Now in Job 23, verse number 1, the Bible reads,
Then Job answered and said,
Even today is my complaint bitter,
my stroke is heavier than my groaning.
Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
that I might come even to his seat.
Now, first of all, in verse 2,
what he's saying there when he says,
My complaint is bitter, my stroke is heavier than my groaning.
When he says my stroke, he's talking about basically
the bad things that are happening to him.
Usually when the Bible talks about strokes,
it comes from the word to strike.
Strike would be the verb,
and to strike something means to hit something.
And then a stroke would be basically that individual impact.
So when he says my stroke,
he's talking about the fact that he's been hit.
He's been stricken by God.
So he's saying my stroke is heavier than my groaning,
meaning my complaining can't even really do justice
as to how bad things are going in my life.
Even with all of his bitter complaining,
all the things that Job has said about
how bad things are going, how much pain he's in,
about losing his children, about losing all his money,
he's saying, Okay, I'm complaining,
but things are even worse than I can express in words.
And throughout the book of Job,
sometimes it's easy when you read the book,
just because it's kind of a long book,
you get way deep into the book,
you kind of forget how bad Job's condition is.
Sometimes you get caught up in all the back and forth
of the talking between him and his friends.
Let's realize that while this man is talking,
he's covered in boils head to toe.
Don't forget that.
He's scraping himself with a piece of pottery
because he's just itching and burning
and in physical pain the entire time.
The last thing his wife said to him was,
Curse God and die.
His friends have all turned on him.
His children are all dead.
His servants have all left him.
He talks about the fact that even the people in the city
and in the town basically are all looking down on him.
They've all forsaken him at this point.
So he's in a really bad place.
He says in verse 3,
O that I knew where I might find him, talking about God,
that I might come even to his seat.
I would order my cause before him
and fill my mouth with arguments.
I would know the words which he would answer me
and understand what he would say unto me.
Would he plead against me with his great power?
No, but he would put strength in me.
Now keep your finger there.
Flip over to Hebrews 4.
This passage reminded me of Hebrews 4
when he talked about how he wished that he could just
come before God's seat and talk to him
and order his cause before him.
But look what the Bible says in Hebrews 4 verse 14.
It says,
Seeing then that we have a great high priest
that is passed into the heavens,
Jesus the Son of God,
let us hold fast our profession.
For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched
with the feeling of our infirmities,
but was in all points tempted like as we are,
yet without sin.
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace
that we may obtain mercy
and find grace to help in time of need.
So the Bible tells us that we can come boldly
to the throne of grace
and when we get there,
we're gonna find someone who can sympathize with us
because the Bible says he was tempted in all points
like as we are, yet without sin.
Therefore he understands the feeling of our infirmities.
So it's not like when we pray to God
and we pour out our struggles to him
and ask him for help with the situations
that we're going through in our life
that he can't understand
or he doesn't really feel our pain.
He's been through the same types of things
when he was on this earth.
And obviously everyone's life is unique,
but he was tempted in all points like as we are.
You know, if you were to categorize
the different types of pain and suffering
and grief and sorrows,
he went through each of those types of things.
You know, you've gone through family problems,
he went through family.
You know, you had loneliness, he had loneliness.
You were hungry, he was hungry, and so forth.
However you would categorize grief, pain, suffering, sorrow,
Jesus went through all of that while he was on this earth.
And that's why the Bible says we can come boldly
to the throne of grace,
and it says when we do we will find grace
to help in time of need.
So Job is right if you flip back to Job 23
when he says that if he did come before God's throne,
if he did come to God's seat,
that God would put strength in him.
And he would give him comfort,
and he would help him.
And so when we're going through hard times,
when we're struggling, when we're sad,
when we're suffering,
we do need to take it to the Lord in prayer.
You know, we do need to get on our knees
and come before the throne of grace
and tell God our complaint,
tell God the things that we're going through.
And if you read the book of Psalms,
that's a lot of what Psalms is.
David is praying to God,
and he's telling God the bad things he's going through,
all the suffering he's going through,
and he's asking God to help him.
And he's asking God, and he talks about the fact
that he's weeping and filling his bed with tears,
and he's praying to God, saying,
have mercy on me, help me.
And the Bible says that we can boldly come
and realize that God's ready to hear from us,
we're not bothering him,
he knows what it's like to live on this earth,
and he wants to hear from us,
and that if we do so,
that he will give us grace to help in time of need.
He will strengthen us, he will comfort us.
And that's what Job is saying in Job 23, 6,
and that's what Hebrews 4 was saying.
It says in verse 7,
There the righteous might dispute with them,
so should I be delivered forever from my judge.
Behold, I go forward, but he is not there,
and backward, but I cannot perceive him.
