Two Journeys

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a sermon on Job 1-2. He covers the suffering that Job experienced in the first two chapters of the book and applies it to the ways that Christians will suffer in their earthly lives. Earthly suffering is used by God to sanctify us and teach us patience.

Turn your Bibles to Job chapter one. We'll be looking this morning at the first two chapters of this incredible book. We begin walking through this masterpiece of Hebrew wisdom, this incomparably deep book of Job. This morning, we're going to stand alongside this godly man, Job, and watch him go through the greatest avalanche of sorrows that ever crashed down on any living man in a single day. This morning, we're going to peer, as you're doing maybe even right now, on the cold words on the page that recount a blazing hot trial in the life of a godly man poured out on him by a loving and sovereign God, poured out on the choicest servant of God that lived at that time. The cold words, black and white on the page, will become living lessons burned into our hearts only by the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

However, as we, this morning, read the account of Job's sufferings, we do so from the perspective of life beyond the grave, beyond the cross and the empty grave of Jesus Christ. We seek to learn the timeless lessons of suffering given to us by this old Testament book, Job, but as we do, we don't forget what we've learned from the new Testament of Christ, of his sufferings in his triumph over the grave. From that perspective, we look back at this book. So, this morning, we look back at the immeasurable sorrows of a godly man, having ourselves been blessed by the infinite sorrows of a perfect man, Jesus Christ, whose sufferings on the cross atones for the sins of all who believe and whose resurrection victory answers all of the deepest questions of our souls, and the questions of earthly suffering. Yet, even knowing that Christ died for our sins, that he rose for our glory, we still have much to learn about suffering don't we? We still have much to learn. We are not done with our salvation yet. Salvation is a process. Salvation comes to us in stages. That's even true for some of you that are listening to me who are not yet Christians, who are, the scripture says, "Dead in your transgressions and sins." That God, when he works in the heart of a lost person to eventually bring them to Christ, it's a process that could go on for years. The process of drawing of a magnetic pull that results finally in coming to Christ and finding forgiveness of sins. And if you are, as yet, outside of Christ, it is good for you to understand that the sufferings that Job went through are nothing compared to the eternal torments of hell. The Bible's very clear about the perfect wrath and justice of God and hell, and that there is one and only one remedy for that, and that is faith in Jesus Christ.

Now, up to this point, if you're not a Christian, if you've heard the gospel. You're here today, or maybe listening by live stream, you're aware of the gospel, but there may yet be still a process before you're ready to give your life to Christ. That process will involve pain and suffering. You will be stripped of the illusion of this world as bringing ultimate pleasure and joy to you and you'll realize it's all empty, as the author to Ecclesiastes said, "Vanity of vanities." At some point you'll realize that you're facing the judgment of God and then flee to Christ. That's my prayer for you today.

Now the rest of you have already found Christ. You've already come to faith in Christ. You know that you're a sinner. You have been saved by grace through faith. You have received the gift of justification, of full forgiveness of all sins past, present, and future by simple faith in Christ. That's already happened to you, but you're not done being saved yet either. There's still a process going on in your life. The journey of holiness, of sanctification. God is in the process of purifying your hearts and your lives from the pervasive effects of sin. And the fires of suffering are necessary; they're essential to that journey of salvation that we're on even after we've come to faith in Christ. We do not make much progress in holiness during the times of sunshine and hot fudge sundaes. That's not when we make a lot of pro... however enjoyable those things are, for God has given us all things richly to enjoy. And we should enjoy them, but we don't make a lot of progress and sanctification at those times. God must, it seems, hurt us in order to fully save us. We must, through many tribulations, enter the kingdom of God; it's not easy. We have to go through the refiner's fire so that the corruption of sin can be burned from our hearts, from our mixed and changeful hearts, we have to go through the fires. And so, we're told in a later book of the Bible, in the book of James, chapter 1:2-4. "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance, and perseverance must finish its work so that you will be mature and complete and not lacking in anything." That word mature means Christ-like, sanctified. We have to go through trials, hard times in order to be sanctified and Christ-like. Now that text, James 1:2-4, will be central to our meditations, God willing, over the number of weeks and beyond that we walk through this entire book of Job. Because the problem of pain and sorrow and suffering is, I guess, the most poignant of all of the theological problems on earth. We have to walk through it. We have to study it. It's not a light, quick study: this issue of suffering.

When we hurt ourselves, when loved ones hurt or are dying, or even have died, and we've walked through that experience, that's when our souls can be most rocked by temptations toward dark thoughts about God. Is he really wise, or is he really powerful, or does he really love me? Is he really good? And we can start listening to Satan and wonder about one or more of those attributes that are so clearly taught in the Bible, but we start to wonder and we start to doubt. We need the book of Job. We need to walk through these chapters and understand them. So, this morning we're going to begin that process of walking through this incomparable drama with Job one and two. Now, we start with the clear teaching about who Job was, the greatness of Job.

Look at verses one through five in chapter one, “In the land of Uz, there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright. He feared God and shunned evil. He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yolk of oxen, 500 donkeys, a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the east. His sons used to take turns holding feasts in their homes and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would send and have them purified. Early in the morning, he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, ‘Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.’ This was Job's regular custom.” All right so, Job's greatness is asserted here by the Holy Spirit in the text. He was the greatest man in the east.

Job's greatness is asserted by God himself in these two chapters. In Job 1:8, “the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him. He is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil,’’ Job 1:8. That's God speaking about Job.  And then again in chapter two, verse three, “the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him. He is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil and he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him, without any reason.’” So twice, almighty God asserts the greatness of this man, Job. For me, it's remarkable, really amazing, how much pride God takes in his own creation work. He delights in what he's made. He looks at what he's made in Genesis and sees that it's very good, and he delights in it. And at the end, when God speaks out of a whirlwind, he spends a lot of time boasting about his creatures, effectively saying, "Have you considered the wild donkey that runs free out in the desert? Have you considered the ostrich, how fast she is? Have you considered the horse and its courage of heart, and the way it snorts and stamps? Have you considered the Eagle the way it sores free in the air?" But none of God's creations bring him as much pride and delight as human beings created in his image, and his redeemed children, redeemed by the blood of Christ.

I actually believe when God says to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job?" that that is a foretaste of some innumerable, even infinite moments there will be in heaven when God will effectively say that in reference to all of his children. We have plenty of time in heaven. And how God will hold up various servants so that we'll understand the grace God did in their lives and through their lives to others, that great network of good works, but there are some people that are elevated above the norm. They are the great heroes and heroines of redemptive history. They're unique. They go through a high level of suffering. There's a high level of fruitfulness in their lives. They're just unique individuals. They will receive proportional honor, and God saying, "Have you considered my servant so and so?" Job was one of those. He was a unique individual, the greatest man in the east.

Now, what are the attributes of Job's greatness? Well, it says right away, he is blameless and upright, that he feared God and shunned evil. Blameless means that there is no record against him of wrongdoing. Satan himself doesn't question this. Satan is the accuser and he doesn't bring any accusation about Job's sinfulness. He had nothing to say; he's a blameless man. No witness for the prosecution could be brought forth at that moment. He is upright, that is, he is righteous; he lives according to the standard of God, of God's moral law. He feared God; he was a pious man. He feared sin because of what God would do to him, and because how it would dishonor God.

He later is going to say to God, at that moment, somewhat disrespectfully, but he's going to say, "Will you never look away from me for a moment, oh watcher of men?" He lived every moment aware that God is watching him, every moment, and that he would have to give an account for his actions on judgment day. He feared God. He feared his power and judgment, and so he feared sin, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” as we read in book of Proverbs, chapter nine, verse 10. So he shunned evil. He stayed away from evil. He hated evil. Later, he will assert, “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl.” He wouldn't defraud anyone. He wouldn't hurt anyone. Anything that was evil, he stayed away from it. He shunned it. Turned aside.

He also had a secret piety, and he understood the importance of secret piety. He was not a whitewashed tomb looking good on the outside, but corrupt on the inside. You remember the whole thing with his children, “He wondered if some of them might have cursed God in their hearts. So he got up early in the morning to offer sacrifices for them, and would send and have them purified,” it says.  And so, this is remarkable. This may be one of the best accounts of a fatherly action in the whole Bible. Maybe I would put it even ahead of some of what we see in father Abraham's life. Although similar, what Abraham did with Isaac: remarkable. But he continued to shepherd his grown children after they were grown, and to care about their piety and their holiness, and he offered sacrifices for them at times of feasting. He knew that feasting could bring on corruption. Celebration, pleasure could, it could be a time of weakness. He would do this. It says it was his regular custom. He had the habit of doing this.

Now, we need to keep this in mind when his so-called friends start wrangling with him over the issue of their perception of morality and what's really going on with all of his suffering, and the only thing they can surmise is he must be a very great sinner in private. They don't have any accusation; they have no evidence. He's blameless with them, but all they see is his suffering. They reason he must be a secret sinner, and a great one, but we have the alternate truth here. We know that he was not a whitewashed tomb, but he was what he appeared to be.

So for me, I'm going to apply all of this at the end, but I just want to break off and apply this to you Christian fathers, and just say, study Job as a pattern for fathering. That you would be a role model, both in your public life and your private life, that you would keep on shepherding your children in their older years, even when they're not minors anymore, that you would actually care about what's going on in their hearts and their lives, asking them challenging questions, praying for them secretly. These are things that Job gives us a role model for.

And he had prosperity; he was wealthy in the way that you look at wealth and success. He had family prosperity, 10 children: seven sons and three daughters, so it seemed like his family lineage was set. And material prosperity; in that agrarian society all of this livestock that's listed in great detail would've made for wealth back in those agrarian society. For me, I wouldn't know what to do with one camel, never mind, 3,000 camels. What did 3,000 camels eat in a day? And what does that even look like? In my geeky way, I figured out it's somewhat like a matrix of 55 camels wide by 55 camels deep, that's what it... so picture that. But I don't know how wide 55 camels is. What is it? It's bigger than my property. So, this was a wealthy man. 500 yolk of oxen, that's a thousand oxen. He was wealthy. This was Job.

Now, let's talk about Satan's first test of Job in Job 1:6-19. Satan approaches, “There was a day,” verse six, “when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan also came among them.” This is what's often seen to be the heavenly council. It's in the heavenly realms; not something could have been seen with the naked eye. God ruling in the heavenly realms. One translation just simply says angels, and they, I think, were angels, the sons of God. The text, the Hebrew, says sons of God, but in Job 38:7, it says that the sons of God were celebrating and worshiping when he laid the foundations of the earth. There were no human beings at that point. We don't know exactly, in Genesis one, it's not accounted when he created the angels, spirit beings, but he did and they watched him make the physical universe.

