Mr. Richard Pinelli

Sermon Transcript
June 22, 2002

Is There a Problem Here? Who Caused It?

Now there was a day when the sons of God came together to present themselves before the Lord. And Satan came in the midst of them, and the Lord said, "Satan, where have you been?"

And he said, "I’ve been walking up and down in the earth."

And the Lord said to him, "Have you seen My servant, Job?"

And he says, "Yes. I’ve seen Your servant, Job."

And He said, "Well, Job is a perfect and an upright man, one who fears Me and hates evil."

Now Satan said to him, he says, "Job fears You not for just simply fearing You, but he has reason to because You made a hedge around him, and you’ve protected him, and You’ve given him all these things. If You take away all that he has, he’ll curse You to your face."

And God said, "Okay." He said, "Take away all that he has, but don’t touch him."

And there was a day when the sons of Job were eating and drinking, and a messenger came and he said, "The Sabeans came, and they fell upon the herd, and they took away certain of it, and they destroyed the servants."

And while he was yet talking, in came another servant, and he said, "The fire of God has fallen from the heavens and has burned up the sheep, and the servants have been consumed as well."

And while he was talking, another servant came in, and he said, "The Chaldeans have laid hold on the camels and taken them away, and I am only left to tell you that this has been done."

And while the sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their elder brother’s house, a huge wind comes and it tears down the four corners of the house and destroys all of them, and only this young man was there to tell what had happened. And Job rose, and he rent his mantel, and he shaved his head, and he fell down to worship God. And he said these words. He says, "Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return. The Lord gave, and the Lord took away."

Now there came another day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came in their midst again. And the Lord said unto Satan, "Have you seen my servant, Job?" And He said, "Have you considered my servant, Job, that there’s really none quite like him in all the earth. He fears God; he hates evil, and he is a man who holds to integrity. And He said, "And you have moved Me to destroy him without cause."

And Satan says, "Yeah, skin for skin, a man will give all for his life." And Satan says, "Put forth your hand and touch his bone," and he said, "and he will curse you to Your face."

And the Lord said to him," Okay, his life is in your hands, but simply, do as you will, but don’t take his life."

So, Satan went forth, and he laid upon Job one of the most awful things, boils from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet.

Now, his wife said to him, "Do you still retain your integrity? Curse God and die."

And Job said to her, "You speak as a foolish person. What shall we receive? Good at the hand of God, and shall we not also receive evil?"

And as this particular story begins to unfold, we begin to recognize that probably one of the most profound set of discussions and literature that has ever been written in the Bible begins to unfold from chapter two all the way through to chapter forty-two.

Now Job for seven days sat, and he was scraping his body with a piece of broken pottery to take the boils that had come to a head and try to scrape them off to get rid of the oozing that was there in his body. For seven days his three friends stood there and sat there and watched him, and they sat with his misery, and Job then began to speak, and began to talk about what had happened to him and how he felt about what had happened to him.

And Job’s friends began then to have discourse with Job, and then in the fourth chapter, Eliphaz said, remember, he said, "Who has ever perished being innocent? Even as I have seen," he said, "they that plow iniquity and sow wickedness reap the same."

So Job’s three friends began to tell him simply that you are suffering because you have sinned against God. But Job, in essence said, "If I am doing right, which I am, nothing should go wrong." If I am doing right, which I am, nothing should go wrong. He goes on to say, "Show me, now, please show me, what I have done wrong." And he went on to finally say, "No matter what I do, it seems I can’t be right."

Now you and I are allowed to see the whole story unfold before our eyes. We see the true instigator. We see the true purpose of God being fulfilled in this particular book in the life of this man, Job. And so what we see is we have players or participants that we just talked about in just a very short summary of what went on during that period of time. And you and I step back and we look at this book as an observer, and we see the whole book from chapter one through chapter forty-two. And we also see the purpose or the outcome as it came down to us. Most of the players did not understand causes and effects and the overall purpose of God. The players did not understand those because we see they said the fire that came down was from God. And Job said, "The Lord took away." The Lord took away.

