SPEAKER_00: Good morning, Eastridge.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Justin.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the senior pastor here, and I am really excited to get into the word today.
SPEAKER_00: We are going to be in the book of Job.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I I kind of I kind of don't want to really hesitate at all in getting into it because there's, you know, we we kind of need to uh just understand the truth and the hope and uh and the the uh the honest nature of what job is a is like so um you know all summer long we have been asking a question about who God is.
SPEAKER_00: Who is he and what is he like?
SPEAKER_00: Um and we've seen that he is holy, that he is set apart, that he is in a category all on his own, and that he is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: Uh he never changes and he never fails.
SPEAKER_00: And last week that we learned that he knows you completely, and all the way down, and he loves you anyway, despite your flaws or your failures, your sin, anything else.
SPEAKER_00: He loves you anyways, he knows you completely.
SPEAKER_00: So today we come to the attribute that most of us think we already understand, and that is God is all powerful, he's almighty.
SPEAKER_00: Um the uh theological term is omnipotent, so nothing is too difficult for God to do.
SPEAKER_00: So we say it very easily, though.
SPEAKER_00: We put it on our t-shirts and our coffee mugs and things like that.
SPEAKER_00: But this morning, I want to take you to the one book in the Bible where a man asks God to use that power, that almighty power, and God answers in a way that nobody expects.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, if um if you're down in you know the canal area, uh down in Canal Park, and um and you look at Lake Superior, you know that there is a very different uh idea of Lake Superior from July to November.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You know, in July it is a it's a postcard.
SPEAKER_00: We go down there and we we kind of hang out, we watch the ships go through, and it's really nice.
SPEAKER_00: But then November comes around and you don't want to be anywhere near it.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's um, you know, I've I've stood down there and watching, you know, uh storms come by and you know, having uh been splashed in the face by the waves that go through and feeling the rumble of those waves on the canal and knowing that you know there's something that's moving here.
SPEAKER_00: And there's there's people down there that uh that really, you know, they want to hold their phone up and and take a picture of it, but really you can't capture that power.
SPEAKER_00: You can't understand that power.
SPEAKER_00: It is so like you just have to be there to experience it.
SPEAKER_00: And you find yourself standing there thinking one thought over and over, at least for me, is that I could not stop this if I tried.
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't stop these waves, I couldn't stop any of the water, I couldn't touch one inch of it.
SPEAKER_00: And there's something about standing next to that much power that makes you uh honest in a way that you weren't the same person that you were before.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: the hardest moment of my life was not standing next to something powerful, it was standing in front of something that I couldn't fix myself.
SPEAKER_00: And asking God to do something about it, asking those deep why questions.
SPEAKER_00: Why am I going through something?
SPEAKER_00: You know, and and so I I've had moments in my life where I have prayed and prayed and prayed, looking for an answer, and I have heard nothing.
SPEAKER_00: I have heard nothing, and I continue to go through trials.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember thinking something, I'm guessing some of you have thought too.
SPEAKER_00: That, you know, God, I know that you can do something about this.
SPEAKER_00: I know that you can change my circumstances.
SPEAKER_00: I know that there's a reason I'm going through this, so why don't you change it?
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you do something about it?
SPEAKER_00: I'm having a very honest conversation with you about what I'm going through, and I know you can change it.
SPEAKER_00: You're telling me to be faithful, so why can't you do it?
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you do that at all?
SPEAKER_00: That is the question that gives us to go right into Job.
SPEAKER_00: It's easy to believe that God is powerful.
SPEAKER_00: It's much harder when you know that he could and that he hasn't.
SPEAKER_00: Because I know I'm not the only one in this room carrying that question.
SPEAKER_00: You know, it some of you have prayed for a marriage for years and it ended anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have prayed over a child that has walked away from God.
SPEAKER_00: And you've prayed over that child over and over and over again, they still walked away.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you got that scan back from the doctor, and it was not the answer that you were begging for, that you were on your knees for.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are in this room right now, this morning, sitting in this room with a smile on, and you have that question underneath all of it.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I want you to know before we open this book that the Bible does not scold you for asking those questions.
SPEAKER_00: It gives you an entire 42-chapter book to a man who asks it.
SPEAKER_00: And he has asked it louder and longer and more honestly than most of us probably ever could.
SPEAKER_00: God did not strike Job down for asking the question of why.
