Lord, This Really Hurts
NLF 2/8/2004 Job 1:6-22 Matthew 11:25-30
Our Bible Study this week involves the stress of loss. Today’s message is entitled, “Lord this really hurts.” Have you ever had to say to the Lord, or to someone else, “now this really hurts?” We are all going to suffer some losses as we go through this life.
It can hurt even more when our loss may be someone else’s gain. In the Superbowl last week, it was interesting watching the joy and sadness keep changing places in the faces in the fellowship hall during the second half of the game as the church aligned itself with either the Patriots or the Panthers football team. In the end though, those of us on the losing side was able to walk away with our loss saying “it was just a game.”
But in life, we can’t always simply walk away from our losses saying it was just a game. Loss can come to us in so many forms that affect us for a long time. Nine year old Jerry’s father has died from a brain tumor. Bob sits in his large spacious office with tears in his eyes after sacrificing himself for his company for 15 years.
He has a mortgage, a new car, and two kids in college as he looks at this piece of paper informing him his job has just been eliminated and this will be his last week . Tanya can’t believe after four kids and years of promises to marry her, Raoul has left with another woman and married her two months later.
Yesterday, at the Doctor’s , Jack’s life was changed when his doctor told him he had waited too late to come in and that the cancer had spread through his body and there was little that could be done. Mary was shocked that after 15 years of marriage, the certified mail she received yesterday was from the court with a complaint from her husband for a divorce. 19 year old Amy was simply out on her morning jog in the cool breeze, when a drunk driver swerved on the road, and left her paralyzed.
When things like this happen, quite often the question we ask is “why me. Why did this have to happen to me?” What we’re really saying is, “this is not fair. I didn’t deserve this.” Chances are, we’re right. We did not deserve it. But the problem is, there is nothing in God’s word that says life is going to be fair. The word of God clearly indicates just the opposite is true.
Eccles. 8:14 There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless. This verse lets us know, that it is wrong to go through life thinking, if I just do what is right, everything is going to go well. There are people upset with God, because they feel life has not been fair to them. Does anybody know that life was not fair for God’s Son, Jesus Christ?
What we see in this world, is only a small part of what’s actually going on. There are beings in this sanctuary that we cannot see, but they are here. They affect our lives. They are part of the losses we experience.
The Bible tells us in 1 Peter 5:8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Our enemy wants to devour somebody here today. He wants to devour this church.
Sometime we will make the poor choice of allowing our losses to devour us. We refuse to move beyond them, and they become the determining factor for our behavior. We need to ask ourselves; is Jesus going to be Lord in this situation in my life or am I simply going to handle it in my own way? We can use our losses as either excuses to keep us from becoming what God intended us to be, or as changes in our lives that can draw us closer to God. Who is the Lord of your losses, you or God?
One of the most famous characters in the bibles for losses is a man by the name of Job. When Job enters the pages of the Bible, Job is walking as close to God as one person could get. Job is one of the few people in the bible that we know that God brags about in the heavens.
God’s blessings is on his life in every which way he could turn. Job has a large family, a lot of wealth, a great reputation in the community, good health, and a faithful wife. He’s doing his best to serve God.
We look at people like Job in the Bible and we think, “if I walk with God like he did, then I’ll be blessed by God just like he was” But there is nothing in the Bible which says God is trying to make us more like Job, like Mary, or like Paul. The Bible says that God is conforming us or making us more like Jesus Christ. So God’s plan for us all is to develop within us the character of Christ. This means we should expect God to take us through many of the paths in life that Jesus went through. How many of you know that’s a time to say “uh ohhh.”
Rick Warren has given us the phrase, “God is more interested in your character than your comfort, and He’s more concerned about your holiness than your happiness. We’ve got an eternity to be comforted, but a bad character today can cause us to lose it.
We’ve got an eternity to be happy, but a lack of holiness today will rob us of it. God wants to take our losses and use them to build a Christ like character in us. You may say, “but lord, this really hurts what I’ve been through or am going through.”
This man Job had it going on. But in one day it was all gone. He lost all of his livestock and cattle business. He lost all of his investments in the stock market. He lost of all of his pension benefits. And the most crushing blow of all, he lost all ten of his children plus their husbands, wives and probably a number of his grandchildren. This was more than just having a bad day.
