Job 1. I'll try to be brief in this session. I'll try to cut back some material. Instead of reading the full chapter, we'll read verses 18-22. I'm assuming you know that Job was a very godly man, perfect and upright, the Bible says in verse 1, feared God, prayed for his family, verse 5, and then I'm also assuming that you know the history of all the different people that came to him saying, Your cattle is destroyed, and your servants are slain, except I alone am escaped to tell thee." We'll pick up there at verse 18. While he was yet speaking, there came also another and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house. And behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men and they are dead. And I only am escaped alone to tell thee." Then I want to preach to you this morning on the next two verses. Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, and said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this, Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." Let's pray. Great God, we bow before Thee in this last address of this conference. and pray that thou wouldst apply to our souls Job's submission to providence, and that we would learn to bow under thee with the same kind of submissive humility, submissive grief, submissive faith, and submissive praise with which Job has bowed. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. During World War II, Dr. Cornelis Sietsema was a reformed minister in Amsterdam. In May of 1940, the Germans overran the Netherlands. It was a very difficult time for the church as the Nazis systematically brought all the forces and facets of society under their control. Dr. Sitzman was arrested in 1942 and they took him to the infamous concentration camp at Dachau. Sadly, his life ended there at the age of 46. Another minister in the same camp who reflected later on Dr. Sitzma's life in those last four years in the concentration camp said, it was full of courage and faith until the hour of his death he remained a faithful witness of Jesus Christ. Now what few people know is that for two years prior to Dr. Sitzma's arrest, he preached through the book of Job. And I wonder, Job's witness, did that prepare him to submit himself to God in what lay ahead? I think so. When you read this book, Sitzma says, That when we strive with God. We forget who God is. And we forget who we are. And that's the heart of submission. Remembering who God is. And remembering who I am. In fact, that's really the heart of all true religion. Martin Luther once said more than half of all true religion is simply letting God be God. in our lives. Well, here in the book of Job, we're confronted not so much with answers to the questions that swirl around our afflictions as we are with the one who is the answer. And we're called to place ourselves completely in his hands. Joseph Carroll, the Puritan, who preached some 300 sermons on the book of Job, published in 12 volumes and 5,000 pages, wrote, this book is written especially to teach us the sovereignty of God and the submission of the creature. And in Job we learn that the righteous God afflicts righteous people. We learn in Psalm 34, verse 19, many are the afflictions of the righteous. We learn in Hebrews 12, verse 7, Job is that grand Old Testament book in which we learn that as Christians we must endure chastenings and afflictions and trials trusting in God with the praises of the Lord on our lips, the fear of the Lord in our hearts, always praying for help and ever hoping for deliverance and final redemption. Without this submission, dear friends, we forfeit all enjoyment of comfort in Christ. We forfeit the peace of God and we live exposed to all the ups and downs of life in such a world as this. A Puritan John Owen put it this way, He that cannot live in an actual resignation of himself and all his concerns unto the sovereign pleasure of God can neither glorify God in anything, nor have one hour's solid peace in his own mind." You see, submission to God, submission to chastening, submission to afflictions, is the heartbeat of the Scriptures and the heartbeat of the book of Job in particular. This is the point of contest between God and Satan. Does Job fear God merely for the benefits he enjoys? Or does he fear God in integrity, loving Him in his heart, trusting Him at all times, delighting to do His will? Will Job renounce his faith when the afflictions roll in and curse or blaspheme God, if God permits Satan to rob him of all his wealth and his children and even his physical health? What about us this morning? What about you? Are you a fair-weather Christian, as Bunyan would call such people, who loves Christ only when the sun is shining and the birds are singing? Does the Word of God take deep root in your soul so that when troubles come, your faith won't wither and die? When you go to pray, is your great goal to change God to do what you want to have done? Or is your great goal that you would change to be submissive to what God wants done? You see at the bottom, the question of the book of Job is, are you using God to get things from Him, or are you submitting to God because of who He is? This is one of our greatest tests as Christians. So I invite you, in this short time we have this morning, to come with me and observe Job, and see