SPEAKER_00: He let the question stand for 37 chapters, and then he answered, though not in the way that Job expected.
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we get into this word, I want to just tell you something that I've been really encouraged by is that we had our men's breakfast yesterday, and it was it was great.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was delicious too.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but what was really cool is that you know we we were we were coming together and we were encouraged to uh to bring our Bibles and to carry them with us.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to pass that on to all of us here as well, that we bring our Bibles to this church, to our to our place, because uh in Ephesians it talks about how we should be having the armor of God.
SPEAKER_00: And part of that armor is the sword of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So I I invite all of you to bring your swords here on Sundays and have them sharpened.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: I want you I want you to leave here on Sundays with instruments that are going to be used out in the world.
SPEAKER_00: So bring these with you.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, write right in the margins, highlight things, uh, put bookmarks in them.
SPEAKER_00: Seriously, bring these and and scan them with your fingers.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing better than having your personal fingers touch these scriptures because there is something that happens when you're reading over it.
SPEAKER_00: And it's going in your mind and you're and you're seeing it happen, and you have this book.
SPEAKER_00: And the best thing is that as much as my 10-year-old son would love for me to give him this, I get to give him this.
SPEAKER_00: And in this has things that I have prayed over, uh, areas in scripture that I have struggled with, uh areas that I have applied, things that I have learned, and I get to give him this and say, This is for you.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is God's wisdom that I want to give to you.
SPEAKER_00: And and I and like I said, as much as you love a phone, I can't write those notes in there and give that to him.
SPEAKER_00: So I love technology, it's great, but if you don't have one of these, I want to give you one.
SPEAKER_00: I want to encourage you to bring yours here, to get your to get your sword sharpened on Sunday so you can go out in the world and use them against the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so here's what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be in the book of Job, and Job has lost everything.
SPEAKER_00: Job has lost his health, he has lost his wealth.
SPEAKER_00: All ten of his children have died in a single day.
SPEAKER_00: His friends have spent chapter after chapter after chapter giving him bad advice.
SPEAKER_00: And although here's something I want you to notice about those friends.
SPEAKER_00: That when they first arrived in this story, they got something exactly right.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 2 says that they sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and did not say a single word because they saw that his suffering was very great.
SPEAKER_00: Seven days of just being there, just being in that presence, saying, My friend, you are going through it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm right here with you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Seven days of I know that you're suffering, and I don't want you to do it alone.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna sit here with you so that you're not.
SPEAKER_00: It was when finally they opened their mouths that trouble started.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone else have that problem?
SPEAKER_00: I do.
SPEAKER_00: I do all the time.
SPEAKER_00: I start speaking, and it's like, what are you talking about now?
SPEAKER_00: So it Job has been asking over and over and over again for God to come and explain yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Then we see that in chapter 38, God starts to do that.
SPEAKER_00: It says, 38 verse 1, then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
SPEAKER_00: Dress for action like a man.
SPEAKER_00: I will question you and make it and you make it known to me.
SPEAKER_00: Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
SPEAKER_00: Tell me if you have understanding.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the first thing that happened here.
SPEAKER_00: God shows up.
SPEAKER_00: God is here.
SPEAKER_00: After all those chapters of silence, God is present.
SPEAKER_00: And he comes out of a whirlwind.
SPEAKER_00: That storm that I mentioned down in Canal Park, God comes in times like that.
SPEAKER_00: Job asks his questions from the middle of the storm and drama in his life.
SPEAKER_00: And God answered him from the middle of one, a physical one.
SPEAKER_00: And your storm, though, your the storm that you are going through is not evidence that God is absent from it.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the storm is the very place that he speaks to us.
SPEAKER_00: Job asks from inside a storm, and God answered from inside of one too.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what surprises everybody who reads the scripture for the first time.
SPEAKER_00: God never answers the why.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: Not once.
SPEAKER_00: Not in the four chapters that follow uh uh the 37 chapters of this book.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, what he does is he takes Job on a little tour.
SPEAKER_00: He asks him, Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
SPEAKER_00: Who shut the sea behind doors and said, This far and no farther?
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever commanded a mourning to happen?
SPEAKER_00: And then the the one that really makes me kind of smile when, you know, living up here in Duluth, it says, in 22, have you entered the storehouses of snow?