The word of God has a warning in it which says, Eccles. 9:12
People can never predict when hard times might come. Like fish in a net or birds in a snare, people are often caught by sudden tragedy.
Job knew what had happened, but he did know why it happened. We know what happened to us , but we don’t know why they happened. There are some things we never will know why they happened. Job never knew why all of this stuff happened to him. He never knew about the conversation in heaven between Satan and God. Satan had appeared in heaven when the angels came before God. God said specifically to Satan, “Say have you noticed how much Job loves and worships me?”
Satan said, “Give me a break, you’re not worthy of worship. If you had not bribed Job, by giving him that Benz, that money, those kids, and his power, he would not think twice about you. If you let me take control of those things, he will curse you to your face.” God responds, “just to prove you are wrong, everything he has in your hands, but don’t you dare touch him with your finger.”
Satan could not wait to hit Job with the losses of everything. He timed it all so that Job would find out about everything within literally minutes of each other. It was as though Job was on the phone with one call getting bad news and the call waiting button came on with more bad news, and when he clicked back over to talk to the first caller, another person had called with bad news. Before he could finish that, the call waiting button clicked again, and Job was thinking it was the second person who had called only to discover it was a fourth caller with more bad news.
Can you hear him saying, what. All of my children and their wives and husbands and their kids. Are you sure nobody is left? I had 10 kids. Nobody was able to escape the tornado. You’re sure everybody was killed and nobody was found alive in any of the rubble. Lord. this really hurts.
Let’s notice a couple of things in this story of Job when it comes to the stress of losses. First of all, that same God who was sitting on the throne the day before our losses is sitting on the throne the day of and the day after our losses. The name used for God in Job thirty one times is Almighty.
Satan can not do anything to God’s children, without God’s permission. No matter what happens in this world and in our lives, God is on the throne and has everything under control. Things will be different, and may even be harder, but God still has it under control.
Second, let us notice that God did not find fault with Job, Satan did. When we ask the question, “why did this happen to me”, or “what did I do to deserve this”, we’re asking something which may lead to despair. Our circumstances are not always an indication of us having done something wrong .
The idea that I must have done something wrong, goes back to the false assumption that life is suppose to be fair. Life can’t be fair because God has made some promises to His children that he has not made to unbelievers.
Satan’s attack on Job was really Satan’s attack on the character of God. Satan was accusing God of having to pay people to worship Him. When we make Jesus Lord of our lives, we give God permission to use our lives in any way that we might bring honor and glory to Him. Is our eternal relationship to God based on the size of our pay check, the condition of our health, or the success we get in this world. Wouldn’t it be better to have our relationship based on faith and trust in a God who has promised to never leave us or forsake us.
After Job had lost all his possessions and children, some people wanted to prove to Job, if he had just lived a better life, none of these losses would have ever happened in his life. The truth was, it was Job’s loss that stopped Satan’s accusations against God in front of all the heavenly beings.
Job proved that a person would honor God even though he had lost everything. There was a battle in the heavens and Job did not even know it was going on. Job’s life was the battlefield where the forces of God and Satan were at war in deciding the question, “is God worthy of human worship?”
After Job had gotten all the bad news within a literal span of minutes, those standing around him did not know what he was going to do. Some thought he’d probably lose his mind. Job had been listening to all this bad news while sitting down.
At the end of the last report, he stood up. He had to leave the place for a moment where he had been overwhelmed. He tore open his clothing, probably symbolizing the agony and the grief he was going through. No doubt he felt as though he was being torn up on the inside. He then shaved off his hair. The loss of his hair indicated that he felt his personal glory had departed from him. He felt greatly humbled by his loss.
He then fell to the ground in worship with his face touching the earth. He is in the position of adoration to God in the midst of his losses. He utters the words that have been quoted many times: Job 1:21 and said: "Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised."
Instead of cursing God as Satan had predicted that He would, Job offers praise to the Lord. All of heaven is looking down on this man face down praising God. Job is proving to beings he cannot see and is not aware of their existence, that His God was worthy to be praised regardless of the circumstances going on in his own personal life. If you really want the devil to be hurt, praise God in your situation when everybody else thinks you’re going to crumble and fall to pieces.
