NOV 10 2024 | Job: Hearing God in the Whirlwind S1E5 | Out of the Whirlwind

Sea Change Church · NOV 10 2024 | Job: Hearing God in the Whirlwind - S1E5: Out of the Whirlwind
Job 38:1-18
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

I want to thank you for the work that you're doing in this church. And we just want to move in unity with you, Lord. Please open the doors that you want us to walk through. Shut the doors tight where you don't want us to be. We want to move where you want us to move. I pray that you'll receive every bit of today's offering and use it to expand your kingdom.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. The book of Job, chapter 38, verses 1 through 18. Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man. I will question you, and you make it known to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.

Who determined its measurements? Surely you know. Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone? When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb? When I made clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, And prescribed limits for it, and set bars and doors, And said, Thus far shall you come, and no farther.

And here shall your proud waves be stayed. Have you commanded the morning since your days began, And caused the dawn to know its place, That it might take hold of the skirts of the earth, And the wicked be shaken out of it? It is changed like clay under the seal, And its features stand out like a garment. From the wicked their light is withheld, And their uplifted arm is broken.

Have you entered into the springs of the sea, Or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you, Or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare, if you know all this, This is the word of the Lord. I have a twat, I have a twat, I have a twat, I have a twat, I have a twat, I have a twat, I have a twat, I have a twat, I have a twat, Right on.

Well, welcome to church this morning. Hopefully you're having a good time today. We love to have fun. One of our values is fun, adventure, fun and play. And so hopefully you're having a good time. Chris, great job on that song. I didn't approve that. I just want you to know, don't put that one on me. No, it was amazing. You guys were awesome. And Bailey and Parker are going to miss you guys.

And thanks for all that you guys have done. Yeah, give it up for them. Let's go. Somebody said, why is Pastor Jordan wearing a cowboy shirt? I know you asked yourself that, didn't you? I just wanted to go circa 2004. Remember this? Circa 2004, right? Remember some of your millennials? Remember that early days? If you have your Bibles, open up to Job 38, 1 through 18.

I want you to write something on top of your notes. God is always speaking. God's always speaking. In this time, in this era, there was a season where God stopped speaking after the book of Malachi was finished. He had a 400-year period of silence. But even then, the creation was speaking of who he is. And so to live in the paradigm that God is always speaking, he might not be telling you what you want.

He might not be answering the thing that you want. And sometimes we shut God off because he's not telling us what we want. But he's still speaking. He's speaking in his word. He's speaking in creation. He is speaking. And I guess the question is, are you in a position of recognition? Are you recognizing? You can also put God is always speaking. Beside that on your notes, you can put am I recognizing?

But recognition, I'll just give you a definition, is the act of identifying or acknowledging something or someone who is familiar. I love that word familiar when it comes to recognition. You recognize something that you know. Recognition is not something new. It's something that you know. It's valid or significant. It involves becoming aware of discerning something previously known or understood, often through patterns, characteristic cues that trigger the memory of understanding.

It's starting. Job is in a period of recognition. He's hearing from God. And God finally speaks now through the whirlwind, as we'll see in just a moment. I want to just say that many people react, but they never recognize. There's a lot of people, something happens, and they react to it. You saw a lot of that this week, right? There's just a lot of reaction, right?

A lot of reaction. And I'm not sure everyone is recognizing what God might be saying to them, perhaps to a nation, to whatever. And so you can make your own conclusions by following the Holy Spirit and listening to others and whatever. But many will react and not become people of recognition. I would say before we react, it's a really good habit to have the speed bump of recognition in our lives.

You're in an argument. All of a sudden, you get triggered in an argument with someone in your family. And you react before you recognize, hey, you know, what I said really hurt them. Or whatever it is. You just stop and you recognize. Once you recognize something, your reaction will usually change. Not always. But if you recognize you're in danger, sometimes you run.

It's not going to change. But this idea of recognition, Job recognizes when God speaks here. And God is speaking out of a whirlwind. God is speaking out of a natural disaster, if you've seen that. We've skipped 36 chapters now. I've encouraged you, because this is a 43-chapter book that we're not going to get through. I'm not going to spend, you know, 92 weeks in Job.

I just can't do it. It's six weeks. So in order to understand what's going on, you're going to have to be reading through it yourself. And I want to encourage you. Job is a book that should be binge-read or binge-listened to. I mean, we can do, you know, four hours of a podcast or something like that or binging Netflix. Let's binge the Word of God.

