Every single one of us is going to one day witness a friend or family member lose someone they love. We will see people experience tragedy and suffer loss. So, my big question today, what can we do when someone is grieving?
That is what our Bible story is about today, our passage today comes from Job 2:11-13, and we’re going to see what Job’s friends did when they found Job grieving terribly.
We’re starting a new series on one of the best literatures on suffering. It’s an ancient epic collection of poems called, the book of Job.
Now the way Job is written is that major themes are drawn out and weaved throughout the entire book, and so its conclusions are all found at the end of the story. And so because of that, our series won’t really be going through the book chronologically because then we’d have 5 sermons with zero answers to our questions and the one sermon with 5 answers. So instead, we’re going by themes.
AND SINCE this is the case, I’m starting all the way at Job 38, which means we have to summarize the previous 37 chapters. So let’s do it!
What truths do we need to hold in order to suffer positively (meaning, in a positive trajectory).
The Bible gives us instructions for a good life under the reign and love of God, BUT it has a lot of rules. And no one likes rules. For example, there’s something very wrong with my soul here but if I was about to grab an apple to eat, and my mom said, “Yeah! Good! You have to eat apples everyday”, I will not eat that apple anymore. I hate rules.
But what if God gave us rules because he knew what he was doing? Let’s say God isn’t just powerful and divine and stuff, what if he was also smart? Smarter than any business person. Smarter than any scientist or influencer. Smarter than Andrew Huberman and Elon Musk and whoever else you look up to. Would we dismiss his rules and his words as fast as we do, IF we assumed God was smart?
What if, instead of being a list of restrictions meant to oppress us, Jesus’ way of life and God’s rules for living with Him and with others was made for us to thrive in the best life possible?
What if? Let’s explore that today.
How can God’s rules lead us to abundant life? The answer that we find today is when we honour the INTENT of God’s rules because:
1. Rules use wrongly are weapons 2. Rules used rightly are gifts
Most Christians know about God’s devotion to us. We believe this. If we’re honest though, sometimes it doesn’t feel like he loves us. Sometimes when we ask God for help, he doesn’t help us in the ways we might expect and its frustrating.
It feels like God doesn’t care and he is doing nothing. So, my big question today is: How can we get help from God? That’s what our Bible story is about today.
Our passage today gives us two keys for finding help from God:
Problems in our work, and problems in our relationships. Problems are everywhere. And problems matter/ Even ordinary problems matter to God, because for a Christian every problem is connected to the stuff of eternity. Everything we do is meant to be part of God’s work, and it’s all meant to be holy. And when we have that mindset, we can experience the presence of God and the power of God even when we’re doing ordinary things.
So my big question today is: how should we respond to problems?
My big idea today is:
1. We should start with faith 2. We should continue with faithfulness.
Everyone has a different story when it comes to their journey toward faith or away from faith. We all know people who are like James Wallace who come from a skeptical background. So, it naturally creates some tension in our conversations because our skeptic friends don’t want to believe.
Yet, as Christians we really want to help our friends find Jesus. So, my big question today is: How do we talk to skeptics?
Fortunately, the Bible is no stranger to skeptics. Our Bible story is about some skeptics who have a conversation with Jesus, and when we study this conversation, we see a good way to talk to a skeptic.
My big question today is: How can we answer skeptics? Our story teaches us two things we need to expect in those conversations:
I want to ask: what is the best way to manage all of our responsibilities? I’ve found an idea in the Bible, and it works really well for me. And the Bible’s answer helps me to stay calm and optimistic even when life is really busy. My answer is: we need to focus on giving everyone what we owe them. More specifically we need to give people what we owe them, and we need to give God what we owe him. And we’ll see this answer in our Bible story today.
Today we’re starting a new sermon series called Arguing with Jesus. And over the next few weeks we’ll be following some of the toughest conversations that people had with Jesus in the Bible. And we’ll see brilliant answers from Jesus that still mean a lot today.
Moms are the best! So, I want to reflect on how much mother’s or mother figures are a gift from God. Now, I understand that some of us have great relationships with our moms but for others, Mother’s Day can be a painful experience.
Some of us have a broken relationship with our mothers or maybe you’ve lost a mother, so we want to acknowledge that, and we are here for you. But for many of us, some of the most excellent people we know are moms or the maternal figures that God brings into our lives.
And it’s worth thinking about what makes them so excellent because it will make us more grateful, and it will give us ideas for how to be excellent ourselves. So, my big question today is what does personal excellence look like?
That’s what our Bible passage is about. Our Bible passage is part of a letter written by Paul to a church in the city of Corinth. Paul wasn’t their mom, but you might hear some of that motherly tone in our passage.
What is the worst thing that you could miss out on? I think to answer that question is: we have to look at what we were made for! I believe the Bible shows us that we were made for a relationship with God that informs all our relationships with others, and we were made to join him in the work that He has done and is doing and will do. I just think of the Genesis story where God creatively and wonderfully made everything from nothing and then He made humans and told them to do what He just did, turn raw material and chaos into beauty and order. We’re made to lovingly join him in his work and represent him to the rest of the world.
But the tragic thing is, even though everyone has access to this extremely valuable calling, we often forget about it and miss out on it. This will probably be what we’ll regret most looking back.
See, God is always always working in and around and through our lives, every single day. But because His ways are not always our ways, we won’t see it if we’re not intentional. And if we’re not intentional about it, we could be missing out on the greatest thing happening in our lives and not even know it.
And so how do we avoid missing out on all this?
Or in other words, how do we join God in his work?
We’re zoning in on Barnabas in this series, a man described as good, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and we’re using him as a model for how we can join God in His work! And this is what we see from him and what we’ll spend the rest of our time focusing on.
A few years back, social psychologist, Jean Twenge published a detailed study on the mental state of today’s teenagers and college students in a book called iGen. She found a rapid rise in depression and anxiety in young people. Twenge believes that the biggest reason for this problem is the rise of smart phones and social media.
People are connected by the internet, yet they feel alone. People are constantly comparing how they look and what they have. They see people doing fun activities without them and they feel left out.
Twenge writes, “By 2016, roughly one out of every five girls reported symptoms that met the criteria for having experienced a major depressive episode in the previous year. The rate for boys went up, too, but more slowly (from 4.5% in 2011 to 6.4% in 2016).” Very sad news!
However, one interesting part of her research is that she found five activities that are linked to lower rates of depression: sports and other forms of exercise, attending religious services, reading books, in-person social interactions, and doing homework.
Her research implies that churches like ours can make a significant difference in the lives of young people. So, my main question today is: how can we help people who feel alone? Our passage today is from Acts 9:26-28.
Our new sermon series is on Barnabas, who was a difference maker, and we can learn two things from him:
