Our Ministry of Glory

July 26 2020

2 Corinthians 3:7-18, 4:1-6

         As the days grow closer to yet another birthday for me I of course, can’t help but think of birthdays I had as a kid. I try and forget the angel food cake with chocolate cream icing which in the August heat we found out too late was a great medium for intestinal bugs to grow. I haven’t had chocolate cream icing since. No, I rather would think about what some of my favorite gifts were. One of my favorites were Ripley’s Believe It Ot Not books. Do you know the ones I’m talking about? They were little paperback books filled with strange facts from all over the world, throughout history, that were as the book states were quite unbelievable. Ripley’s now has a website that you can go to which gives you the strange factoids for the day. Just the other day I learned that a Colombian company has invented a cardboard hospital bed that converts into a coffin. Talk about convenient and cheap! They also had posted that there are one hundred Barbie dolls sold every minute. I think at that rate Barbies shall soon overtake the world. You see why the stuff Ripley’s finds is really hard to believe. This is why those little paperback books could entertain me for quite a while.

         Well, I was also thinking of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not because of this weeks scripture which retells the account of Moses who had to wear a veil over his face because his glowed so much it scared everybody who happened to look at him. Which I guess is kind of understandable because people don’t normally have  rays of light shining off of their face. This just seems like something that you would read in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not with the headline “Man who had an encounter with God ends up with a face that glows, believe it or not. Now what also is unusual is that this story is found not just in the Old Testament, in the book of Exodus, but it is also found in a letter of Paul to his church at Corinth. So, to say that there is a lot to unpack in todays scripture is an understatement.

         It isn’t that unusual that Paul would have had Moses on his mind because as we discovered last week Paul, earlier in his letter, asked the question, “Who is sufficient?”, which is exactly what Moses wondered when he was called to go down to Egypt and set the people of Israel free. God told Moses that he would speak through Moses, that he would place the right words in his mouth so Moses had nothing to be concerned about as far as not being a great speaker; God had it covered. So, the answer as to who is sufficient, is that they are the ones who fully rely upon God, the one who puts no trust in their own flesh.

         So it is no surprise that in todays scripture Paul continues to write about Moses. Paul in this part of his letter is unpacking the new covenant as he is a minister of the new covenant. Moses is the one who represents the old covenant that God had made with the people of Israel. The old covenant as Paul states was written on tablets of stone which again is a nod to Moses. The new covenant is instead written on tablets of the human heart. This new covenant was foretold by the prophet Jeremiah who in the thirty first chapter, the thirty first verse through the thirty fourth verse, wrote, “Behold the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah not like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. But this covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be my people.” This is what Paul focused in on in the first part of his letter which we learned about last week. This week, I believe, Paul is going to focus in on the rest of what Jeremiah wrote about the new covenant where he writes, “No longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “Know the Lord”, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.”  Now, Paul does not explicitly speak of knowing the Lord however it is there if you know where to look for it. The key is to understand this strange phenomenon of Moses glowing face. To do that we have to turn back to Exodus, the twenty fourth chapter, where we read of how Moses went up on Mount Sinai to receive from God the Ten Commandments which is the terms of the covenant God had made with the people of Israel. Now Moses was up on the mountain we are told, forty days and the people of Israel who waited down at the foot of the mountain began to get restless when Moses failed to return in a timely manner. Seeing all of the fire at the top of the mountain they just figured thatMoses had been consumed. So they persuaded Aaron, Moses brother and High Priest, to make them a Golden Calf, a god who would go before them now that Moses was AWOL and the God of Moses was also nowhere to be found. This is what Moses found when he eventually did come down off the mountain, the people of Israel worshipping and dancing around this statue of a golden calf. Of course, he was furious and he threw down the stone tablets, breaking them to bits as a demonstration that the covenant with God had been broken by their worship of idols.  Moses took the golden calf burned it, ground it to powder and made the people drink it.Then Moses punished those who were disloyal to God and he went back up the mountain to see if he could patch things up with God. What Moses finds is that God is not easily persuaded. God tells Moses that he will not go with the people to the Promised Land. Moses then intercedes for his people pleading with God for mercy. Moses tells God that he had told him that Moses was to take his people to the Promised Land but he had not told Moses just who was going to go with him. Moses continues saying, “You, O God, say to me, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor in my sight. Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me your ways that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight.” So, Moses wants to know God, to understand the ways of God and in this understanding Moses will find favor with God. This is the same knowing that Jeremiah tells us that because of the new covenant everyone will be able to know God and find favor with him just as Moses did. Well, with this plea of Moses, God agrees to go with the people of Israel. This will be proof that Moses has indeed found favor with God. So when Moses knows that he has found favor with God he boldly asks God to show him his glory. Just as God knew the name of Moses, his character and his integrity, Moses desires to know God’s name which is what makes God honorable. After Moses made two new stone tablets, God descended and stood with Moses and declared his name, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin but who by no means will clear the guilty.” Once Moses had this knowledge he bowed down and worshipped God and pleaded with God to pardon the iniquity and sin of not just the people but for him as well. You see, we need to know all of what happened up on the mountain to understand why the skin of Moses glowed when he descended. Moses had a personal encounter with the living God, one where Moses had discovered the certainty that he had favor with God and one where he understood God’s glory is his name, his unchangeable essence which above all was God’s steadfast love and faithfulness demonstrated in God’s willingness to be merciful and forgive. Again, this is what Jeremiah prophesied that everyone will know because of the new covenant God would make. Everyone would come to know God and what they would know about God is his name, his unchangeable essence and character which is discovered when one knows that God had been merciful to them and has forgiven their sins. It is this knowledge of the greatness of God’s forgiveness that forever alters a person’s heart so that now their heart is consumed by love for God. As Jesus teaches in the seventh chapter of Luke’s gospel, he who is forgiven much, loves much. He who is forgiven little, loves little. When you know God you also know that all of us have been forgiven much and therefore a great love in our hearts compels us to obey God.

         As Paul writes in his letter, the Old Testament came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze upon the face of Moses. The account in Exodus tells us that the people who saw the face of Moses were afraid and it was this fear that caused Moses to put a veil upon his face. It is this fear that that was the motivation for the people of Israel. As Paul wrote in the fourteenth chapter of Romans, whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. This is why Paul writes that the Old Covenant is a covenant of death because while the Old Covenant as Paul knew was spiritual, holy, righteous and good what the Law could not do was to give the kind of intimate knowledge of God that Moses had experienced. So, the Old Testament was one where the people did not have a personal knowledge of God, of his unchangeable nature so the people attempted to fulfill the covenant while in the grip of fear which led to sin whose wages are death.The law spoke of this sin but it had no power to set anyone free from the sin that it spoke of. As Paul wrote in the third chapter of Galatians, scripture imprisoned everything under sin because before faith came, people were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. The law was a guardian until the coming of Christ so that we might be justified by faith. This explains what Paul in his letter to the church at Corinth means when the glory that Moses had, the glory of the Old covenant was coming to an end. Paul wrote in first Corinthians chapter thirteen, when the perfect comes the partial will pass away. What was coming to an end was that only one person would have the experience that Moses had. Now, with the coming of Christ who gave his life on the cross for the sins of the whole world anyone who comes to that cross and accepts that forgiveness will know God as a God whose unchanging character is steadfast love and faithfulness, and a willingness to forgive transgressions, iniquity and sin. This is the same personal knowledge that Moses discovered up on Mount Sinai, that God does not just forgive sins but that God forgives my sin, that I have and you have been forgiven much at a great cost to God, the very life of his only Son. When we know that we have been forgiven much it is not hard to have a desire in our heart to love much. It is this love which enables each of us to draw near to God to experience God as the Holy Spirit, the God close by. No longer are we like the people of Israel who because of fear, refuse to draw near to God, who insist upon keeping their distance behind the veil sheltered from the glory that can only come through Christ.

