From Job to Jesus: Seeing Suffering Through Redemption

And I think that that perspective is something that gives me a little bit of hope to live for because I think that if a lot of people who call themselves Christian in this world actually lived by that and started to encounter the sin and the suffering and the evil in this world with that lens that Jesus did, I think a lot of people would come to know that same person. Because God doesn't give us a why to the answer of suffering, he gives us a person. And that person isn't just for us, it's for every single person in our life, those people that we might feel inclined to be angry at. Jesus wants to be that person as an answer for them too. [01:12:23] (41 seconds)  #JesusIsEnough

They hung me here, but it's not their fault. It is that snake's fault. It's that accuser's fault. Forgive them. I'm repenting on their behalf, and I'm interceding for them, and just like you accepted Job's prayer, accept mine. And guess what he has? That's why at the end of the gospel of Luke, that Jesus summarizes his entire ministry with these words. The son or the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins shall be preached in his name beginning in Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth. Does it look like that? [01:08:22] (39 seconds)  #RepentanceAndResurrection

That's the one that Elihu, that that God uses in this story in order to give Job this reframed perspective of it's not about you. I absolutely adore you. I love you. I'm the one who declared you to be my servant in the first place. There is nothing that I wouldn't do for you. And I've been with you in the midst of this suffering, in the midst of this struggle. But also, dude, you're not that big of a deal. [01:00:56] (23 seconds)  #BelovedYetHumble

See, our problem with evil and suffering, when we look at an evil situation or we look at something that we're going through ourselves, we look at something at our job that we feel is not fair and unjust and undeserved, We look at whatever it is that's happening to us and we say, that's not fair inside of me. That's not fair to me. We get focused on ourselves. And Job, he fell into that perspective of what Martin Luther called Incervates Insa, man turned in on himself. A perspective where you only look inside. [00:58:16] (34 seconds)  #BeyondSelfFocus

No. There are so many times that our bible says that Jesus got angry. There's a time that this person comes up to him with a skin ailment and and and Mark, the gospel writer, literally says, Jesus was angry, and I am certain he wasn't angry at God. And he wasn't angry at that person. He was angry at that snake from the beginning of the story. He was angry at the hostile one who asked God to tempt his righteous and blameless servant. He was angry at that guy that he met in the wilderness. He was angry at that person that plagues you and me with all of the evil and the suffering in this world. [01:06:15] (35 seconds)  #RighteousAnger

And then he goes into the temple and he says, stop turning my father's house into a den of robbers. And for so long, I read that and I thought that he was mad at those people that were in that temple. But I am positive he wasn't. He was mad at that snake. Because three days later, he goes and he's hung on the cross, and from the words of that cross, he looks at those very people that he said that claim to. Of stop turning my father's house into this den of thieves. And he says, father, forgive them. [01:07:54] (28 seconds)  #CleansingAndForgiveness

Because the perspective that Jesus had is that this world is hard and there's suffering in it because of that snake, because of that hostile one. And I've come and I've overcome it. It's not going to be easy to be a Christian. It's why that gospel reading that we heard today about being a disciple, it sounds hard. It's bad news before it's good news. Life is going to be hard as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus. That means little Christ to be a Christian. If this was his path, according to him, it's going to be yours. But the good news follows that in that that word that Jesus spoke from the cross of forgive them for they don't know what they're doing is not the only word that he spoke from the cross. [01:10:25] (45 seconds)  #CostOfDiscipleship

And I've seen a lot of unjust and undeserved suffering in my friends, in my family, in my own life, by people that I could never even comprehend knowing in this world, that I just look and I cry out and I'm like, why is it this way? And it's really easy to fall into the trap that Job fell into and think that I'm the main character in my story. And it's really easy to fall into the trap that so many of those Pharisees fell into and point my finger at other people and say, they have it wrong. I'm mad at them. That's not the perspective that Jesus had. [01:09:43] (36 seconds)  #NotTheMainCharacter