and been quiet I would have slept I would have been at rest there in verse 13 he also sees the grave as the great equalizer notice in verse 14 he'll take his place with kings and counselors in verse 15 he'll take his place with the wealthy princes in verse 17 he also takes his place with the wicked who are experiencing the consequences of their actions but they're at rest and then in verse 18 he'll take his place with prisoners who are finally there's no more burden there's just freedom and rest in Job's mind and Job's thinking to be dead is to end suffering for everyone regardless of your lot in life regardless of your posture towards
[33:33] God and so Job's faulty theology influenced his emotion influenced his emotion by the way it's the same way with Job's wife what does she say curse God and die curse as if cursing God had no consequences after the grave right or Job's friends there's there's three examples that I'll give to you but there's an abundance of examples as you read through the book chapter 4 verse 20 Eliphaz says this between morning and evening they are beaten to pieces speaking of wicked people they perish forever without anyone regarding it Bill dead in chapter 8 verse 22 says those who hate you will be clothed with shame and the tent of the wicked will be no more in chapter 11 verse 20 Zophar says the eyes of the wicked will fail all way of escape will be lost to them and their hope is to breathe their last as if the wicked have no consequences after the grave that was the that was the the going knowledge that was that was the wisdom of the day but of course knowledge informs emotion knowledge informs emotion
[34:49] I was just remembering and I think I may have shared this story before many many many years ago when I was in college and we were down in Cincinnati we were sharing the gospel and somebody came up behind me and they choked me out and then they held something sharp against the back of my ribs and they said give me all your money and I didn't respond I was just kind of like why is this guy doing this and the reason I was unresponsive is because I was looking at the face of a friend who was observing the situation there was no panic on their face I was informed about the situation as if I were looking in a mirror so I knew I didn't have anything to worry about I was just kind of wondering why in the world is this person behind me being so rough emotion is the same way and as we look at the face of God and we see that God and know that God is in control and we recognize that he is good and we know that he is just and we know that vengeance is the
[35:55] Lord that he will repay and we look at his face and we say he knows what's best we look at his face and that will help condition our emotions to respond in our situation in a way that expresses faith in him so I want to just spend the last few moments very quickly how can my emotion lead me to God how can my emotion lead me to God and we could cover a number of verses throughout the book of Job where we see Job's emotion coming out in Job chapter 9 verse 21 he says I hate my life and in Job chapter 10 verse 1 he starts with I hate my life in Job chapter 10 verse 18 he says why did you bring me out from the womb this continuing narrative of Job and the burden on his heart but we also need to understand that of all the people in the
[36:55] Old Testament Job is one of three that God commends Ezekiel 14 14 says this even if these three men Noah Daniel and Job were in it they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness declares the Lord God and I and I set that right here at the forefront so we can understand that what we're seeing and reading about Job this raw emotion and expression is coming from man that God commends as one of the three most righteous men in all the Old Testament okay he stands in good company so when we think about emotions and how we engage emotions we need to understand this and I and I put these two quotes in your outline they're important enough for you to see for yourself it says engaging emotions without engaging God is a recipe for disaster our emotions are fundamentally designed to force us to engage God and the lie is that we can and should deal with our emotions apart from bringing them to the
[38:02] Lord that's a lie that's a lie from the pit of hell it will lead to ruin and disaster for you if you're going to deal with your emotions rightly you need to deal with them by taking them to God the next our hope is not in a system or strategies it's not in all those self help kind of how to kind of fix it process our hope is in God it's not in the strategies we can enact sorry let me back up our hope is not in a system of strategies that we can enact but in a savior!
[38:38] in shepherd! in ever present help in time of need who sees us knows us loves us and actually has the power right here and right now to help us with the turmoil of our hearts so what do we do how do we engage our emotions first and this should be easy read your Bible engage your emotions by engaging God and you engage God through the word of God and of course you engage God through prayer our hearts are shaped by God's word and Jesus as the word of God made flesh the living word himself so when we engage the word of God we inform our heart on the truths of God it helps to steer and align our emotions appropriately and when we come to God with our emotions we encounter God himself in his word we come to know who he is we we come to recognize that he that he is over all of the hard things of our life and we can trust him second cultivate good negative emotions cultivate good negative emotions time out wait a second good and negative they don't fit together what is going on here and
[40:03] I want us to understand just just briefly that there are a lot of negative emotions and and because because God is over our emotions he can take our doubt he can take our anger can take our fears he can take our anxieties he can take all of those negative emotions that we feel and when we entrust those negative emotions to him it informs us some!
