Worthy to Suffer

Are you worthy to suffer? 

That sounds weird, huh? I mean, my knee-jerk reaction to suffering is, “Lord, why me? What wrong did I do to deserve this?” But (apparently) the opposite is true. When suffering, we should rather ask, “What good thing have I done to be so fortunate?”

You’re not convinced, I can tell.

In our study of Acts, we’ve witnessed an exciting start to this new Jesus movement called the church. Even after the first scandal—the deaths of hypocrites Ananias and Sapphira—the purified and passionate church is growing wildly. Luke tells us, “And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women” (Acts 5:14). Because of the love they showed to one another, the care for others’ physical needs, and the good news of God’s grace, “the people held them in high esteem” (v. 13). Times were good. But the devil was not going to stand by and let this growing movement go unopposed. Satan knows his end is coming, and the sooner the church accomplishes her mission to take the Good News to all nations, the sooner his time is over. 

Having failed to establish hypocrisy in the church, Satan went to his favorite friends, the hypocritical leaders of Judaism at that time, the Sanhedrin. 

But the high priest rose up, and all who were with him (that is, the party of the Sadducees), and [they were] filled with jealousy (v. 17).

We know from the Gospels that these leaders, most of whom were Sadducees, were liberal (they didn’t believe much of the Bible was inspired, and didn’t believe in miracles, or resurrection, or heaven), and they were corrupt, having twisted the religious system to enrich themselves. Jesus had called them out—and they killed him for it. Now Jesus’ followers are the biggest thing in Jerusalem! If someone wants to be vehemently hated, just take the spotlight away from the who’s who. What’s worse? They accused these establishment elitists of killing Jesus! How dare they! So the leaders “arrested the apostles and put them in the public prison” (Acts 5:18). 

The devil is behind all this. He is turning up the heat on these apostles who just a couple of months earlier had fled in fear when Jesus was arrested. “This will scare them and stop their enthusiasm,” he must have thought.

Where God is at work, Satan gets to work. But God is greater. As Luther said, “The devil is still God’s devil.”

The Apostles Delivered from Prison by an Angel. 

An engraving by Philip Galle and Maerten van Heemskerck 

in the 1560s. National Gallery of Art.

What happens next is great. “But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out” (v. 19) There’s nothing God can’t do. He sets captives free. Literally and figuratively. Bars and chains can’t stop him. Neither can drugs and sex (or whatever holds you captive). The angel said, “Go and stand in the temple and speak to the people all the words of this Life” (v. 20). "What?!" I can sense them thinking, "you want us to go right back into the lion’s den?" I think it is so awesome. I think God wants us to do the same. Persecution shouldn’t stop us. It should steel our resolve. And that’s what they did: Verse 21, “And when they heard this, they entered the temple at daybreak and began to teach.” I love this! Meanwhile, the pompous Sanhedrin convenes that very morning and called to have the apostles brought before them, expecting them to be humbled. Imagine the shock when they were told the disciples weren’t there! Right after getting that news, someone else yelled, “Look! The men whom you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people” (v. 25). They were brought in and grilled: “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man's blood upon us” (v.28). The apostles were unwavering. “We must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” (Acts 5:29-32)

This enraged the elitists and they wanted to kill them. But a respected member of the Sanhedrin warned that they should let them alone. He told them that if this movement “is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!” (Acts 5:38-39)

As you may know, it WAS of God. 

After agreeing to let them go, the Sanhedrin called them in and blessed them and bid them a kind farewell. Umm...not quite. "When they had called in the apostles, they beat them” (v. 40). Think about this for a second! What did that entail? Did they let the temple guards stand around them with sticks and cane them? Did they chain them to a post and whip them? Did they ask some Roman soldiers to punch them and slap them around? All of those scenarios are real possibilities. It's hard for us to picture because not many American Christians have experienced literal blows because of their faith.

After beating them Luke says the Sanhedrin “charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go” (v.40).

I've had the privilege to meet people who face violent
persecution every day for Jesus. This is a group of
Christians forced to flee China. When I took this picture,
they were singing, "This is the day that the Lord has made
let us rejoice and be glad in it." Not a sad face among them.

The apostles' reaction? “They left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (v. 41). Wow, it’s true. Suffering dishonor is honor. 

Jesus said it like this (in Matthew 5:10-12), “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” That's relatable even to us American Christians. We do know insults and all kinds of evil being said falsely about us. 

Is it relatable to you?

As crazy as it seems, it’s true. When you suffer persecution for Jesus’ sake, you’re doing something right. You can count it all joy. So rejoice! You were counted worthy to suffer.

