We want a God who is only a slightly bigger, slightly smarter version of us. But the God of the Bible is something altogether different from who we are. Only that kind of God is capable of explaining life's mysteries. Only that kind of large God gives us a real sense of purpose in the world. And only that kind of God can ignite our passions and worship.
Thanks for joining us today for the Summit Life podcast with JD Greer. I'm Molly Vitovich. I want to remind you about a daily email devotional from Summit Life that you can sign up for today. I know the busyness of life can quickly choke out any joy we feel in our walk with God, so why not cut those weeds away each morning with a word from the Lord? Sign up for this free resource at jdgreer.com slash resources.
Today, Pastor JD shows us there are some things about God we'll never be able to wrap our minds around, and that's actually a good thing. Find out why as we begin a new study called Not Got Enough. Pastor JD is headed to the book of Job with a message he titled, Your God is Too Small. Remember, if you'd like to follow along with the transcript of each message, you can always find them free of charge at jdgreer.com. Let's get started.
If you got your Bibles this week, yet, I want you to take them out and open them to the book of Job. The book of Job, it's in your Old Testament, right near your book of Psalms.
So, if you find Psalms and just look right around that, you'll find it pretty easily. We are starting a new sermon series today called Not God Enough. Here's the big idea behind. Not God enough. Almost all of our spiritual problems, I believe.
Problems like doubt or apathy, unhappiness, insecurity, almost all of them come from a view of God that is too small. As Americans, we prefer a God who is small, a God that we can manage, predict, and control. That kind of God feels safe to us. We can understand Him. We can explain Him.
He doesn't embarrass us, or confuse us, or contradict us, or make us mad. But this is simply not the God that we encounter in the Bible. The God in the Bible is the opposite of small and manageable. He is big. He's bigger than big.
He's bigger than all the words we use to say big. He defies our abilities to categorize or describe him. Most Americans, myself included, we want a God who is only a slightly bigger, slightly smarter version of us. But the God of the Bible is something altogether different from who we are. And here is the irony.
Only that kind of God is capable of explaining life's mysteries. Only that kind of large God gives us a real sense of purpose in the world. And only that kind of God can ignite our passions and worship. It's like the British philosopher Evelyn Underhill once remarked, she said, a God that is small enough to be understood is never going to be big enough to be worshipped.
So, you gotta choose. You need to have a God that you can predict and control and understand, or you're gonna have a God that is worthy of your worship and can sustain you in the midst of life's hardships.
Solomon calls this the fear of God. The fear of God, recognizing his size and says that the fear of God is necessary for any proper relationship to God. Proverbs 1:7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. What that verse means is that without a trembling awe before the majesty of God, we'll never really know God, we'll never trust him, and will never be able to walk with him. That's the step that for many years, for many years, I tried to skip in the development of my faith.
If you all have been here for any length of time, you probably know that I've tried to be honest with you about the struggles with belief that I've had throughout my life. Hard questions that I didn't really have great answers for. Questions like, why is there so much suffering in the world? I get that some pain and some suffering might be necessary and can work good in us, but what possible good could God have for something like the Holocaust? Or how does the concept of hell align with the view of a loving God?
Or how about this one? If Christianity is true, why do so few people, relatively speaking, why do so few people believe it? And why isn't God doing something more to get people saved? I mean, if God is God and he can do anything, why didn't he just send down an angel, a 900-foot-tall angel, to stand on top of the rotunda in the Capitol and proclaim the gospel to everybody? That'd be more effective than putting his spirit on somebody like me.
Why why is it why is he not doing more a couple of summers ago? My family and I worked for a week among Syrian refugees overseas. And after our week there, my eight-year-old daughter looks up at me and she says, Dad, if God loves these people so much, why doesn't he fix all this? I told her, I said, Well, he is, sweetheart. He's just using us to do it.
I mean, that's a standard pastor answer right there. Standard pastor answer. Not satisfied. She pressed back. She said, Dad, no, no.
I mean, why doesn't he do something about it himself? I think it's a fair question. Why not send that army of angels that we've heard so much about? And why not just make the war in Syria go away? He's God.
He could do it if he wanted to. Maybe you've had some of these very same questions. Maybe you've had others.
Sometimes I thought, you know, the fact that I can't understand or explain these things, maybe that means that God is not actually even there. Eventually, I came to believe because I became genuinely convinced that there really was no other explanation for the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ other than that he really was who he said he was. But y'all, even after coming to that conviction, I really struggled to develop a love for and intimacy with God. Because how can you feel close to a God that confuses you and bewilders you so much? I mean, y'all, I wanted to love him.