So the heavenly council, I believe, involves God descending from the region above creation, if you could picture it that way: heaven, even the highest heavens. Christ, in the book of Hebrews, moves through the heavens above all that, so God is not part even of the heavens; he's above everything. But you get the sense of him descending and setting up his throne amongst the angels. And they come and the Holy angels assemble around him to stand in his presence ready to serve him, to bow down in his presence, to worship him, this is what's going on. And Satan comes as well, so there's a sense that he's an outlier, not ordinarily there perhaps, or not welcome, in one sense he's not included in them, but he comes.

Satan is a fallen angel. He is an angel that thought, it seems, from Isaiah 14, that he could ascend and topple God from his throne, preposterous, but he was arrogant in that sense and thought that he could do that. So he comes and Satan comes as well. God, then, questions, Satan: “The Lord said to Satan,” verse seven, “‘From where have you come from?’ Satan answered the Lord, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.’” This is a picture of the restless roaming of Satan. It's his nature to be restless and to roam and to move around, moving back and forth over it. Charles Spurgeon said that Satan marched everywhere like a king in his own dominions, unhindered and unchallenged.

So that's the confident Satan who just dominates the earth, like when Satan takes Jesus to a very high mountain and shows him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. He said, "All this has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want. If you'll bow down and worship me, it'll all be yours." You remember that moment. So there's that sense that Satan runs planet earth, but Revelation 12 we get more of the full story, where it seems that Satan, as he was leading a rebellion of maybe a third of the Holy angels against the throne of God, fought a battle and lost and was hurled to the earth, lost his place in heaven and was hurled. And it says that he's filled with rage because he knows that his time is short. If you study the gospels, the demons, in their encounters with Jesus, are terrified of Jesus. They're absolutely terrified; there's zero doubt about his power over them. They're afraid that he's going to throw them into the pit to be tortured before the final judgment where they'll be cast into the lake of fire, where they are not now, but they will be at the end of time.

And so yeah, in some sense, Satan's confident, roaming around, other sense, filled with rage because he knows his time is short.  And Jesus said of demons, “When an evil spirit goes out of a man,” Matthew 12:43, “it goes through arid places seeking rest.” You picture demons as, well, restless, roaming around. Says in Isaiah 57, speaking of people, but it's also true of demons and of Satan, “The wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud. There is no peace, says my God, for the wicked.” So when you think restless, Satan is restless. I've also seen how when he is tempting us, he makes us restless and discontent as well. Just, when that's going on in your soul you know where that's coming from.  So Satan has a deep-seated hatred for God and for God's people. Relentless. Relentless malice, and he has vast powers of destruction at his disposal.

So, God boasts about Satan in verse eight, as we've seen, “The Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him. He is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.’" He says that to Satan. Now, it's key that Satan doesn't say, what about this? What about that? What about the other? There is nothing he can say. It's just true, but what does he say? Look at the accusation, verse nine through 11. "‘Does Job fear God for nothing?’ Satan replied. ‘Have you not put a hedge around him and his household, and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands so that his flock and herds are spread throughout the land, but stretch out your hand and strike everything he has and he will surely curse you to your face.’"

Like I said, Satan means accuser. It's an actual... the Satan, in a court trial, would be the prosecuting attorney; that's what the Hebrew word means. But here, it's just the name that we've taken over in English. He is the accuser. He says that Job is essentially in it for the money. He's a mercenary. He's basically accusing Job of being a prosperity gospel man. Meaning he's just in it for worldly goods. And he accuses God for abetting it, “You're paying off your friends, God.” Now this shows one of the key points that I'm going to make later this morning, it's vital, but I think repetition is helpful. Satan is restricted in his access to the people of God. He's restricted. He's like a lion on a leash. God is faithful to his children and he will not let any of them be tempted beyond what they can bear. I'm going to say that many times this morning, but it's first time I said it this morning. You just need to understand that.

So, God erects a protective wall around Job and everything he has, called a hedge, something that he cannot penetrate. And Satan has to ask permission to get at Job, at every step. Permission. This is vital for us to realize. All of Satan's approaches to us are filtered through the throne of God. He zealously guards his children, his adopted children. He zealously guards them, but he will allow some flaming arrows of temptations, and then accusations, to come through from time to time. And he trains us to put on a spiritual armor and lift up the shield of faith, and he works with, but understand: everything has had to go through him, God.

And also, Satan's accusation here is really repulsive, “If you take away everything, he will curse you to your face.” There's so many dimensions of wickedness about that. Effectively,  “God, there's nothing about you worth worshiping.” There's so many things in Job, himself, being essentially a deceiver. Well, then God grants Satan permission, but he limits it. Verse 12, “The Lord said to Satan, ‘Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him, do not stretch out your hand.’” Now, we need to understand this, I Corinthians 10:13 says: “no temptation has seized you, except what is common to man. And God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear, but with the temptation, will provide a way out so you can stand up under it.” So when you're being assaulted, understand, God had to give permission for that, so take it back up to God. What are you intending, Lord, in this? What are your purposes? You are very wise and loving to me. You're going to bring it back to God. There's intentionality in whatever God permits.

So then Satan goes out from the presence of the Lord, verse 12. Satan and his demons, we should not imagine, are continually in the presence of God, and see him, and whatever. Not at all. Actually, we learned in the book of James, where it says, "You believe that there is one God, good, even the demons," what? "Believe that." That means they don't see him; they got to believe that there is one God. God is higher than the highest heavens. He's above all of them. He reveals himself as he chooses. It's interesting how, in the Bible, angels and demons fight it out on roughly equal terms. We see it in the book of Daniel. It's really quite remarkable, but God and his sovereignty rules over all of these things. So, Satan goes out, verse 12, from the Lord's presence and the avalanche of sorrow starts. The avalanche, wave upon wave, upon wave of sorrow comes down on this man.

One day. In one day, all of his possessions are lost. He loses, when the first messenger comes, all of his oxygen and his donkeys. The Sabaeans came in, and they're raiders, and they came in and they took everything, slaughtered the servants, and I'm the only one left. While he's speaking, then the next messenger comes, and the sheep and the servants, the shepherds, are taken by the fire of God from the sky. Lightning, I guess, some electrical storm might have started a prairie fire, I don't know, but the fire of God comes down, it was called, killing them all. While that messenger's still speaking, then the next wave comes. Chaldeans swept in and stole all 3,000 camels; gone in an instant, and they slaughtered the servants as well. While that messenger's still speaking, the next avalanche comes down and the worst of all, the worst of all.

Verse 18 and 19, “your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck all four corners of the house and it collapsed on them and they're dead and I'm the only one who has escaped to tell you.” Could be, I would think, what any parent fears the most, which is vulnerable. We can't keep our kids safe perfectly in this world. We know it. It's one of the greatest sorrows there is in this world, is parents burying a child. Well, he didn't have one to bury, he had 10, in one day. An avalanche of sorrows, and then we see what James calls the patience of Job.

Verse 20 through 22, “At this, Job got up, tore his robe, shaved his head, then he fell to the ground in worship and said, ‘Naked, I came from my mother's womb and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised.’ In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.” This really is one of the greatest moments in redemptive history. Very, very unique, that a man would receive that kind of news and respond like that. Incredible. He humbled himself under God's mighty hand. He tore his clothes. He shaved his head. This deeply hurt him. There's no doubt about it, but he's very aware of his own mortality, and of the temporary nature of all of the earthy blessings that God gave him. He said, "Naked, I entered the world, and naked I will depart." What this says to me, if you ponder this carefully, what this says to me is every last one of us will experience, in some way, what Job experienced at the end of our lives.

One of my best friends in this church, over the years, was a man named Mac Woody. Mac was on the search committee that brought me here, Godly man, one of the most consistently cheerful men that I've ever met. He loved his wife, Eileen. He loved his three children, his multiple grandchildren. Sweet man. Consistently cheerful. The last time that I saw him, I visited him at Croasdaile Nursing Home. Mac had three homes. He had a home on Garrett road, simple home that he lived with Eileen for many years. Then he had her ancestral home out in Otto, North Carolina, the Western part of the state in a beautiful part of the mountainous area out there, very simple home, but it’s a very pretty area. Later in life, he acquired a beach home at Carolina Beach, got an amazing deal on it. He just let our family go to the mountain home or the beach home whenever we wanted. Very generous, and I remember seeing him, visiting him that last time and he knew, I knew where he was at physically and that the end was very near, but he was cheerful as always, filled with the faith of the gospel. But it occurred to me, he will never live in any of those homes again. Probably never see them again in this world… done. It's all gone. I didn't say that to him, but it was in my mind. It was just a lesson on how to die well. I just want you all to be ready for what's coming to you, and I want to be ready for what's coming to me. We don't know when, but it's going to come. Naked, we entered this world and naked we will leave it. And the Bible's very honest about that. We need to be ready for that.

We need to have the faith of the faith-filled men and women that are celebrated in the hall of faith in Hebrews 11, who when they reached the end of their lives, realized that all of the best promises were still yet to come. They died in faith, Hebrews 11:13 and 16 says, "All of these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised. They only saw them and welcomed them from a distance and they admitted that they were aliens and strangers in this world." That's what naked I entered and naked I will leave, that's what it means. Aliens and strangers. We just moved through. They were longing for a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. God has prepared a country, and a city, and he's going to give that to us through faith in Christ.

So you're going to reach the end of your life and all of your earthly stuff's going to be taken away. And if you're strong in the faith, like I hope you will be, it won't bother you at all. You will rejoice and say, "All of my best blessings are yet to come. They're in the future." So Job's patience means that he worshiped God, he trusted God, he did not question God, he did not challenge him, or charge him with wrongdoing. Now, people ask me, “Pastor, is it ever okay to just be angry at God?” What do you think the book of Job's answer to that question is? Absolutely not, ever.

We are never okay to challenge God, or charge God with wrongdoing. God never does anything wrong. And I just think it's part of the trial that we go through, that Satan tries to slip that in and teach us it's okay to be angry with God sometimes. No it isn't. God loves you and sent his only begotten son to die for you. His love for you is... the credentials are impeccable. No, it's not okay. It won't do you any good to be angry at God. Now, I believe that there's some things percolating inside Job at this point. Do you sense it? You've read the book. You know what's happening. It's going to start bubbling to the surface, but it's not there yet. He doesn't charge God with wrongdoing, and he worships.

All right, second test of Job, chapter two. Satan's relentless, “On another day, the angels came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan came also with them to present himself before him and the Lord said to Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’ Satan answered the Lord, ‘From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.’” He is so proud. He can never admit he was wrong. Just a proud being, too proud to admit failure. He's never going to think differently about anything for repentance is a gift of God's grace. And he's not going to repent; Satan doesn't repent of anything, just comes out at a different angle. He does what he does, and what does he do? He's a thief that comes to steal, and kill, and destroy, John 10:10. That's what he does.