On the left hand where he doth work,
but I cannot behold him,
he hideth himself on the right hand that I cannot see.
Now notice in verse 8,
he says I go forward, he's not there,
backward, but I cannot perceive him,
on the left hand where he doth work.
So is he absent on the left hand?
No, it says he doth work, he's there.
On the left hand where he doth work,
but I cannot behold him.
So he's saying I can't see him, but he's there.
So just because we feel like God has forsaken us,
that does not mean that God has really forsaken us.
And I'm sure everybody's probably gone through a period in their life
where they feel that God has forsaken them,
or they feel that God's not hearing their prayers,
or that God just doesn't care about them.
And then he says lastly,
he hideth himself on the right hand that I cannot see him.
So if we look at verses 8 and 9,
he's not in the front, he just isn't there.
But he is on the left, he is on the right,
he is behind him, but he cannot be seen.
And notice it says he hideth himself on the right hand.
So God is intentionally making himself unknown to Job,
and hiding himself from Job.
But look what it says in verse 10,
but he knoweth the way that I take,
When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.
So what the Bible's telling us,
that sometimes God will test us, and try us,
and he will purposely hide himself from us.
He's still there, he's still working in our lives,
but he will purposely put us through
times of trial and tribulation,
where he hideth himself.
And Job said, when I'm tried, I shall come forth as gold.
Now, the Bible promises this over and over again,
Jesus said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.
I mean, that's pretty clear, right?
Let your conversation be without covetousness,
and be content with such things as ye have,
for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.
And David said, whither shall I flee from thy presence?
Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
God is always with us, no matter where we go.
He said, if I ascend into heaven, behold thou art there.
If I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there.
Look, no matter where we go, no matter what we do,
God is always with us, he's always there to hear us,
and he might make us feel that way sometimes,
that we've been forsaken, and sometimes maybe even on purpose.
You say, well, why would God do that?
That's cruel.
But yet, God has a reason for the things that he does.
And it's not our place to question God
or stand in judgment of God.
If we have the faith, we will always know that he is with us,
even when he hideth himself.
And there's another scripture that says,
but thou art a God that hideth thyself.
I forget off the top of my head, for some reason it escapes me,
what book of the Bible that's found in.
But this is something that comes up throughout the Bible,
where people do go through times where God hides himself,
where they feel forsaken of God,
where they feel like they're on their own.
But we need to just have the faith in God's word
so that he has never forsaken us,
that whether we feel like it or not,
he is always there with us,
and that he knows the way that we take,
and that all things work together for good
to them who love God,
to them who are the called according to his purpose.
And at the time, when you're going through it,
it's hard to see that.
And I'm sure for Job, it was pretty hard to see
how things are working together for good in his life.
But he doesn't know in the end of the book
he's going to have all the wealth back,
he's going to have ten additional children,
he's going to have all of his reputation back,
and pretty much everything comes back to him.
And he's a great example of suffering and patience
for even us today, thousands of years later.
And so that's encouraging when we read this
and understand that, look, God cares about us,
he loves us, he's never going to turn his back on us,
even though sometimes we are going to feel like
God has turned his back on us in our lives.
We're going to feel that way.
Job felt that way.
Other people felt that way.
He says in verse 11,
My foot hath held his steps.
His way have I kept and not declined.
Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips.
I have esteemed the words of his mouth
more than my necessary food.
And that's a great scripture right there,
saying I've esteemed the words of his mouth
more than my necessary food.
The word esteemed there, think about the word estimate.
What does it mean when you do an estimate?
You're determining the value.
If I get an estimate on my house,
I'm getting the value of that house.
He's saying there's more value to me,
God's word is more valuable to me,
it's more important to me than even my necessary food,
even just the food that I need to survive.
Basically what he's saying is that when given the choice
between God's word and eating, he'll choose God's word.
Now, this isn't to say that eating is not important
or that our necessary food is not important.
Quite the contrary, because eating is so important,
that's why he compares his view of God's word to eating,
because eating is so critical, eating is so important,
that he says if I'm looking for something to compare
the importance of God's word with,
I'm gonna compare it to my necessary food,
because that's something that's very important to me.
Now, different people have different things
that are important to them,
and maybe I wouldn't necessarily be able to relate
with some of the things that you think are important.
And you may not be able to relate
with some of the things that I think are important.
But one thing that we can all agree is important is food.
There's nobody here, food's just not that important to me.
I go days and weeks without eating.
It's critical, food and water is something
that keeps us alive, it's something that sustains us.
It's the building blocks that build the cells of our body.
It gives us our energy, it gives us everything
that we have physically in our flesh
come from the food that we eat.
