Can we trust God during life's hardest trials?
WATCH
Bad Theology, 4 of 4 from October 26, 2025
“God permits suffering to show us our need for a Mediator.”
Job 8-9 by Patrick Fox (@pfox103)
SUMMARY
This sermon explores the themes of suffering and divine justice through the story of Job. Pastor Patrick discusses how Job's friends, especially Bildad, mistakenly assume Job's suffering is due to sin, reflecting their flawed theology. He emphasizes the importance of seeking wisdom from God and highlights our need for Jesus as a mediator, encouraging grace and compassion toward others.
REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
💬 Are we trusting Jesus to be our mediator with God?
💬 Do we give people the benefit of the doubt?
💬 When we don't understand, where do we turn? Where do we point others?
💬 Do we extend the same Grace we receive to others?
💬 Are we comforters or are we accusers?
💬 Where is our hope?
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
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All right. Well, good morning, church family. Good morning. I'm really excited to be here with you this morning. For those of you that don't know who I am, I'm Pastor Patrick.
I'm from the Sebring Church and I am the associate pastor there. I do a lot of the finances, pay all the bills, do all that behind the scenes work. And so, yes, to keep the wheels moving. Right. And so I'm blessed to be able to be here with you guys this morning and share what God's put on my heart through.
Through his word. So would you pray with me this morning?
Heavenly Father, we're so excited to be here this morning, humbled to be able to come together, Lord, and open up your word. And Heavenly Father, I just pray that you would focus us this morning, focus us on what you have for us. Pray that we would open up your word and read it. For that you speaking to your people, we don't need to hear another good message. We don't need to hear my thoughts, Lord.
We need to hear from you this morning. So come into this place, focus us. Block out any distractions that might be going on. Let us focus on you and what you have for us. You're so good, it's in your son's name we pray.
Amen. So, as you guys know, we've been in our series in Job titled Bad Theology. And if you were able to join us over the summer, we spent a lot of weeks talking about our theology. Right. And that, that's the idea of what we believe about God is just basically theology that we all have a theology.
And as we're going to see this morning, and as you've seen over the last couple of weeks, we encounter some people in Job's life that know about God. They know things about God that they believe to be true. And what we really honed in on all summer and what we're going to see this morning is that bad theology is rampant in our culture today. Bad theology about who God is, what God does, and how he does it is all over the place. Like everyone, we have opinions and we have thoughts, but where do we go to really find out who God is?
And that's his Word. And so as we've looked at the last couple of weeks and looked at some of his friends, we've seen that they get some things right. They know some basics about God, but just like wisdom and knowledge, when applied the wrong way, ends up in a bad place. And what his friends have been continually doing is hitting Job to Repent, to turn away from his sin. But what have we seen?
That's not the issue here, that Job has not sinned. Job is not in sin. Now, that's not to say that Job is a perfect person. That's not to say Job's kids weren't perfect people. Right?
We know that they were fallen people because we know that they had a system for repenting of their sin. And I stole some of Pastor Michael's preference, pretty much all of his template, but also some of his slides as well, because it's an overarching theme throughout the book of Job. And what we see is bad theology says we worship God not because he's worthy, but because of what he gives us. And that's what we see as we jump in this morning. What I want you to do is turn to Job, chapter one.
We're going to be in Job chapter eight, and we're going to be looking at Bildad and his theology. But if you turn on over to Job, chapter one, what I want us to see is that there is a fundamental problem going on, that there is something going on behind the scenes in the spiritual realm that not everybody has a. Is privy to. And what we're going to see is the type of guy Job is. And this is the perfect place to start because we're going to see, we are going to make sure and understand what.
Who Job was. And not from anybody else's perspective, but from God's perspective. So Job, chapter one, starting in verse one, says this. There was a man in the land of Ooze, whose name was Job. And that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.
There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camel, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants. So that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East. Verse 4. His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day.
And they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them. And he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, it may be that my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus Job did continually.
Verse 6. Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. The Lord said, To Satan, from where have you come? Satan answered the Lord and said, from going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it. And the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on earth, A blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil?
Verse 9. Then Satan answered the Lord and said, does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hand, and his possessions have increased in the land, but stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face. And the Lord said to Satan, behold, all that he has is in your hand.
Only against him. Do not stretch out your hand. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. And this right here gives us our foundation. As we jump into chapter eight, we see that Job was doing good, right?
We see that he was blameless, he was upright, while not perfect. He was greatest in all the land. He had all the things that we would want. He had all the servants. He had all the cattle.