Jesus I My Cross Have Taken

By Bryan McKaig
Guest Blogger

The first time I heard the hymn “Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken” was at a Reformed University Fellowship service on the campus the University of Tennessee. I had been attending these week night meetings for several months, coming back every week for the unvarnished and practical Bible teaching and stripped-down, simple worship music. In a large college auditorium class room, I stood in front of a squeaky, wooden, fold-down seat and sang as I read these lyrics from an overhead transparency projector:

Jesus, I my cross have taken, all to leave and follow thee. Destitute, despised, forsaken, thou from hence my all shalt be.

As the song went on, led by a young woman with an acoustic guitar and a fuzzy headed college guy with an upright bass, I began to be overwhelmed by the unyielding joy found in the lyrics. The song absolutely slayed me. It still does.

What moved me to tears about the hymn that night in college was the absolutely thorough way in which it expresses it’s central theme: that to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Without directly quoting Paul’s famous line from Philippians 1:21, this song spends six glorious verses joyfully embracing Jesus’ call to take up our cross and follow him. 

Fast forward from sometime in 2002 to March, 2018. At Providence, we’re in the middle of a four-week deep dive into Jesus’ final day before his crucifixion. It’s Sunday, March 11, and Anthony Burton is preaching on Luke 23:26-31. Simon of Cyrene is compelled to carry Jesus’ cross for him, presumably because Jesus was too badly injured from his previous beatings to haul a large wooden beam very far. And as a crowd follows them down a Jerusalem road, weeping for him, Jesus tells them that they really should be weeping for themselves, because there’s a worse day coming to the Jews of Jerusalem in a few decades.

All of this brought to mind one of Jesus' most shocking teachings: that if you want to be Jesus’ disciple, you have to deny yourself, take up your own cross daily, and follow him. 

Every week, as we plan our services at Providence, we consider what songs would best prepare people to receive what God has for us in the scripture we’ll be studying. We choose songs that we think will help tie together the themes from God’s word with the realities of our lives, and help us take his word into ourselves with the help of his Spirit. And in light of this part of Jesus’ story, this incredible hymn was one of the first things that entered my mind. We sang it Sunday, and revisited a couple of verses at the end of the service. I heard people singing loudly, which is always the sound I hope to hear in a worship service. A few folks asked me about the song afterward, and I heard through others that it really got some folks thinking. Still others said they wanted to understand the song better, becuase some parts had been a little tough to follow.

So I want to take a minute and walk you through these lyrics. There are a few things to keep in mind:

1. These words are old. Henry F. Lyte published them in 1824, and they sound like it. There are words like “thee” and “thou,” which people didn’t normally use, even back then. The rest of the language is pretty standard poetic stuff for the 19th century. Just for reference: thee/thou = you,  thy = your. And did you know that “thou," “thee," and “thy” were actually the more personal, intimate words to use. You would call a superior “you,” but your family member would be “thou.” Point is, old words can be confusing.

2. Old words are worth the work, in this case. You might ask why we should bother preserving old songs like this in worship. Aren’t there plenty of great worship songs being written today that you don’t need a degree to understand? Well, yes, there are. And no, that doesn’t mean we don’t need to dig into the old stuff. There’s a connection to the past in older music that can remind us that we are one with all the followers of Christ throughout history. They sang this song in church two hundred years ago! There are also sometimes old songs that just express something that nobody has quite managed to match since. I think this is one of those songs.

3. There’s a strong stream in early 21st century American culture that doesn’t like thinking, that encourages us to only process short sound bytes of information, in quick bursts. That influence can make it hard to focus on complex thoughts, like the ones in some old hymns, or even the ones in the Bible. It’s more valuable than ever to practice using the minds God gave us as a means of loving and worshiping him, when binge watching yet another season of some nostalgic 90’s show or soaking up sensational news headlines can be so appealing to our information-saturated brains.

That being said, here are a few key verses of this song, broken down and elaborated.

The first verse is a simple statement of commitment: 

Jesus, I my cross have taken

All to leave and follow thee

Destitute, despised, forsaken

Thou from hence my all shalt be.
 
Even through the syntax sounds like something Yoda might say to Luke, it’s really quite simple: 

• Jesus, I’ve taken my cross, I’m leaving everything, I’m following you. Even if I end up poor, friendless, and alone, from now on, you will be everything to me.

Verse 3 has one of my favorite lines in the hymn:

Oh, ’tis not in grief to harm me

while thy love is left to me

Oh, ‘twere not in joy to charm me

were that joy unmixed with thee.

Did you get that? No? Here’s what it means:  

• Sadness cannot hurt me while I have your love. Happiness cannot attract me if you’re not involved. 

Verse 4 contains maybe the hardest line in the song to say:
Go then, earthy fame and treasure

come, disaster, scorn, and pain.