Well, God vindicates Job, as we've seen. Chapter two, verse three, “the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him. He is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil and he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.’” Well, Satan renews his accusation, despite his failure to get Job to blaspheme. But Satan does know human nature. He has studied us. He knows our weaknesses. And what does he say? Look at verse four and five. “‘Skin for skin,’ Satan replied. ‘A man will give all he has for his own life, but stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and his bones and he will surely curse you to your face.’” Basically, what Satan saying is fundamentally, fundamentally, without our health we can't enjoy any blessings in this world, and we will actually trade all of our earthly blessings to get our health back. There's a sense in which that's really true. There are spiritual blessings that are not tied to our health, and we can enjoy those anytime, but it's hard to enjoy the physical blessings of life if you're in deep physical pain; if you're in agony, it's hard to enjoy them. People will spend a lot of money on their health. The last normal medical year, before COVID, in the United States alone, people spent $3.5 trillion on healthcare in one year. That's an average of $11,000 per citizen. That's how much we value our health and how much we... and Job, in his physical misery, lost his appetite. He didn't want to eat anything. Even an egg white tasted terrible to him. He says in Job 6:6 and 7, "Is tasteless food eaten without salt, or is there flavor in the white of an egg? I refuse to touch it. Such food makes me ill." You can't enjoy anything when you're hurting, when you're physically sick. So God permits Satan, but limits him again. Verse six through eight, “The Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well then. He is in your hands, but you must spare his life.’ So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores, from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.  Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.” hard to even imagine what that's like. We're going to talk, God willing, in weeks to come, about what he was physically feeling, and what kinds of suffering he was going through. But then Job's wife comes to him in verse nine and his wife said to him, "Are you still holding onto your integrity? Curse God and die." We don't know much about her, but those are her children too. It's just hard. It's hard. It's painful. But what she said was wrong. At that point, she's almost, it seems, coming at from the same angle that Satan was.

The devil can take us captive to do his will. We can actually say things the devil wants us to say. We just need to be really, really careful. We all can do that. We all can do that. And then Job's friends come. We're going to get to know them, God willing, over the next number of weeks. Interesting people, all I can say about them at this point, “Job's three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him. They set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him. They began to weep aloud. They tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. They sat there on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him because they saw how great his suffering was.” we'll just leave it there. It is through this paragraph here we sense just how great Job's suffering is. They can't even recognize him.

The patience of Job is deepened and broadened. In verse 10, as his wife said, “‘Are you still holding onto your integrity? Curse God and die.’ He replied, ‘You're talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?’ In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.” Now, that's an interesting statement. You know, first chapter is he didn't sin by charging God with wrongdoing, now he didn't sin in anything he said, but he is thinking some thoughts. How do we know that? Because he says them, over the subsequent chapters, just not yet. So it's percolating in there, and I think this is part of God's purpose, in Job's life. There is a basic corruption deep inside this blameless man and it's going to come bubbling to the surface and God's going to deal with it and heal him from it, but it's going to take time. The rest of us, it would have come a lot quicker, almost right away. With Job, look at all he went through before, but he didn't sin in what he said. He said, like in Psalms 141:3, "Set a guard over my mouth, oh Lord. Keep watch over the door of my lips." He's going to say later, "I put my hand over my mouth." sometimes, that's the best thing you can do. "I'm not going to say anything." Good choice, but he's thinking it.

All right. I want to just give you 10 quick lessons and one word applications, because we're going to see these lessons again and again. I'm just going to say it and apply it quickly. First, earthly prosperity is temporary, so store up your treasure in heaven. Second, God is sovereign, so humble yourself under his mighty hand. Third, Satan is a powerful adversary, so study his schemes. Paul says, "We're not unaware of his schemes. Study what he does." Fourth, the heavenly realms, the realms of angels and demons, are hidden from us, but they're impactful on our lives. Fifth, human godliness is precious to God, so pursue it. Pursue it. Say, "I would like five years from now, 10 years from now, to be more like Job in which it could be said, blameless and upright. Someone who fears God and shuns, shuns, evil. Six, God limits Satan's power, so rely on God's protection. Understand God has a hedge, a wall, around you too. He is protecting you. Understand that. And he's limiting Satan's power, and God knows how to do that. Seven, suffering is deep and inevitable, so prepare for it and suffer well when it comes. Don't act like it's a surprise. Don't act like these things, you didn't know this was coming. It's going to come. Get ready for it. You may say, how do I do that? Suffer well on the little things. He who is faithful in little, be faithful in much. Bear traffic annoyances better than you do. I mean all humor aside, just do that. Be more patient in your life. Be more patient with little annoyances that happen along the way. Say, "God, get me ready for the big one." You say, "But I don't want the big one, so if I ask God for patience, he's going to start doing stuff to me." Friend, he's going to do things to you anyway. The question is, are you going to react well or poorly? So, if you can get ready now and ask God to build patience in you now, then you'll be more ready to suffer well when that time comes. So number eight, patience in suffering is essential, so develop it in that way. Develop your patience. Number nine, Providence is meticulous, so learn the doctrine of Providence and trust in it, “A sparrow doesn't fall to the ground, apart from the will of God.” Ten, God is good and loving, so draw near to him in Christ. Draw near to him in Christ.

I'm going to finish the sermon by just meditating with you briefly on Christ, as contrasted with Job. Christ shines radiantly against the black backdrop of human sin and human suffering. Christ shines. Job was, in some sense, the best our human race had to offer. He was blameless and upright, who feared God and shunned evil. Jesus is infinitely greater than Job. Perfect in all respects. Completely sinless. He is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being. He loves righteousness and hates wickedness, that's Jesus. He was wholly at a level Job couldn't even touch. Job was vastly wealthy and lost everything without any cause at all. Jesus was infinitely wealthier. He was on a throne of glory in heaven. He was rich, and for our sakes, he became poor, so that we, through his poverty, might become rich. So everything was taken from Jesus too, but he did it so that we might have eternal life. Job was afflicted with terrible sores from the sole of his feet to the top of his head, but he survived; Satan was not permitted to take his life, but Jesus is different. Jesus willingly laid down his life in death for us. He made himself nothing and became obedient to God. Even to death, even to death on a cross, he allowed Satan to take his life. He put himself in Satan's power to some degree, because Judas was inhabited with Satan, and Jesus went with him. Satan is a murderer and Jesus died, but in so doing, he destroyed Satan, who held the power of death.

Job eventually would question God's justice. We'll get there, but he does. Jesus displayed God's perfect justice, perfectly, for all time, Romans 3:25 and 26, “God presented Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice because in his forbearance, he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just, and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” By his death on the cross, the only begotten son of God, sinless, but our sin substitute, by his death, he perfectly displays for all time, God's justice. So Job's example can teach us patience and suffering, but Jesus is the only savior. Job can't save us. He's an example, but Jesus is a savior, so trust in him.

I'm going to close the sermon time in prayer, and then we'll go to a time of the Lord supper, celebrating the Lord supper. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for this time in God's word. We thank you for the truth of the book of Job. There's so many deep lessons for us here. Help us, oh Lord, to take them to heart. We thank you for the ministry of the word. Now, as we turn to the ministry of this ordinance, we pray that you would bless it as well. In Jesus name, amen. 

Over the course of Job 1-2 we see the prosperity of Job, his greatness of character, Satan's two tests, and Job's patience through them both.

The post An Avalanche of Sorrows (Job Sermon 2) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this 5th episode of the Peter Podcast series, Andy and Wes talk about 1 Peter 3:1-7, focusing on the proper way for Christian wives and husbands to behave.

The post Peter Episode 5 – Wives and Husbands appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this episode, Andy Davis covers the mysticism movement and Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153 AD). Learn about the complicated life of Bernard of Clairvaux.

The post Journeys from the Past, Ep.18: Mysticism & Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) appeared first on Two Journeys.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a sermon giving an overview of the Book of Job, covering the genre, history, and topics in the book.

Today we begin a study in the book of Job. My intention is to give you an overview of the whole book today. Most profound problem facing all believers in an infinitely powerful, infinitely wise, perfectly good God is the problem of evil, the problem of pain and suffering. And more acutely, when evil descends into the lives of God's people in the form of pain and suffering, why do good people suffer? Where is God when we face the varied sorrows of life in this world? Some of you are going through significant trials right now, this morning, or in this phase of your life. Some of those you're willing to share with others, some of them you keep to yourselves, no one knows about it. And even if we ourselves are not suffering right now this morning, or in this phase of our lives, perhaps we have in the past, and we have a strong sense that we will again in the future. And with the sting of that lash, the lash of pain and suffering, we often cry out to God, why, oh Lord? Why? Do you still love me?

We feel disconnected from the, apparently, happy people around us. Their laughter, their vigor, their apparent success in life can feel like so much salt in those wounds, the wounds of the lacerations of the trials that we're going through. We yearn for some explanation, at least, some sense of the reason why. We're left with the worst problem of all: a sneaking doubt about God himself. Is he really good? Is he really powerful? Is he really wise? And if so, then how do we understand the world around us, the world we're actually seeing. A world of pandemics that afflict millions, a world of natural disasters, like tsunamis that wipe out whole coastlines of cities and towns and fishing villages in a single day, a world of wars and rumors of wars, of viciousness and cruelty, and seemingly mindless, purposeless evil.

And then, in terms of outreach, in terms of evangelism and missions as we Christians try to proclaim a Creator God, who rules lovingly as king, and who calls on all people everywhere to trust him and love him, and follow him. It's not long before, in our evangelistic encounters, we meet people who throw this at us, this seemingly insurmountable problem of evil, of suffering and of pain. We don't know if we have an answer.

And there are many people like this, this evidence of strong unbelief in God, because of the problem of suffering and pain. Some of you have been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, and you've seen the evidence of the evil of the Holocaust, World War II, and at the end, there's a quote by Elie Wiesel, he's a man who was Jewish, who actually personally experienced the Holocaust as a boy, and who wrote the book Night, among other works, and he wrote this, talking about the Jewish doxology: “Blessed be God’s name? Why, why would I bless him? Every fiber in me rebelled. Because he caused thousands of children to burn in his mass graves? Because he kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and Holy Days? Because in his great might, he had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces? But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened, and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man."

Such is the effect of human suffering, on the worldview of some. People feel emboldened to question, even interrogate the very idea of an omnipotent loving, good, wise, God. To them it's proof that such a God doesn't exist. But then for us who are believers, even if you've never been there, you certainly know people who have questioned or people who are Christians but they're going through suffering, and they believe in God, they believe that God is wise loving, powerful, but they don't have an answer for what's going on in their lives.

