1. "Suffering is universal, but sometimes we Christians tend to avoid admitting or discussing hard things—fear, failure, anger, conflict that we are in. We like our church services to be upbeat and positive, so we're not really looking for a series on Job."

2. "The church isn't a place where we hide from suffering, but where we help each other make our way through our own unique combinations of sufferings."

3. "We can use true things in bad ways."

4. "It's not wrong to say you didn't do something if you didn't do it."

5. "We all tend to reach conclusions too quickly. We think to ourselves, okay, God made us. Surely he must intend for us to understand everything all the time. Because I want to. It seems much to our surprise, God somehow is glorified by our not understanding everything all the time."

6. "God's revelation of himself and his word is essential to our understanding and making real sense of our lives. Philosophy alone can't do this. Philosophy has to be based on something. Our own experience can't do it."

7. "God cares for us. From what we can see, this basis for trust was never afforded Job. Job was never told about the heavenly court scene that we're allowed to peek into in the first chapters of the book. All the evidence Job has for trusting God in these trials is the fact of God himself. And Job trusts God."

8. "True worship of God is not dependent on our circumstances. We can certainly give thanks to God for good circumstances, but true worship occurs within us through the grace that God gives regardless of the circumstances that he sovereignly deems to allow us to endure."

9. "So far were Job's friends from being right in this case—this suffering might have come on you had you been more virtuous, so that when the Lord and Satan were talking, the Lord might have said, 'Have you considered my servant Bildad?' But he overlooks Bildad. He goes right to Job."

10. "God intends to display His glory in your life and in the lives of everyone around you. The circumstances of our lives are each meant as unique platforms upon which to display His power and His goodness."

Observation Questions

1. According to Job 1:1-5, what four characteristics describe Job's character, and what regular spiritual practice did he perform on behalf of his children?

2. In Job 1:8, what specific question does God ask Satan about Job, and how does God describe Job's character in this verse?

3. What does Satan claim in Job 2:4-5 about why Job serves God, and what does Satan predict will happen if God allows Job's health to be taken?

4. In Job 40:2, what direct question does God pose to Job after speaking about His power in creation, and how does Job respond in Job 40:4-5?

5. According to Job 42:7, what does God say about Job's words compared to the words of his three friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar?

6. In Job 19:25, what confident declaration does Job make about his Redeemer, and what does he say this Redeemer will do "at the last"?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that God initiates the conversation about Job with Satan (Job 1:8), rather than Satan bringing up Job first? What does this reveal about God's sovereignty over suffering?

2. The sermon points out that Job's friends and Job himself shared similar theology about sin causing suffering, yet they reached different conclusions. What was the key difference in how Job approached his suffering compared to his friends?

3. In Job 22:4, Eliphaz asks rhetorically, "Is it for your fear of him that he reproves you?" The sermon calls this an irony because Eliphaz unknowingly spoke the truth. How does understanding the heavenly court scene in chapters 1-2 change the meaning of this question?

4. God never explains to Job the dialogue He had with Satan. Why might God have chosen to leave Job without this knowledge, and what does this teach us about the relationship between understanding and trust?

5. How does Job's declaration in Job 19:25 ("I know that my Redeemer lives") point forward to Jesus Christ, and why is Christ's suffering described as both similar to and different from Job's suffering?

Application Questions

1. The sermon emphasizes that the church is not a place to hide from suffering but to help each other through it. What is one specific way you could this week bear the burden of someone in your church family who is currently suffering?

2. Job's friends used true theological statements in harmful ways, like using the doctrine of human depravity as "a club" against Job. Can you identify a time when you have used a biblical truth to condemn someone rather than to comfort or counsel them? How might you approach that situation differently?

3. The sermon compares trusting God to sitting on a plane and trusting the air traffic controllers rather than demanding to understand every variable before takeoff. What is one area of your life right now where you are struggling to trust God because you cannot understand His purposes?

4. Job's friends assumed his suffering must mean his sins were worse than theirs since they were not suffering as he was. How might this same assumption affect how you view people in difficult circumstances, and what would it look like to suspend such judgments?

5. Clara Brown testified on her deathbed that Christ's sufferings made her own seem small. How might regularly meditating on Christ's suffering on the cross change your perspective when you face trials this week, whether at work, in your family, or in your health?

Additional Bible Reading

1. James 1:2-12 — This passage teaches believers to count trials as joy because testing produces steadfastness, echoing the sermon's emphasis that suffering is part of the Christian life and produces spiritual maturity.

2. John 9:1-12 — Jesus corrects the disciples' assumption that suffering must be caused by specific sin, teaching that God's works can be displayed through suffering, which directly parallels the sermon's central message about Job.

3. 1 Peter 1:3-9 — Peter describes how faith tested by trials results in praise, glory, and honor at Christ's revelation, reinforcing the sermon's point that God displays His glory through our endurance of suffering.

4. Romans 8:18-28 — Paul teaches that present sufferings are not worth comparing to future glory and that God works all things for good, providing New Testament grounding for trusting God amid circumstances we do not understand.

5. Hebrews 12:1-11 — This passage presents suffering as God's fatherly discipline and calls believers to endure, looking to Jesus who endured the cross, connecting Christ's suffering to our own as the sermon emphasized.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Story of Clara Brown: A Life of Faith Through Suffering

II. We Often Suffer (Job 1-3)

III. We Sometimes Understand (Job 4-41)

IV. We Can Always Trust God (Job 19:25; 42:1-6)

V. Christ's Suffering Illuminates Our Own

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Detailed Sermon Outline

There was a woman in the state of Colorado whose name was Clara Brown. And that woman was good, and she was helpful to others, she was one who feared God and turned aside from evil. She was born enslaved in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, around the year 1800, and moved as a child with her mother to Kentucky. From there, as a 10-year-old girl, she was converted. She came to know God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

At age 18, she met her beloved Richard. Being enslaved, they had no legal rights, including no right to marry. So wanting to honor God as best she could, it was common among enslaved people to have a public ceremony in which a man and a woman held hands, laid a broom on the ground, and jumped over the broom together as a sign of symbol of their going forward in life together in love and commitment. Richard and Clara loved each other. God gave them four children, Richard Jr., Margaret and twin girls, Eliza Jane and Paulina Ann.

