Sermon Brief
Date Written: January 21, 2010
Date Preached: January 24, 2010
Where Preached: Oak Park (AM)
Sermon Details:
Sermon Series: A Series on Job
Sermon Title: The Perfect Storm of Job’s Life
Sermon Text: Job 30:26-31 [NLT]
26 So I looked for good, but evil came instead. I waited for the light, but darkness fell. 27 My heart is troubled and restless. Days of suffering torment me. 28 I walk in gloom, without sunlight. I stand in the public square and cry for help. 29 Instead, I am considered a brother to jackals and a companion to owls. 30 My skin has turned dark, and my bones burn with fever. 31 My harp plays sad music, and my flute accompanies those who weep.
Introduction:
This morning I am going to ask you to do something that may sound a bit strange… I want you to look squarely and honestly into the center of the dark clouds and the raging storm of your life!
Why would you want me to do that pastor… that is the most frightening and terrifying thing you could ask me to do… Well this morning I want us ALL to do it, so that we can come to the realization that when we look honestly at the storms of our life… when we see them for what they truly are, I know that for the believer you will find God has kept His promise to never leave you, to never forsake you, and to never stop using you for His glory.
This morning I want to bring 3 points to your attention...
A perfect storm of suffering may overwhelm you.
A perfect storm of suffering might drive you away from God.
God is most clearly revealed in the worst moments of our suffering.
Have you ever seen the movie, “The Perfect Storm”, it is a tragic dramatization of a true story about the fishing vessel named the Andrea Gail. She sunk in a storm of the Northeastern coast of New England!
Now for us to fully understand why the Andrea Gail never had a chance, one needs only to search the clues along the shoreline of the Eastern Seaboard.
The Andrea Gail had a crew of six, and the small fishing vessel was caught square in the crosshairs of the colliding storms. Sustained winds of 60 knots and sea swells of 39 feet were recorded, and unconfirmed reports told of even stronger winds and higher waves.
The movie that told her story, and coined the phrase “the perfect storm,” painted a graphic picture of a crew caught in the middle of overwhelming difficulty, pressed in on every side by the colliding weather patterns.
The fishing vessel went down sometime after midnight on Oct. 28, and ironically, its search and rescue, satellite-aided tracking system washed ashore a week later on Sable Island.
Strangely enough, the tracking device was found with its power switched off. Could it have been an accident…or was it a case of a storm so overwhelming, so devastating, that the captain of the ship simply turned the device off as a symbolic gesture of giving in to the worst storm he’d ever seen?
(Source: “The Perfect Storm, October 1991,” NOAA Satellite and Information Service, National Climatic Data Center.)
Have you ever been there in your life, a storm so violent, a storm so strong that you simply believed you would NEVER survive it? If you have, then you are in good company because that is where Job is when we find him this morning. Job would understand what you have lived with because he lived it himself!
Again, as we look back at his life we see that his story is so very painful! On top of the world at one moment and wallowing in misery and ashes the next. Wealth and position one moment, and penniless and a pariah on society the next moment.
In fact Job’s story is so strong, and has such deep cutting pain that even his name has been associated with the very idea of suffering itself. To have a “Job-like” event in your life tells the world around you that you are suffering the worst of the worst…
This “perfect storm” in Job’s life involved grief beyond description, physical pain that defied understanding, and a spiritual pain that might have been the worst of all.
This was a painful time for Job as he came to the understanding that the God he has faithfully served, and the God who could have prevented any or all of his suffering had chosen to allow it to happen. In his eyes, the God who should have noticed his faithfulness had decided to reward his faith with torture.
To make matters worse, his wife didn’t help, as she struck out at God in anger and wanted Job to do the same! Then on top of that Job’s friends showed up and their ‘help’ only added to his misery and pain! As the skies of his life turned dark and this terrible storm blew in around him, Job connected the dots between the storm, and his set of very difficult circumstances.
