WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.440 But before we begin, I need to confess my own sins and I do that. 00:00:07.919 --> 00:00:12.960 I know that over this last week or two I've been far too busy spinning too many plates 00:00:14.320 --> 00:00:19.519 and it's not praiseworthy as sometimes we think being busy is. It's just bad planning 00:00:20.240 --> 00:00:27.920 and it's sometimes very often in our lives just pride at work. Either people pleasing or thinking 00:00:27.920 --> 00:00:32.480 that no one else can do what I have to do and that's never healthy and that's never good. 00:00:34.400 --> 00:00:38.960 And I recognize therefore that I haven't been doing as much as I should be doing here in the 00:00:38.960 --> 00:00:46.719 congregation and so I ask for forgiveness for you for that and probably about 70% of the congregation 00:00:46.719 --> 00:00:53.840 today are not ordinarily the congregation but you can still forgive me okay even though you're not 00:00:53.840 --> 00:01:00.160 normally here. And also this time of year is an instant time because I mentally I get tired 00:01:01.120 --> 00:01:07.120 and traditionally because we're great traditionalists in the free church I use this time of year for 00:01:07.120 --> 00:01:14.640 reflection and for planning and as part of that I use old sermons rather than create new ones. 00:01:16.480 --> 00:01:21.520 Now I've been a minister for nearly 30 years so I've got a good back stock of sermons probably 00:01:21.519 --> 00:01:29.280 about 2000 or so that I've actually still got. I could barely find two sermons for this week 00:01:29.280 --> 00:01:35.920 and for next Sunday night that were worth repeating. That's what happens when you're a minister. 00:01:37.199 --> 00:01:42.159 Why is that? Because you need to feel them you know. You can't just get up and it's not like 00:01:43.039 --> 00:01:47.840 forgive me for all the lecturers here. It's not just like a lecture okay. It's not just like you're 00:01:47.840 --> 00:01:55.600 just passing on information historically or currently. You need to feel a sermon. You need to 00:01:55.600 --> 00:02:00.800 be comfortable with it. You need to believe that it's the message that God wants the people that 00:02:00.800 --> 00:02:07.359 you preach to you on that particular day to hear. So it took a long time. I would have probably been 00:02:07.359 --> 00:02:18.080 quicker preparing new sermons. However eventually I came back to revisit Job. It's not a long time ago. 00:02:18.080 --> 00:02:23.680 Not too old these sermons. I did them a few years ago and if you remember them then you need to just 00:02:23.680 --> 00:02:30.800 again put that out of your mind and if you haven't heard them then God be praised for that. But maybe 00:02:30.800 --> 00:02:38.400 today this is the message that God wants you to hear even if you heard it before. Maybe you need 00:02:38.400 --> 00:02:44.640 to hear it more today and I know certainly I needed to hear it more today. Because the question of 00:02:44.640 --> 00:02:52.160 suffering is a really huge issue in many people's lives and it's a question that's addressed in a 00:02:52.160 --> 00:03:00.480 majestic mysterious yet revealing way in the book of Job. Job is a great man of faith in the old 00:03:00.479 --> 00:03:08.239 Testament. He's a believer and he trusts in God and he follows God. And yet radically bad things 00:03:08.239 --> 00:03:16.639 happen to Job. He loses his health, he loses his wealth, he loses his family and ultimately he loses 00:03:16.639 --> 00:03:26.239 really his friends as well who are sickened by his challenging of God for what God has done 00:03:26.240 --> 00:03:33.439 in his life. And this book of Job in the Old Testament is all about wrestling with God. 00:03:35.680 --> 00:03:40.000 It's about wrestling with his spiritual mentors, the people that were supposed to be 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:46.719 encouraging him and building him up. It's about wrestling with his wife and her challenge to him 00:03:46.719 --> 00:03:55.840 to curse God and die. And it's wrestling with himself about who he is and about why me? Why am 00:03:55.840 --> 00:04:00.400 I going through this suffering? I thought if I was a believer in God and I followed God that 00:04:00.400 --> 00:04:06.319 there would be blessing, life would be good, things would be acceptable and enjoyable. And that's not 00:04:06.319 --> 00:04:14.000 his experience. And what we find is that after this time of great wrestling, God answers, we