They loved God and each other. They liked to do good to others. One day in the summer of 1834, one of the twin daughters went swimming and tragically drowned.

Paulina. Not long afterwards, in 1835, the man who owned the whole family died, and all his property was auctioned off to pay his debts. Well, Richard and Clara and their family were considered property, and so violating another of God's laws, in yet another way, husband and wife were put asunder. Even the children were sold separately. Over the next few years, Clara learned of the death of her husband and her son and of the death of her daughter, Margaret.

Through a chest ailment. Eliza Jane alone was left of her little family. And she was far away and eventually lost touch with her mother.

It was many years later that Clara Brown was given her freedom and $300. For two years she worked to find Eliza Jane but couldn't. In the meantime, gold fever had taken over the country and people were moving out west. So Clara decided to move from Kentucky to Colorado. In Colorado, she was quickly hired as a cook in Denver.

She also helped to start a laundry business. Soon Clara was prospering financially. And spiritually as she helped organize a church. Having no place to meet, she offered them her home and they began to meet in her home. She rejoiced at being able to sponsor her own church like that.

Soon around 1859, she moved further up in the mountains, 4,000 feet in elevation further to Central City, Colorado. There through her hard work kindly manner, and shrewd business skills, Clara Brown became the laundress to the miners. She housed many of them. She made a good living. She would keep miners in her house and cook for them and do their laundry in exchange, in part, for a share, a stake in the claims of the mines they were going to dig.

Aunt Clara, as everyone called her, prayed aggressively. She prayed for her miner's safety, and she prayed for her miner's success. And her prayers availed much with God. She would often, in the middle of the town, drop down to her knees in prayer with her hands uplifted, her heads bowed, and loudly praying out. And the people called it Aunt Clara's Way.

Every time a mine paid off, she reinvested it. In property and in more claims. After several years between her interest in mines and her laundry business and real estate, Clara had amassed a fortune of $10,000, which at the time made her one of the richest women in the West. She gave her money to her church, she was a good Methodist herself, and also to other churches to help them. To other people to help them.

And she spent money in placing ads around the country searching for her daughter. In October of 1865, she closed down her laundry and headed back to Kentucky in search of her long lost daughter separated from her by this point more than 30 years earlier. After months of fruitless searching without success, she returned to Colorado. This dear saint had still more trials coming her way. In a terrible fire, she lost much of her property.

Soon after that, Clara herself was struck with congestive heart failure. Her wealth gone, her Denver property titles had been washed away in a flood. Her health in decline and her heart broken by her long lost daughter, Clara returned to Denver and lived the remainder of her days in a little house that had been given to her at 607 Arapahoe Street.

Why should such a hard-working, people-loving and helping God-fearing woman have such a hard life?

Why was she born into slavery? Why did she have death, alienation, and loneliness, heartbreaking circumstances, backbreaking hard work for the better part of eight decades? Why was her life crowned with congestive heart failure in her body and fire and flood to her property? Why?

Why does suffering like this happen?

To answer that question, I want us to turn to the book we've been considering for the last month in the third chapter. And this morning I want us to look at the entire book, the whole book of Job. You'll find it in the middle of the Old Testament.

The book of Job is just one of five books in the middle of the Old Testament which we call the wisdom books. Do something unusual. Open your Bible to the table of contents. So that's at the very beginning of your Bible, whatever copy you're looking at. Find the table of contents.

There are five books in the middle of the Old Testament which are these books of wisdom. They're books with no great events in them like the books of history or prophecy have, and no new laws like the first five books of the Bible have. These books rather are about the nation of Israel not as a whole so much but as individuals expressing their highs and lows.

These books form what we could call the heart of the Old Testament. So applying God's laws not so much to the corporate people of God, as the prophets do, but to individuals, the great issues that we face in our lives. That's why I think these five books often contain Christians' favorite parts of the Old Testament. Job, you see it there, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, full of beautiful, expressive poetry with hills singing for joy and God's enemies melting like snow and God riding on the clouds. Our hymns pick up some of these images.

They're full of the love and liveliness of the Psalms and Song of Solomon. The practical advice of Proverbs and the mystery of Ecclesiastes and of course of our object this morning, If you remember the futility, havel, and injustice of this world that we heard about in Bobbi's message a couple of years ago from Ecclesiastes, those lessons all seem to be personified in Job. It's like he is called and ordained to be a living example by his various experiences. Of the truth discussed in Ecclesiastes. Well, you can find the Book of Job on page...

Mike, I said, don't need to tell you if you're looking at your table of contents.

If you're using the Bibles provided, it's on page 417. You just turn there now. We will, unusually in this sermon, trying to go through the whole book, not read the text I'm preaching on. The whole book. And we will do a lot of flipping around.

So if you're not used to being at a church or looking at a Bible, the chapter numbers are the first numbers and the verse numbers are the little numbers after it. So if I say chapter 42, verse 1, you look over the big 42 and then the little verse 1 and you read the sentence after that. So that's what we're doing. So there it is, J-O-B. Some people first turn to the Bible for guidance and they just read the title of this book and they assume that it's be about employment.

And Troubles at Work, and it sort of is, but not directly. It's about trials and difficulties that God lets things happen in our lives that we don't fully understand, so it is kind of about work. This is the title that's pronounced Job has Important Wisdom for Us. The book of Job speaks realistically of all of our suffering, and it explores the limits of our understanding.

And it illustrates compellingly our need to trust God. So I want us to look at three simple statements, which I think summarize well the book's message, and I pray that as we do, you will learn to trust God more, or maybe even for the first time. If you're 10 or 12 or 15, what a great testimony to give someday saying, I first came to trust in God, to believe in Jesus in a sermon on the book of Job at church. I promise you, that will be an unusual testimony for the rest of your life. So the first statement, which summarized Job's message to us, number one, we often suffer.

We often suffer.

Job is one of the more famous people in the Bible. He's famous for his patience. When we're introduced to Job in the first five verses of the book, we see that he's called a righteous man. You look at chapter 1, verse 1, that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. Job is also described as a wealthy man there in verse 3, wealth meaning not just money, but possessions and evident prosperity.

That's why it would include his children, his family, the numerous attendants, along with animals and any kind of other wealth they had. He was prosperous. And not only was he wealthy, but he was also wise. We see there in Job 1:5, and when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate his sons and daughters. He would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all.