And she said, "Curse God and die," because who got the blame? I mean, the devil has always done that over the ages; he’s always made sure that God got the blame for most everything that supposedly goes wrong. And then Job’s friends said, "You’re the problem; you’re a sinner; you have broken God’s laws and God’s way of life," and of course, over a period of twenty-some chapters, they were never able to prove that about this particular man. So in reality, they blamed God for what happened. They blamed Job for the problems, and Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes, justified himself rather than God. And he got into some pretty stinky attitudes in blaming God.

Today I would like to take you to a concept based on what you and I just saw in the book of Job.

The apostle Paul made this comment. He said to us in the Church of God, "Therefore, brethren, judge nothing before the time."

The servant said, "Fire from God." But the fire didn’t come from God.

And Job’s wife said, "Curse God and die," thinking that God had done that.

Job said, "God has given and He’s taken away," and God didn’t take away.

And his friends simply said, "Job, you’re the problem because you sinned."

So we see that sometimes we sit in judgment before the time. Judge not according to appearance, but that’s what they did. And brethren, that’s what we do in the church many times, we judge according to appearance instead of judging righteous judgment, getting the whole story, backing up for a little bit as an observer to see what is actually happening and understand that what they saw is not what you and I saw. And what God sees is not always what you and I see, therefore, we have to take the time to judge nothing before the time and to understand those things.

Some years ago, in the Caribbean, we had a terrible problem with the sound system. And the sound man said, "The devil got into the sound system." The devil got into the sound system. Well that sounded quite good because it alleviated him of any blame, or the hotel, or whatever; you always have to pass the buck. Is that not the way that it normally happens in life?

Well in Toronto we had the Feast of Tabernacles in 1978, and at seven-thirty in the evening, the sound system went on, and Larry Greider walked to the microphone and he said, "Brethren, take your song . . " and that’s all we heard. And the sound system went - "Pphhheeetttt." And it died. And he looks at me and he says . . , and I go . . .you know, like that. You know, you’re worthless, Richard, you say, what do you do.

And so I said, "Sing more songs. We’ll see if we can find a way to fix the sound system."

And so finally, the man in the sound system took wires apart, and he with a pliers held them together, a power situation that probably he could have hurt himself pretty badly with, and he held together those wires while I preached the forty-five minute sermon. We made it through.

And so everybody was saying, "You see, that’s what happens, the devil comes here and he tries to destroy the Feast of Tabernacles, and he does everything possible. . . blah, blah, blah, and so forth and so on.

The sound man walked up to me afterward, and he said, "We found the problem."

I said, "Yeah, the devil did it, right?" I said, "What?"

He said, "We plugged in the ‘hard of hearing’ section backwards. And we blew the whole thing up."

Now, what’s my point? The point is that in the church sometimes we don’t perceive what really is happening and so we start to put the blame in areas that probably we’d be better off not doing. But the point is that you do have to judge according to righteous judgment. There comes a time when one must learn to do that..

Humans being tend to judge improperly. We judge without the facts. We see in the Bible man’s judgment, yet we also see stories which unfold to give us a better understanding because we are observers and not participants. But when you are a participant, it’s a whole lot different. Right? Right. It’s a whole lot different. So therefore, the sermon today, in the long introduction that I gave, the title of the sermon is: "If there is a problem here, who caused it, and why?" Or, let’s elaborate on that a little bit, how do I know when God is testing me, or if He is correcting me? Or maybe, instead, the devil is tempting me, or maybe the world is persecuting me, or maybe my human nature is afflicting me. And how about when time and chance occur in my life? Am I suffering from my own sins, or maybe I can blame it on my dad, my forefathers.

I mean, these are all the things that we go through, and so today what I would like us to do is to take a look at five categories of blame, five categories in our thinking, because it doesn’t cover every last one of them, but it covers pretty well the five basic ones.

Number one: The devil. We’re going to look at the devil and his problems.

Number two: We’re going to look at sins and faults, our sins and faults.

Number three: We’re going to look at God’s hand or correction.

Number four: We’re going to look at time and chance.

Number five: We’re going to look at God’s testing.

So, let’s begin first of all with the devil. Let’s take just a short run at each one of these today in the time that I have left and evaluate this particular concept.

Now we read in the book of II Corinthians there was man who had been put out in

I Corinthians because of incest and because of fornication. He had repented; he was to be received back into the fold, and Paul said you need to bring this individual back lest he is swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. And he said, "Lest Satan get advantage, for we are not ignorant of his devices."

