Beacon Sunday Service: July 6, 2025 (God's Suffering Servant)

Before we read the word of the Lord together, just I wanted to introduce the next few weeks. For the next three weeks, we're going to be learning together about a very important doctrine of the Bible. It's actually one of the most misunderstood and most challenged doctrines, and that's the sovereignty of God. It's absolutely important to correctly understand the sovereignty of God because a misunderstanding of it leads to blasphemy. And the misunderstanding of it inhibits worship. Okay, so our understanding of the sovereignty of God greatly affects how and why we gather and how we think through things like the flood in Texas, right? So today we're going to be defining it and then understanding why it's so important to accurately know it.

Next week we're going to be looking at the ramifications of God's sovereignty in all of our relationships and our forgiveness of people's sins. And then two weeks from now, we're going to be looking at how God's sovereignty affects our sanctification. So in our growth in holiness. So if we can all rise, I want to read our passage for today. It's Job chapter 42, verse 7 to 9. And this is the reading of God's word. Now it happened after Yahweh had spoken these words to Job, that Yahweh said to Eliphazatemenite, my anger burns against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has. So now take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job, offer up a burnt offering for yourselves, and my servant Job will pray for you, for I will accept him, so that I may not do with you according to your folly, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.

So Eliphaz Atemanite and Bildad a Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did as Yahweh told them. And Yahweh accepted Job. Let's pray together. Father, help us this morning to correctly understand your sovereignty. Our understanding, we confess, is going to be incomplete, for we are finite. We are sin tainted. So we need your illumination. We need you to open up our eyes, expand our minds, and grant us true humility to really understand how helpless we are. And Lord, increase our delight, knowing that in our helplessness, you have helped us, and that you love us, and that you have control over all things. Remind us afresh that this is not our home. Remind us afresh that you are in total control.

And I pray that you would help us to be appropriate responders to the truths that we hear. So we thank you, God for our time together. We pray this in Jesus' name. So go ahead and take a seat. So week after week and Sunday after Sunday, we gather together for worship. We join together to sing of a God and declare and affirm truths of a God infinitely different from us. We have been created in God's image, but we know at least theologically that his ways are not our ways, nor are his thoughts like our thoughts. The scripture tells us that as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are his ways and his thoughts so much higher than ours. And there are biblical truths that most every one of us in this room will affirm as truth, and we will consider those to be in accord of sound doctrine.

So, for example, God is good. God is love, he is worthy of all of our worship. Now, would you say amen to all of these truths? Would you agree with those things? Okay. I would, and I believe that all of you in almost reactively will, right? God is worthy of all our worship, and he is why we gather. So how about these following statements that we learn about week after week? God is all powerful. God's will is perfect, God is sovereign. He makes no mistakes. Amen. So if you are affirming that all the statements I just made are true, you are affirming then that God has not made one single mistake in your life. Every person, every circumstance, every humbling failure, every hardship, and even unspeakable trauma, has been ordained on purpose in your life by our sovereign God.

This God who is good, the God who is perfect in his love, the God who is perfect in power, who is worthy of all of our worship. Not one single mistake. Now, there may be some discomfort now kind of forming in your heart. There may be a slight disconnect in what you believe and confess to be theologically true from how you emotionally feel about these truths. There may be a little bit of a pushback in your heart, and it's possible that you can't quite put a finger on why. So God is good, he is just, he is merciful. In his goodness, justice, and mercy, God ordains affliction and suffering, even on those who are innocent, especially on those who are innocent. If you're coming up with a biblical theology, you cannot but land on this conclusion.

