Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Churches are there to minister to the body in need, and we've been talking about need. This is the last time we'll be doing this. We're going to talk about Job for the last time, although he's going to live with me for a long time. I've thoroughly enjoyed getting to know him in the Scriptures, and I'm sure as these words find their way into a book, which I'm sure they will one of these days, then I'm going to know him even better when I'm finished writing it.

If you'd like to turn to the book of Job, we're going to start at the last chapter. It's like when I read a book, I always start at the last chapter to see if I want to read it. Drives my husband crazy. He says, "I can't stand this. What are you doing?" I said, "Well, I'm just reading the last chapter to see if I want to read the first and all the way through." He does not like that idea. But here we are going to start this lesson with the last chapter.

Job replies to the Lord: "I know that you can do all things. No plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, 'Listen now and I will speak. I will question you and you shall answer me.' Well, my ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."

Jill Briscoe: I love many of the thoughts that spring out of the beginning of this chapter, and we'll read the end of it as we get on in the study. We were encouraged to look into James 5, where Job is used as an example of perseverance, of waiting. I have been reminded myself just lately that waiting does as much to you as suffering. It really does, and waiting in a sense can be a sort of suffering. The anticipation or the fear during a waiting period—waiting for someone to die, waiting for someone to divorce you, waiting for someone to reconcile, waiting for a child to come home—waiting is an incredible thing.

In James 5, the Bible says that Job, after this period of waiting, finally found himself in a warm and sunny place after a long, cold winter. Chapter 42 tells us about that sunny place. What the Lord finally did, James says, in Job's life was to bring to fruition all the things God had been doing as he allowed the suffering situation to happen. There is a "finally" for every child of God. Remember when Jesus was being tempted, it said the devil left him and angels came and ministered to him. If you're enduring a time of temptation, hang on to that "finally." Lord, I'm on the way to finally. I think in one of these messages, I talked about being on the way to soon. Soon it will be over. Well, there is a finally too here.

But what do you say to a Job when they're waiting for the finally, whatever the finally is going to be? How can we be an Elihu? We looked at the other comforters that weren't comforters at all but rather critics. Then we looked at Elihu, who didn't do it all right, but he didn't do it all wrong. I do want to encourage you. I hope I haven't put any of you off by really lambasting these comforters and saying, well, you shouldn't say this and be careful you don't do that. Don't try and be an amateur psychologist, and don't try and be a deep theologian, and don't be an authority figure.

I do believe that it's better to try and minister than not try at all. You will never do it all right, but if you are in the spirit as he was in the spirit, you will never do it all wrong either. One thing we can learn from Elihu above all else: he spoke what was right about God. This is what his thesis was in the end, even though he too accused Job of some of the things the others were accusing him of, and he also said you haven't got enough faith, which is not a very good way to go about it.

He then took the emphasis off what Job was doing right or wrong and put it on what God was doing right. What he did was say this: we must never doubt God's ability to sustain till the end. We must never doubt God's ability to sustain to the end. If you want to know what to say, you can say that and not worry that you're saying anything wrong. In other words, he turned Job's eyes to the object of his faith. I must have said it two or three times in the series, I'll say it again: it isn't the amount of faith that matters, it's the object of your faith.

Maybe you don't have enough faith, but you can have very little faith in very thick ice and stay very dry and safe. Remember, you can have a lot of faith in very thin ice and get drowned. You can drown by faith. So we must never doubt God's ability to sustain to the end. What he says in Job 37 is this: "Listen, Job, stop and consider his wonders. Look up out of the north. He comes in golden splendor. God comes in awesome majesty."

He got Job to look with him. He prepared Job to see the face of God and to hear the voice of God. That we can do for a Job. So what can we do? We can certainly meet with them. We can certainly use tact and kindness and sweetness and humility. He said, "I also have been formed out of clay. Surely no fear of me will terrify you, Job." He identified with Job. He said, "I'm no better than you. I'm just a little dust man like you're a little dust man as well."

So he came kindly and humbly, and he came in the spirit. Job 33:3-7, he is talking to Job: "My words come from an upright heart. My lips sincerely speak what I know. The spirit of God has made me; the breath of the Almighty gives me life." The breath of the Almighty is the word for the spirit, pneuma, the breath of God. He claims to be inspired and infilled by the Holy Spirit. We must not go out of our hearts to minister to somebody else's heart unless we are, as far as we know our heart, full of the spirit of God.