And so we see that happening. And this idea that many react, but few recognize. And I would say in regard to historical events, I would say there's many people in Jerusalem when the Romans started cracking down and the Jerusalem church was being emptied, right? And if you were a Christian in Jerusalem in, you know, the first, you know, 10 years after Jesus died or 30 years after Jesus died and this started happening and the church was collapsing, there was no money for the church, everyone was leaving, it would be really easy to say, oh my gosh, things are, this is horrible.

God, what's happening? Why would you allow this? Why would you allow this? Without recognizing that those first steps out of the capital of Jerusalem would be the steps that would go on to evangelize the rest of the world. Because God used that persecution that within 50 years, the gospel was being spoken what would be considered modern day England today or Scotland.

God was doing something and people just didn't recognize it. There was this mass shift in the culture. Jesus' disciples are on the boat, right? And they'd been with Jesus for three years and he walks out on the water towards them, but they did not recognize him. Believers who follow the Spirit of God are people of recognition. They are people that stop and ask God, not why are you doing something, although it's a fine question, Jesus asked it, Job asked it.

The question is what are you doing and what do you want me to do about it? This week as I looked at the election results, I began to ask myself, God, what do you want us to do as a church? And he began to speak to me, not about politics, he began to speak to me about hearts that are open to perhaps the gospel. Whether you know it or not, in the midst of all this political thing that is happening, there has been a soft, I would say, revival, a velvet revival going on in the country.

Young people are coming back to the Lord. And a lot of people, because they're so caught up in everything that's going on, they're missing this. We have, I think, I don't want to get it wrong, I don't want to use hyperbole, I think there's 70 high school kids at Kearney Mesa coming to Faith Club. I think there's between 50 and 70 coming to our Faith Club on Wednesdays at La Jolla High School.

This is something, if I were to tell you how many kids come to a Christian faith club at La Jolla, I doubt many of you would have picked that. But God is moving, and we need to recognize it. We want to be people about evangelism, baptism, discipleship, and sending out people to bring the kingdom of God. And so, I wasn't going to say this, but I want to say one thing too.

If you're really happy with the election results, I want to encourage you, don't be a jerk. Like, I'm serious. Like, you know, I mean, people will talk to their friends and say things, but I would just say we need to be the most gentle people. I want to be a person of that king, not this one. And I really want to do that. And so, I just want to encourage you, as a people, we want to be a gentle people.

I was praying that God just put an empathy on my heart for people that, I mean, there's people that are seriously struggling now. Seriously struggling. Stuggling with should I kill myself? Bipolar. So, all that to say, I'm just going to stop with that. We need to be praying for people. People are desperate, whether they agree with you or not. And so, we want to be a church that lifts up Jesus.

That's the king I want to follow. And God, you do what you want with that. But it's a recognition, right? Here's the main point for today. God's voice at the conclusion of Job reveals his wisdom woven through creation, showing his presence and purpose beyond human understanding. When God speaks here, he speaks out of the whirlwind. Let me give you verse one through three.

Let's jump right into the text. Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, circle whirlwind. And he said, Who is this that darkens my counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man. I'll question you. And then you make it known to me. Hmm. If God is going to speak to me out of the whirlwind, I'm not sure that's the word I wanted, right?

Gird up. Let's go to war. That's what he's saying. If you gird up like a man, that's what it means. That gird up word is like, have courage. You ready for battle? Let's wrestle it out. Let's go. You wanted to do this? Job, you called me to this? You said you wanted to speak to me face to face. Who is this that darkens my counsel? Basically, when he spoke, he said, You're darkening my counsel, which was really interesting because he was seen as this incredibly righteous man.

First thing we want to see is God doesn't show up, right? He doesn't have an angel come. They've done that before where he just gives words, right? An angel comes and speaks and speaks to Mary. You know, he could have done that. He didn't show up in like Melchizedek. Remember, Melchizedek shows up. He doesn't show up in a bodily form. He shows up in a, what can be seen as a catastrophic, catastrophic natural disaster.

I don't know if his world wouldn't hit anything, but he shows up in creation. Now, this is interesting because we believe, at least many scholars believe, I believe it as well, that this is before the time of Abraham, before God has revealed himself to a people, before the law, before the scripture, before the incarnation of Jesus, before the Holy Spirit could live with inside it, our bodies and inside of our hearts and souls, this was a time where the only thing that they had to know that God existed was creation and stories of the past.