Think of Joseph. Think of Daniel, think of Job. So the suffering of the innocent, the suffering of the righteous, is very much a part of God's perfect pleasing and goodwill. Remember, our faith is not superstition. Our faith is founded on this. We celebrate this profound truth every year through the events of the Passion Week, Good Friday, and Resurrection Sunday. So I want to I want you guys to turn your brains on with me because this is a very important doctrine that we're looking at today. Isaiah 53, 4 to 5. Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried, yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. He was pierced through for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the chastening for our peace fell upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

And we consider this a beautiful passage. The Isaiah 53 passage continues on in describing the suffering, innocent Messiah, and it gets even better and more frameable and more profound and even more uncomfortable in verse 10. Yahweh was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief. So again, sometimes we don't turn our brains on, but these are truths that we affirm, truths that we confess, but truths that nonetheless leave us feeling uncomfortable. The Lord's ways are not our ways, nor are his thoughts like our thoughts. But if God's people worship in spirit and in truth, we must understand that at times this truth part may be profoundly uncomfortable. And this has always been the case.

So it's not a shock that a book like the book of Job, filled with very uncomfortable doctrinal truths, has been a beloved book of God's people for thousands of years. Some believe that the book of Job is actually the very first book of the Bible written.

And at the same time, it's a very comforting book. So the passage that I read for you in the beginning is found in the very end, the last chapter of the book of Job. Job 42, 7 to 9. And it comes just after one of the greatest statements of the sovereignty of God and of the worshipper's appropriate posture. We see in the entire Bible. I know that you can do all things, and no plan of yours can be thwarted. That's Job 42, 2. And it just, it comes right before we read about Job's, about God's double recompensing of Job, all that he suffered, and all that he had lost. Right? If you lose 10 kids, you get more kids. Fixes the problem, right? Job 42, 7 to 9 is the passage we're going to be looking at and launching off of today.

Job 42 reads like a standard happy ending. If you're familiar with the book, but you know that the first 41 chapters are filled with nothing remotely happy. Most people immediately think of the theme of suffering when the book of Job is mentioned. Is that what you guys think about? Okay. Suffering, of course, is the backdrop of the book, but the focus of the book of Job is the sovereignty of God. A good, loving, all-powerful, sovereign God, will allow his beloved children to suffer. It is a profound and mysterious. But the book ends with the great reward of Job, the perseverance suffering servant. And because of this, and because we all like happy endings, it's a well-loved book for many Christians today.

And the book of Job has also been one of the favorite books of the Hebrew nation as well. But for reasons beyond the seemingly unfair sufferings of a righteous man, the book of Job is actually a very fascinating book. Job the man is a very fascinating character. So I want to introduce you a little bit to, so we expand our understanding of this book. First of all, there is no indication that Job is an Israelite or any ancestor of any Israelite. So the book of Job begins with a mention of a place that is outside of Israel in the land calls Ooz, which is not easily identifiable today. The geographical places named in the book suggest that Job is from a region later inhabited by the Edomites, which is fascinating because if Job is an Edomite, that's an enemy of Israel, but they celebrate him.

Okay. No one knows who wrote this lengthy book. No one knows when it was even written, but most scholars place Job after the time of Noah and the flood and before the time of Abraham. And as I mentioned before, it could very well be the oldest book in the Bible. And what's fascinating is that you have to remember the people of Israel were a very proud, ethnocentric people. Yet, this book, whose main human character is a godly non-Israelite living outside of the geopolitical borders of Israel, has been celebrated all throughout Israel's history. There is no mention of any Mosaic law or any significant covenant made, but without any acquaintance with Moses and the prophets, it nevertheless appears that Job was intimately familiar with the God of whom Moses and the prophets spoke.

The book of Job uses the name Yahweh 31 times. And we don't know how Job learned it. We don't know why he uses it. So the questions abound, right? Who was this man? How righteous was this man? We know that from Exodus chapter 33, no mortal man can see God and live, but it seems that this human being saw God with his physical eyes and survive. Again, it's fascinating. So it almost feels like a fairy tale for the Hebrew people. It would be a natural and a logical thing to categorize it as a fairy tale, if not for all the mentions of the book of Job all over the Bible. So many psalms read similarly to the sections of Job. King Solomon, it looks on the surface, borrowed from Job, as there are many parallels in the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes to Job.

