Jeff Schreve - Trials and Tragedies
So we’re gonna learn today how to look at trials and tragedies, how to process those, because all of us in this room, we have trouble processing trouble. What do we do with this? And the book of Job and the person of Job, he’s the poster child for trouble and tragedy and trials and difficulties, and how do we make heads and tails of those things. Job chapter 1, scripture says this, «There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job».
Do you know the name Job? You know what it means? It means persecuted. How fitting. He lived in the land of Uz. The land of Uz is east of the Jordan River, south from the Dead Sea. It says that, «He was blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil. And seven sons and three daughters were born to him. His possessions also were 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and very many servants; and that man was the greatest of all the men of the east. And his sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day». On his birthday, «and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And it came about when the days of feasting had completed their cycle, that Job would send and consecrate them, rising up early in the morning and offering burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, 'Perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.' Thus Job did continually».
Here is a man of God. Here is an upright Godly man who has integrity, who’s a good daddy, who’s a man of prayer. He did this continually. Verse 6, «Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. And the LORD said to Satan, 'From where do you come? ' Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, 'From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.' And the LORD said to Satan, 'Have you considered My servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.' Then Satan answered the LORD, 'Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not made a hedge about him in his house and all that he has, on every side? You’ve blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. Ah, But put forth your hand now and touch all that he has; and he will surely curse you to your face.' Then the LORD said to Satan, 'Behold, all that he has is in your hand, in your power. Only do not put forth your hand on him.' So Satan departed from the presence of the LORD».
God let down the hedge and Satan goes after Job. And we read the rest of the chapter, this is what happened to Job all in the same day. All in the span of a few minutes, he gets a message. Hey, there was a problem and there was a raid and you lost all your sheep, and you lost all your donkeys, and you lost all your oxen. And boom, there was this message, and boom, there was that message. And you lost all your wealth, and you lost all your servants, and it comes in rapid fire. There’s a message here, a message there, a message here. And then the fourth message comes, and that fourth message says, Job, all your children, they were together on the birthday, and they were celebrating and a great wind came and blew the house over and all of them have died. And I alone have escaped to tell you. He lost everything like that, all his wealth, all his servants, all his children.
Now, if that’s not enough, it goes on in chapter 2, «And again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD. And the LORD said to Satan, 'Where have you come from? ' Then Satan answered the LORD and said, 'From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.' And the Lord said to Satan, 'Have you considered my servant Job? For there’s no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man fearing God and turning away from evil. And he still holds fast his integrity, although you incited Me against him to ruin him without cause.' And Satan answered the LORD and said, 'Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. However, put forth Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, he will curse You to Your face.' So the LORD said to Satan, 'Behold, he is in your power, only spare his life.' Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a potsherd to scrape himself while he was sitting among the ashes. Then his wife said to him, 'Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die! '»
Job is the poster child for trials and tragedies. Here’s our question for today. How are we to make sense? How are we to process the trials and tragedies of life? I want to share with you three insights from the life of Job, from the book of Job to help you to help me process those trials, those tragedies that come with life. Insight number one, trials and tragedies are an inescapable part of life. You’re never gonna get past trials and tragedies. You’re never going to be able to elude and evade trials and tragedies.
Jesus said in John chapter 16 verse 33 he told his disciples in the world, you have tribulation. You have the Greek word is thlipsis. That means pressures, that means afflictions, that means troubles. That’s just part of the world. That’s what you have in the world, in the world. You have tribulation, but be of good courage. I have overcome the world. They’re in inescapable part of life. I mean, you got to think of life from Job’s perspective. He gets up one morning, he’s just going about his day and maybe he, you know, he did what he was doing in the morning and it’s in the afternoon and he’s just kind of on the front porch and he’s in his rocking chair and he’s just kind of enjoying life and all of a sudden the messengers come bam, bam, bam bam and everything changes in his life just like that. He didn’t prepare for that. It came without warning. It was just like a regular day to him, but it came to him totally unexpectedly. Does that ever happen to you?
You know, one phone call can change your life. One car ride can change life. One doctor’s visit can change your life. Bam. Out of nowhere it comes, life is fragile. Trials and tragedies surely come to all. People often come without warning and they sometimes come with severity with severity. Now we all can relate to trials and tragedies to a certain extent. If we were to poll everyone in this room or everyone watching online or watching on television, I mean, we could start ranking. Well, you have more trouble than I have it. Everybody has a degree of trouble.
I contend that no one except the Lord Jesus Christ ever had as much trouble as Job. No one ever had that when his friends come to see him in chapter two, it says in verse 11, when job’s three friends heard of all this adversity that had come upon him, they came each one from his own place, Eliphaz, the Temanite, Bildad, the Shuhite and Zohar the Naamathite and they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him and comfort him. And when they lifted up their eyes at a distance and did not recognize him, they raised their voices and wept and each one of them tore his robe and they threw dust over their heads toward the sky and they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights with no one speaking a word to him for, they saw that his pain was very great. Can you imagine going to see your friend? You don’t recognize him because he’s so disfigured.