Now Paul knew that an unforgiving spirit opens the door to Satan. Therefore, he said we are not ignorant of his devices. We do know that there are certain devices that Satan has in order to remove us from the body; he has many different ways. He sows discord; he uses human beings to create problems between human beings and negative spirits, unforgiving spirits, whatever you might want to call them. But the point is that he has a number of things, and you can say, "Yes, this is a part of what I understand." Yet there is a whole lot more that we don’t understand.

Let me take you to Revelation 2:24 and show you that there is also the fact that we don’t always know how he does everything, but we do know how to withstand him. Revelation 2:24 says the following:

Revelation 2:24 - "But unto you I say, and to the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will put upon you none other burden." So we recognize that the church in Thyatira didn’t have it all in understanding about how the devil works.

Flip Wilson made the comment in the sixties, and it’s always been used, "The devil made me do it." And I thought it was interesting because of the fact that in reality, sometimes you don’t really always know whether it’s your human nature that is doing it, or whether you’re being poked at by the unseen god of this world in implanting thoughts or feelings or attitudes in your mind to make you think or feel or do certain things you shouldn’t do. Sometimes you don’t know that. And here was a church that didn’t know the depths of Satan. Yet Paul said, "I want you to understand we’re not ignorant of his devices." So it means simply that not all things that we would like to know in making this judgment about this spirit being do we know. There are many things that we can, but there are some things that we can’t. And sometimes we want to plant our feet on something and say, "This is the way it is," and it may not necessarily be so. It may not necessarily be so.

Let go to a scripture over in I Peter 5 for just a minute. Let’s notice what Peter says here in I Peter 5:8. The apostle Peter writes about Satan, and it says:

I Peter 5:8 - "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour." Now it doesn’t say how he devours. It doesn’t say how he goes about doing some of these things. You don’t always recognize that this roaring lion who brings affliction and suffering, we don’t always know what kind of afflictions because they’re not enumerated here. He just simply says, "Be on guard."

How do you stay on guard?

Verse 9 - "Whom resist steadfast in the faith." So he tells us that while we may not always know who it is and how he may be doing it, you and I are to resist him steadfast in the faith. What in the world is "resist in the faith?" It is simply the belief or the truth of God, that you stand on, that the foundation upon which you and I stand is the word of God. Why are we sitting in this room today doing what we’re doing? It’s because somebody couldn’t deceive us into believing that we could go to another day, or keep other holidays or whatever it might be, because they tried to implant those thoughts in the minds of many people. You and I stood upon a foundation of belief, and we have practiced those beliefs, and they are a part of our being, a part of our thinking, and you’re going to hear about some of them this coming afternoon in the concept of the resurrections. But Satan tests our beliefs based upon the word of God by sending us off to try to get us into a deception.

Now the devil has a way of sliding off the truth, adding to the truth, moving away from the basic truths that God has given, that’s just simply his style, but it tells us to remain faithful in the faith, to hold fast to the word of God, to hold fast to the truth of God. This is where we need to go.

Now, let’s go over to Matthew 4. Just take a look at this for just a moment and show you another concept here in Matthew 4 that Jesus used to help us understand how to withstand Satan, whether you know that it’s him or not. Here’s Matthew 4:1:

Matthew 4:1 - "Then Jesus was led up of the spirit into the wilderness. . .

Verse 2 - ". . .where He fasted forty days and forty nights. . .

Verse 3 - "And the tempter . . ." Satan comes and he begins to deal with Him. Now the devil does three things: First of all, he simply operates in a trinity of sin. His favorite three trinity is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. He used it with Adam and Eve; he tried to use it with Jesus Christ; and he continues to use it, because he recognizes that human nature is what it is, and therefore, you see, that he first of all tried to get Christ to turn the stones into bread because he was very hungry. And so he uses the concept of the lust of the flesh to try to draw out of Christ’s physical cravings the ability to move away from the word of God, and to do what He needs to do to turn these stones into bread. Jesus, understanding the way that he worked, simply quoted the scripture:

Verse 4 - ". . .Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." So He quoted the Bible; He stood upon the Bible; He used the Bible as the basis for which He was going to practice what he needed to practice.

Verse 5 - "Now the devil took Him then to a high place in the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple.