Isaiah 43, uh 40, verse 13 quotes Job. The prophet Ezekiel mentions Job. And to help us also understand how real and how historical Job was to the people of Israel, I want to read a verse from Ezekiel's prophecy. Son of man, if a country sins against me by committing unfaithfulness, and I stretch out my hand against it, break its staff of bread, send famine against it, and cut off from it both man and beast. Even though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job were in its midst, by their own righteousness, they could only deliver themselves, declares the Lord Yahweh. So apparently Job is a legend. Yahweh God speaks of Job to the prophet Ezekiel. Job, a man from Ooz, is and has always been a well-known symbol and a beacon of righteousness of the people of God.

The Apostle Paul quotes the book of Job twice. Romans 11 35, 1 Corinthians 3 19. The first is a quote from Job 41.11, and the second one is out of Job 5.13. Now, I'm giving you a lengthy introduction of the book of Job. Because it's a familiar story, you might already have had like underlying presumptions and opinions on this book. So because I don't know exactly where you're going to be coming from when you're understanding the book of Job, I want to hedge in our thoughts and our collective focus. And I wanted to anchor our understanding that the main character of the book of Job is not Job, the man, but it's omniscient, sovereign Yahweh, who is sovereign over all the universe. You guys following that?

Okay. The main character of the book of Job is Yahweh God who burns with anger at false doctrine and misrepresentations of his anger, of his nature.

So the title of today's sermon is God's suffering servant. And I want it to provide you with the outline of Job 42, 7 to 9, to help you track the thought flow through this passage. So hopefully the title of the sermon helps you remember and track the outline. Okay? So God's suffering servant. So first we're going to be looking at verse 7, the character of God. And you see God's anger burn against three well-meaning individuals. And in that verse, you also see what delights the heart of God. Then we're going to be looking at the second point, the backdrop of suffering. And we're going to be looking through the context of the book of Job for this, especially chapters 1 and 2. And then we'll be looking at the acceptance of a servant, verses 8 and 9.

The Lord calls Job my servant Job six times in the book. And in verse 8 alone, he calls him my servant Job three times. So it's almost with a sense of pride that God refers to him as my servant Job, as you will see through this book.

So it's fascinating. And we're going to be looking into all that. And at the end, we're going to see what appropriate responses and applications that we can draw today from this ancient but timeless text. So I want to read verse 7 of Job chapter 42 again for you. Now it happened after Yahweh had spoken these words to Job that Yahweh said to Eliphazatemenite, My anger burns against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has.

Presented as holy. All creation must accurately declare the glories of God. So we see in verse 7 that God's anger, his wrath is kindled by misrepresentations of him from Job's three friends. Do you guys see those words? Why does God's anger burn? Because they have not spoken of him what is right. Jeez, God, you are sensitive. He deserves to be sensitive. He is sovereign, right? So God's anger is kindled and his righteous rage burns. But before we look into why God's anger burns, I want to actually walk us through what Job's three friends did right. They are not bozos. Alright? So these are three individuals that are well-meaning. Chapter 2, verse 11 to 13. Then Job's three friends heard of all this calamity that had come upon him.

So they came, each one from his own place. Eliphaz, the Temenite, Bildad, the Shuhite, and Zophar, the Naamathite, and they made an appointment together to come to console him and to comfort him. Then they lifted up their eyes at a distance and did not recognize him. And they lifted up their voices and they wept, and each of them tore his robe. They threw dust over their heads toward the sky, and then they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights, with no one speaking a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great. So far, so good. I mean, in some ways, these men get a bad rep. And unfortunately, their mistakes have been recorded for all of human history. These guys were well-meaning, and that's more than evident.

They intentionally came from far away together to sympathize and to comfort Job. And I believe that they were genuinely horrified at Job's appearance and his lot, and they wept. This was a loud weeping. This was a wailing. Job's body was covered from head to toe with horrible boils, slimy blisters, and he was their friend who had just lost everything. So they wept. And these three men, they sat and camped with him for seven days and seven nights.