That's why you should actually pay attention
to what kind of food that you eat
and not put total garbage and poison into your body
and expect there not to be any bad effect from doing that.
But he's saying here that God's word
is more important than our necessary food.
Think about how many other scriptures teach this.
Man doth not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Showing us again, Jeremiah said,
thy words were found and I did eat them.
Even John the apostle is seen to eat God's word
in Revelation chapter 10.
And so we need to look at the Bible as a food source.
The Bible says, as newborn babes,
desire the sincere milk of the word
that ye may grow thereby.
Milk is the necessary food of a newborn babe.
And we need to look at our Bible as food,
how often do we eat?
Every day, every single day.
Now some people eat once or twice a day,
some people eat three, four, five, six times a day.
But daily we need to be taking in God's word as nutrition.
We need to be eating the word of God every single day.
It's more important than our necessary food.
And so going a week without eating
would be damaging to our body.
Well, what about a week without Bible reading?
But many Christians will frequently go a week
without reading the Bible.
I mean, frequently, from one Sunday service to the next,
the Bible is not touched, the Bible is not open.
Now imagine just frequently doing that with food.
You would be emaciated, you would be extremely unhealthy
if you're just constantly just,
oh whoops, I just forgot to eat for life.
It's Sunday again.
I left my Bible at church and I never touched it for a week.
Well, what if you did that with food?
But that's how you look spiritually
when you do that with your Bible.
If we could put on spiritual glasses,
some would look like they were just emaciated.
Spiritual anorexia, my friend.
Just not eating, not consuming the nutrition of God's word,
taking in what we need.
Now think about this.
You say, well Pastor Anderson, that would never happen
because I would start craving the food.
I'd get hungry.
I mean, if I forget to eat,
my stomach's gonna start growling at me.
But if you'll get in the habit of reading God's word,
you'll develop that hunger for it.
Where you'll just feel like,
man, I just haven't read my Bible.
I just feel like I need to read the Bible.
I need to spend some time on my Bible.
You need to get to that place and get in the habit
where you start to crave and desire God's word.
David said that God's word was like honey in his mouth.
And he loved the taste of God's word like honeycomb.
That's how God's word should be dear unto us
and we should esteem it more highly than our necessary food.
We should feast on God's word daily.
What's the difference between a baby and an adult?
A baby has to be fed by someone else every meal.
Even a toddler.
And then as they become a toddler,
they start reaching out and grabbing simple foods,
but you can't really hand them a T-bone steak.
But they can eat simple foods.
And then as they get older,
they can handle the strong meat on their own.
We as believers can be divided into the babies
and the grown-ups based upon whether we're feeding ourselves
or whether everything is being fed unto us.
Now, we as believers, when we're in church, we're being fed.
When we are at home reading the Bible on our own,
that's us feeding ourself
and that's a sign of spiritual maturity.
And if you're not spending a lot of time feeding yourself,
you're spending more time being spoon-fed,
that's a sign of spiritual immaturity.
Now, as an adult, does someone else prepare meals for me?
Sure.
But you could say, okay, I'm an adult.
I'm a mature Christian.
I'm still going to come to church.
The pastor is like a spiritual chef
that can maybe prepare a dish that I'm not able to prepare for myself.
But are you able to prepare anything for yourself?
My wife's smirking at me
because she doesn't think I'm able to prepare any food for myself.
I went from my mom preparing my food to my wife preparing my food
and then I'm going to the grave.
Hopefully it will be a three-stop plan for me.
And you know what?
Thank God we're going to be eating in heaven.
Every mention of heaven,
every mention of the glorified resurrected body, there's eating.
Jesus was eating after he rose again.
The Bible talks about eating and drinking in the kingdom of heaven.
So we're going to be eating for a long time.
We're going to be eating forever.
It is good.
But here's the thing.
I can feed myself.
There's one thing I know how to make.
A cheese omelet.
And I make one for myself every day.
Pretty much every day.
You say, for breakfast? No.
My wife makes me breakfast.
My wife makes me lunch.
My wife makes me dinner.
And I eat a cheesy omelet at about 10.30 every night before bed.
All right.
That's my fourth meal of the day.
But anyway, you should be able to feed yourself.
But at least when my wife cooks the food,
at least I can carve it up and put it in my own mouth.
Isn't that worth something?
But obviously, anybody who's a toddler can at least grab a granola bar.
And as you get older, you can at least throw together a sandwich.
Even my children can make themselves some food.
You are a spiritual newborn if the only learning you get is from church.
You're like a spiritual baby.
Until you can at least do some reading on your own
and some Bible study on your own, of course.
But we should read our Bibles every single day on our own.
And if you've never read it cover to cover,
you need to read the Bible cover to cover.
You need to make that a goal.