And you know that someday that will probably be you. It's going to come in some form or other, no one gets out of this world unscathed by pain and suffering and death. So we're talking about reality, a real world faith that actually faces, honestly, what is happening in this world, faces the problem square on, and seeks to address it. And no book in the Bible does this better, or with more masterful skill than the book we're about to begin studying this morning, the book of Job. So this morning we're gonna begin our journey in the book. My goal in my preaching ministry is always the same. My goal is to preach for the faith of my hearers, faith in Jesus Christ, faith in God who sent him, faith in his goodness, in his mercy and love, that as a result of my preaching, that you would have faith in Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and for the joy, the eternal joy of your soul; that's always my goal.

As Jesus himself said the night before he was crucified: “Do not let your hearts be troubled, trust in God, trust also in me,” that's my goal: that in the face of suffering, you would be stable in your faith in Christ, that you would not, as it says in Ephesians 4:14, “be infants tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching,” or we could say, blown here and there by every wind of circumstance. There's nothing that can happen in this world that would move you from faith in God and in Christ. Now the book of Job is a part of, a cluster of books called, generally, wisdom literature. It's not like the history books that precede it, or the prophets that follow, which have a different role in the Old Testament, this is wisdom literature, five books: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs.

Now these books address the life of the heart, and of faith in the midst of the real world that we live in, that's what they seek to do. And Job is the first of these wisdom books. And it addresses the problem of suffering, the problem of pain, of evil in the world, specifically the suffering of the righteous. Some scholars call it the oldest book in the Bible, older than the books of Moses.

I just want to say, how do you know that? We will never know in this world when this book was written, I'm sorry for your chronological Bibles that put Job first. The scholars say, and it's an argument from silence, because Moses is never mentioned, Yahweh, I mean, these things, and so they think it must come first, we'll never know. And then there's the issue of the author, who is the author of the book of Job? Some of you were like: I thought it was Job? Well, it may have been, we don't know. I believe some scholars focus too much on the author; they talk about his literary skill, his poetical genius, his knowledge of science, his knowledge of the cosmology and all that. I get all that, I understand it, but I think the more you do that, you may find yourself in a dead end, effectively having denied this book as history.  It's just becomes a work of, like a fable almost, a moralistic fable if you make too much of the author's skill. I believe the true author of all the scripture is God, the Holy Spirit. And I tend to take an approach where I, unless compelled by the text, to take a grammatical historical approach, this actually happened. There actually was a man named Job, this really happened in life. And Job's message of faith, and the immense suffering that he faced, his process of reasoning through it, the final resolution of unshakable trust in God, once God reveals himself, is timeless, it's essential for us today. We need this book.

And our unsaved neighbors who are going through the same trials, physical trials, we are, but they are without hope and without God in the world, they need us to read this book, though they don't know that, but they do.  They need us to suffer well, based on sound doctrine in this world, to suffer well. And to be lights shining in a dark place.  In the midst of the same kinds of trials they go through, that we would be very different because we're so filled with hope and we don't yield to the temptation to doubt God and to murmur against him and to argue against him when we go through pain. But instead, we show a rock solid faith in Christ.

So faith in the God of Job will help you to shine when the world, your world, is the darkest, and that will be perhaps the best you've ever been in this world. As people watch you suffer well through your faith in Christ. So, this morning, the outline for the sermon is four parts: first: the problem of human suffering, secondly: the limits of human understanding, third: the resolution in the glory of God, and fourth: a call for unshakable faith. So that's the whole book, as we walk across it we'll look at it today. And no I'm not preaching verse by verse through all 42 chapters today, so rest easy. Honestly, I still don't have figured out a homiletical strategy on this book, so I'm hoping God will reveal that to me as we go. I tend to just go chapter by chapter, but this is a long book and it's just a fascinating study, but right now we're doing an overview of the 42 chapters. 

Let's start with the problem of human suffering. Job is introduced as you just heard, as a pious man, righteous, blameless, and upright, a man who feared God and shunned evil. He was a godly man. He was wealthy: seven sons, three daughters, 7,000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 yolk of oxen, 500 donkeys, a huge number of servants. In agrarian societies that's a very, very wealthy man. He was called the greatest man of all the people of the East. As we said, he's pious and he was a godly father. One of the best examples of fathering in the Bible is Job, because he didn't just assume things were well spiritually with his grown children: they seemed to be doing well, they get along with each other, they frequently feasted together, they enjoyed each other, but Job saw deeper and he knew that even in times of feasting and celebration there could be secret sin going on in their hearts. And so he would offer sacrifices for them saying: “perhaps my children have cursed God in their hearts.” And so Job realized piety is not just a matter of looking good on the outside, being a whitewash tomb, but there has to be reality inside. That's the kind of man he was. Then suddenly, overwhelming sorrow and suffering strikes him. You just heard it, verse 13 through 19, chapter one.  It's overwhelming because of how sudden it all was, and how comprehensive it was. What's shocking is that this all came upon him in one single day.  A report came upon him, and then another report. Reports come in, wave upon wave, waves of sorrow. As soon as one messenger finishes, the next one begins. And in one terrible day Job loses all of his wealth and all 10 of his children. I would dare say that none of you have had a day like that, even close to a day like that, ever. And not only that, I would dare say, you don't even know anyone that actually has been through something to that level. The level of pain here is almost indescribable. Everything thing that made him wealthy and blessed in this world is gone in an instant, taken in a single day, all 10 children gone, but the trial wasn't done.

Phase two, which we didn't read this morning, happens in chapter two.  And he is stricken with disease, with physical pain, from the sole of his feet to the top of his head, painful sores blistering out. And his agony was so great he's sitting there in an ash heap and scraping his body with shards of pottery just for some relief of the agony. His appearance was so transfigured, transformed, that his friends did not recognize him. And beyond that, his trials are misinterpreted by his friends and by the community around him, to the end that they all assumed he must be a very wicked person. To have all of this evil come upon him, he must be evil, only secretly evil. He's not the man we thought, so his friends, though initially they have some compassion on him, soon that goes away and they begin effectively accusing him of sin, again and again. And not only that, but the community around him thinks nothing of him anymore, he has no reputation with them.  As he says in Job 29, he says: "Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God's intimate friendship blessed my house, when the almighty was still with me, and my children were around me, I wish for those days. When my path was drenched with cream and the rock, poured out for me streams of olive oil. When I went to the gate of the city and I took my seat in the public square. When the young men saw me, they stepped aside, and the old men rose to their feet, and the chief men refrain from speaking, and they covered their mouths with their hands. I sat as their chief; I dwelt as a king among his troops. I was like one who comforts mourners. But now, they mock me, men younger than I, whose fathers I would've distained to put with my sheep dogs, mock me,” lost it all.

This is real life. This is; our Christianity has to face these kinds of things, this kind of suffering. And we need to be honest with ourselves. Job's already said it, you already heard it this morning: you actually are going to go through this. You will lose everything physical you care about in this world when you die. Now some of you're going to die in one way, some another, some cases of the process will be long and drawn out and very painful, others it will be very quick. But Job said it, in Job 1:21, he said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart,” and so will you. So our Christianity has to be real world and face this suffering head-on. And therefore we can't just come to church, for what John Piper calls, “yippy-skippy worship,” and then a fluffy sermon like cotton candy, that makes you feel good for a short time, and then kind of sick and queasy later. Instead, you need the real meat of the word, you need to be able to fight for your souls, and fight for your faith in God when these things happen to you. 

Secondly, the limits of human understanding: we don't understand. Again and again, we struggle with this searing question: why, oh Lord? We just don't understand the reason why a loving, wise, powerful God would allow such suffering in our lives. Job didn't understand. The majority of the book of Job records limited and faulty human attempts to make sense of human suffering, most of the book. At the end of chapter two Job's friends come and sit with him, and they come to console him, and as I said, they're staggered by his appearance, they don't recognize him, they sit there in silence with him for a week lamenting with him. But then, come the words, a river of words. It's long. It's a long book. I almost wonder if the length of the book of Job is almost like a statement to us of how long the trials are going to go on your life, longer than you thought they would.

And so Job begins to talk. In Job three he laments and curses the day of his birth, I wish I'd never been born, why was I born at all? Why does God bring people into a world of suffering? And worst of all for Job, was that he cried out to God and got nothing but silence back. Job 30:19 through 21, he said, "I cry to you for help, and you do not answer me, I stand, and you only look at me. You have turned cruel to me. With the might of your hand you persecute me." Imagine saying that to God, 'you've turned cruel to me, and you're persecuting me with your omnipotence.' So he didn't understand. And Job's friends definitely didn't understand.

They think they do. Their theology is all figured out, they got the whole thing worked out, they had it worked out before they went and saw Job, they know what's going on. And they all come, effectively, from the same school of theology. God is perfectly just, he's sovereign over the events of planet earth; he doesn't let the wicked get away with it. And he brings judgment on people. And so, the only possible explanation here, Job, is that you must be a sinner. And it's proportional, so given the magnitude of your suffering, that's evidence of the magnitude of your sin; you must be a very great sinner.

And so, we have a dialogue from chapter four through 27, three cycles of dialogues between Job and his friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. And so one of them will speak and Job answers, and the next one will speak Job answers, and the next one speak and Joe answers, and then they cycle back. And they just, really, the friends anyway, just keep making the same points over and over. But Job is on a journey, and Job just continues to unfold his heart as he's trying to work through this. The worst moment, in terms of the friends, is Eliphaz's second speech. In Job 22:5, he actually says this to his friend: "Is not your wickedness great? Are not your sins endless?" I mean, how much further from reality could such a friend be? You must be the greatest, most endless sinner that's ever walked on earth. This is the man that, of whom we're told, is blameless and upright. I think their theology is basically the same as the disciples’, I mean, is current among the Jews of Jesus' day, with a man that was born blind, it was a problem for that theology, right? You sin, you die. You sin, you suffer. But now we have a baby born into the world blind, blind from birth. So, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind? They were trying to work it through; you remember John nine, same theology. The only explanation the friends have for Job suffering is Job’s sin. But Job swears his innocence. Again and again, he asserts his innocence, he's not claiming sinlessness, there are clear evidence that he knows he's a sinner in that sense. But rather, that there's no horrendous sins, skeletons in his closet that would explain this, possibly could explain such massive suffering. So in Job chapters 29 through 31, he basically takes a solemn vow before God and man that he is innocent, blameless of great transgression.

