Pulverized to Powder Faith Series

We've been in our faith series now for a number of weeks, and today, friends, we come to the final lesson. Turn in your Bibles to the book of Job. We will be in chapter 1, chapter 5, and we'll finish in the last chapter of Job, which is chapter 42.

May God's Spirit attend the reading of His Holy Word. Here, in the book of Job, we find a man laid low by circumstances, circumstances brought into his life from an unseen hand, circumstances so personally devastating and crushing he was laid low by them. But when you read the opening chapter of Job, you soon learn that Satan wasn't the reason why Job went through hell, if I may so speak.

God was the author of it all. Satan was just his errand boy. God tells Satan he can have his way with Job, but he can only go so far.

He says, all that he has is in the power, but upon him put not forth thy hand. As we continue to read the opening chapter of Job, we see him in a deep personal tragedy that crushes him, and Job ends up on his knees in the dirt brought low by these circumstances. Then, at the end of the book of Job, in chapter 42, we find Job again on his knees before God in the dirt, but this time it's different.

The first time was by circumstance. This time, it is by choice. In Job 42.6, we read, wherefore, I bore myself and repent in dust and ashes.

Recently, while I was in a deep crisis that was crushing me, I asked God, how low do you want me to go? I went as low as I could go. God will never ask you to go lower than you can go, but he will get you into circumstances that will take you as low as you can go. Pride must go.

Ego must go. Self-opinion must go. Self-reliance must go.

Self-preservation must go. They must all go the way of the cross as you go as low as you can go. When a battered Christ carried his own cross to Calvary, his back was laid bare by the beatings of the whip of scourging, and it was bleeding, and as he struggled beneath the weight of that heavy wood, he was bent low to the ground.

Christ's humility was on display on the way to Calvary, and Christ's victory over sin would take place on Calvary in a death blow, in crucifixion. So you're the chairman of the deacons, and you feel pretty good about yourself. You can stick your thumbs under your armpits and strut a little before men.

This is the picture of many Christians as they serve God with their religion. It is often a display of self that serves for recognition, appreciation, and acknowledgment. Many pastors live that way.

They live for those things. Many Christians operate that way. The look-at-me attitude they carry about from the world by the car they drive and the clothes they wear are offshoots from a self-centered life that needs notice and longs for recognition.

But in Job chapter 42 and verse 6, we see a picture of a broken man sitting in the dust of repentance. The word dust in the Hebrew is the word afar, and it is a noun that means anything pulverized into powder. Pulverize means to reduce, to find particles.

This speaks of humility, to get as low as dirt. The second definition of dust in the Hebrew is to defeat utterly, and this is a picture of self taken to the cross and nailed up there. Pulverization is the process of crushing, grinding, reducing.

I can't explain it any better than that, friends, but I can tell you this. I know when I have experienced it, God will place us at times in circumstances that grind us to powder. He will do this for His reasons, for His purpose, and for our good.

He is a Father who has our best interests at heart, but at times He has to discipline us, to correct us, to make us more like His Son Jesus. In Job chapter 5 and in verses 17 and 18, we read, Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth. Therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty, for he maketh sore, and bindeth up, he woundeth, and his hands make whole.

The one who emerges out of such a fiery trial that they are pulverized to powder will ultimately live and experience this first. He is happy because he knows the fruit that will come from the correction, and he looks forward to the blessings that will flow from it.