Job says in the book of Job, «My bones cling to my flesh». He had lost so much weight. He looked like a skeleton. He couldn’t eat because it was more than just boils that the devil afflicted him with food, made him sick. And he just sat there scraping himself with a broken piece of pottery. His friends, they see him and they cry and they sit with him for seven days and no one says a word because they saw that his pain was very great. Hey, trials and tragedies, they surely come to all people. They often come without warning. Sometimes they come with severity and they always come with questions and the questions start flowing. In chapter 35 times Job asked the question, why he didn’t understand?
It didn’t make sense to him. He is an upright man. He fears God. He walks with God, he didn’t understand. And he asked the question that the common question that most of us ask on a dare say, all of us ask when we’re experiencing trials and tragedies. Why is this happening to me? What have I done? Why God, why has all this calamity come into my heart? So the very first insight trials and tragedies are an inescapable part of life. Second insight trials and tragedies are an important test in life. It’s a test. Job is being tested. We know that because we read Job chapter one and Job chapter two, we know that. And the book of James says this, «Consider it all joy my brethren when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance trials are a test».
And so God tells us, hey, when you encounter a trial, when you encounter a tragedy, when you encounter some anguish and some difficulty, put it in the plus column, consider it all joy. That word consider is a an accounting term which means you put it in it. It doesn’t mean that it is all joy. It means you consider it all joy. You consider it of an asset and not a debit, a plus and not a minus. Put that in the joy category. Why? Because it’s a test of your faith. Now, anyone calls himself a Christian can praise God when everything is going well, the test of your Christianity is not.
Do you praise God in the sunshine? The test is, can you praise God in the rain? Can you praise God when you’re walking through the valley of the shadow of death? Can you praise God when the bottom drops out. Can you praise God? Even when your spouse says I have found someone else? I want a divorce. Can you praise? Even when the doctor’s report says you have stage four cancer and you thought you just had a stomachache? Can you praise him? When you get the pink slip at work? You have lost your job. Can you praise him when the stock market crashes and you lose everything? That’s the big test. So Job hears that he lost his wealth. He hears that he lost his family.
Chapter one verse 20. «Then Job arose tore his robe and shaved his head and he fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said, 'Naked, I came from my mother’s womb and naked. I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord is taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.' Through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God». He did well. He did so well. He responded so well as we could imagine a man responding that God said there’s no one like him on the face of the earth. Job is the guy. He is my servant. He handled that well. When his wife, he tells him curse God and die in chapter two, his response is great. «But he said to her, 'You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity? ' In all this Job did not sin with his lips».
Amazing does really well, see that, that communicates to a lost and dying world. The, the best sermon that we can ever preach is not from a pulpit per se, it’s when you’re going through the furnace of affliction and you’re still praising God that gets people’s attention. People say, hey, there’s something to this, that girl, that guy, they have something, they have an inner strength that I don’t have because they’re able to still trust God, still praise God, still bless God, still follow God even in the midst of tremendous difficulty and pain. Hey, trials are an inescapable part of life. Trials are an important test in life and then insight.
Number three trials and tragedies are an invaluable teacher in life. God uses trials and tragedies to teach us things that we wouldn’t know any other way. Hey, you mark it down. We can learn the deepest lessons in the darkest times. We don’t like dark times, but we can learn the deepest lessons about God in the darkest times because in the darkest times, you find that Jesus is not only necessary but Jesus is enough because that’s all you have. He takes away everything else and you find what’s really there. Look what Job said in Job chapter 23. He said, «Oh that I knew where I might find Him. That I might come to His seat»! That I might go to where He is. «Behold, I go forward but he is not there. And backward, but I can’t perceive Him when He acts on the left, I can’t behold Him; He turns on the right, I cannot see Him».
Have you ever been there where you’re searching for God? You’re crying out for God. And God doesn’t answer. And Job is saying God, where are you? How come? You’re not answering me? I need to talk to you. I need to know why this is happening to me. And there’s nothing. God is silent all through the book of Job until you hit chapter 38. It says in Job 38, verse 1, «Then out of the storm, the Lord,» Yahweh, «spoke to Job,» out of the storm, out of the whirlwind. The Lord revealed himself to Job. You know what that makes me think of.
That makes me think of Matthew chapter 14 when the disciples are in a boat and they’re in a storm, they’re in a windstorm and the waves are, are uh rocking the boat and it’s dark. It’s in the fourth watch of the night, the darkest part of night of the night. And the scripture says, then Jesus comes to them, walking on the water and you know how that story ends with Peter, getting out of the boat and walking on the water with Jesus. That story ends this way, they get back in the boat and the scripture says, the disciples worshiped him and they said of a truth. You are the Son of God. It was in a storm. It’s in a dark time. And so God reveals himself to Job in this dark time. And Job’s been asking God a lot of questions and God ask Job questions.
