All right. We ready for the meal? Well let's have a seat and our Bibles to the book of Job, chapters 1 and 2, a couple chapter swe've been looking at the last two weeks and we will for this week and next week, Job chapters 1 and 2.
Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, you're so good, your mercies are new every morning. We're so thankful for who you are what you have done for us and in us. But Lord there are some present today who are in the deep places of suffering and pain, bewilderment, depression. And it's as though you are silent in their lives. Speak to them clearly Lord with words of comfort and confidence and bolster their spirits. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
I know you have heard things like this, like "You know you're going to have a bad day if…" Well here's a few: :You can tell you're going to have a rotten day when you see a 60 Minutes news team in your office. You can tell you're going to have a rotten day when you call Suicide Prevention and they put you on hold. You can tell you're going to have a rotten day when your twin sister forgets your birthday. (Laughter. It's pretty bad.) You can tell you're going to have a rotten day when your car horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you follow a group of Hell's Angels on the freeway. You can tell you're going to have a rotten day when your income tax bounces. You can tell you're going to have a rotten day when you put both contact lens into the same eye. You can tell you're going to have a rotten day when you wake up in a hospital all trussed up and the insurance agent tell you that your accident policy covers falling off the roof but not hitting the ground. I wonder when Job knew he was going to have a rotten day. Was it the first messenger that came? There were four messengers that brought bad news to him. Certainly by the third messenger, he could turn to his wife and say, "Honey, this is going to be a rotten day."
I love what I do. I love being a pastor. I absolutely love it. And one of the reasons I love it is the opportunity I have to walk with people through virtually every experience in life, a full gamut of life, a full spectrum; from birth to death. I get to see them come to Christ. I just led a family to Christ in the courtyard between services. I will often get to see them date, I will see people at the marriage altar as I perform their weddings. I dedicate their children. I will later counsel them about their children. I will help them and pray with them about life decisions, job calling. I get to be there when they're sick and I have the opportunity many timesto do their funerals. The whole gamut of life experience, I have the privilege of being in people's lives with. What that means is I see a lot of suffering, I see a lot of pain, I see a lot of death. We do a lot of funerals in a church this size. We've done four funerals a week sometimes, a week. I did one yesterday. I'll see people when they say, "here's the report from the doctor, here's the sickness that I have, sometimes a lingering illness. Sometimes a manmade disaster, an accident, domestic violence. And sometimes people will ask the question, if not ask they'll certainly think it, but often they will ask, "How do you do it? How can you see all of the things that you see and be a pastor? How can you see all of the things you see and still preach on the love of God and preach on the care of God? Suffering brings up question marks. I did a funeral yesterday I said of a great colleague and friend. He was faithful, he came to church every week for a number of years, sat in the front row, served afterwards in the prayer room and counseling, went out to California, went through seminary, graduated with honors, very bright fella. Just graduated and was just starting a brand new church when he suddenly died of a heart attack. Explain that one.
Or, a friend of mine this week lost his 19-year-old son, also a pastor, pastor of a large church in Nashville. And Steve's 19-year-old son hit a tree, was in a coma, then life support. And then on his 19th birthday died, very difficult times to go through. And so people will ask, "How can you see those things and be a pastor?" I will just say, "I couldn't see those things unless I was a pastor." Unless I had the foundation and knowledge to build and have direction of a life for. Now if you have come this morning with questions like that I am so glad you came this morning because I'm going to answer them. In fact, I'm going to let Job answer them. In fact, we're going to see ultimately how Jesus provides the answers for that. But something I want to remind you of, there is a book, if you were to take a tour of your Bible, there is one book in the Bible, there is one book in the Bible that has a more disproportionate number of questions in it than any other book and that's Job. There are over three hundred and thirty questions found in the book of Job alone. Now if you compare that to the book of Genesis, only 160 questions in that book. In Matthew, 180 questions. Even the book of Psalms, 150 chapters are 160 questions. But Job in its forty-two chapters has over 330 questions. Why is that? It's simple. Because the theme of the book is human tragedy, loss, suffering, pain. And questions bubble forth during times like that.