Job 31 is a fascinating chapter. It's, I think, the parallel to Proverbs 31, which is the righteous wife, righteous godly woman. Job 31 is the righteous godly man. And he just goes step by step through the levels of his piety. He claims to be innocent of lust, of falsehood, of covetousness, of adultery, of mistreatment of servants, or mistreatment of the poor needy. Actually, he's lavishly cared for the poor needy. He's not trusted in his wealth, he's not celebrated a foes misfortune, he's not failed to care for the sojourner, and he has not secretly idolized the stars. I'm a righteous person. However, he goes so far as to charge God with injustice. Job 19:6,7, "God has wronged me, and drawn his net around me. Though I cry, 'I've been wronged,' I get no response. Though I call for help, there is no justice." Wow. Imagine saying that to God.

And then, he said earlier, Job 13:15, "I will surely defend myself to his face. I will take God on." It is for this very sin, that God, when he appears at the end in a whirlwind, bears down on him and brings him to repentance. The Lord said to Job, Job 41 through five, "’Will the one who contends with the almighty correct him. Let him who accuses God, answer him.’ Job answered the Lord, ‘I am unworthy. How can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer twice, but I will say no more.’" But God didn't let it go so easily. Job 48 through 10, he said, "Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself? Do you have an arm like God's? Can your voice thunder like his? Then adorn yourself with glory, and splendor, and cloth yourself in honor and majesty." So to question God's justice, to question his love, to question his power, to question his goodness, these basic attributes are the ones that get on trial when we're suffering. God is either not this, or he’s not this, or he’s not this. He's either not wise, or he’s not loving, or he’s not powerful, one of those. But to do that, is a very great sin. And I actually think it is the point of the whole book of Job that we would never do that. And that we would end up having a stable faith in the God of the Bible, and all of his attributes, no matter what's happening in our lives; to move us, so that we never murmur against God ever. We never question God, we don't challenge him, ever, we just trust.

Now the basic issue with our seeking to understand is we lack all the facts; there's just some things we don't know. We're limited in our ability to process the facts that we do have, and worse than that: we twist our interpretation by pride to bias ourselves. So those are our problems. So first, we lack all the facts. I have left out so far of this fascinating drama, the heavenly realms, the conversation that happened between God and Satan, up in the heavenly realms, the whole thing started with that. And Job never knew anything about that conversation. God boasts about Job to Satan: “Have you considered my servant Job?” And then Satan accuses Job: “Does Job fear God for nothing, you've blessed him and protected him.” Well, this encounter shapes the whole experience completely, powerfully. If Job had known this conversation had gone on, he would've been much stronger in his faith, and been able to endure knowing that God was in some way using him as an example, putting him on a pedestal of suffering, not because of any sin that he'd committed, but for his own sovereign purposes, he would've been able to endure, that God thought well of him, actually, of all the people on earth, he thought well of him. He was a man of whom God was accustomed to boast, and it would've shut up all of Job's friends, quickly. You need a broader interpretation scheme here. They would've known God's evaluation of Job, that he was blameless and upright, a man who feared God and shunned evil. As it turns out, we, the readers of Job, know more than Job did. And we also know how blessed Job ends up at the end of the book. Have you ever done that? Where the answers at the end of the book, maybe a mystery, and you're like, "I got to know." And you flip ahead? Maybe somebody you're like, "I would never do that." But we can go ahead to the end and find out how well it all turns out for Job in this world, in this world. James talks about that, James 5:11, he said, "As you know we consider blessed those who have persevered. You've heard of Job's perseverance, and have seen what the Lord finally brought about." So we have information about the heavenly realms, God and Satan, we have information about how it's all going to turn out, on earth at least. Job didn't have those things; we lack the facts.

So our earthly knowledge of our sufferings is limited. The book of Job takes us up into the heavenly realms and shows us dimensions of God's providence that we don't have access to. And it takes us to the, at least the end of Job's earthly days, to see the blessedness that God poured out on him in the end. But I really believe, the full satisfying, richly satisfying explanation will be in heaven not on earth. I believe there we will see in retrospect the full dimensions of God's plan for our lives. There we will see how God ordained our suffering for our own salvation, and for the blessing of others through the gospel of Jesus Christ. We will see his wise, tenderhearted fatherly discipline for us and our sins, how wise God was with that. We will see, I think, the Satanic and demonic activity around us, which, thankfully actually, we cannot see while we live in this world. We'd be paralyzed; we wouldn't be able to live. We would understand that Satan is a thief who comes to steal, and kill, and destroy and that God only means to give us life and give it to us abundantly. We will see how he protected us, and would not let us be tempted beyond what we could bear. We'll see that. We will see how Christ constantly interceded for us at the right hand of God that our faith would not fail, and it didn't. We will see how our own blood, sweat, and tears, and our toils were used for the kingdom of God, the building of the kingdom of God, in dimensions we could never understand, the effect of our lives on our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, our friends, acquaintances, fellow workers, the whole scheme, and not just for us, but for all our brothers and sisters. Now, pastor, you're getting to multiply to infinity, yes, but we'll have infinite time. This is a big story. And there, we will finally understand, how infinitely reasonable, how perfectly rational was everything God did in this world. And we will know none of it was mindless or for no purpose at all. We'll actually admire God's craftsmanship in everything he did in providence when we get to heaven.

But now, our perspective is limited. We just get themes, and the book of Job gives us themes. In 1773, William Cooper wrote a poem that he called, “Light Shining out of Darkness.” He was a man who battled depression, even occasionally strong temptations to suicide, throughout his Christian life. And that poem, “Light Shining out of Darkness,” was his effort at self-therapy to fight depression. We know it in the hymnal as, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.” He wrote the poem based on Jesus' statement to his disciples in John 13:7, "What I am doing, you do not understand now, but later you will understand."

This is the poem: "God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, the clouds ye so much dread are big with mercy, and shall break in blessings on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace. Behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face. Blind unbelief is sure to err, and scan his work in vain. God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain." That's powerful, isn't it? When's that going to happen? “God is his own interpreter he will make it plain,” not in this world. What you get in this world are themes, and you're called on, based on those themes to trust God. Heaven will give us that comprehensive education and the minute purposes of God throughout redemptive history. We'll be able to see the rest of the story, why our children had to die maybe, or why this natural disaster had to come and take our home, or why this economic setback had me unemployed for that length of time, or all of it.

We'll be able to see, the light and dark threads in the tapestry of grace. And we'll be able to celebrate, and we'll see that education, but here on earth, we don't get the explanations. God never told Job, you know, when he appeared to him in the whirlwind and started talking? He didn't say, “oh, by the way, something you should know, I had a conversation with Satan about you, let me tell you what I said,” he didn't say anything about it. And he never, certainly never, told Job how much he intended to use his suffering to bless every generation of his children for millennia after that. The dimensions of God's goodness through Job suffering, he never knew. Instead, we just need to learn how to trust God, and to see his glory in everything, and those two points will take the rest of our time.

Thirdly: the resolution in the glory of God. God appears in glory. After hundreds, I don't know, maybe thousands of futile human words, in which, God actually speaks against both what Job says, and what the friends say, leaving me as an interpreter a basic problem. God's already panned the things these men have said, what do I do with it? But yet we find there's so much truth in it, it'll be interesting, so we'll get to that in the future. But he appears to Job in a whirlwind. And he said, "Who is this that darkens my counsel, but with words without knowledge, brace yourself like a man, I will question you, and you shall answer me." And for the next four chapters God puts Job, the best man on earth, in his place, puts him in his place. He deeply, fully, completely humbles him. And he does it by pointing to his own wisdom and power and creation. This is the pinnacle of what some call natural theology: God, the creator can be known and learned by observing what he has made. But in this case, it's God, the nature instructor, it's God, the one teaching us natural theology, it's so beautiful.

And we're not going on a nature walk here with binoculars and a sketchpad. No, this is God himself talking with obvious pleasure, in the dimensions and details of his creation. He discusses the fundamental structure of the world, but he brings it right down to Job himself, Job 38:4-7. He says, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you understand, who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know. Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footing set? Who laid its cornerstone while all the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? Where were you, Job, when all that happened? Did I ask you for advice? And if I had, would you have had any to give me?" And God goes beyond that to discuss the limiting of the mighty oceans of the world, the structure of the subterranean regions. He talks about the weather, the control of the winds and the storms, the wise arrangement of different types of zones on the earth, the desert, the icy regions, also the lightning, the precise amount of rain that falls at certain times, all of this. And then he takes Job up into the heavens to discuss the stars, the constellations, like the Pleiades and Orion, which he made and control. "Job, can you make the stars? Can you count them and keep them all in their place?" Having arranged the heavens and the earth wisely, he talks about the creatures that he's made, the lioness, the raven, the mountain goat, the doe, the wild donkey, the wild ox, the ostrich, the horse, as well as birds of prey, the eagle. Simply put, “Job, can you make an ostrich? The thing about her is she treats your young roughly, but she runs like the wind. She's interesting. Can you make an ostrich, Job?” He's just putting Job in his place.

He's also giving a clear lesson. “If I can do all this, and if I can care for all of my creatures so wisely, how much more will I care for you, my son, whom I love?” This is an amazing, and astonishing therapy session. Reminds me of when Jesus dealt with Peter after the resurrection, after Peter denied him three times, remember? And how Jesus bore down on him, and said, "Simon, son of John, do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?" And the third time the text says Peter was hurt, he said, "Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you," but it was therapy, it was healing him. And so God, I think, is hurting Job's pride in order to heal him. And it is immensely satisfying and successful. If a God like this loves me and cares for me, if he knows me and cherishes me, and if he will talk to me, that's all I need. And it really is. The God who made the universe knows us by name and loves us and cares about us, and pain is part of his method for saving our souls. Because of our sins, we must have a painful process of salvation. Not that there's any merit in our pain, but this is God's way of awakening our awareness to our sin and to our need for a redeemer and our need for salvation and to cry out to him and trust in him; he uses pain. 

So fourthly, this brings us to a call for unshakeable faith. The bottom line is the book of Job calls us to trust God while he works skillfully in our souls. Even if that working takes pain. All roads in the Bible lead to Christ, all of them. The book of Job leads to Christ.

Job cries out in Job 9:33, "If only there were a mediator, someone who could lay a hand on us both." Well, there is a mediator; there's one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. There is a mediator. And then beautifully he says, "I wish there were a Redeemer, but I know that there is a Redeemer, I actually," Job 19:25, "I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end, he will take his stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been destroyed yet in my flesh I will see God, I myself will see him with my own eyes, I and not another. How my heart yearns within me." That's the faith of Job, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and someday I'm going to be in a resurrection body.” And so therefore, he says in Job 13:15, "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him." I actually think that's probably the point to the whole book of Job; that you get to that point. “No matter what God does in my life, I will trust in God and trust in Christ and not let my heart be troubled,” that's why this book is here.

