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Introduction: Liam & the Pillar Network Partnership

Well, good morning, everyone. I’m really honoured by the opportunity to come and preach today, not least to be the first guest speaker at Horizon. I’m very privileged by that. Thank you to Kenny. Thank you for just being in church here. Thank you for having me. I bring greetings from Charlotte Chapel, a Baptist church in the heart of Edinburgh. It’s about 220 years old, so it’s been around for a wee while, and I’m praying that you guys will be around for just as long and have a great impact on the world, even as you have been praying this morning.

I’m so glad that we get to be partners together through being members of the Pillar network. Over 550 churches in 43 different nations, and that’s growing. It’s a great joy to see churches in one place partner with the church in another place, even internationally, to see God’s Great Commission work being done. It’s a privilege and a joy to be here. Even more of a privilege and a joy to have a weighty responsibility of contributing to your series, as you’re thinking about suffering, it is weighty.  I’m feeling the pain of it even as I prepare to preach it. So let me pray once more. Ask for God’s help as we come to open up his word together.

Father, we praise you for your sovereign care, your loving compassion. It’s truly great. You’re gracious and your compassion, you’re kind, and you move towards us in love. You feel deeply about us in our suffering and our struggles. Indeed, you sent your son to enter into it to pull us out of it, and we praise you for that. Thank you that in these moments now, both preachers and hearers can be fully dependent upon you and your Holy Spirit’s help in moments like this. According to 1 Corinthians, these spiritual things are spiritually grasped with the help of your spirit. And we pray that as we cover a big chunk of text today, that you might give us grace to understand it well, to your glory through our sanctification and our gospel witness, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

 

What Do You Say to Those Who Are Suffering?

You’re going to be really helped to have your Bibles open in front of you today because we’re going to do a flyby of the book of Job to answer the question, How do we help people in their suffering? Let me start with a couple of examples. I stood three years ago around an open grave. We were burying my aunt. She had struggled for a significant amount of time with alcoholism and had died after a brief binge. She was only 62. As the purple cord slipped through my fingers and her coffin descended into the dirt, I looked up at Richard at the head, her 26-year-old son, and thought, he’s distraught. How is he going to make sense of this? He’s not a Christian. My aunt wasn’t a Christian.

I’m the only Christian in my entire family. How are they going to make sense of this? What do you say to an unbeliever in their suffering? Then, six months ago, I stood at the head of another open grave. This time we were burying my big brother, and he was only 53. He died in his sleep one night suddenly. It’s completely torn 2024 apart from me. He wasn’t a Christian. My heart was like a lead weight in my chest on that day. Heavy with grief. Heavy with guilt.

My question is, what would you say to someone like me, a sufferer like me, with the pain that I feel? What do you say to each other? We all suffer, we all carry burdens. We’ve all lived long enough to experience some kind of suffering of some kind. I don’t know what it is for you. For me, these two examples are the sufferings of grief. But it could be all kinds of sufferings, relational struggles, it could be long-term illness, it could be abuse of any kind, it could be anything.

What do you say to each other as a church? Because suffering is experienced within the context of a local church. You not only rejoice together, you mourn together, you weep together. My prayer is that as we work through this today, you’ll be helped to do that better. Because we ought to prepare ourselves to know what to say to each other in our own suffering for three reasons. One, suffering is inevitable. Don Carson is very famous for saying, ‘Live long enough and you will suffer.’ It’s true.

Two, the world’s contribution is fundamentally worthless. They’ve got nothing to say. Conventional wisdom, the kind of wisdom gained just by living life and seeing life, won’t help anyone make sense of suffering. I experienced it at both of the wakes after my aunt’s funeral and my brother’s funeral. You know the kind of stuff that people say, there’s nothing you could have done.

Thirdly, suffering together in God honouring ways is not only one of the things that will strengthen this church in terms of your own sanctification, but it’ll also strengthen your witness. It will make your love, and therefore Christ’s love through you, much more attractive to the people around, who, Lord willing, will find the twee and the useless encouragements in their suffering to be empty. So I want to go through three things with you today.

So, three things we’re going to look at. One, move towards each other in your suffering. How do we help each other in our suffering? Two, help each other, and talk honestly about your suffering. Thirdly, speak God’s word to each other very carefully in your suffering. These are the lessons I believe we learn from Job, chapters 2-37.