Job is the complete antithesis of the success story "From Rags to Riches." In fact, I call this message this morning, "From Riches to Rags" because Job is on top of the world and then he loses it all. He loses his business, he loses his health, he loses the support of his wife, he loses even the respect of his friends. And yet he's godly. He's godly. God says he's the most righteous one I have on this earth at that moment. And he suffered all of that.
It reminds me of what C.S. Lewis once said, when somebody asked him, "Hey why do the righteous suffer?" Do you know what Lewis said? He said, "Why not? They're the only ones that can take it." Well C. S. Lewis I think was right, Job took a lot of it. And he took it well and we're going to look at that this morning and next week. Now you'll notice in your bulletin that you have an outline, it looks like this. And the outline is five characteristics or five experiences of Job during this episode of suffering in his life. Because it's large in the sense of an outlines, I'm only going to cover the first two this morning and the next three next time. But the five experiences are the reality of Job's life, what he suffered; the response of Job's heart, what he did and said after all this happened; the resentment of Job's wife, we'll get to that next week in chapter 2; the resolve of Job's will, how he reacted to his wife's response; and finally the refreshment of Job's friends. They were refreshing before they talked, we'll see that.
Let's look at Job's life. Now we've already taken a glance a this, we've gotten snippets of Job's life. But I just want you to know it gets so bad for this man that in chapter 3 verse 25, Job says, "The thing that I have feared has come upon me." The greatest fear, I'm living it right now. It was completely unexpected, no doubt. I was reading a Readers' Digest article this week called "The Untold Story of September 11th, 2001." It was about that fourth airliner that was hijacked and crashed into the field in Pennsylvania. In "The Untold Story" article it talked about a man who was a passenger and called his wife on his cell phone, said, "Honey our plane has been hijacked. There are three men aboard this plane, they say they have a bomb. They've already killed one person. Please call the authorities." And as her husband is on the phone telling this to his wife, all of the while the wife in hearing this is saying to herself, "No. No. This can't be happening. We have a perfect life. We have great jobs. We have good kids. Nothing bad ever happens to us." And I've discovered that is the first reaction of people when tragedy strikes, when news comes that is devastating. "No." It's denial. "No. This stuff doesn't happen to us. God, you've made a mistake. This happens to other people. We read about this. We help other people with this. And because this is a common experience, this kind of pain and suffering, this is a one of some people's favorite reasons to reject the God of the Bible: How could a God of love, how could a God who knows everything, how can a God who's all powerful allow evil to exist?" You've heard it, I've heard it, a thousand times. It is sometimes put in a syllogism, or a series of logical statements. It goes like this: The God of the Bible is all loving, the God of t he Bible is all powerful, the God of the Bible is all knowing, the God of the Bible is all just; but massive evil exists. Therefore the god of the Bible does not exist." That is how it is often put. In other words, "Whoever would allow this kind of evil that goes on and suffering worldwide day in, day out, cannot be loving, cannot be just, cannot be powerful or cannot be all-knowing. And to many people, this backs Christians up into an impossible corner. I assure you it does not back Christians up into an impossible corner. And I want to show you that this week and next.
Let's look at some of these things that happened to Job. Four happened to him. I've summed them up into three categories. The first one is terrorism, Job was a victim of a terrorist attack. Verse 13 of chapter 1, "Now there was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house and a messenger came to Job and said, "The oxen were plowing and the donkeys feeding beside them, when the Sabians raided them and took them away. Indeed they have killed the servants with the edge of the sword and I alone have escaped to tell you." Sabians were a tribe form northern Arabia at that time. Now go down to a verse 17, "While he was still speaking, another came and said, ‘The Chaldeans formed three bands, raided the camels and took them away, yes and killed the servants with the edge of the sword and I alone have escaped to tell you." Chaldeans were nomads from Babylon, Mesopotamia. Here's a terrorist attack and any time these things happen, people say, "Where was God?" September 11th, "Where was God?" I know, I worked at Ground Zero. I worked for two weeks at the morgue in Manhattan when family members came and identified remains of their family. Where is God? Now 9/11 was a tragedy. And it's typically what we think about when we think of a terrorist attack. And I'm not going to minimize it but that was about five thousand people in those towers or so. The U.S. State Department estimates there were more than twenty-two thousand deaths from terrorism last year. It's in epic proportions, terrorism.