Now, the Son of God knows infinite suffering more than Job. I know that's hard to believe, but it's true. Jesus suffered more than Job did. Job was a righteous man in that sense; Jesus was a perfect man. Job was definitely a man of whom God chose to boast, "Have you considered my servant Job?" But God spoke at least twice out of the heavens concerning his only begotten son, "This is my son whom my love, with him I am well pleased." Highest commendation. And Job was a man who knew immense earthly suffering, but that suffering in no way represented God abandoning him. God didn't abandon him, but what about Jesus? Jesus up on the cross, in an infinitely mysterious sense, as our substitute, bearing our sins in his body on the tree he cried out as if from hell, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" I don't even think I can begin to comprehend what was going on at that moment in the spiritual realms. God demanded from Jesus his bloody death for our sins. "Father, if it is possible, let this cup be taken away." There is no other way, and he drank it.

So, Job knew immense suffering, but Jesus knew infinite suffering. He basically drank hell for us on the cross, so we wouldn't have to be condemned. So, when we're suffering now as Christians we need to first and foremost evaluate our sufferings in light of the cross. We're not suffering as we deserve, and we're not suffering to atone for our sins. Jesus did that, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” And we need to realize, that God is using that suffering to shape us and prepare us for eternity, not to punish us. Yes, to discipline us, to get us to hate sin, but it's all to save us. And we need to believe that, that pain is essential to our salvation. The New Testament gives a far more developed theology of suffering than the Old Testament does, because it's in light of the work of Christ on the cross. Many verses explain the benefit of our suffering to us, perhaps Job is, sorry, James is the clearest, James 1:2-4, he said, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. And perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." You must go through pain, dear Christian brother and sister, if you're going to become mature and complete, not lacking anything, it's the only way. And then, if you want to be a witness to others, you must suffer additional pain and suffering. You must be willing to be persecuted. Because Jesus said, "Unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains by itself a single seed, but if it dies, it brings forth much fruit." So we have to be willing to suffer both in the internal journey of holiness, and the external journey of gospel advance.

And in the end, when we get to heaven, we will see how all of our suffering had a very powerful purpose, in the wise providence of God. Close with me in prayer. Father, thank you for the incredible book of Job, as we begin this morning to study it and to understand its big picture, and its themes, help us oh Lord to take these lessons to heart, to realize, oh Lord, that you are good, and loving, and wise. And that everything you do is right, and all your ways are just. Help us oh Lord to embrace that truth, and help us to suffer well when you call on us to do so, and to be strong. Help us not to live in fear, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the curse to finally come. Help us to realize everything you intend for us is for your own glory and for our good, in Jesus’ name, amen. Hi, this is Andy Davis. I hope that you've enjoyed this sermon, for more of my resources, please go to twojourneys.org, and may the Lord, Jesus Christ bless you as you continue to serve him.

Follow Job's loss, betrayal from friends, testing by Satan, and rebuke of God in a powerful example of how Christians ought to suffer well.

The post An Overview of the Book of Job (Job Sermon 1) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this 4th episode of the Peter Podcast series, Andy and Wes talk about 1 Peter 2:13-25, covering the topic of submission to God-ordained authorities, just as they should submit to God.

The post Peter Episode 4 – Submission to Authority appeared first on Two Journeys.

In this episode, learn about how the Irish monks saved Western civilization, and the warrior monk Columba (521-597AD) and his bold missionary efforts to reach the bellicose Picts.

The post Journeys from the Past, Ep.17: Irish Monks & Columba (521-597) appeared first on Two Journeys.

Well, turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 16, we're looking at the final verses in this incredible book, and I've had the opportunity over the last number of months to study the Gospel of Mark deeply and richly day after day. And I have just been blown away by the wonder-working power of Jesus Christ, the river of miracles that He did, the healings that He did one after the other. How effortless they are, how there is nothing that He could not do. There was no malady He could not heal. And I have realized that the healing ministry of Jesus, the physical healings He did were not only actual evidences of His power and proof of His deity and displays of His kindness and His character. But they also were metaphors of the saving work that He came to do in us, they are living parables. Because the work that Jesus came to do, this work of redemption is a grand work of therapy, it's a work of healing, because sin has genuinely messed us up. And these marvelous organs, physical organs of the human body that God created were rendered dysfunctional by sin, by disease.

God did not create the eye with all of its marvelous arrangement of cells with the cornea and the pupil and the retina, and all of the optic nerve to be blind. He created it to see. God did not create the ear with all of its marvelous minute aspects and all of the portions of the ear that are unfathomable so it could be deaf. God did not create the legs so that people would be paralyzed. He didn't create the skin to be destroyed by leprosy.

And so Jesus came into the world to take these corrupted organs that had been destroyed by sin and render them healthy. And He did it effortlessly, the greatest organ of the human is our heart. Now, this, I don't mean the physical muscle that pumps blood. But I mean the core of our being, the part of us that thinks, the part of us that reasons, the part of us that plans, the part of us that chooses and yes, the part of us that loves.

Corrupted, messed up, and He came to heal it, we're all messed up by sin. And when we look at the two greatest commands, the vertical command to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. And that horizontal command that is like it, to love our neighbor as ourself, our hearts are corrupted, we are sick and we do not love as we should. But someday we will brothers and sisters. Some day we will love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And someday we will love our brothers and sisters as we love ourselves, we will be healed from our lovelessness. And I'm looking forward to that, I don't know about you, because we're swimming in a loveless world.

Now, you may be thinking, pastor's talking about this 'cause it's Valentine's Day. I'm not. I'm not. I write my sermons a number of weeks in advance, it just happened to line up with Valentine's Day, and I made it worse by what I'm wearing, I know I didn't... I thought about it once I got to church. “What am I doing? This is sending the wrong message.”  But this is not why I'm here to give a Valentine's Day message.

I just wanna finish this incredible journey that we've been on in 1 Corinthians, and I feel like an organizing rubric on all of the kind of statements that Paul makes at the end here is love. And I wanna see how much God, the Holy Spirit yearned that the Corinthian church be a healthy church. And that they would live lives of love as a foretaste of the world of love, that we are going to. Heaven is a world of love as Jonathan Edward said. And we saw that in 1 Corinthians 13, but we're gonna see it.

Now, this is the end of a long journey that we've been on as a church, by one count, I think this is my 69th sermon in 1 Corinthians and my last one began the journey about two and a half years ago. And it culminates with these various statements here at the end of 1 Corinthians 16. We've seen how the apostle Paul ministering in the power of the Holy Spirit was writing to a severely dysfunctional church. Very messed up, a loveless church in many ways. They were not loving God with all of their heart, they were not loving one another as they should have, they weren't loving the lost in their community.

And so they were messed up and we have been benefiting from how dysfunctional that church was. Because God in His wisdom allowed the Apostle Paul to write this letter to address their dysfunctionality point by point, chapter after chapter. And then gave it to us in the canon, the new testament assembly of perfect writings of inerrant scripture so that we could benefit. And every generation of Christians since the time that Paul wrote this letter has benefited from what he said to these Corinthians. And I think a way that I wanna sum up these statements here at the end is by love... If you look back at what we talked about last week, 1 Corinthians 16-14. He said, “I gave you five commands, the last one, let all that you do be done in love,”  So I wanna organize these final statements here under love.

Love in the terms of healthy individual Christians, and in terms of a healthy local church, love in evangelism. Number two, love in passionate service to the saints, number three, love in submission to leaders, spiritual leaders. Forth, love in refreshing the saints. Fifth, love in recognizing servants, recognizing servants, and then love in greeting the saints. Seventh, love for the Word of God, and then finally, love for the Lord Jesus Christ.

So we're gonna walk through these eight quickly. First love in evangelism, look at Verse 15, You know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia. So healthy churches are filled with love for the lost. They love lost people, and they show that by evangelism, they're active in the harvest. The actual term that Paul uses for the household of Stephanas is first fruits, they were first fruits of a vast spiritual harvest of souls of human beings who were dead in their transgressions and sins, and who God has the power to save through the Gospel.

And Jesus called that harvest to the attention of His disciples. They were blind to it. You remember in John Chapter 4, they were in Samaria, they didn't wanna be there. They were Jews, what are we doing in Samaria? They went in to get some food, Jesus is talking to the Samaritan woman, and then she is so excited by that conversation, it changed eternity for her. It changed her soul, and she leaves her water pitcher there and runs into the town, and then this huge group of Samaritans are coming out and the disciples were unaware of the harvest that was right in front of them. They just went and bought some food, got out of there as quickly as they could. Came back, said, Let's eat and get out of here. And Jesus said to them, Do you not say four months more and then the harvest? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields they are ripe for harvest. That's still true today. Here in the Raleigh, Durham Chapel Hill area, we are surrounded by lost people. And just like the disciples didn't know what that harvest was about, because Jesus said, I have food to eat, you know nothing about.

I like to stick that extra word and you apparently know nothing about 'cause you didn't say anything about me to them when you went in to buy some food, but here this woman got the whole village to come out. And that's our problem too. Now, Achaia was a southern region of Greece that included Athens and Corinth. When Paul came there from Thessalonica, his first success was with this man Stephanas and his household, family and servants alike seemed like they all came to faith in Christ. The first fruits of a vast harvest there in that province. Now, Paul's zeal for souls is well known. He said to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, he said, “I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the Gospel of God's grace.” That's what my life is. Now, he's gonna make it super clear to these Corinthians in The Second epistle, 2 Corinthians 5. He's gonna talk about it very, very plainly, chapter 5 verse 14 says, “The love of Christ compels us.” And the context there is toward evangelism, the love of Christ constrains us to make an effort to win the lost, because he says at the end of that chapter, in verse 20, we are God's ambassadors.

Christ's ambassadors as though God Himself were making His appeal through us. We implore you, we beg you. On Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. Now, I think that's our calling. It's fallen to us now. This generation of sinners is given to us, this generation of Christians to reach, and there should be that love for the lost that just spills out into an effort to reach people. We are Christ's ambassadors, Christ by the Spirit is in us, making an appeal. We're imploring you. Begging you, be reconciled to God. Find forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ.

That's our role to play among other healthy churches here in the Triangle region, we are given this role to play, so what's going on in our church? What about FBC? Are we vigorously active in evangelism as we should be? If we're not, we don't love the Lord as we should vertically, and we don't love the lost as we should, we don't weep over spiritual condition of the lost as we should, and I don't think anybody I've ever met would say I weep over the spiritual condition of the lost as I should, we all know we could grow in that.