 

Move Towards Each Other in Our Suffering

Number one, the encouragement I want us to see from this first section in Job is to move toward each other in our suffering. Let me just give you a recap. How many of you have read the book of Job? How many of you get a little bit confused as you read the book of Job? Let me just give you a quick recap of the story so far. Go back with me to chapter 1, verse 1. Now, chapter 1 introduces this man called Job. Verses 1-5 are all you get in terms of a bio for him. But three things stand out. One, he’s a godly man. Verse one.

“Blameless, upright, feared God, shunned evil.”

Aim for that, brothers and sisters. What a great testimony of a life. He’s a godly man. Secondly, he’s a family man. He’s got 10 kids, that’s amazing. You just think, I bet they’re thumping each other and they’re falling out and winding each other up all the time, like my three kids do. But no, verse 4 is a picture of absolute household harmony. Cultivated, I believe, by a proper dad, who, as you see later on in the text, prays for his kids, offers sacrifices as they did back then, praying for forgiveness for his kids. He was concerned for their souls. Men, husbands, take notes, be good dads.

Thirdly, godly man, family man, wealthy man. If you want to know if someone’s rich nowadays, what do you look at? Their bank balance. If you want to know someone’s rich back then, in those days, where do you look? Their fields. Count their animals. Job is a godly man, a family man, and a wealthy man. Now this is important because secondly, we see in the rest of chapter 1 and into chapter 2, verse 10, Job has suffered the stuff of nightmares.

He lost it all. His wealth and then his kids. Soon after that, his health in round two of the suffering. Now, there are reasons for that, and we can get into that. Of course, there is this heavenly reality of the spiritual realm where the Lord, in his sovereignty, takes this one. Even Satan himself, the accuser, who has been dishonorably discharged from his heavenly responsibility and even within his demonic activity, is still called to account in the heavenly courtroom, the heavenly throne room.

Job’s name comes up. Godly man, wealthy man, family man. God permits the suffering. You guys are thinking about this already in your series so far, and you will continue to think about it, and we will shortly as well. But let me just major on the fact that, feeling the impact of what Job himself has suffered, he has suffered the stuff of nightmares. That kind of suffering can make people like us, I want you to realize, really reluctant to get in touch with the people who are suffering, can’t it?

I mean, have you ever heard of a friend suffering and just felt so worried? You’re like, I need to call. But I’m feeling anxious at the prospect of even picking up my phone. You know, I feel like I want to speak to them. They’re going to come to church for the first time after suffering this loss or this difficulty of some kind. Then, you know, you find yourself pottering about cleaning the toilets or something like that. You’d rather do anything than go and speak to the person because you’re worried about knowing what to say. You all feel that you may be worried that you won’t be able to hold it together yourself. Your heart is so entwined with that person.

But we need each other, and suffering is hard enough for people. But if we leave people through our anxieties to suffer alone, then that’s worse. So move towards sufferers, but take care how you do. This is what I want to take into account as we quickly dash through this. Remember Job’s wife and Job’s friends in this first point. Don’t be like Job’s wife. This is the negative example, the bad example of how to do things. I mean, Job responds to his suffering at first, as you know from chapter one, with a God given incredible faith. This is the kind of thing that someone would say when their hearts are entirely wrapped up in devotion to God.

Remember, he does not know, by the way, what is going on in the heavenly throne room.He only knows what’s going on on Earth. Yet, despite his heart being rendered and broken, in chapter 1, verse 21, he says,

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I shall return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

What does his wife say? Chapter 2, verse 9. After the second round, after his health has been taken,

“Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die.”

Friends, if that’s all you’ve got in terms of counsel, stay in the restroom. Keep cleaning. Don’t move towards sufferers with that kind of counsel. Run as fast as you can the other way and find a quiet place to pray and be sorry. She is not a great example of how to help Richard, my cousin, in his grief. She is not the kind of person I want coming and talking to me as I mourn the death of my brother. She’s not the kind of person that you, as sufferers, want to come with consolation. No, best to be like Job’s friend, at least at the start. We read from this passage in chapter 2:11-13. Let’s read it just briefly again.

“When Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him. They came from each from his own place. Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar. They made an appointment together to come show his sympathy and comfort him.”