That was it. There was no word. And so there had been a passed down stories that had come down. And so God speaks out of the thing that he knows. He speaks and he roars out of creation. It's really important. And God speaking out of creation is not something that should be lost on a modern generation. That God speaks out of creation. We'll see that more and more.

But that is really important that he speaks out of it. And what I wrote is this. The voice of God is the most powerful force in nature. When he speaks, the wind and the sea obey him. Actually, I didn't write that. That was A.W. Tozer. Let me just read that again. Because God is always speaking. And the place that he speaks in Job, just to be contextual to this book, is he's roaring out of creation.

Tozer says the voice of God is the most powerful force in nature. When he speaks, the wind and the sea obey him. The scripture's really clear that the heavens declare what? They declare his glory. That the sea is constantly, every time a wave breaks and you hear the sound of a wave, it is praising God over and over again. The earth cannot be stopped.

The creation cannot be stopped because it is constantly praising him. We'll see in a moment how we do want to immerse ourself in creation. The difference between Christian love of creation is that we give glory to God the Father, unlike pagan creation, where they worship the creation. That's the difference. But we as Christians do not want to cede the territory of caring for creation so that God might be glorified through that to people who are pagan who will worship that creation and perhaps you see that now at this point.

There's three types of, or two types of revelation. Now this is, we're gonna go into the classroom for just a second, okay? And then I'll try to find some cool story that'll make us all entertained again. But I wanna go into the classroom for a second. And I wanna say there's two types of revelation theologically. And the first one you're gonna see, there's general revelation.

I think in the notes, I didn't put revelation. I want you to put general revelation. That is what we had before God gave us special revelation, before God stepped into the picture and said, I'm gonna show you a little bit more. I'm gonna let you go behind the curtain a little bit more. So let me just say what these are. The first for general revelation is nature, our conscience, which has always been there since we were created, and then history, what God does in history.

Those are three things where you can see God. That is called general revelation. Let me just look at nature real quick. God attributes and divine power are revealed in his creation. So in Romans 1.20, there's this, one of my favorite verses. It says, in creation, we can see all of God's divine nature and his invisible qualities. There is nothing in creation that God has not put the story of who he is in that.

Whether it be the face of a fox, whether it be a shooting star, whether it be a whirlwind, whether it be an earthquake, God is there in creation. The first way that someone knows that there is a God is through creation. I just wanna encourage you, just if you have not heard from God for a while, I wanna encourage you to get back out in creation. That's why I struggle with cities sometimes.

When you're in a city, I was in a city, I was in Santa Monica recently. I don't know if you've been to Santa Monica. I was walking through. There was parts in Santa Monica where you cannot see anything but a building. Once you get to the ocean, it's cool. But I'm walking through, it's just gray. It's just big, tall buildings. I'm like, this is not a place I wanna be.

God speaks through creation. If you want to hear from God, I wanna encourage you, get into creation because creation speaks. Let me tell you something that rarely speaks about God. It does sometimes. This thing, right? Right? Sometimes it does, right? You get that meme that is like, oh, that blessed me, you know? Someone sends you that video, you're like, yes, that's amazing.

If you could take 15 hours of what this gives you or 15 minutes in creation, what would you take? I wanna be the person who goes for the 15 minutes in creation because in creation, we experience God. You hear a thing and a lot of people that are pagans today or don't follow God or have a thing, it's called green bathing or something like that, right? It's this idea of like, we're just gonna go out and we're gonna experience the life force of the universe and we're gonna manifest and all these things.

As a believer, you have a peek behind the curtain. I wanna encourage you, like, if you live in San Diego, you're probably no more than 30 minutes from that little ocean. Like, try to get down there, get to a park, go the other direction if you're closer to El Cajon. Spend time in creation. Once again, back to the scripture, just go back once again to the scripture at the beginning.

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind. God is answering. Isn't that interesting that he's answering out of a whirlwind? When things were really going crazy during COVID and then we were allowed to go hiking, I remember I was, I was hiking, I went to Big Bear and I thought I'm gonna go hiking and I did walk by a guy, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna say that, I'm not gonna say that.