In thy service pain is pleasure

with thy favor, loss is gain.

How difficult is that to say? It’s so difficult:

• As far as the good life goes: it can leave me. As far as terrible experiences go: bring ‘em on. When I am serving you, Jesus, whatever hurts reminds me of your pleasure with me, and if you are pleased with me, I’m better off without the good things in life. 

Verse 5 does something that we see a lot in the Psalms; it addresses our own soul. This is a powerful poetic device for prayerful worship link this - you are speaking to your own soul within yourself, reminding yourself to remember what is true: 

Soul, then know thy full salvation

rise o’er sin or fear or care

Joy to find in every station

something still to do or bear

Think what Spirit dwells within thee! 

Think what Father’s smiles are thine!

Think that Jesus died to win thee!

Child of heaven, cans’t thou repine?

Ok, so: “station” means “stage or situation in life.” “Repine” means “mourn or be sad.”  So the verse says: 

• Hey! Self! Get a grip on what your salvation really means! Rise above sin, fear, and worry, as you find joy in whatever situation you find yourself! There’s something in it for you to do, or some burden for you to bear. JUST THINK!!! God’s Spirit is in you! God is your Father, and his smiles are yours! Jesus died for you! Child of heaven, can you really mourn hopelessly?

The last verse takes us into eternity, when all of the suffering will give way to unmitigated joy and unpolluted fulfillment.

Haste thee on from grace to glory

armed by faith and winged by prayer!

Heaven’s eternal days before thee,

God’s own hand shall guide us there!

Soon shall close thy earthly mission,

Swift shall pass thy pilgrim days!

Hope shall change to glad fruition, 

faith to sight, and prayer to praise!

This is the good stuff! We finish the song with our eyes on the true motivation for enduring suffering in this life: There will be fruition. There will be fruit. There will be a brilliant, perfect, worth-it-all result. Here’s a paraphrase of this final verse: 

• Go! Speed on through a life sustained by God’s grace to the presence of his glory! Your weapon is faith, and your wings are prayer, and God has his hand on you, guiding you into his presence. Your mission here will be over soon, and your days as a weary traveler will end. What you hoped for, you will have. What you prayed for, you will see. What you trusted God for, you will praise him for.

What’s the point then? Gain. Being a disciple is all about what you get: and what you get is not your best life now. What you get is God. And that will either seem like the greatest gift in the world to you, or it will seem like nothing. If you see God as the greatest thing you can ever have, then your suffering, what you give up to follow him, the pleasures you don’t take part in - those will seem like nothing, and he will be everything.

2016: Worst Year Ever!?

Whew, what a year. While we can probably say that about any year, this one was one for the books. Of course I am specifically thinking about the unsavory presidential campaign that commandeered the headlines all year, but that's not all. The economy has continued to struggle—for the eighth straight year. It seems culture continues to lurch toward negativity and licentiousness. Many notable people died. Racial tension seemed to creep near to a boiling point. International tragedies and natural disasters were not uncommon: Isis, Syria, refugees, terrorism attempts (and incidents), severe drought and fires, Zika...I could go on.
But was it that much worse than other years? I'm old enough now to remember many bad years that contained terrible events and trying times. My grandparents told me of the Great Depression and the years of World War II. Those seem much worse by comparison! As I think about it, I'd trade 2016 for many others in memory. In fact, 2016 was quite good for me in many ways! Health-wise, financially (despite giving more than ever and having two kids in college), family life, experiences, good movies and sports events, lessons learned, relationships with others, spiritual growth, progress regarding our church's mission...there are so many ways 2016 was quite good!
Let me take our church's mission for example. This time last year we were over 1.7 million dollars in debt (which has been an albatross hanging around our collective necks). We don't have the final tally, but in our year of "decrease to increase" (d2i) we have paid more than 1 million dollars toward that debt ALL WHILE giving 100% of what was needed for our budget! Pretty great. Meanwhile, two of our church plants became official, independent churches during 2016! What's more, some of the churches we planted in previous years planted churches this year! That's cool!
So, we should be careful about joining the chorus of negativity. Remember, celebrities (and others) will die every year, disasters will happen, there will be wars and rumors of wars, there will be other election years. I think we would be wise to focus on victories rather than losses, feel determined rather than defeated! God is still in charge! In this I take much comfort!

What's so good about Good Friday?

The Friday before Easter is what we call Good Friday. Twice today someone has asked me why it is called "Good" when it is the day we remember something as brutal as Christ's crucifixion. It just seems so, well, bad. I think all of my kids asked me the question at some point when they were younger, and I remember asking my mom the same thing when I was a kid. The answer she gave is about as good as it gets. It's what I told my kids and all who have asked me since:

Good Friday is the day Jesus--the only person who was truly good--died on the cross in our place, cleansing all our sin with his blood. Now when God looks at believers, he doesn't see sinners...he sees us as good!