         When we know God, that he is a God who is a God of steadfast love and faithfulness who is willingness to forgive our transgressions, iniquities and sins and we know this because of what Jesus has done for us and our hearts are no longer hearts of stone but are instead hearts alive with the love of God then it is easy for us to have faith in God. This is the faith of Jesus who went to the cross because he had faith that his Heavenly Father was the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence those things that do not exist.This is the faith that sets us free, as Paul tells us, free from the shackles of fear, sin and death. This is the faith that makes us to be people of boldness unwilling to hide our experience with the living God behind a veil.

         How amazing it is that not only in Christ are we forgiven which would have been more than enough, and how amazing it is that in Christ our hearts become hearts of love because of his forgiveness, that too would be also been more than we could ever expect. And how amazing it is that we now have faith in God which secures our future, this too is beyond all that we could have ever hoped for. But God quite unbelievably wants to give us more. This more that God desires to give us is glory. The passage which best explains what it means for us to have glory is found in the eighth Psalm, the fifth and sixth verse. There we read, “Yet you have made humanity a little lower than the heavenly beings, and crowned him with glory and honor. You have made them rule everything your hands O God have made, you have put everything under their feet.” This is not some future expectation but it is one that begins the moment we first place our faith in Jesus Christ. As Paul writes in the fifth chapter of Romans, those who have received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through one man Jesus Christ.” Jesus explains how we are to reign in the tenth chapter of Mark where he tells his disciples whoever wishes to be great must be a servant and the one who desires to be first must be the slave of all. This is exactly what Paul writes about in our scripture for today, that what he proclaims is not himself but Jesus Christ as Lord with he being a servant for Christ sake. This is the light that shines in our hearts, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. This glory is that Jesus came not to be served but to give his life as a ransom for many. This is a living example of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness which we know through the cross is God’s crowning glory. This knowledge of God’s glory is the light that not only should be shining in our hearts but it is a light that should shine before the world as we humbly reign in life through serving others. To God be the glory. Amen! 

Who is Sufficient?

July 19 2020

2 Corinthians 2:14-17, 3:1-6

         My daughter Sarah has turned out to be quite a good seamstress which as I consider this I realize this is a rather odd thing. I mean, sewing is really a lost art anymore. It’s just one of those things that people just don’t seem to do that much of. Its kind of like when we made our own homemade strawberry jam, I wondered just how many people still do this. Now we froze it instead of canning it so if we had done so we would have been in an even more elite crowd. As I thought about things that are lost arts, I thought about letter writing. I can remember in elementary school how part of our writing lesson was learning how to write a letter. You had to include the date you wrote the letter, the address of the person you were writing to and then you had to have the right salutation, like “Dear, Sir or Madam”. Then came the body of the letter which was wrapped up by the closing. This of course was followed by your signature.  With the coming of e-mail and then of course, texting, all of this formality went right out the window. I mean when was the last time you wrote a letter to someone? The last time I wrote a letter was when I was part of the Kairos Team sharing the gospel behind prison walls. As part of the weekend that we spend with a select group of inmates, all the members of the Kairos team are required to write a letter to each of the eighteen inmates. Since the roster of the selected inmates isn’t finalized until the weekend begins, these letters have to be written in the evenings after we have spent our day in the prison. So its kind of intense to try and write eighteen letters in two evenings to have them ready to give to the inmates on Saturday afternoon especially when you haven’t even written any letters in like forever. What drives the men on the team to work hard at writing these letters is that we all know what these letters will mean to those who will receive them. Many of these inmates have no correspondence with anyone one on the outside. Many of their families disowned them when they were incarcerated. So for these guys to receive over twenty letters encouraging them to keep the faith in a God who loves them is a pretty powerful experience. Truth be told, this is why we write the letters so that these men realize just how much God loves them, just how much we, as their brothers in Christ, love them and in that realization begin to let their guard down and allow God to touch their hearts.

         This is the power of a letter. And another important aspect of a letter is that it is something that you can go back and read it again. The inmates who received those letters treasure them and when life starts to get to them they go and read them again and again to remember that there is a God who loves them and there are brothers in Christ who care about them. Knowing this then it is not hard to understand just why it was that Paul wrote letters to the churches that he loved. We often think of these works of Paul to be books but they should instead be thought of as letters from a pastor to his church. Or, using Paul’s own analogy, these are letters from a father to his children as Paul often writes that he is their spiritual father. Today we are beginning a message series from what is called the second letter to the church at Corinth. Corinth is a little town in the country of Greece close to the city of Athens. Here, Paul planted a church which was so very unlike churches to day because they had no central meeting place known as the First Church of Corinth at the corner of Main and First Street just off the square. No, this church was  a loose gathering of people who met every Lord’s Day in their homes where they would share a meal together as part of partaking in the ritual of the Lord’s Supper as you can read about in Pauls first letter to the church at Corinth in the eleventh chapter of that letter.

         The reason that Paul wrote his letters is that quite frankly, the church at Corinth was a mess. As the saying goes, there are no perfect churches and this church was no exception. So after Paul moved on from Corinth and word got to him about the problems at Corinth, Paul would write them a letter. Now, what we call the first letter to the church at Corinth was not actually the first letter because as we read in the fifth chapter, the ninth verse Paul had written them a letter previously. This letter that Paul references has unfortunately been lost.  Yet Paul was not the only letter writer because in the seventh chapter of this first letter, we read of how the church had also sent Paul a letter and Paul alludes to what they have written but again that letter has also been lost.

         We have similar issues with what we call the second letter of Paul to the church at Corinth because if you read this so called letter very slowly and carefully what you find is that this is not just one letter but rather it is four separate letters that have been pieced together. It seems that as these letters of Paul got passed around from house to house to be read at their gatherings, over time, these letters began to tear and fall apart. So in order to preserve them someone took and wrote them down in a new document trying to put all the fragments in some semblance of order. Well, they almost succeeded but not really.  If you want to read them in the right chronological order, you have to begin where we’re beginning today at the fourteenth verse of the second chapter and read through until the fourth verse of the seventh chapter. This is Paul’s third letter to the church at Corinth. His fourth letter to the church that he writes about in the fourth verse of the second chapter has been lost.The fifth letter though, we read from the first verse of the first chapter through the thirteenth verse of the second chapter and then we pick up the rest of that letter in the seventh chapter. Yes, the guy putting the pieces together didn’t always get it right. Finally, there is another letter Paul wrote to the church as an appeal for funds which is found in the eighth and ninth chapter and the final letter Paul writes is found in the tenth through the thirteenth chapter.  It all seems kind of confusing but I think that when you read the letters in order that they were written, they just make more sense because Paul often refers back to what he had written in his previous letter.