One thing that is unfortunate about the passage of Scripture saying, the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away is that it is at the beginning of Job’s loss and many people think that’s the end of Job’s suffering and pain. They think by simply saying these words, you should be able to move on as though nothing has happened. That’s not true about Job and it will not be true about us. Job has 41 more chapters written after this faith declaration. It’s in these other 41 chapters that we find Job shedding some tears, crying out to God, asking for answers, wondering why me, and discovering who God really is
.
Job discovers in the end, that his faith and knowledge of God was no where near what he thought it was. Job said to God, “before all this happened, my ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you.”
In other words, God my relationship to you was based pretty much on what somebody else had told me about you. But now I know for myself who you really are and what you can truly do for a person. My friends we can’t go through life and handle our losses and those tremendous hurts without seeing God for ourselves.
That’s why Jesus told us, “come to me all of you who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest.” Jesus’ call is a call to leave the burdens and hurts we are carrying around in order to discover rest in him. Jesus knows what it is like to be hurt.
He knows what it is like to be talk about and criticized unjustly. He knows what its like to be misunderstood. He knows what its like to try to please God and to get in trouble for it. He knows what it is like to suffer and to feel betrayed.
But the call is still to come to him. Now Jesus said, “you have to make the choice to come, and when you get here, you have to say, “Yes, Lord I’ll do what you want me to do.” Because Jesus is standing there with a yoke. Now a yoke was a piece of wood placed on an ox to help control the animal for the owner’s purpose. So to come to Jesus means you’re voluntarily giving up control of your life for your purposes in order to receive His purposes.
You’re looking, and you know you do not want a bunch of religious rules and regulations. So Jesus says, “but that’s not what I’m offering. My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” As a carpenter, Jesus is letting us know that he has so designed this yoke that it will fit you and only you, because its designed and crafted for you. This is why it does not matter who you are or what you’ve done to be saved. Jesus designs our yokes according to where we are in life.
Now when Jesus provides us with his yoke, He never says putting on my yoke keeps you from experiencing loss and hurt in your life. His yoke helps us to make it through those losses and hurts. Now if we know that God is more interested in our character than in our comfort and in our holiness than our happiness, what should we do in our losses.
The first thing we should is to refuse to be discouraged. That begins with a look upward. The psalmist wrote, “I will look unto the hills from whence comes my help. My help comes from the Lord the maker of heaven and earth.”
David said in Psalm 23:4, I will fear no evil. When we use the word will, it implies a choice, an act of decision. We have to make a choice to follow God’s will when it really hurts because of a loss in our lives. Sometimes we might have to encourage ourselves. We choose to not have a pity party.
Jesus could have chosen to be discouraged that night in the garden of Gethsemane. He had asked the disciples for prayer three times because of the agony in his soul, and three times he came and found them sleeping when they should have been praying. He could have said Lord, we have to postpone this crucifixion thing until I can find somebody to stand by my side.” Instead he chose to encourage Himself, by declaring, “not my will, but yours be done.”
The second thing we must remember when it’s really hurting is that God is with us. In Psalm 23:4, again David declared, “for you are with me.” What can be more encouraging than the presence of God. God has promised, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.
God’s presence says, its alright to hurt, but I will not let the hurt overcome you. God built inside of us, the ability to hurt and to feel pain. Since God put it there, He knew that we needed it to be a part of His plan and purpose for our lives.
There is nothing wrong with grieving our loss. Some losses we will grieve for a few moments the rest of our lives. I think when we do, God just looks at us with a nod of approval that it’s okay to remember for a moment. But His presence causes us to turn back again to place our eyes on Him.
The third thing we must do is to rely on God’s protection and guidance. In Psalm 23:4, David wrote, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. The rod and the staff were the tools a shepherd used to protect and guide the sheep. When the sheep sees the wolf coming, it was not the sheep’s job to charge ahead into the wolf. The sheep was simply to get back to the shepherd. The shepherd would use the rod and the staff to deal with the wolf.
Nor was it the sheep’s job to go out at it alone to find water or grass to eat. It was the shepherd’s job to lead the way to food and nourishment. Just because we’ve had a loss, does not give us the right to take matters into our own hands. God has not forgotten how to provide us His protection and His guidance.
We can ask the question why did this happen to me as often as we like, but like Job we may never get an answer. We should always be willing to admit to the Lord, this really hurts. God does not need phony martyrs.