In Scotland, we wear black suits and black ties as a mark of communication of our mourning. Well, they wore dust and ashes. It was just the dress of grief. They go to him, they weep with him. For a whole week, all they do is sit with him. They don’t utter a peep, not a word. But in itself, their action said, we’re here for you. So important.

Now, there’s a lesson in this for both the comforter and the sufferer. Now, to the anxious comforter, the ones who are afraid to go and speak. I don’t know how it will go. I might make it worse. Who knows? This passage says, move towards your brother and sister in their suffering. Let it be true of Horizon City Church that no one in this church ever suffers alone. Mourn with those who mourn and weep with those who weep. There’s a biblical commandment.

But let this be the rule. If you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything. You don’t have to. The best thing Job’s friends did was be with him. It all went pear-shaped when they opened their mouths. We’ll get to that in a second. But the lesson for the sufferer as well in this is to let your brothers and your sisters serve you in their suffering. Minister to you. Notice that Job does not send him away.

He doesn’t request privacy, doesn’t turn them away. He lets them come and he lets them speak. One of my biggest regrets when my brother died involved one of my closest friends, Scott. I became a Christian when I was 19. Scott was very key to my becoming a Christian. He’s a pastor now in a church in Glasgow, one of the bigger cities in Scotland.

When my brother died, he called me and said, I’m coming to see you. He just said it like that, I’m coming to see you. Where do you want to meet? I said, I appreciate that, but I really just want to be alone. Now I was wrong. I was wrong to rebuff that love. I was wrong to deny him that opportunity to help. And worse, I denied God’s help through him because he, in God’s eyes, was a means of grace to me. I rejected that kindness. So I think it is okay to be on your own. I’m not saying just gather lots of people around you to sit around and say nothing. That’s not what I’m saying. But what I am saying is don’t rebuff the kindness God shows you through the means of grace that is your local church family. Let them come. Don’t make the same mistake.

But move toward each other in our suffering. In doing so, we follow the example of the Lord Jesus Christ himself into a world of pain and suffering. God sent his own son, moved with compassion. He came towards us to enter into our suffering, to sympathize with us in our suffering, and indeed, who suffered himself to end all suffering one day. Praise God. So feel deeply and move towards each other. That’s the first thing.

 

Help Each Other Talk About Our Suffering

The second, let’s help each other talk about our suffering. Have a quick look with me at Job chapter 3. I think sometimes we’re a little afraid to be honest about what we’re feeling when we’re suffering. That’s one of the reasons why I’m very glad that Job chapter 3 is in our Bibles. It sits there in the company of the Psalms of Lament. It’s just so real. We didn’t read it, but let me just give you an overview of it, because Job speaks very honestly and openly about his experience and how his suffering is making him feel. So in verses 3-10 in particular. Let me just read the first two verses:

“After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. Let the day perish on which I was born and the night that said a man is conceived. Let that day be darkness. May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it. Let the blackness of the day terrify it.”

You get the gist of how that’s going. Goodness, Job, what has changed? Verses 3-10 are basically him saying, I wish I had never been born. That’s a strong thing to say. He even goes as far in that section as to say, I wish my mum had been barren. Goodness Job. Then verses 11-19, he says things like, I wish I had died in infancy. It would be better than experiencing all the suffering that I’ve experienced just now. What happened to the Job we met in chapters 1 and 2?

“The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Where’s that Job gone? Well, you should be glad that this Job’s here, because as is often the case with those who suffer, there are initial faithful, adrenal responses that give way to the experience of the pain and the depth of pain initially unfelt. Initially did not feel the ache and the loss and the pain and the prospect of a future that doesn’t have the thing you want in it or has the thing you definitely don’t want in it.

You’ve heard stories, I’m sure, of people breaking their ankles on mountain hikes and trekking home for hours and then, eventually, collapsing in pain at the end. Well, spiritually speaking, I think that’s what’s happened to Job. He’s been feeling for a week the ache and the pain of the kids he’s not going to be able to embrace, and the loss, and how he’s going to provide for his family. But Job is still mindful of God.

He’s not lost his faith. He’s just trying to figure it all out, because as you keep reading, in verses 20-26 of chapter 3, and verse 23 in particular, you find that he’s actually conscious of God hedging him in. Even in his suffering, God is actually providing a kind of protective fence, a barrier that protects him.

