Services | God Breaks His Silence – The Red Letters

Bulletin

Hymn #50 “Blessed Be the Name”

SCRIPTURE READING – 1 Corinthians 2:18 - 25
Giving of Selves and Our Offerings

OFFERTORY PRAYER
OFFERTORY MUSIC – Pru Hungate
Praise and Worship

“Echo Holy”
“Homecoming”
“With Everything”

Proclamation of the Word
Message by Pastor Joe
“God Breaks His Silence – The Red Letters”

PRAYER TIME / Time of Reflection
“Morning by Morning (I Will Trust)”
Benediction “God Really Loves Us”

Acknowledgements and Announcements

Sermon Notes
The Lord will ask Job over 70 questions

Job 38:1 - 11 The Lord asks where was Job when the Lord created the earth and does he have knowledge of creation
Job 38:12 – 41 & 39:1 - 30 The Lord asks Job does he have power and knowledge to impact or control the earth, the weather, the universe or feed animals of the earth Job and his friends have been asking why Job experienced adversity, but that is the wrong question Who is the Lord and can He be trusted in what He is doing in His world

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Scritpures

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Transcript of Service

Audio file

FBCWest519.mp3



Transcript

You have your Bibles. Please turn to job chapter 38.

As I mentioned, probably early on.

In the study of this book.

Make sure choose me pass through.

Do not go through this book.

Because it's challenging.

As they shared, sometimes the scriptures is easy, like sometimes are.

Learning is easy.

Now you memorize 2 + 2 is 4 for the point that you no longer have to think about it, you just know it.

And so sometimes the scriptures are very clear.

As will be shared where to.

Believe in our heart.

And confess with your mouth.

Jesus is Lord.

Those things are clear.

But sometimes the scriptures go through a little more wisdom and requires us to read and think and consider and meditate.

And that's kind of what's happened from after.

Chapter 2 of Job until now, Chapter 38, we've gone through questions who've gone through despair. We've gone through accusations, we've gone through speculations and misinformation about God and what he's doing.

And as a pastor, I'm glad we're through that.

We're now at Chapter 38, where God finally breaks his silence.

I find it interesting.

Because again.

When God speaks, he's not going to give us the kind of 2 + 2 is 4.

He's going to use, as I discussed previously, a Socratic method.

A Socratic method is where you ask questions.

The reason for asking questions is not for the teacher to learn anything, but for the student.

Turn on alone, but understand.

God is going to ask Joe over 70 questions.

That's a lot of questions.

But he's remained silent for 35 chapters while.

Job, three friends, and this fourth woman, and then Joe go back and forth with what they go back and forth with.

Now there is, if you will, one thing.

That job may have over us.

Is that eventually Bob does break his silence.

Sometimes he just lets us be in the quiet.

We'll deal with that in a moment.

But the Lord, like I said, asked job over 70 questions and so chapter 38, verse one says. Then the Lord answered job out of the ruling said, you'll notice I want you to see some God answered out of the world went out of this sense of power. He didn't answer in the sense of glory. He didn't answer him from the throne of heaven. He.

Answered him with these words out of the whirlwind.

Oftentimes we want God to reveal himself to we we want God to reveal himself.

He went to him to reveal himself on a throne, ruling and reigning and doing these things or high and lifted up and majestic and awesome and so that we can take comfort in that, but in this case.

Job is.

Indicated by God through the whirlwind.

And then he says this.

Who is this?

That darkins council.

By word without without knowledge.

Initial questions is.

Who are you to ask such dumb questions and give such blowzy answers?

That's a really great start.

Who are you?

It doesn't have a clue.

Now grit up your loins like.

A man and I will.

Ask you, and you instruct me.

Now, basically what God is saying, I want you to man up.

Now, in case you think that's too gender specific in this world.

I can also say he's saying not chewing up.

That doesn't make it any better.

It's basically he's saying is.

You're not even being great at being.

A man or a human?

And you're going to instruct me?

I'm God.

You're not even a ideal person, let alone God.

So God is started, is questioning, but putting job if you will on the defense because job entitles be put on the defense.

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Tell me if you have understanding who sets its measurements, since you know who stretches the line on it, or on what were its basis?

Some or who laid its cleaner stone?

Now, OK, job.

Were you there?

When I created the world.

And obviously the answer is no.

Then since you weren't there, you don't even know how I did it.

And many centuries later, we still don't know how God did it, because quite frankly, science doesn't want God to be involved.

And so we speculate on.

How he did it.

And even when we are so sure how he did it, all of a sudden science didn't start saying, and again, let me correct that.

Science never says anything scientists do.

Scientists started saying, Oh well, maybe because of the the James Webb.

Telescope? But maybe our?

Convinced ways of considering the universe having started.

Maybe didn't.

But they're not going to go to the scriptures.

They will.

Then God must have done it.

They're going to try to find some other explanation.

So not only they were not bare.

They refused any understanding.

How it started?

When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

Or who in close the sea with doors in bursting forth.

They went out from the room when I made a cloud.

It's garment, and the thick darkness is swaddling band, and I placed boundaries on it and set it bolt and doors.