But these three men just sat for seven days and seven nights without speaking a word to him. So these are good friends. So what did they do and what did they say that was so wrong? Wrong enough to incur the wrath of God. People get confused here. If you comb through chapters 3 to 31 and carefully examine these men's speeches, it's actually very difficult to discern where they were wrong. Some of what you read from these men's speeches actually would make very good Bible memory verses.

God, he catches the wise by their own craftiness. And the counsel of the twisted is quickly thwarted. Reads like a proverb. Do you disagree with it? Paul doesn't. This is what Apostle Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 3 19. So how did these men err in what they said? Here it is. The overarching assumption of these men was that Job was suffering because he had done something wrong, because he had violated God's law.

But Job's suffering simply was because God purposed it. God okayed it. God had determined it to be part of his good, pleasing, and perfect will. Job had done nothing wrong. And Job's good, loving, omnipotent God, purposed his sufferings. And God was justified in doing so. He remained good in doing so. He was still the everlasting God of love while doing so. He delighted in Job while doing so. So pay attention here.

And this allowance does not go against his attributes of goodness, love, wisdom, and justice. Okay, I'm going to repeat this. God allows for suffering. He ordains it. And this allowance does not go against his attributes of goodness, love, wisdom, and justice. And that is a biblical truth, which a lot of people in the world they argue against that, right? How could a good God allow for suffering? The Bible is clear. God in his goodness allows for suffering. God is creator. He is a king of kings and the Lord of Lords. He's the author of life. He ordains emotional suffering of loss, disappointment, and tragedy. He ordains financial ruin. He ordains social suffering. He ordains even national sufferings, like floods, like riots, like hostilities of a divided nation.

And he remains a God who is perfectly good, perfectly loving, and perfectly just.

Yahweh gave, Yahweh has taken away. Blessed be the name of Yahweh. And through all of this, Job did not sin, nor he did he give offense to God. And Job's wife was not as godly. And here's Job's response when his embittered wife suggests that he should just curse God and die. He said to her, You speak as one of the wickedly foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept calamity? And all this Job did not sin with his lips. So in this confession, Job points to God not only as a source of good, but as a source of what? Calamity. We need to watch our lives and our doctrine very closely. We need to accurately proclaim the excellencies of God and present him as holy, as completely other.

We do not need to try and sugarcoat difficult doctrines to make them more palatable to the world. That's where we get in trouble. We do not need to apologize for God. Amen.

Charles Spurgeon once wrote, the word of God is like a lion. You don't have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose. The lion will defend itself. So blasphemy by definition, it's an impious utterance or an action concerning God. It is to speak defiantly or irreverently about God. Heresy is a belief or opinion contrary to any biblical truth of God. So any form of these misrepresentations of God kindles his anger. And passages like Job chapter 4, verse 12, lead me to believe that blasphemy and heresy are both demonic in nature. And those things distort the truth and tarnish God's glory. So when we see, or when we suffer, and when we when we see those around us suffer, this doesn't mean that we shouldn't act with grace and compassion.

But we must always take care not to fail in speaking of God what is right, especially when there is great suffering. Amen. Ooh, it's so hard sometimes not to just speak wishful thoughts to someone who's grieving.

And this brings me to my second point. If you have your Bibles, I'm gonna ask you to actually turn to the beginning of the book of Job. And we're gonna be looking at the backdrop of suffering, God's suffering servant. So point two, suffering. There was a man in the land of Ooze, whose name was Job. And that man was blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil. I'm gonna pause here. I've heard people actually compare themselves to Job. I feel like I'm suffering like Job. You should never be so proud to compare your life to Job, your suffering to Job, unless you are as confident you're confident that you're completely blameless, upright, and fearing God like Job. Okay, so verse two.