how he handles this sore trial of his faith. we can learn from Him. And the great theme we have to learn from Job is this. When the godly suffer, their duty and their source of comfort is to submit with childlike faith to the sovereign dealings of God. And I believe in these two verses this morning. There are four major groups of lessons we need to learn. I want to bring them to you very briefly. First, lessons about submissive grief. Second, lessons about submissive humility. Third, lessons about submissive faith. Fourth, lessons about submissive praise. Submissive grief, humility, faith, and praise. Let's look then first at submissive grief. We see Job here expressing his overwhelming grief in a way that honors God. Verse 20 says, he rises from his seat, he tears his clothes, he shaves his head, he falls down to the ground, and he bows before God. Well, you know that tearing one's clothes and shaving one's head were signs of grief and mourning. And falling down and worshipping expresses Job's devotion to God. Bible commentator David Clines writes, Job falls to the ground not in despair, but in reverence. No doubt touching his face to the ground in a silent act of submission. You see, in expressing his grief and loss, Job does what is common to mankind. In demonstrating his faith and fear of God, he shows himself to be a true man of God. You must never think that the godly don't feel pain or are insulated somehow from pain. Love does not make us numb Love makes us feel all the more. It's a grave mistake when we think that submission means no tears, no breaking of the heart, no inward struggles, and no troubling questions. I had a lady in my congregation who lost her husband about two years after he died. She came to me one day and she said, You know, the Lord has given me so much submission that ever since my husband passed away, I've never missed him. I'm thinking. Something sounds wrong. That's not submission, you don't submit the things you don't miss. If you love someone and they die, you will miss them. And you'll feel the pain, you'll feel the pain more as a Christian sometimes than as a non Christian. And yet, you'll learn to bow as well. You see, Job did not tear his clothes and shave his head as a mere formality. He rent his mantle because his heart was torn to pieces. He cut his hair because his dreams for his children were all suddenly cut off. I've only got three children. I can't imagine having to bury all three in one day. Can you imagine burying ten children in one day and not even having one left? And then not even saying to God, Lord, couldn't you just have left me one? Calvin said, Job felt such anguishes as had wounded him even to the bottom of his soul. And if you read further in the book of Job, of course, What is it but an unfolding of the wrestlings with profound questions, contending with his friends, arguing his case, crying out to God, even cursing the day he was born, though he never cursed God? No, we don't find in Job the slightest hint of the rock-like indifference of the stoic or the blind fatalism of the Muslim. Though God later rebuked Job for trying to call the Lord to account, for the most part, Job's words received God's commendation. So the very fact of Job wrestling is not wicked or sinful. Joseph Carroll says we must avoid extremes in our sorrow. We must not despise the work of God by acting as though his discipline were a light thing, saying, if my children die, then let them die, nor must we fall into the other extreme, Carol says, of fainting or falling into despair and saying, if when my goods are taken away, my heart is taken away, and when my children die, my soul dies as well. Neither extreme is true submission we owe to God. Calvin puts it so well when he says, there's no virtue at all in going through suffering like a block of wood or as a stone. But rather, our aim must be to glorify God in the midst of all our miseries so that we are not swallowed up with sorrows, but frame ourselves to the goodwill of God. You know, Calvin had a wonderful marriage to a woman named Edelette. And he said of that woman that if he could go to eternity, if he had to go to eternity in anyone's shoes other than his own, he would go in her shoes. That's quite a compliment for someone you live with 24-7. When she died nine years later, Calvin's heart was broken. He wrote to one of his friends, I can scarcely go on because God has taken away the partner of my life who never hindered me, but only helped me. In all my work in the church and the kingdom of God. And yet Calvin added, but go on, I must. And so I force myself, he said, to go on. looking to the Lord. So he doesn't write these words. Don't be swallowed up with sorrows lightly. He knows what it means to have overwhelming sorrows. The loss of a very, very dear wife. We actually named one of our daughters, middle name, Edelette after Edelette Kelvin, because she's such a notable example. But you see, here's exactly Calvin's challenge and here's your challenge, my challenge. The great challenge in the midst of heavy affliction is to frame ourselves by the grace of the Spirit to be shaped and be molded and teachable so as to fit God's will and not our own. But that is just the whole essence of worship, isn't it? Mike Mason says, real worship has