And I said, thus far you shall come, but no further, and here shall you're proud.

Wave, stop.

He's going.

OK, Joe, you even know how I set forth the oceans.

And the waters and the lakes and the rain.

Now, do you have any comprehension of how I did that?

Doesn't allow job.

Answer yet?

Have you ever in your life commanded the morning?

And caused the dawn to know it's.

Now, if you've ever been in any type of pain or suffering or distress, there are times when you're praying for the morning to come.

'cause, the night just seems too hard to bear.

And even in those cases, I can't get the time to go any faster.

The sun comes up when God her Zidane.

The sun to come up and it sets when God ordains.

It's a set as a matter of fact if the scripture says there have been at times when God has placed the sun.

In stationary orbit or a period of time for things to happen, none of us could ever do that.

But he's asking job have you ever done that?

But it might take hold of the ends of the Earth, and the wicked chicken out of it.

It is changed like slay under the seal.

And they stand forth like a garment.

From the wicked their light is.

Withheld and the uplifted arm is broken.

Entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the.

He's gone, OK?

We've talked about.

The light and all that, and the separation.

Now I want to talk about the sea.

Bear those even in our current technology who say that it's more dangerous.

To to delve the depths of the Marianna trench.

And to go to the moon.

It is saying.

You ever done that?

Even in our technology, we consider it extremely dangerous.

Have the gates of death been revealed to you?

Or have you seen the gates of deep dark?

So, OK, you really understand death.

Or Lord us.

Not only does he understand it.

Jesus has defeated.

That's how powerful our God.

He's asking job have you done this?

Have you been able to?

See death and then come back.

Have you understood the expanse of the earth?

Tell me.

If you know all this.

OK, job, you're so brilliant.

Tell me.

Tell me now what I don't know.

Tell me what I do.

Know and how I did it.

Where is the way to the dwelling of light and the darkness?

As its place now this verse reminds me of.

Because Genesis talks about something that seems.

Impossible in physics.

It says if God took light and separated from dark.

Because in our present world, when you turn on the light, darkness flee.

But there was a time when somehow light and darkness was just stumbled up into chaos.

And our God, who is a holy God, separates things and he separated the light.

From the dark.

He's saying, hey job, you know about this?

But you may take it to its territory that you may discern the path.

To its home.

You know, or you were born then, and the number of your days is great.

The game keeps.

Diddy and Joe.

Gibson, you know these things.

Because you're the one who was questioning me, so obviously you know a whole lot more than you revealed because you've questioned me.

You have any of the.

Store houses of the snow.

Or, as you seen, the store houses.

On the hill.

Which I have reserved for the time of distress or the day of war and battle.

Where is the way that the light is divided or the east wind scattered on the earth?

Who has cleft a channel for the flood or away for the Thunderbolt?

I did these things.

We still.

Try to say that places like the Grand Canyon were etched out by a river over millions and millions of years.

Even though the beginning of the Colorado River was below.

Most of its course.

So it's interesting how a river goes up still, but whatever, broad says, no, I'm the one who cut channels.

I did this.

To bring rain on a land without people or a desert without a man in it, he's saying job.

There are reasons I.

Do what I do.

But you see, man is not the only thing I've created.

And so I bring rain upon the whole earth, because the holder is my creation.

And I bring rain for the plants and the animals that exist in places that humans don't.

But I'm a God who is concerned with all of creation, not just man.

To satisfy the waste in desolate land, and to make the seeds of grass to sprout as a rain or father, or who has begotten the drops of dew, from whose womb has owned the ice and the frost of heaven, who has given it birth?

Water becomes hard like stone, and the surface of the deep is imprisoned.

So he's asked drove a number of questions related to meteorological and creation events here on Earth and in the skies.

And I suspect at this point job still doesn't have an answer to any of these questions.

But God is going to continue asking him questions.

And he's going to ask him questions like in 31, can you bind the change of the Pleiades? Or lose the cords of a lion, and you lead for the consolation in its season and guide the bear?

And her satellites?

He's saying the consolation fighting switch.

Is also called the Seven Sisters as this.

Phenomenon of crossing over the skies.

And a lion follow.

We're saying, can you change the course of Pleiades and can you stop a lion from following?

Bodkin and newjob.

And you affect the universe.

So God is going, you can't affect the small things now going to go to the really great things like the constellations, like the universe.

Do you know the ordinances of the heavens or fix their rule over the earth?

He asked two questions.

Do you understand what's going on?

And in our human desires to learn, we try to understand what's going on.

But we can't.

We may understand better and better, but we still have no power over.

Kind of like they say, everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

As if you could, I would ask you to turn it down a few degrees.

Can you lift up your voice to the clouds so that an abundance of water will cover you?

Can you send forth lightning that they may go and say to you, here we are, we're saying, can you cause it to rain, then you cause lightning to go specifically where you wanted to go?

Who has put wisdom in the innermost being or giving understanding to the mind?

Have you done that?

Recently in our education.

We are going, doing, trying to do away with the mind.

We talk about the brain.

His that's his.