He had everything a person back then would want. Which draws us to the idea that he must be doing good, right? You do good, you get good. Therefore, on the flip side, if you get bad, you did bad. And this is going to be the fundamental crux of what his friends are going to continually hit him with over and over again.
Job, bad things are happening in your life. You've lost everything. You've lost your family, you've lost your kids, you've lost all your servants, you've lost your health. Job, there's something going on in your life that you must have done and you need to repent. And what I want us to see this morning through these couple chapters we're going to look at is that God permits suffering to show us our need for a mediator.
We are going to see in the life of Job that he knows things about God. He knows that God is good. He knows that God is sovereign. He knows that God is set apart. He knows that God is over his ways.
And what it seems like he's starting to question is, is God just? Is God fair? And probably all of us in this room have wrestled with that question. All of us in this room have probably heard, why do good things happen to good? Or why do bad things happen to good people?
Because in theory, that's what we've probably heard. We've heard that in our Christian life, man, if you would just come to Jesus. If you would just follow Jesus, everything would work out. And while there will be a day, like we sang this morning, that that will come true, that that God will wipe every tear, that there will be no more sickness, there will be no more death, we aren't there right now. We live in a world marred by sin.
And it doesn't take much to see that in our lives. And that while we try to follow God, while we seek after him, and while we do good things, yet bad things happen. Amen. None of us have the perfect life. None of us have the perfect, perfect nothing.
Not everything happens exactly the way we want it to. And so we wrestle with this idea of why do these things happen? Because as we saw, Job is a pretty good guy by all the standards. He follows God, he trusts God, he trusts God with his kids. He prays for his kids, he brings offerings for his kids.
But yet Job is suffering. And we see in this series that his friends are gonna come to him and try to give him some advice. They're gonna try to point him to the right place. They're trying to give him some quote unquote wisdom. And we see they actually start out pretty good, right?
In Job, we see that his friends come to him after all these things happen. His kids die, he loses his servants, he loses his. All the good things in his life. And his friends come to him and. And they sit with him in silence for seven days.
And that's pretty good, right? How many of us in here would be able to go to somebody who's in a job season and just sit with them for seven days and not give our opinion and not try to fix it? His friends did care about him, but they had bad theology. They missed pieces of who God is. And what happens here with his friends is they beat him up.
And we're going to look at Bildad this morning. And Bildad's the type of person that unfortunately, I know too well, because I have some of these aspects. Bildad misses grace and compassion. He's the type of guy who doesn't know what tool to use sometimes. And what he does is he thinks he can fix everything with a hammer, and he's going to take that hammer to Job into his life, everything that's going on.
And so what I want us to see first is that the Bildad's theology assumes the worst about others and the worst about God. Flip over to Job, chapter eight. And we're going to read these first six verses together, says this. Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said, how long will you say these things? And the words of the mouth, of your mouth be a great wind.
Does God pervert justice or does the Almighty pervert the right? If your children have sinned against him, he has delivered them into the hand of their transgressor. If you will seek God and plead with the Almighty for mercy, if you are pure and upright, surely then he will rouse himself for you. So the first thing that we see is that Job attack, or Bildad attacks Job. And he says, job, if you would just repent, if you would just move past this thing, if you would stop blaming others and say it's not that you haven't done anything wrong, if you would just come to the end of yourself and just admit what you've done, God would restore you.
And Job continually wrestling with this idea that he hasn't done anything wrong, continually proclaims his innocence. And his friends say, no, no, no, Job, you must have done something wrong. Everything you say is like hot wind, right? It's like the guy that goes to prison, he's like, yeah, but I didn't do anything wrong. I shouldn't be here.
This is a mistake, right? This is what his friends are thinking about. Job is like, all these bad things are happening in my life and I haven't done anything against God. I've been following God, I've been upright. And they're like, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, tell it to the judge.
And so he accuses and rebukes Job in verses one through two. And Job has been defending himself. He's been trying to tell them that this is not the case. And some of you guys in here, you probably have kids. And I have two little ones.
I have a five year old and a three year old. And sometimes they love each other really well. Sometimes they get along and they hug each other and they play with each other really well. But every now and then, I don't know where they get it from, probably my wife. But every now and then I look out of the corner of my eye and one of them is shoving the other one or snatching something or pushing one down.
And I'm like, every time I go to them and I ask them what is going on, what has happened? You know, you guys were playing so good. And I say, griffin, that's my son said, griffin, what happened? What do you think? His first response is, she did this, right?