My pastor back in Sacramento, you know what he used to say?
He used to say, if you've been saved for more than a year
and you haven't read the Bible cover to cover,
you need to get right with God.
You need to read the Bible.
Because reading it once in a year is a pretty reasonable goal.
It takes about 15 minutes a day.
And anybody can carve out 15 minutes a day.
You say, well, I just don't have that time.
You know what?
Then take it 15 minutes out of your eating time.
But I bet you none of us would have to do that.
But if we did have to carve out 15 minutes from our eating time
to read the Bible, it would be worth it according to this passage.
Although, you might be able to eat and read at the same time.
You know, you need to learn how to multitask.
But anyway, it says in verse number 13,
But he is of one mind, and who can turn him?
And what his soul desireth, even that he doeth,
for he performeth the thing that is appointed for me,
and many such things are with him.
And basically here, Job is just resigning himself to the will of God.
Just saying, God's will is that I go through this.
He's of one mind.
I prayed about it.
I can't make him change his mind.
He's going to do what he's going to do.
And this reminds me of when the Apostle Paul talked about having the thorn in the flesh.
And we don't really know what that was,
but he said that he had a thorn in his flesh,
and that for that thing he besought the Lord thrice,
that the Lord would take it away from him.
And God basically answered him that he would not remove it from him.
He said, My grace is sufficient for thee,
for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
And Paul said, Most gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmity,
said that the power of Christ would rest upon him.
Paul had an abundance of revelations given unto him.
If you look at the New Testament,
he penned down 14 of the 27 books.
He is widely regarded as the greatest Christian who ever lived.
I mean, how many times have you heard people say that?
And the Apostle Paul is lifted up as being this amazing man of God
that was used to pen down so much of the New Testament,
preaching the Word of God all over Asia, all over Europe,
starting churches everywhere.
And he said because of the abundance of the revelations that were given unto him,
God gave him that thorn in the flesh to keep him humble,
because he said, Lest I should be exalted above measure.
You know, Paul was such a great man of God,
and he did so many great things, and people lifted him up so highly,
that God knew that if Paul didn't have that thorn in the flesh,
he would have been too proud, and it would have destroyed the Apostle Paul.
And Paul basically in the conclusion says,
I don't want to be destroyed.
I want the power of Christ to rest upon me.
I don't want to preach to others, and I myself be a castaway.
I don't want to become shipwrecked in my life.
So he says, all glory and infirmities,
because I just believe that if this is what God has put in my life,
it must be what is best for me.
That's what the Apostle Paul is saying.
And Job is saying, look, you know, God has a desire to do this.
God has it in his mind.
God's will has appointed this for my life.
It is what it is.
I'm just going to basically resign myself to the will of God.
Now, we're going to have things in our life that are similar to this.
I remember my grandpa, for example,
there was a time when he was very wealthy,
just making money hand over fist.
It was one of those things where it was Los Angeles,
it was the 1950s, and that was just a time
when there was just so much opportunity
in Southern California in the 1950s to just make a lot of money.
I mean, it was just one of those,
everything just lined up just right,
and you're in the right place at the right time.
And he was just making, he had a few different businesses going,
and he was just making a fortune, huge amounts of money,
insane amounts of money for the time.
You know, even by today's, like,
when my dad was giving me the numbers
of how much money my grandpa was making,
even today it would have been good money.
You know, he's making, like, several thousand dollars a week,
he's making 5,000 this week, 10,000.
I mean, even today that would be a lot of money,
let alone when you make 10 grand today,
10 grand in the 50s, big difference.
But he was making money hand over fist, but he wasn't saved.
And he was a drunkard and a bunch of other things.
And my grandma literally prayed that he would lose everything
if that's what it took for him to get saved.
So his own wife prayed that he would lose,
and he ended up losing it all.
And after he got saved, as a result of losing everything,
because remember, it's easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to be saved.
After he had lost everything, and the businesses he was in,
he had a paint store, a Sherwin-Williams paint store,
and he was manufacturing these hot dog on a stick trailers
and selling them every week and making a fortune.
He lost everything, and after that,
he would always try to make money again, you know,
and try other businesses and everything.
And after he got saved,
he never succeeded in business like that again.
I mean, he wasn't poor, he wasn't destitute,
but he was never wealthy again.
And I remember my dad saying that probably God
just knew that he couldn't handle it
and that it just wasn't going to be good for him.
So he spent the whole rest of his life getting by,
doing fine, but never getting wealthy.
And I can think about it in my own life,
whenever there's been a time when all of a sudden
things were just going really good in business,
and as soon as I would start making a lot of money
and, you know, straighten out the finances,
and then it's like, wow, I'm making a fortune,
it would always fall through.