I knew other people who seemed to love him. There's a lady in our church who, every single time she prays or talks about God's grace, she tears up. And I thought, why don't I tear up when I talk about God and his grace?
Now, I knew how to play the game. I knew how to like shake my head and splint my eyes and, you know, kind of grunt and make spiritual sounds.
Some of y'all are like, I've seen you make that very face when you're talking to me. Yeah, I knew how to play the game, but a lot of times the emotions just weren't there and that bothered me. I've come to see that one of my primary problems in all of this was a conception of God that was too small. Like I said, I thought of God as just a slightly bigger, slightly smarter version of me. And I thought if God would just take a minute to explain himself to me, then I would readily and easily be able to understand it all.
But, y'all, that conception of God is just not able to sustain faith. It is only by grappling with the size of God that I develop the ability really to believe.
So, in this first message, I want to unpack the experience of the man in the Bible. who probably had more questions for God than anybody else I know of. In fact, this man's name has become synonymous with doubt and confusion and despair. That man's name is Job. We're going to be in chapter 38.
So let me give you just a quick overview of chapters 1 to 37, the Cliff Notes version of it. You can hang on there in chapter 38, and I'll catch up to you. Job 1.1 says, pretty much everything we know about Job. We don't know much about Job. He is said to be from Uz.
And so you ask, where is Uz? Short answer, scholars have no idea where Uz is. They assume you have to follow the yellow brick road to get there, I guess, but that's about all they know.
Furthermore, we don't know what time period Job lives in or even what nationality he is. We know that he's not an Israelite because his name is not Hebrew, but we don't know where he's from. This lack of detail, scholars say, is intentional because evidently the author of Job does not want us to get fixated on the particular historical situation of Job. He wants us instead to focus on the universal questions that are raised by Job's suffering. Questions that everybody asks.
Questions that you have asked in some form at some point in your life. All we're told in Job 1:1 is that Job is a blameless and upright man, which is a Hebrew way of saying he was a really swell guy. It means that he helped little old ladies across the street. He always ate all his vegetables. He turned in his library books on time.
He read every single word of the terms and conditions on his new iPhone update before he hit agree and had it reload. He's just a stellar fella.
Well then, right after this brief two-verse introduction, we get suddenly whisked off to heaven where God is apparently having a staff meeting. And among God's staff is a particularly feisty fella called the Satan. In Hebrew, it literally means the accuser or the prosecutor. And the Satan raises a critical challenge. He says, you know, God, the only reason that people serve you is that it's in their own self-interest.
They just serve you because you give them stuff. If you let them suffer and you stop giving them stuff, they'll drop you like a bad habit. And so God says, okay, okay. All right, Satan, let's take Job. You take everything in his life from him that he loves, and you'll see that he values me just for me.
And so in the next two chapters, that's exactly what happens. Satan takes every single thing from Job that he loves. Interestingly, by the way, or maybe disturbingly, he doesn't take Job's wife. Which is always a little confusing to me, right? You can almost see one of the demons saying, Hey, you forgot to mess with Job's wife.
And he's like, Nope, I know exactly what I'm doing here. That's intentional. She turns out to be pretty cranky and not much help to Job. At this point in the narrative, As you're reading this, you should be asking, you should be going, wait, what? Why in the world would God allow this?
And then we would expect the rest of the book of Job to provide an answer to that question, but that is not what we get. In chapter 3, we see Job's friends enter the picture. Job's friends, there are three of them, Eliphaz the Temenite, Zophar the Neomathite, and the shortest man in the Bible, Bildad the Shoeheight. Get it? Shoe height?
You see? That's classic Bible trivia right there. You want to write that down? These men, these three men, try to explain Job's suffering using the very best of ancient wisdom. Y'all, for what it's worth, they seem to be halfway decent friends.
They sit with Job in his misery and they try to comfort him and they cry with him. And basically what they say to Job is this. They say, look, we know that God is just. We also know that God is sovereign and everything happens for a reason.
So the fact that you're suffering, Job, must mean that there's a reason that God is paying you back for something. Job pushes back. He's like, that's just not true. I'm not telling you all that I'm perfect. I'm not telling you I've never sinned.
I'm just telling you that I'm innocent of anything that would warrant this kind of suffering. But his friends hold the line. They're like, no, listen, Job, there has to be something. I mean, Job, it's easy to get the logic of this, right? God is just, and everything happens for a reason.
So, Job, you got to think hard. What is it? What have you done that's brought all this on? And this back and forth goes on for 37 chapters until finally, Job, exasperated, says, Listen, guys, you're wrong. And the more you talk, the worse I feel.