For Job said, It may be that my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually. So Job was a great man, says in verse 3, he was the greatest man in all the East. But you know, it's interesting, what Job is known for most today is not his wealth, it's not his health, it's not even his holiness, but he's known most today for the trials. He suffered and endured.

His trials are legendary. But you know that all of Job's trials are told of in just eight verses. It's not that the whole book is a long accounting of his trials. No, they're just right there in very brief compass there. The first seven in chapter 1, verses 13 to 19, record Job's loss of wealth and family, his prosperity outwardly.

And then the last one, verse 7 of chapter 2, records the loss of his health. So he lost his health, wealth, prosperity, and family, chapter 1, and then his health in chapter 2. You can take time to read those two chapters and get that story more thoroughly this afternoon. But it's interesting that Job's trials first affected his prosperity, the outward splendor of the man. Job was known as a great man, head of a great family.

He was known as great because of the things that people people could see with their eyes. He had these flocks. His animals took up so much land. He was able to do trading with so many. He had many servants.

And as I say, most of all, he had a large family. So he had a great reputation. Later in the book, he reminisces about the honor he used to experience when he would go to a city and enter the public square by the city gates.

All of this was taken from him quickly there in chapter 1. Not only did he lose his family and possessions, he also lost that which was left to him, his health.

Now, how many ads tell us, like, if you don't have your health, what do you have? I mean, they're trying to sell us on something that they say will improve our health.

And that's part of how people sell us. But still it is true that if we don't have our health, what do we have? On the other hand, if that's all we have, our own health, well then we can know that we will all surely lose that one thing we have, our health. None of us will keep our health forever. Perhaps Job suffered more suddenly than many of us have suffered.

But in the end, He didn't suffer more comprehensively than we will suffer. Sir Walter Scott said of all our lives, Come he slow or come he fast, it is but death that comes at last. Indeed, suffering is universal, but sometimes we Christians tend to avoid admitting or discussing hard things, fear, failure, anger, conflict that we are in. We like our church services to be upbeat and positive, so we're not really looking for a series on Job.

If we want realistic understanding of what it means to be a follower of the crucified one, we must, though, include such teaching. If we want to live lives in the real world, we should recognize that although we may be able to psych ourselves up for a little while with some rose-colored version of Christianity, we won't be able to convince many people around us of the truth of it, and certainly not of the truth of the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ. We won't be dealing honestly with ourselves either. By looking at the book of Job, we can see that trouble and strife belong not only to Job, but to us as well. We do no one any good by denying it.

People around us know it, they experience it in their lives, and for us admitting it, we help---by us admitting it, we help them. Job is a candid example of someone who suffers acutely and intensely and thinks honestly about his suffering. You find that as you read through the book. As we've seen in our study through Job chapter 3, he is very frank about his negative thoughts. You remember his counselors, his friends come and they sit with him for a week in quietness, and then it's Job who breaks the silence.

And do you remember what Job's first words are after a week of silence? How awkward would it be after all that he suffered what do we say to him? What would he say to us?

Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, A man is conceived. Let that day be darkness; may God above not seek it, nor send light upon it.

Friends, our suffering is not helped by our denying it or ignoring it. And as Christians, we have to be familiar with suffering as a very part of our religion. As our founder said, if anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. Jesus suffered.

James wrote, Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

Sadly, friends, the next paragraphs and pages and chapters and volumes of this sermon could be written in the red blood of Christians who have suffered.

Picking one of a sad host of examples, just because I'm an historian and this last week it was 1700 and 20 years ago that the great persecution broke out suddenly in 303 A.D. Diocletian, the Roman Emperor, had been Emperor for 19 years, but one day he promulgated an edict. He posted it in Nicomedia, ordering all copies of the Christian Scriptures to be seized and burned and all churches to be dismantled and no meetings of Christians for worship to be held. The next day Diocletian issued a supplementary edict which deprived Christians of all honors and dignities, making them all liable to torture, debaring them from being plaintiffs in any legal actions, and churches began to actually be physically torn down. This persecution continued intermittently for years. And friends, persecutions like it and worse have been prosecuted against Christians in every corner of the globe.

From that day till now. Now we know that Christ's church will not finally be defeated by such persecutions, but nor will we be excused from the trials of this fallen world. In this world suffering finds a home, even in the best of churches, suffering finds a home. Friends, the church isn't a place where we hide from suffering. But where we help each other make our way through our own unique combinations of sufferings.

We sing and we pray, we listen, we counsel, we hear one another's burdens and sorrows and we help to bear them. Because of this world, we know what life is like and we know in this world we will have sorrows.

So, friend, one way you can begin to honor the message of the book of Job is by looking around at your own life honestly and asking this week, what suffering am I involved in?

What about the people around me, those that I know and love, how are they suffering?

Any Job's among us this morning? Maybe something in your family?

Something at work, something in your health. Kids, you all are very unusual ones to talk about suffering because we often don't think of this as being something that kids experience. Of course, kids do experience suffering, but adults often find it very hard to talk about. Kids, sometimes your honesty is really helpful to us. So let me just ask for you maybe a little awkwardly at lunch, to bring up at the lunch table, Hey, what kind of suffering are we experiencing?

What are we doing about it? What does it mean? Do we suffer? Mom, Dad, do I suffer? Do you suffer?

See what interesting conversation that might provoke. Friends, in this world we often suffer. Truth number one. Truth number two. Second statement which summarizes Job's message to us.

Number two, we sometimes understand.

Number one, we often suffer. Number two, we sometimes understand. This is what most of the book of Job is about. If it's not merely about the fact that we suffer, what it's about really even more is the why we suffer. That's really the contest in the book.

As we noted last week, the basic note about sin in the Bible is that it causes suffering. It causes suffering and death. So it is completely natural for us when we look at suffering to wonder what sin is behind it. Maybe sin in your own life and your suffering. Maybe it's sin in somebody else's life that causes your suffering.

But what sin is related to this suffering. Let me give you a brief overview of the whole book. Let's just walk through it quickly so you'll see what it's like. The first two chapters give us the basic story. They tell us who Job is and the trials he encounters.

Then at the end of chapter two, these three friends of Job come to comfort him and they sit with him silently for a week. Finally, chapter three, the chapter we've been studying for the last few sermons, someone speaks up and it's Job. And this is his complaint that we have considered carefully. Then after Job's complaint, chapters 4 to 41, all but the last chapter, are a series of dialogues. So this is most all the book.