In chapter 1, that hedge kept Satan and evil, and suffering out. But in chapter 3, the same hedge is keeping Job in. Protecting him. Throughout this whole book, Job is asking about his suffering. Why the whole book? What’s going on? That’s what’s going on in chapters 4 through 37. Before 38, when the Lord himself finally interjects and speaks. Job thinks what is going on? Why did this happen? He’s not doing it out of fizzing rage. He’s not furious. But it’s pure lament.

It’s a man talking honestly about the things that he’s facing. By the end of the book, God does not despise Job’s lament. He doesn’t despise his pain. He doesn’t detest his experience of it. I mean, if you heard the way Job was talking, what kind of thing would you say to him? You’d probably say, the things I was saying a few minutes ago, like, shut your face, Job. You’re overstepping the mark. This is The Lord of heaven and earth you’re talking to right now. As we say in Scotland, haud your weesht, just a way of saying, button your lip, just get a cup of tea, calm down, don’t say any more.

Job’s friends think he’s out of line. By the way, that’s what the middle section of the book is all about as well. Like Job, what are you saying? While indeed Job does repent at the end, for not thinking as clearly as he ought to about everything that’s been going on, God thinks that Job’s wrangling lament is perfectly fine. As you read in Job 42:7, It says,

“After the Lord had spoken these words”

In other words, all these questions, do you know where the mountain goats give birth? You know, all those lovely little questions that demonstrate God, who sees all and knows all and does all things well.

“After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My anger burns against you and against your friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right, my servant Job hath.”

Job was not rebuked for his honest, out-loud processing of his suffering. So in all that Job says in this book, whether he’s expressing his faith at the start gloriously or honestly pouring out his heart in the middle, or recognizing at the end that he foolishly misspoke, he’s affirmed by God at the end. Now don’t misunderstand me. You can absolutely overstep the mark in what you say to God or about God when you’re trying to make sense of suffering.

Chapter 3 is an example, but it’s not a license for you to say anything you want to the Lord God himself. That is not what’s been said. So what should we say? This chapter is inviting us to speak honestly about our struggles to God and with each other as a church family. My question is, do you do this? I think I don’t know what it’s like here, but certainly where I’m from, we can be far too private, far too tight-lipped about the real things that are going on in your life. You know, in church we often joke, How are you doing? Fine. But no one’s fine.

Nobody actually thinks you’ve got it together, even if you say you’re fine. But there’s a danger in this, even for your church at this stage, in your infancy. I think it was David Powleson, a biblical counselor, who said that you become co-conspirators in your own culture of superficiality. In other words, you don’t talk openly enough with each other and honestly enough in a way that inhibits your life together. That goes for all situations and subjects, but especially for suffering. Does anyone know you? Really know you?

Not knowing just about your suffering, what are you afraid that people are going to find out? That you’re not as well maintained and altogether as you like to think that you are? Nobody thinks you are. I am definitely not. I think about the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus’ prayer there. It is one of the key markers for me in my own conversion. That’s when I saw Christ for who he was and my sin for what it was. But I reflect on that passage often. It’s so special to me. Even as I was thinking about it in relation to this sermon, I thought about Jesus in Gethsemane, that garden of tears and anguish.

Amazingly, he wasn’t afraid to say to his dull friends, I’m overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and watch with me. Even if Jesus himself isn’t afraid to talk about how overwhelmed he felt with his dull friends, how much more should we be unafraid of talking to each other about the things that we’re going through? As a Church, do you create a culture that says it’s okay to talk? Or do you create a culture that says, No, we don’t want to talk? One of those is a beautiful thing. One of those is a problematic thing.

Nobody will ever be helped if you create a church culture where everybody’s okay. Cultivate instead the atmosphere where it’s okay to do like Job does in chapter 3, and suffer out loud. So first, two things. Let’s move towards each other. How do you help people who suffer? One, you move toward each other in our suffering. You don’t retreat. Two, you help each other talk about suffering. You let people be open and honest with God and with you.

 

Speak God’s Words in Suffering

Thirdly, we speak God’s word to each other in our suffering. This is the problem with atheism or any other worldview. Nobody’s got anything good to say about suffering. The atheists think there’s a random collection of atoms that happens. Good stuff, bad stuff. None of it makes absolutely any sense. It’s just stuff, and it just happens. How helpful do you think anybody finds that when you’re before the doctor and they’ve just said, I’m sorry, there’s nothing else we can do, it’s useless. Or other religions that say, well, inshallah, it’s just fatalistic.

