Gateway Church's Podcast
A Turn for the Worst
A Gateway Sermon
I want to talk a little bit tonight about struggles and to kind of start it off, I want to kind of walk you through some of the periods of my life where I've had struggles. When I was in grade school, elementary school, the only struggles I ever worried about in my life were the kind that involved a belt and my bear behind. I got a little older, I got into junior high and the struggles involved girls and fitting in and being Mr. Athletic. Then I got to high school and then it really involved girls and it really involved fitting in. Then I got to college and I met my wife and I know most of the earth thinking that I'm going to say that marriage is one of my struggles but I learned, those of you who know me the best, my mother-in-law was here two weeks ago and she stayed for nine days. After that, I've learned that my greatest struggle in life is spending nine days with my mother-in-law saying that I'm going to stay over here away from my wife so I don't get chased out of here. Now my greatest struggle is seeing her after church but seriously, if I asked everybody to raise their hands who's struggled in their life, I'm pretty sure we would all put a couple hands up. Talking tonight, I wanted to talk about something that we all experienced and God really put Job on my heart so I want to answer a few questions that we don't really think about when we're struggling. Tonight it's called A Turn for the Worst. The story of Job is a serious turn for the worst. Here's a guy who was at the pinnacle of prosperity and like that he was in the pit of poverty immediately. He lost his family, the Bible says he had a great family life. I want to kind of set up a little bit about Job, his background. The Bible says that he was one of the most powerful, richest men in the east. In Job's time, the people in the east were the Bill Gates of the world. They were the richest, the most influential, the most powerful. So it's pretty safe to assume that Job was pretty powerful, rich and influential God. So you take a guy at the top of his game and we pick up in the first chapter and Satan is talking with God and he says, "I could do that. If you gave me all the things you've given him, I could live life. I'd be pretty happy. But what if you took those things away?" Well when we get into the questions, when we get into struggles, when I get into struggles, I feel buried. I don't know if that's the way you feel, but I feel like I have this weight on my shoulders and I want to pose a question tonight, why, why struggles? Well to me, there are two purposes for struggles. The Bible says in Hebrews and in Proverbs 3-12 that those whom the Lord loves, he reproves. He disciplines then. So struggles can be disciplined with Job, it wasn't disciplined. So why? He was a great guy. God himself said he hasn't abandoned his integrity. So why? Well a little later we'll talk about that and there will be two reasons. But the important reason is to strengthen Job's faith. How easy is it to live life when we got everything going for us? It's pretty easy. I look back in times in my life where things were great. Had a good job, good money, great girlfriend. Things were good. Well what about when things took a turn for the worst? With Job, the struggles were a test. And the question that I don't always think about, what is God doing? I ask him all the time when I get into struggles, man where are you? What are you doing? Have you forgotten about me? Well I want to answer that tonight. I want to let you know that he hasn't forgot about you. So the first question, what is God doing when life takes a turn for the worst? First off, God is watching your every move. I can sit down right now, that's good enough for me. He's watching me. He hasn't forgotten about me. Even though I feel like that sometimes, he's watching my every move. And then Job 2-3, we see, I want to kind of show you with Job, how great an example of Job is for periods in our lives where it's just straight struggles. And it says, "Then the Lord said to Satan, 'Have you considered my servant Job that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil, and still he holds fast to his integrity.' Now they had a prior conversation that went just like this in the first chapter. How did God know what a great guy Job was? He was watching his every step, and he's watching your every step. And you know what, sometimes I hate that. I can't stand that thinking. He just watched what I did. He just watched how I was impatient with my wife, or how I kicked the Nintendo, because the game froze up. He's watching that. I can't stand that sometimes. And struggles leverage it. Leverage the fact that he's watching your every step. Is there a better thought in the midst of struggles than God is watching me? Well there is, and I'm going to talk about that now. The second answer to the question is, 'God is in control of your situation.' Now this is something that I was really excited to talk about, because when I went away to college, I was interacting with people who were not saved, who were just saved. And I came across kind of a theme. There are a lot of people out there who think there's some kind of a power struggle between Satan and God. I never thought about it, but there's some Tyson-Holyfield boxing match over my soul. I'll stand before you right now, tonight, and say, 'Uh-uh, the authority is God's. The authority is God's.' Where do we see that with Job? Let's look. Job 112. When the Lord said to Satan, 'Behold, all that he has is in your power. Only do not lay a hand on his person.' I love this part. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. Who's got the authority? Who's got it? Is it Satan? No. Why not? He had to ask. God had to give him the authority. He had to let him. Well do you think that just applies to Job? No. It applies to you, to me, to all of us, who are His children. And sometimes I get caught up thinking, 'Maybe God has forgot about me. Maybe Satan had a nasty uppercut that kind of stunned God for a little bit. No, it doesn't happen that way. I'm in the midst of a test. God hasn't forgotten about me. And better than that, He's in control. Repine yourself of that. Leverage that in a struggle. Who's in control? I know I'm not. It's like driving with no hands in the wheel. I know I am out of control. But in the midst of a struggle, when I remind myself that He's watching me and that He's in control of my situation, it sounds good to me. In the third answer, God has the purpose for your struggles. He has the purpose for my struggles. That is the purpose. We get so caught up in, 'God, why? Why are you putting me through this? Why am I in this situation? Why are all these things happening to me?' What do you think Job was saying? Do you think he was sitting back saying, 'I just lost all that money. I had the best family.' The Bible says that his family never missed an opportunity to celebrate with one another. And when they died, they were celebrating with one another. They loved each other. It's not only did he have the money, which is great, he had a great family. He had everything going for him. Well, what about me? Is it any different with me? No. God has the purpose for my struggles. Romans 8, 28, 'For we know that all things work together for good to those who love God.' When I was in college, we would have to dissect verses, and I would have to write 20 pages on a verse this long. And you talk about having to really dig into the meat of this. This was one of the verses. In my professor, I met with him after we turned in our papers, and I asked him, I said, 'Why? Why did you pick this verse?' And he said, 'Because people don't understand it.' Well, after I wrote 20 pages on it, I kind of understood it a little bit better. People think that this means, if I'm one of his children, everything's going to be great. Life will be perfect. No. The good, the bad. Job says one of the most profound things in one of his speeches to God. And it's to his wife. His wife says, 'Hey, listen, we've lost it all. Let's give it up. Just turn your back.' His own wife said that. And Job said, 'Are you just going to take the good from him? Are you not going to accept the bad?' Profound. Take them both. You know why? He knew why. The good, the bad. They all point in the direction God wants you to go. Wherever he wants you to end up, the good and the bad are going to point you there. And I'm the king of not wanting the bad stuff. I just give me the good stuff. When God tests me, I'm the guy who says, 'Okay, my wife says that I overanalyze everything. Don't know how we'll get into these most of the time one-sided conversations.' And I'll be saying, 'Hey, I figured it out. I think I know why I'm in the situation. I've learned my lesson.' And you know he's sitting back going, 'I'm fixing to show you really good.' And he does. But I'm the first one to say, 'Learn my lesson. I'm done. I'm going to walk in this direction.' And God says, 'No, you haven't quite learned it yet.' And then he takes me out to the woodshed and rips into me. The good and the bad point to what God has for you. For Job, the purpose of his suffering was twofold, like I said. The first part was to strengthen his faith. The second part was to prove Satan wrong. You see the conversation between Satan and God. And God's kind of saying, 'Okay, take it out first man. You think you can take him out?' But I love that he says, 'Don't lay a hand on him. Don't take his life. Well, what happened? He didn't take his life.' Satan knows who has the authority. So it's two-part, strengthen Job's faith, which it does, and to prove Satan wrong. There's a second question that is the most important question when we're in struggles. What should I do? What should I do when life takes that nasty U-turn for the worst? In school, they teach you to have three points for everything. So surprised. There's three points for this too. The first point, I try not to be, you'll see, everything starts with an R. I've got an extra points for that in college. The first answer that I want to look at is, remember the omniscience of God. It's a lot like the first point that I've already talked about. Remember the omniscience of God, always watching you, any knows you, any new Job. My dad and my brother are both pilots. And when they have the opportunity to fly a lot, whenever we go out to lunch, there's always a lot to talk about flying. Well, there's a good illustration about omniscience, a good reminder about the omniscience of God. Holly and I drove by Dallas Fort Worth and the National Airport a couple of nights ago. And on a clear night, have you guys ever noticed all of the planes coming in on final? I mean, you can just see six, seven planes coming in. And I got the thinking about that in a storm where you can't see anything. If you had no contact with the air traffic control, the tower, about the location of any of the other planes, would you be a little scared? I'd be afraid me and another plane would just be doing this thing. That's how I was