Isaiah 50:4 is one of my favorite verses, that he will give us the word in season to those that are weary. How's he going to do that? He'll awaken our ear to hear morning by morning. He'll awaken our ear to hear like the ear of a disciple. It's a wonderful passage of Scripture. Get into it sometime. What Elihu had done, he had waited upon God. He had also waited for the older people to speak, for he said, "I'm the youngest of you all, and out of respect, I wanted to hear what you had to say."

But then he realizes that they hadn't spoken what was right about God. So he lets no man despise his youth; he has a go as well. You might feel, well, I'm too young a Christian, or I'm too young in age to minister to this older person. Remember what Paul said to Timothy: "Let no man despise thy youth. You be an example of the believers in all doctrine and correction and righteousness." You get on and exercise your ministry as well.

So Elihu is a model of a good counselor. What we can do is gather somebody that's hurting around our kitchen table and have a cup of coffee and cry with them and pray with them and hold their hand and share a piece of Scripture. He didn't have the Bible as we have it. He had his wisdom literature, his wisdom theology, and he went there to share that with Job. We have the word of God. We have so much more than Elihu had to share with a hurting heart.

All you need to do is have a cup of tea, read a little bit of Scripture, say, "What are we learning about God here? What are we learning about ourselves?" and then pray about it. Anybody can do that. It's as simple as that. Take them to the Lord. The best thing you can do is to take somebody not to yourself or to somebody else but to God in prayer. You need to be God's advocate. Gleason Archer says the main role of Elihu is that of an advocate for the wise and loving providence of God.

He just keeps pointing back to God. God is good. God is great. God is sure. God is faithful. God is there. God is able. God is aware. God sees. God cares. That's what an advocate is. What he did was show that Job had overlooked the possibility that suffering may be permitted by the Lord for wise and benevolent purposes and that the only proper response of a true servant of God is a posture of humble acceptance and uncomplaining submission.

Job may not be guilty of all the charges of the three, but by this time in the story, he has become resentful against God. He is not charging God with the things that the others say he's charging God with, but he has become cut off from God because his anger is directed upwards. Elihu sees this and addresses it. Verse 33:8-11, I'll paraphrase it for you: You have charged God with treating you unfairly and unjustly even though you've been guilty of no wrong, and you have accused him of persecuting you in a malicious way as if he regarded you his enemy.

Indeed, in 13:27, Job says this: "You fasten my feet in shackles, God. You keep close watch on all my paths by putting marks on the soles of my feet. You branded me." That's what they did to prisoners of the day. He felt like a prisoner. He felt that God had put him in a dungeon and put chains around him and a yoke around his neck. That's how he felt God was treating him. He's saying, "God did this to me."

Yet if a man reacts and responds rightly to suffering, he softens his attitude to God; he doesn't harden it. The same sun that softens butter hardens clay. We are responsible for our attitude to suffering. We can choose our attitude. If we can start there and make a decision, "I will respond rightly to suffering," then we will not grow like Job into a hardened state towards the end of his story. Suffering softens a man, Elihu reminded him.

Suffering can sanctify a man. Come back to 33:26-28: He prays to God and finds favor with him. He sees God's face and shouts for joy. He's restored by God to his righteous state. Then he comes to the man and says, "I've sinned and perverted what was right, but I did not get what I deserved." He redeemed my soul from going down to the pit, and I will live to enjoy the light. What he's saying here, let me paraphrase it again: Man establishes a closer personal relationship with God than ever before through suffering and afterward. Afterward he rejoices in him with a new joy over his wonderful forgiveness and grace and deliverance. Then he becomes an active and enthusiastic witness for the Lord.

Hebrews 12:11 is a passage of Scripture we have not even looked at and could have borne a whole talk in itself. But let me just read you these verses: "My son, don't make light of the Lord's discipline. Don't lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves. He punishes everyone he accepts as a son. Endure hardship as discipline." There's a verse for you: endure hardship as discipline. God is treating you as a son. What son isn't disciplined by his father?