I walked by a guy and he was very cautious and I passed him. We're all alone, bro, out here in the wilderness. Not sure that accoutrement's needed but nonetheless, we'll leave it at that and I sat down and everything was going crazy, right? It was just crazy. Do you remember, I don't wanna remember but remember how bad it was? And I sat down in creation and I saw birds that were just unaware of it and I, like seriously, the birds were not aware of what was going on.

At least the city, the city birds might have been, the angry birds. Once again, for all the millennials. The, but those birds didn't know what was up and I sat there and I thought to myself, this space is unaware and it's doing really well at the moment and like, everything's gonna be okay. God spoke to me in that moment. I don't wanna undersell how important it is to, even if you can go out in your driveway and look up at night, like be in creation because God speaks through creation.

We have a couple more things that are interesting in regard to that but we see that natural relation, the next is human conscience. God has written his moral law on people's hearts as people inherently know what is right from wrong. How do people in tribes in Africa or whether it was a tribe in the Amazon or in Scotland or the Picts or why does everybody know that you shouldn't go steal your neighbor's wife?

Why does everybody know that, right? Why does everybody know that murder is inherently wrong? They've tried to figure this out. If you look at the scientific study, you know, like why do we have this? Romans 1.20, if you were to go to Roman, sorry, not Romans 1.20, I got the wrong verse there but in Romans, one of the scriptures that you would look at in Romans says that God's moral code has been written upon everyone's heart that we might know what is right or wrong.

I think it is Romans 1.20, that you will know what is right or wrong, that he has put that on our conscience. That's the first, the second part of general revelation. There's the creation and then there's our conscience. As a believer, once again, I want to encourage you to follow your conscience. Conscience meaning your spirit of God that is written upon your heart.

If you're feeling something that says about a relationship, just slightly like, no, don't do that. Don't do it. All the dopamine is saying, yes, let's go, you know. If you feel that quiet, even if a little bit saying, no, you'll know that voice. We develop that voice so God doesn't have to speak out of whirlwinds. Next one is providence and history. You see God's actions sustaining the world and guiding history.

It was interesting, I was listening to, I was reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich last night, which is a book by William Schur. He was an American journalist that was actually in Germany during that time. Maybe you have seen that book. It's one of the most well-known historical books about what happened because he was behind the scenes and he was with Hitler's entourage, this American guy, until the Americans came into the war.

And he said, the biggest mistake that Hitler made in the whole war was he got really ticked off at Moldova and he decided, we're gonna wait four weeks on the attacking Russia, right? So we can go, he has this little pet project. So he goes and does that and then he starts heading towards Russia. Winter comes three weeks early, right? And all of a sudden, they're not able to go into Russia.

Had he gone into Russia, the war would have been lost, guaranteed, 100%. It would have been lost. In this moment, God, you can see, God just steps in and says no. At a certain point in history, God says for one reason or another, yes or no. And he does it. And the key is to recognize through the spirit of God what he is doing. So that's the first thing we see with Job.

Job, the only thing that he knew before God spoke with an audible voice was natural revelation, what was on his conscience and on the providence of what had happened in history. The next thing that we see, I'm not gonna go through these, is special revelation, which is scripture. People say to me all the time, you know, God never speaks to me. And I just ask this question, do you read the Bible?

Not much. Well, let's start there, right? If God never spoke to you, okay, if he never spoke to you, if you never heard his voice, you didn't have the Holy Spirit, which it says he will give you, that it'll be a counselor for you, the more you follow it, the bigger that voice will get, the easier it'll be to recognize, the scripture says, the less you follow it, the more calloused you will become, the less you'll be able to hear it.

If you never had any voice from God, but you only have the scripture, I guarantee you, it's enough to live your life by. 100%. The Bible, if you just parlay creation, okay, what God says to creation, and the Bible, and you just follow what the word of God says, I gotta tell you, the blessing of God will be, you will hear from God, the blessing of God will be all over your life.

And so, we see that in the special revelation, is scripture, the person of Jesus, the apostles who came, and then miracles, we won't go into all those things, but that is special revelation. Now let's look at what God says now, because when he speaks, Job's there, and he starts, God just, you know, it's kind of like a mic drop moment, he does a few chapters here, but God just starts dealing.

Let's look at what he says, go to verse two. Who is this, that darkens counsel by words, without knowledge? The first thing he says to Job, let's get something, let's get something right. Who's calling me? Like, who wants to have a conversation with me? The person who, everything you say, is, can never have the fullness of what the truth is, and so all you're doing is, whatever you say just darkens what I say.