looked 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:20.240 at the little first bit of that, that God answers them in chapters 30 to 41, an astonishing divine 00:04:20.240 --> 00:04:30.639 soliloquy where God speaks absolutely not in the way you expect. He answers the question of suffering 00:04:30.639 --> 00:04:38.160 not in the way you would expect. It's a book. The book of Job is a book like no other in the world 00:04:39.759 --> 00:04:44.960 within even the Bible. And I guess we're cheating today a little bit because I'm taking you right 00:04:44.960 --> 00:04:49.680 to the end. It's worth taking time to go through the book of Job, but I'm going to write to the 00:04:49.680 --> 00:04:57.519 end. And so we're doing a Job spoiler really. So I'm taking you right to the end, to the end of the 00:04:57.519 --> 00:05:03.680 story and seeing what the answer is. And it's not what you expect. It's not what I expect. Because 00:05:03.680 --> 00:05:11.600 the answer in many ways isn't scripted in Job. For all of us, Job included here, it needs to be 00:05:11.600 --> 00:05:17.519 experienced. The answer that we get at the end of Job is about his experience of meeting with the 00:05:17.519 --> 00:05:24.639 living God. And that's something we all need to do, because the response of Job and the response of 00:05:24.639 --> 00:05:36.079 God that he gives are really unsatisfactory until you feel it in your heart, until you meet the God 00:05:36.079 --> 00:05:42.159 that he speaks about, until you know why Job responds the way he does, and then it all begins to make 00:05:42.160 --> 00:05:48.000 sense. So for a few minutes, we're going to look at some of these aspects of particularly that last 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:54.720 section in Job chapter 42, Job's own response. And I've called it a shock of repentance, and 00:05:54.720 --> 00:05:59.840 repentance is just another word for turning back, turning and facing God, having been turned away 00:05:59.840 --> 00:06:05.680 from God in our thinking and our lives. So if you're struggling with God, or with the thought of 00:06:05.680 --> 00:06:10.400 God, or with the thought of faith, or as a Christian struggling with suffering, with health issues, 00:06:10.399 --> 00:06:16.799 with family issues, with life, with worship, then I hope that you'll find that God's word will speak 00:06:17.439 --> 00:06:22.639 into your situation and into mine. Can I know in the first place that there's no change, 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:30.560 absolutely no change in Job's circumstances at this point? He's still sitting in the gutter 00:06:31.359 --> 00:06:37.039 in his experiences with suicidal realities all around him. He's still lost everything, 00:06:37.040 --> 00:06:45.280 including his dignity, his health, his well-being, his prestige, his standing in the community, 00:06:45.280 --> 00:06:54.320 his respect of others. He's lost it all. But there's a massive heart change in Job that we find here. 00:06:55.120 --> 00:07:02.160 He sees himself completely differently to how he had previously seen himself as he argued with God 00:07:02.160 --> 00:07:09.920 and wrestled with God and shook his fist at God. There's a massive heart change. He is in dust and 00:07:09.920 --> 00:07:15.920 ashes physically, but also metaphorically or spiritually, because that was a phrase that was 00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:23.040 often used for people who turned back in sorrow and in humility to the living God. 00:07:23.920 --> 00:07:27.440 And so there's something very important there, even just by way of introduction, is that 00:07:27.439 --> 00:07:35.759 the big change in his life is not circumstantial. It's not on his out what's happening outside of 00:07:35.759 --> 00:07:42.399 him. And that's very important because so often we look for changes in our circumstances to change 00:07:42.399 --> 00:07:48.240 the way we think about God. And yet what we find here is that Job's circumstances at this point 00:07:48.240 --> 00:07:56.800 haven't changed. The huge change is internal. It's in his own heart. And as God spoke to him and he 00:07:56.800 --> 00:08:04.240 turned and faced God, he saw things very differently. He sensed his own unworthiness. He sensed that his 00:08:04.240 --> 00:08:11.680 own speech had not been right before God in his own eyes. What brought this change? Why did he change? 