as a six and seven and eight year old boy to feel conviction in my heart about what is being preached. So I know that each one of these little ones, and then I definitely know their moms, dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents. I know they definitely know how to listen to 20 minutes of preaching. I know they do, because I was where they were. And I pray that you take what we're about to say and use it for your honor and glory. I wanna thank you for putting me in this place, for all the hard work that's happened to make this meeting take place tonight. Now God, earn the reward of your son's suffering, take it, declare a holy war on our hearts and minds tonight, and I pray that you do so in the name of Jesus our Lord. Amen. So, I come... It's about July of 2006 and I'm mostly concerned about my son, who at the time is about seven years old. And he's reckless, always doing dangerous stuff. How many of you know what it is to have a kid you can't keep out of trouble? I know what it is. And then on top of that, I don't know if you've been in a situation where you're pretty sure that you're the hawk in the family that watches the kids the closest. Probably not true, but it's how I felt. And I remember getting the call from my wife telling me that our son had had a terrible accident and that his leg was torn open below the knee all the way to the fascia over the bone. I'm 7, 8,000 miles away, and I am a praying man. I'm a Christian. I'm not a pastor. At that time, I'm a member of Northview Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Kentucky. Fayetteville, North Carolina. I know where Fayetteville is. It's hot. And I remember going outside of my shop. I was an electrician. I worked at 11,000 volt system in Western Iraq. Made sure that everyone had air conditioning. How many of you appreciate that today? And I remember tearing open that shop door and I remember saying to the Lord, I thought that I could trust you. I thought you were big enough and powerful enough to keep my family safe when I was away from them. I thought you loved me enough to look after my family when I was away. Now, what I mean to tell you, and I'm getting to it, what I mean to tell you is if you would have said, but God is omnipresent, I would have said, a lot of good that did me. He was in Fayetteville on my friend's farm, a green beret's farm, who went home early that I was serving with, named Tim, and that man had him out on the farm. And my son was enjoying himself in that barn, and he stepped down after looking in a bird cage and tore his leg open on a rusty bolt. And I remember thinking, oh, God's everywhere. A lot of good that did me. I'm talking about I'm in my bachelor's degree program to become a chaplain in the army. I plan to be a pastor again one day. I was a pastor in my early 20s. I'm studying the Bible every day, and I'm bothered about what I know about God. If you would have told me He's not only omnipresent, He's omnipotent. He can do all things, I would have said, I know. And that's what bothers me about Him. He could have kept my son from being injured and he didn't. I've always been told if you live a clean life, there's a good chance God will keep calamities from happening to you. And I believe that partial lie and I believed it 7,000 miles away from home where I couldn't do anything about my son's injury. All I could do is be upset that a God who was in Fayetteville and a God who could have kept my son from being injured didn't. If you would have told me, not only is God omnipotent and omnipresent, but He's omniscient, meaning He knows everything, I would have said, I know. And that's what bothers me. He knew that my son was in danger and didn't keep him safe. If you would have said, but God is all loving, I would have said, I don't feel it right now. I don't feel that he's omnibenevolent because I don't know how a God of love who is everywhere, knows everything, and is all powerful can allow my son to go through deep, deep injury And I can't do a thing about it. Seven or eight thousand miles from home and I'm making everyone else's life easy. I'm keeping Iraqi little boys safe. Where's the God that I love? Keeping my little boys safe. Now I want to tell you, you may not think much of me tonight by telling you this, but I would have said I was a God lover. I would have told you that I was a believer in Jesus Christ. And I had a major crisis of faith that day in Western Iraq. I knew all that I was supposed to know about the Bible. I thought. But I want to read to you out of the book of Job, chapter number 9, verse number 1. Job answered his friends and said, I know what you're saying is true. How can a man be righteous before God? If one wished to contend with Him, he could not answer Him one time out of a thousand. Listen to what Job describes God. You were to say, Job, God is everywhere. He would have said, Amen. Job, God knows everything. Amen. Job, God, is all-powerful. And He could have kept you out of losing your 10 children in chapter 1. Could have kept you from losing your livestock in chapter 1. Could have kept you from losing your health in chapter 2. Could have stopped you from losing your home in chapter 2. Could have stopped you from losing your wife's trust in chapter 2. Could have kept you from having mouthy friends in chapter 2. Job would have said, I know that all-powerful God. Job, he's all-loving. Job would have said, I'll probably have to take your word for it today, brethren. Because, don't feel it much, but here's what Job said in Job chapter 9, verse 4. God is wise in heart, mighty in strength. God is wise. I wish I was taught that when I was as young as you. That not only is God all powerful, and God is all present, and God is all knowing, and God is all loving, but God is all wise. It says so in the book of 1 Timothy chapter 1, he's the only wise God. It says in Jude verse 25, he's the only wise God. We would say that he's all wise, which means that there is obviously, given this, now think about this, apparently in