Or somebody else says, You must have been a terrible person in a previous life. Nobody’s got anything near the kind of goods and glorious things to say like we do, brothers and sisters, based on the gospel. So speak God’s word into each other’s suffering, but do it carefully. That’s what you learn when you read the back-and-forth discussion between Job and his friends here in chapters 4-37.

 

Overview of Job

Here’s the key to understanding what’s going on. Job’s friends, after they sit for their week-long silence, talk some good theology. They say a lot. You could read through chapters 4-37, and you could underline little bits. You might even be able to buy, you know, a coffee cup in Walmart that’s got one of these Bible verses on it, ripped, kicking and screaming out of context, but still sounds like this is glorious.

But the problem is, they’ve got good theology, but they’re absolute blunderers in their application of it. They try and take these good things that are in other parts of Scripture absolutely true or taken on their own merit, totally fine in and of themselves. But then you try and rub it in to console and to comfort the person’s wound that they’re experiencing, and it’s like rubbing sand into it because they’ve just taken what God’s word says and tried to apply it in a sense where God never intended it to be added. That’s why it’s dangerous. So let me give you a flyby overview of the shape and content of the book.

In Job chapters 4-22, you’ve got three cycles of discussion. There’s Job, chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 3 is Job’s lament. Then it goes into this first cycle, second cycle, third cycle, before Job talks again. Then Elihu speaks, and then God speaks. Then it ends. That’s the overview of the book. That’s the shape of the book.

Now you have these three cycles of debate, and they’re largely repeated. Each cycle goes Eliphaz, Job, Bildad, Job, Zophar, Job. They are his pals. As the conversation goes through each cycle, the conversation intensifies. Job’s friends, initially, after hearing Job talk, the way he talks, they say, the Lord is good and the Lord is sovereign. He does what he does. Job, for God to have allowed this to happen to you, there must be something that you’re hiding. They think Job has done something wrong. He’s sinning in some way.

Job says I’m not. Job’s friends find Job’s defense unbelievable. Job then finds his friend’s words painfully unhelpful. In the end, Zophar gives up, says, I’ve nothing else to say. Then in chapters 27-31, Job offers some final protests about his innocence and the unhelpful chat from his friends, where he cries out for wisdom, and cries out for a mediator. If only there were somebody to speak on my behalf, somebody to demonstrate that I’ve done nothing wrong in this instance.

Of course, we know fine and well from chapters 1 and 2 that this experience of Job suffering is not in the slightest bit down to any sin that he has committed. It is not discipline. It can be. But if we’re going to have a biblical understanding of what suffering is, we need to have a biblical understanding of the different reasons why suffering comes. Sometimes it’s completely related to something sinful. There are consequences to sinful acts. But we live in a broken world, and sometimes we suffer the consequences of other people’s sinful acts. Sometimes we just experience the rubbish of living in a broken world.

Well, Job offers this protest, crying out for wisdom, crying out for a mediator. Then, eventually, in chapters 32-37, young Elihu pitches in with a rebuke for Job’s friends. The young guy waited to speak. You’re not being very nice. There’s a paraphrase. But he has a little rebuke for Job as well, where the man with his youth, maybe, should have held his tongue. Let me give you a flavour of how that goes, though. Let’s concentrate on that first cycle. Let me just give you insight into how this goes very quickly before we come to apply it. In Chapter 4, Eliphaz comes in. In chapter 4, verses 7-8, it says,

“Remember who that was innocent ever perished.”

In other words, Job, you’ve done something, you’re hiding something.

“When were the uprights ever cut off? As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.”

Job, these kinds of things don’t happen for no reason. You must have sinned to have been punished this way. Trouble and hardship equate to punishment in Eliphaz’s mind.

See his dodgy theology from the start. Job says, no. Bildad weighs in not so carefully as Eliphaz, as we see in chapter 8, verses 2-4, where he says,

“How long will you say these things, Job, and the words 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 hands of their transgression.”

The first guy, Eliphaz, is like Job; you’re hiding something. You’ve sinned. Job says, I haven’t. The second guy comes in and says, No. But your kids must have done something wrong. Goodness, how not to say something to someone who suffers. Then Zophar’s turn in chapter 11 in verses 14-15 of that chapter says,

“If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away. And let not injustice dwell in your tent. Surely then you will lift up your face without blemish. You’ll be secure and will not fear.”