Seven sons and three daughters were born to him. His possessions also were seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred pears of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and innumerable is the word. Okay, innumerable number of servants. And that man was the greatest of all the sons of the east. So we see that Job is a righteous man. Job 1-1 describes him as one who's blameless, upright, fearing God, turning away from evil. He had seven sons, three daughters. He was exceedingly wealthy. He had an innumerable number of servants. So this is to tell you that God blessed him. But in verse 6 to 8, Satan, the accuser comes into the presence of the Lord. And what this text shows me is that there is great delight and great joy when God talks about Job.

Eyeball those verses. Do you see that delight? I almost want to read it like this is my servant Job, in whom I am well pleased. Look at him. So then Satan asks permission to tempt Job by ruining his life. And completely unbeknownst to Job, God approves. Job 1.12. Then Yahweh said to Satan, Behold, all that he is it has is in your hand, only do not send forth your hand toward him. So Satan went out from the presence of Yahweh. On one single day, Job loses all his wealth. He loses all of his servants, with the exception of the four who were left behind as messengers. Job lost all ten of his children.

And guess what? All ten of his children were at the biggest brother's house having a big celebration. All their friends were there. All of Job's friends, children who were his children's friends, were also all killed. Many of whom he likely watched grow up. He probably delighted in his children's friends. And I can imagine each and every parent of the young friends blaming Job for their death. You are responsible. God must hate you. My daughter is dead because of you. So can you imagine the overwhelming guilt, the grief, and the pain? I don't think the money is a big deal. I don't think all the animals that died are a big deal. But it says on the end of the first day, Job fell to the ground and worship did not sin or blame God.

Satan failed in his efforts to tempt Job. Strike one. And then we get to chapter two. Satan asks permission for a second time. And again, unbeknownst to Job, God gives the okay. And God gives him permission to even mess with his body and his health. The only thing Satan was not allowed to do was to go all the way and to kill him. He probably would have been gladly killed. Okay? Leave him alive. Leave his wife alive. Okay. So Yahweh said to Satan, Behold, he is in your hand. Only spare his life. And then Satan went out from the presence of Yahweh and struck Job with terrible boils from the sole of his foot to the top of his head. So what a boil is, it's a painful pus-filled bump that forms under the skin when bacteria infect and inflame one or more of the hair follicles.

Can you guys imagine that? You guys might have had something similar to that, right? Where it's a very tender. The average human has five million hair follicles on his body, some more than others. Okay? Average human is a five million hair follicles. And my guess is that every single one of Job's hair follicles was filled with pus and inflamed. So Job is suffering. His is a holistic suffering. So physical, obviously, social, emotional, financial, which is probably not a big deal to him at this point, marital, and probably spiritually, he had tons of questions. And though he does not sin, Job asks many chapters worth of questions that have since been posed by humanity for centuries upon centuries.

How can a good God allow for the suffering of those he loves? Have you heard that asked before?

Job asks, and God also in his sovereignty never gives him an answer. In chapter 38 to 41, God shows up, and rather than say, my child, I'm so sorry. You know what he does? He shows up and he rebukes and silences Job. Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have knowledge. Job is never made aware of the fact that the primary reason for his suffering was God's delight in him.

Because there was no one like him in all the earth, blameless, upright, fearing God, turning away from evil. And as far as we know, Job is never told of Satan's requests, nor of his activities. We know, because Ephesians chapter 6 is our struggle is not against flesh and blood. Job doesn't know this. One thing we do know, however, is that Satan, the prince of the world, always has to ask permission. And he has always had to ask permission. So in the New Testament, Jesus tells Peter that Satan had asked permission to sift the disciples like wheat. You guys know this passage? Simon Simon. Behold, Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat. But I have prayed earnestly for you that your faith may not fail.