the life of my son, Jake Sturm, on that July 2005, Apparently, there was no better outcome to what happened than what did happen. And I take that because Prophet Job, Patriarch Job, Father Job said, he has a wise heart. I'm talking to people under this tent and out who are hearing this through the speakers, out here by the grill, out here by the cars. You believe in a God that's everywhere, and that's what irritates you. You believe in a God that knows everything, and that's what bothers you. You believe in a God that's all-powerful, and that's what has you perplexed. You believe in a God that's all-loving, at least in theory. But tonight, you don't feel quite loved. You got lots of questions. You don't know why God did what he did. Answer, because everything that he says yes to in our lives is the absolute best thing that could have been done. You say, I don't believe that. What is your recourse? To believe in a God of your own imagination? To construct your own God up here that you can believe in only to find out He's only real up here and will never be there when you die? That God will disappoint you because He doesn't exist. The only God, the God that exists, is the one who is everywhere, all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving and all-wise. He does the absolute right thing all the time. And I've got to tell you, this absolutely messes up my preaching of the book of Job. Because in my early years, I would have said the reason God allowed to happen to Job, what happened to Job, is so that He could bless him at the end of the book. But God doesn't have to take Job's camels. for Job to be blessed at the end of the book. God could have done anything and out of all the possibilities that God chose for Job, the one that happened was the one that was all wise. because he's wise in heart. Have you considered, no matter if you're a believer in Jesus or a follower of Christ or a non-believer, you might say you're an agnostic, a seeker, has it ever occurred to you that the God we're talking about is not only all those things, but when you go back to your home, your car, your trailer, wherever it is, You have an all-wise God that says yes to everything in your life. And frankly, God could have allowed that all things that happen so that we could somehow be made better. God could have, because He's all-powerful, done it a different way. But here's the thing. God is tethered by His own wise counsel. According to the book of Ephesians chapter number 1 and verse number 11, it may not have felt like the best thing for you to go through what you're going through, but God allowed all things to happen, all things to pass through His hands, and as old Pastor Spurgeon would say, the waters of life flow in the channels dug by our eternal God's big fingers. You see, God is all-wise, and if God is all-powerful and all-loving, then why could He not accomplish the saving of Jacob's house without putting Joseph in prison? Answer? Because it wasn't the wisest thing to do. Why did God allow Ruth to have to wander all the way to Moab? Or rather to have Naomi wander all the way to Moab for her boys to marry two girls and then them boys die and her husband die and she has no husband and no sons and now Ruth takes a trip back to Bethlehem. Wasn't there a shorter, easier, more loving, more omnipresent, more omniscient, more all-powerful way to do it? Maybe, but there wasn't a wiser way to do it. You know, we think about David and Bathsheba, and I've heard people say the reason that we had to have David's fall with Bathsheba, after all, an all-powerful God could have had her bathe in the house. An all-powerful God could have put David in the battlefield. An all-powerful God could have done anything. And to simply say, well, we needed David's fall so that we could have Psalm 51, no, we didn't. But apparently it was the wisest thing to do. That's the God that we serve. That's the God we're confronted with. We're talking about a God who didn't have to tell Hosea, go marry a woman of the street who makes her money and feeds her children by selling her body to men. He didn't have to do that. But in the Bible, he did do that. Is it because he's omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, omnibenevolent? No, it's because he has a wise heart. Everything God orders it's the right thing to do and and one thing is certain When you look in our passage in verse number 10 and you see in Job chapter number 9 in verse number 10 he does great things past finding out and wonders without number and And frankly, this is the verse that every believer under the tent needs to remember, and that is that everything that God allows to pass through His hands into our lives works out together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. unsafe friend, whoever you are, church member or not. If you live here in this park or you don't, if you drove in today or walked over today, listen carefully. One of the greatest motivations you can have for being safe tonight is that all of your heartaches will make sense eventually. because He works all things together for good to those who love God. All those marvelous things, verse 10, that He does. But the person who dies without Jesus, one of the greatest horrors of all eternity will be that you will always wonder, why did I go through those things on planet Earth? So a loving and a powerful God allows some to carry out suicide. Why? Because He couldn't stop them? He allows others to abandon their family because he couldn't stop them or he didn't know what would happen or he didn't know the terrible thing that would start in the family tree. He allows others to get addicted to methamphetamines or THC or any other kind of legal drug. He allows them to get addicted when he can keep them from being addicted. Why? Is it because he's not all-powerful or all-loving or omnipresent or just doesn't like you? No. He allows others to get injured while they're playing athletics and others to play 20 years and never get injured. He allows