The Good Ol' Days

the vacations and the sports memories [music] is your memory isn't a documentary, it's a highlight reel. And as [music] time passes, when we say the good old days that it was simpler, it was easier [music] because you didn't know how it ended yet. And [music] hey, well, if you have a Bible, go ahead and grab and open to Job chapter 29. Job chapter 29. If you don't have a Bible, you can grab the one in the chair right in front of you. And we're going to be on page 459. But as you're flipping there, I want to read you a verse. And you don't have to look there yet. You can just listen to this in Job 30:1. As it starts out here in this part of the section we're going to be reading today. Job says this, "But now they mock me, men younger than I am, whose fathers I would have refused to put with my sheep dogs." 4,000 years ago, Job dropped the first Kids These Days. He writes, he's like, "Man, kids these days are idiots. Kids these days are jerks." He's like, "These He's like, "I can't believe I'm being mocked by these kids. Like, I didn't even trust their dads to like take after a dog." And he's like, "A dog at that time, a sheep dog, just took care of itself." And he 2,000 year or 4,000 years ago, Job drops this line. He's like, "Man, what is wrong with our world?" He's like, "They just they don't make them like they used to." Uh last week my daughter Arya, she's 10 years old, my oldest daughter, and she came home and she had a field trip and they played and like went to some pioneer village. I don't know if they turned butter or something. Uh but she got home and and we were like hanging out and I'm like, "Hey, can you go grab that for Alice for little daughter?" She's like, "My legs hurt. They're too tired." I like, "You're 10." I was like, "My legs didn't get tired when I was 10." All right. I was like, every recess I'd be running a 10K and then we would go to PE after that, right? I was like, I can't run a half marathon now, but I ran that every day at school. I walked to and from school just a couple times and it even snowed in Phoenix back in that day. All right, there was a hill and everything. All right, three of you are awake. That's cool. But we have this idea like, man, kids these days, they just don't understand. They don't understand what how hard things were, but they also don't understand how good things were. And Job in the middle of this as he's going through this hard season, he starts reminiscing on how bad this generation is and how he wishes he could go back to what was previous. And all of us have these times where nostalgia kind of pulls us back. You see this on social media like only 90 kids know this, right? And now they're making things that look like it was made in the '9s. And uh I appreciate that cuz I was made in the '9s. Okay. Okay. Three of you. That's right. [laughter] It's going to be a long sermon. I don't know where we're starting with, but in here it's like all of us have something nostalgic. We're like, man, when I grew up this time, like it was so much better. There's so much here. And we get lost in this phrase and thinking about the good old days. And today, as Job starts to reminisce in Job chapter 29 is he latches on to the good old days. And here's a suffering reality we see that kind of takes Job to this place is the book of Job has taken us from why to who is Job asked over and over why why why is this happening and throughout the book of Job he just gives who God is supreme God is this God is here but then what we see today is Job gets lost in this thing where he starts to ask when when did things get so hard when did things get so bad when did all of the sudden I become come so trapped in this hardship. I'm a Arizona Cardinals fan and a depressed Arizona Cardinals fan. Maybe it's just a normal Arizona Cardinals fan. I think we're all equally depressed. But there's time, you know, every now and then I think about like, you know, when we were good. And that's like a season and a half. All right. When we were good. I literally found this jacket on clearance. Um or this sweater. I I don't know why it was on clearance. I think it should have sold out. Uh, but I got it for cheaper, so it was great. But 2008, I remember it so vividly when the Cardinals were good, when we should have won a Super Bowl if they didn't steal it from us. More on that later. I'll tell you the place. Uh, but in that we think back like when this was here, when things were better, when times were good. And here's the thing is we have a way when we look back to start remembering things differently. And today in the book of Job, as it starts going down this journey, Job is going to start telling himself that things were different when in the good old days. And the first thing we see is things were different. Things used to be good when times were simpler. Check out Job chap 29. And Job is going to show us how he thought times were so much simpler. In verse one it says he continued his discourse saying but he picks up in verse two and says if only I could be as in months gone by in the days when God watched over me. You see this nostalgic reminiscing that Job gets into when his lamp shone above my head and I walk through the darkness by his light. I would be as I was in the days of my youth when God's friendship rested on my tent. When the Almighty was still with me and my children were around me. When my feet were bathed in cursed and the rock poured out streams of oil for me. As Job opens in chapter 29, listen to how Job remembers his past. He says the lamp of God was shining over his head. It was like God was just saying, "Go down that door. Go down that door. Go down that door." Verse four, he says, "God's friendship rested on my tent." In verse 5, he says his children were all around him, which through this tragedy, he has lost them. Verse six, he gets into his feet were washing in cream. I don't even know what that means, but 4,000 years ago, that was luxury if you had cream on your feet. All right, but he describes this this life. And in the Old Testament, this is like the version of the picture perfect Thanksgiving. The table is full. The turkey isn't too dry. All the people around the table that you want to be and crazy Eddie couldn't make it, so you left him off and you're not complaining about it. And all of a sudden, like you have the perfect life. And then Job gets into he thinks about how great things were. But then he starts talking about his retirement plan. Check out verse 18 of chapter 29. He says this. So I thought, I will die in my own nest and I will multiply my days as the sand. My roots will have access to water. And the dew will rest on branches all night. My whole being will be refreshed within me. And my bow will be renewed in my hand. Job had it all mapped out. Grow old, have grandkids running around on the front porch, and then die in his own bed. And here's what I love. This is actually not a bad thing that we shouldn't long for. We should long for parts of this, of having a a legacy of pouring into the ones we love, of being surrounded by family and friends and our legacy enduring through those ones that we have loved and invested in. In verse two, even tells us he misses the right thing. He doesn't talk about all the cattle that he misses. He doesn't start talking about the crane on his feet, but he does get there, which is weird. But in verse two, it says he misses the most of the days when God watched over him. What Joe misses most in this dark season of his soul is God himself. But here comes the question. Were the times really simpler? Were they as really as rosy and as great as the good old days that he is describing here? Check this out in verse 12 in the middle of this before he describes his retirement. He says in this good old days he describes he says I rescued the poor who cried out for help and the fatherless child who had no one to support him. The dying blessed me and I made the widow's heart rejoice. He said, "I clothed myself in righteousness and it enveloped me. My just decisions were like a robe in a turban. I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy and I examine the case of the stranger. I shattered the fangs of the unjust and I snatched the prey from his teeth." Did you catch what Job is describing here? [snorts] In Job's good old days, there were still orphans. There were still widows. There were still blind and lame people. There were still predators, those who were unjust, that had teeth and hurt people around them. The world wasn't simpler. Job was just strong enough in that season to stand between the unjust world and the people he loved. You go back to chapter 1 and Job's good old days. He got up early every single morning to offer sacrifices for his kids. And I love it says in case they had sins. If you have children, it's not in case they had sin. They are sinners. They're all little sinners, right? Um I say they're little sinners cuz I have little kids, but then they grow up and they just become big sinners. All right, some of you with grown kids. Then you got grandkids. They're not sinners though, right? They're just perfect little angels. But Job here, he says every single morning he's getting up to offer sacrifices. The crazy thing about this is that's not a simple life. That's a worried dad who is afraid for his children. And then you go to chapter 3. Job said, "The thing I feared most has overtaken me. He was afraid back then, too. He just had more comforts and more stuff to cover it up." Psychologists actually have a name for this. They call it rosy retrospection. Rosy retrospection. You get a nice big fun word today. All right. And here's how they found this out is some this these studies they did a study where they sent psychologists on vacation with people. Now my question is who agreed to have a psychologist on vacation with them? All right. Like you better have paid for the vacation. It's like my parents went to a time share one time when I was a kid and I just remember being in like some dark dingy room playing Nintendo 64 for like eight hours. I'm like are parents going to get us like here's some more juice boxes and Jesus quiet. Um play some Super Smash Bros. You'll be fine. But it's like I don't know how they convince these people but they did it and they they watched him on vacation. And here's what they observed through the vacations. It rained. There was crowds. There was traffic. The couples fought and there was a lot of tension, but then they went home and they let time pass and a few months later they asked him about the vacation and all the thoughts were just glowing and nice. Oh, it was so fun. We had bonding time with our family, left out that they punched him in the face. They're like, "It was just so great. We loved every single moment of it." You know, most Cardinal fans, uh, they don't remember the one good year we had when we should have won the Super Bowl and we were winning and Centennial Holmes only had one tow in, but we won't talk about that anymore cuz I'll get mad and go through it. We were robbed. But what a lot of them don't remember is we were 9 and seven that year. And actually Chris Collinssworth, who's a jerk, he called the Cardinals the worst playoff team in NFL history when they started that playoff series. And we proved him wrong cuz he's a loser, right? They made a Super Bowl and they got robbed. But here's what all that shows. The vacations and the sports memories is your memory isn't a documentary. It's a highlight reel. And as time passes, when we say the good old days, that it was simpler. It was easier because you didn't know how it ended yet. And Job didn't know when he was washing his feet in cream the hardship of his life that was coming. And here's the thing that Job couldn't see from his suffering from the ash sheep is God was watching over him the whole time. In chapter one, God is the one bragging on Job saying to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job?" And as Satan says, he's only he only likes you cuz you're giving him all this stuff. And God's like, "Bet. Take it all away and see if he worships me." And Job does. But here's the truth of it is is Job's like, "Remember the days when God was my friend?" And God's like, "My lamp has still been over you the whole time. Job just couldn't see it anymore through his struggles." And maybe today you're in that place. Maybe this morning you're scrolling through old pictures. And you give everything to just go back to that moment. Go back before the diagnosis came. Go back before the divorce divided your family. Go back before that loved one passed. Go back before something happened and it stopped the good old days in your life. And you see the ache is real. And I just want to tell you, you're allowed to feel it. But here's the problem is you can't live there. We see an example of someone in the Bible who looked back and they couldn't couldn't look forward anymore. And it we don't even know her name. It was just Lot's wife. And she looked back. She couldn't look forward anymore. You know what happened to her? There was more biblical scholars in first service or they just more afraid. What happened to her? >> She turned into a pillar of salt. Oh, you are biblical scholars. You're just all nervous. All right, I get it. You don't know how to talk in church. This is can be a little feedback here. BUT SHE TURNED ASSAULT IN here the Bible. There's there's a lesson in there of we can't just be dwelling on what is behind us. We're going to continue to see that because times weren't simpler, things weren't easy. But here comes the next thing. When we start to look at the good old times and tell ourselves things were different, we also tell ourselves that people were godlier. That people were godlier. Check out verse 7 of chapter 29 as he gets into this. He says here, he says, "When I went out to the city gate, yet I took my seat in the town square. The young men, they saw me and they withdrew while older men stood to their feet. City officials stopped talking and covered their mouths with their hands. The noble men's voice were hushed and their tongues stuck to the roof of their mouths. When they heard me, they blessed me. And when they saw me, they spoke well of me. You know what Job is reminiscing about and what it says about Job, we've said throughout this is Job was a baller. Job was a wealthy man. He was known as the greatest man of the east. We've done the math. He was worth of tens of millions of dollars in today's terms. He was a big deal. And what Job describes here is when he walked into the city gate. in the city gate at this time 4,000 plus years ago. It was like the town square, the city hall, and the courthouse all wrapped into one. And when Job walked in, everybody noticed and everybody stopped what they were doing. The young men stepped aside. The old men stood up. The princes stopped talking mid-sentence. In verse 11, it says, "Everybody who heard him blessed him." And then he keeps going on about this. Check out verse 21 of chapter 29. He continues to flesh this out. He said, "Men listened to me with expectation, waiting silently for my advice. After a word from me, they did not speak again. My speech settled on them like dew. They waited for me as for the rain and opened their mouths as for spring showers. If I smiled at them, they couldn't believe it. They were thrilled at the light of my countenance. I directed their course and presided as chief. I lived as a king among his troops, like one who comforts those who mourn." Job also might be a little arrogant all right in this. But Job talks about the history that is true that he was a big deal in his world that he had respect, he had honor, there were manners towards him. That's the world that Job remembers. But now you fast forward to chapter 30 and he starts to talk to the present day and he says, "Men that are younger than I am, they mock me." He says they spit in his face. They make songs about him mocking him. And they made songs before AI was making songs. So it was even harder to do at that time. And as he's doing this, and here's what's questioned is this question that pops up. If if he had this amazing life in 29, all these people respected him. In chapter 30, who are these people? Well, here's the irony. It's the same town with the same gate, with the same families. Those young men who stepped aside in chapter 29 are the same young men who's singing songs about him in chapter 30. Chapter 30 says, "The mockers were the outcasts of societies, hungry, living in the bush, the kind of people Job used to help at the gate. And now that he's down, they start kicking him." And here's the thing, the people didn't change. Job's circumstances changed. And they weren't honoring God in 29. They were honoring him as a man in 29. And all of a sudden, the moment Job hit rock bottom, the respect left with the money. In church, if we're honest, we do this with whole generations. We look back and be like, "Man, things were so much better back then, man. In the 20s things were better. Then it's like in the ' 50s things were better. It was the ' 70s and '7s you're like, that was all the hippies and they were terrible. And now you're in 2020 and they're like, let's go back to the hippies in the '60s and '7s. And we have this rosy retrospection. They're like, "Man, people used to be godlier back then. They were sinners just like you and me. They just hid their sin for generations. We didn't pass on the sin. We just passed on the highlights down the road. And we hid the bodies and the baggage behind enclosed doors." Solomon actually addresses this in Ecclesiastes and he says this and I and I love this verse. He says, "Don't say why were the former days better than these since it is not wise to ask this. Solomon says, "This question isn't wise. Not because the past had nothing good in it, because the past pretends the human heart used to be different. Sinners lived in the past, sinners lived in the present, and sinners will live in the future." And you know who also knew this? Jesus himself. On a Sunday that we recognize as Palm Sunday today, the crowd threw palm branches on the ground as Jesus rode in on a donkey and they screamed, "Hosana! Hosana!" They said the king is here. These people worshiped him. They were declaring him king in God. The Messiah has come. All of a sudden on Friday, there was crowd chanting, "Crucify him!" The heretic, same crowd in the same city, five days apart. You see, Jesus never trusted the good old days of public opinion. And John tells us he didn't entrust himself to the crowd. And in the Gospel of John, it says Jesus knew what was in the people. And here's what's crazy. Despite that, he went to the cross for the people at the gate both days. Those who sang to him as Lord and those who spit on him as a heretic. So here's the question for us. Who are you on the other side of somebody's chapter 30? When the guy who used to run your meetings and be the big shot in your office, when he loses his job, do you treat him the same? Or do you be like, "Man, I was waiting for that boss to get fired cuz I couldn't stand him and now I don't have to pretend to be nice to him." How do you treat the family who always used to host, who you always used to strive to be like that family and the divorce happens and rips their family apart? Do you still seek them or love them or do you be like, "Ah, let's distance ourselves there." Do we still stand up at the gate or do we honor people only when they're at the top? You see, Job is taking us on this journey of the good old days that things look different when times were simpler even when they weren't. When people were godlier, even they when they weren't. But it leads us to the last thing we tell ourselves and we get introspective in this one is when temptations were easier. In chapter 31, this is Job's final defense. Over and over, he says, "If I have done this, then let this happen to me." He's making this legal oath to God. He's like, "God, I'm innocent. Hear it here." He's putting his whole life under an oath. And look at the very first line he gives in verse one of chapter 31. He says, "I have made a covenant with my eyes. How then could I look at a young woman?" Now, this feels super far out of left field. You're like, "What is Job talking about here?" Like, right? I thought we were talking about Job. Now the pastor is going to talk about sex. I did not come to church for that. Gotcha. Actually, Job got you. It's just in the Bible. But here's what's crazy about this. Let's step aside for a second. Is we like to think it was easier to be holy back then. Like 4,000 years ago, Job just had goats and camels and sheep. He didn't have TV. He didn't have a smartphone. He had so many last distractions. I would seek God all the time because I don't want to hang out with a goat all day long. All right? Like it was so much easier to be holy back then. There was there was no smartphone. There was no internet. There was no algorithm built to rewire your brain and exploit all your weaknesses and make you a drone of the AI overlord. It's coming. Um, and listen, I agree with part of that. Not the AI overlord part. Well, maybe. But it is hard today. The phone in your pocket is a battlefield. But Job 4,000 years ago had to make a covenant with his eyes before Wi-Fi and the internet were even a thing. [sighs] And here he describes this word covenant. We hear that. We don't think much of it. Here's what a covenant meant back then is it wasn't just like a New Year's resolution. It's like I hope I get better at this. Instead, you would cut an animal. You would spread the animals on the sides. If there's any hunters in the room, you should try this sometime. And they would line up animal carcasses and then they would walk through it to make an oath. And what the oath was saying as they walked through it is, "If I break this oath, may I be like the animals that I ripped apart." Job was laying down some heavy stuff here. Job was saying that the problem I see of the temptations and the sin around me is it doesn't start with my hands. It starts with my eyes and before that it starts with my heart. Jesus would tell us the same thing on the sermon on the mount long before the sin shows up physically in our lives. It has started spiritually and emotionally in our beings. And then Job goes down the list of the sins that he has avoided. Check out verse 9 of chapter 31. He says this, "If my heart has gone astray over a woman or I've lurked at my neighbor's door," he's saying, "I didn't do this." What's crazy is he's talking about adultery, the neighbor's wife. He's saying, "That's not a new temptation that all of a sudden our world has dealt with, but it is one that's been going for thousands of years." Check out verse 13. He says, "If I've dismissed the case of my male or female servants when they made a complaint against me," he's talking about here how he treated his employees, when they had a complaint, when they had issues. Today, as we are business owners and managers and fellow co-workers, as Job had all the power here, nobody had to hold him accountable if he ignored an employee. But he did it right anyway because he knew God was watching. And for us today, how we treat the people that we work with, that is a spiritual issue. But listen as he keeps going in verse 24. Then he gets to the heart of it. He talks about his lust. He talks about adultery. He he talks about how we should treat other people. But in verse 24, he talks about his relationship with God. He says, "If I placed my confidence in gold or called fine gold, my trust, if I trust in my wealth, if I rejoice because my wealth is great and because my own hands has acquired so much, he's trusting his pride. If I have gazed at the sun when it was shining, or at the moon moving in splendor, so that my heart was secretly enticed, and I threw them a kiss, this would also be an iniquity, a sin, deserving punishment, for I would have denied God above. Now, you hear that some you relate with, you're like, "Yeah, I can be too reliant on money." But then Job's like, "And then if I look at the sun and moon and I give him a blow him a kiss," you're like, "I've never done that. That sounds weird, right? Uh maybe you blew the clouds a kiss last week as the rain was pouring down. But people in this day were worshiping creation. And Job to He's like, "Hey, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to worship created things or creation." You're like, "I don't have I don't do that. I I come to church. I just worship Jesus." But instead, we may not say we worship the sun or the moon. We may not worship our money, but instead, we put more trust in our 401k. Our world puts more trust in their astrology and their horoscopes and what sign they are with how the stars are aligned than blame their bad moods on it and our world and even us. We put more trust in these things rather than trusting God. And here's what Job is getting at is the temptations of life were never easier in prior generations in the good old days. The screen changed but the heart did not. So how for us do we begin to live this out? What what is a practical thing of what this looks like? And before we get into I think how this passage overall applies to us, I think first we need to start here is what does saying no to the temptations of the world mean to us? What is starting a personal covenant as Job describes? What does that look like to have a covenant with our eyes not to give in to the temptations of our world? Kyle and I uh because Kyle does student ministry and and he works with students who are going through and being honest about the stuff they have. Uh we've had parents ask us about, hey, what do I do when my child finds pornography? What do I do when they're exposed to this? What do I do when that happens? And and if you're just putting your head in the sand and say it's never going to happen. I'm fine. I bring them to church. They'll be okay. you are ignorant and is going to happen and the world will talk to them whether you do or not. >> So, one of the things Kyle and I did is we got together and we made a resource for parents that said when your child finds pornography and it's a whole stuff of blockers you can have on your phone of conversations you can have with your kids of books you can read of how to navigate this temptations that are all so relevant in our world today and how do we address them and how do we make a covenant? How do we guide our kids to them, but how do we guide ourselves to them? How do we put the phone in another room? How do we have stuff on our blockers on our things that make sure we're not seeing stuff? How do we have accountability partners in all areas of our lives that speak into us and say, "Hey, stop looking at that. Hey, stop being a jerk. Hey, you're not acting like Jesus. We need to course correct." And what Job is painting here is a world that was not a simpler time. And here's the thing is a simpler time isn't coming. There is not a time coming that all of a sudden things will get better. We need to make the covenant, the promise, the steps to follow Jesus. Now, and here's what I love about the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. It tells us Jesus was tempted in every way as we are. Yet, he was without sin. Jesus didn't live in an easier century. Jesus could have lived with a smartphone and he still would have been blameless. Jesus would have probably just stayed off of Tik Tok. I didn't say that in first service, but it just came to me. I'm like, Tik Tok? Of course, Jesus wouldn't be on there. He would start his own platform. That's I I'm done. I can't say this. Anyway, [laughter] but as we go down this road, not that road, the real road, the route of the Bible. But how do we start to put this together and start living this out for ourselves? Well, here's where we start. These three chapters show us that times weren't simpler. The good old days have been messed up just like the current days and like the future days. People weren't godlier. They didn't make people godlier then. They were sinners then. They're sinners now. And they will be sinners in the future. But temptations weren't also easier. They were alive then. They're alive now. And we have to fight them going forward. You see, Job knew it because right in the middle of his oath, he says something huge. Check out verse 15 of chapter 31. It says this. Did not the one who made me in the womb also make them? Did not the same God form us both in the in the womb? Job is talking about his servants. He's talking about the wicked men in the gates around. He's saying rich man, poor servant, same maker, same womb, same dust, different situation, same need, same problems, same hurt that they have to go through. And at the end, at the very end of all this through Job, as he gives his oath and he says, "I am innocent. I haven't done this. Look at my life. Look at what I have done." He finally signs his name in verse 35 and he says this, "If only I had someone to hear my case. Here is my signature. Let the Almighty answer me. Let God answer me." Mark on your calendar in two weeks, God's going to answer him and it's going to be awesome cuz he's going to rip Job a new one. He says, "Let my opponent compose his indictments." Job says, "If only someone could hear my case. If only someone could understand what I'm going through." And church, we have been hearing this cry throughout all this series if you've been with us. And throughout this book, the fingerprints are all here. In chapter nine, Job says, "There is no mediator between us and God. If only someone could speak on our half." In chapter 16, he said, "My witness is in heaven." He's like, "He's not here. He's in heaven, but please speak to God on my behalf." In chapter 19, he says, "I know that my redeemer lives. I don't see him. I don't know where he is, but he is out there somewhere in here with his very last breath of argument. He's still asking for someone to plead his case." Those are some of the last words that Job speaks in the entire book. And it's the last thing Job speaks before God responds to him. Verse 40 says, "The words of Job's are concluded." And that cry, "If only I had someone," has been the cry of every generation. That has been the cry of your generation, your parents' generation, your grandparents' generation. It will be the cry of your children and your grandchildren's generation. We are even crying it right now. Throughout history in America, it's like, man, if only we had a different president. And then a different president comes every four years. And then you're like, if only we had a different president again. If only they could fix this. If only they could elect that person. If only this. And then we do those things, but there's still something broken behind all the scenes. Why? Because sin is still rampant. And we put band-aids on the problem. and it might increase our comfort like it did Job. But the root of sin is still there. And every time we say, "If only this, if only I had that person speaking into my life, walking alongside me, telling everything I did wrong." And that's what mentors are, right? But is the best mentor you can have. They are still flawed. As a Cardinals fan, not a depressed one, just a normal Cardinals fan cuz we're all depressed. Every year we say, "If only we had a quarterback." We had one for like two and a half years and they were both old and retired. They should have came earlier. And then we had another one. We thought he was it, but he was like 5 foot eight and it just didn't work out. But we're like, if only I had someone to hear my case, someone to guide my life, someone to bring back the good old days, then things would be fixed. But church, someone has. In Hebrews chapter 4:15, we hear about that someone is described as for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness. You see, the someone we have is different than the someone's in our world. Is the president cannot understand what you're going through. Is the politicians cannot understand everything you're going through. Is your family, your grandparents, your kids, whoever it is, they can't understand everything you're going through. They can't sympathize with our weakness. But the one who has been tempted in every way as we are is without sin. That Jesus the high priest, he came down to understand our failures, to understand our hurts. But he did not fail himself. So he is greater than all the other someone's who have come before and who will come after. But it says, "Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need." You see, Job wanted a hearing. But Jesus gives us something so much more. Jesus gives us a seat. Jesus gives us a seat boldly at the throne of grace in God. Not because your life is perfect. Not because your oath is perfect. Not because you were good in the good old days, but you're a mess now. But because he is perfect and he has covered you. You see, Job signed his oath with his own name. And it wasn't enough. And hear this. Ours isn't either. Only one man could list the things of chapter 31 and said, "I never did this." And actually sign it and be real. And the one who did is Jesus Christ. And he signed it with his own blood. But here's how this shapes us to push us out and do something about it. When we reflect on the good old days, when we think back to how we just wish we could pull stuff from the past and bring it to today, here from Job is the enduring truth that we need to hear to counteract that is that every generation has been hard. Can I get an amen on that? Let me say it again. Every generation has been hard. >> I didn't walk in snow uphill and downhill in Phoenix. That wasn't true. All right. But it was still hard. Every generation has been hard. Every generation has had its issues. But hear this, church. Every generation has needed the same exact savior. It wasn't a tech mogul. It wasn't a politician. It wasn't the leaders that we promote in our world. It is not AI. Okay? It is the same savior throughout history who died on a cross and rose again 2,000 years ago so that we could have the advocate on our behalf. We could have the perfect one sign our oath that we could not live out so that we could have a new life. And here's what I love that we see throughout scripture and we see through this is this Jesus Christ, this God man who took our place, who didn't look back and say, "Hey, the good old days, you were okay then, but then you messed up later and I'm going to give you a pass." Instead, this God man who died in our place for our sins, to save us, and to resurrect us. We are told about him in the New Testament. Hebrews chapter 13:8, I love this. We prayed through this verse together. We proclaimed this. We sang this together. is that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Yesterday, your good old days that were so messed up, Jesus was still God. Today, in your hurt and your heartache and your depression, Jesus is still God forever. that when we look in the future with uncertainty and fear just like Job did as he offered sacrifices. He said the fear that is coming it has finally got here. The fear we don't know that is out there. Jesus Christ is still the same. He's still God. He's still sitting on his throne. And as we take in God's word to see all that he has done, church, this is how we begin to practice this that we stop being a people that look backwards and say, "Man, life was so much better than, man, if I could just reclaim some of my old stuff, things would be great." And instead, we start shifting to people. But what can I do now that's going to change mine and others eternity for the rest of their lives? [music] You see, this afternoon I'm going to go home and because of time change, I might eat and take a small nap because the Cardinals don't kick [music] off till after 2:00. I'm going to have to kill some time. And as I'm going to sit on my couch, watch him play the Seahawks, which is half [music] the reason I wore this, to make all the Seahawks fans mad. You all know who you are. It's like 80% [music] of our church. God, give me your biggest trials. Can you send me Seahawks fans? But as I sit down and watch [music] that game, usually when they start being terrible, my team, I start [music] thinking back to, man, I wish Kurt Warner could still play football. Larry never officially retired. We inducted in the Hall of Fame, but maybe [music] he could come back. I still think he'd be better than some of our guys. Man, I just wish this would I just wish. But [music] when I do that, I don't even get to enjoy the game I'm watching right then. because I'm [music] just reminiscing about the past. The same goes for our life. When we're [music] stuck reminiscing about the past, we're not enjoying the present that God has put us in. [music] And church, we aren't people that dwell on the past. Our past is full of sin. That does not mark us anymore. If you are a believer in Christ, the hope you have is that Jesus Christ has [music] saved you and your future is secure. But what we get to do is not just sit in a chair and be like, "Man, I used to be a deacon. [music] I used to be an elder. I used to serve in kids ministry. I used to do this." Well, what are we doing now? How are being part of the kingdom [music] now? God is working in the present. And maybe you're not what you once were in your youth, but you're alive cuz God ain't done with you yet. [music] And as we look at where God has placed us now, what if you ask the question, God, how are you using [music] me to make Jesus known? How am I serving in your church? How am I loving on my neighbors? How am I [music] sharing with my co-workers? How are you dominating someone in Sun City Grand Pickle Ball and then [music] sharing the gospel with them after? God is not done with you yet. [music] Will you be part of the kingdom work that he is doing right now? And maybe [music] you're not that person yet. Maybe you haven't entrusted yourself [music] in Christ. And my invitation, my plea, my cry [music] is that you stop trusting in the stuff of this world. The money, the [music] lust, the conquest, whatever the world says will fill you up. And [music] that gets you emptier than it was before. Say yes to the God man who died on a cross [music] for you, who raised from the dead for you, and is the same yesterday, today, and forever. [music] Church, how are we going to make Jesus known now, and until [music] we are joined with him forever? [music]