SPEAKER_00: Or have you seen the storehouses of the hail?
SPEAKER_00: Now, God asks Job if he's ever you know seen where the snow is kept.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: I've asked that too.
SPEAKER_00: I've asked where is this all coming from?
SPEAKER_00: It just keeps on going and going and going.
SPEAKER_00: So if you have wondered that yourselves around here in February, and I and I I'm with you.
SPEAKER_00: And then he points up, and he says, in 31, can you bind the chains of chains of the Pietes or loose the cords of Orion?
SPEAKER_00: The same constellations that you can see from your driveway, from from out in the field at night, up here are the ones that God points to and says, Can you hold those in place?
SPEAKER_00: Can you?
SPEAKER_00: Can you, little human, hold those stars up in place?
SPEAKER_00: Then he walks Job through the wild animals.
SPEAKER_00: He talks about the mountain goat giving birth alone on a cliff where no human has ever watched it, and yet it's still happening.
SPEAKER_00: The wild donkey who answers to nobody, the hawk that knows when to fly south without being taught how to migrate.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I really love about that section when we read all those things about the animals is that God is describing a whole world that is running beautifully right now without any human being managing it.
SPEAKER_00: There are things in this planet this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Creatures are being born, storms are forming, stars are being held in their positions that require absolutely nothing from you and me.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: That's a good thing, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's a great thing.
SPEAKER_00: God is gently making a point to a man, this man named Job, who feels like everything has spun out of control.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever felt that before?
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever felt like the world is just spinning out of control, that you're in the midst of it right now?
SPEAKER_00: The world, though, is not held together by your grip on it, by your understanding of it.
SPEAKER_00: Let me repeat that.
SPEAKER_00: The world is not held together by your grip on it, but God's alone.
SPEAKER_00: Then in chapters 48 and 41, we talk about uh there's two creatures that are in there.
SPEAKER_00: And they're not only in this chapter, it's actually in Psalms 2, the behemoth and the Leviathan.
SPEAKER_00: These are enormous, untamable, terrifying creatures.
SPEAKER_00: The thing that kind of shows up in ancient stories as pure terror.
SPEAKER_00: You do not want to see these things, let alone be by one.
SPEAKER_00: You don't you barely want to hear about these things.
SPEAKER_00: And listen to what God says in 41.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Can you draw out Leviathan with a fish hook, or press down his tongue with a cord?
SPEAKER_00: Can you put a rope in his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook?
SPEAKER_00: Will he make you please you?
SPEAKER_00: Will he speak to you soft words?
SPEAKER_00: Will he make a covenant with you to make take him for your servant forever?
SPEAKER_00: Will you play with him as with a bird, or will you put him on a leash for your girls?
SPEAKER_00: Do you kind of hear the sarcastic little tone that's going on here?
SPEAKER_00: It it you know, God is asking Job whether the most fearsome creature you can ever imagine is something that Job could put on a leash and hand to a child as a pet.
SPEAKER_00: It's ridiculous.
SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I have a little 15-pound uh dog named Jojo.
SPEAKER_00: She's a chug, and chug is uh is a chihuahua pub mix, so I'm not just calling her a chug, but she is kind of.
SPEAKER_00: So, but but honestly, um when I say we're going on a walk, that dog goes crazy.
SPEAKER_00: She's running all over the place, and and I'm like trying to chase her around just to put a leash on her, and she's 15 pounds.
SPEAKER_00: I can't do it.
SPEAKER_00: It's just difficult.
SPEAKER_00: So, what what what we're really we're trying to understand here is that God is saying you can't even get a 15-pound dog to put its leash on.
SPEAKER_00: And you think that you can question me about the power that I have over everything to understand it?
SPEAKER_00: God is asking Job whether the most fearsome creature he can imagine can be tamed and put a leash on.
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is no.
SPEAKER_00: And the point is that it it isn't it isn't no for God, that he can do those things.
SPEAKER_00: What is untamable to you is not untamable to God.
SPEAKER_00: The thing you cannot handle, the thing that you cannot fix, that you can't even look at directly, is something God could put on a leash without even any effort at all.
SPEAKER_00: He can do that.
SPEAKER_00: The thing you can't handle is not something that God struggles with at all.
SPEAKER_00: So here's where we get down to Job's response.
SPEAKER_00: Starting in chapter 42.