This is what God says. Job 38 beginning in verse 2: «Who is this that darkens counsel By words without knowledge? Now gird up your loins like a man. And I will ask you and you instruct me! Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who set its measurement since you know? Or who stretched the line on it? On what where its basis sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone. When the morning stars sang together And all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who enclosed the sea with doors. When, bursting forth, it went out from the womb; When I made a cloud its garment, And thick darkness its swaddling band. And I placed boundaries on it, And I set a bolt and doors, And I said, 'Thus far, you shall come and no farther; And here shall you your proud waves stop'? Have you ever in your life commanded the morning, And caused the dawn to know its place; That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, And the wicked be shaken out of it»?
And God just comes at Job with question after question after question after question, I looked this morning and saw that there were 70 questions from God in Job 38 through Job 41, 70 questions. Job is asking God questions and then God turns the tables and God starts asking Job questions. And what God is showing is Job. You can’t answer my questions about the physical realm because God asks him a lot of questions, science related questions about physical things, about animals and such. And he says, Job, if you can’t answer the things that you can see, how are you going to understand the things that you don’t see? What is God trying to do? He’s trying to get Job to see.
Does the clay have any right to say to the potter? Why have you made me this way? And the answer is no. Does the clay have any understanding of what’s going on with the potter? No, he’s a lump of clay. He doesn’t understand the potter. So while we ask, why so much of the time, why is not a good question? The whys belong to God, the houses belong to us? How God, how do you want to use this in my life? I’m not on your level. I can’t understand what you do. And that’s what God is showing Job. You can’t answer any of my questions, but you’re trying to make yourself my equal like we can have a powwow and you can understand what I’m doing. You can’t understand what I’m doing. So why don’t you just trust me?
Job responds to God in Genesis chapter 42. And it says this, «Then Job answered the Lord. I know Lord that you are all-powerful; that you can do everything you want. You ask how I dare question your wisdom when I am so very ignorant. I talked about things I did not understand about marvels too great for me to know. You told me to listen while you spoke and to try to answer your questions. In the past, I knew only what others had told me, but now I have seen you with my own eyes. So I am ashamed of all I’ve said and repent in dust and ashes».
Oh, I’ve heard of you with the ear, but now my eye sees you and I repent in dust and ashes. Did you know when people see the Lord, that’s always their response. Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6 in the year of King Isaiah’s death, I saw the Lord high and lifted up and I said, wow. And then I saw myself and I said, whoa, whoa is me? I’m in trouble. Job sees the Lord. Wow. Then he sees himself, «I repent in dust and ashes». Peter on that day when the Lord told him to put down the nets and, and for a catch. And he said, Lord, there we’ve been fishing all night, caught nothing. He said, do it. And so he did it and he caught so many fish, it began to sink the boat and in the midst of flapping fish and sinking boats, he saw Jesus and you said, «Depart from me, Lord for I’m a sinful man». Saw himself.
Job who was the greatest of all men, he said, «I repent and dust and ashes». He learned things about God that day that he wouldn’t have learned any other way. We can learn what Job learned. And that is this, that God alone, it is worth it all. God alone is worth it all. God alone is enough. Hey, when you think of the joy in your life, where does it come from? You say, well, I it comes from the Lord. My joy is in the Lord. He’s my source for joy. How do you know it’s not in your kids? I’ll tell you one way. You can know it’s not in your kids. If you lose your kids, if your kids are taken, do you still have joy? Because if you, when you lose your kids, you lose your joy. Your joy was in your kids.
You say, well, I know my joy is in the Lord. How do you know it’s not in your money? One way you can know it’s not in your money. If you lose all your money, you lose all your wealth and you lose your joy, then your money, your your joy was in your money. That’s why when the stock market crashed in 1929 what did people do? Businessmen were doing swan dives out of buildings, why? Because all their joy was in their money. But when everything’s taken away and you still have joy, then you know, my joy is in the Lord and Jesus is not only necessary, He is enough, and Job showed the devil without even knowing it, that he served God for nothing. He served God because he loved God. That’s why he served him.
Listen, if you’re going through trials and tragedies right now in life, and you’re asking the question, why God and you are focused in on the things that you don’t know and you can’t know and your three friends or however many you have and when they speak into the situation, they can’t know either. Let me encourage you to do this. Quit focusing in on what you don’t know and start focusing in on what you do know. This I know that my redeemer lives. This I know that He is good. This I know that He loves me and I don’t understand everything that’s happening to me, but I know that I can trust Him. And Job said in Job 13, verse 15, «Though he slay me yet will I trust him».