It's these dialogues. Chapters 4 to 31, if you look through, you'll see there are three cycles of dialogues. It's Job with these three friends named Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, in the many interesting recovery of biblical names in this generation, which is so interesting. In my generation growing up, everybody had what felt like very plain and the same names. And these days there's been a great recovery of biblical names, but I still haven't noticed many Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophars.

That may be for the good.

The first cycle is chapters 4 to 14. If you're looking at your own Bible, you might even want to mark it. That's the first cycle. 4 to 14, the second one is 15 to 21, and the third one is 22 to 31. In the first two cycles, Eliaphaz speaks.

He's probably the oldest, and then Job responds, and Job is so tired. I mean, he tells Eliaphaz that he doesn't have the strength to wait or be patient. He's just honestly confessing that he feels spent. And then Bildad speaks. Bildad is a man for great truth.

I think Bildad went to Ligonier conferences, I'm pretty sure. I don't mean that negative, I mean positive. Bildad knows like great theological truths. Unfortunately, Bildad doesn't seem to know how to apply them very well. So he brings out these great truths like human depravity and he uses it kind of like a club.

He says like, so look in chapter eight, verse 20, God will not reject a blameless man. Well, that's really good. I mean, that's Jesus. That's getting on to the gospel. But of course, what Bildad means by that is God is clearly rejecting you, Job, by the way you're living right now, so clearly you're not blameless.

So he says a word that you can actually quote and you quote it as a great Bible truth. But the way Bildad is using it is not good. Interesting that we can do that with the Bible's truth. We can use true things in bad ways. Anyway, and Job responds again, and then Zophar speaks and Job responds.

Really, each of the speakers, they keep making the same point in all three cycles of the dialogue. Job must have sinned. And it's the first cycle with all three speakers, and the second cycle with all three speakers, and the third cycle is different because you have Eliphaz and Job responding, and Bildad and Job responding, but then there's no Zophar. I don't know what happens to Zophar in the third cycle. He just may have peace out, I'm done with this.

We don't know. He's not, he's done. He doesn't say, Job just talks and keeps talking, and Job talks for a long time. The debate is over. Job's three friends have finished.

They've said again and again, Job, you must have sinned, and pretty badly, given all this that's happened to you. Of course, do think when they're saying that, they are presuming a number of important things, one of which would be his sins must be worse than theirs, because they're not suffering like he is.

Lots of interesting things when you're saying, oh, you must have sinned badly. It is good for us to confess our sins to others. It's good for us, it's good for the people we confess to. But Job here protests, oh, no, I didn't! Friends, it's not wrong to say you didn't do something if you didn't do it, you know?

And so Job is not saying he's sinless. Job along the way will confess sin, but he's saying, no, I didn't do anything big that caused this.

But Job is just confused by it all. He says, he asks in 17:15, Where then is my hope? He describes his situation very frankly again and again. Let me just give you a couple of brief passages of it. In chapter 10, look at the beginning of chapter 10, I loathe my life.

I will give free utterance to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. I will say to God, Do not condemn me. Let me know why you contend against me. Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favor the designs of the wicked?

It's not a charge, it's a question.

See, Job and his friends have very similar theology. Friends think suffering must be sin. You must have done it. Job goes, no, I didn't. I know I didn't.

But I am suffering. I am being treated like I sinned. Lord, what's going on? You see how it's similar? The difference is the openness of Job to the Lord.

They have a closed system, only two dimensions. All suffering must be explained like this. Job, well he knows suffering is normally this. And yet he knows he didn't do that.

So, Lord, what's going on? And so he asks, or over in chapter 19, beginning at verse 10, He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone. And my hope has he pulled up like a tree. He has kindled his wrath against me and counts me as his adversary. His troops come on together.

They have cast up their siege ramp against me and encamp around my tent. Now, when I say he counts me as an adversary, Job isn't really knowing that God views him as an adversary. All Job is doing is he's describing the things that are happening to him. It's like the word evil is sometimes used in the Bible. When God does evil, it doesn't mean he does moral evil.

It means he does things that we experience negatively. You know, an earthquake happens and we say, this is very evil is done.

You know, so when Job says, acting as an adversary, he's not really saying, God, you, are my adversary. He's just saying, why are youe treating me as one? Because Job is operating with a pretty similar system to his friends, but he doesn't know. He's confused because he knows he didn't do that. That's a striking contrast with the way the Lord is.

When Job makes his final rebuttal to his friends, especially in chapters 29 and 30 and 31 that you can read, Job's strong defense. It sounds like he's demanding for God to show up so that Job can finally talk to him directly about his suffering. And instead of God showing up, we hear from this young man named Elihu. He appears in chapters 32, speaks all the way through chapter 37. He said he'd been listening for a long time because he was the youngest.

He didn't want to say anything. But Elihu speaks his mind saying Job's charges should be answered and that neither God nor his justice can ever be impugned. But friends, you read it and you see what you think. I think Elihu's off. Again, like the friends, and like Job, it says a lot of true things about God, but when it comes to assessing Job, if you look at 35:15, man, Elihu just goes right for Job's heart.

And he says, he characterizes his words as empty talk. He multiplies words without knowledge. That's a striking contrast to what the Lord, just a few chapters later, is going to say about Job's words, where he will characterize his words about him, God, Job's words about God as right.

So Elihu does not understand Job correctly according to God. Finally, in chapter 38, God himself enters the discussion and he criticizes those who've been speaking words without knowledge, as he puts it in chapter 38 verse 2. One of the most remarkable These are the descriptions in the Bible of God's works in creation as God paints this picture of His unique sovereign power. You see there in chapter 38, verse 36, who has put wisdom in the inward parts, or given understanding to the mind? 39 and 40.

And then in 40, God asks Job very directly in verse 2, Shall a fault-finder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it. Very direct, to which Job's response is simple, right there. See there in chapter 40, Behold, I am of small account. What shall I answer you?

I lay my hand on my mouth. That means I shut up. I've spoken once, I will not answer twice, but I will proceed no further. And then God replies, there in chapter 40, verse 8. Will you even put me in the wrong?

Will you condemn me, that you may be in the right? Have you an arm like God? Can you thunder with a voice like His? Adorn yourself with majesty and dignity, clothe yourself with glory and splendor, pour out the overflowings of your anger.

