Job 38

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0:00 Well, glad you made it this morning. We're working through these four core values, story, piece, lineage, and life. And we've had those four core values since our first couple of years. We kind of pulled people who felt like the cross-or-lender were their home and asked them what are the things that stick out to them about us as a church. And these are the four things that came up. Last week, Brian talked to you about lineage. And this week we're gonna talk some about life. And the passage I was thinking about first for that

0:32 is in the book of Job. Maybe you're familiar with it. In Job chapter 38, Job's one of these weird books where it's like, it's an odd story kind of in general. And it's kind of a contextual. We're not 100% sure at when Job lived. And then some people debate did Job live even, you know?

1:04 It's longer than you want it to be because it's a book about a guy's life pretty well falling apart, you know? And it doesn't look like the whole point of the book is that Job's life falling apart isn't his fault, which is also kind of a head scratcher, how that's a lesson, where God allows his life to fall apart. And towards the end, Job spends a long time being very kind of pious and patient, though everything is falling apart in his life.

1:35 And he starts to get pretty grumpy towards the end as you could imagine. I don't know if you've ever had anything go wrong in your life. Maybe you lost a job or maybe a relationship has been a challenge or maybe a car, maybe you've owned a car. If you've owned a car, you've had something go wrong in your life. I hate cars and love them. Job had everything going wrong in his life. Maybe we can relate. And at some point he stops being pious and patient

2:08 and starts getting frustrated and begins to say to God, what are you doing? You're getting this all wrong. I'm a good guy. Why would things bad happen to me? I'm a good guy. All those other jokers out there don't care about you at all, and everything seems to be going fine. I'm a good guy.

2:38 Why would bad things happen to me? Job starts to get frustrated. And in Job 38, God has a famous answer. We're going to skim it because it's kind of long, but you've got to skim it to get the point, Bob. Okay? Just skim it on your phone. Job 38, then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said,

3:13 who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Just for action like a man, I will question you and make it known to me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who determined the measurements? Surely you know. Or who stretched out the line upon it. Or where were the bases sunk or who laid its cornerstone?

3:44 And when the morning suns sang together and the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy, oh, who shut in the sea with doors when it's burst out from the womb when I made the clouds and garment the thick darkness embedded in the band, you get the point. He's going on and he keeps going. If you read through chapter 38 of Job, he has these large, like,

4:14 have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare if you know all this. Where is the way to the dwelling of light? And where is the place of darkness that you may take it to its territory and that you may discern the paths to its home?

4:47 You know for you were born then, right? And the number of your days are great. He says, have you entered into the storehouses of the snow? Or have you seen the storehouses of the hail? Which I reserved for the time of trouble for the day of battle and war. I mean it's not a new idea to think that like the earth is much larger than you.

5:18 But at a moment when Job says all the earth is conspiring against me, why is everything going bad? God picks up his attention and stands him back and says, you want to think about how things are going? He says. Okay, let's talk about where does all of these things come from? Where do they hold off? Where do they begin? This last week Megan and I were up in the mountains with some friends in Colorado. High up in the mountains and I was remembering years ago in 2006,

5:52 Megan and I lived in Denver. In our first September, September of 2006, we went with some friends up to Fletcher Mountain. It's a 14,000 foot elevation peak, right? And you start, you know, you hike the last 2,000 feet of it or something, you know? And it's got a trail. And it's like the weather's nice in September in the mountains at what? 12,000 feet elevation. You know, we weren't quite ready for it because we didn't,

6:23 we'd never been up that high before. We'd been to the Smokies, but what are they? Four, and you get up to the 12,000 feet elevation and there's still some trees in your glad, because the wind picks up so you need a long-sleeve t-shirt at least, right? And then you get up to a lake up above the tree line. Now we're up above the tree line and we're not done. There's no trees growing. And we're going up and the guy that's going with us, he's like, there's a trail,

6:53 which just means there's like a little beaten spot in the rocks where more people have walked than other spots, right? Because there's no grass to mark the trail. There's no trees to put blazings on, you know? And you go up to the saddle and you go up to the ridge and now we've made it, 14,000 feet. You feel like you're at the top of the world. Everywhere you look around, all you can see is more mountains. It's September, y'all, Labor Day. We turn around, we're like, how are we going to get down? And there's a snow field, 150 yards.