less to do with offering sacrifices than with being a sacrifice ourselves. Job feared God in the days of prosperity. And Job feared God in the time of grief. He fell down and worshipped. He didn't pretend to be strong. He didn't put a grin on his face and say, God will help me through. But he submitted. He didn't stand up and whistle a happy tune with a smile on his face like many Christians pretend to do now when they're in the midst of trial, trying to drown it out. He didn't put on a mask of superficial happiness to cover up pain. But out of the depths of sorrow, he worshipped God. Actually, our text describes his body language, his outward actions. The body language expressed what lived within. Joseph Carroll says internal worship is to love God, to fear God, and to trust upon him. And so Job did, even with a broken heart. But of course, Job here really finds his highest expression in Jesus Christ. It's written that Jesus wept, shortest verse of the Bible. Christ was a man of sorrows, not a man of steel. Jesus had a soft and tender heart. Jesus was deeply moved with compassion and his own pain and the pain of others. He suffered intensely under the burden of your sins, dear believer, bearing them all the way to his death. Looking into that cup, he was about to drink. He staggered. He fell to the ground in Gethsemane, dying on the inside, even before they began to shed his blood. And yet, even as he suffered under the crushing burden of our sin and misery, he countered his grief with perfect submission to his father. Father, Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Save me, Father, from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify Thy name." Jesus came to that place where He said, as it were, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee. Take this cup away from Me, nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt. So you see, we cannot minimize either side of this paradox of suffering and submission. On the one hand, Jesus says, my soul is troubled and take this cup from me. Father, how long? The weight of sin is destroying me. And on the other hand, he says, Father, glorify thy name and thy will be done. They both live inside of him at the same time. See from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Christ submits himself to the will of God. Christ perseveres in his suffering here. Salvation is accomplished here. Divine glory beams forth to illuminate a benighted world. Here. Sinners are saved by Jesus Christ. The gospel of our redemption, dear believers, revolves around sorrowful submission. First, Christ's submission. And then ours. For ours would not be possible without Christ. The only way Job could submit this way is because of the coming Messiah. Who would submit perfectly to God. By nature, you and I don't have one grain within us of real, genuine, heartfelt, childlike, believing submission in the midst of sorrow and grief. It's all grace. And it all comes to us from the Lord Jesus Christ. But how is it possible? How is it possible to honestly grieve in brokenness and yet simultaneously bow and worship God? Well, the answer to that is in what we see next. Secondly, submissive humility. We see Job humbling himself before God and man. He says, verse 21, now naked came I out of my mother's womb and naked shall I return thither. Job shows us here a profound sense of self-knowledge, doesn't he? He visibly casts himself on the ground. He takes a low position of a servant, a position that cleaves to the ground. He says, this is where I belong, near to the dust from which I have been taken. And he doesn't only show this visibly, but he says it explicitly. Naked came I out of my mother's womb. Naked shall I return dithered. Job feels his utter nakedness before God. The utter destitution of his beginning and his end. The last part of this statement may surprise you. naked shall I return to them." We know that no one returns like a naked baby to his mother's womb. John 3 verse 4 tells us that. We are not born a second time from our mother's womb. But Job is speaking metaphorically here. He's identifying his mother's womb with the earth from which man was first taken. He's affirming that we come from the dust and will return to the dust in fulfillment of the penal curse imposed upon Adam after the fall. And so Job acknowledges his humble position as a mere creature subject to mortality. This is a man. He was the greatest man in the East. People bowed in front of him. And in one day, everything is taken away. But he's a man with so much self-knowledge, so much humility, that he doesn't say, Oh God, why are you doing this to me when I was the one who was admired by everyone? But he bows in the dust. I'm subject to mortality, he says. Naked shall I leave this world. I can't take anything with me. Ecclesiastes 5.14 As the rich man came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labor, which he may carry away in his hand. 1 Timothy 6.7 We brought nothing into this world, and it certainly can carry nothing out. This is the vanity or futility of our fallen condition in Adam. Apart from grace, life is nothing But a brief vapor and sin has doomed us to a brief, fleeting, insubstantial existence. Man is light to vanity. His days are a shadow that passeth away." How easy it is to