If you're not disciplined, and everyone undergoes discipline, then you're illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we've all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live? Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best, but God disciplines us for our good that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, finally, later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet so that the lame may not be disabled but rather healed. That's a whole passage in itself, isn't it? Endure hardship as discipline. So suffering rightly responded to softens a man, sanctifies, sets him apart for God, gives him a new joy so he can become an enthusiastic witness for the Lord when the finally finally comes. Suffering can even save a man. Job 36:15: "Those who suffer he delivers in their suffering; he speaks to them in their affliction."

He saves them. My own testimony is such that God saved me through suffering. I was in hospital, I was physically suffering, and through that situation had occasion to look up to God and to be driven to him in my extremity. Those who suffer he delivers in their suffering; he speaks to them in their affliction. I don't know if I'd ever have listened to God if he had not brought me to that low place. I certainly wasn't listening to him whenever everything was fine in my life. So suffering can soften, suffering can sanctify, and suffering can even be used as a means of salvation in many, many people's lives.

His size, his greatness, his nature is somewhere I can go, and we have talked about this before. But we need to gaze on God. We need to really turn our eyes up to him. What Elihu does in 36, he begins to talk as actually God is about to talk and turn Job's attention to nature. 22-26: "Who's prescribed his ways for him or said to him, 'You've done wrong'? Remember to extol his work which men have praised in song. All mankind has seen it; men gaze on it from afar. How great is God beyond our understanding. The number of his years is past our finding out."

What God is trying to do in the next few chapters as he uses nature in a very specific way is teach Job certain things. Elihu focuses on God's saving grace. God's grace helps us to make the right use of our sufferings. God's grace is seen in nature. God's grace is seen in the creatures that he has made. Well, as we come to 38 through 42, and apart from the last part of the chapter, we find that God speaks. We've had a little look at Elihu. Elihu has been speaking. Then we have a little look at God.

This is a marvelous part of Job. There was a time in my life when I memorized these chapters. It was just poetry that for me, just apart from anything else as literature, takes me to heaven. But when you add the inspiration of the word of God, it's a wonderful exercise. I don't know if I could do that anymore. If you're young, memorize. You know, once those little brain cells die off, they say it's the only part of our brain that doesn't redo itself. All the rest of your body renews the cells except your brain. Well, nobody needed to tell me that; I knew that. Probably what's happening is the brain cells that are dying off are the ones that I memorized with because that's why I can't remember.

But if you are young, and that means anybody under 50, memorize, because it gets harder and harder the older you get. The 38th chapter begins with these words: "Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm." Now, I don't know if God speaks to us as clearly as he does when the storm is over. I don't know. But I do know that the words that he speaks in the storm are some of the most precious words that you will ever hear. As he begins to talk to Job, he rebukes him for not trusting him, for not trusting him to sustain him to the end of the temptation, to the finally finally comes.

He says, "Who are you that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I'm going to question you now. You've been questioning me; now I'm going to question you, and you shall answer me. Let me just read you a little bit of this. Where were you, little man, when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know. Who stretched a measuring line across it? Or what were its footings set? Who laid its cornerstone while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?"

"And who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the cloud its garments and wrapped it in thick darkness? When I fixed the limits for it and set its doors and bars in place? When I said, 'This far you may come but no further. Here is where your proud waves halt.' Job, have you ever given orders to the morning or shown the dawn its place that it might take the earth by its edges and shake the wicked out of it? The earth takes shape like clay under a seal. Its features stand out like those of a garment."

"The wicked are denied their light; their upraised arm is broken. Have you, Job, journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death? Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me if you know all this. What is the way to the abode of light? Where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? Surely you know, for you were already born. You've lived so many years."

"Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle? What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain and a path for the thunderstorm to water a land where no man lives, a desert with no one in it, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass? Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew? From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens?"

"When the waters become hard as stone and when the surface of the deep is frozen? Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God's dominion over the earth? Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water? Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, 'Here we are'? Who endowed the heart with wisdom, Job? Who gave understanding to the mind? Who has the wisdom to count the clouds? Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens when the dust becomes hard and the clods of earth stick together? Do you hunt the prey for the lioness? Do you satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in the thicket? Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?"