Now, this doesn't mean that God doesn't want to hear from us. I'm not telling you not to pray. I think it's an attitude thing, where you come to God, and you just say, hey, I'm just, we're going to talk about that next week, and the final week, with what Job says. But I think it's an attitude thing, that we come to God and say, God, I have these things I want to share with you, but I just want to put myself in my place.

I don't know anything. I think starting your prayer time with, I don't know anything, other than Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, coming again, I don't know anything but that, I'm a fool, compared to you, once again, compared to God, I know nothing. I love starting my prayer time, my quiet time. When I sit down with the Lord, that's where I want to start, and so God, that's where God starts with him.

God shows up in a natural disaster, okay, the same one that killed his children, the whirlwind, that the wind hit the four corners when his children died, which is unique, we'll get to that in just a second, and he begins to speak to him, and he goes, who are you? You darken my counsel. And I would even say to the Lord, God, who am I? That's a great, that's a great question.

God, who am I that you would love me? Who are we that you would call us sons and daughters of the righteous? Who am I that you would allow me to go boldly, in Hebrews, boldly before the throne of God? That's a miracle, right? Because I should be crushed because of my iniquity. Like, but Jesus was crushed for our iniquity, and now he opens a door that you can go boldly before the throne of God, but I can run in boldly still knowing who I am at my core often.

And so we start with that, and he says, who is this that darkens my counsel? Be careful when we go to God. I don't mean, I mean, it's a balance, right? We're gonna talk about that balance next week. I can't wait to get to next week. But just be, just don't be careful because we can go boldly. Just be aware. Just recognize who you're speaking to and humble yourself.

It's so key, and God loves that. The next he says in verse three, he says, dress for action like a man. I will question you, and you will make it known to me. Now, verse doesn't play well today, right? Dress like a woman. I have a joke there. I'm not gonna say that. He says, dress like a man. I will question you and make it known to me. I will tell you what I believe.

I believe that men are designed as protectors. I believe that men are called to be warriors in the spirit realm and sometimes in the physical realm. I believe that men have a position of duty as protection and covering. And God says, and in this Old Testament, if you're going to translate it according to the Hebrew, it is, there is a way men should be, gird up, get ready to go to war.

And that assumes a few things. And I'm not saying, by the way, women can, you've seen it, it says a she-bear. Remember when they talk about David? He's like, hey, if you go after David in the council to Absalom, if you go after David, he's going to be like a she-bear robbed of her cubs, right? So I don't want to mess with some ladies either, okay? You know, ladies, I got some respect.

I know who I'm talking to, right? But in the middle of the night, my wife usually sends me out if there's a bump. Honey, get out there. Get out there. That's me talking to her. Honey, no, it's you. You go. And we're to argue. No, we don't argue about it. I know whose role it is to go and she wants me to go and do that. But in order to do that, so this doesn't mean that women can't do that, that women aren't courageous, that I'm not saying that.

Two things can be true at once, that men can be specifically designed for something and women can still do that thing, okay? But I believe that they're specifically designed for it and what it takes is courage. It takes courage and boldness and strength and he says, it basically says, that term is gird up your loins. It says gird up your loins like you're going to go to war because you're gonna speak to God right now.

And for me, I think that's really powerful. That speaks to men and to women that when we speak to God, he doesn't, you know, there are times where people cower and usually, even in Revelation, when people fall down in front of God or they run and hide or they do something like that, he's really gracious that he usually says, hey, the angel will say in Revelation, hey, stand up.

Hey, stand up because our God's a gracious God. We should actually just blow up, not stand up. But God says, I want you to stand up and so the word that I want to say out of Job, because Job does stand up, is some of us are being called to stand up. We're being called to be courageous. You're being called to go out to a place that is fearful for you, stand up in the spirit realm.

But if that's you, you will know it. And if you have been cowering because one thing or another, you have a God who loves you who will go into battle with you. So that's the other thing. The next thing he says in verse four, and this is kind of putting him in his place. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding.

Who determined its measurements? Surely you know. He actually does about three or four chapters here where he just keeps talking about creation. It's interesting because the whole answer, the whole cadre of what God says is about creation. Where were you? Do you know where the snows are? As a skier, I wish I did know that answer because I would release them more often, right?

He's regularly, he just keeps asking, where were you? Where were you? And you can see this as like, okay, God, you're pretty arrogant there and yeah, okay, I wasn't there. Or you can be like, you can settle into his sovereignty like I said last week. One of the best things you can do is to settle into his sovereignty, especially with things like election results, right?

