Opening Message: Dr. Les Heinze
June 16, 2010Les Heinze
Pastor, Red Rocks Baptist Church
Message title: “Hope in the midst of Heartache”
Intro: Could you cut off your own leg? It is primarily a question of courage. A CO fly fisherman did it (Bill Geracke). You can endure tremendous adversity if you have hope.
Job had it all and lost it: 10 kids, great holdings of livestock, tremendous wealth and security; but adversity struck. Terrorists stole, or calamity destroyed, everything he had. Then he lost his health. Profound statement of faith & hope (the earliest in the Bible?), viz., 19.25-27:
25 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:
26 And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:
27 Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.
3 realities from these verses:
1. JOB’S CONVICTION, v. 25 – I know there is a living Savior
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- A conviction of that redeemer
- A personal relationship with that redeemer,
God uses circumstances to get our attention and say “Look at ME.”
Testimony: toughest year in LH’s 25 yrs at the church: 4 criminal investigations, 3 went to trial; 8x in local news, etc.
1 Pet 1.19
2. JOB’S REALIZATION, v. 26 –I know this is a decaying body
“And though after my skin worms destroy this body…” (I’m scraping myself and filleting myself, like a fish!)
App.—our bodies are wearing out
Ill.—LH grew up on a dairy farm, one of 9 children in an RCC family. Mother is 90 yrs of age.Visiting mother in MI who had Alzheimer’s.
2 Cor 5.1-4
Rom 8.
Phil. 3.20-21
3. JOB’S ANTICIPATION, v. 27 –I know there is a waiting glory
“Don’t doubt in the darkness of your trial what you have learned in the light of God’s word.”
v. 26, “ye tin my flesh shall I see God”
App.—look at your struggles thorugh the lens of God’s word
Jn 11-25-26 “…he that believeth in me, though he were dead…”
Ill.—kids in LH’s boyhood school who received rocks they picked out of the field out of a rock tumbler—they looked like jewels. God is doing the same in our lives through the trials we are experiencing.