00:08:12.240 --> 00:08:19.280 What brought this radical transformation in the attitude and the thinking and the heart of Job? 00:08:19.279 --> 00:08:31.439 And the answer is it was all about knowing God's presence rather than persuasion of facts. 00:08:33.199 --> 00:08:38.799 It was all about meeting with the living God. It was about the presence of God. 00:08:38.799 --> 00:08:46.000 See, there's been 33 chapters of arguments to and from between Job and the three guys that come 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:51.039 and try and persuade him, this is what's happening. You must have done something wrong, God punishing 00:08:51.039 --> 00:08:56.000 you. And all these things, the theological arguments that they go through and the right and the wrong 00:08:56.000 --> 00:09:03.200 and the yes and the no. And these arguments are really not insignificant. They have their purpose. 00:09:04.080 --> 00:09:11.200 But what he craved, what he needed was a personal revelation of the living God. 00:09:11.200 --> 00:09:17.840 What he needed was to meet with the living God as God spoke to him, the words that God spoke 00:09:18.400 --> 00:09:25.920 in the context of coming from the person of God, the reality of God. We see that in different 00:09:25.920 --> 00:09:32.400 places in Luke chapter 8, 5 verse 8. We see it with Simon Peter, one of Jesus' disciples. But when 00:09:32.400 --> 00:09:38.240 Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees saying, depart from me, for I am a sinful man of 00:09:38.240 --> 00:09:46.480 Lord. It was just meeting with Jesus Christ in his power in a miraculous way that changed his whole 00:09:46.480 --> 00:09:55.440 concept. We see also with this, a lot of these are manly men, okay? Job was a manly man. So was Peter, 00:09:55.440 --> 00:10:01.360 a fisherman. And now the Roman soldiers in John chapter 18. Remember in the garden when he was 00:10:01.360 --> 00:10:05.840 about to be, Jesus was about to be arrested, Jesus knowing that all that would happen to him came 00:10:05.840 --> 00:10:10.000 forward and he said to them, who do you seek? And these soldiers, professional guys, these killers, 00:10:10.560 --> 00:10:14.639 they answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus said to him, I am he. Judas who betrayed him was 00:10:14.639 --> 00:10:18.879 standing with him. When Jesus said that, I am he. They drew back and fell to the ground. 00:10:19.920 --> 00:10:27.040 Now these are not Keystone cops we're talking about. These are the elite army of the day. 00:10:28.240 --> 00:10:33.920 And they were ready to arrest Jesus Christ and they fall back to the ground because there was, 00:10:33.919 --> 00:10:41.839 it seems that there was this just revelation of who he was in front of them. And Revelation 117, 00:10:41.839 --> 00:10:47.039 also at the end, when I saw him, John said, I fell at his feet as though dead. He was right on me 00:10:47.039 --> 00:10:55.679 saying, fear not, I'm the first and the last. It's that sense of God as God, overwhelmingly powerful 00:10:55.679 --> 00:11:04.799 that changes how Job sees his experiences. Because I believe he also understands, 00:11:06.559 --> 00:11:12.879 this is slightly conjecture, okay? But let me go with it, because I think it's significant. He 00:11:12.879 --> 00:11:22.319 understands God's voice that we have in this chapter 38, 41. When we read, excuse me, when we 00:11:22.320 --> 00:11:28.320 read Scripture, we don't get the tone, we don't get the intonation, and we don't get the beauty 00:11:28.960 --> 00:11:32.640 that must have been revealed in God's voice. We miss that. One day we will. 00:11:35.040 --> 00:11:43.280 But it's significant that when these sections where God speaks, it doesn't strike terror into Job, 00:11:44.400 --> 00:11:51.440 it strikes wonder and amazement and humility. And that must be something to do not just with 00:11:51.440 --> 00:11:59.600 what God said, but the way he spoke as a father to his child. In other words, Job's big question was, 00:11:59.600 --> 00:12:05.200 why isn't God answering me? Why isn't he speaking to me? Where is God if God is real? And 00:12:07.440 --> 00:12:16.960 in God's response, Job knows his complaints have been heard. He's hearing the voice of a father 00:12:16.960 --> 00:12:23.840 who's love and who's grace he senses, and who by his speech in these chapters 00:12:25.280 --> 00:12:34.480 calms his fears and gives him a new perspective. That's what happens when by faith we wrestle with 00:12:34.480 --> 00:12:48.480 God. He's not a tyrant, he's not a distant, disengaged creator God. He is our father, as believers, 00:12:48.480 --> 00:12:55.279 we come to him, and in our wrestling he speaks to us, and he assures us of his love. 00:12:57.279 --> 00:13:01.759 And that changed, because that changed Job because it was about presence more than persuasion. 