Kind of like I did at the beginning of this illustration. It wasn't me, it was my wife. They point the finger, right? And that's the idea of what. This is what they feel like Job is doing.
They're saying, it wasn't me, it wasn't me, it was somebody else. It's fill in the blank. And here's the thing, guys. They try to justify themselves when I have them dead to rights. And that's what's happening here is Bildad thinks he's got Job dead to rights.
He sees what's going on in Job's life and he says, what? If you're getting this, you must have done this. A plus B always equals C with God. There is no in between. There is no changing of that.
God always punishes the wicked. God always punishes the sinner. And if you do well, and if you follow God, you will always get good. Your life will be good. Your life will be rainbows, Your life will be kittens.
Your life will be everything that Job had at the beginning of this book.
He says, job, if you understood that good guys always finish first and bad guys always finish last, you would repent. You would turn away from your sin. And those of us in here who try to stand for Christ and try to do things the way that he's called us to do in our work, in our lives, know that's not the case.
Good guys don't always finish first. Bad guys don't always finish last. Sometimes the person at your Job who you know is the worst worker, gets the promotion. Guys, life isn't always fair, even when you're following God. And as we're gonna see, that's really actually a good thing.
So he continues, and he tries to give him some advice in verses three through six here. And he says, job, there's no exception to this. It's impossible for God to punish the righteous and reward the wicked. He says, if bad things are happening in your life, you did bad. And he starts to lay out this case and give Job some examples of why he knows this is true.
Job has just lost everything. His entire family, all of his kids, they were killed in a collapsing building. And he says this in verse four, and this might be, in my opinion, the hardest, harshest thing that Bildad says to him. Because for you parents in the room, you know, don't go after my kids. And he says this.
If your children have sinned against him, he has delivered them into the hand of their transgression. Bildad says, job, look, your kids died because they were sinful. They were sinners, and they got what they deserved. Job knows that his kids were not sinning, right? He knows that he would continually go to the Lord.
And even in sins of omission, even if they were cursing God in their heart, he would go and he would set up offerings for them.
Could you imagine your friend coming to you after losing a child? Or a child runs away from you? Or fill in the blank about your kids and say, well, you know, they got what they deserved, Guys, that's the Bildad theology. It assumes the worst about us and it assumes the worst about God, that God must be punishing, that you must have done something wrong. And church family, that is not the theology.
That is not the God that we serve. Job knew that God prescribed sacrifice. He knew by prescribing these sacrifices, it meant that God did not expect them to be perfect. He knew that there were ways to offer sacrifices for the sin that they would inevitably do because they were not perfect. For God to prescribe these sacrifices, saying, look, when you sin, when you fall short, here is the remedy, here is the solution, here is the way to abate God's wrath for a time.
Why would God give us a means to take care of sin if he operated the way that Bildad thought? And here's the thing, Church, family, it's really easy for us to have the Bildad theology. It's really easy for someone who is hurting, who is in suffering, to just automatically assume it's because of something they did. Now, don't get me wrong. There are times in our lives where we have to deal with the consequences of our sins.
Pastor Andy used to use a fun illustration. He used to say, you know, come to Jesus and he will take care of the sin part. But if you come to Jesus fat, you're gonna be fat afterwards. God doesn't take care of everything in our lives, right? He doesn't fix everything right away.
But what he does do is he takes away our sins and he exchanges them for Christ's righteousness. And what Bildad is missing here is that he is assuming that Job has done something wrong. He assumed that Job's kids had done something wrong.
How many of us in here have ever experienced some kind of suffering, some kind of pain, some kind of trial or tribulation, and. And asked ourselves, God, what did I do to deserve this? God, why am I here right now? Why am I dealing with this thing? God, I've tried to follow you, God, I've tried to do the right thing.
Why am I here? And we start to question God, and we ask ourselves, and we ask God, how do I get back on your good side? Because I've clearly done something to get on your bad side. How do I get on the good side? And I see this in ministry a lot, that one of the toughest burdens is with young people, right?
Or with parents who have to deal with kids who have turned their back on them and turned their back on God and they run and these people get bildad theology. They get this from people. Because I'm sure you've all heard, well, you know, if you would have homeschooled your kids, you wouldn't have had this problem. You know, if you would've sent them to a Christian school, they wouldn't be dealing with this stuff right now. I mean, what did you expect was going to happen?