In other words, you’re blemished now, Job. But if you just repent before the Lord honestly, then you might be okay again. Job says, Honestly, I’ve done nothing wrong here. The cycle is then repeated. The cycle is repeated another two times, in which it intensifies both times, until Job, in chapters 27-31, insists on his innocence.  He says, Listen, guys, neither wealth nor women have drawn my heart. I’ve remained steadfast in my faith. I’ve been devoted to doing God’s will.

That’s why in chapter 31, verse 35, he cries out for vindication.

“Oh, that I had one to hear me! Here is my signature. Let the Almighty answer me.”

In other words, I need the Lord to help me. As the flow goes, you’re asking the question. Well, is Elihu that guy, the young man who’s not spoken yet? Is he the advocate that Job really needs? No, Elihu’s main contribution is, Job’s friends are wrong. God does permit suffering not to punish, but to purify and to sanctify, so that there is purpose in it. Yes, and amen.

Just like 1 Peter 5, Romans 8, and James 1 say. It’s good theology. But then he also turns to Job and says, Job, you’re wrong. Because his own wondering is no better than his friends. God isn’t unjust, nor is God Job’s enemy. It doesn’t explain it. I mean, Elihu has not drawn a line under the whole debate at all. It sounds close to the truth. Like I said, everything he says sounds like, oh, suffering. Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint. Yes, amen. Brilliant.

But as close as Elihu is, he’s still actually speaking out of ignorance. Remember, Job 1 and 2 are the lens through which you view the entire book. In Job 1 and 2, it tells us that God did not explicitly allow Job’s suffering in order to strengthen or to purify his faith, even if that did become a byproduct of it. But God permitted this suffering to befall his servant Job, to prove that God is worthy in the eyes of those who are devoted to him in love and faith.

To prove that Job does not worship God for nothing, as Satan himself accused. Does he worship you for nothing, Lord? Satan accused, spouting his black filth, his putrid lies, his snarky dagger-like words. Job doesn’t worship God for nothing. That’s what this whole episode proves. Because even in the end, Elihu isn’t rebuked along with Job’s friends, but neither is he congratulated. God actually doesn’t even mention Elihu at all. That’s the overview.

What does God teach us in that? About how carefully to speak to each other. Two things when helping each other in our suffering. Make sure that your theology is thought out. Your understanding of what the Bible says about different teachings is thought through. At the same time that you’re careful in your handling of the Bible. So Job’s friends, as I said, didn’t say unbiblical things; they just misapplied them. The author, Christopher Asch, in his commentary on Job, says that ultimately Job’s friends hold to this four-part doctrine of suffering. There are four parts to their understanding of suffering.

1. God is in control.
2. God is just and fair.
3. God punishes the wicked and blesses the righteous.
4. Therefore, if you suffer, you must have sinned.

Slow down a bit because all four of those things independently are true. But care needs to be taken when you piece them together.

If you walk in the ways of the wicked, what do you expect to reap the consequences? Psalm 1 is straightforward. That’s not all the Bible says about this, because the Bible also talks plainly about how sometimes reward and punishment are actually withheld until later, for eternity even. In fact, the reward of the righteous and the justice of the wicked are most often spoken of in relation to the final judgment.

Meaning that it’s entirely plausible for someone to suffer innocently something that is not tied to something sinful in their lives. Don’t make judgments. Just take great care to show great care without being that kind of narky, judgmental person. So you can’t say to someone that your appendicitis is down to your sinful anger. There is certainly lots of claptrap on your TV that will say things like that. Do not watch those things. It’s drivel, it’s nonsense, it’s an aberration, and you should be mad about it when you see it on your TV.

 

Closing: Make the Most of Grace

Take care to say biblical things in properly applied ways. How do we do that? Make the most of the ordinary means of grace. Just do the things that God has given us to do as part of the church. It’s really simple in God’s eyes. It’s as you do these simple things that God has said for you to do, in the company of others who do the same thing in your mutual devotion to the Lord God of Heaven and earth, that you become more Christlike. Not just in your character, but in your mind and with your words, helping each other.