All your talking is not helping me at all. It's just making things worse. Reminds me of the story of the man who gets pulled over by a policeman, and a policeman walks up and says, Sir, did you know how fast you were going? He says, No, officer, I didn't. And his wife leans over and says, Yes, he did.
He pointed it out right before you pulled over, pulled him over. And he says, Did you? The officer says, Did you know your taillight was out? He says, Oh, no, I had no idea. She said, Yes, you did.
You've known that for months and been complaining about it. Officer said, You're not wearing your seatbelt. Did you realize that? He said, Yes, sir. I unbuckled her right as you were walking up.
The wife said, No, you didn't. You never wear your seatbelt. He looks at his wife and says, Woman, would you shut up? And the officer says, Ma'am, does he always talk to you this way? And she said, Only when he's drunk.
Only when he's drunk.
So. Just stop talking. Stop talking. Every time you talk, things get worse. That's how Job feels about his friends.
And so his friends, at the end of chapter 37, exhausted of their wisdom, they leave one by one, and Job sits there all by himself, still confused. The point after 37 chapters is this: the wisdom, all the wisdom of the ancients has been spent. Yet the mystery of suffering remains. And then finally, finally, chapter 38. God shows up.
And Job says, at last. I'm finally going to get some answers. But no. Instead, God shows up and does not give an answer at all. He simply starts to ask Job a bunch of his own questions.
64 different questions spread across three chapters, to be exact. He asked Job's things like chapter 38, Job, were you around when I shaped the earth? Job, where were you when I spread out the constellations? And where were you when I knit the stars together? Joe, while we're at it, where do you think storms come from?
Can you even predict when the next storm is going to come? And then there's some even really odd random questions in there like: Job, how much do you know about the copulation patterns of goats? Or how about this one, chapter 38, verse 13? Job, do you know why ostriches are so ugly? Job, can you explain the mystery of grape nuts?
Neither grape nor nuts. Can you get your mind around that, Job? No, that one's not in there. I'm just kidding. I made that one up, but the others are in there.
And you're reading this and you're thinking, like, okay, I get the big questions, I get the stars and the earth, but why all these little questions? The point is to show perspective. God is saying to Job, Job, if you can't even really fathom the mystery behind natural things, are you really in a place to understand and evaluate eternal things? You see, the assumption that Job and all of his friends are working off of is that they know enough about the world to analyze and understand God's ways. But God says to them, actually, your perspective on the world is quite puny.
Mine is huge. You don't even understand simple things like constellation creation or ostrich ugliness. And Job, if you don't understand the mystery behind finite things like this, do you really feel like you are in a place to hold court on me and evaluate eternal purposes? You see, Job, to understand infinite justice, you're going to need to have infinite perspective, and you don't even have a good grasp on finite things. Then finally, chapter 40, God says, while we're at it, Job.
Do you really want to run the world for a day? You really want to punish every little act of injustice in every single instance? Job, do you know how many different things are happening in the world at one time? And do you know how many different things are interconnected? When I read this, I thought of that scene in Bruce Almighty, where that great theological mind, Jim Carrey, is given the responsibility to play the role of God for a few days.
And remember, his first crisis is trying to answer all the prayers. Remember this? All the prayers are coming at him, and he doesn't know what to do. Right, because all this prayer is connected to this one over here, and this person's praying that, but this person's praying the opposite. And if you answer this prayer, then it affects this person over here, which changes this, and he just about loses his mind.
That's basically what God is saying here to Job in this chapter. He's like, hey, this is quite a bit more complicated than you thought it was, isn't it, little man? And then the book ends. And God ends up, by the way, the last few verses, restoring everything to Job, back sevenfold. Yet, even after the restoration, we never really get satisfying answers to the question of why all this happened in the first place.
Neither did Job. The book ends with mystery for him. All we get from God is more questions. But these questions make five crucial points about the size of God. And this is God's answer.
These questions are making five points about the size of God. This is God's answer to Job. Number one, God says to Job through these questions, my power, Job, is sovereign. In this book, we see God's absolute power over creation. over the angels, even over Satan himself.
Y'all, we see that Satan does nothing. Except by permission. We can see through these questions that God has purposes in creation that go far beyond our purview. For example, chapter 38, 26, God talks about watering a land that nobody lives in, making the flowers and the plants flourish in a plant that doesn't benefit humans at all. When I read that, I was reminded of that.