Now, hear me, church Family, I have nothing against those things, right? I've got nothing against homeschooling. I've got nothing against Christian schools. Those things are great. And we should definitely, absolutely utilize them when we can.
But what I'm here to tell you this morning, church Family, is that whether you're a parent or a friend or somebody who's maybe even mentioned this or thought these ideas is that the truth is, no matter how much you try, no matter how much you do, there is no such thing as a perfect parent.
There is nothing that we can do un of ourselves to win them back. The truth is, what they need is God to break their hearts and bring them back to Him. Guys, people say things like bildad all the time, even today. And far too often we buy into this idea. We buy into this bad theology.
And that's why, church family, it's so important to know what you know about God and trust what you know about God. And that's why we spent the entire summer giving truth about who God is and clinging to those things. Because it's really easy today. If things are going well, if you're experiencing like we saw at the beginning of Job, if things are going well and things are working out well, the to say God is good, I trust God. God is sovereign, God is fair.
God is just. Until we get the call and it's cancer, until we have a kid who turns their back on us and runs from us and runs from God till fill in the blank. Then in those moments, in those job seasons, we really find out what we believe about God. And that's why we must cling to the truth and what we believe about God. We must cling to that good theology, not the Bildad theology.
Church family, we can't always assume the worst about people. Are there times that people are going to be suffering from the consequences of their sin? Absolutely. But who here hasn't sinned? Guys, we shouldn't be like Bildad.
We should not assume the worst and we should just trust God. And we shouldn't assume God the worst about God, even either. Church family, do we give each other the benefit of the doubt? That's one of the hardest things that I've had to wrestle with in my life is assuming the worst, assuming maliciousness. It was one of the hardest things I struggled with in the early days of my marriage.
Because if my wife did something, I always assumed it was because she was mad at me or trying to get me somehow. And she's like, no, it was just an accident or it was just a mistake or it was just an oversight. And I'm like, yeah, but look at the results. This is what I had to deal with because of it. There's no grace there.
There's no comfort there. It's always assuming the worst. And church family, we as a church need to be a hospital to the sick. And even if it is results of their sin, should this be our response? Should we be beating them up like this?
Or should we be putting our arms around them? Guys, we cannot have this Bildad theology. Guys, bad theology assumes. If you've got problems, you're the problem. I stole that one from Pastor Michael.
What a great thought. That cannot be us. Church family. The next thing I see is in verses 7 and 8, and it points you to the wrong place for wisdom. And it actually goes into verse nine.
It says this. And though your beginnings were small, your latter days will be great for for inquire, please, of bygones ages and consider what the fathers have searched out for. We are but of yesterday and know nothing. For our days on earth are a shadow. Will they not teach you and tell you, utter words of your understanding?
Can papyrus grow where there is no marsh? Can reeds flourish where there is no water? Church family. Job gets pointed to by his friends. To what?
Not to God, but to others, to history. What Bildad says to Job is Job, this is how it's always worked. You don't have enough life experience to understand this, but what I'm telling you is this is how God has always done it.
Job, if you just get your heart right, you're going to be back on track. If you just repent, you're going to be even richer than you were before. God is going to open the floodgates to riches and health and wealth. And it sounds like the bad theology we hear in our world. And unfortunately, some bad theology we hear even in the prosperity gospel, the deliverance gospel, these types of things that send us back to, ultimately ourselves.
And where we need to be sent is not to ourselves and at the end of the day, not even to others right away. The first place we need to be sent is, is to the one who holds everything in his hands, to the one who paid it all to win us back to him. And that's to God. Here's the thing. Church, family.
Bad theology points to the worldly wisdom, not to godly wisdom, because you don't need my opinion, you don't need your family's opinion and how things have worked in their lives, their experiences. There may be some pearls in there, but ultimately, when we struggle, when we're in a job season, we need to be pointed back to God. When we're in a pit of despair and we can't turn right or left, the only place we can turn is up. And that's my encouragement to you, church family, is that when there are sufferings, when you do encounter trials, when you encounter these seasons of life, because it's not an if. It's a when.
The first place you should go is not even to your pastor. It's to go to God. We can take these things to God. We can wrestle with those things to God, and then, yes, after that, we bring them to the people who are wise in our life who will then again point us back to Jesus. That's not Bildad's place.
Bildad points him to his knowledge and to history. Church, family, that's not what we need. We don't need more worldly wisdom. We need the wisdom of God. And so we must, must, must always go back to God.
And if you're in here and somebody comes to you with something, where are you pointing them? Are you trying to fix their problem? Are you trying to solve their problem? Are you trying to point them to somebody else? Are you trying to say, oh, you know what?