And so I just think the best thing you can do is just be a spiritual beggar on this and say, Lord, I have a heart that just doesn't care enough about lost people. Would you change me? In 2021, would you make me evangelistic? Would you make me care the people around me are on the road to destruction, that they're under the wrath of God, would you actually make me care about that? Would you make me cry over certain individuals who I know are lost, who I work with or who are neighbors or who are relatives, and they're not saved, would you actually move me so that I would be willing to pay a price? And it doesn't mean they're gonna come to Christ, and if they don't, they're probably gonna give you a hard time. But I'm willing to pay that price. The love of Christ compels me. I'm Christ's ambassador, love for the lost, evangelism.

Secondly, love in passionate service to the saints. Healthy churches express love in service to one another, we serve one another. Look at verse 15, it says there, and I love the KJV on this, I'm gonna go KJV, “I beseech you, brethren, you know the house of Stephanas that is, it is the firstfruits of Achaia.” And listen to this, it's KJV, “that they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints,”  Addicted.

Now, I don't think any other English translation, other than the King James version, went with addicted there. But wouldn't it be cool to be addicted to ministry, I mean, you just do so much ministry you can't get enough of serving the saints, can't get enough. The Greek implies that they've arranged themselves, appointed themselves, set themselves in careful order to do ministry. They thought about it, they planned it. And at the heart of it is, what can I do in service to the saints today? How can I make their lives better? Make their lives easier.

So this would be using the spiritual gifts that we talked about in those chapters, using the gifts of service, gifts of administration, gifts of hospitality, just even just speaking words of encouragement. I understand in this present stretch that we're in, some of those ministries have been difficult, but they're gonna come back. This is temporary, what we're going through, and hospitality will get going in full force, and we'll be able to serve one another and care for one another. Healthy churches do this, healthy churches wash one another's feet. So just think about that, Jesus washing the disciples' feet in John 13.

And He says, I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I am your Lord, I am your teacher. Now that I have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. That's a great image, isn't it? I love how Paul picks up on that image and applies it to godly widows, in 1 Timothy 5 and verse 10, talking about honorable widows who should be put on a list of care, financial support by the church. There are certain criteria for the widows that the church was going to care for.

And it's interesting what Paul says that such a widow would be well-known for her good deeds, such as bringing up children, showing hospitality, washing the feet of the saints. Isn't that incredible? So here's this godly woman who is... And it's a metaphor, but she's just serving the saints. Other Christians, how can I wash their feet? How can I meet a need? So FBC, does this characterize us? Do we wash the feet of the saints? Do we serve one another in love as we should? Do we individually have a planned-out strategy for ministry?  It's so easy to fly under the radar screen and church this size, and even easier in the COVID era to just fly under the radar screen.

Nobody really knows what's happening, what you're doing with your life. The question is, do you have some regular pattern of ministry to brothers and sisters in Christ, seeking to make their lives better? Could be words of encouragement, you could be calling people or communicating in the cyber ways that we do, of love, praying for you, I care about you, I'm aware of what's going on in your life, and then more and more, even physically with one another, alleviating suffering, does this characterize us?

Now, when the Lord Jesus returns and all the angels are with Him. And He gathers all the nations before Him, and He separates the people out, one from another. As a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, what He's gonna say to the sheep is, I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink, you cared for my needs. And so that's a pattern of service that we should be seeing in our church.

Thirdly, love and submission to leaders, love and submission to leaders. Again, in verse 15 and 16, you know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia and they have...Here's one translation, “devoted themselves to the service of the saints. I urge you, brothers, to” Verse 16, “submit to such as these and to everyone who joins in the work and labors at it.” So this word submit is a very important word in the church and in the Christian life. Stephanas was a key leader in the Corinthian church, look later at verse 17 and 18, he said, “I was glad when Stephanas, Fortunatus and Achaicus arrived because they have supplied what was lacking from you, for they refreshed my spirit and yours also such men deserve recognition,”

So they were the official representatives of the Corinthian church who are there to help Paul and supply his needs, but Paul's basic command is to submit to these hard-working men, they were spiritual leaders in the church. So healthy churches, loving churches, submit to their spiritual leaders. Hebrews 13-17 puts it this way, says, “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority, they keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them, so their work will be a joy, not a burden for that would be of no advantage to you.”

Now, this Corinthian church was fractious and rebellious and hard to lead. I mean, you can tell it just by the way that Paul has to deal with them over these two epistles, they're a handful. And Paul wants them to submit to godly leaders like these men were. Godly hard-working leaders and not make life and ministry miserable for those people, as the author says in Hebrews 13-17, “Obey them so their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.” So certainly would be no advantage to them, but the author to Hebrews is talking about the church, you don't want to keep running off godly spiritual leaders and making their lives miserable. That would not help you in your Christian life. And so make their lives a delight. Submit to their leadership.

Now, some commentators think this command extends to all hard-working Christians, anyone who works hard and serving the Lord, submit to such as those. In one sense, I definitely understand that view. Let's take, for example, a woman that's in charge of a wedding reception. Okay, I've done a lot of weddings, and there have been a lot of skillful women that are good at organizing weddings. And so when it comes to the reception down there, the hall, friend, she's in charge, and where she wants the decorations and the flowers and the table arrangements and all that. That's where they're gonna go. You understand what I mean, okay? And what do I know about these things? What do most guys know about those things, honestly.

But there's an event and there's details, and if you wanna help, you're gonna fit into that vision and that plan, so anyone who's doing a planned patterned ministry that requires organization, others that wanna come along and help are gonna fit into what they're doing. So I think that's helpful, but the word submit is a very strong word, and I generally tend to point it over toward elders and towards spiritual leaders that God sets up.

Now, what about our church, FBC? Well, when I first came here in 1998, there was a nucleus of very godly wonderful people, many of whom are still alive and are here. Who were praying for the health of the church, loved the Lord, loved ministry, but then there were a handful of others that just weren't that way They weren't submissive at all, and of those, some were particularly ardent about their role in the church, and they really did feel in a very unhealthy way that the church was their church. They gave more money. They'd been there longer than anyone else. Their names were on plaques on the sides of the building or different things like that. They felt it was like kind of their church and they were jealous of their position of power, and they were especially careful in a negative sort of way about pastors.

When I first came here, the polity or the government of this church was what we call a single elder model, most Baptist churches are that way. So the senior pastor runs the staff, and then the deacons, there were 24 deacons back then were kind of pseudo elders back then, we defined it differently then than we do now. But they... some of those deacon leaders saw themselves as a check and balance to the power of the pastor. And a few key kind of ring leader types felt it was their job to make certain no pastor stayed at this church very long at all. So every two to three years, they would increasingly make life difficult for the pastor, godly men, until they finally just saw the wisdom of leaving. Well, that's not helpful for the life of the church and the health of the church. Our church is radically different now, and I thank God for it. There is no church I'd rather serve than this one, and there's... I think it's a model of a healthy esteem for the elders. We moved over to plurality of elders, and so we have a group of godly men, and there is sufficient check and balance with them, 'cause they all have equal authority and we're in each other's lives, we're aware of what's going on, in each other's lives. They themselves are duly elected by the church and accountable to the church, it's a beautiful system.

I've said before this is a little kludgy, but I think it's true, this system of congregational polity, like Baptists have that vote in their leaders, a plurality of elders who all have equal authority to one another. And who then the church follows as long as they're leading plausibly biblically. That system is the best system of church government I've ever seen, where Roman seven sinners lead other Roman seven sinners. We're all sinful and we're all corrupt, so leaders can become corrupt, that's true. And followers can become corrupt as well, this system is the one the Lord has set up that helps minimize that sin. And when everyone's following the Lord in the power of the Spirit, it's a very healthy and beautiful system, and I love it.

Alright, number four. Love in refreshing the saints. Verses 17-18, “I was glad when Stephanas, and Fortunatus and Achaicus arrived because they have supplied what was lacking for you,” verse 18, “For they refreshed my spirit and yours also.” Isn't that a beautiful image? They refreshed my spirit.

Paul, I believe, had the hardest ministry in the history of the Christian church, I don't think anybody ever went through more suffering than the Apostle Paul did. Read about it in 2 Corinthians 11, the level of sorrow and suffering and persecution that man went through is staggering.

But here come these godly saints, and when they came into Paul's life when they brought their gifts from the church when they brought encouragement from the church, Paul felt refreshed. Paul felt refreshed, and especially he was refreshed by news from this Corinthian church. Paul says, “Of all the pressures on my soul, all the sufferings and pressures, the greatest pressure I feel, 2 Corinthians 11:28-29 “The greatest pressure I feel, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.” And he says, “Who is weak and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn.” I'm worried about the churches, I'm worried about the church at Thessalonica, I'm worried about the church in Ephesus, I'm worried about these churches, are they doing okay? They're under pressure by the world, the flesh, or the devil. How are they doing?

And so when these three godly individuals came, Paul just said, I was refreshed, relieved, I was energized. So isn't that incredible? What does refresh mean? Wouldn't you like to be that for other people? Wouldn't you just love to be a refreshing person? I mean, you're the kind of person... Where it says in Psalm 23, The Lord leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul. There is that sense of, and you are the way by which God refreshed some brother's or sister's soul. I think about an oasis in a desert, and you think about burning sand like the Sahara desert, and some oasis out there, which suddenly out of all these rolling hot sand dunes suddenly, there's a bunch of date palm trees, and there's a bunch of fruit trees, and there's some drinkable water in the middle and it's life to you. I think about Psalm 63, it says, “Oh God, you are my God, earnestly, I seek you. My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you. As in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

Because your love is better than life. David says I will praise you. Alright, but God uses us to minister Himself to other people. Wouldn't you love to be an oasis to somebody else who's going through a trial? Struggling with certain things, and then they had a conversation with you, and you shared Scripture with them, you shared the love of Christ with them, you prayed with them, and when they went off they were refreshed.

What about the opposite? How would you like to be the church's Eeyore? How would you like to be the church's Debbie Downer? Like, I was fine until I went and spent time with him or her. And it just sapped me, I don't wanna be an anti-refreshment, I wanna be a refreshment, and so you do that through the ministry of the Word, through genuine love, through physical things like hospitality, service, meals, things like that. But I just I think healthy churches do that and they care.

Now, a picture of this comes from the Pastor John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace, and he was... John Piper calls him the healthiest pastor he's ever studied. Here was a man, remember, he was a slave trader who was converted marvelously and had a genuine sense of the grace of God in his life, and was a real genuine, broken-hearted, saved sinner who was humble, but he was also happy. He was just a happy man, and it's the kind of person that you just wanna be around, the kind of pastor you just wanna spend time with. And he continually ministered to his friend William Cooper, who was chronically depressed and even occasionally suicidal, and he took him on and poured goodness and ministry to him. He refreshed him.