forget that we came into the world with nothing. Paul says, "...who maketh thee to differ from another? What hast thou that thou hast not received? Now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?" You see, we have no right and no power to hold on to the things we accumulate while we live. Calvin puts it this way, I came naked out of my mother's womb and has been God's pleasure to enrich me for a time, but now it is his will, Job is saying, that I will go ahead and start naked again. We have nothing of ourselves, nothing to claim, nothing to retain. It's all grace. By which we live, it's grace by which we die. It's my grace by which will be received into glory. And so we should accept the loss of earthly treasures and riches with humility. But you see, it's just this that's so hard for us to do because we're so prone to put to fixate ourselves on earthly things, and we hold them with a tenacious grip. Malcolm Ross was talking about holding on to the Word with both hands. By nature, we hold on to the things of this world with both hands. So Kelvin says, if God gives us leave to joy two or three days in any benefit of His in this world, we think He does us great wrong if He takes it from us again. We think that God robs us as if we were the rightful owners and God were a thief and we forget that God is the one who gave them to us in the first place. But you see, Job recognizes that here. That's true submission. Submissive humility. He recognizes his vulnerability, his helplessness. Naked came I out of my mother's womb. If you're a father, you will remember standing beside your wife, the birth of every child you've ever received. I can recall like a snapshot all three of my children being born. That moment of birth is just so awesome. But there's that little baby brought up into my wife's arms and that Incredible bonding takes place between my wife and my child. I'm like standing outside, you may know that, outside the inner circle for a moment, and you see this bonding. And all this child has, in its total helplessness, is this bonding experience. The child can't feed himself, the child can't clothe himself, the child can't defend himself, the child has nothing. and is nothing with respect to power and ability or nobility or knowledge. The child is completely dependent upon the love of the mother. That is what Job realizes. I am completely dependent on God. The love of God. I came into this world helpless, exposed to danger, unable to defend myself. But even now, when everything is taken away, And I'm going to go the way of all flesh. I'm completely dependent again. Helplessness characterizes us. And the realization of it when sanctified by grace produces humility. Yes, we usually try to cover up our helplessness. We usually try to talk about our self-reliance. We've got everything under control. But we don't. We had two members in our church die last week. One of them was actually my uncle. There I was an hour before he died. I was sitting beside him, the family, individual. It was tough. Tough to see him go the way of all flesh. The last enemy is death. Couldn't reach him. can reach either one of them. Talk, you pray, but no response. We die naked. We return to the dust. May I ask you this morning, have you ever humbled yourself to the point of realizing you have no right and no power to hold on to anything in this world? Have you ever looked around at your life? At your car? At your furniture? At your wife? At your children? At your home? At everything you own? And you had to say, this all belongs to You, O Lord. Not a single thing of it. Do I deserve? Nothing. My dad came out of heart surgery one time. I visited him and he was crying. I said, Dad, why are you crying? What's what's the matter? I always said. A nurse just came into the room and she took an ice cube and she just moistened my lips. And after she walked out, I started thinking. The rich man in hell could have one drop of water to cool his tongue. I did not deserve that moisture from the ice cube. You see, when we're really humble, every bite of food we take, every time we put on a piece of clothing, every smile we receive from our spouse, is a gift of God. We really have not deserved anything. In fact, we've deserved only death and hell. When we realize that, you see, we're brought into submissive humility. Sometime ago I was in Floor 1, Butterworth Hospital, Grand Rapids, Michigan, going up to Floor 7 on an elevator. You know how people are really quiet on elevators. I don't know if that's true in the South, but everybody stands there, nobody says a word to each other, like somehow we're isolated in the elevator, cut off from the rest of the human race. I could never understand that. I always talk to people in elevators. I mean, this is a time to evangelize, right? I had a minute and a quarter to say something to this woman who came I'm floor one with me. We've gone up six floors and she was captive. She couldn't get off. So I said to her right away, I said, you know, great weather out today. Oh, yes, she said. I said, good thing we're not in control of it. She said, that's right. I said, yeah, it's a good thing the Lord is in control of everything. And she said, you got that right. My mama always told me anything above ground is the mercy of the