Thing that C.S. Lewis pointed out, I've told you about before, where when explorers got to the new world and they would go into these valleys that, as far as they knew, no human eye had ever seen before, and they discovered a new types of flowers and plants that were just more beautiful than anything that they'd seen. C.S. Lewis said, the question you have to ask is: why did God put all this beauty in a place where nobody had seen it for thousands of years? And C.S.
Lewis's answer is the same thing as God's answer here in chapter 38, and that is that God does some things solely for Himself. Not everything that exists is for the purpose of man. And so, what you're seeing about Job's suffering, and this is kind of the theme of it, is that the ultimate purpose in Job's suffering. Is to bring glory to God. God was demonstrating his glory to Satan and all the angels through Job's suffering.
And I know that when you hear that, some of you have a hard time with that. And you say, that's a hard thing to live with, that God is using my suffering for his glory. But I'm telling you, listen, that is the secret to a happy and fulfilled life. Is for you to understand that you and all the world exist first and foremost for God's glory. Because when you embrace that, you're going to find a joy and a satisfaction that you've never known.
Because you were created to live for God. You weren't created to live for yourself. You weren't created to live as if everything was about you. You weren't created to be at the center, you were created for God to be at the center. And when you get your mind around that, you'll suddenly find a freedom and a happiness that you never could get a hold of when you thought everything was all about you.
So he says, number one, my power is sovereign. Number two, he tells Job, my perspective is infinite. My perspective is infinite. The climax of God's argument comes in chapter 42, verse 3, when God says to Job, Who is it that dares question my judgment? Without the knowledge to be able to do so.
In other words, Job, if you don't even understand the mystery behind natural phenomenon like storms and stars, Are you really in a place to understand the purposes of the eternal God above them? There is a problem. that philosophers refer to as the problem of evil. It's probably the number one intellectual reason why people choose to quit believing in God. And it's a problem that has been expressed for literally thousands of years.
The first person to actually put it in the form we have it now was a philosopher named Epicurus, and I think it was the 5th century BC, Greek philosopher. And basically, the problem goes like this: if God is all-loving, he would want to remove suffering. Right?
Okay, makes sense. If God is all-powerful, he could remove suffering. The fact that suffering exists means that God must not be all-loving or all-powerful. And a God who is not all-loving or all-powerful is by definition not God.
So, therefore, the fact that suffering exists means that God doesn't exist. That's the problem of evil. And it's been repeated for thousands of years. It gets repeated in college classrooms today. And some of you have asked some form of that question: why is there all this purposeless evil?
But I have told you. That syllogism, that problem of evil is missing a crucial premise. And that crucial premise is this: if God is all-loving and God is all-powerful, then it follows that God is also all wise. And if God's wisdom is as high above our wisdom as his power must be above our power. Then it should be a rational conclusion that there are certain things about God and His purposes that are going to escape our immediate ability to comprehend them at least easily.
Do a thought experiment with me. I've taken you through something like this before, but do a thought experiment with me. If there is a God, Let's say that you came in today and you're not normally a church person, and you came with a friend, and you don't even believe there is a God.
Okay, just still go through this thought experiment with if there is a God. How much power must he have in order to create the universe that we live in? I mean, just think about it. Think about the number of stars, for example. The last number I saw, astronomers say there are 3,000 billion trillion stars.
Some math nerd told me the other day that that number is septillion, the number I'm looking for, whatever, okay? 3,000, it's 3 with 24 zeros after it.
Now, if you're like me, numbers like million and billion and trillion, they all start to sound the same after a while, right? I don't really get it. What does that mean? Let me, again, a little thought experiment. Let me help you get your mind around this.
A million seconds ago. Do you know what you were doing a million seconds ago? A million seconds ago was 11 days ago.
So, what, last Wednesday or Thursday or something like that? Can you think about what you were doing 11 days ago? All right, how about a billion seconds ago? Do you know what you were doing a billion seconds ago? When was a billion seconds ago?
31 years and eight months ago.
Some of you don't know what you were doing a billion seconds ago because there was no you to speak of.
Sometime in the mid-1980s, the CD player had just come out and been released. Rambo was saving the world from certain destruction. The Jedi had just returned for the very first time. It was a great era, but it was a long time ago. That's a billion seconds ago.
How about a trillion seconds ago? When do you think a trillion seconds ago was? Maybe a couple hundred years. What do you think? A trillion seconds ago was 29,672 BC.
The first Rocky movie, I think, had just come out. That helped you. Put that on the map.
Now I want you to think about the fact that there are at least three thousand billion trillion stars, each one putting out roughly the same amount of energy every second as a trillion megaton atom bombs.