00:13:01.759 --> 00:13:08.879 And therefore, his response is one that shocks us and challenges us in our understanding of God. 00:13:08.879 --> 00:13:20.639 He comes very much to his senses. He recognizes who God is and who he is in relation to God. 00:13:20.639 --> 00:13:27.200 I have heard of you by the years, but now my eye see you. He's saying that he's come to his senses. 00:13:27.200 --> 00:13:32.800 He's heard who God is, and he's heard what God has said, and he's saying, 00:13:32.800 --> 00:13:40.320 now with the eye of faith, I can see God differently, and I can hear God differently. 00:13:41.920 --> 00:13:49.920 And that's so significant in our spiritual lives. It's not just an audible hearing and a visual 00:13:49.920 --> 00:13:55.920 seeing of God, because, you know, we can't see God, and Jesus is risen to heaven. But it's with the 00:13:55.919 --> 00:14:02.719 eye of faith that we are to see things differently, and it's with a spiritual hearing that we hear 00:14:02.719 --> 00:14:08.319 things differently. There's different senses, in other words. It's not just about what we hear with 00:14:08.319 --> 00:14:15.839 our ears physically and what we see with our eyes physically. Life is more than just the physical, 00:14:16.799 --> 00:14:23.039 the auditory and the visual. There is a spiritual dimension, and Job very clearly is coming 00:14:23.039 --> 00:14:31.120 to see God by faith in this response that he gives. And therefore, he returns to God. 00:14:32.719 --> 00:14:40.639 I despise it. I repent in this nation, and repentance is simply that word for turning back 00:14:41.439 --> 00:14:48.319 towards God. It's the most remarkable verse in the Bible, I think. It's also one of the most 00:14:48.320 --> 00:14:58.400 expensive verses in the Bible that he turns back to the living God, having lost everything. 00:14:58.400 --> 00:15:07.040 He still trusts in God's goodness and God's grace. There's no recoil as he responds to this amazing, 00:15:07.040 --> 00:15:13.760 powerful revelation that God gives in these chapters, but it's an awe that attracts him to 00:15:13.759 --> 00:15:22.720 God. He feels free, in other words, to confess his wild words and his raging doubt and his lack of 00:15:22.720 --> 00:15:29.200 knowledge. God isn't attirent to him, and he doesn't need to be nice and polite and correct and 00:15:29.200 --> 00:15:37.919 theologically astute and full of faith to go into God's presence. He knows that God is pleased to 00:15:37.919 --> 00:15:43.679 hear all his complaints and his cries and his doubts and his fears and expressions of lack of knowledge, 00:15:45.199 --> 00:15:51.439 because he's come to recognize and is confident in God's mercy. That as he goes to the living God, 00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:57.039 he knows that he can turn back to God and God will accept him, that forgiveness for him 00:15:57.919 --> 00:16:02.159 is full and free. He's in a safe place. You know, we talk about that today a lot, 00:16:02.159 --> 00:16:07.360 you know, safe spaces. You want a place to be a safe space where you can save what you want. 00:16:08.159 --> 00:16:13.199 Well, he knows that in God's presence it's a safe space. It's where he can express himself, 00:16:13.199 --> 00:16:17.839 but also where he knows that in his folly and his weakness and his sin and his doubts and his 00:16:17.839 --> 00:16:26.159 struggles, he can come back and realize there's forgiveness, full and free. He's confident 00:16:26.159 --> 00:16:33.919 of that. There's a real redemptive reality here. He may still feel in the gutter physically. He may 00:16:35.199 --> 00:16:43.600 recognize that his arrogance as he sees it is misguided before God, but he also knows the company 00:16:43.600 --> 00:16:51.439 here and the companionship of the living God and that's transformative. That's what he needed most, 00:16:51.440 --> 00:16:58.800 and that's what in our suffering and in our lack of understanding of why we suffer and struggle 00:16:58.800 --> 00:17:03.200 in battle with different things, that's what we need most. I'm not saying there's not lots of 00:17:03.200 --> 00:17:08.320 arguments and for the atheist the problem of suffering is just as real as it is and more real 00:17:08.960 --> 00:17:14.320 than it is for the Christian in many ways. However, it's not simply philosophical reasons 00:17:14.319 --> 00:17:22.319 and arguments that will persuade us through battles and struggles. It's to know that we are still loved. 