Lord. Whoa, she's evangelizing me. That was great. That was outstanding theology. But it was also outstanding practical Christian religion. Anything above ground is the mercy of the Lord. And once we realize that, you see, we bow in submissive humility for the smallest things and we thank the Lord. Boys and girls, some some of you are here and we're happy to see you. But I want to tell you something. When I was 10 years old, I was pretty upset with my mother one day because. I was trying to feel sorry for myself about something, trying to get my mother to feel sorry for me, and she wasn't she wasn't doing what I wanted her to do. And she finally said, you know, it could be worse. It could be worse. And she said that so many times in my life that I got a little bit angry with her. And I said, Mom, I said, you always say, no matter what I say, you always say, it could be worse. And she said, that's right. It could be worse. And I said, but you could just say that about everything. She said, that's right. Could be worse. If you knew what you deserved, you would bow. Say, Lord, why haven't you done so much more? Why haven't you taken away everything? Why haven't you destroyed me? You destroyed me long ago. I don't deserve to be here. Naked. I came into the world naked. I shall go out. But then thirdly, Job has this wonderful, submissive faith as well. He goes on to say at the end of verse 21, the Lord gave and the Lord had taken away. You see, he begins to speak of the Lord, he acknowledges Jehovah God, the Yahweh, the I am that I am the eternal, unchanging, ever faithful covenant, keeping God he has given and he has taken away. And so what Job does, which is amazing, because when you get really afflicted, you can't see anywhere beyond yourself, can you? Most of the time, you can't see another person's troubles. You can't even think another thought about another person. You're so consumed with your own troubles. But Job rises above himself and past all the secondary causes of all the enemies that came and did all these terrible things to his possessions and to his children and whatnot. And he, looking past The rampaging enemies, the lightning blasts, the deadly windstorms, and Satan himself, he says, I look to the primary cause. He has given and he has taken away. That is faith, my friends. When something happens to you, the very first thing you need to understand is God has done it. It is the Lord. The first step of true submission is to say it is the Lord and to say that by faith. the Lord gave. Calvin points out that when the Lord gives us something, it is actually still his. He gives it to us. He even gives us ownership of things. But we're only stewards here and we have to give an account of everything. That's true of our bodies. I have to give an account of everything I do with my eyes. That's a frightening thing. My hands, my feet. my mind, my soul, my affections. But I also have to give him account of everything he's given to me. And you see, the reality is that everything we have is a gift of God and it remains his rightful property to dispose of as he deems fitting. And that's true of my health, that's true of my breath, it's true of my children, It's true of our spouses. It's true of our occupations. The Lord gave and the Lord has the right to take it away. So how does faith in God's sovereignty help us to submit to God? Well, Joseph Carroll says. Faith is a sword that kills four monsters in our sinful heart, discontent, envy, pride, and contempt. Discontent, envy, pride and contempt. You see, when we see the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, God uses through faith as we trust in Him, the great giver and the rightful remover, God gives us to have those enemies destroyed. And so Job bows down before God. His discontent, his envy, his pride, his contempt, all destroyed. Verse 22 says, In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly. That's amazing. That's grace. The Lord has taken away. Job was right to say, even when the purpose of God was accomplished through the agency of Satan, The powers of nature. The violence of sinful man. It was ultimately the Lord who was taken away. And you know, it's quite a step to reach in the life of faith to really believe that He has the right to take everything away from me. That He gave it in the first place. And now he has the right to take it away because he is Lord. And there is no other. Job has to learn that even of his 10 children. Deep down, deep down, we have to learn that those 10 children, or our three children, or your five children, or four children, they're not, they're not yours. They're yours, but they're not yours. They belong to God. They're just really loaned to you. for time to raise for His glory. And if it's His sovereign will to take them home before He takes you home, and you have that unnatural burden to have to bury one or more of your children, it's His sovereign prerogative. I know that's difficult. I know it's impossible by nature. I know that by nature we want to raise our fist and resentment and anger Against these acts of God. But faith. Learns to say submissive faith. The Lord is given. And the Lord. Is taken away. And then the fourth and final step, which is the most amazing of all, is Job's submissive praise. He actually triumphs