So read your Bible every day and do it when you gather. Pray and ask for understanding in things you don’t understand. Listen to your leaders, pray, and follow their example. Hear God’s word read and preached regularly. Sunday is the best day. Read books that help you understand it. Whether it’s the little books or the thicker ones that might take you a little bit longer to read. These are all good things.

Do these things and you’ll save each other from the stupidity of Job’s friends, the well-intentioned blunderers who sought to soothe Job’s suffering with their sandy misapplied theology. May God keep this church from offering nearly true explanations and consolations in suffering. May He have mercy on all of us if we have maligned God and mistreated his people by what we’ve said to them in their suffering. God is gracious, friends. You know Christ died for all our sinful misapplications of His Word, for making people think that God has done something in someone’s suffering, when in fact he hasn’t. The Lord is gracious to forgive us all of our sins. The cross, as Romans 5 tells us, is the ongoing demonstration. The present and continuing demonstration. That forgiveness for us.

If you’re here today, you’re not a Christian. I’m glad you’re able to hear something like this. I hope you heard me earlier when I said that the conventional wisdom of the world that’s offered to me and my cousin Richard, to mourners and sufferers who struggle with all kinds of things, is completely unsatisfactory. It will leave you empty. It won’t console. The only consolation for every single person, including you, is through Jesus Christ. The one who, in compassion, moved towards us in order to die for us and to pull us out of the suffering and promise an eternity with him in Heaven, where there is no more suffering or dying, no mourning, no pain.

In order to receive that blessing and gain from that wisdom, you don’t need to go away for a week and scrub yourself up, spiritually speaking. You don’t need to do lots of good deeds in order to get yourself into God’s good books. That’s not the way this works. It is through faith and faith alone that you receive this free gift of life and all its comforts and blessings, and consolations from Jesus Christ. Faith. If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. You will be saved.

So, how am I going to help unbelievers like my cousin Richard? I’m going to move towards him in his suffering. Let him talk honestly about his suffering. I’m going to do my best to speak God’s word carefully into his suffering and commend the suffering Christ to him. How is my church family going to help me and my suffering? They have been. They’ve moved towards me. They’ve helped me talk honestly about my grief and my suffering.

I’m a pastor, for goodness sake. I mean, pastors aren’t supposed to feel like this. But they’ve helped me talk about it. They’ve spoken God’s word well into my suffering. I’m consoled. When I gather now with the saints at Charlotte Chapel, I can sing again. There was a time when I couldn’t. I would cry through every single song. Songs I’ve loved singing with all my heart for years.

But I can sing again because of them and what God has done through them. I can see again that even in my pain, God has proven to my church family and my unbelieving family the same thing that was proved through Job’s suffering. The worth of my faith in God, who is sovereign over all things, good in all things, and gracious in all things.

Some of you will have known very dark days. Some of you will move toward each other in your suffering, help each other talk about your suffering, and speak God’s word carefully to each other in your suffering. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Let’s pray together. Maybe just take 20, 30 seconds in the quietness of your own heart, to pray in response to what you’ve heard. Ask God for help. Ask God for consolation. Whatever it is, just pray it.

Our Father, Romans 8 tells us that we live in a world that groans because of the brokenness of it. It’s a world broken by sin. And even it awaits that full redemption to come. We groan for many reasons. There are things from outside of us that cause us heartache. There are things within us that cause us heartache. There are things that have happened to us or things that we’ve done that create this sense of suffering in us, and our hearts are heavy and weighed down, and things in life feel hard. 

How we praise you for your consolation, for your comfort. Goodness, without it, Lord, I don’t know what we would do. A despairing world careering towards an eternity with no good wisdom. But where do we look? We look to Christ, who is himself wisdom from you. We look to the one who died in our place and suffered in our place and redeems and rescues us from our suffering. And we pray that we would not only be refreshed by these great truths, but be helped to put these things we’ve looked at today into practice. 

Indeed, I pray that we would go away and read the rest of the book this afternoon to hear that long list of questions that you pose, Lord God, which underline your greatness and your majesty, your supremacy and your sovereignty. In ways that help us see things clearly with the right perspective, even on our sufferings. Help Horizon be the Church family that you would have it be. To be made up of people who are not co-conspirators in a superficial culture where everybody’s just okay, but are open, honest, moving toward each other in Christlike ways with compassion and care. Saying good things about you, our good and gracious God. We ask it in the name of your Son, whom you love and whom we love, Jesus Christ our Savior. 

Amen.