It was a perfect storm of emotional, physical, and spiritual pain, and it attacked the old man just like a physical storm would attack the coastline. A transcript from Job’s storm sounds like this:
15 I live in terror now. My honor has blown away in the wind, and my prosperity has vanished like a cloud. 16 “And now my life seeps away. Depression haunts my days. 17 At night my bones are filled with pain, which gnaws at me relentlessly. 18 With a strong hand, God grabs my shirt. He grips me by the collar of my coat. 19 He has thrown me into the mud. I’m nothing more than dust and ashes. 20 “I cry to you, O God, but you don’t answer. I stand before you, but you don’t even look. 21 You have become cruel toward me. You use your power to persecute me. 22 You throw me into the whirlwind and destroy me in the storm.
Job is saying “God! You toss me about in the storm.”
If you’re here today and have ever known disease, either from a personal experience or from caring for a loved one… then you’ve known the storm.
Have you ever been woken up in the middle of the night with that dreaded phone call… you have lost a loved one? If you’ve ever known that heart-piercing grief, you’ve been in the storm!
If you’ve ever been betrayed, forsaken, cheated or hurt, you’ve known the horror at the heart of it all. You can understand where Job is in his life and what he is going through.
We know and trust in God’s Word and we know that God’s Word tells us that He is in control, and this same God has promised to love us always and never forsake us… and we also know that this is the same God that has allowed these things to happen in our lives...
I believe that we can come to the place where we say, “GOD! You toss me about in the storm.”
As Job’s story comes to a conclusion, it indicates a gathering of clouds, a blowing of the winds, a storm of incredible magnitude, and eventually, God speaks to Job out of the storm, His voice surrounded by the flashes of lightening and the crashing of the thunder.
We find in Job’s story that as the storm rolled in, he never moved. When the rain came falling down, he sat in the clumpy, wet mass of dust and ashes, his sores still running, his heart still broken.
The friends stayed, too, and they must have been anxious. Unlike Job, they still wanted to live. And unlike Job, they did not know what it was like to have multiple problems crashing in upon them, all at the same time.
It was symbolic that the skies around Job were turning dark, that the wind and the thunder were coming closer and closer to the little group of men in Job’s story. The more stormy the weather, the more Job related. He was living out the worst days of his life, dealing with a perfect storm of physical, emotional, and spiritual pain.
And this morning this is where YOU may be in your life! You may be hurting… You may be wondering why God has allowed these things to happen to you! Job wondered, Job asked why…
But what I want to share with you today is that it is RIGHT THERE… right there in the ‘smack dab middle’ of the storm… that is where we can learn some of life’s most important lessons… they became apparent for Job and they can for us as well.
A “perfect storm” of suffering may overwhelm you.
Now I believe I can confidently say that this “perfect storm” in Job’s life had totally overwhelmed him. In an amazingly brief period of time, enemies had attacked, his financial portfolio had been stripped and worst of all, his children had been killed. In the aftermath, his own health deteriorated to the point that he wanted to die.
But Job could NOT die, and to make matters worse, his wife and his friends had come to ‘comfort’ him and they had come to the conclusion that the entire thing had to be Job’s fault!
In their own ways, they all said “Confess your sin, Job, and maybe God will abandon His attack against you!” They told Job, “We know God to be fair, and just, and right. No matter how much you protest your innocence, Job, God simply cannot be wrong. Come now … what did you do to deserve this?”
It was a perfect storm that sank Job to the depths of discouragement and depression as surely as the Andrea Gail sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic.
Haven’t you seen it? When the funerals start arriving for a family, they seem to come in bunches. A family that didn’t even know where the community funeral home was suddenly knows the back hallways and hidden rooms, the price of coffins and the way to organize a memorial service. After a rash of funerals, it numbs them. At times, the survivors wonder which one of them will be the next they remember in their season of death.
Or what of the health issues? A person who has known only the best of health slams into a troubling symptom as if he’d hit a truck on the highway. And the problems pile up behind him, bringing tests and surgeries and treatments and expensive medical bills and thoughts of giving up.
Financial pressures can do the same thing to a person, or a family. A job is lost, and bills are missed. The debts pile up, and a car – or a refrigerator – decides to quit, just when there is no money to pay for the repairs.