SPEAKER_00: Says this.
SPEAKER_00: Then Job answered the Lord and said, I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
SPEAKER_00: Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?
SPEAKER_00: Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
SPEAKER_00: Hear and I will speak.
SPEAKER_00: I will question you and make it known to me.
SPEAKER_00: I had heard of you by hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see you.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna read that chapter that verse five again.
SPEAKER_00: I heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see you.
SPEAKER_00: Job never got his answer.
SPEAKER_00: Go read for yourselves this week.
SPEAKER_00: I promise you that God never tells Job about the conversation that God had with Satan in the very beginning in chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have that conversation with him, he doesn't know that that happened.
SPEAKER_00: So Job dies without knowing why any of it was going on.
SPEAKER_00: But he stops needing to know everything.
SPEAKER_00: Because what Job got instead was God himself, not the answer.
SPEAKER_00: And there's something else in that whirlwind that I don't want you to miss that God could have said nothing at all.
SPEAKER_00: He owed Job no response.
SPEAKER_00: He could have just left him be on his own.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he came in a person and spoke for four straight chapters right to Job, his servant.
SPEAKER_00: You don't spend four chapters on someone that you have dismissed in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Four chapters is a lot.
SPEAKER_00: And the the the very length of God's answer is evidence of how seriously he took the man who's asking those questions.
SPEAKER_00: And it turned out that seeing God was better than getting an explanation for all his whys.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be careful about something here though, because that can sound really cold when you are in the middle of it.
SPEAKER_00: When you're in the middle of a storm, when you are going through all the whys that is happening in your life.
SPEAKER_00: It can sound really cold that I just say, yeah, but you're not gonna know.
SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna know.
SPEAKER_00: So let me explain this to you as a pastor and not as a theologian.
SPEAKER_00: That an explanation would not have fixed Job's heart.
SPEAKER_00: An explanation almost never will fix those things.
SPEAKER_00: Especially if you're not near God.
SPEAKER_00: So get close to God, and and and the explanation for why things happen to you kind of goes away, and that relationship starts to flourish.
SPEAKER_00: Knowing the reason would not have brought his children back.
SPEAKER_00: Knowing the reason wouldn't have brought his health and his wealth back.
SPEAKER_00: What actually held him together was the presence of God with him.
SPEAKER_00: It was big enough to be trusted with parts that he would never, ever understand.
SPEAKER_00: And we're in the same situation almost all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Job never got his answer.
SPEAKER_00: He got something better.
SPEAKER_00: He got to know the creator of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: And then that's where why this book matters so much.
SPEAKER_00: Understanding this matters so much is because uh honestly I can't get over this idea that Job saw God from a distance, out of a whirlwind, out of a storm.
SPEAKER_00: And you and I have seen him closer than that.
SPEAKER_00: We get to see him closer than that.
SPEAKER_00: Because the God who spoke out of the storm eventually stepped into the world by his own son, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Into the world, the exact same world that he was describing.
SPEAKER_00: The one who told the sea how far it could come and stood eventually in a fishing boat in the Sea of Galilee in a storm and said three words peace be still.
SPEAKER_00: And the wind stopped instantly.
SPEAKER_00: It was the same voice, that same power, is now standing in a boat with wet and terrified friends.
SPEAKER_00: And then he did something with that power that nobody saw coming.
SPEAKER_00: Scripture says that he, Jesus, did not cling to his equality with God, but emptied himself, took the form of a servant, and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: The same hands that hung Orion, the constellations, the stars in the sky were nailed to a piece of wood.
SPEAKER_00: And he told his friends, Jesus told his friends plainly, this was clear, it's in scripture, that he could call 12 legions of angels in a single moment if he wanted to.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's power.
SPEAKER_00: That is powerful.
SPEAKER_00: He had the power to come down from the cross, but he stayed.
SPEAKER_00: That is what real power looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Power completely under control and used for someone else's good instead of their own.
SPEAKER_00: Job asked God to explain the suffering.
SPEAKER_00: God's ultimate answer was not an explanation, it was a person, Jesus, entering the suffering with us.
SPEAKER_00: And then three days later, that same power that flung the stars into place rolled a stone away and walked out of a grave.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're here today asking that deep question of why, you may not get your answer this side of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: But you can have the same thing that Job got.