Friends, you can read this in so many different tones. So if you just look at those two questions in verse 8, you can read that as God very angrily charging Job. Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right? But friend, that kind of tone usually only happens when somebody feels threatened.

I promise you, God does not feel threatened. God loves Job. God's been bragging on Job. So how would God say those things to Job?

I think more his questions to get him to understand.

Will you even put Me in the wrong? And I'm sure when Job heard that question, he would go like, no, Lord.

Will you condemn Me that you may be in the right?

Lord, when you put it like that, no. You see, that's the difference, I think. That shows that Job really feared the Lord in the way these charges come. In the remainder of chapters 40 and 41, God continues to instruct Job about who He is. Who then is He who can stand before Me?

Who has first given to Me that I should repay Him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine, he says in chapter 41. And then in chapter 42, the last chapter, Job makes his statement there in chapter 42 at the beginning.

And Job answered the Lord and said, I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know. Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me. I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.

Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. The story ends then with God telling Eliaphaz and Bildad and Zophar that they have been wrong. And then he blesses Job. The more interesting thing is that God didn't say, we'll come to that in just a moment, but the final verses of the book show the Lord restoring Job's fortunes. We read in 42 verse 10, the Lord gave Job twice as much as before.

Verse 12, the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. Friends, God is good. And what's more than that, God wants to be seen and known as good. And so he would demonstrate to Job in a way that everyone no one could see his goodness. So Job's great wealth at the beginning had given him, at least in part, a kind of great platform.

He was the greatest man in the East. You see, God is using Job and his wealth very much like he used Egypt and their power. Why did he have the Egyptians be the ones to be the masters over the Hebrews? So that God would defeat the mightiest of them all, so that people would know that the Lord was truly the king of the earth.

So why was Job so wealthy, the greatest of all the men of the East? So that God could deprive him of that wealth, he still praised God and then God, to show that Job had been right, restored him double of all that he'd had. Because God wanted not only to be good, but to be seen and known as good. Job's wealth was a platform His prosperity broadcast the truth about God. Again and again Job's friends had the same response that Jesus' disciples did in John 9.

We mentioned this last week, you know, when they see the man born blind and they say, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? They had to understand the suffering of their esteemed friend Job in some way, and so these friends were in a difficult situation. You know, when I read through these, and I read through the whole thing again this past week, I have a lot of sympathy for Job's friends. They love Job and they're operating with pretty good theology, a little crimped and limited in some crucial ways, but they've got some basic truths, tight hold on them. The problem is that they think that's all there is.

Good for them that they couldn't bring themselves to the delusions of Buddhism, which denies the reality of pain and suffering, or Christian science, or positive thinking stuff that passes itself off as Christianity. Good for them that they were more realistic than that. At the same time, they also wouldn't abandon their orthodoxy, which told them that God was sovereign and God was good. He was just. So the only conclusion they could see left to them was that Job's virtue must have been mistaken.

Maybe he wasn't really that good. After all, you know, you can't judge a book by its cover. Who knows what kind of oppression, greed, lust, even murder may have gone on behind the scenes. And one who outwardly appeared so pious for their friends. You know, rich and powerful men know how to put on a good show.

Who can really say who Job is after all?

Friends, we too try to understand our suffering, thinking that we can somehow alleviate the pain by comprehending it. Some have tried to make sense of their suffering by saying God can't do anything about it. He would like to, but He's doing His best. And he can't do better than he already has. That's not how the book of Job deals with Job's calamities.

The book of Job clearly presents a sovereign God. Job and his companions all actually know that. They agree that God rules his creation, others observing the same disconnect between actions and consequences, you know, whether that's good or bad, like good people suffering or bad people prospering. Others have tried to make sense of suffering by saying that, okay, well, God may be all powerful, and this is a darker solution, but maybe He's not holy. Maybe He's not all what we think of as good.

God may be all powerful, but maybe He's not righteous. But again, friend, the book of Job clearly presents a holy God who judges evil and rewards good. Still others simply despair of there being any meaning at all to life and suffering, at least anything that we can figure out ourselves in the limited horizons that we have and the narrowed measures of our own understanding. But our demanding that there be meaning and reason and that they must fit within a too narrow scope of our own understanding Prejudice is the case already. There will only be a certain kind of solution that we may pick from our limited understanding.

That would be like deciding that because I can't get the Wi-Fi on my phone or my laptop, there must be no Wi-Fi. Could be. There are more options.

These friends, they understood that Job was suffering and that it was real. They understood that God was good. They understood that God was powerful. We all have the same tendency as these friends do. We all tend to reach conclusions too quickly.

We think to ourselves, okay, God made us. Surely he must intend for us to understand everything all the time. Because I want to. I understand that. It seems much to our surprise, God somehow is glorified by our not understanding everything all the time.

We are pushed into a whole different territory in our relationship with God. How do we know what He intends? Why would he condemn Job like this? Perhaps above all, the book of Job clearly teaches us that we simply must recognize the fact that we are not in possession of all the facts. So there must be room for happenings that are mysterious to us.

In a few moments, we'll consider the interchange between God and Satan that set the stage for all of Job's sufferings. In that, Satan asks God for permission to to afflict Job in order to prove something, and God grants Satan permission to do it. Now, that much is known to us, but how much did Job know about the dialogue between God and Satan? Job's comforters didn't seem to know anything about it. They never mention it.

Job says nothing about it in his own musings. God never references the discussion he had with Satan when he confronts Job. He didn't say, oh, Job, I'm sorry about these troubles I've been causing you. You see, friend, let me tell you, it was like this. I was up in heaven.

Satan came around and he was doing what he does. And I've been trying to teach him some things. So I told him and pointed over to you. And well, then he said, well, then I said, and then, Job never hears this. We never see this in the book of Job.

Nowhere do we read that Job had access to this knowledge. God's revelation in this book is that He would display His glory through His creation in ways that the people of the time did not understand. Nor likely would we ever have understood if God had not revealed the truth to us through this book. God's revelation of himself and his word is essential to our understanding and making real sense of our lives. Philosophy alone can't do this.

Philosophy has to be based on something. Our own experience can't do it. Friends, if God hasn't spoken from outside of this world and given us a sure and certain word which we then learn by which we will be evaluated. There's finally no grammar for making sense of life. Truth and goodness are not self-evident.