trying to find my own way, but there's a guy that sits over a screen with some blips on it. And he tells me the pilot, okay, come in here, you'll fit right in. Can I see that screen? I can't see that screen, can I? I don't see it. I can't see the other planes behind me in a storm where I can't even see my hand in front of my face, which hopefully I wouldn't be trying to do in an airplane and stick my hand out the window. But I can't see the screen where this guy can, and I have trust in that guy as a pilot that he's going to help me not crash into the guy behind me. We forget about that. Sometimes we convince ourselves that we're sitting atop that screen, and we know what's going on. Don't tell me, I'm getting in first. And God says, shuffle back a couple, well why does he do that? Because if he didn't, we'd probably crash into the plane. He's on mission. He knows what's going on. Once again, leverage it, leverage the fact that he knows you. He knows every hair in your head, the thoughts that you think. He knows you. And when he watches you, he's known you, they go hand in hand. The second part of the answer to this question, oh, let's take a look at this. This is good. Three, Joe has this good day, you know when we're in struggles, and we have like 40 bad days in a row, and then there's one good day that it's like, yeah, yeah, and then you wake up the next morning and you're like, oh, it's back. He was having a good day, he was having a thoughtful day, because there were times when he was talking to God, he cursed the day of his birth, and then he went one step further than that, he cursed the day he was going to see, he was pretty ticked, but he was having a good day in chapter 23, and he's got some friends that kind of act like friends, you know. He has these three guys come out of nowhere, they hear Job's losing his money, so they rushed to his aid. He loses his family, and for 25, 30 chapters, these guys are saying the problem is in you. You must have done something to ask for the wrath of God the way you have. What have you done? And all the while, Job says, I will stick to my integrity. I know I didn't do anything, I'm not being disciplined, this friend's been believing, and they spend all these chapters, and all this time telling him the problems in your lap. So finally, he kind of sidesteps his three buddies, and starts talking to God again. And he kind of shoves this in his friend's face, let's say. It's chapter 23, verse 10 through 12, but let's look at verse 10. But he knows the way that I take. He's the air traffic controller, and this is just the beginning. By the end of this little three verse section of Job 23, hopefully you'll be as excited as I was when I realized what Job was actually saying. Then in the second half of verse 10, he gives us our second answer. What should I do when life takes a turn, for the worst? Realize the outcome of your trials. It's like I was saying earlier, how great I am at being that guy that says, "Okay, done, done. No more spankings." You know, my mom used to spank me. My dad would be at the church working, you know, and my mom, if I'd done something just really ruthless, would spank me before my dad got home. And I remember a few times where before she even started spanking me, I started screaming at the top of my lungs. She would say, "I haven't even started yet." But I knew since it didn't hurt that bad that I had to really work it up, so she would stop real fast. But then she wasn't stupid. She knew that. My dad came home, she explained to him the situation. It was over. It was over. Whatever ruthlessness, it was gone for at least a day. But it seems like I've been doing that all of my life, because we all hate to be in the middle of struggles. I'd venture to say, if I ask the question, "Do any of you enjoy struggles?" There wouldn't be smell in any deodorant, I promise you that. Nobody raised their hand unless you're kind of crazy. But I hate it. I can't stand struggles. Well, to realize the outcome of the trial isn't to seek with excitement the end. That's not what he's saying. He's actually saying, "Realize what happens when you're in the midst of a struggle, when you're being tested. Sit back, stop whining, stop complaining, and realize what God's doing." And he says this in the second half of verse 10, "But he knows the way that I take is the first half. But he has tested me, I shall come forth as gold." Isn't that what realizing the outcome of trials is? The good and the bad point towards where God wants you to be, it's gold. Pretty sweet, huh? It's gold. So for my very scholastic third point to this question, we look at verse 11 and 12. And when I'm in the middle of a struggle, you know, I love to talk about it. I love to tell everybody what's going on. I'll tell Holly, you know, "We'll just talk and talk and talk." Because I always think that if I talk about it enough and God gets sick of me just enough, that it'll pull me out of this struggle. It hasn't worked yet, but maybe it will one day. But Job says something. The first point, remembering the omniscience of God and the second point, realizing the outcome of trials, Job's kind of saying, "I didn't do it. I didn't do anything. You guys keep telling me it's my fault." It kind of pushes it into their face a little bit, and then it comes to verse 11. And it's kind of a conversation with God, even though it's with these three guys. And it's verse 11 of chapter 23. He says, "My foot has held fast to his steps. I have kept his way and not turned aside." He's pleading