Well, it's not only that but there was natural disaster that happened to Job. Look at verse 16, "While he was speaking another came and said, "the fire of God fell from heaven (no doubt a reference to lightening) and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them and I alone have escaped to tell you. And then, look down at verse 19 after another servant comes. "And suddenly a great wind came from across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house and it fell on the young people (those were his own children) and they are dead and I alone have escaped to tell you." So two natural disasters: lightning called here the fire of God. Isn't it interesting even back then they used to call natural disasters acts of God. That's how the secular world refers to it, acts of God. Fire from heaven, lightning that caused a fire that caused destruction. And then a wind. Now in the Middle East, there's two types of wind. One called the Sirocco and one called the Hachmsin, and the only difference between them is form what direction it blows and what time of the year it blows. I've seen both, they can be sudden hot and devastating. And without the infrastructure that we have today, destruction happens. And people will, when these things occur, ask the same question, "Well where's God, if you believe in God, where's the God of love now?"
Do you remember watching the news when that huge tsunami hit Asia? Do you remember seeing those pictures and hearing of the death toll? I mean day after day as that toll went up to what? A hundred and fifty-five thousand people? Like that. Where was God?
Well there's more in Job's life. He didn't just have one, he had all three. The third was disease. Chapter 2 verse 7, "So Satan went out form the presence of the Lord and struck Job with painful boils form the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took for himself a potshard (a little piece of pottery) with which to scrape himself while he sat in the midst of ashes." I'll be honest, I don't know what disease he had, some scholars say it was the early signs of mycobacterium leprae or leprosy. Others say because of the symptoms that are described in this book, that it was a form of elephantiasis. We don't know. But Job wouldn't be able to tell you anyway, he would just simply say, "it hurts from the top to the bottom. My whole body is in pain." And keep in mind Job was righteous godly man.
So can you picture it? One moment life is great. It's great. Job's eating alaffles with his family. Life is good, its' satisfying, it makes sense, it's in order. God is good. And the next day his life is turned upside down. He is dazed. He is confused. He is in pain. And he doesn't know why. So, question comes up again: "How can God be loving and powerful and knowledgeable and let all this stuff happen?"
Well, there's a whole realm of study based on that question. It's called theodicy, T-H-E-O-D-I-C-Y, theodicy. And theodicy comes form two words: theos God, and dike which means rightousness. And theodicy is an explanation of or a defense of a holy righteous loving knowledgeable God in the midst of evil. So this morning, let me give you a thumbnail sketch of a biblical theodicy, in part, a biblical theodicy. I'm going to give you a few truths about this. Truth number one, evil does exist. I know you're going, "Duh." Evil does exist. That's without argument, that's incontrovertible, you would think. Unless you believe what they teach you in the Christian Science movement. If you're an advocate of Christian Sciences, you believe that evil is an illusion, pain is an illusion, suffering is an illusion, sickness is an illusion. Even death is an illusion. Well, that doesn't help. I'm suffering right now an illusion. Well I just buried an illusion. You know, it's sort of like Grape-Nuts. Ever wondered why they're called that? There's not grapes and they're not nuts. It's the same with Christians Science, it's not Christian and it is not scientific. And to just say that something doesn't exist that so obviously does exist, playing that kind of metaphysical game doesn't help anybody. Evil is real. Evil exists.
It does exist, in many forms. There is natural evil. Ntural evil is impersonal, it is external, it is physical evil, it comes from the physical natural world, from viruses to volcanoes, from diseases to disasters, from sarcomas to tsunamis. This is natural evil. The whole natural world is blighted with bad stuff. Bad things; things that make you sick, things that injure you and things that kill you. That's natural evil. But second, there's moral evil. Moral evil is personal, not impersonal. It is internal, it is spiritual. It is sin, it is iniquity, it is wickedness, all of those terms the same idea. It is the inner bent toward evil. It dominates humanity, absolutely dominates humanity. So much so that the Bible says, "There is no one who is good, no not one." It infects everybody. The Bible even says, "The thoughts of the human heart are only evil continually." So if you miss all the disasters and you miss all of the diseases, guess what? You'll still die because the wages of sin is death. So it's not just natural evil, there's moral evil. And it impacts every life and every relationship because all of humanity is made up of fallen people. All of us are sinners. So it's really the perfect storm, because as all of us sinners collide with each other in a variety of ways through the day, the months, through the years, you have things like rivalries and feuds and wars and malfunctioning families and broken marriages and lying and cheating, etcetera.