00:17:23.919 --> 00:17:30.000 That's what really matters. It's to know that we are loved through that and that he is not left us 00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:37.839 or abandoned us, but there is a reason for what he has done, but he will not let us go and he 00:17:37.839 --> 00:17:46.639 willingly speaks as a father into our experience for our great good. 00:17:48.480 --> 00:17:53.199 So he returns to God and we recognize and we see through this 00:17:57.759 --> 00:18:06.559 almost template reality of suffering that is expressed here. What God, a curtain is pulled 00:18:06.559 --> 00:18:11.759 back into the unseen things in many ways of suffering, but what we see is right from the 00:18:11.759 --> 00:18:18.000 beginning of the book to the end of the book, God is showing himself not only to be a father, 00:18:18.879 --> 00:18:27.039 but also to be the one who gifts a faith that overcomes suffering and death into eternal life. 00:18:27.039 --> 00:18:34.960 That's what we see here. It's a kind of template for much of the mystery and many of the questions 00:18:34.960 --> 00:18:39.840 we ask about suffering and about the chaos of the world in which we live as Christians. 00:18:40.640 --> 00:18:45.120 He's saying that, okay, you don't need all the answers to that suffering right now, 00:18:45.759 --> 00:18:53.279 but what you do need to know is that my gift of faith to you to take you through it is stronger 00:18:53.279 --> 00:19:00.000 and bigger and better than the suffering and the love that surrounds you will take you through 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:05.839 to eternal life because of the challenge isn't there in chapter one, curse God and die. That's 00:19:05.839 --> 00:19:13.119 what Satan says to God, Job doesn't follow you for nothing. You've lined his pockets, 00:19:13.920 --> 00:19:17.279 you've made him blessed, you've given him a great life, no wonder he believes. 00:19:19.200 --> 00:19:24.000 And that's the challenge that Satan lays out and then his wife lays out, well curse God and die. 00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:30.240 Go on, what's the point of believing in God? And that's the natural response, isn't it? Curse 00:19:30.240 --> 00:19:39.440 God and die. And here's the answer, that God's gift of faith to Job is miraculously and divinely 00:19:39.440 --> 00:19:47.039 gifted to take us through and to enable us to see things differently and to see his fatherly love 00:19:47.039 --> 00:19:55.680 even in the midst of suffering. And that faith of Job is the same gift of faith for every single 00:19:56.319 --> 00:20:04.159 believer. Job is not a superhero, Job is not different from anyone. Job has that gift of faith 00:20:04.799 --> 00:20:10.399 that is the same gift that can take us through battles and struggles and suffering. It's not 00:20:10.400 --> 00:20:18.000 saying it's easy, it's not trite, it's not insignificant, but there is a clinging to the 00:20:18.000 --> 00:20:24.800 living God through this. It's his gift. It's not, God is not saying here at any point, well, 00:20:24.800 --> 00:20:28.880 you know, you need to have a, you really work up your own faith to be strong enough to take you 00:20:28.880 --> 00:20:35.519 through the battles. You need to really perk up, you need to do your best, you need to fire on in 00:20:35.519 --> 00:20:43.759 there and have a faith in me. You know, he's saying, look, I gift you what you need to survive and to 00:20:43.759 --> 00:20:51.920 come through and to learn from and to grow by. It's counterintuitive, absolutely, but it's the kind 00:20:51.920 --> 00:20:58.720 of relational trust in the divine God that he wants us to enjoy. Job experiences a God worth trusting 00:20:58.720 --> 00:21:08.240 because he is God and because he is merciful. And of course, it transcends the Old Testament 00:21:08.240 --> 00:21:15.120 because what we don't see and what Job didn't see, although he asks about it in Job 9, verse 33, 00:21:15.120 --> 00:21:22.720 about whether there is an arbiter or a redeemer between us who might lay his hand on as both. 00:21:22.720 --> 00:21:32.000 There's that hint towards a suffering God, a suffering redeemer, a suffering savior who is 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:39.600 indeed the one who arbitrates