Verse 6 - "And he said to Him, ‘If you be the Son of God,’ " now what’s that? The pride of life. He tries to deal with the pride of life. He tries to get Christ to say, "Well, wait a minute, what do you mean if I am. . . I’ll show you I am." And hurl yourself off the pinnacle! No, He didn’t do that. He caught on to it, and he just simply told him very simply that He was not going to allow Himself to follow what Satan had devised for Him to do.

Verse 7 - And Jesus said, " . . you shall not tempt the Lord your God." Even though the devil used the scriptures.

He said, "Cast yourself off, and God’s angels will protect you."

And Jesus understanding that that was wrong simply said, "No, you don’t do that. That’s not the way you deal with your humanity. You don’t give in to ‘what if’ type thing." And so the devil did the last thing in dealing with Christ, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and said I’ll give these all to you if You’ll fall down and worship me.

Verse 10 - "And Jesus said simply, ‘Get hence, . . .for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you worship.’ " Now my point comes back to a simple thing, and that is, if you hold fast to the faith, if you hold the truth of God, if you don’t allow yourself to be given in to the human aspect of what Christ did not allow Himself to be, because He planted His feet solidly on the word of God, you don’t always have to know. You can’t always know the depths of Satan and the way that he does things, but you can know that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

Now sometimes we wonder if it is Satan or our human nature. We wonder, because sometimes we have these giant pulls, and sometimes you will recognize that what will happen to you as a human being is that you will feel this sense of being pricked in the mind, and this idea keeps coming back again and again and again and again. And you throw it out; you cast it out; and it keeps coming back; and you could say, "Yeah, well maybe I have some influence here where he is poking at my mind."

But the point is that God has permitted it to occur because - because - if it’s Satan, he sees, or he perceives a weak link, or suspects one, like in Job’s case. He perceived, or he discerned that maybe there was a weak link here. If it’s human nature, then we have a weakness which needs overcoming. So one way or the other, the devil has become a tool in the hands of God to get you to deal with your problem. And if you keep having this particular problem occurring again and again, then you recognize that whether it’s him or whether it’s your human nature, you’ve got a problem you’ve got to get rid of, you’ve got to work on. It’s interesting, and the devil becomes the tool in God’s hands if it’s him. Just as he was the tool in God’s hands to deal with Job, even though he was the one who was the instigator, God still used him to bring about in Job a repentance to understand the greatness of God. This is fantastic because you begin to realize God and Christ use all of these things in order to bring us to the place where we need to be.

Now if you would look at Ephesians 6 you will realize that there were fiery darts, and I’m not going to go there today because I simply want to show you that Satan, the devil, does fire these darts into our armor, or tries to fire them into our armor. The word of God says that there is an armor that we are to coat ourselves with. It’s called the - girt about your loins with truth; you’re supposed to have the breastplate of righteousness; you’re supposed to have the helmet of salvation; your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace and the sword of the spirit. These are all offensive weapons that have you going forward. You don’t turn around and go the opposite way; there’s nothing to cover the back.

But the point is very simply that what you ultimately stand on is the armor of God. And what is that? Simply the word of God. Thy word is truth. What is God’s law? That is righteousness; that’s the breastplate that you cover yourself with, the helmet of salvation. You have God’s holy spirit and obedience to what God has commanded, the commission of doing the work of God, getting outside of yourself is the preparation for your feet that you walk on. And the sword of the spirit becomes your offensive weapon, which is the word of God, which slices both ways.

But the point is, it doesn’t make any difference whether it’s the devil or whether, you know, it’s your human nature. The point is that you are standing on the word of God, the law of God, the, what we describe as, the purpose of God and the purpose of the gospel. And so the end result is simply this: that if God is in charge of this universe, and He is the all wise, all knowing, all powerful, then He sees and knows, and He therefore permits for our ultimate good for us to be worked with and dealt with. Is this not the ultimate end? Is not His character developed in us by free choice, or by free moral agency as a separate entity. Is that not the bottom line? Well, of course it is.

This, therefore, is a teacher. This is a teacher, and God allows, or permits, or even uses him to find the holes in our armor. Because if he finds holes in our armor, then it means simply that we’ve got something to work on. And if he’s capable of finding holes, and we’re offended, or we’re hurt, or we’re bothered, or we’re tested, the point is that it becomes a teacher, and it is a useful teacher to bring us to the place that we get that armor sewn up to protect us from the holes.