         All of which brings us to todays scripture. Right off the bat, Paul is thanking God for leading him in a triumphal procession.This sounds great doesn’t it, to be part of the victory parade until you do a little research and figure our just what is meant by a triumphal procession. These were kings who were returning from battle with the prisoners of war bound in chains being dragged before the chariot of the conqueror. These vanquished foes would be dragged through the streets in a public display as they were being taken to the Temple of Zeus to be sacrificed. When we realize the image that Paul is conveying here its not hard to want to believe that this cannot be what Paul meant. Down through the ages many commentators including John Calvin have changed the Greek wording so that it is Paul who is the victor. These commentators, like many Christians down through the ages want to have this image of being victorious. We certainly to not want to think of ourselves as those defeated, those bound in chains being dragged in the streets as a public display. Yet, I believe that this is exactly the image that Paul wants to begin his letter with. As Paul wrote in his letter to Rome, in the fifth chapter, we were enemies of God. As God’s enemies we had to be defeated by God. This is what Paul is getting at. Now just when we get our heads wrapped around this image of defeat, Paul abruptly changes his metaphors and he states that we are those who spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God everywhere. So we go from being a prisoner of war to a cologne salesman at a department store spraying fragrance on everyone who passes by. This fragrance is the aroma of Christ to God Paul tells us, among those being saved and among those who are perishing. To Paul then, the world is split into two factions, those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  This is also something we must stop and wrap our minds around. There are a lot of ways to divide up the world but to Paul it all comes down to people are being saved or people are perishing; there is no grey area only clear black and white. To each, the saving and the perishing, the aroma of Christ is breathed in but the affects of this aroma vary according to which group people find themselves. To those who are dying the fragrance just smells like death; to those who are living this aroma is the very scent of the living. This is an allusion to what Paul had written in his previous letter. In the first chapter of First Corinthians, Paul writes, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing but to us it is the power of God.” And further Paul writes, “For Jews means signs and Greeks seek wisdom but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.” Here we begin to understand why Christ seems like sheer nonsense, something that could not be what life is about because to them Christ is something that trips them up, Christ is just stupid. Yet to the living, those who have found their life in Christ the more they are around Christ, breathing in his life, Christ like the air we breath is the power that gives us life.

         We have to wonder though just how does what Paul say here tie together? Is this just a bunch of random thoughts from the mind of Paul? Well, the way that Paul so often lays out his arguments I hardly believe that these are just random thoughts but instead there is a thread that connects them. This idea of fragrance and aroma, as Paul so well knew, is used in describing the sacrifices of the Temple. In the first chapter of Leviticus we read, “ The priest shall offer all of it and burn it on the altar; it is a burnt offering a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord”. As we said earlier, the triumphal procession ended at the temple of Zeus where sacrifices would be made. Here Paul is saying too that the triumphal procession of God also ends with a sacrifice. With this in mind it is not hard to recall what Paul wrote at the beginning of the twelfth chapter of Romans where we read “ I appeal to you therefore, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to the Lord which is your spiritual worship.” As we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, we put off the aroma of Christ who offered himself through the Holy Spirit as a sacrifice without blemish to God.When we live like this then Paul tells us people everywhere will begin to know who Christ is and what he is about. What the sacrifice of Christ reveals to the world, what our sacrifice reveals, is that real life is a life of putting no confidence in our flesh but finding our strength in the Spirit of God. This is why the sacrifice of Christ was without blemish because it was done through the power of the Holy Spirit as we are told in the ninth chapter of Hebrews. To live by the flesh makes us an enemy of God but when we experience his great love and mercy we crucify our flesh, the cross becomes our victory and our life becomes constrained by the chains of love.

         All of this we must understand as we come to Paul’s question of “Who is sufficient for these things?” This is a question that has echos of the call of Moses. In the fourth chapter of Exodus, when confronted by the call of God to go to Egypt and seek the freedom of the Israelites, Moses tells God that he is not sufficient as he had trouble speaking his whole life. God told Moses not to worry because God would open his mouth and give him what he needed to say. So to answer Pauls question as to who is sufficient, the one who is sufficient is the one who relies upon God to make them sufficient, the one who puts no trust in their own flesh to make them sufficient. It is here in Pauls letter that we begin to discover the problem being addressed by Paul which is that the church of Corinth had been visited by traveling preachers who were being paid by certain families of Corinth. The people of Corinth wanted to pay Paul like this but he refused which hurt their feelings. But the reason why Paul refused their money is for the very reason that he wanted the church at Corinth to know that his motives were pure. The reason why he was an apostle, a sent one of God, was that God had asked him to join him in his mission to save the world. This meant that he was therefore always accountable to God and when he spoke he spoke in the place of Christ. All of Paul’s ministry then was a Spirit thing. If Paul had accepted their money the ones who gave him the money might have thought Paul would have been their preacher. Paul could not forget that in his previous letter he had to address the quarreling going on in the church as some said that they were following Paul, some said that they were following Peter, some said that they followed Apollos and still others said they followed Christ. Paul had to admonish them this quarreling was of the flesh, a power thing to see who was the top dog and it just proved that they lacked the wisdom that comes through the Holy Spirit. Paul knew that this battle between the flesh and the Spirit was a constant one for the church at Corinth and this is why he refused to accept their money.

         These traveling preachers were not only being paid by people from the church at Corinth but they had gotten their foot in the door by flaunting their letters of recommendation. It isn’t hard to see that these letters of recommendation sure seemed like they could easily puff up the pride of these traveling preachers. Paul would have none of this business of letters of recommendation because as he told the church at Corinth they were his letter of recommendation. Paul’s love for them was engraved upon his heart and those who had encountered Paul would have heard about this church that he loved. They were a letter from Christ because it was Christ who had brought them into existence through the power of the resurrection.Christ wrote them into existence with the Spirit of the living God who had raised them from death, from being those who were perishing to create a new people who were being saved by that Spirit day by day. Paul knew that what made him sufficient for what God had called him to do was the power of God himself. Paul refused to rely upon the flesh but instead found his life in the Spirit of God.This was the beauty of this new covenant Paul lived under which was ratified through the blood of Jesus upon the cross. As Jeremiah wrote of this covenant in the thirty first chapter, this new covenant  was one where the law of God would be within God’s people; it would be written on their hearts. When Paul refers to the letter of the law he is speaking to the futile attempt of those who tried to keep the law through the power of their flesh. The law, as Paul writes in the seventh chapter of Romans is a spiritual thing but we are of the flesh, sold under sin. Further he writes that there is nothing good that dwells in him that is in his flesh for he had the desire to do what is right but he simply did not have the ability to carry it out. But now through the coming of the Spirit the righteous requirements of the law can be fulfilled in us. Who is sufficient to fulfill the righteous requirement of the Law? The one who is sufficient is the one who is relying fully upon the Spirit.