Some of these stars are so big they defy description, like Etta Carine, right here in our own Milky Way galaxy, which is 5 million times brighter than our sun. These stars, they say, exist in an expanse that we simply cannot comprehend. The Hubble Telescope is now sending back faint infrared images of galaxies we didn't even know about. estimated some of them at 12 billion light years away. Which means if you were to get in a spaceship and travel 186,282 miles every second, In 12 billion years, you would arrive at the edge of that galaxy.
And they say there are likely many, many more beyond that. All of these 3,000 billion trillion stars and all this expanse is created in a single moment with a single word from God. That is God's power.
Now compare that to my power. I can't lift my mattress over my head. But seriously, my wife and I tried the other day, and it did not turn out well, okay? Don't try to flip that thing. We had to get several friends involved.
I've told you this before. It's like my rowing machine. I have a rowing machine, and one of the settings on it, you can attract the number of watts that you're producing, which I don't even understand. Like, I get like meters rowed, that makes sense. I get calories burned, that makes sense.
But watts, why is that setting on there? It's there just to humiliate me. That's why it's there.
So I flipped into it the other day and I was like, how many watts can I produce? I get up to 60 watts and I'm like, I'm lighting a light bulb. You know, 60 watts. Whoa. You know, how long can I sustain this?
I get to two minutes, and the next thing I remember, my wife is reviving me with smelling salts. You know, several minutes later. Giving all my energy, I can light a light bulb for two solid minutes. God can speak 3,000 billion trillion stars into existence. I can't keep a light bulb lit for more than two minutes without passing out.
Now, I want you to think if that's the extent of how high, much higher God's power is above mine. If there is any analogy at all to how much higher his wisdom is above mine. Then doesn't it make sense that there are going to be a lot of things that may escape my immediate ability to grasp them and to understand them? It's just rational to conclude such a thing. It is entirely possible.
That God has some amazingly beautiful purposes that he is working out that we just cannot see yet. This spring, when you give to Summit Life, we want to say thank you with a powerful resource from Pastor JD. With your gift of $45 or more, we'll send you a copy of Not God Enough, a book that invites you to rediscover the greatness of God.
So often without even realizing it, we shrink God down to something manageable, something familiar. But in this book, Pastor JD reminds us that God is far bigger than our fears, our doubts, and our expectations, and that encountering Him changes everything. Not God enough points you to a God who is worthy of worship. Strong enough to handle your hardest questions, and powerful enough to transform not just your faith, but your life. Your generous gift helps Summit Life continue sharing clear, gospel-centered teaching with listeners across the country and around the world.
And this is our way of saying thanks for being a part of that mission. To give today and receive your copy of Not Got Enough, call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220 or visit jdgreer.com. Mm. Bart Ehrman, one of the most famous skeptics over here at UNC Chapel Hill, says that he lost his faith because of the presence of purposeless evil in the world.
There is a huge assumption behind that statement: purposeless evil. And that assumption is that if there is a purpose, then he would be wise enough to detect it. And I would just say to you, it is rather arrogant to assume, with our very limited pea-brained knowledge, that we would be able to automatically perceive every purpose of an infinitely wise God. God is not just a slightly smarter version of you, because he's not just a slightly bigger version of you. It's like we imagine God as this being with these huge earth-shaping, star-creating muscles and this itty-bitty teeny tiny head.
With a little brain not that much bigger than ours. No, God is something altogether different, and His wisdom defies my ability to understand it. And when Job gets a glimpse of that, just a glimpse. Here's what he says at the end of verse 3. Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things that are too wonderful, things that are on a different plane for me to know.
In other words, I didn't realize how dumb and how limited my perspective was. But, God, now that I see how big you are, I realize that I had the wrong posture in my questions. Y'all, your questions are great. There's nothing wrong with your questions. God invites you to ask the questions.
But when you ask them, you ought to at least approach God with a sense of how big he is. And let that shape the posture that you have in asking God to understand. God says to Job, number three, my purpose is guaranteed. My purpose is guaranteed. One of the most encouraging things in this book is we see that because God's power is sovereign and because his perspective is infinite, We see that even Satan's attempts to attack God's people.
only end up furthering God's purposes. I mean y'all think about it. All of Satan's best attacks on Job? Yielded for us a book. That has provided encouragement to countless believers down to the centuries.
Do you really feel like that was Satan's end game when he started this whole thing? This book is a big old gotcha shoved right in Satan's face. Don't we see this all throughout Scripture? Satan's strategy to defeat the sons of God only serves to provide salvation for the sons of men. We see it in the book of Acts, don't we?
