94-101 Christmas Questions – The Question of Suffering

This sermon is Part 3 of the series "Christmas Questions" by Dr. Chuck F. Betters.

Christmas evokes numerous emotions, and in 1994, the emotions Dr. Betters experienced were not of warm, fuzzy Christmas scenes, but heart-breaking as he faced his second Christmas without his sixteen-year-old son, Mark. In this series, Dr. Betters acknowledges that not everyone loves Christmas or even looks forward to it. Rather than running from Christmas, though, he encourages us to recognize the opportunity to experience even deeper comfort as we recognize the pain of that first Christmas. Dr. Betters opens up a list of five significant questions that people are longing to ask, not only at Christmas, but throughout the uneasiness of living life in this broken world. We will see five influences that shaped the culture of the Christmas story and continue to shape our culture today. Our culture is hungry for someone or something to trust. In this message, Dr. Betters asks, “What about the question of trust, and what does Christmas have to do with it?”

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Welcome to In His Grip with Dr. Chuck F. Betters, produced by Marking Ministries. Each In His Grip message is designed to help turn your hearts toward Jesus and equip you to walk by faith. Let's join Dr. Betters as he preaches today's message.

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Turn to the ninth chapter of the book of Job, Job chapter 9. You know, Christmas brings with it a lot of mixed emotions. We celebrate countless family traditions, celebrations. The church holds many different religious services. Our children are caught up in a childlike suspense. The parents are caught up in an adult-like expense. There's a wonder, there's an expectation of Christmas Day. And yet there are so many hurting and fragmented and lonely people who are struggling during this time of the year to try to figure out meaning and purpose for their own lives. People raise questions. People raise tough questions. Somehow or another, the church has to begin answering those questions. It seems to me that we oftentimes in Christian circles preach messages and communicate in language that answers questions nobody's asking. Questions that don't touch the heart with relevance. Questions that maybe we're even afraid to raise. One of those questions we'll be addressing this morning. But let me quickly review where we've been. The first time we were together in this five-part series, because I see five major questions that people are asking, regardless of whether or not they're believers, regardless of whether or not they've ever come to faith in Christ, there are five significant questions. Now there may be more, and I'm sure there are more, and this is certainly not meant to be an exhaustive list of the questions people are answering. But I think fundamental to everyone are these five questions. The first one is the question of trust. Is there something or is there someone I can trust? Now, the time we were together when we dealt with that question of trust, we looked at the context of the day in which Jesus came, the crowd and the culture to which he addressed himself, the religious community, the political community, the social community, the economic community, how people were thinking, the philosophical community, etc. And the conclusion of that message was that the rationalists offer no hope, the religionist offers no hope, the relativist offers no hope, the politicist offers no hope, and the hedonist offers no hope. The question then becomes: to whom do we turn? In whom can we place our trust? Who has the answers? Who is going to tell me about the meaning and the purpose of life? We constantly get our hopes up through a political party or through some new scientific discovery or through some new philosophical idea. We constantly have our hopes raised, especially during this time of the year. And then they're dashed very quickly. We make New Year's resolutions, only to break them within the first few days after we've made them. And on and on this emptiness goes. People are raising the question of trust. Who can I trust? The message of Christmas is there is only one you can place your trust in. There is only one who offers you hope. There is only one who can answer the basic longing of loneliness and fragmentation and disorientation that so many in our society are experiencing. You can only come to understand the meaning and the purpose of life when you place your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, God's provision for man's lostness. The second question was the question of reality. We live in a world filled with illusion, especially at Christmas time. What is real? And what is unreal? And I proposed to you the last time we were together, there are certain illusions, too, primarily, under which people live, especially during this time of the year. One is the illusion of idolatry. And if you'll remember, I talked about three idols that seem to be resurrected from their graves every Christmas season. The idol of man's great human potential. That is, all he has to do is dig down deep inside and tap into the so-called brotherhood of man. In our collective and corporate unity, we will find answers to these questions of faith and hope and fragmentation and loneliness. We will find meaning and purpose in life when we look to each other and look at the great human potential that exists within the so-called family of man, only to find out that wars and rumors of war continue to abound and hate and violence and bigotry and prejudice continues to