So there's natural evil, there's moral evil, there's a third: supernatural evil. Supernatural evil is that evil that is perpetrated by Satan and his demons. We talked a little bit about that last week. A third of the angelic hosts fell with Satan in a rebellion and they are very active. They are very active in every nation in the world. And just so you know how bad it is, listen to this: I John chapter 5 verse 19 says, "The whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one." That's quite a statement. The whole world lies in the lap of or under the sway of the wicked one. These demons have the power to seduce and deceive humanity against God, against Christ, against the gospel, against biblical truth, to drag people further and further into sin. Evil exists.
Truth number two: God allows evil to exist. Now before I tell you why, that's always the first question, when you say "God allows evil," Why? Before I answer that I have to tell you that this is so perplexing a problem to some people they have to get God off the hook so quickly that they teach there is a God can't help evil, can't do anything about it. There is a group of people, there is an area of theology known as process theology. I don't know if you've every heard of it, process theology or open theism. They say that God is a deity in progress. A deity in progress. God knows more today than he did yesterday because more has happened since yesterday, that God is finding out about. And God will know more tomorrow and be better tomorrow because more will have happened tomorrow. So this whole process is really helping God become a better God. That's all nonsense.
The reality is evil exists and God allows evil to exist. So here's the question, it's often asked this way: Why did God create evil? I'm going to answer that carefully. God did not create evil per se but God did create the potential for evil by creating creatures with free will, with volition. So he didn't create evil, he created the potential of evil. Man actualized the potentiality by sin. He gave us free will. Well the next question inevitably is: Well then why did God allow people to have free will? That's always asked by people. "Why the whole Satan business. Why did he allow the devil and why did he put people here with free will?" Now listen very carefully to this, you could never have a world where people have genuine freedom unless they had the potential to sin. You can't say, "You have a freedom of choice but you can't really choose. You can't choose that, you can't choose that, you can only choose this." That's not free choice. You can't have a world where people have genuine freedom unless there is the potential for sin. If you don't have free will then you don't have a world with love because love requires free will. If you don't have love which is the highest value, you don't have a good God. So, I know you're all excited about this, but I want you to really listen to this. So, God in his love, in creating a world with volition must allow people's choices and the consequences of those choices which can be great evil. So, I'll give you my own syllogism now, my own series of logical statements. The biblical God is a loving God. The biblical God is all powerful. The biblical God is all knowing. The biblical God is all just and all holy. But massive evil does exist. It does exist because we live in a fallen world. But one day, not today, but one day God will eradicate all evil. One day all wrongs will be made right. One day all sins will be judged and on that day evil will be eradicated. So, evil exists, God allows evil to exist and here's a third but I just don't have time to deal with it because of our time today: God has a purpose in evil. God has a purpose. Evil can be helpful. And I'll tell you why next time.
Now what I want you to look at is verse 20. We have seen the reality of Job's life, this is what happened to him. Now let's see the response of Job's heart. I've got to tell you, when I start reading verse 20, 21 and 22, I feel like taking my shoes off. I'm on holy ground. Listen to this: "Then Job arose and tore his robe (a sign of grief) And shaved his head (a sign of intense mourning) and fell to the ground and worshipped." Let that linger. "And worshipped." Listen to what he said, "And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." Do you hear that? This is a sufferer? This is somebody who's lost it all? In fact, the summary statement is in verse 22, "In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong." The thing that impresses me most first of all is Job wasn't stoic about this, he tore his robe. He wasn't like, "Hmm, we what do you know?" He was heartbroken. He grieved because of it. He wasn't some hyperspiritual nut job who said, "Whee, whatever, hallelujah." He was grieved deeply but he worshipped. And he gives a perspective in verse 21 toward human life and toward stuff, materialism. When he says, "The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away." Do you get that? It was never mine to begin with. Okay, I lost everything. It wasn't mine to begin with. I came into this world with nothing. God gave it all to me and because God gave it to me, God can take it away whenever God wants. Blessed be his name." That's worship. He didn't sin, he didn't say God was wrong in what he did. That's Job. That's the response of his heart.