in adoration. This is overwhelming. That spot on the dirt where a broken man has fallen down is turned into a sanctuary. It's turned into a place of worship. He cries out, Blessed be the name of the Lord. It's an altar for the sacrifice of praise. This is the language of angels that sing the praise of God before the throne of God. Holy, holy, holy, blessed be the name of the Lord. This is what Job says. His face is in the dirt and his children are dead and all his possessions are wiped away. This is astounding. The submission of Job is not resignation to impersonal fate. It's not resignation to the arbitrary decree of a remote and uncaring Allah or some kind of God. When He says, Blessed be the name of Yahweh, Jehovah, the Covenant-keeping God, the Lord, He confesses that He is worthy of all His praise. His outward and public praise, His inward and spiritual praise. And praise, my friends, is the antonym of murmuring and complaining. Thomas Manson put it so well. Murmuring is an anti-providence. Murmuring, all murmuring, is a renouncing of God's sovereignty. As if we could correct His ways and as if we could somehow do better and fitter for the government of the world than He could. Maybe Thomas Watson said it even better. He said, our murmuring is the devil's music. Satan likes nothing more, you see, than to get men to curse God, even if we do it under our breath or in our hearts. And that was Satan's whole goal with Job, wasn't it? If you let me touch him, if you let me touch his property or his children, he'll curse you. But how could Job? Isn't this superhuman? How could Job bless God for his holy and perfect character when all his circumstances seemed to shout that God was unfair? How can you come back and worship God as your greatest friend when He seems to come out against you as your greatest enemy? A couple years ago, one day I was in a park in London, England, I was sitting there meditating about the address I had to give in a couple hours and into the park walks this young woman with a, I'm not sure what kind of contraption she had in her hand, but there was a hard ball on the end of it and something she could release with her hand and she had a big dog with her and she would take that thing and whip it and hit the dog right in the side I was like, oh, like this dog's gonna come back and bite her, you know, I mean, he's gonna take revenge and the dog would just get the ball and run back to her and hand it to her and he'd run away and she'd do the same old thing again. And I started thinking, you know, that's, that's what we ought to do when God strikes us with his blows. We ought to pick up that ball and bring it right back to him. Trust Him. This woman was amazing, but the dog was even more amazing. Because the dog trusted her just implicitly. But a dog does it only out of habit, you see. The Lord wants us to trust Him from the depths of our soul. From a will that is bent toward Him. From affections that find their home in Him. From a soul that loves Him. How is it possible? Well, it's only possible because of the Gospel. Because of Jesus Christ, who was bent toward His Father, no matter how much His Father struck Him. My God! My God! He said. Why hast Thou forsaken Me? He said, My God! For Christ's sake, Christ gives His people strength through the Savior to trust in the Father. And in true submission, true submissive praise, we learn to trust our father more than we trust ourselves, trust his will more than we trust our own will, so that when affliction comes, we learn to say, father, I don't understand it. I don't know the why or the wherefore, but it's OK. I trust you. I have an elder right now who Oh, it's, you know, humanly speaking, it's very pitiful. He was working on a barn and a piece of metal fell off, a heavy metal thing, and it struck him in the knee and crushed him and crushed his knee into a thousand pieces and two surgeons would not even think of doing surgery. They thought they'd have to amputate the leg and finally another surgeon did it and it seemed to work and he was limping around for about six months. He was amazing the whole time. He was just filled with love for God and his father and saying this is all God's will. He was spiritually very, very mature. It was great to watch that. And then about three months ago, he got infection in that knee while he was still recuperating. Had to go back in, take the kneecap off, had to do everything all over again. Had to get another new knee. Everyone felt so sorry for him. But he said, no, it's my father's will. I don't understand it, but I trust him. He makes no mistakes for me. And now he's coming back to church again. He's limping and going around. Every step he takes, I just keep thinking, oh, what faith God has put in this man. Isn't it wonderful? And last week, he got an infection again. What's he going to say now? My father's good, he says. My father's good. He knows what he's doing. And last night from the airport, just before I arrived here, I gave a call. How is George doing? His wife says he can't talk to you now. I said, what do you mean he can't talk to me? Well, she said, the medication he's taking to offset the inflammation, the antibiotics in his knee. He's had an allergic reaction to it. And he's laying in bed and he can't talk. His