Now let’s go to point number two: Our sins and faults. There are two things that are found here: sins and faults. Faults we would describe probably as character flaws. Sin has to do with the transgression of God’s law, first of all, in the letter, and secondly, in the spirit. So we are told over in I Peter 2:20 that sometimes we are buffeted about for our sins and faults. This is Peter’s statement over here in I Peter 2:20 that he simply tells us that we, as human beings, can and are at times buffeted about.

I Peter 2:20 - "For what glory is it if, when you are buffeted for your faults, you shall take it patiently? But if, when you do well, and suffer for it, you take it patiently, this is acceptable to God." So, we recognize that there’s going to be times of trial, but also there are times of suffering for our own sins.

Now retribution can be swift. We can see mistakes sometimes, like the law of gravity, because committing a sin or doing something wrong in certain ways will bring about a retribution, at times, immediate. Then there are some times when sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily showing that sometimes things take time, sometimes, later, especially matters of the spirit that have to do with getting rid of flaws in character and simply the breaking of God’s law in the spirit that some people had to work on for years and years, maybe wrong thoughts in the area of desires, lusting after things that we should not desire. But the point is very simply that God deals with both of these things by simply, in some cases, dealing with some things immediately, and other things a little bit later.

I’d like you to turn to I Corinthians 11 because I Corinthians 11 tells us that not all things are revealed and understood immediately, and therefore, it takes time to judge things in the way that we should. Now he was telling them in this particular case that the Passover and some of the things that they were doing simply led them to having a problem. And I Corinthians 11:32 tells us that, well, let’s begin to read in verse 30:

I Corinthians 11:30 - "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.

Verse 31 - "For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged." Or we should not be judged. Now that’s a principle that you and I have to work on every day of our lives, not just the during the days of unleavened bread, not just during the Passover season, but every day of our life, it simply says if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged.

There are some things that are easy to see. The letter of the law is easy to see. You don’t even have to be converted to see the letter of the law, because the children of Israel were able to see the ten commandments in their basic essence when they were given in Mount Sinai. What you and I face is the inability to always understand the spirit of the law and how it applies to us as an individual or just simply weaknesses that we have that need to be dealt with. So Paul is saying simply that if we would judge ourselves, in verse 31, we would not be judged. Now, verse 32:

I Corinthians 11:32 - "But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world." Now what do you mean, chastened of the Lord? A lot of people think that somehow God comes along and brings some horribly strong big terrible trial upon an individual as a basic reason for correction. You will find that in most of the corrections of both the Old and New Testament, you will find that this happened in a stronger way mainly to the people who were given leadership positions as kings and leaders and prophets and individuals like that. When you come to the person like you and I, you will find that God has a gentler way, sometimes, of getting the point across. He shows us what happened to leaders in the Bible when they didn’t do what was right, as an example of these things. But you will find that many of us will be worked with gently. We will have time, and God will work with us. He will give us the word of God. He will give us sermons; He will give us just the impregnation of our mind with thoughts and ideas as we study and as we experience life. God does not take a ball-peen hammer and rap us up beside of the head all of the time when we’re doing something wrong. He’s not done that. If you stop and think about when the space shot was going to the moon, was going to the moon; it was never on course. It was never on course. It would get closer to a correction, every time it had a correction, it would get closer to being on course, but the moon shot was never always on course. It wasn’t just going straight to the moon. It had its movements to the left or to the right, as we would say, and there would be small burns that would occur during that period of time to bring it into an alignment with the moon in order to get there, just as they turned it around and brought it back to the earth. God does the same thing to us. These little small burns, a little bit of tapping to the side or a little push here is basically the way He does it. And the point is simply that you and I have to be sensitive enough to the wooing of God’s holy spirit in order for us to be attentive.

Now when we don’t pay attention, and we continue to do the thing that we shouldn’t be doing, and we simply blind ourselves to the reality of what should be done, then sometime, like the Missouri mule, He’s got to rap him on the nose. And once in a blue moon, that might happen to us, but most of the time we have been so gently dealt with that sometimes we don’t even know that we’ve been worked on. And that’s the point that you have to realize, brethren, that sometimes in sins and faults, we have to realize that God simply says here that we should judge ourselves, and if we don’t, then we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world.