You really need to come to my church, which is not a bad thing, or are you pointing them to God?
We must point others to the source of true wisdom. And instead of pointing Job to the one who holds everything, he points them to others and to experience, Bildad should have pointed Job to God.
Guys, we can't let our experiences dictate our theology. That's what we see here, that his experiences are marred by what's going on in his life. The Apostle Paul would write in one of his last letters to the Colossians, Grace and peace to you, brother. I pray for you constantly. And where is Paul sitting at that time?
In a jail cell, ready to be killed for his faith.
We cannot miss that. We need to be pointing people to God and we cannot let our experiences dictate our or mar that. It's really easy to look at our problems and see them as big. But we must remember that even at the flood, God was seated. Nothing catches him off guard.
God is sovereign. God can be trusted even in those pits of despair. Guys, where do we turn in a job season? Do we turn to others? Guys, we must stop asking God why and start asking God what?
What are you trying to teach me in this? What are you doing in and through this? James 1:2 says, Consider it joy, my brethren, when we encounter various trials, do we have good enough theology that even in our job seasons we can consider it joy? The resolute assurance that God is still in control even when it doesn't feel like it. The last thing I want us to see is that the as we.
Oop, I went too far. Is that Bildad's theology lacks grace and compassion. And I'm not gonna read the whole section there because I'm sure I'm gonna be over time as it is. But what we see in this last section, and I encourage you to read it on your own, is this idea that Bildad question. Bildad's theology lacks the grace and compassion that we truly see in in a church family that far too often our responses are pointing them to ourselves and to other things of this world.
And when we do that, when we try to have a merit based theology, right? At my kids school they have this thing called the kindness jar. And every time they do something good, they put a coin in the jar and when the jar fills up then they get to do something fun in their class. Guys, that far too often is our theology with God. We think that if we just do the right things and we put something in our kindness jar for God and we say, God, look what I did for you.
That when these hard times come we can say, yeah, but God, look, I've already done all these good things. Now you can get me through this, now you can get me out of this. And oftentimes what God is trying to teach us is we don't want that merit based society, we don't want that merit based theology. Because when we really get down to it, how good is good enough? How good is good enough for God?
Because he is a good and holy God. He is set apart from us and we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I was listening to a Q and A a couple weeks ago and it was John MacArthur and R.C. sproul, some of these giants of the faith that have now gone home and been with Jesus. And they One of the questions that came in was why was God's punishment so severe in the garden?
Why was God's punishment for mankind so severe? And he said, that's the question.
This person that God created from the dirt, this holy and blameless God creates this being from the dirt. And he says when you eat of that fruit, you will surely die.
And instead of dying right away, he actually says the punishment is going to be worse for the serpent that deceived you and that you're going to have to live in this world marred by sin and you're not going to get to live in perfection anymore. That's the question we ask that a good and holy God. The real question is, why wasn't it vastly worse?
Guys, the truth is that the compassion that the Lord has for us, the grace that the Lord has for us, far outweighs this merit based theology that Bildad has. Guys, we can't put enough coins in the kindness jar to earn God's grace. We can't do enough good things to earn God's salvation. We can't put enough coins in to earn his compassion.
Fortunately, God makes a way. And this is something that Job really gets to the point of right. This is the idea that he's wrestling with in his heart. And that's this. We need a mediator.
Go to Job nine, verse two, real quick. It says this. Truly, I know that it is so. But how can a man be in the right before God? This is the question that Job asks.
How could I even be right with God? How can I, even the wretched person that I am, with all the sin that I commit, how can I be right with God? Even though I'm blameless, even though I'm upright, even though I'm all these things, I know I'm not perfect. How could I possibly be right with God?
Flip over to verse 32 in chapter 9. It says this. For he is not a man as I am, that I might answer him that we should come to trial together, for there is no arbiter between us who might lay his hand on us both. Job is seeking out a mediator. Job understands.
Hey, I know I can't have right standing with God apart from these sacrifices. And even Those are temporary.
First Timothy 2. 5 says this. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. Here's the thing that we need to understand, guys, that there is no hope. In the bildad theology, the only hope is in Jesus, our perfect mediator, that God sends us a savior, a perfect savior, a spotless lamb that wouldn't abate God's wrath, that wouldn't just turn his face away for the sins that we commit, that wouldn't just set our account to zero, but that would exchange his righteousness for ours.