his case with these guys, but also the God. Do you think God didn't have a clue about that? Do you think God knew? We've already said he knew. And I think that the hardest thing in the midst of a struggle is to remain obedient to the word, and that's the third part of this. We get so caught up, I get so caught up in talking about it and feeling sorry for myself. What is Job saying in verse 11, "My foot has held fast to his steps. I have kept his way and not turned aside." He's fixing to tell you why, "I have not departed from this commandment of his lips. I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. Why remain obedient to the word, why?" Two reasons, extra credit. First off, because the word guides us, he says, "I have not turned aside because he was remaining obedient to the word. It was pointing him in the right direction." Well, what I like even better than that, the second part, is that it sustains us. And he says, "Even more so than the food that is necessary to keep this body going." It got to be pretty important. It was more important than the necessary food. It sustained him. I'll be the first one to admit that it struggles unless God hits me over the head, not thinking about these six things that I've talked about. The first three are good, but the second three are really good. See, the point was to give you three answers to the question of what is God doing because oftentimes we start asking, "What are you doing? Where are you?" Well, there's three answers. Get out of Job, and Job came up with them. I didn't come up with them. Job came up with them. Then the second question is the important question. What should I, Preston Morrison, be doing in the midst of this struggle? Three answers. And Job even told you why, because whatever God's got is better than the food that is necessary for this body to live. And remember, he lost it all. This guy isn't the chipper person who used to walk down my high school hall and go, "Hey, buddy, praise the Lord." That wasn't Job right now. Job was frustrated, but he still knew. What did he know? He knew that God was omniscient. He knew that God knew all along what was going on. What else? He realized the outcome of trials. He knew that whatever he was going through would make him a better person. My best friend in college plays professional baseball. In professional baseball, there are many steps, you've got rookie A, single season A, you've got all these jumps up and it's really hard work and they pay you $600 or $700 a month to do it. This is a guy that lives by the statement, "That, which doesn't kill me, only makes me stronger." That's what Job is saying. He's saying, "Even though this hurts, even though I am absolutely at a loss over losing my family." I know there's a reason and he did know and it's hard, he knew. Even though he got a little confused every once in a while, he always knew because he always came back to these kind of conversations with God where he acknowledged, "Okay, I just can see the fact that I don't know." At the end of the book of Job, God, I think Job was a little bit like me because God kind of wanted to drive the point home. He comes up with 70 or 80 questions such as, "It might have been, why is the sky blue?" He asks them all these questions about the animals, about the people of the earth. Job starts thinking about them and he says, "I have no idea, not one of the answers to this question. I couldn't tell you. What was God doing?" Exactly what he does to me. He says, "No, you're not done. I want you to get the point." Then he moves on real quickly. In struggles, with struggles, there are three people, the number three. Do I stand in front of this thing all night? There are three kinds of people when it comes to struggles. The first kind of person is the kind of person that sees the struggle. Let's say that this podium here is the struggle. That kind of person is living life, things are going good. They see that struggle, they kind of slowly turn around, walk back this way. I don't think I want that for me. That's the first kind of person. The second kind of person is the person I really want you to hear. They struggle through the struggle, they fight it, they get to the other side, they're constantly looking back. It may be that they're looking back, like I do every once in a while and say, "Hey God, remember that?" I made it through, or on a negative note, they look back and they say, "Things are terrible with me. Remember that just happened?" They never let go. In Philippians 3, 13, there's a pretty profound statement, "Forget what lies behind, forget that stuff. It'll always have a part of you, okay. But forget it. Don't really live it. Don't rehash it. Press on towards what's ahead of you." That's what the third person does. They get to the other side of this struggle, they just keep on moving, they just go. They know that it happened, it made him stronger, and that's what happened to Job. He came out of this little process like gold, just like he said he knew he would. He came out as gold. So I want to remind you real quick, if you never ever remember anything about this, when you get into a struggle, my prayer for each one of you is that you would leverage what we talked about tonight, that you would remember that your God, my God, is omniscient, he knows you like the back of his hand, that you'd realize the outcome and you'd remain obedient to the word no matter how bad it gets. So let's pray real quick, tie your heads with me. 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