But you don’t see us going through the things that David went through when he lost that child. You don’t see us going through things where Abraham was told simply to give up his son. You haven’t seen that to the normal Christian. Now you have to give up your life, yes. In being a Christian, you ultimately give up your entire life in that sense of the word, but in the same way, I don’t think you see us having that happen to us. So, I do believe this is important that we always go back to the most important thing. James 1:22. Let’s go notice what James 1:22 says. This is the key to everything. If you remember now, twice we’ve talked about going back to the word of God. Notice James 1:22, it says:

James 1:22 - "But," Let’s start in verse 21. I’m sorry.

James 1:21 - "Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls." You have to internalize like a computer, you have to have the programming redone inside of you. You have to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is what He is saying.

Verse 22 - "But be you doers of the word, and not hearers only. . ." So the concept of dealing with the devil; the concept of dealing with our sins and faults is simply internalizing the word of God. And as you internalize the word of God, He pricks your mind to show you where you’re wrong. Is that correction? You bet. Is that a gentle correction? You bet. Do you want the other kind? No bet. You and I don’t want that kind if we can avoid it. Let’s not go there because He’s very capable of using a two by four. He’s very capable of a ball-peen hammer, in that sense of the word, up the side of the head. But He doesn’t do that as a normal thing. Going on, He says:

Verse 23 - "But if any man be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

Verse 24 - "For he beholds himself, and goes his way, and straightway forgets what manner of man he was.

Verse 25 - "But whoso looks into the perfect law of liberty, and continues therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed." So you begin by asking what I have I done to cause or contribute to a particular problem. You seek correction first, and that becomes a pattern of behavior in your thinking and you’ll find that if you beat God to the punch, in that sense of the word, you’re going to find a whole lot less adversarial situations and conditions that will occur from the point of view of sins and faults because you’re always keeping God’s word utmost in the forefront of your mind.

Now let’s go to point number three: God’s hand of correction. Now David felt that he was going through certain problems and he said that God was correcting him. I don’t want you to turn there, but when you have a chance, you’ll want to go back and read Psalm 32 because you know it says God’s hand was upon him for correction, but it was not defined. It was not defined in this particular case.

Now in Psalm 38 it is defined in a particular way that I thought you might find interesting as to how David perceived God’s hand or correction in his life. This is Psalm 38:1. Let’s begin by reading:

Psalm 38:1 - "O Lord, rebuke me not in your wrath: neither chasten me in your hot displeasure.

Verse 2 - "For your arrows stick fast in me, and your hand presses me sore." So David said that he perceived that God was dealing with him in this case. He said:

Verse 3 - "There is no soundness in my flesh because of Your anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin.

Verse 4 - "For mine iniquities are gone over my head: as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me.

Verse 5 - "My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness.

Verse 6 - "I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long.

Verse 7 - "For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease: and there is no soundness in my flesh." Now, now, wait, wait just a moment. Here is a health problem; here is a health problem. And to David, this particular health problem was correction from God. I ask you the question; I’m not going to answer it today. Was it God directly? Or was he suffering for his mistakes? The point was that he saw God’s involvement, whatever he did in the breaking of God’s law, he saw God’s involvement; he thought that it was a correction from God, and that is fine. But the point was, it was a health problem. It was a serious health problem; he was in trouble; he had fever and disease that he was going through. Was it God directly, or was he suffering from his mistakes? You don’t know, and I don’t know. And I dare say that probably in so many cases in times past when somebody was ill, we would say, "What have you done wrong?" Because that’s a part of the black and white thinking that we have had in times gone by, and even Job thought of it in that particular way - do good, and you will be blessed. Do evil, and you will be cursed. And have faith, and you will be healed. And when somebody wasn’t healed immediately, then the person says, "Aha!" Aha!

My wife was one of the first people that had an operation in 1976 for a tumor, and it was amazing for six months the kind of flack we got in the congregation about going to a doctor and having that removed. That was a part of the thinking back then. We don’t think, probably most of us don’t think that way today, and if you do, you’d better get rid of it because, that’s not the way that we understand it.