Job knew that he could not stand blameless in front of God. And Job's gonna wrestle with some things. Job's gonna have some difficulties understanding this. And he's gonna get his time. He's gonna get that moment he thinks that he wants at the end where he gets to stand in front of God and plead his case.
And what God says to him is, job, where were you? Where were you when I flung the stars into the sky? Job, where were you when I created everything? Church, family. I pray that we don't miss and we don't have this bildad theology, that we understand that we can only have right standing with God because of what Jesus has done on the cross.
And here's the thing. Our lives aren't going to be perfect. Our lives are not going to be easier. Jesus said, if they persecuted me, why wouldn't they persecute you guys? We're going to experience things in our lives that are going to hurt.
And I'm not trying to belittle those things. The apostle Paul, while he was trying to defend himself, says this in Second Corinthians, verse 11, starting in verse 23. Are there servants of Christ? I am a better one. I am talking like a madman.
With far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked a night and a day.
I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers in toil and hardship through. Through many a sleepless night and hunger and thirst, often without food and cold and exposure and apart from other things. There is a daily pressure on me of my Anxiety for all the churches.
Guys, Paul didn't live that cushy life that we often get promised in the Lord. Paul lived his life for the Lord and he had joy in it, even in the sufferings, even in the difficulties, because he knew that, that it was worth it. He didn't have this build ad theology where he did good, he would get good. He didn't have this theology that even when he got bad, he would do, he would get bad. Guys, the truth is that God permits suffering in our life to show us our need for a mediator, to show us our need for Jesus.
Because we are not the only ones that are experiencing the effects of sin. The world we live in today is groaning for the coming of Jesus, the groaning for the new earth, groaning for the time when he's going to wipe away every tear, when he's going to take away all the sickness and all of these things that Job is going to experience. Church, family. We must be a church who stands firm on what God has done for us, that we don't need deliverance from a pastor. We don't need deliverance from anybody else other than than Jesus.
Jesus provides it all.
So in closing, I just want to touch on some things that we can wrestle with this week. Guys, do we give people the benefit of the doubt? Are we willing to not always assume the worst about people and assume the worst about God? God must be punishing them. They must have done something wrong.
Guys, when we don't understand, where do we turn and where do we point others? Hopefully we have a church family in here that we lock arms together, right? That we do this life together because it's not a solo sport, right? And we are not the hero of the story. We lock arms and we point others back to God.
But is that always our response when we're in difficulties? Do we take it to God, guys? Do we extend the same grace we receive to others? For those of us in here that know the saving power of Christ and what he did for us and all the sins that he paid for, do we extend that same grace to others? And are we comforters or are we accusers?
Guys, we're called to be a hospital to the sick and hurting. When we look out at the world, there's enough people beating each other up. There's enough people yelling at each other, screaming at each other, blaming each other. What do we do? Are we comforters?
Do we comfort them and point them to Jesus? And at the end of the day, the question we all have to wrestle with, where is Our hope. Do we have a mediator or do we try to be our own mediator? Because the good news is that Christ steps down from on high, puts on human flesh, and becomes the perfect sacrifice for us. That.
That he goes to the cross to pay for each and every one of our sins for those who believe in him. Church, family. If our hope. If you were to die today and you were to stand before God and said, why should I let you in? If our answer is anything other than Jesus, anything other than Jesus.
Not I put so many things in the kindness jar. I did all these things that you called me to do. God, if I did fill in the blank, not no. If our answer is anything other than Jesus and what he did on the cross, we have no hope. We have the Bildad theology.
Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, I'm so thankful this morning. Thankful that we get the opportunity to open up your word. Thankful that we have what Job didn't even know he was asking for. We have that great mediator.
And Heavenly Father, like we sang this morning, I pray that you are our firm foundation, that while storms will rage, while things will be hard, while the world will bash against us, our foundation, our hope, is in you and what you've done for us, that you come and live the perfect life to pay the ransom for us, to atone for us in our sin. Heavenly Father, the weight of that should do something, should move us to not look like Bildad, to not beat our friends down, not to beat people down, not assume the worst about you and others. It should move us to show that same grace for those around us. So, Heavenly Father, I just pray that you'd give us that opportunity this week.
I pray that you would move our hearts so much that when we are in a job season or when we're faced with somebody in a job season, that we would rely on who you are, that we would trust that you are good, that you are just, that you are sovereign and that you paid it all, that you exchange your righteousness for our filthy rags. Father, let us live in that. This week focused completely on you and what you've done. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.