And it's just because God just knows that if we get rich,
if we make a lot of money, if we prosper too much,
we can't handle it.
You know, and we all have this pride that tells us,
oh yeah, I can handle it.
You know, if I had a million dollars,
I would do so much good.
If you had a million dollars,
it would probably destroy your life.
If I had a million dollars,
it would probably destroy my life.
And so we need to just be thankful
for what God has given us, and if God is keeping us poor,
or if God's just keeping you middle class or whatever,
whatever God is giving you, just be thankful for it,
and know that if you love God,
if you are acknowledging Him in all your ways
and trusting in the Lord with all your heart,
He's directing your paths.
The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.
All things work together for them, for good to them to love God.
So if you're just kind of always a little bit stuck financially,
you're always just kind of struggling a little bit,
you're always a little bit hungry,
you can never just quite get to that place that you want to be,
maybe God's just keeping you there.
And instead of just getting so focused on,
I gotta straighten this, I gotta fix these finances,
I gotta straighten this out, I gotta fix this, I gotta fix,
just maybe sometimes we just need to realize,
hey, this is where I am,
and let's just focus on spiritual things,
let's focus on serving God,
but if God doesn't want me to have money,
if God doesn't want me to prosper financially,
then maybe I just wasn't meant to prosper financially,
and we need to be content with such things as we have
and not give way unto covetousness.
It's like the sermon that I preached a few weeks ago
about the whole Dave Ramsey thing,
where people get really into money,
and they get this goal, and everybody just has this attitude,
well what in the world is wrong with
wanting to become a millionaire
and make all this money so that you can give it all away?
And here's the thing,
you're leaning on your own understanding.
And we need to be careful that the word of God
gives us our life philosophy, not our own understanding,
because humanly speaking, that makes perfect sense.
Yeah, if I can just spend a few years,
maybe 10 years or something,
getting all my financial ducks in a row,
following all this financial advice,
really working hard at that,
and just hanging on to every dollar and whatever,
doing everything, and then I can get to this point
after I've invested money in the mutual funds and the stock,
whatever, and then I can get to this point
where I have all this money,
think about all the good I can do.
But that's man's understanding,
that's not a biblical thought.
The Bible never teaches you to do that.
Or I'm just gonna devote my life
to becoming a professional athlete,
and then when they hand me the mic,
when ESPN puts the microphone in my hand,
it's all gonna be about Jesus.
But these are all just worldly, man's logic,
it's not the way that God told us to live our lives.
And here's what I always tell people
when they hit me with this thing of,
well yeah, you become a millionaire
and then you can give it away.
I always say you will become a bad person
before you get to that point
where you're ready to start giving it away.
Okay, so this thing of I'm gonna get real rich
and then I'm gonna give it away.
On the way to getting rich, you will become a bad person.
I didn't say you might, you will.
They that will be rich fall.
It doesn't say they might fall.
Now, I'm not saying that every rich person is bad.
Job was a rich person that was not bad.
There are rich people in the Bible that were not bad.
But here's the thing,
there's a difference between,
let's say you're a man and you start a business
and your business starts going well
and all of a sudden you just start
making a fortune in business
and you just start making a ton of money.
I mean, if the money's there,
make hay while the sun is shining.
I'm not saying, oh wow, I need to stop this,
I'm making money.
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying anybody who sets out and says,
my goal is to be rich, my goal is to become a millionaire,
my goal is to make a fortune,
that type of philosophy will always lead you into sin
and the love of money is the root of all evil,
covetousness is idolatry,
it will lead you down that wrong path.
And you say, well, you're just splitting hairs,
but the Bible is making that distinction, okay?
So this isn't me making this up.
It's the desire of your heart to be rich
that destroys you.
When you're not rich and you desire to be rich,
that is covetousness.
That is sin.
That is a major sin that will destroy you.
You say, well, how do you just accidentally become wealthy?
Look, because when you go out and work hard,
sometimes you become wealthy and sometimes you don't.
But the Christian life is lived by people,
people who aren't focused on making money
as their biggest thing,
but that doesn't mean that they might not still
make a lot of money if God blesses them in that way.
But God chose to do that.
Like Solomon, he didn't pray for wealth,
but wealth was given unto him.
He did not pray, bad example anyway,
because it did end up destroying him anyway in the end.
But I think about my own life
and when I started my fire alarm business,
I had no intention, zero intention of,
I'm gonna start a fire alarm business
so that I can make a ton of money,
so that I can be rich,
so that I can live in a fancy house,
drive fancy cars, wear fancy clothes.
And I also didn't have an attitude that said,
I'm gonna start this fire alarm business
so I can get really rich
and give all the money to the work of the Lord.