But the point is very simply that David looked upon it this way. Okay, whether it was God, or whether it was from sin, the point was that David did something about it. Notice verse 18:

Verse 18 - "For I will declare mine iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin." So, he saw this as a correction of some kind whether he was breaking God’s law or whether God dealt directly in his particular life. The point is that you have to able to understand that sometimes you don’t always understand the cause, but you do see the effect.

Let’s go to one more place in II Corinthians 12. This is the apostle Paul speaking in this particular case. He is talking about something that happened to him, and notice what he says here concerning the visions that he had and all of the things that have occurred. He talks about glorying in his infirmities in the middle of all of the visions that he had because this was very humbling to him. And he said in II Corinthians 12:7:

II Corinthians 12:7 - "And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure." What was he talking about? Some commentaries say that he was talking simply about some particular trial that God was bringing upon him, and most of the commentaries say simply that there was an indication that there was an eye problem, and because of the eye problem, he appeared in a certain way toward people and was a little more repulsive in that sense of the word. I think probably more than two thirds of the commentaries say that. But the point is, who is the messenger of Satan? What is the thorn in the flesh? He doesn’t say. But the point was: did he learn from it? You bet. Did he have to live with it? Yes, he did, because his strength was made perfect in this particular weakness. Was God’s hand upon him in dealing with this? Yes, because he said, "I sought God three times to take it away, and He didn’t do it." Does that happen to some of us? Yes, it does. Do we live with certain things? Yes, we do. Why? Because God left it that way for a reason.

The point is all of these were teachers. All were humbling to bring the person to the state of mind in spiritual growth, and the ultimate end is the character of God when you come down to the bottom line.

Let’s go to point number four: Time and chance. Let’s read Ecclesiastes 9. This one you can have a lot of problem with. I recommend that you don’t. And the reason I recommend that you don’t because this one doesn’t have too many answers to it because of the fact that while we know that while God is in charge of a universe, there are things that people go through that are unexplainable. Well, let’s touch it. Let’s not be afraid of the topic because I can honestly say that in some things, I don’t know.

Years ago, as a young minister, I used to always have to give an answer. I always had to have an answer regardless as to whether it was right or wrong. I had an assistant one time that had to explain how to observe the Sabbath in the Arctic. And so he was explaining to everybody how you deal with Jerusalem time, and you do this and you do that and you do the other. And he looked over at me, and he said, "Isn’t that right, Mr. Pinelli?"

And I went . . .

And he says, "What do I do now?"

And I said, "Go home and study it and then explain it to them next week."

And the point was he had to have an answer. But we don’t always have answers to everything. We recognize that there are some things that happen and that we live through them, and we learn whatever we can learn from them, but the fact is that some things you don’t always have answers to. Ecclesiastes 9:11, notice what it says:

Ecclesiastes 9: 11 - "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happened to them. . .

Verse 12 - "For man also knows not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falls suddenly upon them." That’s a fact of life.

I was coming to the home office on a Sunday morning, and over on the side of the road were two cars, both up in the bushes. I turned on the radio about a half hour later and found that somebody from that side, going south, crossed the median and killed somebody coming north. He was drunk. He was drunk. The point was that time and chance did happen. It has happened to God’s people on occasion. Does that mean that there is no protection? No. Does it man that God’s doesn’t intervene? No. That’s not what I’m saying. But it has happened; time and chance have happened. Why is that so? I don’t know, but the point is that things do happen. Accidents can, and do, happen. People’s mistakes do effect us. People’s mistakes do effect us. Sometimes it’s hard to take. But a calamity in life forces people to look at themselves as an individual. You want to notice in a funeral, where there is an untimely death, take a look at the faces of those individuals. I sat in a funeral a couple of weeks ago, and I watched the faces of people. And they were listening a whole lot closer to Mr. Smith give the sermon because this was sobering time. It makes us think about life. It sends us back to the very purpose of our existence, why we were born. And the focus on those things, and to get serious sometimes when you kind of let things slide just a little bit in life. But we recognize, according to Ecclesiastes 8:14 that this is a temporary condition. It says:

Ecclesiastes 8:14 - "There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there be just men, unto whom it happens according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men, to whom it happens according to the work of the righteous: and I said this is also futility." And that’s true. The wicked prosper sometimes; well, probably the wicked prosper most of the time, and you and I do the things we need to do, and Psalms 73 is a very good Psalm for understanding what Asaph went through.

