Open—S. Hallowell
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Pardon me if I take a few minutes of your time.
You know, I I look on the.
The faces of.
My brethren, brethren that I know have.
Put a good deal of their lives and their effort into seeking to follow the Word of God.
And to act on.
What they feel they have found there.
And perhaps.
You felt with some of us.
Is it ever enough?
I want to turn you to a a passage that's gonna.
Been a blessing to my own soul.
You know, sometimes when we we follow the Lord Jesus, we we.
We say, well, what does God expect out of a person like me?
You know, there's times when God deals and discipline with us and and undoubtedly.
You know things may not go right in your life.
Doesn't mean God doesn't love you or appreciate what you've done for him.
So I'd like to turn.
To the book of job history, I'm not going to say take a lot of time.
I want to read a few verses that he himself uh.
Says in Job Chapter 7.
Job, Chapter 7 and verse 17.
What is man? Thou should just magnify him.
That I should have said thine heart upon him.
And had asked to just visit him every morning and try him every moment.
How long hold on a depart from me? Don't let me alone till I swallow down my spittle.
I understand what shall I do on today? Although preserver of men, why Hasta sent me his mark again today so that I'm a burden to myself? And why dost thou not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity?
For now shall I sleep in the dust, and thou shall speak me in the morning, but I shall not be.
Here's the words of a man.
Who was going through more than any of us have ever experienced.
Things were going so well for job.
Uh, he was.
Prosperous, he was godly. He had such a nice family.
He, uh, was following the Lord with all his heart.
And one day, everything changed.
He lost everything.
In one day.
And, uh, if that weren't enough.
He kinda weathered that storm.
And there's health sales.
What was God trying to do?
What did he have against them?
You know, Joe didn't have the advantage of being able to read the first two chapters of the Book of Job.
Nor do we.
I mean in one sense. Nor do we in our lives.
00:05:00
Uh, if we were to go back to job chapter one.
Let's see what the Lord thought of Joel.
Verse eight. And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, The perfect in an upright man, one that feareth God and assureth evil.
That's what the Lord thought of Job.
Job.
Perfect. We can see that there was perhaps a little more self esteem than their auto ban. There were things that that God brought out is through the situation, but when when he looked at Joe.
He said.
There's a perfect and upright man. There's a man that really loves me.
There's a man that wants to please me.
And Satan says.
Yeah, but it's just so he can get something out of you.
Well.
In my case, that's probably all.
But God was going to.
God says to Satan, OK, you take away everything he has, you're allowed to do what you want, just don't touch his health. But you can take it all away. And you see.
So he does.
Chapter 2.
Verse three. And the Lord said unto Satan.
I still considered my servant job that there is none like him in the earth.
The perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and Stuart evil, and still the oldest, fastest integrity, although thou moveth me against him to destroy him without cause.
If I could put it in my own words, the Lord says to Satan, See, he still loves me.
He's lost everything and he still loves me.
Do you know what it matters to you that?
It matters to God whether you love him or not.
Here we are in significant specs of dust. If we all disappeared from the face of the earth, nobody hardly noticed.
And God cares if we love him or not.
And he wants to see.
You know there's a test on here.
Do we love them for what we can get out of them?
Or do we just love him?
I wanna say that.
There was no time in Job's life where he was bringing God as much happiness.
As he was right here in the middle of his misery.
You know Satan says, answered the Lord, and said, skin for skin. Yeah, all that a man hath will he give for his life, But put forth his hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face.
OK, so he didn't care about his possessions, but if you took his health away?
He did you, he wouldn't love you then.
The Lord says, OK, he's in your hand, let's save his life.
We know what happened. We all know the story.
And there were.
Perhaps months, perhaps years.
Misery in this man's life.
Was God mad at him with God? Was God angry? Was he not happy with what Job had been doing for him?
So he was delighted with him.
Because it came down to this. It's in Job chapter 13.
00:10:01
In verse 15.
So he's slaying me.
Yet will I trust in Him?
Let us know as it comes out of my heart.
That's what came out of Jobs and uh.
You know Satan didn't have any more to say, and I want to tell you God was.
I think we can see from the record here that God was pleased enough with this story where he spent 42 Chapters of His Word to tell us about it.
And uh.
Then of course, it goes on from there. Yes, God was going to bring a bring Job through some difficulties and he was probably going to have to find out a few things about himself. But.
That didn't mean God wasn't delighted.
And you know, at the end of the book, God himself speaks to Job.
He doesn't say job.
You were doing this wrong.
Is that wrong?
And the other thing wrong.
And that's why I had to deal with this with this way with you.
He just says job look.
You're that big.
I'm infinite. I'm the creator. I made all this. Can't you trust me?
You've been saying I I was doing things wrong. Can't you trust me?
What a challenge for every one of us. We're all faced with things that we don't understand.
We all have situations that.
It just seems, seems like God hasn't got this, isn't getting it right.
Can you trust them?
We're this big, we didn't make the sun come up this morning.
We didn't make the world.
We really didn't make ourselves. We didn't, we didn't. We're just here and we're just stop begging. We only have a little teeny bit of experience and a little tiny bit of wisdom and he's infinite.
Can we trust Him?
You know, Joe got the privilege of, through this trial of getting to know God in a way that he could never have known him.
Any other way? Yeah, he got twice as many camels and twice as many sheep. But you know what? That is almost beside the point.
You got to know with God and I think if you were to ask him and we sure certainly will get to see you do that shortly. I think if you were going to ask him now whether it was worth it to go through all that trouble and misery and.
All that those problems.
What do you think you'd say?
I think he already already counted it worthwhile by the end of the second to the last chapter of the book.
You know.
We can say the same thing because if we turned it over and I'm gonna have to look for this verse, but.
I think it's first Peter.
First Peter chapter one and verse 7.
And this said.
None.
Not the job.
That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise, and honor, and glory, That the appearing of Jesus Christ.
That trial in your life, that difficulty that you don't understand.
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If you can trust God in it, it's going to be found to praise, honor, glory. It's going to be the thing that God values. He loves to be able to point to you. He loves to be able to point to me and say he still loves me.
Not just because what he can get out of me.
He loves me anyway.