Now I know, some of you are asking, right now you're going, "Okay, is this really possible? I mean in real life. Not ferom a Bible guy. But in my life, in this generation. Is this possible?" Well I'll tell you this: Pain will move you. Guarantee that. If it's a significant enough pain you'll be moved from where you are, either toward God or away from God. It will either break your back or bend your knee, if it's deep enough. In this case, it bent his knee. I watch people go through suffering as I mentioned. Sometimes I see people get very bitter, they get very bitter, they turn inward, they get filled with self pity, they complain, they're very resentful. And frankly, I've seen that response in people who go through what I would call small things in life, inconveniences. And I say, "My goodness, if they're doing that in traffic, what will they be like when something bad happens?" It won't be a good picture, it won't be good. They'll get bitter, they'll get bitter at God. Other people get what I call battered. Not bitter, but battered. They go through so many storms, they just get so beat up they become sort of numb to it all and they just sort of grit their teeth and they've got to bear it. And they turn out fatalistic and even nihilistic, saying "There really is no purpose in life, everything's meaningless, everything's random and you've just got to put up with it."
But then there's a third, they don't become bitter, they don't become battered, they become better. And Job in this case became better. And I'll tell you this, it's not just possible, I've seen two examples of it this week. I've got to tell you about it. I got a letter first of all from a dear woman from this fellowship who lost her son. It was after last week's message on Job and she writes this, I won't tell you her name but just a portion of her letter, "My eleven-year-old son was truck with bone cancer and it was too far advanced for him to survive. Based on your lesson in Job I never did get any answers but I can attest to God's grace, faithfulness, strength, and comfort. Everything seemed to slip away and God's word has become my only rock to stand on. And most important, oh what sweet lessons came out of pain. And what closeness and what knowledge of God. I have been through many trials only find out that God is the answer and my very reward."
That's one instance. A second example is from my friend Steve, Pastor Steve Berger who lost his 19-year-old son who died on his birthday, his son's birthday. The day he turned nineteen he was in heaven in Nashville, Tennessee. He called me on the phone, I was so impressed I just had to jot down some of the thoughts so I wouldn't misquote him. He said, "Skip, my heart, our hearts are so heartbroken. At the same time, Skip I see God's hand in this." He said, "Right now, my son's heart is beating in somebody else's body. Right now my son's lungs are breathing in somebody else's body." And Steve said, "How cool is that?" And then he said this, "Who are we to stand in God's way?" What did I immediately think of? This. This. I came naked into the world, I'm leaving naked. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be your name." That's what I saw and I saw it twice this week.
So you see sometimes God will calm your storm. But sometimes God will calm you in your storm. I know we always pray for the first, "Take away the storm, get me out of this. God I believe, I trust you, you're holy, you're righteous, you can do it. Heal!" And you know what? He might. I've seen him heal. God can miraculously heal. He still heals people today. But sometimes God will say, "Actually I'm going to turn it up. But I'm going to calm you in this storm."