God gives the mind.

To the brain.

And you do that.

Who can count the clouds by wisdom or tip the water jars of the heavens?

When the dust hardens into a mass and the clouds stick together and you hunt the prey for line, he's going can you affect anything on the earth?

And obviously the answer is no.

There's this.

And a joke that talks about the man finally gets to the point where he can take.

The same materials that God used.

Dirt and dust.

And create a human.

So the person, the scientist gets ready to do it and God stops him and says.

You've got to use your own dirt.

See, even when we try to do things.

We used dodge crew.

To do that.

This is can you hunt their prey for the lion, or satisfy the appetite of the Young Lions when they Crouch in their dens and lie and wait in their lair?

He's going and you feed the wild animal.

Most of us are afraid of.

Wild at the same can you feed them?

Who prepares other Raven its nourishment when it's young?

Cry to God and wonder.

About without food.

And he's going to go on and learn to stop here.

He's going to go on and talk about the animal world and basically says you don't understand and you can't do anything about it.

God has asked many questions of job and at this point, job.

Can't give an answer and won't even try.

And God, as we go through the next week or two, going to ask Joe additional question.

Why is he asking him question?

Because job and his friends asked wrong question.

You see, Joe?

Wondered why God would cause the.

Things that happened to him.

Because he was an innocent man.

He had integrity, and it wasn't fair.

And why should I do it?

And if I just talked to God, I could change his mind as I'm innocent.

His friend said, you're obviously a center because if you were in the center, these terrible things wouldn't happen and drove would defend himself and they would accuse him no more, and they go back and forth and basically saying you got to figure out how simple you are, repent and move on.

They kept asking the wrong questions.

As it says in the bulletin, job and his friends have been asking why job experience adversity.

That's the wrong question.

The correct question is.

Who is the Lord, and can he be trusted and what he is doing in his will?

Those were the questions they should have been asked.

Can I trust God?

But it doesn't seem fair.

Can I trust God in my adversity?

Can I trust God?

That he knows more than I know.

And I trust God that his word says that he loves me with an everlasting love, and I trust that because he said.

I'm going to end.

By asking this.

If God were to ask.

You 3 questions, not 7.

God would ask me 3 questions.

Over those three, question B.

Now for each of it's, it's probably one or two of them may be the same.

The third probably would be different because each of us has a different relationship with God and a different struggle with.

Maybe one of the questions would be this is here.

Do you?

Really? Trust me.

Maybe one of the questions is what is your real priority?

And I'll let you fill in the blank.

That's your homework.

This week.

What would God ask?

These questions that God asked Joe.

Her job had errored.

That he might.

But in my trust that God knows what he's doing.

And has the power to do it.

So we asked Jones question.

Because sometimes telling us something doesn't get us to understand.

Sometimes we have to ask questions and ask questions.

And the live the results of the wrong answers and the right answers to get to that understanding.

In law school is about the only time I ever got the cratic type of questions, and the credit questions have been around a long time.

We reason we call them Socratic questions is because that's what Socrates did.

Socrates lived a long time ago.

There's nothing new.

And God uses this, and I'm asking that maybe God?

Asking you those questions might cause us to have a better understanding of our relationship with them.

And a better understanding of where we want that relationship to be.

And so you may have thought it odd or repetitive.

It pretty much throughout the entire time of.

Of the body of job.

I've only had two reflection songs done over and over.

There's been about two others that we.

But the vast, vast majority of the reflection songs have been.

But the one that we're going to sing today.

Well, I trust.

I will trust.

And then the other one was, come what may.

Because I read the end of the book.

And I understood that the true question being asked here is, do we trust God?

It is easy to say it when things are wonderful and hunky Dory and the.

World is just.

75 degrees.

But whatever it.

Is when the Heat's turned up.

Or you lose your friend.

Or you lose your loved one.

Or you lose your property, or even those who you thought were close to you.

Or saying curse God and die.

I only want to be around you.

You're like having halitosis.

I don't want to even.

See your face?

Can you still, and will you still trust that?

And the purpose of the reflection songs has been to instill in us I will trust.

Morning by morning, I'm not making a commitment for the next 30 years.

I will trust him.

I just want to do it today.

Tomorrow I just want to do it.

Tomorrow I want to do it the day after that and the day after that day after that until he calls me home.

I understand that pride goes before the fall, so if I say, Lord, I want to trust you no matter what.

And watch out for the no matter what.

But God, I'm gonna say I will trust you.

Just like that person.

Lord, I believe help my unbelief.

Well, let me trust you when you're weak, Lord.

Give me the strength to trust you, Lord.

Because I do believe.

But you have the wisdom.

And the love.

To operate your world the way you want, and you have the understanding and the wisdom to do that.

We jokingly say.

You want to make God laugh?

Tell him your plan.

After seeing how he questions Joe, I think the true thing is.

Will make God irritated.

Not telling your plan.

Plus jobs.

Not being wrong and fuzzy, headed by God.

He's attacking the point and attacking the point to get him to understand.

Job you cannot lean on your own understanding.

You gotta lean on mine.

No guts, people said.