"Shattering and Unexpected" (MP3 AUDIO)

“Shattering and Unexpected” (Job 1:21)

The work of God in our lives is both shattering and unexpected. God at His most violent is shattering, because He destroys our whole life, or at least the life we had up until “it” happened. “It” is something so shattering and life altering, that what we were before it happened, and who we were before it happened, are lost forever.

Just ask someone who lost a relative to a sudden heart attack or car accident; or perhaps ask the folks in Rolling Fork about the tornado that came through and shattered a whole community last year.

A little closer to home, ask Sister Coleman what it was like being accused of murder and being put on the front page of the newspaper and appearing on the local news. Ask her was that work of God shattering to the life she once had.

This is the destructive aspect of God’s work in our lives. But God’s work is also unexpected. It is unexpected because there was no way that we could have predicted or known that what happened was going to happen to us.

We have seen things happen to others. We know that things can happen, and are one day going to happen, but it is unexpected when it happens to us.

Real Christianity begins something shattering and unexpected. Job had always known the Lord who gives, he had not known the Lord who “taketh away.” Consider the following three points.

1. We want all that we believe is good a. Job had lots of blessings (Job 1:2-3; 2:3). b. Job understood God as he remained in the hedge (Job 1:10).
2. Shattering and unexpected events (no matter how painful) bring us closer to the reality of God. a. Job knew that his calamities came at the hand of God (Job 1:21). b. God destroys all that separates the believer from Him (2nd Corinthians 10:4-6). c. Job didn’t want to lose all he had; he had to lose all he had.
3. God brings new life by shattering our old lives with something unexpected a. We don’t choose the troubles that we meet; the troubles choose us. i. We are destined for them (1st Thessalonians 3:3). ii. God chose them for us in eternity past to accomplish His purpose in us (Genesis 50:20; Ephesians 2:10). b. Other people can purpose to destroy you, but they will not be successful unless the Lord allows them to be (Isaiah 54:17; Lamentations 3:37-38; Isaiah 45:7). c. Good things and good times don’t change us; but hard things and hard times do (Romans 5:3-4; James 1:2-4). d. When we look to God, those things that are both shattering and unexpected conform us to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29-30). i. The ashes that Job sat in (Job 2:8), represented all that he lost. ii. But the ashes also represented the foundation from which his new life would spring. Out of sorrow and destruction, God would bring new life (Job 14:7-9; Isaiah 61:3; Hosea 6:1-2). iii. Job would later write in Job 23:10-12 that when God finishes “testing him” that he would come forth “as gold.”

“Christ First, Christ Only, Christ Always”