exist. And the more we seem to talk about man's great human potential, the greater our lostness seems to loom in front of us. We wonder how much more of the lies and the deceits of this idol we can take. The idol of religion is another of the idols or illusions of idolatry. Religion, remember, is man's way of trying to reach God. And the world is filled with religions. Religion abounds all over the world. Christianity is viewed by many as just another of the world's religions. But people who say that simply don't understand that Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is not about you in your efforts and attempts to reach God. That's what religion is. Religion is nothing more than man's efforts to reaching God. Christianity has nothing to do with religion. Christianity is a relationship. It is God incarnate. It is God reaching man. It is Emmanuel, God with us. It is God's initiative in electing a people for himself. It is God's initiative in coming to die on the cross by taking on human form. It is God's initiative when he rises from the dead. It is God's initiative when he sends the Holy Spirit to draw his elect people to himself. It is God's initiative when he preserves and keeps us until the day of judgment. It is God's initiative which will ultimately bring us into glory. It is God's initiative when at that precise moment the Lord Jesus Christ returns and brings all of human history to a major climax. That's a relationship, and it has nothing to do with the idol of religion. But it surfaces its ugly head as our Christmas and Easter people make their appearances in the church during that time. And I hope that doesn't offend, but on another hand, I hope it does. If you're one of those people, the idol of materialism certainly surfaces its head during the Christmas season. We think we can buy ourselves happiness. We can buy our children happiness. The illusion of idolatry. Are going to be politically and socially correct, or are you going to be biblically correct? In the conduct of our church life, will we as a church become socially relevant, or will we as a church become a counterculture that stands against the philosophies of the world? And in the conduct of your home life, is your home going to be modeled after the biblical paradigm, or is your home going to be modeled after the feminist ideology and the philosophies that follow that feminist ideology? Are you going to be locked into the biblical model of the husband-wife relationship? Or are you going to be locked into the relationship that exists within the so many fragmented and lonely families that have been sold this bill of goods about what a family is and what a family ought to be? Illusion. Illusion. Illusion. Raising the question of what is real. What is real? The only real thing, friends, you can place your trust and your faith in is the real incarnation of the Son of God. The real substitutionary atonement on the cross. The question of suffering and the question of pain. Have you ever noticed how much of the Christmas story is shrouded in pain? You know, we've decorated it with tinsel, and we've decorated it with lights, and we've decorated it with trees, and we've decorated it with our fancy designs. But friends, ultimately, doesn't it boil down to one thing? When you examine the true content of the first Christmas, it was shrouded in fear and darkness and loneliness and emptiness and pain. Little children died during that first Christmas because of a madman named Herod. Mothers' babies were ripped from their arms and sliced through with the sword. And those same mothers spent the rest of their lives grieving over the loss of those children who were ripped from them because of the madman Herod. Mary and Joseph were frightened young people. I mean, stop and think about what Joseph had to bear. You're what? I'm pregnant. But we didn't. I know that. Well then how the angel told me. Say what? Imagine the fear of discovery. You see, the whole first Christmas was shrouded with pain. Do you know what this next year holds for you? During New Year's Eve, 1993. New Year's Day prior to that. It would have been 92 New Year's Eve, going into 93. My wife and I were having fellowship with another couple and some other friends in their home. And there were just a few of us there, and I raised the question. I remember asking the question to everyone sitting there. I said, What would you do if you knew? Now, by the way, this is the same question I asked you about a week later. I asked my family just a week earlier, what would you do if you knew that in this coming year, beyond any shadow of a doubt, if somehow or another God were to reveal to you this truth, that you have one year to live, or there is one year left until the return of Christ. If you knew that beyond any shadow of a doubt, that you only had one more year on this earth, or that Christ was to come back in one year, what would you do? Now I raised that question to my family. I remember sitting around the dinner table talking about it. I heard all kinds of answers as I raised it in the church. Some people talked about running their credit card bills up to the limit. Others talked about doing this, that, and the other thing. Most people who were committed Christians raised the concern about their loved ones who did not know the Lord. And isn't that a valid concern? Little did I know that seven months later we would be burying our son. What does this next year hold for you? What will you have to face in this coming year? What would happen if God were to suddenly invade your life with massive doses of pain and suffering? You know, one of the reasons why we have