And you, once you have returned, strengthen your brothers. To sift like wheat means to shake someone apart, to break someone down, or to irreversibly injure. What's very insightful here is that the U in verse 31 is in the plural. It's actually not obvious in the ESV or even in the NASB or the other translations. Verse 32, the rest of the U's are all in the singular. And one of the reasons I love the LSB is that the second person plurals are made distinguishable from the second or the second person singular. And in places like this, the distinguishability of this is super helpful. Satan has demanded permission to sift you all. Like wheat, meaning all the apostles. But I have prayed for you, singular Peter.

In regard to whatever Satan had wanted to unleash on Peter to dissuade or harm Peter to cause Peter to be just like Judas. Jesus said, no. And that but at the beginning of verse 32 is very important and a very operative word. There are things that take place in our lives and in our world because Satan temporarily is moving and maneuvering behind the scenes. You guys know this, right? Satan is real. And that shouldn't come as a surprise. But for us who have put our faith in Christ Jesus, we learn from scriptures like Romans chapter 8. We know that there is now no condemnation for us. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Your eternity is secure. Affliction or turmoil or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword may and will be ordained for your life here.

Does that make sense? Like most of our prayers are like against this. Bless me, Lord, right? But if you are in Christ, and if you persevere in his grace, you're gonna hear, well done, my good and faithful servant. Well done, my good and faithful suffering servant. No matter how you die, no matter what afflicts you. Brings us to our third point. God's suffering servant. Verse 8 and 9 of Job 42. So now take for yourself seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves, and my servant Job will pray for you, for I will accept him, so that I may not do with you according to your folly, because you have not spoken to me what is right, as my servant Job has.

So Eliphaz, the Temenite build that the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite, went and did as Yahweh told them. And Yahweh accepted Job. God tells Job's three friends to offer up a sacrifice of seven bulls and seven rams. The sins of these men needed to be paid for.

You see that in the text. Track along. Job's three friends are told to go and receive prayer from Job from the text. It would appear that they were to go to Job for God's forgiveness, not for any kind of healing. Job, so God shows up to these to Eliphazemanite anyway, and says, Go to Job for forgiveness. Couldn't he have forgiven him right there? Job is functioning as a priest here. The prayers of Job, the righteous man, would be powerful and effective for the forgiveness of their sins. I find Job to be one of the most Christ-like figures in the entire Old Testament. Job was God's beloved, accepted servant. He was blameless and upright. He offered up priestly prayers. I mean, we see him interceding on behalf of his children in Job chapter one, because he was afraid that they had committed sins.

Job, like Christ, suffered in every way imaginable. He was made an example.

He was misunderstood. Like the suffering Messiah, Job 2, Job 2 was esteemed by those around him, stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. And there are many places in the book of Job that sound very similar to my God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? But what's most fascinating is that, like Christ, our great high priest, Job's intercession leads to the forgiveness of these blasphemers and heretics. Do you see that? It doesn't say he accepted Job's prayers. Some translations add to it in the English, but in the original language, the word prayer is not there.

Fascinating. So what are we to take home from what we are seeing here first? When we encounter God's truths, especially in our seasons of great suffering, we need to respond like Job did. There's nothing wrong with crying out in pain. But Job chapter 42, verse 1. After God shows up, doesn't give him any of the behind the scenes info, just rebukes him. Job answered Yahweh and said, I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. You are sovereign, is what he's saying. And then he quotes God, who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too marvelous for me, which I did not know.

And then he asks God, hear now, and I will speak. I will ask you and you make me know.

Therefore I reject myself, and I repent in dust in ashes. How do we respond? What's a Job like response? It's to repent of all arrogant thoughts. Your ways are higher than my ways, your thoughts are not like my thoughts, or as high as the heavens are above the earth. So are your ways higher than my ways, your thoughts than my thoughts. But in our moments of grief, our arrogance kicks in. Why? What did I do to deserve this? Why? I thought you were a good God. And whatever arrogance that wells up, that is exposed, we repent of it, and then we worship God, and then we trust him. The world has no answer or an explanation to a Christian's joy in the midst of great suffering. Right? Sometimes the Lord will use the Christian's trial on the Christian's suffering for the saving of non-Christians.