Now I want to close with this or bring this to a close. How does Jesus matter in all of this? How does Jesus Christ answer Job in his suffering? Since the series is based upon Job meeting Jesus, how does Jesus help? Well, do you remember how Isaiah described what Jesus would be like on this earth? In Isaiah 53, that prophet said, "He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief." Jesus, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. You see Jesus Christ is the ultimate answer for loss because he experienced it himself and he promised that you'll never go through those things alone. Alone. It doesn't say you'll never go through those things. Alone. He said, "I'll never leave you. I'll never forsake you. I'll be with you to the end of the age. I'll walk with you through this pain." But there's something else and there's a lot of scriptures we could turn to. I want you to turn to one and we'll close with this. Turn to Hebrews in the New Testament, Hebrews chapter 4 and we will close. Hebrews chapter 4. As you're turning there, let me tell you that the writer of Hebrews wrote this book to simply say, "Jesus is better than anything and anyone. He's better than the old covenant. He's better than the law, he's better than any sacrifice. He's better than the old priesthood. He's superior. The priesthood is in view in chapter 4, Hebrews 4 verse 14. "Seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses (some translations say infirmities or diseases) but was in all points was tempted, tried, tested, like war are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." Do you get what that is saying? When you're praying to Jesus, you're not talking to some ivory towered diplomat who stays locked up in his throneroom of heaven and doesn't even know what it's like to be among us. When you pray to Jesus about your pain, about your suffering, about your loss; his answer to you could be, "Been there, done that. I know suffering. I know pain. I can relate to you right now." Jesus knows suffering. He left heaven, place of comfort, came to the earth to suffer. He knows rejection, his own family said he was crazy. He knows misunderstanding, rumors circulated about him. He knows betrayal, Judas betrayed him, Peter denied him. And boy, does he know physical suffering. Does he know what it's like for a prolonged protracted period of time to have been beaten and a crown of thorns and a cat-of-nine-tails across his back and then the agonizing grueling hours of crucifixion, on top of that the sin of all the world being added to that. He knows. He knows exactly. And he is your best representative when you suffer and will walk with you in that.
Now I'm going to close with an illustration, a little parable, and then we'll pray together.
At the end of time billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God's throne. Some near the front talked heatedly, not with shame, but belligerence, "How can God judge us? What a ripoff." "How does he know anything about suffering?" snapped a brunette. She jerked back a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. "We endured terror, beatings, torture, death." In another group a black man lowered his collar, "What about this?" he demanded showing a ugly rope burn. "Lynched for no crime except being black. We suffocated in slave ships, we were wrenched from loved ones, toiled til only death gave us release." Far out across the plain were hundreds of such oppressed minorities. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and the suffering he permitted in the world. How privileged God was to live up in heaven where there was no repression, all was sweetness and light, no weeping, no fear, no hunger, no hatred. Indeed what did God know about the hassles man had in this world? So each of these oppressed minorities sent out a leader chosen because he suffered the most. There was a Jew, a black, an untouchable from India, an illegitimate son, a prisoner of war, and American Indian, one from a Siberian slave ship. In the center of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was simple: Before God would be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they endured. Their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on earth as a man. But because he was God they set certain safeguards to make sure he didn't use his divine powers to help himself. "Let him be born a minority (a Jew). Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted so that many will question who his father really is. Let him champion a cause so just but so radical that it brings down upon him the hate, condemnation, and eliminating efforts of the establishment and the traditional religious authority. Let him be the object of put-downs and ridicule, be spat upon and labeled mad. Let him be betrayed by his dearest friends. Let him be indicted on false charges, tried before a perjured jury. Let him experience what it is to be terribly alone and abandoned by every living thing. Let him be tortured. And let him die. And let him die the most humiliating death. And let his name live on for centuries and be used as a common curse word in moments of rage." As each leader stepped forward and announced his portion of the sentence, a loud approval went up from the great throng of people. When the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No one uttered another word. No one moved. For suddenly they all knew God had already served his sentence.
You're suffering, some of you. Some of you are facing huge unknown, not just with the economy, maybe with your own physical health or a loved one or a loss. Job knew. And Job said, "Blessed be the name of the Lord." I challenge you to do the same. Even if you've got all of the answers to all of the questions about all of the losses in your life and you have it all intellectually figured out, I don't think that's going to help heal the emotion of hurt deep inside. "Well I figured it all out now." It's still hurting. Still with a loss. Jesus will walk with you through that.
Our heavenly Father, what Job experienced is far more than anyone here has experienced, though that's not to marginalize or minimize our own losses and our own pain and our own suffering. You're familiar with them, it does exist, you allow it to exist and you have purpose in that. Because of all these truths, we face what we face in our future with great courage and great confidence. And I pray Lord with great comfort this morning. And I pray your people will rise up and become worshippers in the midst of the reality that exists in this world. In Jesus' name. Amen.