so much difficulty with pain is rooted in a doubt that rests in the alleged sovereignty of man. Real issues demand real answers. Job raises some tough questions about the relationship between man and God. He didn't live in a dream world like some of us do. He knew how to suffer loss, how to suffer pain. He lost ten children. Not one, not two, all ten of them. He lost all of his possessions, he lost the loyalty of his friends and came very close to losing the loyalty of his own wife. He lost his health and he nearly lost his mind. Now, through it all, he never cursed God, but he did raise some very potent questions that remind us of how fragile life is. It is time for God's people to wake up and to realize that we live in a tough world. In just a few hours in the hospital this past week, I visited one woman, a godly older woman in our church who has suffered immense physical pain. She is now continuing to suffer immense physical pain, one thing after another, again and again and again and again. Next door to her, another person in our church who has just been diagnosed with a very rare disease. That is a very tough physical disease to fight. He's got some very difficult days ahead of him. I went downstairs and walked into the pediatric special care unit and looked at an eight-month-old baby who's lying there in a coma, healthy as can be from all outward appearances, staring at me with his eyes, sucking like he would suck for a bottle, but knowing that he's fully in a coma and probably will have severe brain damage. Seconds before, that child was just healthy and vibrant and the joy of his parents and grandparents' lives. But then suddenly he has an accident and goes into cardiac arrest, and now that family has been invaded. Their lives have been changed forever, and that little baby sits there in a coma. And just down the hall, I sat and prayed with a family of an elderly couple in this church who were waiting for a dear brother whom I've known for many years to come out of surgery. Surgery for cancer. Very difficult cancer that may eventually cost him his life. And that was just in a matter of a few minutes. That's just in our own circle of influence. We live in a tough world. We live in a world filled with pain and sorrow. Some of us need to learn how to walk in the shoes of those who suffer because life is not a bowl of cherries. We live in a world that's fashioned by illusion. The illusion of idolatry, the illusion of conformity, the illusion of the so-called sovereignty of man. We don't live in a garden anymore. Adam and Eve were placed there, but they sinned and God cursed them so that they could not come back into that garden. What he anticipated and hoped for in them was devastated by death itself. And from that moment on, we have lived in a fallen world that is racked with pain and suffering and the curse of God and death itself. And none of you are exempt. All of you will experience it at one point or another in your life. We must now work the earth and we must labor by the sweat of our brow because we no longer are lords over creation. Creation is Lord over us. That's why we suffer. That's why we are subjected to the ills and to the diseases and to the heartache of living in a fallen world. In that ninth chapter of Job, if you have your Bibles, if you look at verse 27, a scripture that we read this morning, notice the context of what he's trying to say. He says, if I forget my complaint, I will change my expression and smile if I say that. Well, I'm just going to ignore it. I'm going to do what most Christians do on Sunday mornings. I'm going to put on my plastic face. I'm going to screen out all of the pain and all of the suffering that exists in my life, and I'm going to act like nothing's wrong. I'm going to convince others that everything's peachy cream in my life. And I'm just going to ignore the fact, I'll change my expression and smile. How often have we said to people, get over it? Get over it. Do you know why we're saying get over it? Because we don't want to enter into their pain. Why? Because it's too painful. I would venture to say that sitting in this church are thousands and thousands of variations of suffering and pain, all to one degree or another. Questions and doubts about suffering and pain and heartache, that if it were voiced, if it were expressed, if you were honest, I've said it before, I'll say it again, this building would not be able to contain the tears of sorrow that exist right here this morning. Why? Because we live in a diseased world. So Job says, if I say I'll forget my complaint, I'll change my expression and smile. Notice what he says, I still dread all my sufferings. For I know you will not hold me innocent. Since I am already found guilty, why should I struggle in vain? Even if I washed myself with soap and my hands with washing soda, you would plunge me into the slime pit so that even my clothes would detest me. You hear what he's saying here? I do not trust my emotional peaks and valleys. They've never been reliable in the past, and they will not be reliable now. And Job is now living within a circle of fear that raises the question if all of this has happened to me in the past, the question then becomes what? What is going to happen next? And he questions his own emotional stability. You see, fundamentally, he cannot understand God. We make a very serious mistake as Christians when we interpret the book of Job as some sort of struggle between Satan and Job. It has nothing to do with the struggle between Satan and Job. That's just what happened in the background that opened up the floodgates because God took down the so-called protective