Sometimes the Lord will use the Christians' suffering for the saving of non-Christians. God wastes nothing. He ordains all things either for your sanctification or for the sanctification of others. So in other words, he ordains all things either for your good or for good. Perhaps God is using the sufferings in your life, whether it's present, whether it was in the past, or whether it's still to come. God is allowing you to suffer to use your profession of trust in his goodness to lead other people to trust him as well, to saving faith. You just might never be made aware of this. Do you know what believers are called in 1 Peter 2 9? We're called a royal priesthood.

Do you know what we're called in the book of Revelation? A kingdom of priests. What's a priest? You serve as an intercessor between God and man. On this earth, that's what you are. In heaven, you're an heir. You're a child of God. But while you're here, you are here to intercede on behalf of God for man and man for God. And sometimes your words fall to deaf ears, but when your words are accompanied by great grief that is unexplainable, and you are still praising God, God works through that circumstance. Are you guys following this? I'm going to leave you with a passage that is very, very full of application. James chapter 5, verses 10 to 16. As an example, brothers of suffering and patience.

Take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. I don't want to take the example of the prophets. They live pretty bad lives.

Right? Those are pretty extreme. Who are those who are blessed according to verse 11? You want to be blessed by God? The prerequisite then is what? Perseverance. You have heard of the perseverance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord's dealings. That the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful. I don't think Job cared that much that he was given gorgeous daughters afterward. He was given double of all that he had before.

I know that my redeemer lives, and in the end I will stand with him on the earth. Though my flesh may fail yet with my eyes, I will see God. Do you guys know that song? For I know that my redeemer lives. Verse 12. Above all my brothers, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath, but let your yes be yes, no be no, that you may not fall under judgment. Is anyone among you suffering? Pray. Is any of you cheerful? Sing praises. Now, if we're in a congregation where you have weeping people and praising people, we do both. We praise and we rejoice and we weep and we mourn together without making excuses for God. Verse 14. Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

That is not literal. There's a symbolism behind the oil in that time. Verse 15. And the prayer offered in faith will save the one who is sick. The Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. That is not primarily a physical healing. Sometimes God ordains a sickness and a disease to cause an arrogant, unrepentant sinner to be terrified to repent and then turn to God. Sometimes I, when people ask me to pray for their unhealthy, sick, unbelieving parent, I tell them, I'm going to pray that they get worse first.

Because if they get healed too quick, they're going to thank science. They're going to thank their doctor. So I will tell that person sometimes I'm going to pray for your mom that she gets way worse before she gets better. Because the goal is not the physical body. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. Please don't read this only as physical. Amen. James chapter 5, it says, humble yourself under his hand. And in due time he will lift you up. Proverbs 3 5 6 trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. And in all your ways, acknowledge him. And he will make your path.

You guys know that verse? Easy. Fun. Straight. May the Lord help us as we repent, as we worship, as we trust, as we obey. And may he use that to lead others to repent, to worship, to trust and obey to his glory and for our joy. We worship God because He's sovereign. Not because He gives us stuff for this life. Amen.

Let's pray together. Father, I pray that you would help us to really dwell deeply on the fact that you make no mistakes. Every detail in our lives has been there, divinely appointed on purpose for our good and for your glory. Some of us have suffered unspeakable things. Some of us currently are going through difficult things. And we know people that are going through circumstances that cause them to question your goodness. Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief and strengthen us so that those who are watching our lives, especially the non-Christians who are looking at us as insights into this Christian faith. Lord, use us to bring glory to you yourself. And in the event you ordain difficult seasons for members of our church.

Help us to worship, trust and obey collectively together and to persevere. For we know that you consider blessed those who persevere. So we thank you, God, for this morning, help us to chew on it deeply and pray this in Jesus' name.