SPEAKER_00: He lost his health, his wealth, his children, his his place in life.
SPEAKER_00: He he lost everything.
SPEAKER_00: And he got God.
SPEAKER_00: You can see him.
SPEAKER_00: You can see Jesus if you turn from your sin and trust in him.
SPEAKER_00: And find that the God who is powerful, who is powerful enough to be feared, came close enough to hold on to all of us, to be near us.
SPEAKER_00: He had the power to come down from the cross, but he had the love to stay there.
SPEAKER_00: So if we know that, if we have that gospel, if we have that transformational information in our hearts and our souls, we need to do something this week that's going to help us move closer to him.
SPEAKER_00: We need to know something.
SPEAKER_00: We know this.
SPEAKER_00: It says, No purpose of his can be thwarted.
SPEAKER_00: No purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing you are facing has ever caught God off guard or exceeded his ability to change it.
SPEAKER_00: The waiting is not weakness.
SPEAKER_00: On his part.
SPEAKER_00: The timing is his.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not asking you to understand and know that concept well today.
SPEAKER_00: To walk out here and say, oh yeah, it's in God's timing.
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: I'm asking you to struggle with it.
SPEAKER_00: To wrestle with it.
SPEAKER_00: To get deeper with it.
SPEAKER_00: Because understanding something like that, a truth like that, takes a long time.
SPEAKER_00: It is okay to not understand how this works right now.
SPEAKER_00: But just know that his power is not in question.
SPEAKER_00: God's timing is his own.
SPEAKER_00: Then I want you to feel this as well.
SPEAKER_00: Feel small in the best possible way.
SPEAKER_00: There's real rest in remembering you are not the one holding up the world.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That's just how you were never supposed to be that way.
SPEAKER_00: So let this week make you feel appropriately small and deeply safe at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: Feeling small next to God is not humiliation, it's relief.
SPEAKER_00: So feel that in your hearts this week.
SPEAKER_00: And then also do this.
SPEAKER_00: Take one thing you can't fix and hand it over.
SPEAKER_00: Be very specific.
SPEAKER_00: Name the one situation you've been trying to control, the person that you cannot change, the outcome that you cannot force.
SPEAKER_00: And if you have trouble thinking of what that is, go to the whys.
SPEAKER_00: Why am I feeling this way?
SPEAKER_00: Why am I going through this?
SPEAKER_00: Why are you putting me through this, God?
SPEAKER_00: Why am I experiencing this?
SPEAKER_00: And then pray something like this.
SPEAKER_00: God, I can't.
SPEAKER_00: But you can't.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to stop pretending otherwise.
SPEAKER_00: Then go outside one night this week.
SPEAKER_00: One night this week, and look up at the stars.
SPEAKER_00: And remember who is holding them all in place while you sleep.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I want you to do this week.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in a few moments, we're going to take communion together.
SPEAKER_00: And after we do that, I want us to stand and sing.
SPEAKER_00: The band's gonna come up here, and we're gonna go into this time of communion and worship.
SPEAKER_00: But you know, there's an old promise that we that we sang about actually through uh the song Mighty to Save.
SPEAKER_00: It's from the book of Zephaniah, and I want you it this to be in your mind as you take and drink this morning.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord your God is in your midst, is with us, is here, a mighty one who will save.
SPEAKER_00: The whole message, this whole idea, this whole sermon in one sentence is that God is mighty.
SPEAKER_00: He is worthy to be saved.
SPEAKER_00: He is in your midst.
SPEAKER_00: He is the great I am.
SPEAKER_00: He's the Alpha and the Omega, the one who commanded the morning and set the boundaries of the sea, is not standing at a distance from your situation.
SPEAKER_00: He's right here at these tables.
SPEAKER_00: He's right here with us right now.
SPEAKER_00: He came in the middle of all these storms to be with us.
SPEAKER_00: And his power was never in question.
SPEAKER_00: Job settled that.
SPEAKER_00: The question was always whether he would use that power for us.
SPEAKER_00: And the table answers that.
SPEAKER_00: The empty tomb answers it louder.
SPEAKER_00: So take the bread, take the cup, and let it be quiet for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Here at Easter's We suburb, it's called open communion, which means that if you are Christian, if you have put your faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior, you can come up and you can take these elements and then take them back to your seats, and we'll take them together shortly.