And this is a sample of how John Newton approach life, listen to this, something Newton wrote, Imagine two heaps, one of human happiness and the other of human misery. Now, if I can take but the smallest bit from the one heap and add to the other, I carry a point, I've won a point, if, for example, as I go home, a child has dropped a halfpenny, and if by giving it another, I can wipe away its tears, I feel I have done something good.  I should be glad to do greater things, but I will not neglect the halfpenny. And when I hear a knock on my study door, I hear a message from God, it may be a lesson of instruction, perhaps a lesson of penitence, but since it is His message, it must be interesting. 

What a great way to go through life. If I could just reduce by my interactions with people, that pile of human misery and increase by the ministry of the Word or by simple acts of service, that pile of happiness, I wanna live my life like that. Refreshing the saints.

Fifth, love and recognizing servants. He says in verse 18, “Such people deserve recognition. It is right for us to recognize such servants.” Now, this is very interesting. I meditate on this for a long time, healthy Christians, really healthy Christians never seek their own recognition, but give tons of recognition to others. And there is an essential humility in both for yourself, you don't need any human being to notice the good things you do, vertically, God is your audience, and He doesn't miss anything. And you can be confident that He is able to guard the good works you have entrusted to Him for that day, that growing pile of good works, He won't miss any of them, and you'll get your rewards. You don't have to have anyone notice you.

This is Christian contentment. I don't need anything in this world to come in to me, Christ is enough, so that's a healthy way for you to serve, to say, I don't need to be noticed. But then you can't turn it around, I will, however, notice others, I'm not gonna give out, you don't need to be noticed, so I'm not noticing you, oh, you don't need to be noticed either, I'm not gonna notice you, and actually none of you need to be noticed, we're just not gonna be a church that notices anybody. That's unhealthy. And it's frankly arrogant. So here, he says, Such men deserve recognition.

So you gotta kind of balance this thing, don't seek it, but do give it. Now, I mentioned plaques earlier, friends, I'm not talking about plaques, we've taken as far... Taken them all down, that's not something we really need is have a plaque. But just words of encouragement, I see what you do to help the church, I see the way you serve, I see your patterns of service, and I'm blessed by it. Thank you. It's just humble. You see it at youth events, people show up there to cook burgers and hot dogs and serve for hours, and they're faithful, it's good for those people to be recognized, but they themselves shouldn't seek it.

And that's just healthy in that regard, so that we would recognize that Paul talks about this in Philippians 2. A godly man named Epaphroditus, a messenger from the Philippian church, Paul says, This man risked his life for the Gospel and became very ill. But God spared his life, and then he says in Philippians 2:29-30, “Welcome him in the Lord with great joy and honor men like him.” Honor men like him, “because he almost died for the work of Christ, risking his life to make up for the help you could not give me.”

So healthy churches, healthy churches recognize the service of its members, but then the individuals never seek it. One of the strongest parables on not seeking it, is Luke 17:7-10, and Jesus is pretty vigorous with us here on this, cuts us off at the knees if we're seeking recognition. He says, Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or attending the sheep. At the end of the day, when he comes in, what do you say to the servant? You've worked very hard. Why don't you sit down? I'm gonna get you some dinner. No, you wouldn't do that. And said, wouldn't you rather say you sit down and serve me my dinner and when you're done, then you can eat. Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, after you've done everything you were commanded to do should say, we are unworthy servants, we have only done our duty. And like, Pastor, is that actually in the Bible? It is, look it up.

It's very humbling. At the end of the day, you should say, I am just an unworthy servant, I have only... You could actually insert a humble word, FINALLY done my duty. I finally have put in a day in which I serve the Lord, but He's not gonna thank you, He's gonna say that's what you should have done, so that's very humbling, but then we don't turn that around, we find ways to encourage and thank people.

So number six, loving greeting the saints, verse 19 and 20, “The churches in the Province of Asia, send you greetings, Aquila and Priscilla, greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets at their house. All the brothers here send you greetings, greet one another with a holy kiss.” This is a very common feature at the end of Paul's epistles, for example, in the Book of Romans, he greets over 35 individuals or households. 35.

And so here he's talking about the churches in Province of Asia, modern-day Turkey, these are churches that were planted by people that Paul trained and sent out. Aquila and Priscilla were Paul's fellow tent-makers, they were very skillful in evangelism. And so what happens is Paul is giving this local church a sense they're not alone, there are a lot of other local churches. We're part of a vast worldwide movement. So sometimes we'll see brothers from Africa come and say, I bring you greetings from my church in blah, blah, blah, and it's really encouraging. It's like there's a whole local church that's behind this individual who's come to this conference to preach And we have a sense we're part of this worldwide movement of the church of Jesus Christ, and so we give greetings from one another.

Now he says here, “Greet one another with a holy kiss.” It's an interesting statement, isn't it? And like Pastor, how does that work in the COVID era? Interesting question. Is there such a thing as a virtual holy kiss? Well, actually all humor aside, this is why I'm saying the virtual isn't robust, healthy, real church, it is better than not having it. For people that are not able to get out, I see that. But isn't there something valuable about being physically in each other's presence? And even though right now things are strange, it's not gonna be like this forever. And our version of the holy kiss is a handshake, pat on the back, where appropriate, a hug, done in a godly sort of way. Those kinds of things, those physical artifacts of affection and love are huge in a healthy church. So he says, “Greet one another.”

So first of all, just realize we're part of a vast movement of churches, and we can give and receive greetings to those other local churches, and then within this local church, let's greet one another. When you see a brother or sister act like you're glad to see them, it is just so good to see you, light up when they come into your view, make them feel loved.

Seventh, love for the Word of God. Verse 21, I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand, he wanted the churches he wrote to know his letter was genuine. He does this a number of times at the end of his letters, he would make his own mark, a number of the epistles are clearly written by secretaries.

He would dictate them. For example, a Bible trivia question is, Who wrote the Book of Romans? Paul, nope, Tertius. Like, who in the world is Tertius? He's the one that wrote Romans. Well, he was his amanuensis, he was his secretary. He dictated those things.

Imagine Romans coming through Paul's mind and Tertius writing it down. Tertius was the first to read the Book of Romans, how awesome is that? But Paul, at the end of some of the epistles, he said, “I want you to know what my signature looks like.” So 2 Thessalonians 3:17, he says, “I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand, which is the distinguishing mark in all my letters. This is how I write.” So this is my signature. Why did it matter? Because there were lots of false reports out there, even with Thessalonians, saying some reports have come out from us... Supposedly from us that the day of the Lord has already happened. You missed the bus. How depressing is that? You missed it. It was like a spaceship going to another cosmos and you missed it. So we were done now. Now that didn't... We never sent that. We didn't give that teaching. This is the mark on all my genuine letters.

Well, we don't have the autographs, we don't have the actual first copies, so the mark has come more traditionally through the New Testament canon and through the tradition of churches recognizing, so that really no one questions these 27 books of the New Testament as genuine. But we also read it, and the Spirit testifies with our spirit, this is the Word of God. And there's a cherishing that comes, and then he says like he always does in verse 23, “The grace of the Lord Jesus, be with you.” So there's grace to you at the beginning of all Paul's epistles and, “grace, be with you at the end.” I look on this thing as like this beautiful corridor of grace, Paul's epistles, and you come into the world of grace as you read the epistle and you're walking in grace, and he's rebuking, he's teaching, instructing, encouraging, he's doing all this stuff. And then at the end, he says, Now grace, be with you as you walk out, I look on it like a spiritual car wash. What a terrible image, but I'm gonna go with it.

Alright, you know those things where you go in, you go in and it starts doing things to your car, and it's awesome, it's a lot of fun, make sure the windows are up, but it's a lot of water, a lot of power and all this, and then these big things come in and these sounds, whatever, and then comes out, and if you get the full like Cadillac thing, 30 bucks and it's got all of the wax and you drive out. Shiny and beautiful. So that's an epistle. You heard, I think, heard that here first, I don't know, have you ever seen an epistle likened to a car wash, but it's the wash of grace, grace to you at the beginning, and then all this lavish grace that the Holy Spirit does in your soul, and then grace be with you as you go out into the world to serve.

Finally, eighth, love for the Lord Jesus Christ. If anyone does not love the Lord, a curse be on him come, Oh Lord. Love for the Lord Jesus. There were perhaps some in the Corinthian church itself that didn't really love Christ, but this really seems to address the outside world to any who will not love Christ, if there are any among you who don't love Christ may you be accursed.

It's a very strong statement, may there be a curse on you, and the ultimate curse is hell, it's condemnation, it's hearing these words from the judge of all the earth, “Depart from me, you who are cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” That is the curse. And if you will not love Jesus, a curse be on you, Paul says that and pronounces it. If you won't love the one that God sent into the world, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. This display of love, if you won't love Him... May, if anyone won't love Him, may he accursed.

God is patiently withholding his wrath. People right now in their lost state they're walking under the wrath of God, They're abiding under the wrath of God, John 3:36, “the wrath of God remains on them,” and that's a terrifying place to be, if in the end they will not love Christ, if in the end, they did not embrace Christ, may they be accursed. And then he says, “Come, Lord Jesus, Maranatha,” O Lord, I can't wait to see You.

May the Lord come at the end of the Book of Revelation, three times, Jesus says to His people, three times in that final chapter, I am coming soon. I'm coming soon. Now, you know, His definition of soon is different than ours, it's been 2000 years, but when we're in heaven, we're gonna see how that's like two blinks of an eye. Very, very soon, we're going to be in the presence of the Lord, and we're going to see His face. And that vision of Christ as He really is in His glory is going to finish our salvation, we are going to be instantly conformed to Him and made like Him, because we will see Him as He is, and you should yearn for that, you should long for the appearing of the Lord. And so healthy churches love the Lord Jesus and yearn for Him to come. Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank you for these eight practical, very practical points, we thank you for the Gospel, we thank you for the truth of the Gospel. And we pray, O Lord, that you would help us be a healthy church whose hearts are healed from lovelessness, from hatred, and from an insufficient love for God and insufficient love for one another. Help us to be what you want us to be, God grant us hearts of love, by the power of the Holy Spirit, enable us, O Lord, to be a world of love here on Earth as much as we can and look forward to a perfect world of love in the future, in Jesus name, Amen.

Paul's closing lines in 1 Corinthians show how a healthy church should overflow with love in every interaction in accordance with God's Word.

The post Healthy Churches are Full of Love (1 Corinthians Sermon 69) appeared first on Two Journeys.