         So as Paul begins his letter, he begins with what is always the issue, this conflict between the flesh and the Spirit. The flesh, the way of this world, seeks its own way, its own rights, its own power and this makes the way of the flesh an enemy of God which must be defeated. The flesh must be sacrificed so that the Spirit can live in us and lead us in a way that our lives our fragrant with the aroma of Christ. The question only you can answer is this: Is the knowledge of Christ in you evident everywhere you go?Are you relying solely on God to make you sufficient to fulfill his calling on your life? Amen!

Control Issues

July 12 2020

Job 29:1-15, 31:13-15, 40:6-14

         Something you may not know about me is that I am a middle child which now that you know that might help explain a lot about me. I have an older brother and sister and a younger brother and sister. My older sister just turned sixty this week which was a pretty big milestone for her.  As she was on our mind this week, we were remembering stories not just about her but about her kids as well. She has two daughters, Sachie and Ren. Sachie is pretty normal but Ren has always marched to the beat of her own drummer.We still laugh about the time when my first cousin, who is a little awkward around kids anyways, picked up Ren when she was like four years old. As he held her in his arms she stared at his face, then proceeded to place her hands on both sides of my cousins head and exclaimed, “You have an oval face” which was kind of an odd statement to make about somebody. Another story we tell often about Ren is when she was in preschool and she was playing with a toy and enjoying doing so so much that no one else could play with that toy which ,of course upset another kid. So, the teacher pulled Ren aside and asked Ren if she knew that when playing with toys she had to take, and then paused, hoping Ren would say, “turns”, as in take turns. But Ren had other ideas because when the teacher said that Ren was to take something, Ren told her she was to take control. This answer fits our family because more often than not we would rather take control than take turns.Even though Ren’s in college now we knew from stories like these she was going to be a real firecracker and she is.

         Well, I think that most of us can relate to where Ren was coming from, because all of us at some point just want to take control. In this last part of Job, this issue of taking control is a major issue that Job is wrestling with. In fact, this idea of being able to control our fate just might be the central theme of the book of Job. As we remember, Job suffered the loss of all his wealth in one day and on that same day, Job also lost all ten of his children. In the midst of the terrible grief Job was experiencing, Job refused to curse God remaining faithful to God in spite of his overwhelming pain. So, because Job would not curse God, Satan asked God to afflict the physical health of Job because if Job’s body was afflicted, surely then Job would curse God to his face. So, Job experienced painful oozing boils over his entire body which caused him intense pain but in spite of this he refused to curse God. An important part of this opening scenario is the possibility of a face to face encounter with God. This theme runs the entire length of the book of Job and we read of that encounter in todays reading.

         To comfort Job in his grief and suffering, friends of Job come to visit him. They sit with him in silence for a week before Job speaks of his tragedy and then Job’s friend, Eliphaz replies to Job’s demands for answers. Eliphaz tells Job the story of God who is the Creator, who not only created the world but also cares intimately for his creation.God created this world on purpose and this means that we as his highest creation, we are created for a purpose. No one is here by accident; everyone is someone to God. This is the ground of our hope, what we hold on to in the darkest of nights. There is a grand story of God and all of us play a part in it. So, when our world seems overwhelmed by chaos we hold fast to this idea that because there is a purpose that there must also be an order to this world that God created.

         Eliphaz also encouraged Job to pray because prayer is how we enter into and become engaged with this story God is speaking into being. Prayer as we said has its roots in the grace of God who gave to us the gift of life. In response to this gift, we show God our gratitude and it is this gratitude which is the beginning of our relationship with God. This relationship is a covenant relationship, where we are there for each other much like a family is there for each other. Prayer then is the conversations we have as the family of God. Through prayer we come to agree with God, we trust in the will of God and the ways of God. Through having faith in God we can then play our part in the story of God.

         Well, knowing the story of God our creator and how we become part of that story through prayer are all well and good but what continued to nag at Job was why had all of this tragedy happened to him. To that question, Jobs friends had an answer. They had the wisdom which told them that those who feared God would live lives blessed by God and the wicked who turned their back on God these would be punished. Job’s friends believed in swift justice.So, when they saw the tragedy that had happened to Job they could only come to one conclusion and that was that Job was a wicked person. Yet, Job insisted that he had done know wrong. Job went on to point out just how stupid their so called wisdom was because as Job pointed out to them the wicked don’t always suffer. The wicked very often are prosperous living lives of ease right up to their death with no real repercussions for their actions.Job wondered if what his friends had thought was wisdom wasn’t really wisdom at all, just where could one find a place of understanding? Job found his answer from God, who told Job that he saw wisdom when he was in the process of creating the world. Wisdom is found in the creation of that which is good and creating that which is good is a wise thing because in the end, good is going to triumph over evil.

         All of this brings us to where we are today and as we have said the issue today and perhaps for the whole book of Job, is this issue of control. After Job discovers just what wisdom is in the twenty eighth chapter, he begins once again to speak concerning what has happened to him. He first recalls life in his village  and what begins to be apparent is that Job used to be a man of honor. Job says he recalls how “the friendship of God was on his tent, how the lamp of God shone upon his head..” When Job went to the gate of the city, the young men knew to make way for him and the elders rose and stood as Job passed by. What Job is referencing is this system of honor and shame that was the unwritten rules of conduct in his community. People sought to be be people who were honorable because they would receive honor from others.This system of honor and shame had a lot of power to control how people reacted because it had the whole weight of the community behind it. Everyone knew how you were to act in the presence of a person who was due respect. If you didn’t honor them as expected then you could be expected to be shamed and held in contempt by everyone in the community. So, this desire to be in good standing among your people controlled how you acted among them.