barrier and gave Satan access to Job. The questions raised in the book of Job are not between Job and Satan. The questions in the book of Job are between Job and God. Job cannot understand his God. He's lost contact with his God. His image of God has been changed. He cannot understand God. Anyone here ever experienced that kind of pain? God, what have I done to deserve this? Why are you so angry against me? Notice in Job chapter 10. Turn over to Job 10 and look at verse 1. He raises the question of why so much pain? What has he done to deserve this? I loathe my very life. You ever say that? Therefore, I will give free reign to my complaint. I'm going to let it all hang out. And speak out in the Mara the bitterness of my soul. I will say to God, don't condemn me, but tell me what the charges are. You see, this is not a question of Job's suffering with Satan. This is a question of Job's suffering with God. I don't understand you, God. And in bitterness of soul, what have I done to deserve this? Why are you so angry against me? And the man has developed a bitter spirit, a Mara spirit. It's an interesting word in the Hebrew, by the way. After the miracle of the Exodus, when the children of Israel crossed over the Red Sea, and God worked that massive miracle of deliverance and buried the armies of Pharaoh. They came to the other side and sang the great song of deliverance. And they saw the glory of God protecting them, and all of their hopes for the future were out in front of them, and they felt like a people who had been redeemed and set apart, and nothing but hope. You see, the sky was the limit to them and for them. Only a few days later to be driven into the wilderness. Waterless, poisonous waters, the Bible tells us in Exodus 15. It says, Then Moses, I'll read this to you, led Israel from the Red Sea and they went into the desert of Shur. For three days they traveled in the desert without finding water. When they came to Mara, they could not drink its water because it was bitter, and then he PS's it and says, That's why the place is called Marah. It's bitter water. So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, What are we to drink? Then Moses cried out to the Lord who showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. Now there's all kinds of imagery there. We live in a bitter world. We live in a desert. The desert in Scripture always portrays the lostness of man wandering for hope. He looks and he doesn't find it anywhere. Why? Because his pain is shouting too loud to hear the voice of God. He lives in bitterness and develops a bitter spirit that says, God, why me? Why me? You ever asked that? Moses takes a piece of wood, which some scholars say is representative of the cross. And it may very well be that imagery, and he throws that piece of wood into the water, the bitter waters that exist in the desert of our lives, and that is only by the cross of Jesus Christ that life can become sweetened. I think that imagery falls very, very short of what the real facts are. See, I gotta tell you something. I've got news for you. When you come to understand what faith in Jesus Christ is all about, you better not be under any illusions that life is going to become sweet for you. Because prior to you coming to know Jesus Christ, you are a child of the devil. You belong to Satan. And you see, if you belong to Satan, you are a child of the devil. You represent no threat to Satan as long as you're within his possession. But when you come to faith in Jesus Christ, then and only then do you become a threat to the kingdom of hell. And if you thought life was bitter prior to Christ, you haven't seen anything yet until you come to Christ and become a threat to the kingdom of hell. That is when Satan begins to bombard the courts of heaven for permission to attack. Take down that barrier and he'll question you. And you know what? It works. It works. And many Christians walk around for years not understanding their struggle because they don't understand their God. The book of Job is not about Job's struggle with Satan, it's about Job's struggle with God. If you go back to the book of Job and look at chapter 3 and verse 20, he says, Why is light given to those in misery and life to the bitter of soul? Why is light given to those in misery? And life to the bitter of soul. He says in chapter 7, verse 11, therefore I will not keep silent, I will speak out in the anguish, the bitterness of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. Job chapter 10, verse 1, I loathe my very life, therefore I will give free reign to my complaint and speak out in the bitterness of my soul. Job 21, verse 25. Another man dies in bitterness of soul, never having enjoyed anything good. You get the picture? Even the prophets pick up this theme of marah, this theme of bitterness, and they begin to associate marah or bitterness with those who have become the objects of God's wrath and judgment. Jeremiah the prophet would say, Your wickedness will punish you, your backsliding will rebuke you. Consider then and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake the Lord your God and have no awe of me, declares the Lord God Almighty. You see what bitterness of soul can lead to? A questioning of God that ultimately gives birth to apostasy, where we walk away and we say, There is no God. Because oftentimes, listen closely, oftentimes, in our greatest moments of anguish, when my soul and my spirit is the most bitter, and when I question most vociferously the love of God in my life, at those very precise moments when that kind of spirit begins to emerge, I am most vulnerable to walking away from my faith