Your God is Too Small, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. 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. 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 know conflict isn't anything new.

Sadly it's often as much of a part of life as breathing. Can I get an amen? And while most of us run from conflict what if I told you that conflict is one of the things that God actually uses to shape our lives? That's our subject today on Summit Life as Pastor J.D. Greer continues our brand new series titled Not God Enough.

If you've missed the first part of this message you can listen free of charge online or download unedited message transcripts at jdgreer.com. Pastor J.D. is teaching from the book of Job with a message he's titled Your God is Too Small. 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 says pretty much everything we know about Job. We don't know much about Job. All we're told in Job 1 is that Job is a blameless and upright man which is a Hebrew way of saying he was a really swell guy. 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 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-interests 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 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 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 Joe 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 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 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 you know how many different things are interconnected 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 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 and and so what you're seeing about Job's suffering 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 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 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 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 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 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 these stars they say exist in an expanse that we simply cannot comprehend the hubble telescope is now sending back fate 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 three thousand 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 anyway to get several friends involved um I you know I 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 road that makes sense I get um calories burned that makes sense but watch why is that setting on there it's there just to humiliate me and that's why it's there so I flipped it to 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 the 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 uh you know several minutes later we're giving all my energy I can light a light bulb for two solid minutes God can speak three thousand billion trillion stars into existence I can't keep a light bulb lit for more than two minutes without passing out 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 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 brain 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 three 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 realized 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 number four God says to Job or 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 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 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 when his mid-70s he made a statement I just totally resonated with it you probably will too contrary to what I would have expected he said I look back now on 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 is 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 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 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 give an infinite time an 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 in the right place a 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 Martin Luther said he said to believers he said assume the moment that God chooses you the moment he 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 chose 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 a little phrase there in the end in the end means in eternity the last scene of 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 not only restores what has been lost he restores it in a way that is perfect in 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'm 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 going to 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 is ear heard nor has even entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him y'all that 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 you 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 at cheap hotel right I've told you about some of my bad nights in cheap hotels had a lot of them when I lived overseas tried 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 ten dollars for the deluxe room the 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 you know it was dirty and every time the people above us flushed the 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 I see us 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 Joe my promise is everlasting number five my presence is pledged my presence is pledged I know that my redeemer lives 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 then 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 promised us 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 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 but 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 our redeemer lives no matter where you are in your story we know the ending God will not leave you and he will not forsake you that's great news today on summit life the bible teaching ministry of pastor jd greer jd thank you for the reminder that our stories are far from over you've just written a new book with that same reminder that our life stories are still being written and it's called what are you going to do with your life this is the last week for our listeners to get a copy of it along with a bonus study guide right yeah we wrote a special edition workbook to go along with this new book it's got some devotionals that our team and i wrote with there was some guided reading to many of the scriptures that are referenced in the book and included it'll just it'll take you more deep into those i really you know one of the things behind what are you going to do with your life this book is that i really feel like it has a chance to be a defining moment a pivot moment for people whether they're college students and young professionals looking at the front end of their career or whether it's somebody at you know the halfway point trying to rethink what the second half looks like or whether it's somebody that's nearing retirement and thinking about how to invest this next chapter i think there's really something in it for everybody at every stage of how to ask the question where i'm at with what god's given me how do i how do i use this for eternal purposes how do i not waste it if you go to jdgreer.com there's information there about how you can reserve a copy of this book we would love to give you a copy for you becoming a gospel partner with us you know you get to be a part of this gospel expansion here to this program but we give you a copy of this book and the devotionals that go along with it that i think could also help you ask good questions about your life or maybe give it to somebody else so jdgreer.com and there you can reserve a copy be sure to request pastor jd's brand new book what are you going to do with your life we'll send it to you with that special edition workbook and it's with our thanks when you donate today to support this ministry with a gift of 25 or more your generosity helps us expand the ministry to new parts of the country so that more people just like you can dive deeper into the gospel every day give us a call at 866-335-5220 that's 866-335-5220 or give online and request the book at jdgreer.com i'm molly vidovich inviting you to join us again tomorrow have you ever tried to bargain with god when you're afraid or in a bind if so then you definitely don't want to miss thursday on summit life with jd greer today's program was produced and sponsored by jd greer ministries