And on he goes. If you and I had an experience like Job, no wonder we'd come out of it saying, "Well, I've heard of you by the hearing of ear, but now my eye sees you, and I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." God spoke to him out of a mighty storm that literally came out of the desert. Elihu talks about it. He can see the lightning coming, and he uses it as an illustration to focus Job's attention, and then the storm bursts over their heads. Sure they were drenched.

Out of the storm, he hears God asking him all these questions. What it did for Job was turn him from a victim into a victor because it helped him to bring all his questions, which now seem so little in the sight of God's might and majesty, and lay them at God's feet. He had moved from "Why is God doing this to me?" to "Why is he allowing it to happen?" to "I don't need a why. One day he'll tell me if he wants to. I'll just take all my whys and put them at his feet."

Like Ruth Graham says in her beautiful poem, "I lay my whys before your throne in worship kneeling, my mind too numb for thought, my heart beyond all feeling. And worshiping, realize that I, in seeing you, don't need a why. I lay my whys before your throne in worship kneeling, my mind too numb for thought, my heart beyond all feeling. And worshiping, realize that I, in knowing you, in seeing you, in hearing you, don't need a why."

Suffering surely wonderfully focuses the attention on things bigger than the soaps, than the latest fashions, or where we're going on our next vacation. Sort of get your eyes on higher things. I remember when I was in hospital another time, somebody sent me a little card that said, "The world says laid aside by illness, but Christ says called aside for stillness. The world says laid aside by illness, but Christ says called aside for stillness."

What suffering does is stretch our minds to wrestle with the deep issues of another world rather than our own. That always happens in the midst of suffering, and sometimes it's the only time we do get involved with other worlds other than our own and tiny little tinsel triviality, our own little world. We come to understand many things, one of which is the fact that some things will have to wait an explanation in heaven. What happened to Job when God spoke to him and began to show him the size of who he was, his majesty, was that he didn't need a why anymore.

In *Oh How Long, Oh Lord*, Curt Larsen says: Don't assume that everything that takes place in God's universe ought to be explained to us. Don't assume that God owes us an explanation. That's what Job had been saying through all those chapters if you've been reading them—that God owed him an explanation. Don't assume that God owes us an explanation, that there cannot possibly be any good reason for God not to tell us everything we want to know immediately. Don't assume that God Almighty should be more interested in giving us explanations than being worshiped and trusted.

That's the whole point of this lesson. Elihu rightly said he is worthy to be trusted to sustain you to the end. That was his message: he is worthy to be trusted to sustain you to the end. When we can't understand our sufferings and God doesn't try explaining it to us apparently, then we have to realize there are some things we will not understand because we are not God, and that's how it is. The secret things belong to the Lord. The things he has revealed belong to us and to our children. So what we need to be doing is concentrating on the things he has revealed to us and to our children, the things we can understand.

Certainly some of those things are these passages of who God is and how he works. I think the thing that happens through suffering is you do realize you are part of the greater scheme of things and that God is working his purposes out. I love 42 at the beginning where it says, "No plan of mine can be thwarted." Often it appears that God's plans are being thwarted. No plan of mine can be thwarted. Do we believe that? Is God working out his greater purposes for us? For the big purpose for us is our ultimate eternal blessing, our eternal blessing.

Can we believe this little suffering that we are enduring at the moment, or this big suffering we are enduring at the moment—maybe Job-sized suffering that we are facing at the moment—is part of the big picture and will all work together for the big picture, for the big plan? I know the plans I have for you, plans for good and not for evil, to bring you to an expected end, to give you hope, to give you confidence. That's a promise of God. Yet it's still hard to trust him, isn't it?

In Jehovah's speeches, the Lord speaks to Job and says, "I have not abandoned you. I have not abandoned you." He rebukes Job for not having seen the issues clearly so far as his misfortunes are concerned. He hadn't yet come to a better understanding of the blessings to be found through sufferings. Those blessings basically are spiritual blessings. Spiritual blessings will always be the first priority of the blessings that God intends through any period of suffering.