altogether and saying, There is no God, he doesn't care. And one of the reasons for that is because when we express with such bitterness and loathsomeness the love of God, heaven is silent. God does not answer. So you hear Job raising these questions. And what he's looking at is a tapestry, and all he sees are those strings because he's only looking at the underside of the tapestry. He cannot see the whole picture. He doesn't know what transpired behind the scenes, he doesn't know of the dialogue between God and Satan, nor does he care. The only thing he wants is a fresh touch of God's spirit in his life. All he wants to hear from God is explain to me what's going on. Tell me why I'm going through this. And heaven is silent at the bitterness of Job's soul. He does not know what has gone on behind the scenes. And here's the key: nor is he told. He becomes bitter in spirit, a man who feels as though he has looked to his God for water. He looks back at his deliverance, his exodus. He has seen in the past the mighty hand of God. He has nothing but the bright hope of future looming out there in front of him. And then suddenly and dramatically he finds himself in the middle of a desert, and the only water supply there is poison. He looks up to God and says, Why have you brought me this far? Only to turn your back and act like I don't even exist. And you know, if you go over to Job chapter 10 and look at verse 3, there's even more. He not only questions the whys of his life, but he does not understand God's system of justice. He says, Does it please you, verse 3, to oppress me? And I gotta tell you something, friends, I've said that to God. I readily confess to you that sin. I've said that to God. I've said, Are you enjoying this pain? You could have stopped this, but you didn't. Are you enjoying the heartache? When I look into my wife's eyes or to the eyes of one of my children, and I see that hollow lostness and that pain, I say, God, are you enjoying this? Is this fun for you? Now, before you become too critical, read on. Does it please you to oppress me, to spurn the work of your hands, while you smile on the schemes of the wicked? I read about a drunk driver the other day. Something like his fifth or sixth conviction of drunk driving. He was speeding down a highway, grazed a guardrail, turned his car over five times, is thrown from the car, I don't know, 150 feet or 100 feet or something like that. The car blows up and he walks away without a scratch. Now I gotta tell you something. I raise that question. While you smile on the schemes of the wicked, do you have eyes of flesh? He says, Do you see as a mortal sees? Are your days like those of a mortal or your years like those of a man? That you must search out my faults and probe after my sin, though you know that I am not guilty and that no one can rescue me from your hand? I've raised those questions. He doesn't understand God's system of justice, he doesn't understand the nature of God, he doesn't understand the battle that's going on. Haven't you raised this one time or another? Haven't you asked this same question? Are there not times in all of our lives when we say to God, I am tired of trying to be good? I am tired of trying to live the Christian life. When I hear and sense and feel so much pain, haven't you said at one time or another, it isn't worth it to be a Christian? I cannot live by faith anymore. I need a God who is flesh and blood, someone who is going to show himself alive to me. I'm tired of praying as though God is in the same room with me when it feels like he's a million miles away if he exists at all. Have you ever wondered if God can indeed feel the pain of a man who has lost his dignity or the sorrow of a mother who has lost her child? Does God have the capability to enter into the fear of a battered and a lost little boy and assure him of his presence and care? Does God not care when the hatred of this world boils over into wars and street violence where the innocent are slain and the guilty go unpunished? Is heaven silent to the desperate pleas of the widow alone in her living room, stripped of her family and her best friend? Are the prayers of a homeless and smelly bag lady nothing more than audible moans only to the crowd in the bus stop or the train station? Does he care that the invisible church yearns for his return and wonders how much more of the cup of wrath must be filled before he blows the trumpets? Is God's heart made of stone? As his spirit blows as a mist through the corridors of the cancer ward of the children's hospital? Is there a cynical smile on his face when his children, the so-called privileged ones, who have been promised an inheritance that he says he has guaranteed by his death and protects with his Holy Spirit, who is the down payment of what is to come, yearn for a fresh touch of his spirit? An assurance that their father has not lost control of his senses? Are the scoffers and the skeptics right? Is God either detached, uncaring, or dead? Are the atheists right? Is God really a no-God? Are the prophets of the cults right in saying that Jesus failed? And that there are other messiahs in whom we can place our trust? Have we missed in the Christian church the boat of reason? Is it any longer reasonable to believe in a personal, caring, loving Heavenly Father who not only cares for his own, but measures with fine-tuned accuracy the accounts of every one of his elect children and will one day restore to them the years that the locust has eaten, that great locust which he says he sent? It is into that context that Job even goes one step further. Look at Job 10, verse 8. Your hand shaped me. You made me. Will you now turn and destroy me? Remember that you molded me like clay? Will you now turn me to dust again? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese, clothe me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinner? You gave me life. You showed me kindness, and in your providence you watched over my spirit. But this is what you concealed in your heart, and I know this was what was in your mind. If I sinned, you would be watching me and would not let my offense go unpunished. You know what he's doing here? Questioning the very Fatherhood of God. You made me, you shaped me, and now you're up there with a great big axe held high, looking for a sin that I've committed, so that you can claim me guilty and spurn the very one that you fashioned. He even gets to the point, if you look at verse 15, where he is almost subjected to the fate of fatalism. If I am guilty, woe to me. Even if I am innocent, I cannot lift up my head, for I am full of shame, drowned in my own affliction. If I hold my head up high, you stalk me like a lion, and again display your awesome power against me. You bring new witnesses against me and increase your anger toward me. Your forces come against me wave upon wave. I have that underlined in my Bible. Why then did you bring me out of the womb? I wish I had died before any eye saw me. From the womb to the tomb. That's where the man is. Fatalistic, saying to all who will listen, it doesn't matter if I'm good because he's going to judge me anyhow, and it doesn't matter if I'm bad, he's going to judge me. I wish to God, he says, you had never created me. And look at verse 19. He loses all hope. If only I had never come into being, or had been carried straight from the womb to the tomb. Are not my few days almost over? Turn away from me so I can have a moment's joy. Turn away from me so that I can have a moment's joy. Now note this before I go to the place of no return, he doesn't even know if there's a heaven. To the land of gloom and deep shadow, to the land of the deepest night of deep shadow and disorder, where even the light is like darkness. Have you ever walked in this man's shoes? Can you relate to what he's saying? I know you're suffering this morning. You see, Job's struggle is not with Satan. Job's struggle with God. What does the real you look like? Deep down inside of my heart, I know what I'm capable of. And most people that I talk to, if I were to share those things, would say, Oh no, you're not capable of that. Because you see, they only have a certain image that I've allowed them to have of me. We're all that way. There's always a part of ourselves that we withhold from even the closest people to us. But listen to me. At some point in your life, God is going to go down into the inter recesses of that real you, and he's gonna dig it out. And 99 times out of a hundred, the way in which he opens the wound, like a surgeon with a scalpel, opens the wound to get access to the organs. The only way, ninety-nine percent of the time, the way in which God gains access to the real you to root it out is through suffering and pain. Remember that. The great story of Jacob. You know what the name Jacob means? Deceiver, trickster, liar, hoax, imposter. This was the same sissy boy that stole his brother's birthright. This is the same liar and conniver who pasted hair on his arms and played the role of his brother to cumin his father out of the patriarchal blessing. It's interesting, he did it with his mother's consent. But there he is, spending his life in deceit, never showing people the real Jacob. And one night he is confronted with the prospect of his own death. His own brother is about to kill him. He's running for his life. And he comes face to face with God. And he begins to wrestle in the darkness. You know, it's interesting that God didn't choose the image of boxing. You know what boxing is. Somebody hits you, pow pow pow, they move away, pow pow pow, they move away, pow pow pow, they move away. And you might even be able to walk away from something like that. And in that context, as he's wrestling with this unknown God, what does God say to him? What's your name? What's your name? Isn't that interesting? Was God looking for information? Did he not know Jacob's name? Was God scratching his head saying, I'm wrestling with somebody out here, I don't know who it is. So tell me what your name is. No, friends. You see what he's doing? He is going down into the very chambers of that part of Jacob that Jacob allowed nobody else to see because he was living a lie. And he was going to root out the Jacob in him. And he was not going to let him go until he did that. And all night he asked him, What is your name? What is your name? What is your name? And got down into the very heart of Jacob's spiritual cancer, essentially, which was, you are a liar, you are a deceiver, you are a hoax, you are an imposter, you are a conniver. And I cannot deal with you until you admit that. What's your name? Not the name everybody else knows. Not what you've allowed everybody else to see. What's your name? And until you make that confession to God, until you allow God to do that surgery, you can never become Israel. Only when Jacob said, My name is Conniver, was God able to say to Jacob, No more shall you be called conniver, but you shall be called chosen of God. Israel, man of God. You see, there's a lot of Jacob that needs to be rooted out in me. There was a lot of Jacob that needed to be rooted out in Job. He said, if I forget my complaint, to change my expression and smile, I still dread all my sufferings, for I know you will not hold me innocent. And