I'm gonna be a millionaire.
I'm gonna make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
I had no intention of doing that.
When I started my fire alarm business,
my goal was just to be able to just support my family,
just provide my needs.
I'm gonna go to work, I'm gonna pay my bills,
I'm gonna work hard, make money, do as well as I can.
But in the process of running my fire alarm business,
I actually started making a lot of money
when I first started it.
Just right away.
And it wasn't that I just had this goal of becoming rich,
but I was just kinda in the right place at the right time,
and I was able to just make a lot of money.
And I did this one job.
It was for a big chain, a retail chain.
I installed this fire alarm system
where I made like a huge amount of money one month
just on this one job.
I made like $25,000 in one month on one job, profit.
Okay.
Let alone all the other work,
some other work that I did that month.
And I had like 10 jobs like that lined up
because it was a chain.
You know, all over in Arizona and California
I was gonna be doing these jobs.
And I was looking at that and I was thinking,
wow, I'm gonna make a lot of money.
Because this first one, I made a lot of mistakes.
I still made a profit installing this fire alarm system
like 25,000.
I was like, you know,
I think I can make a little more on the next one.
I think I can even do better on the next one
because I have some leftover materials
and I kind of know what I'm doing on this particular job.
It's kind of a cookie cutter thing
that's going in all over California and Arizona.
But you know what?
None of the other jobs happened
because I ended up losing, you know,
about two-thirds of my business
due to negative publicity in the news about our church
and they found out that I'm Pastor Anderson
and, you know, whatever.
You know the rest.
What I'm saying is I looked at that
and I'm thinking like, wow.
Now you say, well, what happened to all that money you made?
What happened to 25,000?
Well, what I ended up doing,
because this was back in 2009,
I ended up just taking six months off from my business
because my business pretty much imploded eventually
to where I had almost no customers,
to where I was making like $300 or $400 a month
on my business.
So I just kind of kept it open in case it ever came back.
And basically I just worked full-time for church
and just lived off of,
because this was back when the church,
the offerings were way too low.
There was no money to really pay a salary.
So I just lived off.
I had a bunch of money that was coming in from those big jobs
and I was able to just work for the church for like six months
and just, you know, take in that money.
And then as soon as that money started running out,
it was kind of like, okay, what do I do here?
Because I thought that in that six months
of working full-time for the church
that the church would be big enough
to support me by then, you know, as a pastor maybe.
So like January of 2010 rolled around,
the church hadn't really grown that much.
And I was thinking, okay,
I guess I just need to go out and get a job or something.
But then all of a sudden,
I had some new customers come in
right at the time I needed it,
right when that money had run out
from the seven fat years and the seven lean years.
So the seven fat months,
it wasn't really seven fat years,
it was more like seven fat months.
So the seven fat months where I'm making like $20,000,
you know, I'm making all this money.
And that helped me get out of debt
from when I started the church, you know,
I was a little bit in debt
just because of the way that whole situation worked out.
But I was able to kind of straighten out my finances.
I was able to work for the church full-time for a while,
get things caught up, do a ton of soul-winning, whatever.
And then all of a sudden, right when that money ran out,
it was like all of a sudden,
without me even going out and looking for it,
because I was thinking like,
well, I'm just going to go get a job doing fire alarms
because this business thing isn't working
because my face is on the news and stuff.
So then customers just came to me through word of mouth.
So what am I saying?
God purposely stopped me and withheld me
from becoming, you know, somewhat wealthy there.
You know, I had an opportunity before me
that to me seemed like it was in the bag.
I mean, we'd already signed the contracts
on all these locations
that I was going to be installing these fire alarms.
Paperwork was signed.
I mean, and they literally said,
we're canceling all these contracts
because of your sermon, okay?
Literally, even one that we had already started.
They said, bill us for what you've done so far
and we're canceling.
You will not work for us
because they had some sodomite high up in the company
that didn't like my preaching about faggots.
But anyway, I don't know why they'd be offended by that.
But anyway, so what I'm saying is,
even in my own personal life,
I could see where I work hard, work hard,
work hard, work hard, and I'm able to provide my needs,
provide my needs, provide my needs,
but never really get wealthy or make a lot of money
or really get, you know, ahead.
And then as soon as I get to the point where it's like,
wow, I'm actually making some money now, yeah.
Nope, God's like, psych.
Shut that door on you, buddy.
You know, and then another time you're like,
oh wow, I'm starting to really make a lot of money.
It's like, bam, forget about it.
But I learned a lot through that
because every time I run out of money
or every time I get in a bind or a jam
and it's just, oh man, what am I gonna do,
God always comes through.