whole body from head to toe is nothing but hives. And he's weak. And she said, actually, it's so providential you called because she said, I I was just thinking, I'm going to lose. I'm going to lose him today. God help me. I'm going to lose him. So how's George doing? Oh, she said, no problem there. He said, this is all all my father's will. Oh, George, Lord, help me, help me to be half as holy, half as holy as you are, I thought. How is it possible to respond that way? The world doesn't even begin to understand this. This is all grace, my friends, because Jesus said, not my will, but Thine, because He drank the cup to the bottom bitter drinks. He'll give you the strength to submit to His every providence, no matter how painful they may be. So when pain comes, and when questions arise, and when things are overwhelming, when we have more unanswered riddles in our lives than answered questions, And we're just distraught with everything around us. What is the answer? It is God himself. And that's how we can praise him. Isn't that the answer to the book of Job? You know, God never really answered all Job's questions directly, did he? The answer was just God. Chapter 38 through 41, God gives Job his answers. And the answer is nothing about Job. You see the Leviathan out there, Job? It's all about God, that God is God and God is great. Job says, I've heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now might I see thee. Wherefore, I repent in dust and ashes. I submit myself wholly to thee, Lord. What's the answer to 9-11? We just commemorate the 10th anniversary. The answer isn't that God wasn't there. The answer is that God was there and God is there. The answer is God himself. The answer is America. Return to God and submit yourself and bow under the Almighty. Referring to Hitler's death camps, one embittered survivor said, God died for me. at Auschwitz. But that's not what Job said. His wife said, curse God and die. Job said, shall we receive good at the hands of the Lord? Shall we not receive evil? The answer is not that God is dead. The answer is God is alive. The answer is God will help us. The answer is Jesus Christ and his submission. And when we end in Christ, you see, then sinister praise can rise from the pit of brokenness. Then Paul and Silas can sing in the inner prison. Then when we are lying in the dust, the sweet fragrance of the contents of the broken vessels of grace pour out themselves upon God and upon the Lord Jesus Christ. You say, but I don't find this worship, this kind of worship in myself. I know I should be thankful. I know I should be thankful even in adversity, but I don't have it. It's not in me. But it's in Christ, my friend. If you can't find it in yourself, go find it in Christ. He's the perfect worshipper. He's the master of assemblies. He's the great worship leader. His infinite compassion can reach into your heart with His infinite consolations. He can activate your praise. He can energize your praise. He can sanctify your praise. He can transform the burden of your sorrows. He can teach you to triumph over adversity through praise. Go to Him. Go to Him. As you go to Him, and let me conclude with this, Remember four things. And do these by the grace of the Spirit. The Spirit will help you do them. Number one, when you submit to the Sovereign God, you say it is the Lord. You acknowledge God. That's step one. Acknowledge God. Step two, you justify. You say it's right. It's right. In fact, I deserve worse, like my mother would say. And three, you approve of Him. You say it is well. It is well. Blessed be the name of the Lord. The fourth and the deepest step of submission, you cling to Him. You cling to Him. You say, but Job, though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him. So this is the kind of submission you need. How do you handle affliction in God's providence? You focus on Jesus Christ objectively outside of you, as we heard last night, but you also bow subjectively inwardly in your soul. by acknowledging God, justifying God, approving God, clinging to God in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. And in this way you will discover the abundant comfort that flows from heartfelt submission to God's will and to God's providential afflictions. Let's pray. Great God of heaven, we thank you so much for this time we've had together at this conference, and we pray thy benediction upon every address, every. Portion of fellowship we've had with one another. Bless also the Q&A now if there's still time left for a little of it, but Lord, if not, we commend that also to thy providence, but we pray go with us from this place and use this conference to help us to bow under Thy providence and to appreciate all the areas of providence that as they work together, like the backs of our watch, with the turning of all the wheels, so that every tick of our life goes according to Thy plan. We pray that in terms of the Bible, its preservation, its translation. We pray that in terms of our own lives. We pray that in terms of every event that happens to us, may we learn to say, O my soul, why art thou sad and disquieted within thee? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my confidence in my God. O my soul, let God be God. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.