The thing we've got to ask ourselves is: Have I experienced something that's going to equip me and improve on my trusting God? When God lays out this picture of his provision in creation and geology, the oceans, the weather, and the animals and the birds which these beautiful readings contain, what he's saying is God knows how to equip these inanimate things, the jars of water—who knows? Isn't that beautiful picture, who to tip over the jars of heavenly water when it's time to water the earth and all the clods are sticking together?

God knows how to equip his geology, his oceans. He knows how to say, "Thus far and no further." He knows how to provide for the animals' needs. The pieces I didn't read to you in the Scriptures were all about the animals' needs—how they need a mate and how he brings the mate to the bird, and how they produce their little eggs and how he feeds them, and how he looks after the lions and things. If God knows how to equip them to cope and provides for their needs, how much more will he provide for you? It reminds me very much of Jesus speaking about the sparrows in the New Testament.

He said, "I know where every little sparrow falls. I know where every little sparrow falls." He said you're so much more value than many, many, many sparrows. Fear not; his eye is on the sparrow. Do you remember Ethel Waters' wonderful song? Job has charged God with lovelessness and unfairness, and that is a charge he's rebuked for, for God does love us. If in our suffering we say, "How can he love us to allow this to happen to us?" we need to come back to the book of Job and listen to what he said to his servant.

He talks about the hippo and the crocodile in two marvelous chapters. Leviathan in chapter 41 is, they believe, the crocodile. He says, "Can you put a cord through his neck or pierce his jaw with a hook? Will he keep begging you for mercy? Will he speak to you with gentle words? Will he make an agreement with you for you to take him as your slave for life? Can you make a pet of him like a bird, put him on a leash for your girls?" He's speaking of the might of first of all the hippopotamus in chapter 40, and then in 41.

He says in verse 10: "No one's fierce enough to rouse him. Who then is able to stand against me?" I'm bigger than the crocodile; I'm bigger than the hippopotamus. He shows how huge and how incredibly prepared they are for every arrow that can be thrown against them. Now, if he does it for the hippopotamus, do you think you're more important than a hippopotamus? Do you think you're more important than a crocodile? If he has so made them able to cope against the fiery darts of men, then he can make us able to cope against the fiery darts of doubt and fear of the wicked one as he stands there and shoots at us continually.

God has so constructed and equipped them. He is of such power and majesty. We must not presume to criticize him as unkind or unfaithful to us, who he has told us are far more important than his very important creatures that he has made. So he never makes mistakes. Do we believe that? He always loves and cares for his own. Do we believe that in our times of extremity? The spiritual is always the provision that he makes. The problem is we judge his faithfulness and his love by the material things that he gives us, by the measure of health he restores to us.

Yet the provision that he promises is a spiritual provision. I think of General William Booth, who was one of my favorites. He was the founder of the Salvation Army if you remember. He was a wonderful old man. I mean, he died with his boots on. So I know Stuart's going to go to glory. I mean, if anybody says retire, it's like a red rag to a bull to my husband. "What do you mean?" he says. "I don't know the meaning of the word." I think of some of the great men of history and specifically William Booth as an inspiration for us as we look ahead into the autumn and winter of our lives.

He became blind as an old man; he lost his sight. His son had to break the news after the operation or whatever it was that they were trying to save his sight didn't work. Bramwell Booth—that was the son's name—came to break the news to him. "Do you mean that I am blind?" the general asked. "I fear we must contemplate that," his son answered. "I shall never see your face again." "No, sir, probably not in this world." "Bramwell," said General Booth, "I have done what I could for God and for the people with my eyes. Now I shall do what I can for God and for the people without my eyes."

That is a right response to suffering. What a mighty man of God he was. His test, his trial of course continued to the end of his life, but if you read his autobiography—and I hope you have—he continued to do for God and for the people without his eyes everything he'd done for God and the people with his eyes. In fact, his ministry became even more dynamic and incredibly used. So the finally comes. The finally for him was sight in heaven.

I think of Joni Eareckson Tada and that incredible song that she said she's going to sing, and she does sing at the end of her testimony, of the fact that when she gets to heaven in her wheelchair, Jesus is going to take her hand and say, "Shall we dance?" The finally will come for Joni Eareckson in heaven, and maybe the finally will come for us in heaven. But the finally will come, maybe on earth by God's grace and compassion and mercy a little while, and certainly in heaven.

