6/23 Sermon - Our Father Answers Us From Out Of The Storm

Job 38:1-11

Did you hear about Job? Have you heard the news? God had blessed Job beyond imagination: He had dozens of servants, huge flocks, great wealth, and ten children. Plus, he was a humble, God-fearing man. But then his life got flipped upside down. He lost everything within a single day. All his servants killed, all his flocks stolen by bandits, his wealth gone, and all ten kids crushed to death when his house collapsed. For almost the entire book of Job, he keeps asking God one question: Why? Why did you do this to me?

This past May tornados tore through the town of Greenfield, Iowa and killed 5 people. I’m sure those families asked, why? Someone drives through a greenlight, gets t-boned by someone texting, dies and leaves behind a wife and children. They ask, why? Why God, did this happen? A wife, a mom suddenly learns she has cancer. Why, God, why has this happened?

Have you ever asked that question before? I think we all have. The death of a child or friend, cancer or sickness, a betrayal by someone you trust, someone takes advantage of you or abuses you, the loss of a job. I think many people carry a lot of anger towards God in their heart. Why, God? Why have you sent this to me? Why did this happen? Do you even care?

God answers Job, God answers us, but not in the way we’d expect or want. God doesn’t answer us with logical reasons. That wouldn’t really help us. A logical answer won’t bring your child back from the dead. A logical answer won’t take the cancer away. A logical answer won’t heal our sadness. A logical answer won’t take away the abuse in our past.

And the truth is that God is beyond us. That’s why God questions Job like he does. Job, did you design the earth? Do you control the power of the oceans? Job doesn’t. We don’t either. God’s reason, his logic, is so far beyond our own. He’s like a storm: unknowable, powerful, beyond us. Even if God did answer us, we probably couldn’t comprehend his answer.

But God gives us what we really want. When tragedy strikes our life, what do we want? We want someone to talk to us. We want someone to hug us. We want someone to be with us. We want someone to answer us.

That’s what God does with Job. Out of the raging, terrible, horrible storm, God answers Job. God didn’t have to! He could have ignored Job. There was no reason God should have answered Job. But he did. God answered Job. God cared about Job. God, the infinite designer of all creation, the one who controls the oceans and the seas... he answered Job.

Look at our Gospel reading: The rain battered the disciples. The waves rose over their ship. The storm raged around them! They thought they were going to drown! And they cried out to Jesus, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” What did Jesus do? He got up, answered them, and calmed the storm. Because he did care.

God cares about you. God answers you. Why does God do that? Why is there a relationship between you and God? Jesus. Jesus came as the perfect son of God and son of Man. He never doubted. He never questioned God. Even in the storm he slept content. That’s not what I do when the storms of life hit me. I worry. I doubt. But Jesus was perfect. He gives me that perfection. He took our sin, our doubt, out worry, and died for that sin on the cross.

Now, through Jesus, we do have a relationship with God. He is our Father. He cares about you! Whatever storms might rage in our life, whatever problems we might suffer, whatever terrible pains, we have this confidence: Our Father speaks to us, to you, out of the storms in your life. He cares about you. He is with you.  He answers you. We’ll does some of those answers in our 19-minute bible study

For now, let me end on this. Job was not perfect. He was a sinner, like you and like me. He probably took his anger at God too far. But Job did one thing right: He went to God. He questioned God. His friends didn’t do that! He listened for God’s answers. Everyone has problems. We all have them. None of us have ‘worse’ problems or ‘better’ problems. We all suffer. But in our problems, in our complaints, in our doubts, go to your Father. Listen to what he says. When we listen to him, when we trust in him, we find peace in our storms, just like Jesus slept in the boat during the storm. 

And during out 19-minute bible study, we’ll look at some of the beautiful, amazing, comforting ways that God answers us.

Questions from the 19 minute Bible study in church

1. God answers Job with pictures from creation. “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst from the womb? Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you give the horse it’s strength?”

Jesus does the same thing! “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”

What are some reasons these pictures are so comforting to us?

2. In my sermon, I said, “We can’t comprehend God’s answers. He is beyond us.” Cf. v. 1-3. Why might that make someone angry? How could that be a comfort?

  God used the terrible storm on Paul’s journey to accomplish his purpose. God tells us that he uses the trouble in our life to work for our good.

Agree/disagree: When tragedy strikes a brother or sister in Christ, we should immediately remind them that “God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8)

4. Paul says, “Men, you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete; then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss. But now I urge you to keep your courage.” And an angel tells Paul, “God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.”

Critique this statement. Why is it wrong? “Since God controls everything and works for my good, it doesn’t really matter what I, as a Christian, do.”

5. Paul says, “I have faith that it will happen just as he told me.” That is, Paul trusts that God will save all of them, despite losing the ship and cargo. We’re told earlier that everyone had given up hope of survival in the storm. “We final gave up all hope of being saved.”

Take some time and think of 1-2 passages that give you special comfort and hope when trouble comes.

6. In summary, here are some of the ways that God answers us out of the storm

- God points us to creation: the one who created the world and controls all things is your God and cares about you.

- God is beyond our thoughts. It’s impossible for us to understand him, beyond his Word given to us. But God still talks to us in his Word and promises to be with us.

- God promises to work all things, no matter how horrible, for our eternal good.

- God points us to Jesus. By him we have a relationship with our Father. By him we are saved. By him we hope for eternal paradise.

- God promises to be with us, to hear us, to answer us in our troubles, no matter how terrible they might be.