Every single time Satan unleashes his power against the church, it doesn't lead to the church's destruction, it leads to the church's expansion. Maybe the best illustration of that, of course, is the cross. That was when Satan showed up and killed the Son of God. If there was ever a time when it looked like God was out of control, it was at the cross. Yet we see in the worst moment of human history, that was when God was actually doing his best work, which is why we never know whether to call it bad Friday or Good Friday.
I mean, it's bad Friday in one sense because the Son of God got killed. It's good Friday in another sense because I got saved because Jesus paid my sin debt. God takes even the worst activity of Satan and he turns it for his good. And believer, God is doing the same thing with your struggles. You see, if you think about it, you can probably, can't you already see some of the good things that God has brought through times of suffering and trial in your life?
I thought here are the words of the British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, who Before he passed away, he was in his mid-70s. He made this statement, and I just totally resonated with it. You probably will too. Contrary to what I would have expected, he said. I look back now and experiences that at the time, Seemed especially devastating and painful.
with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything of value that I've learned in my 75 years in this world. Everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence has come through Affliction. not through comfort and ease. Can't you say the same thing?
Can't you look back at different chapters in your life where you looked at the heavens and said, God, where are you? But now, just 10 years later, 20 years later, 50 years later, You're like, I see what God was doing. God was actually working in me. He was taking out something in my life that was hurting me, or he was replacing something, and it was painful, but it was absolutely necessary. Y'all, here's the perspective of Job.
The perspective of Job is: if already we can look back, already we can look back and see a good purpose for some of the suffering in our lives. Don't we think given infinite time and infinite perspective, we're going to see a reason for all of it? You see, sometimes what God is doing.
Sometimes the purpose behind what he is doing is something is working in you. You have to get your mind around the different kinds of suffering we see. in the Bible. Let me just use the Old Testament. There are at least three different kinds of suffering in the Old Testament.
Sometimes... God lets us suffer in order to chastise us or bring us back to the right way. That's what was happening with Jonah. Jonah's going the wrong direction. God sends a fish and he makes him suffer to get him back in the right place.
The second kind of suffering is when God lets us suffer so that he can work salvation in somebody else. That's what we see with Joseph. Joseph sold into slavery and goes to prison so that he can bring salvation to the sons of Israel. A third kind of suffering is where God lets a believer suffer in order to purify his or her heart and help him love God more sincerely. That's what we see happening here with Job.
Suffering is often how God shapes you for himself. I thought of the words of Martin Luther who You know, we spent some time discussing last year. Martin Luther said, he said to believers, he said, assume, the moment that God chooses you. The moment God chooses you, he lets the devil afflict you. in order to turn you into a real doctor of the word.
Luther said, and I quote, I credit the devil. the Pope and all my other persecutors with my deep knowledge of the word of God. Through the devil's raging, they've actually turned me into a fairly good preacher. Driving me into the gospel to depths I never would have reached without their afflictions. Y'all, this is what the gospel is all about.
Satan's strategy to defeat the Son of God only turned out to bring salvation to the sons of men. Satan's continued strategy to bring suffering to the sons and daughters of God only served to bring salvation to the sons and daughters of men. It is what God has been doing, what He did with Job, what he was doing at the cross, what he was doing in Acts. And believer, it is what he is doing in your suffering. Number four.
Number four, these questions. God shows Job: My promise is everlasting. My promise is everlasting. My favorite verse in the book, hands down. Job 19, 25.
Job says, I know, I know that my Redeemer lives. Man, I know that in the end, he will stand on the earth. A few things about that verse. That little phrase there, in the end. In the end means in eternity.
The last scene in the book of Job I mentioned was God restoring to Job all that he had lost sevenfold. Seven is the Hebrew number for perfection or completion or eternity.
So, what you're seeing is a glimpse of what God will do for the believer in eternity when He just not only restores what has been lost, He restores it in a way that is perfect and a way that is overwhelming. Like many believers, I have clung to Psalm 16:11 throughout my life. Psalm 16:11: In your presence is the fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Fullness of joy means joy that could not get any stronger.
Pleasures forevermore means pleasures that could not last any longer. It means that where I am headed in eternity is going to make everything I experienced here on earth seem like absolutely nothing. How long is eternity? The whole life that you've lived so far is gonna be to you like the first few seconds of a never-ending day. Your life is just a brief ellipsis compared to the expanse of eternity.
Eye has not seen, nor has ear heard, nor has even entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him. Y'all, that means it compared to eternity. Anything, the worst things that we experience here compared to eternity. are really just nothing. And Mother Teresa famously compared it to, she said, compared to eternity, the worst suffering on earth here is like nothing, it's like one bad night, she said, in a cheap hotel.