and who reaches out between heaven and earth and who dies in our place, 00:21:39.600 --> 00:21:47.759 not as a distant, disinterested God, but as a God who suffers in order to redeem us ultimately from 00:21:47.759 --> 00:21:55.680 our suffering. Job believed in God as a savior. I don't think he would have known the mechanics 00:21:55.680 --> 00:22:06.240 of what lay ahead for God coming in Christ, yet he could repent and be forgiven because the Christ 00:22:06.240 --> 00:22:15.759 came and didn't need to repent and yet suffered as a sinner bearing our grief. He remained silent 00:22:15.759 --> 00:22:21.440 so that Job and you and I can shout out to the living God. You know, we say that in Isaiah, 00:22:21.440 --> 00:22:30.079 where he says, before the shears is silent, he took all the injustice of the cross in order to 00:22:30.079 --> 00:22:36.559 be a redeemer so that we can cry out and shout and scream about all the injustice to the living God 00:22:36.559 --> 00:22:43.759 who hears us and who redeems us and who ultimately reminds us of a great future we have in him. 00:22:43.759 --> 00:22:53.200 So I just want to conclude with two points, two remarkable gifts that we need to recognize and 00:22:53.200 --> 00:22:59.039 see in this veil of tears which is life for many of us at different times, maybe not just now, 00:22:59.039 --> 00:23:07.599 but often that it is a veil of tears and suffering. First is I think we need to recognize the eye of 00:23:07.599 --> 00:23:17.359 faith as Job speaks here about my eyes seeing him. Now you might have 2020 vision today, 00:23:17.359 --> 00:23:24.399 you might have great eyesight, but this is not physical sight. This is a spiritual sight. Revelation 00:23:24.399 --> 00:23:30.240 3.17 speaks about the minds of believers being blinded. You know, God speaks to one of the churches 00:23:30.240 --> 00:23:35.119 that says, you say, I'm rich, I prospered, I need nothing, but not real is it, you're wretched, 00:23:35.119 --> 00:23:41.839 pitiful, poor, blind and naked. And these are spiritual pictures and we can be spiritually blind, 00:23:43.199 --> 00:23:48.479 not seeing God, not seeing His grace, not seeing His mercy, not seeing His help in our lives 00:23:48.479 --> 00:23:54.079 and His salvation. But the eye of faith enables us to see that and that comes through prayer 00:23:54.079 --> 00:24:02.000 and reaching out to the living God from our heart and asking for the gift of faith, asking for the 00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:11.039 vision to see Him in the same way the job sees Him as awesome and attraction. Someone not to 00:24:11.039 --> 00:24:19.279 recoil from, but someone to go to as our Creator, as our Lord, as our God, as our Savior, as the one 00:24:19.279 --> 00:24:27.119 to whom we will stand before on that last great day. One who loves our questions, who loves when 00:24:27.119 --> 00:24:35.279 we talk, shout, cry, search, dig deep into His revelation in the Bible and find out 00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:44.959 something far deeper than merely the words on the page. And that means that we turn to Him. 00:24:44.959 --> 00:24:50.879 It's something we should really, we do on a daily basis actually, but it's basically what 00:24:50.879 --> 00:24:56.719 prayer is, is repentance. It should be turning to Him all the time, looking to Him, asking for His 00:24:56.720 --> 00:25:02.319 grace and help. And there we see the mystery, the simple and wonderful mystery of His love 00:25:02.960 --> 00:25:11.120 and of His grace. His voice is strong, but His voice is merciful, and there is a depth in it 00:25:11.120 --> 00:25:19.200 far beyond ritual and far beyond religious observance. We need deepest heart honesty 00:25:19.200 --> 00:25:26.080 before the living God. All of us, you need it, I need it. We don't want to be perfunctory. 00:25:26.960 --> 00:25:31.440 You know that word? We don't want you to be going through the motions. We don't want to be religious. 00:25:32.160 --> 00:25:40.080 We want to be people who are exposing our hearts to the living God and our needs and our unbelief 00:25:40.080 --> 00:25:46.400 and our fear and all that we are and asking for the faith that enables us to live our lives as 00:25:46.400 --> 00:25:53.120 believers or to be gifted faith if you are not a believer, to see Him in His great grace and salvation. 00:25:54.320 --> 00:25:58.560 So the eye of faith is really important. You need that. You need that to know Jesus. 