When your finances are just about to just,
I mean, there have been,
I can name a few times over the last eight years
of pastoring, I can name a few different times
where I literally thought it was financial doomsday.
I thought like, I'm done, we're done, game over.
Insert coin, you know, we're done.
But honestly, God always came through.
And then the opposite is true too.
Every time you're like, oh wow, we're finally getting ahead.
We're gonna, hey, we got some extra money.
Hey honey, what are we gonna do with this extra money?
You know, you wanna go do a vacation?
What are you doing?
It's just like, bam.
Oh, forget that idea.
The vacation just became, you know, Arizona.
And I keep trying to tell my wife,
there's so many parts of Arizona that we haven't seen yet.
And we need to just go to those places.
Hawaii?
I keep telling my wife, can somebody help me out with this?
I keep telling my wife, Hawaii is overrated.
Arizona is the place.
You know, there's so many more beautiful places in Arizona.
Hawaii, you know, it's all just a big advertising scam.
And neither of us have been there, so, you know,
I can convince her of that, hopefully.
But anyway, but look, do you see how silly it would be, though?
What if I just kept focusing on that?
Man, I've gotta make money.
I've gotta get a bigger house.
I've gotta get, you know, ahead financially.
I've gotta get this.
I'd live a pretty frustrating life,
because God, that's not God's will.
But do you see how another Christian,
who did the same thing I did,
who was living the same type of life that I lived,
starts a business, still soul winning,
still reading the Bible, still serving God,
but starts a business, and God does not shut the door,
and God, what if God had just allowed me
to finish those ten jobs,
make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a short time?
Do you see how people could become wealthy
without having wickedness in their heart?
Right?
But it's only God's will for some people.
But here's the difference.
God knows who those people are.
Do you think Job is the type of person
that could handle wealth?
He's the greatest man that lived on the earth at that time.
So look, when you're the greatest man who ever lived
on the earth at that time,
God can trust you with a lot of wealth.
When you're Abraham,
God can trust you with a lot of wealth.
When you're Isaac, God can trust you with a lot of wealth.
That's why those people got wealth.
Isaac sowed seed in the land and he reaps a hundredfold.
It's not that he was just this guy
who just spent his life on just riches and money
and all he cares about is getting more wealth.
Do you believe that about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job?
Yet they were wealthy men. Why?
Because God saw fit to just give them those things.
Because they could handle it.
Now, I'm not Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
I'm not Job.
You know, God looked at me and just thought,
you know, you don't need all this wealth.
You don't need all this money, Stephen Anderson.
So I'm not gonna give it to you.
So that's the danger of when you desire to be rich,
when you start devoting your whole life
toward making money and getting rich
and, you know, not seeking first the kingdom of God,
but making your life about the desire to become rich.
Or you say, well, I'm gonna do both.
I'm gonna serve God and desire to be rich.
The Bible says no about desiring to be rich
because it's covetousness.
People don't even know what covet means anymore.
I mean, I guarantee you, if we walk down the street
just asking people, what does the word covet mean?
What does covet mean?
Even if we went to only Christians.
Are you a Christian? Yes.
What does covet mean?
Some people wouldn't even be able to tell us, I think.
And a lot of people who did tell us an answer,
I think would have a wrong answer.
Because I bet if I asked them,
well, what if I would just like to someday,
if I just really wanna live in a big fancy house
and drive a fancy car,
I don't wanna take it from anyone else,
but I just wanna be wealthy someday.
I just wanna retire a millionaire.
Is that covetousness?
No, that's fine.
You know, that's probably what they'd say,
but that is covetousness according to the Bible's definition.
But when we have that philosophy,
what happens is we can sometimes get rich
when it wasn't God's will for us to get rich.
Step outside of God's will and become rich
because we wanna get rich.
It will destroy us.
The prosperity of fools shall destroy them.
Look at all the stories of people who win the lottery
and it ruins their life.
But we all think we're above that,
but actually I could see how even the greatest person
could fall victim to that,
because you don't really know.
It's hard to say because none of us have been there.
How we would react or what we would do
if we had just mass amounts of money.
If nothing else,
it'd probably make you prideful and arrogant,
especially people who earned it through business.
Sometimes people who went out and worked hard
and earned a lot of money have this attitude,
oh, everybody who's poor is a derelict.
Everybody who's poor is lazy.
That's not true,
because actually there have been some periods in my life
where I was working very hard
and I wasn't poor,
but I was just barely scraping by,
even working really hard.
I think there are a lot of hardworking people
that just kinda scrape by.
And God commands us very strongly against despising the poor
over and over again.
So this attitude that sometimes people
who have never struggled financially,
everything just went great for them financially all the time,
is this attitude of looking down on anybody
who doesn't have money.