         Well, what happened to Job is that because of the tragedy that had befallen him he found himself no longer as a person of honor but rather  as a person shamed by his community. They laughed at him, spit on him and basically wanted nothing to do with him because they believed Job had been humbled by God. Since God in some measure had shamed Job then they too would follow suit and shame him as well. While Job no longer demanded anything of God what he is doing is making his case that it is God rather than himself who should be the object of shame. In the twenty fourth verse of the thirtieth chapter, Job states, “Yet does not one in a heap of ruins stretch out his hand, and in his disaster, cry for help? Did not I weep for him whose day was hard? Was not my soul grieved for the needy? Job is saying this is the kind of guy I was, taking the hand of those who found themselves on the dump heap of life, I cried for those who were hurting and hungry, for those who couldn’t find a job. This is the kind of guy I was and still am; I am an honorable guy. But as Job also stated in the nineteenth verse, “God cast me into the mire, I have become like dust and ashes. I cry to God for help and God does not answer me; I stand, and you only look at me.God has turned cruel to me with the might of his hand God persecuted me.” To Job, it is easy to see that God isn’t much better than those who held Job in contempt, people whom Job felt were pretty contemptible. Job’s position is that when it comes to justice he is doing a better job then God is. Job is able to imagine approaching God proudly with confidence ready to give an account for his life.Its not hard for Job to imagine this because Job expects that God could call him to account at any moment. In the thirty first chapter Job is swearing oaths that he is indeed an honorable man despite all appearances to the contrary. And he states, “If I have rejected the cause of my manservant or my maidservant, when they brought a complaint against me, what then shall I do when God rises up? When God makes inquiry, what then shall I answer him? Did not he who made me in the womb make him? And did not one fashion us in the womb?” Here Job shows that he understands the good life that God created not all of us to live, a life caring for others. First, Job lives knowing that he is always accountable to God. We all have to live able to give answer for the way we live our life. God has given us the gift of life and God wants to know just what are we doing with this gift that he has given us. Secondly, we see that Job honors the order of God instead of the order of society. Job listens to the complaint of those which society would have held to be the lowest of the low positions but instead of letting that cloud his judgment Job instead remembers that God is the creator who created Job and everybody else. Job’s answer echos the daily Jewish prayer, “‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God and we shall love him with all of our heart, all of our soul and all of our strength. The Lord our God is one and he is the one who fashioned all of us in the womb. Thus the oneness of God our creator has made us all one and this affects how we reply when anyone brings a cry of justice against us. This is the same as what Jesus taught when in the seventh chapter of Matthew he tells us “So, whatever you wish others would do to you, do also to them for this is the Law and the Prophets.” 

         Well,  just as Job wondered just what he would do when God would come calling we get to have a front row seat to see exactly that. In the thirty eighth chapter we read, “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind…” Now when I read whirlwind, I’m thinking tornado and the the point of saying this is that there is to be expected a lot of terror and dread anytime God speaks just like when a tornado touches down. God speaks but as Job found out it wasn’t to give answers to him but rather it was to ask Job some serious questions. God asks Job, “Were you there…” Were you there when God gave birth to the sea, or when he commanded the morning to arise, or were you there when God entered the storehouses of snow, or when God made it rain in the desert? God goes on to speak of various animals, how God is the one who feeds the lions and how God hears the cries of the young ravens and feeds them. God goes on to tell Job of the mountain goats, and the wild donkeys who ranges the mountains for his pasture. God speaks of the ostrich who lacks all wisdom and understanding yet lives a life of laughter. God goes on and on about the great war horse and his lust for battle and of the soaring hawk and the eagle whose nest is on high. Then the Lord says to Job, “Shall a fault finder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it. To this Job wisely knew not to answer. God goes on to ask Job, “Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right? Then God speaks to the heart of Job when he tells him “Adorn yourself with majesty and dignity, clothe yourself with glory and splendor. Pour out the overflowing of your anger and look on everyone who is proud and bring them low.Tread down the wicked where they stand. Hide them all in the dust together bind their faces in the land of the dead. Then I will also acknowledge to you that your right hand can save you.” Now, I have to admit it’s a little hard to figure out just what all this means what I do know is that it has to do with control. I say this because the last two animals God speaks of are the most terrifying creatures God created. God’s question to Job is the same; can you grab a hold of them and lead them around by the nose? Can you put a fishhook in this terrible beast of the deep and draw him out of the water? You can imagine as you sit and watch ‘Jaws” that you are hardly, as God suggests, going to take that great white and play with him as a bird or put him on a leash for your kids to play with. As you step back and look at all that God has laid out before Job the central theme is that most of what God has created cannot be controlled by people.All of the aspects of nature are all parts of our world we have absolutely no control over. This is driven home by the last and most terrifying beast who represents the most uncontrollable being in all of creation. God says of this beast that “on earth there is not his like, a creature without fear. He sees everything that is high, he is king over all the sons of pride.” This then tells us the source of humanities pride, this belief that they are in some measure able to be in control. The reason for this belief as seen in the life of Job is that if life is able to be controlled then tragedy can be avoided.  Job as you may recall we are told offered burnt sacrifices for all of his children just in case they had sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Job offered these up so that he might have some control over the life of his children to keep them safe but in spite of his efforts they still tragically perished. The bottom line is that creation cannot be controlled because we as people must be free to live as God intended. To make love possible meant that tragedy must also be possible. To be open to receive love meant that God must also be open to receive rejection. This is the tragedy of Jesus who came to his own but his own people did not received him.The prideful people who thought they could control their world nailed Jesus to a cross certain they had silenced his message of a love that was possible in spite of tragedy and suffering. These were the ones God spoke to Job about, the proud who were brought low, humbled when Jesus stepped out of the grave on Easter morning. The resurrection proved that God cannot be controlled, our world cannot be controlled and the only thing that can be controlled is our response to life. This is the control Job should have focused in on and been satisfied with. When one from the lowliest stations of life had a complaint against him Job had control as to how he would answer. He would answer with compassion because he knew that he lived his life before the face of God. He would answer with equity and justice because the one God made us all. His response, our response is the most important aspect of what we can control. It is this control of how we live that ultimately overcomes life’s tragedy. Jesus at the end of the seventh chapter of Matthew teaches us, “Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon a rock. The rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house but it did not fall because it had been founded on that rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand, The rain fell the floods came  and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was that fall.” This is the one tragedy all of us have control over whether it happens to us. I pray that we listen to Jesus then do what he commands each and every day. Amen.

The Wisdom to figure life out

July 5 2020

Job 28

         The other week, my Mom was sharing that how she fills up her spare time now with devouring as many books as possible. She even showed how she is getting callouses on her elbows from where she leans on them to read. She went on to say that my Dad on the other hand loves to watch Westerns, watching the same Western several times. Now she found it a little weird that Dad could watch the same cowboy show again and again but you know, I get it. I can’t tell you how many John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movies I’ve seen or how many times I’ve seen them. It’s hard to say what makes cowboy movies so appealing whether its that they’re set out west or whether there’s a lot of action, with hard fighting, shoot em up, round em up, fight it out kind of stuff. Perhaps what makes these kinds of shows so appealing in an age such as we’re living in is that they portray swift justice.You know, in cowboy movies there’s no guessing who the good guys are, they’re the guys who wear the white hats, the ones who are polite to the ladies and treat everyone with respect. The bad guys are the ones who wear the black hats, the ones who scowl and are mean to everyone they meet, the ones who kick puppies if they get in their way. These are the guys that we know by the end of the movie are going to get what’s coming to them. We don’t know how, we don’t know when but sooner or later the bad guys are going to know what justice means.There will be no plea bargaining, no slick lawyers, no “get out of jail” card for them; no, their punishment for their crimes will be swift and sure. As it is put in one of my favorite lines from the western, “Lonesome Dove”, “If you run with horse thieves, you die with horse thieves.” That’s swift justice. 