some to get fired from their jobs and others, they're absolute loafers and they get to keep their job for 30, 40 years. Why? Is it because he can't make anything else happen? It's because he allows only the wisest things to happen to you. He's wise in heart. Why does He allow some to be wounded in war, others to be killed in war, others to have their whole affliction in lifetimes of absolute delirium and confusion? Why? If He's a loving and a powerful God, the answer is in our text tonight, Job 9.4. I hope you never forget it. He has a wise heart. Our God, who has a wise heart, allows tsunamis and slums, poverty and riches, chance it seems, tornadoes, floods, sickness, terminal disease, birth defects, sinful propensities in your genetics, to where you can blame how you are on how you were born. He allows sinful propensities passed down from your fathers, persecution of his people, sick air, dirty water. He allows all these things. Why? Because he's not loving? No, we could have that conversation. Why? Because he's not all-powerful? No, we could have that conversation. ultimately because he has a wise heart. If you were to go with me over to the New Testament, in the Gospel of Luke, and you were to find in Luke 7 that you have Jesus meeting a woman whose only son is dead, and we could say God knows how you feel. And there was a time, friends, there was a time when knowing that God knew how I felt really mattered to me. Round about 2006, it just made me mad. Knowing that God knew how I felt and didn't exercise that big bicep of his to help me made me furious. It didn't make me want him more. Knowing that he knew how I felt because his only son died didn't do anything for me other than infuriate me because a loving God who could have stopped my calamity chose not to and seems to give better favor to others than to me. How come other people get the more attractiveness. And other people, the more athleticism. And other people, the better job luck. And other people, why don't I ever luck out, it seems? And I would get angry if someone said the Lord understands the woman in Luke chapter 8, or the man, Jairus, whose only daughter had died. Or the man in chapter 9, whose only son was possessed with a demon. I would say, yeah, great. God knows how it feels to have his only son killed. And all that did was make me ask more questions. Why? And the answer is much older than even the story that we've read. It is as old as Job. He said, because God has a very wise heart. If I thought anything different tonight, I would think that we have a God who is all-powerful but cannot possibly be all-loving because I don't know any all-loving gods who are disinterested. But I come bringing you good news tonight that our God is more interested in you than you are in yourself. I would not think much of a God who says He loves me so much but is not empathetic and is crushed with my feelings and my pains and my sufferings and my struggles. I'm not even sure I would accept His Son as my personal Savior if I didn't have more to the puzzle. And I'm thankful in this passage tonight I find out that he has a wise heart. There's nothing better than what he says yes to in your life. We could talk about personal choice, but no one in here wants a second sermon. We just want to talk a minute about how much sense does it make for an all-loving God, an all-powerful God, an all-present God, an all-powerful God to not find out some other plan to redeem you and I, to pay for our sins, How is it even half-wise to kill your own son who did no sin, but died for the sins of a bunch of thankless rebels like Bill Stern? It must be that this all-wise God knew that this was the wise thing to do. And so he provides his son to die for people that are not wise. Not everywhere, not all the time, not all knowing, always presuming that we know better than God. And if we could, we would dethrone him. We would tell him how he could do his better, his job better. I doubt he's all loving because if he was, he'd be just like me. He would do favors for everyone. But the problem is God knows what's best for you even better than you do. He knows what's best for me even better than I do. And so the reason my son was allowed to be injured in a place where I trusted God to keep him safe is because he was wise to do so. And if you have not yet embraced Jesus Christ, an overly critical heart about God will keep you at a distance. You will fool yourself into thinking you'll take his heaven but you don't love his heart. You'll take his money but you don't want his time. You'll take his forgiveness but you don't want his character. And you'll walk this earth for the rest of your life because you live in North Carolina and you don't claim to be Muslim or Buddhist or atheistic. You're going to assume you're saved even though not one day in your life, some of you, not one day have you submitted your will to the wise God's heart. So, in just a moment we're going to stand. There's men around this tent that are ready to talk to you if you want to talk. Men, women, if that's you, would you stand right now where you're at around this tent. I want you to lift your hands so that anyone who wants to can spot you. Look around you. Lift your hand. Thank you. You can go to any one of these people during this psalm And I want you to take the time you need to talk to them. I want you to talk to them about being forgiven of your sins. I want you to talk to them if you're a Christian. I want you to talk to them about how you can pray with them about being submissive to a wise God who often allows my heart to be broken. Why does He allow that? Can't He keep it from happening? Yes. But every time it happens, it's the wisest thing. Father, I pray that many this evening will look upon You and trust You and You alone as the only wise God, our Savior. That they would trust Jesus Christ as Savior. That they would see that this Christ who died on the cross because God is wise offers salvation freely to the believer. And we will thank you in Jesus' name.