You recall the series Bobby just gave us on the conscience. We have to have some agreed upon truths to work on, even to be able to evaluate issues, even if we don't all come to the same conclusions. There have to be some values that we share. God says what is right. God says what is wrong.

All of our understanding of sin and virtue, of right and wrong, of ethics must begin with God and his own revelation of himself. And His purposes of making us in His image. Why did He do this? What is it all about? Sometimes we're helped by remembering that God is in control, that there is nothing beyond His grasp or without His control.

Other things we are helped by remembering that this God is good and loving, and that He is committed to the good of all of His children, and that is enough to satisfy us and enable us to go on. And yet sometimes like Job we can be certain of God's power and certain of God's goodness and yet still be mystified by why does he allow this in our lives? It's in times like that that we need something even beyond understanding. Understanding is so good. I do not want to undersell it at all.

We shouldn't be surprised though when we need more than understanding. If we are limited creatures, then we must assume that there are things that happen that can certainly be beyond the scope of our comprehension. There can be purposes that are hidden to us by virtue of our sinfully distorted way of understanding or by virtue of just our own limitations. So brothers and sisters, this church is here to help us help each other even when we don't understand.

You know, when we're told in Galatians 6 that we should help bear each other's burdens, care for each other, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Well, who's the one another? It's the members of the church. It's the people who will make themselves known to each other. Not just the people who come in and attend when they can, but the people who commit.

They're the one another. That's how we make it through this kind of Job-like situation. So we often suffer. We sometimes understand, but even beyond understanding, we need to be willing to learn a third statement that the book of Job would teach us. Number three, we can always trust.

We can always trust. I want to make it clear, not trust everybody who tells us to trust them. We can always trust God, the real God. We can always trust. Often suffer, sometimes understand, always trust.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul talks about a peace that passes all understanding. In context, he appears to be talking about a state of being reconciled with God such that we are more satisfied in Him than we are in any understanding we may have of our passing circumstances. And that's quite a claim. But Paul says it clearly. And if you're a Christian here today, you know the reality of that in your own experience.

There is just an amazing peace that God gives us, which is greater than our own understanding. You see, friend, as much as we need to understand We need to trust God because of our lack of understanding. As winsome as we may be in our presentations of the gospel, we can't get rid of this part of life. I can tell you as someone who used to be a skeptic, I know that that can be burdensome, but it's certainly true. If we insist on living only according to our understanding completely apart from trust, then basically we can't be a Christian.

Because basically the best we could do would be Job's counselors. We just can't get better than that. We need to learn how to trust God. And friends, the good news is the Bible is full of reasons to trust God. Let me give you just two that are prominent in Job, two reasons to trust God.

First, God is powerful. Second, God is good.

First, if we just consider God's power. In some of the most beautiful poetry you'll ever read, the book of Job displays the power of God, this one that we are called to trust. He's the Creator of all things. We consider His power, His competency. We observe His providence in caring for everything that He has created, particularly His constant care and absolute control over all of His creation, ultimately for His own glory.

This is a great summary of God's relation to His creation. God is more powerful than the greatest and most fearsome creature that He has made, whether it's on the land or the sea, whether it's Behemoth or Leviathan. We see this at the end of chapter 40 and all of chapter 41. These descriptions are kind of like the hippopotamus and the crocodile only supersized. I mean, these are amazing creatures.

I'm pretty sure Tolkien must have gotten smiled from chapter 41. You know, I mean, if you look at the way these things are talked about, some suggest that they are meant to stand for evil itself, maybe chaos, even Satan. Whatever creature they may be meant to represent, these mightiest of creatures, though menacing to us as their terrible power is, they're no match for the God who made them. So even the most fear-inducing creature to be described is trumped by God. God is their Creator.

God is more powerful than anything that He has made. We need fear nothing so much as we fear God Himself.

Friend, can you imagine some circumstances that you are very much fearing right now? This week? That are facing you, this coming Monday, this coming weekend, what would it mean if you understood that God was more powerful than those circumstances?

And if you knew that He is sovereign over them and that His character is a character that is trustworthy. How would you be able to know the truth about God? If you were confident of that, what difference would it make in you as you approach this week?

God is good is the other truth that we see in Job's book. God is powerful, number one. Second, God is good.

We mentioned God making His goodness obvious in a way that the book ends where Job is prospering again. But there's another interesting detail. There are many we could go to throughout Job to show this. That'd be a fun thing, spot God's goodness in this most difficult of all books. But let me just show you one very obviously in chapter 42.

Look there in the last chapter. In verse 10, we find Job praying for his friends. Now that seems magnanimous. After the way they've just been talking about him to his face and about him in front of others. But look at why Job interceded in verse 9.

They asked Job to. They asked him to intercede for them. And yet why did they ask Job to pray for them?

Because the Lord had told them to. God was making it clear to them that Job was not to be looked down on religiously or morally. In fact, they needed Job to pray for them. We see that in verses 8 and 9.

And notice that even the instruction and motivation for their being reconciled and forgiven by God came from God. What a gracious God we serve. That He would initiate this kind of love and concern even for one He is correcting.

This is what kind of God He is. He's a very gracious God. If you are here today as a sinner, this is the God you would have hoped existed.

This is the God who shows his goodness in ways we could never have guessed. As you read through these dialogues, you find that Job is very dismissive about the state of man's life. In several hauntingly beautiful passages, Job speaks of man's days being a fleeting shadow, flying by faster than the weaver's shuttle, certain to return to dust. I think he probably is taking hope from the brevity of life at that point. Yet is it not amazing that though Job speaks so dismissively of man, God and all His heavenly court arrange their activities around such passing creatures?

God has such regard for us that He's made that He arranges the affairs of heaven around these sons and daughters of dust.

Brothers and sisters, God cares for us. We see that especially in this famous introductory scene in heaven back in chapter 1. From what we can see, as I say, this basis for trust was never afforded Job. Job was never told about the heavenly court scene that we're allowed to peek into in the first chapters of the book. All the evidence Job has for trusting God in these trials is the fact of God himself.

And Job trusts God. Oh, friends, don't lose this. You and I, weaker beings that we may be, are enabled to trust God through very hard things as we have chapters 1 and 2 to read, right? Job, the main star of the show, Job trusts in the Lord and he really does. As challenging as some of the things he says are, no, he keeps trusting God throughout.