00:25:59.200 --> 00:26:07.360 You need that to know heaven. You need that to know meaning and purpose in suffering. And even 00:26:07.360 --> 00:26:12.320 when you don't have meaning and purpose in suffering, you need it because the answers 00:26:12.319 --> 00:26:17.519 aren't always guaranteed. But we know God is at work and gifts His faith to take it through it. 00:26:18.240 --> 00:26:21.919 And the other thing I think that we can learn, among many other things, the eye of faith, 00:26:21.919 --> 00:26:31.200 but also we can learn from the patience of Job. James chapter 5 speaks about the patience of Job 00:26:32.399 --> 00:26:39.359 and the importance of learning from His patience. And as we understand God's grace, 00:26:39.359 --> 00:26:48.159 we will be more patient in our experiences of suffering and difficulty. Because very often, 00:26:49.039 --> 00:26:58.240 suffering and difficulties expose where our roots are found. If our roots are found in Christ, 00:26:58.959 --> 00:27:04.959 then that great verse in Jeremiah 17 which says, if your roots are in Christ, it doesn't matter 00:27:04.960 --> 00:27:10.559 even if the drought comes, you will still bear fruit because the roots go down and are fed in 00:27:10.559 --> 00:27:15.920 the relationship and person of Christ. So where are your roots found in life? In other words, 00:27:15.920 --> 00:27:24.960 in whom do you trust? Who is your God? In times of difficulty, what do you lean on? And we find 00:27:24.960 --> 00:27:32.400 Job leans on the living God and his roots are exposed for where they are there in God. And 00:27:32.400 --> 00:27:40.080 therefore, he bears fruit from that because he patiently, interestingly isn't it? He waits patiently 00:27:40.080 --> 00:27:46.240 and the Bible speaks about the patience of Job and yet he rants and he raves and he shouts and he 00:27:46.240 --> 00:27:54.400 complains and he accuses. But God doesn't find any fault with that. And next Sunday night, we're going 00:27:54.400 --> 00:28:03.519 to look at the way God responds to Job and the remarkable things he says in the last few verses 00:28:03.519 --> 00:28:09.840 of this passage. But patience, we don't often talk about patience, but patience is a hugely 00:28:10.400 --> 00:28:16.640 significant response of faith to particularly battles and struggles in our lives because it 00:28:16.640 --> 00:28:26.240 reveals who is our Lord. Usually, we're impatient because we want to be in control. We want the 00:28:26.240 --> 00:28:33.120 answers. We think we should do what we want. And it's difficult for us to be patient and wait for 00:28:33.120 --> 00:28:41.040 the living God. And yet he promises to bring peace in the storm. So Job is a remarkable book and 00:28:41.039 --> 00:28:50.960 it's a remarkable character. And it is a deep seated dealing with the reality of trouble and 00:28:50.960 --> 00:28:56.000 battle and suffering. Here, we've looked at it very briefly in a personal way with Job. There are 00:28:56.000 --> 00:29:01.519 huge lessons to learn. If you do have time, take time prayerfully to look through the book of Job 00:29:01.519 --> 00:29:09.519 and see what it says about the living God and challenge yourself to speak to him and ask him 00:29:09.519 --> 00:29:13.839 to reveal himself to you, particularly if you're suffering and struggling and battling 00:29:14.720 --> 00:29:21.440 as a Christian. Or if you don't believe that you would challenge God to reveal himself to you 00:29:22.319 --> 00:29:29.279 because it really is significant and important. Let's pray. Father, God help us, we pray, to know 00:29:29.279 --> 00:29:37.759 you better, to understand you more clearly, to wrestle with some of the real issues in life 00:29:37.759 --> 00:29:46.400 and not to be superficial and trite about what we say and what we do. We pray especially, we 00:29:46.400 --> 00:29:50.079 haven't dealt with this today, but we pray especially that we would not be like Job's 00:29:50.079 --> 00:30:02.160 comforters in the judgmental and ignorant and ungracious response they had to Job's sufferings. 00:30:02.160 --> 00:30:08.800 May we learn to be far more like Jesus than them. But we do pray that you'd help us today, 00:30:08.800 --> 00:30:14.800 that you would speak into our needs and into our hearts and that you would also bring this truth 00:30:14.800 --> 00:30:21.680 to us as we look at it again next Sunday evening, God willing. Bless us, bless your word to us, 00:30:21.680 --> 00:30:33.200 may your Holy Spirit take it and apply it into our hearts and lives for Jesus' sake. Amen.