Sunday – February 7, 2021 Job 38 to 42 “Christian Thinking During COVID 19” Pt 6

Sunday – February 7, 2021

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Word On Worship – Sunday – February 7, 2021

Job 38:1-2
Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. He said: “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.”

As an adult, I understand there are individuals whose identity is defined by their suffering. But I have also learned that suffering, whether physical or emotional, can nourish depression, affect our health, and cause us to withdraw from friends and abandon spiritual hope. Job’s staggering losses and his friends’ shallow spiritual advice only deepened his despair. Job wanted answers, because, like all of us, we believe answers can justify the whys of life and make us feel better.

Then God shows up. At last! Now we’re getting somewhere. Get out your Bible, pen and notepad because God will give us the answers, justify the tragedies and make all the hurt go away. But, instead of certitudes, God confronts Job with questions that powerfully define the chasm between what we can know in this world and the mind of the God who is greater than creation and time. In Job 3:3, Job told his friends, “I want to speak to the Almighty.” Job wants God to explain his suffering, but he also wants to prove his friends’ disturbing religious ideas wrong.

God responds to Job with two speeches (38:2-40:2 and 40:7-41:6) with a barrage of questions, but never a direct answer. God’s voice out of a whirlwind is a force beyond human understanding and control. We learn some wonderful truths from this unique encounter. Job has felt abandoned by God, left to suffer alone. But the text reveals that God heard every word Job and his friends spoke. Tragedy and evil are not evidence of God’s indifference, but a call to seek God and hold on to him until the storm is past. God is sovereign.

We are not God. God planned and created the world, filled with marvels and tragedy. Sunlight is essential to life, yet it can scorch the ground and cause skin cancer. Crops cannot grow without rain, but rain can cause flooding and death. God’s words to Job speak of the limits placed on creation (vv. 8-10).  God is not angered by nor afraid of our questions. God loves us. But we must never forget there are things we will not understand, questions that will not be answered to our satisfaction in this world. Loving and serving God can be challenging and circumstances can be confusing. Our questions seldom find easy answers.

Sunday – June 28, 2020 Book of Acts – Acts 14:1-28 “Mission Accomplished”

Sunday – June 28, 2020

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Word On Worship – Sunday – June 28, 2020

Acts 14:11-12
When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in human form!” Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker.

It seems like we Christians have been schooled in the Gospel Americana. One of its main features is an obsession with meeting the minimal entrance requirements for admission to Heaven. Every time I have watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail, (as my wife is fond of telling you, if you only knew what your Pastor watches…) I recall the scene when Arthur and his band are trying to cross a giant abyss in order to enter the castle. There is a bridge keeper, and he asks each of them three questions to see if they can cross the bridge and enter the castle. If they get any of the questions wrong, they will be cast into the abyss.

Absurd, right? Most people think the big question is, “How do you know you will get into heaven?” but the real question is, “If you went to heaven, would you like it and would you stay?” Dallas Willard was an expert at forcing us to wrestle with a different viewpoint. People think they can simply decide to turn to God whenever they get the desire, but Willard challenges this idea. The “them” he refers to are those who have thus far rejected Christ, but think Christ is always at the ready. Christ may be always at the ready, but what makes us sure that we would be. Willard describes them as…” Who cannot want God to be God? Multitudes of such people pass by every day, and pass into eternity. The reason they do not find God is that they do not want him or, at least, do not want him to be God. Wanting God to be God is very different from wanting God to help me.”

During a crisis, many people turn toward the transcendent. They seek high and low for God, or a god, to help them cope with something unpleasant. When I hear that someone has turned to Christ, I automatically rejoice, but I do wonder “to which Christ did they turn?” Was it the one who claimed to be God, who challenged the religious institutions and the hubris that is inherent in the human race? The one who says, “Repent of your sins, and follow me?” [Mark 1:12-18] Or was it some selective Christ figure or principle that would accommodate one’s lifestyle and world view? Willard states it well in his last sentence: “Wanting God to be God is very different from wanting God to help me.”

Hell is real; a place where all those who insist on their will being done and have rejected God’s will being done reside. Hell is God’s best for those who don’t like him, oppose him, or have put him on trial and found God to have failed. It is for all those who don’t want the peace and tranquility that come with submission, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Is entrance to heaven answered by three random questions from God? Or is the truth closer to you don’t want God to be God, so you can be your own god?

Sunday – June 28, 2015 “The Man Who Rejoiced in an Invasion” Habakkuk 1 to 3

Sunday – Sunday – June 28, 2015 – Read the Word on Worship

Sunday – June 28, 2015 “The Man Who Rejoiced in an Invasion” Habakkuk 1 to 3 from Sunrise Community Church on Vimeo.

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Habakkuk 1:2-4
“How long, O Lord, will I call for help, and You will not hear? I cry out to You, “Violence!” Yet You do not save. Why do You make me see iniquity, and cause me to look on wickedness? Yes, destruction and violence are before me; strife exists and contention arises. Therefore the law is ignored and justice is never upheld. For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore justice comes out perverted. “

Every Christian wrestles with two problems: Why doesn’t God answer my prayers sometimes? And, why does God allow the evil to prosper while the righteous suffer? What is the purpose of God when sin is celebrated by a nation and yet, from our position, it seems God sits in the distance not hearing the cries of the righteous? We especially wrestle with these two questions when they converge on us personally. When an evil person is harming us or someone we love, and we pray, but God does not answer, it is especially tough.

The prophet Habakkuk wrestled with these sorts of questions. He is unique among the prophets in that he did not, in his written message, speak for God to the people, but rather spoke to God about his struggles over these basic human questions. Why does God allow evil to go unchecked, especially when the righteous cry out to Him for justice?

Habakkuk took his questions and complaints to the Lord and worked through them in prayer, waiting on God for answers. When you wrestle with doubts on difficult issues like the problem of evil, you must proceed with caution. Some wrongly withdraw from God and His people into their own world of depression and pouting. Others angrily pull the plug on God entirely and go their own way into the world, convincing themselves that God must not exist or He wouldn’t allow the terrible things that go on every day in this evil world. Still others hang on to their faith, but it becomes a mindless, anti-intellectual, subjective experience where they just don’t think about disturbing questions.

That’s what Habakkuk did. He kept crying out to God for an answer, and when God’s even more difficult answer came, he stationed himself at his guard post to keep watch until the Lord would speak and reprove him (2:1). God’s second answer to Habakkuk included the great verse, “The righteous will live by his faith” (2:4b). When Habakkuk comes to his final prayer in chapter 3:1-19 he doesn’t have all the answers, just as you and I often do not have all the answers to why issues of pain and suffering have come upon us. We cannot fully understand the ways of the sovereign God, just as Habakkuk did not understand God’s ways. But he had grown in understanding and he could by faith pray with joy, knowing that God was his salvation and strength.