God even says in chapter 42, verse 7, he has spoken about me what is right. So if God says what Job said was okay, you and I are no better judges than God, all right? If God says what Job said is okay, it's okay. So Job trusts in God throughout. Without knowing chapters 1 and 2.

Oh my goodness. I mean Job really did trust the Lord in a most amazing way. He trusted him through it all. Now in the heavenly court scene, you know, Satan was wrong. Satan accused Job of serving God for his own selfish ends.

Satan said that, look, Job's just serving God because he's wealthy, he's prosperous, and God says you're wrong. But he allowed Satan to take away Job's wealth and guess what? Satan was wrong. No. Just like the Grinch thought the Whos, when you take away all the toys, we'll stop celebrating.

Down in Whoville, all the toys are gone and in a way the Grinch can't understand, the Whoville people keep singing and celebrating. Well, in the much more important and more real story here, we read in Job 122 that Job still worshiped God. In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. Job was very prosperous, but he did not worship God merely because he was prosperous. Satan was wrong.

But Satan is Satan, and he has never been one to be put off just because he's wrong. So Satan is the accuser of the brethren. That's what he does. So he will try to find fault with us even in our midst of our obedience to God. It is his nature.

So his first effort having failed, Satan immediately is ready to accuse Job then of only serving God because His health remained. Satan switched his tactics. He said that really this was the only reason. I know I'd said the other one, but no, that clearly not that. No, but this, this is the reason, the only reason why he would serve you and trust you.

He even says very confidently there in chapter 2 verse 4, Skin for skin, all that a man has he will give for his life, but stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh and he will curse you to your face.

Now God said that Satan was wrong in this. Satan, you're wrong. You don't know Job. But for his own purposes, God allowed Satan to take away Job's health, just requiring that Satan not kill Job. And guess what?

Satan was once again wrong.

Even with Job's own body decaying and his skin erupting into boils all over him and his former ease replaced by ever present pain, Job still worshiped God. And that's without knowing chapters one and two that we have, without knowing what was going on. He just knew what God was like from what he knew of God and he kept on worshiping Him. Job's changing circumstances revealed that as prosperous as he was, Job wasn't worshiping God because of his wealth. And Job's changing circumstances revealed that as healthy as he was, Job wasn't worshiping God because of his health.

True worship of God is not dependent on our circumstances. We can certainly give thanks to God for good circumstances, but true worship occurs within us through the grace that God gives regardless of the circumstances that he sovereignly deems to allow us to endure. In fact, that brings us to one of the most central ironies of this book, and this book is full of rich ironies to note. But one of the most central ones, I hope you noticed it, most of the book contrasts, you know, Job's friends to Job, Job's friends saying, Hey Job, I know you look virtuous, but there must be sin here. Otherwise, you wouldn't be experiencing such severe punishment.

And at one point, if you look over in chapter 22, be a good verse to note down, chapter 22, verse 4. Eliash begins the final cycle of the debate. This is the oldest guy, probably their best debater, most respected. He starts off the debate. And where does he begin this third and final cycle?

Verse 4. This is Eliphaz. Is it for your fear of him, referring to God, is it for your fear of him that he reproves you and enters into judgment with you?

You know, if you're playing hot and cold, hot and cold is like, hot, hot, very hot, yes, very hot, Eliphaz, you're on it. But of course Eliphaz doesn't really mean it. It's a rhetorical question. It's such a stupid thing to say. There's no way God would do this.

No, no, no, he's using this as a club to beat Job with.

But the very club he's using to beat Job was the truth. That's exactly what was going on. But Eliphaz didn't see it, even with the words coming out his own mouth.

Eliphaz didn't mean it as a real question. For him, it was just a rhetorical way to make a point. His stance was not Job's under the same question really, maybe, of shrugging his shoulders and upturned palms. It was the squinting eyes, the pointing finger. By which he said those same words, you could tell what he meant by them.

Eliphaz was saying that, of course, that couldn't be the case. But Eliphaz didn't know that. He wrongly acted like he did. But so far were Job's friends from being right in this case, ironically, Someone here could have said to them, Hey, hey, hey, a live fast, Bildad, so far. This suffering might have come on you.

Had you been more virtuous so that when the Lord and Satan were talking, the Lord might have said, Hey, hey, hey, Satan, have you considered my servant Bildad? But he overlooks Bildad. He goes right to Job. If he really wants to brag on somebody worshiping him and trusting him. For who he is.

We, the readers, know that Job's sufferings were actually not because of his vices at all, but because of his virtue.

Friends, God looked over the world wanting to brag on part of his creation to Satan, and he chose to brag on Job. I don't mean this is any kind of preaching of self salvation. Job knows he's a derivative being. He's made by God. He's dependent on God.

But Job continues to trust him. Back in chapter 1, verse 8, have you considered my servant Job? Underline that verse. 1:8, have you considered my servant Job? God bragged on Job.

That's what's behind all the suffering in this book. So in chapters 41 and 42, Job admitted he was comparatively ignorant of God, at least compared to what he thought about him before the Lord finally spoke to him and revealed himself like he has here. His statement in chapter 42 in the last chapter, verse 3, doesn't reflect real error in what he said about God. From the verb translated in the ESV in verse 6, 42:6 is repent. You'll see in a side note in many of your Bibles that it could be translated am comforted.

In fact, we read the Lord saying of Job in 42:7 that Job was his servant and had spoken what was right of him. So what did all this mean for his friends? What does it mean for us today? It means that our trust in God is not based on our own character, whether we are clever or holy, whether we are strong or apparently blessed or healthy or successful or beautiful. No, but our trust in God is based on none of our attributes.

It's based on God. It's based on what He is like. It's based on what He has said. It's based on His character. And so we learn to trust God because His character is trustworthy.

How we endure our trials reflects why we endure them. God is both all-knowing and all-good. He's all-powerful and all-good. He should be trusted. We are wrong when we don't trust Him.

A couple of weeks ago, I was securely sitting on a plane as we taxied off from the Kansas City airport. There are so many planes take off from that small area at one time that they are now building a brand new airport that's just about to be opened. It's going to be larger to accommodate it all. Anyway, knowing the air traffic around the airport as we taxied away from the gate and began to prepare for departure, I mean, I suppose I could have stood up and simply said, Stop the plane. Stop.