         It is this kind of justice that helps bring stability to the world we live in even though we may not always see that justice carried out. We like to think that ours is a world where the good people get rewarded with good things and bad people get punished. That’s a very basic lesson that we are taught from a very early age which is supposed to train our little minds that we should want to be good people who end up with good things. It is this understanding that good people get rewarded with good things and bad people get punished, this is how we try and make sense of this world we live in that sometimes doesn’t make much sense.

         Job’s story is a story of a man whose life in a matter of days ceased to make much sense. First, he lost all of his wealth and then tragically, he lost all ten of his children. Job, to his credit, would not curse God in spite of his overwhelming grief. Yet, if that were not enough for Job to endure, he then found himself covered in raw oozing sores but even though he was rocked with unrelenting pain, Job would still not curse God. Job’s life went from what seemed a well ordered life to one of the deepest and most tragic chaos. Job’s friends come to sit in silence with him, to weep with him, to grieve with him and eventually to help Job make sense of his tragedy. They tell Job their story of God that they know as the Creator, the one who spoke all of our world into being. It is is because God created our world with a purpose that we can know that we were created for a purpose. None of us were an accident but rather all of us are someone God created for a reason.This is the foundation of all of our hope, that God has a reason for us to be here and a purpose for our life. This purpose follows God’s purpose for his creation which is that it is to be a world overflowing with life. We are to join God and be creatures who are life givers, laying down our life for others just as Jesus has done for us.This is what brings order back to a chaotic world.

         Job’s friends went on to urge Job to pray because it is prayer that makes the story of the creation our story. Prayer is the conversation of the family of God. God is not some greater power that we have a contract with that when we are obedient to him he in exchange will bless us. No, God is a covenant God, the creator God who by grace has given us life and we respond with gratitude. This is the basis of our relationship with God and this relationship, this bond, is our covenant with God. This bond is the bond of family and it is a bond of trust. When we trust God, have faith in him despite our circumstances, this is when we join God in his rest and peace. This is the power of prayer, that through this speaking with God we come to agree with God and grow deeper in our trust in the ways of God.

         So, as we go along in this story of Job it is easy to see that this is a story that is about these themes of chaos and order and it is a story about trying to make sense of a world that quite frankly just doesn’t make sense much of the time. Job’s friends told Job their story and they comforted Job by speaking to him about prayer but in the end they failed Job because in their arrogance they believed that they had the wisdom that Job lacked. You see, what Job wrestled with is the “why” of his situation.  Why had this tragedy befallen him? He had gone over and over in his mind to figure out if he had done some horrible evil that would justify the punishment that he had received.What Job was searching for was the wisdom to make sense of a world which seemed horribly out of whack. In this sense, Job is a stand in for so many people in our world, who are wondering, why? Why is there such suffering for those who have done nothing to deserve it? Why is it that evil people get off scott-free and innocent people are punished? Why is it that the rich just get richer and the poor suffer for basic needs? On this Fourth of July weekend, we can’t help but think about what the hope was for this country when it was founded and yet here we are over two hundred years later and just like Job, there a lot of people asking the question, why? Why is there not liberty and justice for all? As Job speaks from our scripture today where is the wisdom to figure this out? Job’s friends were absolutely certain that they had the wisdom to give Job the answers he desired as to why this tragedy happened to him but he was not going to like their answer. You see, it is the wisdom of swift justice, the kind found in good old fashioned westerns, those who are good, those who fear the Lord are blessed by the Lord and the wicked, well, the wicked are punished. If you want to figure the world out, this is where you start. So, as Job’s friends insist, if we put this yardstick of wisdom up against the life of Job what we find is that it is obvious that Job has been punished therefore Job must have been very wicked. Now, this seems as if they have added just more hurt to the tragedy that Job is experiencing. I mean in essence what they are saying is, Job we are sorry for your loss, but buddy if you weren’t so wicked none of this would have happened. It’s not hard to see that Job ends up pretty disgusted with his friends and so does God.You, see the problem with the friends take on wisdom is that it doesn’t hold water. As Job points out in the twenty first chapter, the wicked do prosper. In the thirteenth verse, Job tells his friends, “They spend their days in prosperity and in peace they go down to death. They say to God, “Depart from us! We do not desire the knowledge of your ways., What is the Almighty that we should serve him? And what profit do we get if we pray to him? Behold is not their prosperity in their hand?” What Job speaks of is something we see everyday. You don’t have to look very far to see evil people enjoying their prosperity living their life far from God. It might be true that God punishes the wicked and that the wicked will suffer just as Job’s friends insist but as Job points out that reality is not what we see on an everyday basis. Job’s point is that is if we see the wicked prospering then the opposite is true, we also see the righteous suffering. These are all of the thoughts that bring us to the twenty eighth chapter of Job’s story. 