Because for them it was so easy to make money,
they just look at you like,
oh, you're poor, you're an idiot.
And it comes off, even if they don't say that,
it comes off in their attitude
when they look down on people who don't have,
I don't look down on people who don't have money.
If people are poor, you know what,
I don't look down on that whatsoever.
Because of the fact that I've struggled financially myself,
I understand how this world works
and thank God for the struggles in our lives
that have kept us humble and kept us serving God.
So that's something we need to keep in mind
when we go through things like,
Job is an extreme example,
but when we go through times where we're lean financially,
we go through times where our health is bad,
we go through times where things aren't going well,
we need to always keep in perspective
that God knows what's best for us.
And when we're tried, we'll come forth as gold
if we just stay faithful to him,
keep trusting him, keep doing what's right,
it never makes sense at the time,
but in the end we'll be able to look back and say,
okay, wow, now I see why I went through that.
And sometimes the sufferings might last for a very long time.
You might go through a decade of suffering,
you might go through 15 years of suffering,
you might go through 20 years of suffering.
It might only be six months, it might be a week,
you know, whatever it is.
It's for a reason if you're serving God.
Now if you're one that doesn't love God,
if you're one who is out living a sinful and worldly life,
part of your sufferings could just be
a lot of chastisement from God.
But when you know that you're doing what's right
and you love the Lord and you're serving him,
like Job had that confidence,
you know that whatever's happening is best for you.
And I think if we could ask Job right now,
you know, would you prefer that this had just never happened?
He would say that he was glad that he went through it.
I think even if we would've asked him
when he was on this earth.
Once he'd gotten through it,
and once he had everything restored unto him,
and once he wasn't covered in scabs and boils anymore.
Now if we asked him right now, he'd be like,
are you insane?
I wish I was dead right now.
Kill me now, God.
I mean that's what he's saying in almost every chapter.
But if we asked him at the end of the story,
he would've said, well of course I'm glad I went through it.
Now I'm the greatest example of patience
that the world has ever seen.
So we need to have that same faith in God
where we don't see God, but we know he's at our left hand,
we know he's at our right,
we know he's behind us, we know he's working,
he's always there, he loves us,
it's not that he can't be touched
with the feeling of our infirmities.
He does care about us, he does feel our pain,
he does love us, he might want us to be poor right now.
He might want us to be in bad health right now.
He might want us to be,
and it doesn't make any sense to us,
but we need to trust in the Lord
and not lean on our own understanding.
And that's the main teaching of the book of Job.
Let's go through the last couple of verses there.
It says in verse 15,
therefore am I troubled at his presence,
when I consider I'm afraid of him.
For God maketh my heart soft,
and the Almighty troubleth me,
because I was not cut off before the darkness,
neither had he covered the darkness from my face.
Now what are the results in Job's heart
even before he's gone through the whole trial,
even before he comes forth as gold,
the statement he makes at the end of verse 15,
I'm afraid of God.
Is that a bad thing?
No, because the fear of the Lord is always a good thing.
And people say, well, that's a different kind of fear.
Yeah, but it says fear and trembling.
You know, fear is fear, my friend.
Being afraid of God is not necessarily a bad thing.
Okay, verse 16, God maketh my heart soft.
Is that a bad thing, to have a soft or a tender heart?
That's always a good thing in the Bible.
The opposite of that is being hard-hearted,
which is one of the dangers of things
going too well in your life,
because remember what it said in Proverbs 30,
give me neither poverty nor riches,
lest I be full and deny thee and say, who is the Lord?
We don't need God.
Hard-hearted toward God
and hard-hearted toward our fellow man.
But he said, no, God makes my heart soft.
I'm afraid of him.
Now look, he's in a bad place.
He's suffering, he's upset.
But here's the thing, once the scabs are gone,
once the suffering's over,
he's still gonna have a soft heart
and he's still gonna fear the Lord.
The lessons will remain
and the Christian growth will remain.
And that's what we learn from this chapter
in the book of Job.
Very applicable to our lives,
because everybody goes through suffering in this life.
Especially if you love God and serve God,
you're gonna go through more,
because the Bible says,
many are the afflictions of the righteous.
But out of them all, the Lord delivers them.
Let's bow our head and have a word of prayer.
Father, thank you so much for your word, Lord,
and thank you for the book of Job.
It's a book that we can lean upon in tough times.
Help us to follow Job's example.
It's easier said than done, Lord.
But help us not to fall into the world's philosophy
that says a good life equals lots of money,
perfect health, everything going your way.
Help us rather to just be thankful
and to accept whatever you give us, Lord,
and just whatever you decide we need in our lives.
Help us to be able to just be thankful for it
and go through the trials
and to come out stronger and to come out like gold.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen.