Our Sovereign Lord and His Steadfast, Suffering Servant

Well, we are going to turn now to our Bibles, and Phil Copeland is starting a little series! This evening in the book of Job. And we're going to read Job chapter 1 and a good part of chapter 2! This evening. If you don't have a Bible, we have visitors' Bibles at the sides, at the back. Just stick your hand up. Somebody will be glad to come and bring you one. And on those Bibles, I think it's page 417.

Page 417. Job comes just before Psalms. And we're going to be reading, as I said, chapter 1 through to chapter 2, verse 10. So Job chapter 1 at verse 1. There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. And that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and very many servants. So this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day. And they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them. And he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, it may be that my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus Job did continually.

Now, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord. And Satan, the adversary, also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, from whence have you come?

Satan answered the Lord and said, from going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it. And the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job, that there's none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil? Then Satan answered the Lord and said, does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has on every side? You've blessed the work of his hands and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has and he will curse you to your face.

And the Lord said to Satan, behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. Now, there was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house. And there came a messenger to Job and said, the oxen were plowing and the donkeys feeding beside them. And the Sabaeans fell upon them and took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword. And I alone have escaped to tell you.

While he was yet speaking, there came another and said, the fire of God fell from heaven and burned up your sheep and the servants and consumed them. And I alone have escaped to tell you.

While he was yet speaking, there came another and said, the Chaldeans formed three groups and made a raid on the camels and took them and struck down the servant with the edge of the sword. And I alone have escaped to tell you. While he was yet speaking, there came another and said, your sons and your daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house. And behold, a great wind came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house. And it fell upon the young people and they're dead. And I alone have escaped to tell you. And Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, naked, I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. Again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord. And Satan also came among them and presented himself before the Lord. And the Lord said to Satan, from whence have you come? Satan answered the Lord and said, from going to and fro on the earth and walking up and down on it. And the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, though you incited me against him to destroy him without reason.

And Satan answered the Lord and said, skin for skin, all that a man has he'll give for his life. But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.

And the Lord said to Satan, behold, he's in your hand, only spare his life. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes. And then his wife said to him, do you still hold fast your integrity?

Curse God and die. But he said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God? And shall we not receive evil? In all this, Job did not sin with his lips.

Amen. And may God bless to us. This is word. Well, good evening, and please have your Bibles open to the start of the book of Job.

That'd be really helpful. I once heard of a Christian couple who were driving down the motorway. Folks who knew this couple said that they clearly feared the Lord and loved him. For many years, they had served him with great integrity.

They had both recently retired. As they were tanking it down the motorway, they were headed to see their children and grandchildren for a celebration. And suddenly the husband went a bit funny behind the wheel.

And within seconds, he was unconscious. And his wife, who sat beside him, somehow managed to lean over and steer the car onto the hard shoulder where it skidded to a halt, just in time for her to see her husband take his final breath.

On another occasion, I heard of a younger married couple, both of them in their 30s. Again, they both loved the Lord. They weren't perfectly sinless.

But they both lived upright lives for Christ. And they were both heavily involved with the life of their local church. And one night, as usual, they were reading in bed.

And they said goodnight. They turned off the light. And in the morning, only the husband woke up. His wife had died some hours earlier, leaving him alone to raise their children.

Friends, the Bible is completely honest with all of us. It says that as believers, as those who have union with Jesus Christ, there's not one of us who is guaranteed to have a life that is safe from suffering.

In fact, the Bible says that as believers, it's most likely that we will all face all kinds of suffering in this life now. There may even be times when we are absolutely crushed and perplexed and full of pain because of what is happening to us.

And I know for a fact that many members of the church family here tonight have, at some point in their lives, all been there. You've been there, some of you. And of course, tonight, there are also many members of our church family who are currently in the thick of it too.

Well, as believers, how are we to respond to such painful times? Where are we to turn? How are we supposed to feel? If we have any concerns or any protests against the Lord, what do we do with them?

How are we supposed to pray when we're going through the mill? And what are we to think? Are we to automatically assume that God is disciplining us, crushing us, punishing us for something wrong that we've done?

Or is there some other reason as to why the Lord has allowed this to sweep over our lives? Well, my friends, the book of Job will help us all immensely with all of these things and more.

It's a book about and for people who know suffering. One author puts it like this. Job, he says, is a fireball of a book.

It is a staggeringly honest book. It is a book that knows what people actually say and think, not just what they say publicly in church. It knows what people say behind closed doors and in whispers.

It knows what we say in our tears. It is not merely an academic book. And if we listen to it carefully, it will touch us. It will trouble us, unsettle us, but also comfort us at the deepest level possible.

And God willing, over these next few Sunday nights, we will start to dip into this fireball of a book together. And then hopefully we will return to work through it bit by bit in the near future.

But tonight we're going to spend time working through what is really the prologue to the book that we read earlier. And as you would expect with any prologue, it contains key truths that we must grasp and retain up here and in here if we're to understand the rest of the book and its teaching.

How is the prologue structured? Well, to begin, chapter 1, verses 1 to 5, there is a short section where we're introduced to Job. Meet Job, says the author.

And after that, we get these four scenes that happen. And the four scenes alternate between action up here in the heavenly realms, in the unseen reality, and then the next scene happens down here on earth.

And then we're up again in the heavenly realms, and then we're down on earth again. And let me just note, I'll say this now, we, the readers, we get to see what is going on in the heavenly realms.

But the characters who are on earth have no idea what is going on in the unseen reality. Keep that in mind for later.

Let's look at the short introduction then, first. In verses 1 to 5, we meet Job. And right from the very start, the author of the book wants us to be absolutely crystal clear that Job is a very godly man.

He is a very godly man. Verse 1, we're told that he is blameless. Now, that does not mean that he is sinless. Rather, it means he is genuine and sincere in his loyalty to the Lord.

He's not pretending to be godly. He really is. It's the opposite of hypocrisy. Pretending to be godly on the outside, but actually you're something else on the inside.

Well, with Job, what you see is what you get. On the outside, he is loyal to the Lord, and that's what he's like in his heart too. He's also described there as being upright.

And that has a word to do with his relationships. In Job's dealing with other people, he is a man of great integrity. All his relationships are marked by right dealing.

And you will have noticed from the reading earlier that these descriptions of Job that we meet here at the start of the prologue, they pop up twice again in the prologue, and they're both times stated by the Lord himself.

This is how the Lord sees Job. And most importantly, verse 1 says, Job feared God and turned away from evil.

So he is genuinely wise. He honors God as God and gives thanks to him, and his life is marked by daily faith and repentance. To sum all this up succinctly, Job, friends, is a real believer.

He's a real believer. A very godly man. He's also a very great man. Just run your eye over verses 2 to 4 and see the details that are mentioned about him.

Actually, the text doesn't say he's a great man. The text says he's the greatest man of the East. He's extremely prosperous and wealthy. He's got 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, so that's 1,000 oxen in total, and 500 female donkeys.

And just think about that. To house all that, he must have owned vast quantities of farming land, and he would have been involved in a lot of long-distance trade, because that's why you owned camels back in those days, to take goods long distance.

And his staff team would have been massive too. If there was a top 10 richest men of the East list back in those days, then Job would have been at the very top. He is a very blessed man materially, and he's also very blessed with his children.

Job has got, not one or two, but seven sons. Again, seven, as you'll know, is a very good number in the Bible. Very good number. Top of that, he's got three daughters.

Again, three is a very good number in the Bible. And seven plus three is ten, which is also a very good number in the Bible. Ten children. Ten children. The Lord has filled Job's quiver full of arrows, to use the language of Psalm 127.

He's blessed him with many children, and they all seem exemplary. I love my boys, but reading this, it always fills me with a little bit of envy. Anyway, I say that in jest.

But the detail in verse four, about gathering for feasts there, where they get together and have their family parties, it's not a picture of incessant, immoral partying, or gluttony, or anything bad like that.

It just refers to the fact that as a family, they love each other, and they're constantly getting together for family time. Perhaps to celebrate a birthday. There's enough of them, isn't there? But just notice, there's no hint of any turmoil, or grief, or fighting in this family.

There's just care, love, and harmony. And also in verse five, we see that Job, and I think his children, they care deeply about being right before God.

For the morning after each family gathering, Job would get up early, and he'd summon his children, and they wouldn't rebel. They would come. They would obey their father.

And he would consecrate them all before God. He would offer a burnt offering as a sin offering for each of them, just in case, just on the off chance, that any of them might have slipped up, and sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.

That's what they did. Regularly. In other words, Job and his children clearly believed that their sin needed to be atoned for by sacrifice.

This is not a self-righteous family. They are a humble family who seek the Lord's mercy. Being right with God is very important to them all, and their father leads the way in this.

What a father Job is. So that's Job. There's more I could say, but time's against us. He is godly, and he is a great man.

And do you know, if the book finished at 1 verse 5, we would come away thinking, oh, do you know, that must be how the world works. That is the way God runs things. Godly people like Job, well, it must be that they always prosper like this man, and reach the top.

And the ungodly, those who despise God, well, they must always decline. That is what we see here. A good world. Amen. Let's pray.

But of course, the book doesn't end there. It continues. And let me just say, by the end of the prologue, by 2 verse 10, we are going to see that this godly and great man has been blasted by appalling suffering.

He loses everything. Not because he's being disciplined. Not because he's being punished. He's suffering for a different reason.

And with the rest of our time, let's work through these four scenes in the prologue. And in these scenes, we're going to learn that there is something which is far more important than our comfort or happiness.

Let me say that again. In these four scenes, we're going to learn that there's something far more important than your comfort and happiness. And that is the glory of God.

So, the scene starts, first scene, in chapter 1 verse 6. It's a new day. And we are in the heavenly realms, in the unseen reality, where these sons of God have gathered together to present themselves before the Lord.

Who are these sons of God? Well, clearly, they are powerful spiritual beings. Some translations call them angels. And together, they form a sort of heavenly cabinet, a divine council, who are used by the king of the universe to run his universe.

They pop up elsewhere in the Bible. It is somewhat of a mystery to us here. Some people like to read lots into this. But let's just live within the bounds of what the Bible actually says.

You can read about, for example, later, 1 Kings 22, where the prophet Micaiah refers to this council too. But anyway, this is what we see here at Job.

And it seems that this is a regular, perhaps daily meeting. The Lord convenes his council. He summons all these spiritual beings before him. And each member is to give a daily report before they are sent out again to carry out the Lord's will.

Very much like the U.S. president in the way that he calls his senior staff to an early morning meeting in the Oval Office before sending him out for action. And did you notice only one member of this heavenly cabinet is mentioned individually?

Verse 6, Satan. Or literally translated, The Satan. Because it's a title. It means the adversary, the accuser, the enemy.

Now it's sometimes assumed that because the Satan is evil, which we'll see from the context, he can't be a member of the council and he must have barged his way in uninvited.

And when people think that that's the case, they read the Lord's question in verse 7 to be a hostile one. As though the Lord looks at Satan in surprise and says, From where have you come, you gatecrasher?

What are you doing here? How dare you? That's not right. That's not right. From what happens next in the chapter, it becomes really clear that whilst the Satan is an opponent of the Lord and hostile to the Lord and hostile to the Lord's servants, he is nonetheless a submissive opponent.

The Satan is not an enemy. He's not an equal to... Sorry, Satan is an enemy, but he's not an equal to God. He is a creature who is 100% under the sovereign authority of God.

And so he can't possibly have barged in uninvited. The context tells us that the Satan is most likely an established member of the Lord's heavenly council who opposes the Lord, but nevertheless carries out a key purpose for the Lord that will ultimately bring the Lord glory.

It is as Martin Luther once said, Satan is God's Satan. And so in verse 7, the Lord calls the Satan to give his report.

He says, From where have you come? It's report time. Come on, tell me. And the Satan replies in a pretty evasive manner, rather like a stroppy teenager that replies to their parents when they ask, Where have you been tonight?

The teenager replies, Just stuff. Toing and froing. It reeks of disdain for the Lord. But actually in the next verse, it becomes apparent that Satan actually has been out on assignment, carrying out a task that the Lord has set him to do.

Please look at verse 8. And the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered, have you set your heart on my servant Job?

There is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. Friends, I really think Satan's job is implied here as God's submissive opposition.

His job is to roam the earth, to search men and women, to see if there's anyone who is genuinely godly. His job is to hunt for real believers.

So I take it that in verse 7, the Satan is actually implying that he's traveled all over the earth and he can't find anyone who is a genuine believer. And that is why in verse 8, the Lord responds by saying, What about my servant Job?

Did you notice him? Did you not see him? You must have seen the way he is blameless and upright, a genuine believer who's loyal to me. And friends, the way that the Lord singles out Job here to Satan, it's going to prove absolutely devastating to Job, as we shall see.

This might be familiar to some of us, this bit of the Bible, but just sit back from it again and notice the shock of verse 8, because it is the Lord who fixes Satan's focus on his servant.

And that is what this book is all about, friends. This book is not all about suffering in general, rather it is about how God treats his friends, as Bob File would say.

So in verse 9, it turns out that Satan has noticed Job, and he's ready to share his opinion of Job. Verse 9, he says, I'll come off at Job.

Job only worships you because you've blessed him with lots of good stuff. You've hedged Job in with comfort all around him. But Job does not love you for you.

If you stretched out your hand and took away all of the comfort and the prosperity, well then, you'll see what he's really like in his heart. You'll see that his faith is just a sham, and Job will curse you to your face.

And of course, friends, this could massively backfire for Satan, couldn't it? For if the Lord removes Job's comfort and prosperity, and if Job continues to worship the Lord simply because he is the Lord who is all worthy of praise and worship, then it would show that Job is a real believer, and it would silence Satan's accusations, and God would be glorified.

Listen to Christopher Ashe on these verses. He says this, Satan is not bullying God, nor is he offering a casual wager, as though Job's sufferings were just to see who wins a bet in heaven.

No, the Satan, for all his malice, is doing something necessary to the glory of God. In some deep way, it is necessary for it to be publicly seen by the whole universe that God is worthy of the worship of man, and that God's worth is in no way dependent on God's gifts.

Exactly the same logic is present in 1 Peter 1, where the apostle, writing to the suffering church, says these words, You have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Christ. In other words, when Jesus Christ returns, the fact that a Christian has gone on trusting and believing, even though all the blessings have been removed, and he has suffered severely, it will prove, in the end, to the universe that another human being considers God to be worthy of worship simply because he is God.

God will be praised, his glory adored, and his honor seen by the universe because Christian men and women have gone on worshiping no matter what.

The glory of God is more important than your or my or Job's happiness and comfort. And so in verse 12, the Lord gives this terrible instruction and permission.

And again, this might be familiar to us. Do not skip over the shock of verse 12. The Lord gives his servant, his friend, over to Satan.

Although, not entirely. He says, look what he says, behold, all that Job has is in your hand.

Only against him do not stretch out your hand. As terrible as Satan might be to his friends, he never acts outwith the sovereign will of the Lord.

And so Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and boom, suddenly, we're into the next scene in verse 13. It's a new day. We're no longer in the heavenly realms but on earth.

And it might have started out normally but it doesn't go on for long. And from verse 14 onwards, we see Job receiving four pieces of deeply traumatic news from four servants who come in rapid succession one after the other.

Messenger 1 bursts in and says, Job, Job, robbers have stolen all your oxen and donkeys. they've also killed all your servants who were watching them and only I've escaped to come and tell you.

And before he's finished speaking, messenger 2 bursts in another door and says, Job, all your sheep are dead. Struck by lightning. That's what it means when it's about the fire of God falling down.

And your servants watching those sheep were also killed. They were torched too. Only I escaped to tell you. And before he's finished, messenger 3 comes running in.

Job, robbers stole all of your camels and killed all of your servants. Only I escaped. And before he's finished speaking, messenger 4 bursts in.

Job, Job, all your children were feasting in the house of your eldest son. A terrible storm struck the house. It collapsed and killed everyone inside.

Job, your precious children, they are all dead. In almost an instant, Job is stripped of everything, his possessions, his children.

And yet, look at his response in verse 20. At this, Job got up, tore his robe and shaved his head. That is, he expresses the deep sorrow and anguish in his heart.

He's clearly traumatized deeply in the true sense of the word. And he's grieving. He mourns. Of course he does. And then, he fell to the ground and cursed God and bitterly.

No, he doesn't do that, does he? He doesn't. In worship, he said, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I will depart.

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised. And then the author tells us, in all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.

That is, Job proves to be a real believer. He blesses God God. He acknowledges that he is the giver of all good things. He's the creator.

The one who has the right to give, but then also has the right to take away as and when he chooses. He does not turn away to bitterly grumble about God behind God's back to other people.

No, through his trauma, through his grief, he blesses the Lord. It is a marvelous, well, could you call it marvelous?

Well, in some ways, it's marvelous. It's a marvelous conclusion to a terrible story, but of course, it's not the conclusion, is it? In chapter 2, verse 1, we're into the next scene and it's another terrible day and we're back in the heavenly throne room where the Lord has convened his cabinet again.

And again, Satan and the Lord are convening together. in verse 3, the Lord again says, Have you considered my servant Job?

Do you see his steadfast trust in me even though you incited me to destroy him without reason? But Satan doesn't admit defeat.

Instead, he says, Ha! You've just not pushed him hard enough. Yes, you've taken away his possessions and his children but what about his flesh and his body?

Reach out your hand. Attack his health. Afflict him with deep physical sickness and then he will curse you to your face and the world will see that he is not a real believer.

And again, the shock of the passage is that the Lord doesn't stop and say to the Satan, Nonsense! Enough of this! Job has faced enough suffering. Now again, the Lord gives Satan a terrible instruction and permission.

Verse 6, Behold, Job is in your hand. Only spare his life. And then, boom, immediately we're into scene 4.

In verse 7, Satan immediately leaves the presence of the Lord and he heaps more suffering upon the Lord's friend. And Job is covered from head to toe in loathsome sores that are just so irritable.

Maybe about over a decade ago when we lived down in England, there's no link between this by the way, but when I was down in England, I got a really minor, small dose of shingles. I wonder if you've ever had shingles.

Some of you have, I know. But I tell you, for about two weeks, I had this rash and every day was just this constant struggle to not scratch. Because when I scratched, it would make the rash worse, open up the wounds and it would prolong my suffering.

Friends, Job's skin condition is far, far worse than any minor shingles diagnosis. Things were so bad that in his desperation, we're told that he used a piece of broken pottery to scratch away, to give himself some relief at these sores that Satan had afflicted him with.

Which, of course, would have brought him some temporary relief, but as I say, like with the minor shingles, it surely would have caused the sores to worsen and prolong his pain.

What a dismal, dismal picture. And at the end of verse 8, Job, who was once the greatest man of the east, is now sitting on the ash heap.

That is the heap where people would burn up their garbage. Most definitely outside of the city, isolated, on his own, and covered in sores.

He has become like the living dead. And in verse 9, Job's wife comes to him and for a split second, you know, you're reading that thinking, oh, here comes a bit of comfort.

But no. And let me just say, it's easy to go really hard on Job's wife here. People tear her to shreds in the commentaries. But let's remember the trauma that she has faced too.

Yes? And let's remember the trauma that she's seen her husband go through. Clearly, she's in pain. So let's not go hard on her. But nevertheless, friends, what she says to her husband is wrong and deeply unhelpful.

She looks at him and she says, why are you still trusting in the Lord? Why are you still walking by faith? It obviously isn't doing you any good.

Why don't you just get it over with? Curse God and he will strike you down and your suffering will all be over. And in verse 10, Job says, you're talking like a foolish woman.

This is obviously not what this woman is normally like. But trauma can really rock a person. He says, you're talking like a foolish woman. What you're saying is not worthy of you.

Shall we receive good from God? And shall we not receive evil? And again, after his trials, Job's heart is full of the truth of the Lord being his creator who is the author of good gifts.

All the good Job received in his life he's received from God. He knows that. And can he not trust the same God to give him difficult, hard things and to believe that God knows best?

the word that he uses there, receive, in verse 10, really carries the sense of being one who's to accept and humbly bowing beneath God's loving providence even when that providence is painful.

In other words, Job continues to show himself to be a real believer. And that is what is concluded clearly at the end of verse 10. Again, the author says, in all of this, Job did not sin in what he said.

And again, at this point in the narrative, we the readers, we might be sitting there thinking, oh, this is so heavy. But at least it looks like it's over.

And we breathe a sigh of relief for Job when we read that his friends are about to arrive in verse 11. Well, let me tell you, friends, you must come back in the weeks ahead because what we will see, shockingly, is that through these three friends, the Satan will actually continue his assault on God's servant.

The suffering's not over. The battle, in many ways, has just begun. Well, there's much more to be said, but let me just sum all this up and tie it together for us today.

friends, here is a man whom the Bible puts forward to us as actually a model example for us today as the people of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is what James chapter 5 says to us so clearly. Go home later on and read it for yourself. You will see there that Job is held up as a prophet of the Lord who models for us how we are to persevere through suffering for the glory of God.

In particular, maintaining good speech. Job is a prophet who, yes, and we're told this elsewhere in the Bible, foreshadows the pattern of suffering that the Lord Jesus Christ would face centuries later.

But Job is also a model for all of us who are in union with Christ. And as I said at the beginning, the Bible tells us that as people of God today, there will be times in our lives when Satan will ask the Lord if he can sift us like wheat.

Times when our faith will be tested. Times when we will be hit with suffering. Might not be as intense as Job's suffering, but it's suffering nonetheless.

And friends, when that happens, it is not always because we are being disciplined for something wrong that we've done. Friends, more often than not, we are suffering because the Lord wants to show the principalities, the powers and authorities in the heavenly realms that we really are his faithful servants.

We are his people whom he's redeemed by grace. His people whom he has transformed so that we genuinely love him. not for all the blessings and the good stuff that he gives us, but we love him primarily because he is God and he is absolutely worthy of our love and our worship.

And so as we close tonight, friends, let's remember this deeply challenging message. And it is deeply challenging. This message has stuck with me for many years.

the glory of God is more important than your or my comfort. And if by the help of the Spirit of Christ in us, the same Spirit that was in Job, we follow Job's steadfast example, it will ultimately bring glory and praise to our God on the day when Jesus returns in glory.

glory. Well, amen. Let's be quiet for a moment. Let's bow our heads and let me pray for us. our gracious heavenly Father, we praise your name.

You are the giver and taker of life and we praise your name. Father, please give us the strength that we need to follow the example of your servant Job.

at all times, but especially when we face fiery trials. May you help us to love you, not simply because of the good things you give us, but because you alone are God and you are worthy of all of our love and our worship.

So, Lord, help us by your Spirit to be blameless and upright. Help us to fear you and turn away from evil so that we are ready for the day of difficulty that may lie ahead for us.

We praise you that you will be with us at all times and we praise you that our sufferings, when we suffer in the Lord Jesus, they are for the most marvelous purpose, which is to bring you glory, not just in this age, but for all eternity.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.