         Job begins by speaking about mining for silver, about going deep to underground places where no one has ever set foot searching relentlessly for buried treasure What Job is saying is that we know how to go and search for buried treasure but where and how do we search for wisdom? Where, asks Job, is the place of understanding? What Job is stating here is that what he and his friends considered wisdom turned out not to be very wise in the end. The world is not all that cut and tried as to believe that those who fear God will live lives of blessed comfort and those who are wicked will suffer and be punished until they die. No, the world obviously does not work like that no matter how much we wished it would.So, this is where Job finds himself pondering just where is the wisdom and the understanding to figure this life out?Job laments that it doesn’t seem to be found in the land of the living, and it doesn’t seem to be able to be bought no matter how much riches one may have.Once again, Job asks, from where then does wisdom come? Just where is the place of understanding? Job says that he has heard a rumor that this wisdom surely exists. The answer of course, is that God understands the way to this hidden wisdom, that God knows the place where there is understanding. We read how God looks to the ends of the earth and God sees everything under heaven. Now, Job has just said that he had looked from one end of the earth to the other and went all over the land of the living and he did not locate wisdom yet here is God seeing what Job could not see. What is being pointed out here is that God is seeing the situation differently than Job did, and we are left wondering just why is this? The answer is found in the twenty fifth through the twenty seventh verses where we read, “When God gave to the wind its weight and apportioned the waters by measure, when God made a decree for the rain and a way for the lightning of the thunder, then God saw it and God declared it; God established it and God searched it out.” The “it” spoken of here is wisdom. God saw wisdom when he created the world. Wisdom is found there in the very act of creating our world that is where wisdom is to be seen.Where Job and his friends thought wisdom to be an object for them to possess, to flaunt in arrogance at people as they made quick judgments as to others situations, what we find is that wisdom is not an object at all. Wisdom is not some treasure to be sought and held on to; if this is what is searched for as Job said, it will not be found. No, wisdom is in creation, in the act of creating. What must also not be forgotten is that at various points as God created the world he would stop and declare his work, “Good”. So, wisdom was seen by God as he created that which was good.It is good which gives order to our world because even though it is sometimes hard to see, the truth is in the end, good prevails. The wisdom that it is the good that triumphs in the end though can only be understood as we participate in the creation of that which is good. This is what Jesus was trying to teach us in the seventh chapter of Matthew where he begins by telling his disciples, “Judge not lest you be judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured it will be measured to you.” Here Jesus speaks right to the experience of Job and his friends as they judged Job to be wicked according to their measurement that it is the wicked who suffer and in doing so Job’s friends find themselves to be quite wicked in their judgment. So, wisdom is not to be used as some yardstick to discover just how good or not so good those around us are.  Jesus goes on to teach his disciples that they were to not give dogs that which is holy and to not throw your pearls before pigs…” Here Jesus is saying that our wisdom is not something that we should force upon people as the right understanding that we possess and others don’t.Our wisdom might be holy but with an attitude like that we will be seen as simply as holier-than-thou. No, Jesus goes on to teach us, we should instead ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you;. For everyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks, finds and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” Do you see how different this last teaching is from the first two? In the first two wisdom is the giving of what is not really wanted. Wisdom there is first, thought of as giving unwanted judgment and in the second case wisdom is the giving of unwanted pearls of wisdom. But Jesus tells us that wisdom is instead about not giving but receiving. Wisdom is asking, in order to receive an answer, seeking to receive that which is hidden and in knocking, to be received in a place of welcome. Now what is interesting is just what it is that we are to be asking for, to be seeking for and what door it is that we are to be knocking upon? In verse eleven, of this seventh chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells us that if we who are evil know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him.” Now, that is the typical translation for this verse however, the translators, thought the original did not make sense so they added a word to it which I believe takes away from its original meaning. The original wording was “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good to those who ask him.” Our Father desires to give us that which is good and we as his children, are to be people who are asking for that which is good, we are to seek for that which is good and we are to knock on the door where good resides and live in that good. This is the same understanding of wisdom that Job came to. Wisdom is found in the creation of that which is good. As we become people working for good, pursuing good, asking for the good, searching for the good, we will come to be more and more assured that it is good that will prevail over evil. This is what Paul was speaking of when in the eighth chapter of Romans he writes, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” God is working for good and we are working with him; this is where wisdom is to be found. Paul goes on in the twelfth chapter of Romans to tell us what it means to work for good. He writes, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink…do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” This is what it means to live by the wisdom of God because this is the wisdom of the cross. Jesus went to the cross having faith in his Heavenly Father, faith in the goodness of his Father’s power, the goodness that is stronger than death. This is the wisdom of the cross, the wisdom found in the holy pursuit of the goodness of God.

         The wisdom we find when we work with God for good is the wisdom that understands that yes, good people do suffer, and yes, evil people do prosper but above and beyond this reality there is a goodness that will prevail. This goodness reaches out to those who suffer and shares in their suffering offering love and life in order to help create good out of tragedy. This goodness reaches out in love even to the wicked who prove to be our enemy so that the evil in this world can be shown to be able to be overcome by good. I hope our lives will be marked by this wisdom, lives that are constantly asking for God’s goodness, constantly searching for God’s goodness, constantly residing wherever God’s goodness can be found. Amen.

Prayer Orders the Story

June 28 2020

Job 9:32-35, 13:1-8, 16:19-22, 22:21-30

         Two years ago our children surprised Jennifer and myself by buying us iPads for Christmas. Now, we weren’t sure we would like them but we actually love them and use them every day. One of the things I use mine for is to get the daily news. I prefer to read the news stories instead of listening to the chattering heads. One of the news stories that was not about the Coronavirus or the racial unrest was the story about Pacific Gas and Electric. I don’t know if you remember the deadly wildfires in Northern California last year that totally wiped out the little town of Campfire. As it turns out that fire was the result of negligence on the part of Pacific Gas and Electric as one of the hangers that held up a high voltage wire broke, the wire fell, sparked and the rest as they say is history. What caught my eye from the headlines of the recent trial is that Pacific Gas and Electric were charged in the deaths of eighty four people who died as a result of those fires. The chief executive for Pacific Gas and Electric, Bill Johnson pleaded guilty to the charges of involuntary manslaughter eighty four times as the names were read. To me it seemed a little weird that a power company could be held responsible for so many deaths but it is right that they should be. To me it was fascinating because we rarely consider that the power we rely on to turn on the lights and cool down with our air conditioning and heat our water and run our stoves all these things that make life more enjoyable, this same electric can unleash devastation that can destroy life. That is something we just don’t think about very often.

         Well, this story is in a way illustrative of Job’s perspective on his own personal tragedy. As you may remember, Job was part of a test that Satan was attempting to see if hardship and devastation came upon Job would Job curse God to his face? Or to put it another way, was Job just a fair weather friend to God so that when the storms of life arose Job would turn his back on God? Well, in the first part of this testing, Job first experienced the loss of all his wealth as all of Job’s camels, sheep, cattle and donkeys were either destroyed or stolen. Then if this were not enough, all ten of Job’s children were killed when the house they were in collapsed. The loss of all this, especially his children sent Job into unrelenting grief yet through it all Job refused to curse God. So Satan asked God to try again and this time Job was covered with horrible painful oozing sores over his entire body which caused Job to cry out in anguish over the experience of such piercing pain. But still Job would not curse God. 

         Last week we read how Jobs friends came to be with him in his grief and pain and when they saw him they did not recognize him at first. They wept at the sight of him and for a week they simply sat in silence with Job. When Job breaks the silence, he reveals that in his inner self he is a man overwhelmed by turmoil, another word for chaos. This is the same primordial chaos that was before creation, this chaos is the disorder that is what Job is experiencing. To help Job find order once again for his life Job’s friend, Eliphaz, tells Job a story. It is an old familiar story, the story of God the Creator of all who created the universe with wisdom, understanding and knowledge. Just as God called creation out of the chaos in the beginning so too God can speak order back into a life overwhelmed by turmoil and chaos. 

         What begins to be clear about Job is that he does not have the same perspective about God as his friends do. Job does not seem to know God as his Creator but instead Job knows God as a great power. Just like electricity is a great power that can do great things for our good yet it also can, as the people in California so tragically found out, bring about devastation, this is the way Job felt about God. As Job said at the end of the second chapter, “Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil?” This is when we first begin to suspect that the God Job believes in might not be the God that we believe in, at least I hope not. The thought that comes out of such belief is that if I am obedient to do what this God asks of me then I should have success. Instead of a relationship with God based on faith, the relationship becomes one of a contractural agreement. If I give God the payment of obedience then God in return will give me the blessing of success. When we state it like this, this idea seems plainly not the right line of thought as the Bible yet there are still some who are tempted by it. I’ve been in church long enough to know the people who think that because they have taught Sunday School for thirty years or did some other type of work for the church for a long period of time that something was owed to them besides a thank you. It is hard to not let this kind of thinking color our thoughts when we live in a world filled with contracts. This is why we have bills come due every month because we have a contract with the electric company, the gas company or the phone company. We agreed to pay them so much money and they in return agree to supply us with electric, gas and phone service. This is the nature of contracts, this exchange of something of value for goods and services.