7:26 In September, it hasn't snowed yet. The snow is always there, right? There's snow there right now. I haven't been there in 15 years. I bet you there's snow on Fletcher Mountain right now. We slid down the snow, right? There's a whole lot of world happening right now

7:58 that has nothing to do with you. The first thing God wanted Job to realize here when he starts going, hey, why is all the world conspiring against me? Like, why are things bad for me? What's going on? The first thing he wants him to do is like, dude, you don't have a clue what's going on, man. You don't have a clue.

8:28 Then he goes through and starts to talk about not only are you not there, is it too big? You haven't thought about it. You've made yourself the center of the world. He starts to go on about the nature of the animals. He's like, are you helping the lion find his prey right now? Because I'm working on that. He's like, what about the Leviathan in the seed? Do you know how it came together? When we were up there in the mountains, it was the perfect.

8:58 This week was the perfect time of year to be there because all these trees, the colors are changing. In the Rockies, they have the Aspen Forest where the leaves are glowing. You can't believe it's real. It's like you're in a Jim Cameron movie or something. I was walking through these trees and the best little, I couldn't decide.

9:29 There were two different types of Aspen groves you would walk through. One where the Aspens are 25, 30 feet up in the air and the tops of them are all golden. The trunk has no branches on it at all. It's just gray. Then there's a whole forest of gray. Then you lift up your eyes and there's gold. Then there's some other groves where you're walking through them. There are those 20, 30 foot Aspens. Then there's also little babies that are 6 to 4 to 7 feet high.

10:04 They're putting out leaves and they're gold. Then you're just walking through the whole air is gold. I'm walking through it and I'm like, these leaves are dying. It's going to get, they don't want the leaves to put out the moisture. They drop all the chlorophyll and then the colors are revealed besides the green. Then they die. I thought, what a good idea.

10:35 Just to turn yellow before they die. I never would have thought of that. I suppose it could have evolved that way. I don't know why an Aspen with a leaf that turns yellow would be selected by nature by one that just dies. Or just the leaves just turn brown and fall.

11:07 But there's some beautiful alchemy in it and I think deep creativity. That among a million things remind me, there is a God. And it's not me. There is a God in the world and it's not me. One of the ways I know, I never would have thought to turn Aspen leaves glowing yellow gold.

11:44 We could see the difference from day to day. They were like, you're here at the perfect week. Last week they were green. Next week they'll be gone. This week they are glowing gold. I guess it accomplishes a purpose but it looks like it's just for fun to me. God is reminding Job when all things are going wrong for him.

12:14 That there is a God and it is not him. It comes in again in the first, in John, in the beginning of the Gospel of John. What I was trying to tell the kids here, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. And the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not a thing made that was made. In him was life.

12:47 And the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. The thing about those Aspen trees is that they are like the guy, we were staying at a friend's house up there and he was saying they're not really trees, it's a plant. I was like, well, I mean a tree is a plant. But it's like it's not really a tree. It's more like it grows under the ground. The individual trunk that you're seeing of an Aspen is not one stand alone tree but it's the outgrowth of all this other.

13:20 So there's one big organism that can stretch for miles under the ground and then grow up these trees. It's like bamboo only on steroids. And so I think for me that's why when I was walking through them it felt like it reminded me of when we saw the redwoods. In California this thousand year old tree, these humongous things where it feels like it felt to me like the closest I could describe it

13:53 it's like if someone picked up a blue whale and put it on the ground next to me. It felt like standing next to some giant living thing. Older and deeper and more dangerous and profound than me. Like you're walking through these trees and they are like huge and no expanses of places and have stood there for years and watched the seasons come and go. And the mountain lions and the antelope and the mule deer make their way through, right?

14:28 And the grouse run along the ground. I'm saying that like that thing God made. And he made all the things. I don't know like why to me, well, in some way that aspen is alive just as that giant sequoia.

15:02 We learn about life when we're the kids, right? And you get the, did you guys do the thing in elementary school where you put the little seeds in the cups and you put them in different places, one in the dark, one on the windowsill, and you watch for the seed to germinate and grow. We think we know how that works, but we can't reproduce it.

15:38 I've told this story before, but years ago when the cloning conversation was a big deal, I remember listening to an interview with a woman who had used stem cells to regrow heart tissue on an old dead heart. And they were asking her because she had regrown a heart on a science lab table and then shocked it and it started beating. And the interviewer was stuck with me because it was such a compelling interview.

16:10 The interviewer asked her, what does it feel like? Like, do you feel like you just created life on that table? And she was like, oh no, I don't have any idea. I just put things next to each other and all of a sudden this thing started happening. We don't know where, like, we can't recreate life. Like, as much as we can do, and we know we've gotten good at figuring out, you know, how babies are made.

16:40 And how to help nature make, but we can't make that stuff up. You need the elements. I'm saying that like, you are alive because the God wants you alive.

17:10 You are created miraculously and wondrously just as all the other things of the world, only just a little bit higher. The capstone, the crown of creation, just a little bit below the angels, right? Isn't that in Solmate, Carol read this one?

17:40 You are here on purpose, not by accident. I was then thinking like, what do we do? The aspen, all he has to do is like, exist, and he's fulfilling the calling of being an aspen.

18:13 And he's not as pretty instinctual, I think. I don't know how trees think or plants if it's not a tree, but you and I have more, like, this gift of life, what happens with it? How do you engage it? What do you do with it? This free gift of life.

18:44 Jesus mentions one thing here that I was thinking about just to get on the nature of your life. I mean, there's a lot we could say about how to live, but you can figure that out. Look in Luke chapter 12, though, this is the thing I wanted to get to you. He said Jesus is talking to his disciples, Luke chapter 12, starting at verse 4.

19:17 I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more they can do. That seems like a lot. I mean, right? Do not fear those who can kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear him who after he has killed has the authority to cast into hell.

19:52 That was looking at Word up. It's that Greek word, cahenna, which is that valley right outside of Jerusalem, where in bad King days of Israel they would sacrifice babies to the God of Moloch. And then when Josiah came, he did some things in there that disqualified it for that purpose, and they never sacrificed babies in there again after King Josiah, but they used it as a dumping ground, and they would burn their trash, and then actually the bodies of criminals down there that didn't deserve to be buried.

20:25 And you would go through cahenna and up to Gethsemane, actually. So it was this valley right outside of Jerusalem. And Jesus used it a lot to describe what might happen to people after. It would be like being thrown into cahenna, so much so that then we sometimes will translate the Greek word, cahenna, as hell. And so Jesus is saying, you're thrown into this place where things are burned and tormented. And he's like, when you're living, don't be afraid of the people who can only kill the body, and then they're done.

20:57 Which sounds pretty bad, but if you think about what Job is going through, this is the thing Job is holding off on. Everything is going wrong with him. People are dying, he's losing his jobs, he's lost all of his money, and who does he complain to? The people who took his money? The ones who helped, who aided, who didn't rescue his kids? No, Job in faithfulness and frustration complains to the one who knows where the storehouse of hell is kept.

21:33 Who's helping the lion find his prey? Who knows where the rain is stored, where lightness comes from and dark, hold sway. Job is complaining to the one who originated and holds together life. That's what I'm saying, that you all are here because the God wants you to be here, living, fully alive, heart, soul, body and strength. Does that mean there will be no problems?

22:03 No, as a matter of fact, Jesus says, you may end up where the body is taken from you, but don't complain to the ones who kill the body as though they have any control over you at all. He said, why? He said, I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the son of man, also will acknowledge before the angels of God. The life you have is substantial and persistent according to the will of the God of creation.

22:47 You will have troubles, but it will not take your life. You will have hardship, but it will not master you. Things will be difficult. You will not know the answer. That's okay. You're not God. Live anyway. Heart, body, soul.

23:19 It is encouraging to me when I've had hard times to know that even those who kill the body have no control over me. It is also encouraging to me when I have good times to know that more is coming. We put life as a core value because we want to remind ourselves and not forget that the way of Christ is not one of rules and judgment.

24:06 It is not one of fear. It is one of life. Christ came that we might have life and have it abundantly. It's been given. Let's pray that we might receive it. Lord, thank you for this room of people. Teach us to receive your gift of life well, to live in hard times and good.

24:36 With the recognition that you are God, we are not, and that you have given us life now and forever. In Jesus' name we pray.