[40:30] God and the psalmists do this all the time by the way it's called lament and I know our students went through a whole study on lament not long ago but lament is an honest impassioned expression of sorrow frustration or confusion lament makes or names a loss or injustice and the impact it has had but it also embraces the truth about God that steadies the heart in the midst of those really negative emotions so when you feel like you've been treated unfairly and you feel that sense of anger and frustration that you've not been treated well you take that emotion to God and God is like hey listen remember remember that vengeance is mine that I will repay says the Lord and so you take that negative emotion to God and your heart is informed about who God really is and you say okay
[41:31] I can trust you I can trust you that you are a God who is just that you are a God who is pure that you are a God who is present and I can trust you to deal with this injustice better than God or you take your hurt to God and you remind of the fact that God is the God of all comfort that he is the God of all grace that God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and so you are like yeah right I don't have to be grieving I don't have to be sorrowful I don't have to feel hopeless because God is present in the midst of the pain that I am experiencing and it is meant to draw me closer to him take or cultivate good negative emotions take those negative emotions give them to God and let God turn those emotions into faith third cling to corporate worship cling to corporate worship you see if our emotions tell us what we worship what we value then when you're feeling weak!
[42:44] about your emotions and they want to drive you away from God himself and you need to cling to corporate worship where strong believers mature believers who are experiencing the benefits of God's kindness you can be strengthened by their faith and you can be informed to worship God like they're worshiping God I love 1 Thessalonians 5 14 it says and we urge you brothers admonish the idle encourage the faint hearted help the weak be patient with them all and so your heart of worship is being informed by the people of worship around you and you're also being encouraged and strengthened through God's people as well fourth and finally watch for God on the move because God is God is active God is moving and so when God is working and moving through the lives of others and they're celebrating God's victories in their lives you can see it may not be happening for you but you're seeing it in others and you're reminded of the fact that God is in control that God is victorious that God is able to do what is impossible and so you stake your claim in the work of
[44:00] God even through others to encourage your heart when things are hard and of course we need to be reminded of the fact and I don't have this in your notes but we need to be reminded of the fact that Jesus was a man of emotion Jesus was a man of emotion we get the perfect glimpse the perfect image the perfect model an example of God who is showing emotion through Jesus Christ we see Jesus who is moved with compassion his heart is carried and led by this love for others and it moves him to activity we see Jesus who was moved with pity or even moved with sorrow as he's riding into Jerusalem this triumphal entry and Jesus there he is where he should have been celebrating but he's riding into Jerusalem where the only thing on his mind is what's happening at the end of the week and the rejection of the people towards him and he's weeping in the midst of celebration his emotion over the things that were right not caught up in the moment but driven by right and godly emotion for those people right there who were celebrating his entry and of course
[45:21] Jesus was moved with emotion and zeal to cleanse the temple but Jesus and we're going to celebrate this remembrance this morning but Jesus is moved with emotion this sorrow on the night before he was crucified in Matthew chapter 26 verse 38 it says this then he said to them speaking of Jesus to his disciples my soul is very sorrowful even to death sorrowful even to death does that sound a little like Job he says remain here and watch with me in prayer Jesus his heart his emotion comes out on that evening but he was carried by emotion he could have been undone by the emotion of that moment that sorrow but Jesus was carried by emotion because the joy that was set before him he endured the cross it was emotion and obedience and love for
[46:23] God the father not my will but yours be done that emotion carried him through the hardest circumstances emotion is good if that motion is aligned to the truth of God's word I trust that God will help us grow in our emotion if you are normally steady and align your emotion to God through the informed truth of scripture for those of you who find your emotions all over the place but this morning we remember our emotional savior who died for us and as I pray I'm going to ask the men if they come forward we're going to observe communion together Lord we praise you for your son Jesus Christ who was the perfect picture of right and godly emotion it was raw at times it was extremely extreme at times it was sorrowful it was delighted it was full of joy and yet it was all trained and aligned to the truth of the word of
[47:37] God and in harmony with the father's will and god I pray that you would help us as those who are emotional creatures to live the same way we pray in Jesus name amen