When the storm of financial worry builds to a peak, changes are made, attorneys consulted, letters written, and phone calls are avoided. It’s a little like dancing around the lightning bolts, unsure where the storm will strike next.
It is the kind of situation that only needs one more element before the perfect storm sinks the entire family in a wave of crushing financial pressure. If, in the midst of one kind of trouble another one develops, it can be absolutely overwhelming.
I want us to ALL understand that just because we are believers… we are NOT immune to such pressures. Like I said last week, we cannot simply sing our favorite hymn and wish the problems away.
Our faith, our walk with God and His Word will be a tremendous comfort for us, but there will still be tough decisions to make, still be pain to tolerate, still be pressures from multiple angles.
David often sang of the helpless nature of unrelenting pain. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” is the way Psalm 13 begins, at first glance the most aptly numbered psalm in the Bible’s song book.
David knew what it was like to hurt in every area of his life. Though he had been promised a throne, he only knew the life of a fugitive for several years, before the throne became his.
Joseph, too, had a string of crushing disappointments. Sold by his brothers, betrayed by his employer’s wife, stuck in a prison cell he didn’t deserve, he must have been overwhelmed with discouragement. Though he rallied after each disappointment, if we don’t think Joseph struggled that time of his life, we’ve not read the story with proper emotion.
Paul was so low during one of his letter-writing sessions, he told Timothy that many had deserted him, and “only Luke is with me.” (2 Timothy 4:11). He had been beaten, chased, arrested, scourged, caned, imprisoned, denied justice, and eventually, shipwrecked. Though Paul had a tremendous attitude and faith, he knew real pain, and that kind of pain can overwhelm a person, even if only for a season.
So I want us to realize this morning that if a perfect storm of problems can and DID overwhelm those we look to as faith giants in the Bible, including Job… then why are we surprised when similar circumstances overwhelm us? It’s almost as if Job held on to his faith, and his sanity, by his fingertips, barely able to avoid the chasm of complete destruction.
There may be a ‘perfect storm’ in your life and you may even be at the point of breaking… the point where you feel you are about to go down. This is where many today find themselves… in the midst of a storm and wondering what is going to happen… and that leads many to run in the opposite direction…they run AWAY from God!
A “perfect storm” may drive you away from God.
In our passage this morning we see Job describing what it is like for him now that this storm in raging in his life. In chapter 29 of Job we find Job recounting and remembering what it had been like before the storm hit…
So often when the storms of life come our way, we tend to try to lessen the pain of the storm by looking to a better time and taking our mind off of our present dilemma. But that merely postpones the pain and eventually we have to deal with the storm that is raging in our lives.
Job was no different. After recounting what he had lost, we find Job in agony of where he is right now! In pain, suffering the loss of all his possessions, suffering the loss of all his children, enduring the ridicule and doubt of his friends and wife… Job speaks out to his situation…
When we face the storms of life we have a tendency… MANY OF US… to run away and hide and hope that the storm will go away. But to our dismay the storm is still there when we pull our head out of hiding!
For those believers who have a grounded faith and have armed themselves with the wisdom that can only come from our Savior… this is a time when we may doubt God or be angry at God OR even run away from God because of the pain in our lives… because of the fear we are experiencing during the trials and tribulations of this world!
We can see that after the initial storm had battered Job, he had some serious questions to ask God. I see pain, heartache, agony and fear in Job’s questions and statements… Job was having a crisis of faith and what he had ALWAYS thought about God was being tested… the impression of the God he’d always known had been challenged!
Job’s logic is impossible to miss, as he tried to keep a positive attitude and focus on God regardless of what was happening BUT no matter how long Job tried to keep a good impression of his God… If God was in control of everything, why had God allowed him to suffer in this way? If God took notice of his faithfulness then why would God reward that faithfulness with such pain?
Today I want us to understand that pain and suffering are incredibly powerful tools that God can and DOES use to teach us and mold us. Pain and suffering have changed MANY people… even when the pain or suffering is in the life of someone else. But what I want to point out is that pain and suffering on our part OR on the part of a loved one can lead us down a pathway of FEAR, which can lead to us running away from God!
Have you ever seen the movie, “Black Hawk Down”? Well its movie based on the true story of a military event that happened in Somolia in 1993. A young man in the army unit that this movie was based upon… his name was Jeff Strueker a US Army Ranger. Today Jeff is a pastor of a Southern Baptist Church.
However, for Jeff Oct 3-4, 1993 were the defining moments of his life. He was one of the troops called on to go into the center Mogadisu to secure a building as part of a larger operation. The movie “Black Hawk Down” chronicled the events of those two days.
In the first trip into the city he and most of his friends got out through a hailstorm of bullets. One man was shot and killed. It was then that he felt the fear. He began to pray. The humvee was painted with blood as they escaped the city with their dead and wounded comrades.
The news soon got worse as a helicopter had been shot down and Jeff’s team was called on to return to rescue the fallen soldiers. At this point, Jeff made the decision to clean up the vehicles because he felt his men could not enter into battle in bloody humvees. He and his men spent the next 30 to 45 minutes cleaning their HUMv’s with NO running water but only sponges and buckets.
Jeff says during that time he began to talk to the Lord. He said that he thought he was going to die that night because the situation was very dangerous and success did not seem to be a foregone conclusion.
At this point, Jeff was feeling the pain and suffering of the loss of his buddies from their 1st trip into Mogidishu, and now that he had been called back to rescue these fallen men, his feeling of fear began to grow!
So many times we don’t understand why God places us in situations or how He can allow circumstances to reach a point where we feel like our lives are on the line… where our hearts are stretched to their breaking point and where we begin to experience FEAR of what is coming… FEAR of the unknown… FEAR of a bad outcome!
Jeff was in fear, not for just his life, but for the lives of all his men and for the lives of those trapped inside the city. This fear could have led Jeff to abandon his faith and curse God because of the situation… to run away from his faith and curse God for allowing these terrible things to happen!
But we find that instead of running FROM God, Jeff began to seek God’s face in this situation. His first prayer was to ask God to protect him. But that prayer soon changed.
Jeff tells the story that ... A scene appeared in the landscape of my mind, it was the scene of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane ... Jeff saw Christ and he understood that Jesus KNEW clearly and honestly that He was going to die. ...
Jesus revealed to us his human side in this passage in revealing that he did not want to go to that cross and die… Jeff was too at that point, he knew the danger, and he understood that there was a possibility that he would die that night. Jeff said later that, “All I knew was that I didn’t want to die that night!”
But in his prayer Jeff finally saw what Christ was doing, Jesus courageously said, ’God, not my will, but yours be done.’ And this led Jeff to an amazing revelation of faith in his walk with Christ!
Jeff then stopped praying for his safety, and said "God if I die tonight, that’s fine, as long as Your will is done," And after that prayer, for the first time in his life, Jeff, - who had been a Christian since age 13 - was prepared to die. He later said that God had spoken to his mind and my heart and he had been comforted by the Holy Spirit…
Jeff said the message he heard from God was, ‘I’ve been protecting you every day of your life,’ Jeff later said that God did not make any promises other than He would be WITH Jeff through it all… Jeff said, "He did not tell me, ’You will live through the night.’ He simply showed me my life has always been in his hands."
That night Jeff and his men returned to the field of fire in Mogadishu that night and Jeff fought with a God-given courage. The sergeant first class would later be awarded the Bronze Star Medal "V" for valor. "I fought differently that night than everybody else ... because of my faith," He said that God had given him a "supernatural peace" in the midst of all the heartache, pain and suffering! Even when his HummVee was almost blown off the road by a roadside bomb… He was at peace.
“It was that night when I began to understand God’s omnipotent power," said Jeff. "God was orchestrating every single bullet that was fired that night. ... The peace that I had was not only for my own life, but for the lives of my soldiers. If any of them were to get shot, then that was part of God’s sovereign plan." And God chose to preserve me that night.
Jeff did not run AWAY from God in a time of pain and suffering but ran TOO Him. Today you may not feel like running as far away from God as you can because of the pain and hurt in your life! I know Job probably WANTED to run and get away… I know I have been there… I have wanted to run away… there is always a time when we WANT to run because of the pain…
But I can tell you what I have found in my life… AND it is played out in Scripture here in our passage as well and that is that…
God is most clearly revealed in the worst moments of our suffering.