For the believer, our question is not how long before this pain is over, but rather ‘Lord, what must I do in this situation to allow for You to complete the work you have started in me, to make me more like Jesus.” God’s ultimate purpose for our lives is to be made more like Jesus. When that happens, God sees to it that everything else takes care of itself.
Sermon Outline –Pastor Rick 2/8/04
Lord, This Really Hurts
Job 1:6-22 Matthew 11:25-30
A. The Stress Of Loss
1. Lesson From The SuperBowl
2. Patriots Or Panthers—Just A Game
3. Life Is More Than A Game
4. Brain Tumors, Terminations,
Relationships, Sickness, Divorce,
Accidents
B. The Big Question Of Why Me
1. Did I Deserve This
2. Is Life Going To Be Fair
Eccles. 8:14 There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: righteous men who get what the wicked deserve, and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless.
3. Angry With God Over Fairness
4. Jesus & A Fair Life
C. There Is Another World In This One
1. The Presence Of Other Beings
1 Peter 5:8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
2. The Devour Process Is On
3. Which Way Will Loss Move Us
4. Who Is The Lord Of My Loss
D. Meeting A Man Name Job
1. A Brother With It All Together
2. God, Family, Wealth, Prestige
3. I Want To Be Like Him
4. Being Conformed To Christ
5. Walking Jesus’ Path In Life
6. Character Not Comfort
7. Holiness Not Happiness
8. Eternity For Comfort & Happiness
E. It All Changed Overnight
1. The Day It All Went Away
2. Business, Stock Market, Pension
3. The Family
Eccles. 9:12 People can never predict when hard times might come. Like fish in a net or birds in a snare, people are often caught by sudden tragedy.
4. Job Knew What But Not Why
5. The Battle In The Heavens
6. God—Have you Noticed…
7. Satan—It’s All Just A Bribe
F. God Grants Permission For The Loss
1. Satan Goes Out With A Vengeance
2. Job & Call Waiting 4 Calls
3. The End Of The Last Call
4. God Is The Same The Day Before
5. God Is The Almighty
6. Satan Is Limited In Actions
7. God Finds No Fault
8. Don’t Read Too Much Into
Circumstances
G. The Attack Is Not All About You
1. Satan After God
2. We Signed Up To Be Weapons
3. Foundation Of Our Eternal
Relationship
4. Choosing To Trust God
5. False Accusations About Life
Style
6. Loss Proves That God Is Worthy
7. Where Is The Battlefield
8. Is God Worthy Of Worship
H. Job Takes Action To The News
1. The Rise—Move Away From It
2. The Tearing—Go Ahead &
Grieve
3. The Shaving—I Have Been
Humbled
4. The Bowing—I Must Worship
The Lord
Job 1:21 and said: "Naked I came from my mother’s womb,and naked I will depart.The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;may the name of the LORD be praised."
I. The Victory Belongs To The Lord
1. All Of Heaven Rejoices In Job
2. Job Is Not Aware Of Who’s There
3. Praise God When It’s Dark
4. Job’s Pain Is Not Over
5. 41 More Chapters To Question
6. From Hearing About God To Seeing
God
7. God Must Me Known Personally
J. Jesus Offers Promise To Give Rest
1. Come To Me And Find Rest
2. Jesus Knows About Hurts
3. Jesus Been There—Done That
4. Making A Choice To Serve
5. Yoke—For Oxen & For People
6. Custom Made Yokes By The
Carpenter—All May Come
7. The Yoke For Development
K. Handling The Losses Leading To God
1. Refuse To Be Discouraged
2. I Will Look To The Hills
Psalm 121:1-2
3. David “I Will Fear No Evil” Ps 23:4
4. Forget The Party & Encourage
5. Jesus Had Reasons To Be
Discouraged In The Garden
6. Not My Will But Yours Be Done
7. Remember God Is With Us
8. David Psalm 23:4 You Are With
Me
9. Promise To Never Leave
10. Created By God To Hurt—Plan
11. Grieving Your Loss—God’s
Presence Gives Permission
12. Rely On God’s Protection &
Guidance
Psalm 23:4 I will fear no evil,for you are with me;your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
13. The Sheep & The Wolf
14. Whose Job Is This
15. The Food & The Grass
16. Whose Job Is It
L. God Still Knows How To Guide
1. Asking Better Questions
2. God’s Ultimate Goal