You've had a bad night in a cheap hotel, right? I've told you about some of my bad nights in cheap hotels. I had a lot of them when I lived overseas. Try to cut corners and stay in a cheap hotel. I remember staying in one in South America where a scorpion walked across the floor.
And I thought, I probably should have paid the extra $10 for the deluxe room. My wife and I, my family, were trying to cut corners on a vacation. And so we thought we stayed in the cheapest hotel we could find in a city we were driving through. And that was a terrible mistake because we got in there and it was dirty. And every time the people above us flushed a toilet, water would seep through our ceiling.
Our son was in a crib and it was dripping on his face. And it was an awful experience. We got hardly no sleep. But now, Now it's just a joke. I tell it and I laugh about it.
It wasn't fun then, but it's funny now. Right, suffering now is, yes, I'm not trying to take away from it. But I'm just telling you that compared to eternity, All of our suffering, she says, is like one bad night in a cheap hotel because it's swallowed in the joys of eternity. Which is why C.S. Lewis said, I love this.
If you look at this world, as a place to find happiness. If you look at this world as a place to become happy, you will always be miserable and confused. But if you look at this world as primarily training for the next world. Then you're going to find purpose and joy in your life. That's what God says to Job.
My promise is everlasting. Number five. My presence is pledged. My presence is pledged. I know that my Redeemer lives.
I know that in the end he will stand on the earth. I wonder, y'all, what Job was thinking about when he wrote that verse. Because y'all, listen, we know even more, don't we, than Job did. Because we saw our Redeemer come and stand on earth with us. And why was our Redeemer here?
Why did Jesus come? We know that he came to take our punishment in our place.
So that we would never have to be separated from God again or ever worry that He was angry with us or that He had abandoned us. Yes, there are some times that I am wounded, but he was wounded for me so that I could be eternally healed. Yes, sometimes I feel abandoned, but he was abandoned for me so that I could be eternally embraced. And that means that his mercy is ever present with me. And that means that I never have to worry about what he is doing in my life.
He stands by my side because he stood in my place. My Redeemer stood on earth in my place, took death for me, and now promises to stand by my side forever.
So I love the words of A.W. Tozer here, who said this: He said, with the goodness of God to desire our highest welfare. Believer, that's what you have. The goodness of God to desire your highest welfare, the wisdom of God to plan it. And the power of God to achieve it.
What do we lack? From what possibly could we fear? Y'all, that means that I may not know exactly what God is doing in my pain. I may not know what God is doing in my pain, but the cross shows me. It shows me what my suffering cannot mean.
My suffering, the cross shows me my suffering cannot mean that God has either forsaken me or that God has lost control. Think about the cross. What does the cross show you? The cross shows you how committed God was to you, how much he loved you. The cross shows you the extent he was willing to go to buy you back.
And Paul says in Romans 8: He said, Believer, believer, if God did this for you and you were his enemy, how much more will he not do for you now that you are his son or daughter? That's the first thing the cross shows me. The second thing it shows me is that God is not out of control. Because if there were ever a time where it looked like God was out of control, it was at the cross. Yet you and I see from this perspective that it was at that very moment that God was doing the very best of his work in me.
And that is what he is doing right now in your pain. It means you may be in the 37 chapters with Job. You may be saying to God, Why? I don't understand. God, why aren't you answering this prayer?
It might feel to you like a dark night of the soul, but I can tell you because your Redeemer has lived and he has stood on the earth and he stands by your side today, I can tell you for sure that his presence is with you and he is working resurrection through you, just like he did through Jesus and just like he promised to do for Job. Your Redeemer came and stood by your side and stood in your place and now stands with you eternally.
So, in your pain, you have His presence and you've got His promise. That was God's answer to Job. My power is sovereign, my perspective is infinite, my purpose is guaranteed, my promise is everlasting, and my presence is pledged. Job wanted answers, God gave him presence. And what Job experienced is what believers down throughout history have experienced that presence is enough.
In fact, as soon as Job saw who God was, Job was satisfied. Job was satisfied before God restored all those things to him. Before that, Job was satisfied. In fact, He was more than just satisfied. When he finally saw how big God was, he didn't have any time for any further questions.
His rage is now directed at himself. The end of verse 6 there. After he sees all this, he says, I despise myself and I repent in dust and ashes. You see, when you see the beauty of Christ, you stop asking the why and you start trusting the who. Many of you are like Job's friends.