But the point is that these are all a part of what occurs in life to all of us, and these things do come at us. So let’s be realistic about it. These things do happen from time to time. And we don’t always have answers to those things.

Number five: God’s testing. Some men, like Abraham, were tested to be put into a key position for the future kingdom of God. God told him after he had gone through the test, and he passed the test, which is a most unusual test but recognizing that it was done to this man, recognizing that David went through some things, recognizing that other men in the Bible, like Joseph, went through things that probably most of us would not go through in the same way. God said to Abraham, He said, "Now I know; now I know that you fear God."

Now you and I are to pray that God will not lead us into temptation or into sore trial; that’s what it says in Matthew 6. So we recognize that we are to be asking to be delivered from sore trial, or that from which we cannot come out of, but the point is that there is going to be some testing; and there is going to be some trials in life that we will go through for the purpose of God finding out, as He did with Abraham, where he was. Not in the same way that Abraham went through, obviously.

Let’s go to Deuteronomy 8:2-3 for just a moment. I think it tells us that everything that I’ve said today is true about the fact that you go back to the word of God, and you stand on the word of God, and it becomes the focus of your life, and no matter what happens, you go back to it, again, and again, and again, to stand on it. This is Deuteronomy 8:2-3. It says:

Deuteronomy 8:2 - "And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God led you these forty years in the wilderness to humble you, and to prove you, to know what was in your heart. . ." That’s why we go through certain things. That’s why we suffer a little bit, but not greatly, in comparison to what will happen to people who refuse the government of God ultimately. ". . .whether you would keep his commandments or not.

Verse 3 - "He humbled you, and suffered you to hunger, and fed you with manna, which you knew not, neither did your fathers know; that He might make you know that man does not live by bread only, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord does man live." Bottom line: When God humbled and proved Israel, why? He brought us back to the bottom line, to know what was in our heart. For what reason? To know that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

Now, let’s put it all together; let’s conclude the sermon by putting it all together. In all five of these things, we are students; we are learners. God is the teacher. Nothing happens without His express permission or, in the case of these men that you saw in the Old Testament especially, without His express direction to fulfill His divine purpose. Every experience in life can and should be a teacher. Every experience in life can and should be a teacher. It should be a builder; it should be a helper; it should be a perfecter, it should be a sharpener; it should be an attention getter; it should be an enforcer. Why? Because God wants to know how are you going to handle it, when you’re given your piece of the universe. It ain’t easy to deal with human beings. And so you’ve got to learn how to go through it, and deal with it, and God wants to know in this experience in life as a teacher, as a builder, as a helper, as a perfecter, as a sharpener, as an attention getter, as an enforcer, how are you handling it? What are you going to do with it? What is the ultimate end? The character of God.

Now let’s turn to Hebrews 5, and see that this is what Jesus Christ went through. This is what the book says. Over in the book of Hebrews 5:7-8. We discussed this back a couple of sermons ago, but I think we want to repeat it again. He says:

Hebrews 5:7 - "Who in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared.

Verse 8 - "Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered." So there is a certain amount of suffering. Let’s understand it, even in the corrections of God, there’s a little bit of suffering that goes on, not in the same way that people will suffer when they finally end up looking in the lake of fire. But it goes on to say:

Verse 9 - "And being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him." So, He learned. All of these things that Christ went through, He used them to be a teacher, and a perfecter, and a builder, and a helper, and an attention getter, and actually, an enforcer, and God knew how Jesus Christ would handle His kingdom by the way He handled it in the thirty-three and a half years that He walked the face of this earth.

In the case of Job, God used Satan. God used Job’s friends; He used Elihu. And finally, God Himself began to work and deal with Job to bring him to an understanding of himself and the greatness of God. Life, time, knowledge, understanding, experience and choice bring wisdom, which will lead us to eternal life. It’s very simple. Life’s stumbling blocks are really stepping stones, if you can learn from them. Life’s stumbling blocks are really stepping stones, if you can learn from them.

The apostle Paul said it this way. And I will only quote the scripture. Please don’t turn, just listen to what he said, Romans 8:28. This is what the scripture means. It’s not completely translated this way, but this is what it means

Romans 8:28 - "Because all things work together for a good end to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." Everything that happens works out for a good end for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose and who stand on the word of God.