then he goes on to say to the same God, if only, if only, how many times do we live our lives with those two words as our epitaph? If only. How would you like to live your life that way? If only. But you see, the question Job raises in Job 9, when he says, if only, is the most important question in all of the Bible. It's never answered in the book of Job. It's not answered until we come to John chapter 14. He says, if only there were someone to arbitrate between us. God, if only there were someone that would help me to understand your fatherhood. If only there were someone to help me understand your nature. If only there were someone who could lay a hand on you and a hand on me and bring the two of us together so that my spirit can understand your spirit if only there was an arbitrator. Someone to remove God's rod from me, someone to take God's anger from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak up without fear of him. But as it now stands with me, I cannot, and that question is not answered in the rest of the book. Jesus said, as he lifts the veil, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. There is one mediator between God and man, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. Emmanuel, God incarnate. God becomes a man, fully man, fully God, holding God's hand, holding my hand, and arbitrating between us. And do you know how interesting it is to consider this fact that of all of the ways God could have chosen to make that arbitration real, he chose the vehicle of suffering. He could have come as a prince and overthrown everybody. He could have come as the president of the United States or as a world dictator, a world monarch. He could have come and brought the new heaven to earth without the means of a cross. But the vehicle by which God chose to convey the essence of fatherhood to the puniness of man was the vehicle of suffering. That's why I say that the real Jacob in you cannot be rooted out until you bow before the mediator and tell him what your name is. Oh, you can fool me, and I can fool you. And I can play the games with you, and you can play the games with me. But what's your name? And as you wrestle with God and you question him, and you raise the question of suffering and pain and God's whole system of justice, how he smiles upon the schemes of the wicked and seems to taunt his children? How he seems to love the sinner and the lost man more than he loves his own children? How could a father who is so loving and caring allow so much tragedy and pain into my life? How could he do that? Where is God? In the same place that he was when his son was butchered on the cross, saying to his people, I love you, I love you. And you see, as the book of Job unfolds, and as the message of Scripture unfolds, we are taken more and more and more out from underneath the underside of that tapestry and transported more and more to the top side of that tapestry, where God makes sense out of the whole mess and puts it all together within the context of his plan and purpose. That is why we are taught in Scripture when we get to heaven, we will not even remember the pain and sorrow we had while we were here. I don't know how that's possible. But you see, as we're transported above, and all the strings disappear, and we look down and we see the mosaic, and it all begins to make sense. And you know what fundamentally is the reason it will make sense? God became a man and was tempted in every point like unto us. You say he never questioned the fatherhood of God, didn't he? Didn't he? My God, alloy. My God, alloy. You know what alloy means? Foreigner. Foreign God. Foreign God. Not once, but twice. Why have you forsaken me? But he didn't stop there. As he comes to the point of rising above the tapestry around three o'clock in the afternoon on that first Friday that men call good, as he died there for the sins of his people, and as he feels and releases his spirit to be with his father, Eloy is changed to what? Abba. Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit. Not Eloy, foreigner, but Abba, precious father. How did he get there? He had to go through the cross. If only there were a mediator. If only there were an arbiter, I've got good news for you this morning. There is. That's the whole meaning of Christmas. God has sent the arbiter. One hand, he holds you. In one hand, he grasps the Father. He brings you together and reconciles you to him. But the beginning point is to root out Jacob. Who are you? What's your name? Then and only then can you come to know this God. Would you stand? Join hands with those around you as we close. Lord, it's not easy to understand the question of suffering and pain. But Lord, it does make us feel a little better to know we're in good company by raising such questions when we think of Job. A man who suffered in one day more than we could ever suffer in an entire lifetime. But how we thank you that the questions of Job are answered in the person of Jesus. And if there's one here this morning who is suffering, Lord, lay your hand on them. And if you are seeking through the means of suffering to root out Jacob, to dig down into the inner recesses of their real person, so that you can make of the Jacobs here a people called Israel. And Lord, you do that. Do it in me, do it in my family, do it in the church family.

SPEAKER_02 57:54

Now may the grace of God, the love of our Lord and our Savior, Jesus the Christ, the very presence, person, and power of his Holy Spirit abide with each of you now until Christ comes again and forevermore. And all God's people said.

SPEAKER_01 58:38

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