title: god’s megaphone text: job theme: god uses suffering to make his will known to us and others

TITLE: God’s Megaphone

TEXT: Job

THEME: God uses suffering to make His will known to us and others.

Leprosy

What happened to the fingers and toes of leprosy patients? Did they wear off? Or drop off? Was nerve damage haphazard, or was there a pattern? Was there a possibility that surgery might be effective in making a claw hand usable? If so, why had it never been attempted?

Paul Brad

Brand discovered the gift of pain, claiming that pain deprived people inadvertently destroyed themselves.

Paul Brand and Phillip Yancey“Pain- The Gift that nobody wants.”

Pain has an important role to play in our lives.

What can we learn from suffering?

I. Suffering shows us we are not God. (Job 38)

Job 38

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:

2 “Who is this that obscures my plans

with words without knowledge?

3 Brace yourself like a man;

I will question you,

and you shall answer me.

4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

Tell me, if you understand.

5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it?

Job 38

6 On what were its footings set,

or who laid its cornerstone—

7 while the morning stars sang together

and all the angels shouted for joy?

8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors

when it burst forth from the womb,

9 when I made the clouds its garment

and wrapped it in thick darkness,

Job 38

10 when I fixed limits for it

and set its doors and bars in place,

11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;

here is where your proud waves halt’?

12 “Have you ever given orders to the morning,

or shown the dawn its place,

13 that it might take the earth by the edges

and shake the wicked out of it?


A. We do not control everything about us.

Autotheists: Self-gods.

They imagine that they are accountable to no one higher than themselves. These rebels submit to no law save the self-imposed law of their own arrogant minds



B. We are dependent on God for our very existence



B. We are dependent on God for our very existence

C. We do not always know what’s best for us.

“The Myth of the Greener Grass,” Alan Peterson

Describes numerous case studies of men or women who have cheated on their spouses. He describes the process of moving from interested to compulsion

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

It is often caused by someone who has felt powerless and is therefore driven to restore control in the form of their compulsion. It never works. The person’s compulsive behavior never brings the sense of empowerment that want restored.

II. Suffering may be God’s way of showing us that something is

wrong. (Romans 5:12)

A. It can give us an insight on the effects and nature of sin.

Romans 5:12

Through one man [Adam] sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so that death passed to all men, because all sinned”




B. It can instill in us the urgency to change.




B. It can instill in us the urgency to change.

C. People seldom change unless something tragic happens to them.

III. Suffering directs us to God. (Psalm 18:6)

A. It can give us a new appreciation for the things that really matter. (I Peter 1:6-7)

I Peter 1:6-7

”In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

Christopher Reeve

In interviews following his personal tragedy, Mr. Reeve commented that since being paralyzed, he had discovered a new zest for life.

John Dryden

“We, by our suff’rings, learn to prize our bliss”

Astraea Redux

He that hath an ear, let him hear what suffering whispers to the soul.



B. Suffering can help us understand the pain of others more. (2 Cor. 1:3-7)

2 Corinthians 1:3-7

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.”

An old adage

“Do not judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.”

An old adage

“Do not judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.”

“One cannot comfort effectively until he has lain in the bed of suffering




C. Suffering can make us homesick for heaven. (I Peter 2:11)

I Peter 2:11

”Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.”

II Corinthians 5:8

”We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”

Henry Ward Beecher

“God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more.”




C. Suffering can make us homesick for heaven- It makes us aware that this earth is not our permanent home. (I Peter 2:11)

D. It can motivate and teach us how to pray. (Luke 11:1)

Luke 11:1

“One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

Luke 22:44

“And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the ground.”



E. It can prepare us for eternity. (Hebrews 11:13-16)

Hebrews 11:13-16

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own

Hebrews 11:13-16

15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.



E. It can prepare us for eternity. (Hebrews 11:13-16)

F. It develops character within us. (Romans 5:3-5)

Romans 5:3-5

3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

I Peter 1:3

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Robert Browning Hamilton

I walked a mile with Pleasure

She chatted all the way,

But left me none the wiser

For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow

And ne’er a word said she;

But oh, the things I learned from her

When Sorrow walked with me!

Steve Colbert

Stephen Colbert:

What she taught me is that the deliverance God offers you from pain is not no pain— it's that the pain is actually a gift. What's the option? God doesn't really give you another choice."

title: god’s megaphone text: job theme: god uses suffering to make his will known to us and others

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