So whatever side you're on, whether it was four years ago or now, you each had an opportunity to dance your dance, right? Whether it was four years ago or now, right? Wherever you are on the political scale, right? I would encourage you to make it a short dance and then just settle into God's sovereignty and be God, God, you're in charge. You know what you're doing.

I don't know anything. You know what you, where was I when you stored up the seas? He begins to even speak about things like surface tension. I don't know if you ever realized, I went to the aquarium recently, have you ever realized that if surface tension didn't exist, the ocean would explode? Like new fear unlocked, right? Just the thought of surface tension is so amazing and I was sitting there looking at the thing and I watched, it's so beautiful and it's just being held down and he actually says that in the scripture.

He says, you know, who keeps the ocean in its boundaries? Just the fact that it doesn't, the ocean is so powerful so he says something like that but the whole point is where were you and I think it's just basically a reminder of like, you don't know anything. My problem is, I think I'm too smart too often and I go to my strategy way quicker than I go to the source.

I think I know what I'm talking, I think my opinions are right, I think that person hasn't got it figured out and if they kind of figured it out like I had it figured out, like I don't know if you do that but I become enslaved to my own opinions and I, my opinions, I mean, sometimes I get it right but I'm not gonna trust my opinions. I wanna trust the spirit of God to lead me and so this verse is really good in your quiet time and the more you tell God in your quiet time or when you're upset to say, God, I don't know these things, I don't know where you are or who you are completely, that's good.

And then the final one, verse 18, he says, kind of on the back of that, have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? Declare if you know all of this, kind of in the same vein there. I wanna just finish with God speaking from a position of unapproachable power and majesty. The whirlwind like an earthquake is unapproachable. If you have a, think of the tornado, we had tornadoes this week, I know Jeff, our media guy's mom was in, kept going into the tornado shelter over and over again.

We were praying for her last week and all these tornadoes, I think they were in Oklahoma. And as that was happening, I know she watches, so hi mom. As she was there, I began to think, why does God speak out of a whirlwind? Because it is an, it just speaks of who he is. It is unapproachable. It is majestic. It is powerful. It is just, it is God, I mean, in an analogy, you can see that it is there.

You see God speaking to this in the burning bush. At Mount Sinai, there was thunder in the book of Exodus. The thunder at Jesus' baptism, the earthquake at Jesus' death. Over and over again, God speaks out of power. And it shows his power. And when you look at these massive, like tornadoes or hurricanes, think of some of the hurricanes we saw there, we had massive hurricanes this year.

Just know that they don't even come close to God's power of what he can do. We as a people have not figured out how to stop a hurricane, nor do I think will we ever, but it just shows God's power. But here's the thing that's important. God also speaks from a place of suffering and pain. You see, the whirlwind is what killed his children. If you go back to Job 1, 18 and 19, it says, while the servant was yet speaking, there came another one.

Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the oldest brother's house and behold, a great wind came across the wilderness and struck all four corners of the house at once and it fell upon the young people. They're dead and alone, I have escaped to tell you. If it hit all four corners at once, what is it? It's whirlwind. It's not coming out of the east, not coming out of the south, out of the north.

It's coming from all ways at once. Have you ever felt like that? Everything's coming at you at once and you're in the chaos. Thank God for the eye of the storm, which God says. And it's interesting that he comes and he speaks to him out of the very thing that probably caused his greatest suffering. I told you last week, I think Satan got it wrong, that Satan said, you know, skin for skin.

If you take his skin away, that's the biggest thing you can do and I don't think the biggest thing you can do, I think most people, parents would say, I'll take the bodily sickness before you take my kids. Satan had it wrong because he doesn't understand the familial tie of love. That's why God sent his only son because it is the, there was, I can't think of losing a child as, there's probably no greater suffering that you can have as a human being, in my humble opinion.

And so he speaks to him from this really deep place, this place that shows his majesty that says, even in the midst of your pain, I want you to know that I am present, I am alive, and I am in control. C.S. Lewis, you've heard this before, says, God whispers to us in our pleasures. He speaks in our consciousness, in our conscience, but he shouts in our pains.