So we come into 42, and Job has to learn to forgive. What do you do with the anger and the hate that you've been wrestling with as suffering has come to you? First of all, towards God. Boiling resentment bottled up in your heart will not help you. "Why boil inside?" Augsburger says in his wonderful little book called *The Freedom of Forgiveness*. "Why boil inside? It's a form of slow suicide." Have you ever had somebody say, "This is killing me"? I've said that myself: "This is killing me." One of the things that kills us is repressing all this anger.

But what do you do with it? Augsburger says anger is the father of revenge. If you don't do something good with anger, confess it. Don't repress it; confess it. If you don't do something good with it, right with it, it will father revenge. "Someone has to pay," says revenge. But how can I make God pay? That can lead to frustration. Job's frustration is because he'd been trying to make God pay in this last chapter or two.

You can cold-shoulder God. You can curse him, which is what his wife wanted to make him do. You can hate him. You can keep your distance. You can hold a grudge. Augsburger says this: "I can hate, I can nurse a grudge until it grows into a full-grown hate, horns, hooves, tail and all." Oh wow. And that's what anger and hatred can do, and it is not something that produces the fruits of righteousness and peace that we read about in the book of Hebrews.

Satan, of course, had been trying to get Job to do this. Satan at this point must have thought he'd nearly won. Or on the other hand, we can realize that we need to repent of this, repent of our mistrust, of our suspicion of his motive. "What are you doing? You're just using me as a little chess piece down here in a game with Satan." That has to be put at the foot of the cross, and we have to confess it. Surely you can tell God about your anger, but you have to realize you must stop aiming it at him because he's not doing this.

Well, you say, "He's allowing it." Yes, he is allowing it, but he is not the source and he is not the author of what he has allowed. God loves me. God loves me. God loves me. Perhaps that's what you should say day after day after day, and then you can be reconciled to God, and the hate and the revenge will not be aimed at him. Therefore, the source of your strength and your help will be opened, and things will be able to flow from God to you to help you and encourage you.

A lot of people have no sense of sin at all because they've managed so far to keep God at arm's length. We do need to come to God and say, "What in all my reaction is sinful, Lord?" That's what Job was able to do. Then he was able to repent of the thing he had done wrong—not of the things he hadn't done wrong; he didn't need to repent of those. But in this mistrust, he needed to repent. Repentance of sin, of doubting God's character and his ability to sustain him even in his dreadful situation.

And you know, what he was able to say was: "I thought I knew you before the tornado struck my kids, the Sabeans murdered my servants, my wealth disappeared before I became a victim. But now my eye sees you, and you're going to make me a victor." And that was the difference. It prepares a man for future suffering. There was a man called Alexander Mackay who said this: "I want to remind the committee that within six months, they will probably hear that one of us is dead." He was going out to the mission field somewhere. "But when that news comes, do not be cast down but send someone else immediately to take the vacant place."

I love it. This is turning the view forward. I will probably, because of my vocation going to this Africa's white man's grave, never come back. Therefore, I will pack my things in a coffin instead of a case, and when you get the news, please send someone immediately to take my vacant place. Job forgives God. Then he forgives his friends after he prayed for them. Did you notice that little word? After Job prayed for his friends, God restored him.

And he restored his wife. He had ten more children. All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the Lord had brought upon him. Each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring. And the Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first. He had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 donkeys. Go back to chapter 1 and you see he had double.

He had double what he had at the beginning. God doubled his blessing. He also had seven sons and three daughters. Same number. He replaced his children, and his daughters were absolutely beautiful. Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job's daughters. I don't know whether that meant the sons had a face like a back of a bus or what, but Job's daughters were absolutely gorgeous, and he granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.

He lived 140 years, saw his children and their children to the fourth generation, and so he died old and full of years. It took prayer to forgive his friends, and it's going to take prayer to forgive your Job's comforters and your enemies, certainly your friends. It took sacrifice. The friends came, they repented, they brought a sacrifice, and Job became their priest. That must have been eating humble pie. It's going to take prayer and sacrifice on your part to be able to pray for your friends. It's going to cost you something to be able to pray for people that are despitefully using you, that are doing things to you.