You think you need explanations, you can understand. You think, you know, if God would just take a minute and explain all this to me, I'd be satisfied. That is not what you need. Explanation is not the way to faith. What you need is a revelation.
of how big God is. of how he is God enough. to understand and work his purposes out. A revelation of how loving he is, that you can trust that he will do just what he has promised. A revelation of God, not an explanation of suffering, is what God gives to us.
And believer, I can tell you, with the testimony of thousands and millions of believers through history, it is enough. You will find like Corey Tenboomfau. who spent years in a Nazi prison camp. When she came out, she says, in the worst times of my life, No matter how deep my darkness, my God, the love of my God was deeper still. I heard a talk this week by A guy named Steve Saint.
who was the son of Nate Saint who was one of the five missionaries murdered several years ago on the beaches of Ecuador. As they tried to bring the gospel to an unreached tribe there in South America. They were trying to establish contact, but given a number of gifts, they were trying to bring the gospel there, but. This tribe misunderstood what they were trying to do, and in one of the worst tragedy missionary stories of the last century, they murdered all five of these husbands and fathers there on the beach.
Well, Steve Saint, who was the son, just a young boy at the time, was giving this talk and he was telling this story. It was one of the most remarkable stories of grace that I've ever heard because Steve Saint was. Part of a volunteer group that went back into that same tribe years later and re-established contact with them. And he ended up becoming friends with, listen to this, and leading to Christ. The very man who had murdered his father, Minkai Yi, was his name.
It's one of the most remarkable great stories I've heard. He baptized that man who killed his dad. And then they adopted him, so to speak, into their family as his kids' grandfather. In other words, replacing the man that he had murdered, that he became a part of their... of their family.
And at the end of the talk, he just made this statement. I heard that story before, but he made a statement. He said, why is it? that we insist that every chapter in our lives be good. When God only promises that in the last chapter, he will make all the other chapters make sense.
Yeah, he said there are painful chapters that we walk through, but what God's promise is. Is that when we finally get to the last chapter? When we get to the end of the book of Job, that's when we see that God... Was faithful to every word that he said, and he worked all things out according to his beautiful plan. Don't you see?
That God is going to do this with all of our stories in eternity. You might be in one of these dark chapters with Job, but believe, your Redeemer lives. Elizabeth Elliott, who was the wife of Jim Elliott, who was another one of the five that were murdered. She quotes this poem when she talks about it. I love this.
Listen to this. God never gives a thorn. Without his added grace, He takes the thorn to pin aside. The veil which hides his face. God never gives a thorn without his added grace.
Sometimes he takes the thorn, the penisade, the veil that hides his face. In other words, Sometimes what God is allowing you in the midst of your suffering. It's not some rainbow on the other side. He's letting you see and discover more of the value and the treasure. of him.
That's the message of Job. God wants you to be able to say, with Job, your power is sovereign, your perspective is infinite, your purpose is guaranteed, your promise is everlasting, and your presence is pledged. And that is enough for me.
So riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise. Thou, my inheritance, thou and all ways, thou and thou only first in my heart, high king of heaven, my treasure. Thou art. I know that my Redeemer lives. And I know that I'll stand with him in eternity in the earth because he stands with me right now by my side forever.
Why don't you bow your heads, if you would, at all of our campuses, bow your heads. Is this where you are? Are you in a dark chapter with Job? The gospel is that God has come to you in your suffering. and actually taking your sin in your place.
That's how you know that he's for you. I don't mean to be overly poetic with this, but maybe you could right now just imagine him standing by your side. Maybe you could imagine yourself just reaching up like a child. Taking a hold of his hand. Say, and I trust you.
Maybe for you, this is the first time that you've ever done that. And for you, this is... Receiving Christ as Savior, surrendering to Him. Surrendering to him and letting him be Lord in your life and receiving his salvation. Maybe you've already done that, and maybe this is just simply you saying, I trust you, and I embrace you.
Your presence is enough and I trust your promise. God, be our vision. Give us eyes to see, ears to hear. and hearts that will see how big and how wise and how loving you are. Let us see what Job saw, we pray.
In Jesus' name. Amen. Our Redeemer lives. Yeah. No matter where you are in your story, we know the ending.
God will not leave you or forsake you. In addition to Pastor JD's book, Not God Enough, which inspired this teaching series, we also have a 21-day devotional based on the book. This guided journey walks you through scripture using reflection and prayer to help you confront doubts, expand your understanding of God's greatness, and build bold, steady faith. When you support Summit Life this month, we'll send this devotional directly to you by email as our way of saying thanks. Grow a bold faith by rediscovering a truly great God.
That's it for today. We'll see you soon. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries. Yeah.