It is his megaphone to arouse a deaf world. My old pastor used to say to me, God uses tribulation to shake the fruit off of the tree. And if you want to know when to share with someone, he used to say to me, he says, you know what, just love them until there's a tribulation in their life and then come along beside them. And he says, it is in the tribulation that oftentimes people are most sensitive to the gospel.

And so in that place, I'm not arguing with them, I'm caring for them. And I'm just waiting until it does in everyone's life to there's a tribulation because God uses tribulation to rouse a deaf world. I wrote, to hear God in the whirlwind means finding his guidance in the storms, his presence in the perils, and his purposes in the pain. There's two takeaways for your Wednesday or Thursday sermon because I do want you to be, I want this sermon to hit on Thursday, right?

I want Thursday you to be thinking, hey, I'm going to get out in creation. I want it to hit. And so the first, I want to encourage you, expose yourself to God's creation. Like, I was embarrassed this week. I looked at my time on my phone this week. It was a big week. It was a big week, right? All right? I was like, wow, I need to get out for a walk, bro. Get off the couch for a second.

I'm just going through stuff. I don't know about you. Probably the rest of us, right, too. Expose yourself to God in creation. Let him speak. Let him speak to you. He is there. He will say, everything is okay. Go to the ocean. Go to the mountains. Look up. Expose your God to the power of creation. And then the next one I would say is humble yourself. Humility to God is spiritually nuclear.

Few things God enjoys more than us humbling ourselves before him and saying, God, you are good. I don't know anything. I humble myself before you. Walk out of a humble posture. Especially as a Christian, if you feel like you got the election results that you wanted, humble yourself. Humble yourself and love other people. We don't need another meme. We don't need another Facebook post.

We don't need another gotcha video. God's still in charge no matter what you think, right? I would say humble ourselves. God, you're good. Save our nation. Save people's hearts. Bring salvation to others. That is the target, the salvation to others. And will we recognize God in the midst of it? I'll finish with this little quick video. This is an old one. This is a Hall of Fame viral video from about 20 years ago.

And the Washington Post did a experiment where they took a guy named Josh Bell and you've probably seen this if you're probably over 30 or 40. And they took Josh Bell. He was one of the, maybe the greatest, but one of the greatest violin players in the world. And they put him in a Washington subway to see if anybody would recognize the beauty of what they were experiencing.

And so they're there and he was there for like, I don't know, it was like an hour and a half and he's just playing. And finally, like after an hour and a half, one woman walks by and she stops. And then she turns, you'll see her in the video, and she stands there. I edited this down super short. It's like under a minute. And she stops there and she recognizes in the moment that something beautiful is happening.

Let's watch the video. Let's watch the video. I saw you at the Library of Congress. You see all the people walk by? That's not just yours. That's our life. I said at the beginning, God is always speaking. And can you recognize it? Because if we're lost in this and another political conversation or schadenfreude on the internet, you know, doing your little dance or just lost in your business and all these other things and never taking a moment to rest in his presence, you are not going to get that moment.

It is here every single day. And we need a people that recognize and are spiritually alive, not dead in the deadness of this because there is nothing alive in this at all. It is not built with anything alive. It has no organic material, nothing. But the Spirit of God dwells around us. Amen? Stand if we would. Our prayer team's going to come forward. If you need prayer today, you want to know Jesus, if you need a prayer for sickness, our prayer team will be here.

If you want to know Jesus for the first time, come forward. Lord, we will pray with you to know Jesus, to be baptized like you saw earlier and then to get on the path to following Jesus. We want to pray for you. So just know we have a great prayer team that is up here. If you extend your hands, I want to bless you today. Lord Jesus, I want to bless your people.

We love you, God. We know that you are in charge and you are sovereign. And God, where we have taken ourselves too seriously, when we have put our opinions upon the altar that we worship, God, and our understanding of how things should go and who should be in what position in the world and who shouldn't, Lord God, we just say that we don't know anything. Where were we?

But God, in the midst of that humility, Lord God, would you humble us and would you bless us because you bless humility. You love humility. Moses was said to be the most humble man on the face of the earth and that was until Jesus got there. And so Lord, we want to humble ourselves today. We want to say thank you that you are moving. You're moving amongst young people right now.

You're moving in college campuses right now. You're moving in different communities right now and we see you move and Jesus, we say, come Lord Jesus, come. God, would you bless us. So I bless you. I bless this group of people, Lord God, as they go out today to just have a fresh breath. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Chris is going to continue to worship.

If you want to come for the rest of you, the service is over.