Yet after you have prayed for your friends, God will restore you, certainly spiritually and trustfully, materially and healthfully. Then he forgives his wife. How do we know he forgave his wife? Because he had ten more kids. It's my interpretation; must have reconciled with her at any rate ten times. I love what this statement says about forgiveness: Forgiveness is acceptance with no exceptions. It accepts not only the hurt you received, it accepts the one who did the hurt, and it accepts the loss caused by the hurtful actions or words. It makes no exceptions. It is acceptance without exceptions.

Job accepted the people that had hurt him—his brothers, his sisters. Read what he says about them in previous chapters, how they treated him. Yet they come to him and they offer him a gift and he accepts the gift. Whether or not you find the right mate, for example, is not the important thing for happiness in marriage. The crucial step is your willingness to be the right person for your partner. Why does that sound a little bit out of context? Because I'm talking about Job and his wife.

Some people think that this was a new wife, some of the commentators. I don't believe it was. I don't want to believe it was. I want to believe it was the same wife and that she was the right wife, and that Job became the right person for his partner in a truer sense than he'd ever been before, and she was able to grow through her sufferings as well. He was quick to forgive. The man who follows Christ in life hurries to forgive. He forgives before the sting begins to swell, before the molehill mushrooms into the mountain, before bitterness like an infection or rigor mortis sets in.

Because bitterness paralyzes you. It slowly sets like a permanent plaster cast, perhaps protecting the wearer from future pain but ultimately holding him rigid in frozen animation. His feelings and emotions have turned to concrete. They're all mixed up and firmly set. Only God can melt the concrete, and he does it through prayer as he releases his power of forgiveness into your life. If he can forgive us, he can help us to forgive others. We must be linked into that power to be able to forgive.

We cannot use our own power to forgive other people. God knows how to do it; he practices every single day on us. If he can forgive us, we can forgive others. Finally comes restoration, renewal, marriage, family, ministry. You see him taking up his priesthood again and beginning to do what he did at the beginning of the story. God can do it. At the beginning of the story, his wife said to him, "Curse God and die." The end of the story, we see him praising God and living.

Curse God and die? Not me, not I. Praise God and live. Determinedly believe he is God, he is love, he is in the heaven above.

Curse God and die? Not me, not I. I'll praise God and live.

Curse God and die? Not me, not I. I'll thank God and grow. That's the way to go. He is near, he is here, he is precious, he is dear.

Curse God and die? Not me, not I. I'll thank God and grow.

Curse God and die? Not me, not I. I'll praise God and see he is great, he is all. He will catch me when I fall.

Curse God and die? Not me, not I. I'll praise God.

Praise be. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the story and the book of Job. Thank you that finally you restored Job's spirit, his soul, and in his case, his home, his marriage, his family, his relationships, his wealth, his health. Thank you, Lord Jesus, that what you did for Job down here on earth, you will do for all of us in heaven and perhaps for many of us here on earth before we get to heaven. Help us to realize the most important thing in suffering is what happens spiritually to us and help us to respond rightly.

I pray here for those that are suffering. I pray for many of my friends who I know are battling cancer and other diseases that humanly speaking need divine intervention to reverse. We pray for that healing. We look to you who are the God who can do all these things as you told Job you could do. You can reverse the process. You can bring healing and health in sick bodies, and we pray for that.

We pray, dear Lord, for those who are suffering in other ways. As we go and move into our time of praise and prayer, we pray that we may see you answer prayer and that after we have prayed for our friends, you will give us the ability to give you our concrete hard hearts and receive the softening your spirit can engender within us. Soften us, sanctify us, save us in our suffering.

Lord, if you have allowed the discipline of suffering, the discipline of hardship, help us to accept it and help us to lay our whys before your throne in worship kneeling. Our mind perhaps too numb for thought, our heart perhaps beyond all feeling. Help us to tentatively reach out our hand and put it into yours. Help us hear you say, "I am leading you, my child, to the heavenly land. I am guiding you day by day, and I ask you now as I take your hand to come home by a rugged way. It is not a way you yourself would choose, for its beauty you cannot see, but you know not what your soul would lose if you trod not this path with me." Help us respond to that. For Christ's sake, amen.