         We have to understand this contract mindset to help us wrap our minds around just what Job desires to do as his story progresses. In our scripture we read today, it becomes more and more evident that Job wants to put God on trial. Now just saying such a thing its easy to see how absurd such a thought it. It almost sounds like the premise of a movie that’s coming out on Netflix. Yet this is what Job has figured out what has to happen. We can only understand such a desire if we also understand that Job considers God to be nothing more than a great power and that Job feels he has some contract with this power that now with his current misfortune Job believes God has not kept up his side of the bargain. Only with this mindset can we also understand Job’s increasing demands he makes upon God. I mean as you read about Job you want to pull him aside and say, Job, buddy, look you are really getting in God’s face. I mean this is God, like Almighty God, do you really think getting in his face and demanding something from him is the best idea? Perhaps this is one of the points the writer of Job is trying to make from taking such a mindset to its worst extreme.If you have this idea that the relationship with God is some kind of contract where you behave yourself and in return God rewards you with showers of blessing what’s going to happen on your first cloudy day? What’s going to happen when the hurts, the pains and the suffering of this life show up on your doorstep just as they inevitably will? What are you going to do, sue God for breach of contract? You see contracts don’t work with God because, well, because God is God and we are not. We simply cannot demand anything of God. We can ask, we can seek and we can knock but we cannot demand God do anything for us. When you know this you begin to see what makes grace so amazing. We don’t have to demand God for anything because God desires to give to us all we need simply because of who he is.

         How different would have Jobs story been had he only known God as his Creator. You see when you know God as your Creator then you first realize that all of creation was created with a purpose in mind. This means that each person, you and me and everyone else are not some accident but part of God’s purpose of his creation. When you understand this then you also understand that this life we have is a gift. We are alive because of the choice of God. Thus our life is a gift and a name for a gift is grace. When we realize that God has given us this gift of life then it just makes sense that we should respond to this gift with a sense of gratitude. This gratitude is not about bartering with God or seeing what needs God can fulfill for us; its just the right response to the kindness of God who gave us life. This gratitude is what establishes the relationship we have with God.It is not a far leap from gratitude to a feeling of love for the God who loved us enough to give us life.

         So do you see why God desires to be known as the Creator and not just a great, the greatest, power? The reason why God needs to be known as our Creator is so that we might have a right relationship with him, a relationship based on grace which inspires a response of gratitude and love. The nature of this relationship is disclosed to Moses who God revealed his name of Creator to. God told Moses in the fourth chapter of Exodus that Israel was God’s first born son. God’s desire is to have a parent child relationship with all of the people he created, Israel being the firstborn who like a lot of first born children know their duty is to show the ropes to the children born after them.

         So, we have to know all this to understand that the relationship we are to have with God is not one bound with a contract but one defined by a covenant. Where, in a contract, what is exchanged is goods and services, in a covenant what is exchanged is people. The essence is that I will be there for you and you in exchange will be there for me. This is why we say that marriage is a covenant not a contract. You don’t get married for what goods and services your marriage partner brings to the table; I for one am glad for that! To get a deeper understanding about covenants, it is interesting to note that in ancient Hebrew there is no word for “family”. The bonds found in a family, the bonds of marriage, parenthood, the bonds between siblings and cousins and extended family members all of these in ancient Hebrew were covered by the name covenant.

         Another interesting understanding about covenant from the ancient Hebrew is that the verb which means to swear a covenant is built on the word “seven”. The thought is that when God was creating the world in seven days he was swearing his covenant with his creation.On the seventh day, God rested and he not only rested but he invites into his rest. As we discover in the fourth chapter of Hebrews, it is those who believe, place their faith in God, thee are the ones who enter into God’s rest. This is faith in the God who gives life to the dead and who calls into existence the things that do not exist. So, when our relationship with God is a covenant relationship we have an attitude of trust and faith even if circumstances of life drive us to despair and anguish we still have the bond we have with the God because we place our faith in him above everything else.

         It is prayer then not a hope of a trial with God that Job should be turning to. Prayer is the communication of the family of God. It is as Eliphaz says, to agree with God and to be at peace. This just echos the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples found in Matthew 6. Jesus teaches that after we acknowledge that God is our Heavenly Father, the one whom we have a covenant relationship with, then the very next thing we must do is to agree that God is holy which means that God is righteous and his ways lead to life. Then we agree that it is God’s kingdom that coming upon the earth so that just as God’s ways are known in heaven they will also be known here. And we agree that it is God’s will not ours that is to be done by us in order for heaven to come upon the earth.  Even Eliphaz knew that the good way of heaven comes on earth is when we receive instructions from the word of God’s mouth and we take up the words of God and treasure them in our heart. This is the unexpected meaning behind what Jesus teaches us to ask for in the asking for the supernatural bread of heaven keeping in mind that we do not live by bread alone but we live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. These words of God are our very source of life if we only understood it to be so. Eliphaz continues that if we return to God then God will be to us more precious than gold or silver. We can return to God because as Jesus teaches us in his prayer, we can ask for forgiveness to repair the covenant bond we have with our Heavenly Father if we are willing to forgive in order to repair the bond we have with each other. We know how precious is God’s mercy to us because we have been redeemed from our futile ways not with silver of gold but with the precious blood of Christ. This is how precious we are to God and this is why God is precious to us.

         Finally, Eliphaz tells us that our God is a God who delivers us, even when we are not innocent if we would but confess our sin come clean and walk in the light. This too is what Jesus taught that we are to pray that God deliver us from evil. So, all of what Eliphaz tells Job, this agreeing with God, the listening to God, the returning to God and being delivered by God, all of this is what is spoken of in the family of God. Prayer then is all about strengthening our faith in the God of grace. We learn to do the will of God not in order to receive anything from God but in order that through doing the will of God we will experience the goodness and righteousness of God through our obedience. The blessing is found in knowing God as a good and gracious God that deserves our trust and allegiance.Sure, disasters and tragedies may come but what is found in the midst of them is the God who is our anchor the one we can hold fast to until the storm has passed. This is how prayer orders our story from being a story of chaos and turmoil to one where we have faith that God is still present with us calling our life back into order.What Job failed to understand about our relationship with God is that this relationship is not about what is in it for me but rather that there is a God who is in it for me. This reminds me of a story I once heard about a pastor who felt called to begin a church in the very poorest part of town. He didn’t have a whole lot of resources but he he had a great faith in God. So in order to share the gospel he would walk through this poverty stricken neighborhood every day looking for someone to strike up a conversation with. One day he noticed a man sitting out on his porch, his house completely dark. The pastor asked the man what his story was and he told the pastor that his power had been shut off. He then proceeded to ask the pastor if he could pay to get his power turned back on to which the pastor said, “No, I don’t have enough to get your power turned back on but what I can do is sit with you in the dark.” God may not always use his power to turn our power back on, to send his light but let there be no doubt, God is always sitting with us in the dark. This is the assurance prayer gives to us that our Father is always by our side. Amen!