Many of us have learned… just like Job, that sometimes, the most difficult times and situations in our lives lead to the most enlightening moments. In the classroom of suffering… life’s most important lessons are learned.
This is certainly what it was for Job. Job had longed, all his life, to know God. He had brought the offerings, he had kept the rules, and he had kept a righteous heart. But it was only in his suffering – in the very worst of the suffering – that he was able to meet and really know God in the deepest way.
In the very storm that nearly devastated him, Job met God! Of course, the meeting didn’t go exactly the way Job had envisioned it! God spoke to Job directly, challenging him to answer His questions … and to stop asking so many of his own. Let’s look at that encounter in Job 40:
Job 40:1-10 [NLT]
1 Then the Lord said to Job, 2 “Do you still want to argue with the Almighty?
You are God’s critic, but do you have the answers?” 3 Then Job replied to the Lord, 4 “I am nothing—how could I ever find the answers? I will cover my mouth with my hand. 5 I have said too much already. I have nothing more to say.” 6 Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind: 7 “Brace yourself like a man, because I have some questions for you, and you must answer them. 8 “Will you discredit my justice and condemn me just to prove you are right? 9 Are you as strong as God? Can you thunder with a voice like his?
10 All right, put on your glory and splendor, your honor and majesty.
We can see clearly that when confronted by God directly, Job didn’t stand a chance! Job was helpless under the withering questions of Almighty God, and once Job was back in his place and the proper order was restored, Job was finally ready to address God as he should… as part of his creation… not as an equal.
Job 42:1-6 [NLT]
1 Then Job replied to the Lord: 2 “I know that you can do anything, and no one can stop you. 3 You asked, ‘Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorance?’ It is I—and I was talking about things I knew nothing about, things far too wonderful for me. 4 You said, ‘Listen and I will speak! I have some questions for you, and you must answer them.’ 5 I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes. 6 I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.”
You know when I think about this encounter with God I think about how ironic it was… Many of us long to see God, we dream of the time we will stand in His presence, but NONE of us envision this… DO WE? I am sure Job’s desire to see God did NOT include this conversation… it did not include meeting Him like this!
But when we look at the situation from the outside… looking in… we can see that it took the worst days of Job’s life to bring him to the place where he finally was able and READY, [HIS words] to see God. You see, Job could no longer say that he had only heard OF God, but now Job had been WITH God, he had spoken WITH God and now Job knew God.
And when Job was with God, in His presence and experiencing His majesty… he was still dealing with a great tragedy in his life, he still was grieving the loss of his children, he still knew that all of his property had been stolen or destroyed… BUT we see that EVEN THO’ all that is happening, Job was satisfied once he met God.
How many stories could we tell of those who found God only when they hit bottom in real life? There was a song one time by the Imperials… the lyrics go something like this… “I was looking up from the bottom when it finally shined on me…”
The thing about us is that usually we don’t LOOK UP until we hit bottom. When things are good, we have a tendency to either ignore or forget God. When things are good, there is NO urgency… but when we hit bottom… when things go wrong… we LOOK UP!
I personally have met men who have made the wrong choices in life and have landed in jail, and have been faced with long sentences or have been given long sentences because of their actions. These men felt as low as they could ever feel, and then they met God… God’s word revealed His plan of love and forgiveness, His word opened their eyes to His grace and salvation! And even tho’ they were still in jail, this place of confinement had become a place of enlightenment!
For some people it took a terrible trip to the doctor’s office… it took a terrible prognosis of some awful disease, and only then do they come to a point in their lives that they get serious about a relationship with God! It is NO wonder some people have said things like, “Cancer is the best thing that ever happened to me because if it hadn’t been for cancer, I would have never met the Lord.”
There are times in people’s lives when they are facing life-threatening moments – coming face to face with death – and when that happens, these people come face to face with the ultimate truth that they do not have God and that they need Him. They realize that life is short, eternity is long, and God is in charge. They have Job-like revelations, in the peak of the very storm that caused so much pain… they see and come to know God.
And it’s not always a medical or physical emergency. Financial hurricanes may sweep all you’ve known away. At that moment, God might easily and clearly direct the career path of the person who suddenly has no job. There, in the middle of the storm, you might find the answer to a life-long prayer for direction in your life!
Romantic relationships can blossom, and fade away faster than a summer flower. But for the patient follower of Christ, there can be a victory, even in a lost love. As is often the case, the answer for the frustrating loss will be known as soon as the right person appears. After all, didn’t Jesus challenge us this way? “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33)
Job found the God he’d been looking for not by avoiding the storm, but by holding on to a thread of faith as he went directly to the center of the hardest of hard times. God was revealed best by the very storm that seemed to cast a cloud around God’s presence. It was not the way he would have chosen, but it was the way God provided and it was the way that God blessed.
Conclusion
It’s the story of two people. One is Ted Turner. He is 71 years old, and still in the news. With a net worth estimated around $2.3 billion, Turner has made an impact on cable television, news reporting, and major league baseball.
He has given $1 billion to United Nations causes, and was once married to Jane Fonda. Through it all, Turner was never boring. Outspoken at every turn, Turner’s few missteps have included harsh statements about Christianity.
“Christianity is a religion for losers,” he said in 1990. On another occasion, he joked that the Pope should step on a land mine. He once asked some of his CNN employees who were wearing ashes on their forehead on Ash Wednesday, “What are you, a bunch of Jesus freaks?” Turner even blamed his divorce from Fonda on her decision to become a practicing Christian.
Interestingly, Turner grew up in a Christian Home, and at 17, planned on being a missionary! “I was very religious when I was young,” Turner told Michael Eisner. “I was a born-again Christian. In fact, I was born again seven times including once by Billy Graham. I mean, I know it inside and out.”
Bur Turner lost his faith when he watched his sister die from a rare form of lupas, at the age of 20. For five years, Turner said, “I prayed 30 minutes every day for God to save her, and he didn't.
A kind and loving God wouldn't let my sister suffer so much. I said, 'I don't want to have anything to do with you.'" In short, the concept of suffering separated Ted Turner from his faith in God.
(Sources: “Conversations with Michael Eisner,” CNBC.com, Fortune magazine article, May 26, 2003.)
The other person to consider? Her name was Amy Carmichael, and she, too, knew the disappointment of unanswered prayer. It may sound silly to know that as a child she had prayed for her eye color to change, but she desperately prayed that her eyes would change from blue to brown.
Many people in her native England had blue eyes, and Amy wanted them, too. The color stayed the same, of course, but Amy didn’t turn away from God. In fact, she followed more closely.
She became one of the most famous missionaries in history, moving to India, where she remained for the rest of her life. And there, surrounded by Indians, she noticed that the entire nation there had brown eyes. Her eyes, as it turned out, were a gift to her from God.
One other thing that was a gift from God? A painful nerve condition and a bad fall left her bedridden for most of the final 20 years of her life. But even there, Carmichael saw her suffering as a gift from God. Saying simply that “A wise master never wastes his servant's time,”
Carmichael wrote most of her 46 books from that bed, books that have inspired generations of believers, including a host of other missionaries. It was Amy Carmichael’s life and writings, for instance, that proved to be the major inspiration for Jim and Elizabeth Elliot, two more voices that changed the world for Christ, in part, through their suffering. And through such influence, Carmichael saw her suffering turn into pure joy.
Truth is, the storms are gonna come! They come for ALL of us, whether you accept that as a part of life, like Amy Carmichael did, or whether you reject God because of the same suffering, as Ted Turner did.
So what is God’s msg to us this morning through His servant Job? It is that we look squarely and honestly into the center of the dark clouds and the raging storm! It is that we do not shy away from the storm… because it is there where you will find that God has kept His promise to never leave you, to never forsake you, and to never stop using you for His glory.
Invitation to the lost… Invitation to the saved… Call to surrender your hearts to God… Call to make things right between you and God… call to lean on Him during the stormy times in your life to be a witness to the world around you…