There are a lot of things moving around here. A lot of stuff I can see up in the air, and I just want to make sure what's happening. I need to see some copies of the taxiing route. I need to understand runways a little bit more that we're using. Timetable for other flights around here.

My FlightAware app is not working for some reason right now. I just like to satisfy myself, in fact, that I will be safe. Now, I say I could have done that. I don't suppose I'd get very far if I tried to do that. But I could have tried to satisfy my own understandings satisfaction, or I could have done what I did and just trusted the controllers.

I recognized the care and order with which this whole apparently chaotic, potentially disastrous operation was run, and I sat back as we accelerated and lifted off the ground. And came back to DC in safety. How many times do we want to stop the plane in order to understand all the variables before we go? How much should we, can we, must we trust the true controller who makes no errors, who never sleeps nor slumbers, in whom is not the slightest touch of evil Again, friends, as far as we know, Job never learned the things that we know from the first couple of chapters. He simply had to trust in the character of God Himself.

Friends, we can trust God because, as Job Himself said, as we sang earlier this morning in that new song at the beginning of the prep music, Job 19:25, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. Friend, if you're not a Christian, you really want to understand this point. How did Job's Redeemer redeem by living better, more righteously, more perfectly than Job ever could have lived, and by taking upon himself the suffering, more suffering than Job ever knew. Job's patience and suffering were finally meant to point us to the genuinely perfect righteousness of the wholly undeserved suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross. Through His death on the cross and His sympathy with us in that death, and finally, then His resurrection on the third day and His ascension, Christ would defeat the powers of sin and death.

God then promises to forgive you if you repent of your sins and turn and trust in Christ alone.

For that's what this whole book points toward. They too, along with Job, will stand with the Redeemer at the end. We best understand Job by understanding Jesus. As John Stott said, the cross does not solve the problem of suffering, but it gives us the right perspective from which to view it. Remember I mentioned earlier this story of Jesus and His disciples meeting the man born blind.

When they asked, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Apparently, they were asking the wrong question. Jesus replied, It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. Friends, God works in you and me for His own glory. The circumstances of our lives are each meant as unique platforms upon which to display His power and His goodness.

His sufficiency that will ultimately be proved. God intends to display His glory in your life and in the lives of everyone around you. 1 Peter 1:6, In this you rejoice though now for a little while if necessary you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Our understanding of our own suffering is so incomplete that it should teach us real humility about how other people are handling theirs. What earthly consequences is God using in your life to humble you and to use you to show His unique trustworthiness?

Friends, you'll never see perhaps in this life why But the world will see through you that God is trustworthy. And so, as we observed last week, Job's righteous suffering begins to dig out the basement, as it were, the beginning of our understanding of righteous suffering through which we will come to understand Jesus Christ, one who was truly righteous and who suffered. Sunday by Sunday we encourage each other with this truth as we sing about it, as we read in the Scriptures and we pray together, for their heavenly relief, our growing confidence in the promises of this great God that He set out before us, that all He does, He does for His own glory. So friends, we often suffer. We sometimes understand we can always trust God.

The book of Job speaks realistically of our suffering. It explains the basis of our understanding and it illustrates compellingly our need to trust God Himself. As Job said, Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding. Remember Aunt Clara Brown that I began with? I don't know why her trials happened to her, why her heart failed as it did, or why a fire destroyed her property in Central City, or why a flood eliminated her titles to her properties in Denver.

I could have seen many answers. You know, it could have been because of some sin in her that we don't know of. It could have been On the other hand, God had bragged about Clara Brown to Satan. God may have pointed to her and said, have you considered my servant Clara, a blameless and upright woman who fears God and turns away from evil? We don't know.

We're not told that part of the story usually in this life. We're more in Job's circumstances where we just are called to trust in Him. But we do know that in February of 1882 when Clara Brown was in her 80s, she got a letter. From a former slave and a dear friend of hers who had just moved to Iowa. Dearest Clara, I was at the post office when I ran into a woman by the name of Mrs.

Brewer. Then I heard the clerk address her as Eliza Jane. Well, honey, you just know I had to ask. Yes, Mrs. Brewer had been in Kentucky.

Yes, she remembered getting dressed up and being sold. No, she couldn't remember her mother's name. It was just Mammy. Yes, she was with a family named Covington for 20 years. She married a slave named Jeb from a neighboring farm and they had nine children.

Well, when I asked her about a sister that drowned, she started crying right there in the post office. She doesn't have any money to come to Colorado, but she's desperate to see you. She thought you died in slavery long ago. While her friends gave Clara a train ticket to Iowa and she went and she met her long-lost daughter and her children and her grandchildren. Eliza returned with her to Denver.

It's a real-life Job story, isn't it? Returned with her to Denver. She stayed there for the rest of Clara's days. And as Clara lay in her final bed, she said, When I was a girl, I relied on His mercy, and He fetched me through. My blessed Lord was crucified.

Think how He suffered. My little sufferings was nothing, honey. The Lord, He gave me the strength to bear up. I can't complain. Clara had endured slavery, losing her family, gaining and losing wealth and health.

But Clara also had a consolation that Job didn't have. And I want you to use Clara as a way for you to understand how you're in better position than Job. Clara could look back on the righteous sufferings of Christ's. Christ's own sufferings provided light in the darkest times of Clara's life. In that sense, you and I too have been given aided hope of Christ's sufferings.

But our understanding of His sufferings not being because of His own sin, as being a righteous suffering, that's been aided by what we've learned from Job. Of his sufferings. Jesus, like Job, was not suffering for his sins. Jesus, unlike Job, was however suffering for sins, but not his own. He was suffering for your sins and mine if we will trust in him.

God moves in a mysterious way. We often suffer. We sometimes understand we can always trust God. Let's pray.

Lord God, we bow in reverence before your majesty. We acknowledge you as our Creator. You are all powerful. And God, we acknowledge that the truth of youf goodness are all around our lives. If Job, after his sufferings, could still see tokens of youf goodness even in the midst of his broken questions, so Lord, we pray that yout would teach us by youy Spirit through youh Word, through the example of our Lord Jesus.

Lord, through the loving care and concern of family and friends and our family of faith here in our local church, teach us by youy Spirit of youf love and goodness. Convince us to trust yout. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.