That never left me. In fact, I think her simple explanation of the GOOD in Good Friday, helped me understand the Gospel as a child as much as just about anything else I can think of.

The historical/etymological answer isn't as easy. Here is a great article about that if you're interested. But my mom's answer reveals, at least to me, yet another evidence of God's providence--even in the "accidental" way we came to call it "Good Friday."

Blessings to all this Easter season! If you have not received Christ, you can be seen as good by God, too. Read 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Romans 10:9-10.


Rembrandt's Jesus on the Cross, painted 1631.

Why God Allowed Sin & Suffering

Reading through Genesis and Job these past few weeks caused me to go down a personal rabbit trail and grapple with the whole reason for sin and suffering (as I'm sure others have). Be warned! The conclusions that I am drawing may not put to rest the question, “Why does God allow sin and suffering?” for you. In fact, it may even raise more questions. That’s ok. I’m not sure it is possible to truly resolve the issue on this side of heaven to everyone’s satisfaction, but read on if you’re brave enough (or curious enough) to join me in chasing this rabbit. While there are myriad Scriptures I could quote in support of the concepts I espouse, I have resisted the temptation to cite them for the sake of readability. Here goes:

God was, in the pre-existent fellowship of the Trinity, completely and perfectly satisfied, overflowing with pleasure and joy. God considered it a great good to share the joy and satisfaction he had in himself with others—with humankind—creatures he made for that very purpose. So in creation, after making everything in the universe to foster life—both lower and higher forms for the ultimate support of human life—God finally made human beings in his in his image, giving them the capacity to know him and experience the joy and satisfaction he has in himself.

He must have determined that for his overwhelming joy and satisfaction to be experienced by humanity, there must be sin and suffering. How do I come to this conclusion?

First, the existence of actual sin and evil was necessary for God to define himself to his creatures. He defined himself to them as holy (morally good), which requires that both moral good and evil must be defined. God spelled out both reward for good (vis. pleasure) and consequences for evil (vis. suffering), which are also tied to being like or unlike his character. Just as to understand light one needs to know what darkness is, evil and suffering stand in stark contrast to good and pleasure.

Second, sin was made possible when God granted humans a free will. Free will is necessary for true love to occur. C.S. Lewis wrote:

...free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other…. And for that they must be free.

Without a morally significant free will, our “goodness” (or obedience to a good God) means nothing and is not praiseworthy, any more than it is praiseworthy for a machine to do what it was designed to do. Likewise, if it were impossible to not choose good (or to not choose at all), “badness” (or, disobedience to a good God) is without meaning and God would be unjust to punish it. Instead failure to do good would be a design flaw, which might point to an inept or corrupt designer (God). Therefore, Adam and Eve were created free in the truest sense. Since they were truly free moral agents, they were responsible for their actions. They sinned, and the consequences affected the world and all people who descended from them. All humans born since the fall are sinful, blind, and are “dead in our trespasses” (Eph. 2:5, Col. 2:13).

Unlike Adam, who was previously untainted by sin, our tendency is already toward sin. Therefore, we must be drawn by God and given the ability to see his light/goodness/beauty. Then we are “made alive” by his grace and in response to his love. This results in new birth and the ability to understand and desire good for God’s glory, and experience the joy that God gives (in shadows now while we still live in this world, and fully when our salvation is one day realized in heaven).

Third, sin made it possible for God to show himself more fully to his fallen creatures (humans) who were originally created with the capacity to know him. Without sin, we never would have known some most important aspects of God’s character: his grace, forgiveness, longsuffering, sacrificial love, and mercy. Indeed we would have never known Christ or had need of him. Therefore, the second person of the Trinity and/or his nature would have remained a mystery and we would have never needed his presence with us as Emmanuel and Savior.

Finally, sin and suffering must be viewed in perspective of the exceeding great joy God has in store for those who he has called in heaven. This is a joy that, by comparison, FAR outweighs the pain we experience on this side of eternity. The greatest suffering we experience here will be a faint memory for us in heaven—if, that is, we can remember it at all. Even in this world we experience this phenomenon in a much less-significant way, as in the case of women who endure the pain of pregnancy and childbirth (part of the curse after the fall) soon forget it at the sight of their new baby.

There are even more ways that God uses pain in our lives. As a perfect Father, he grows us and makes us more like Christ as we “share his sufferings.” He reveals himself to us as we seek him and rely on him. He corrects us, heals us, comforts us, and uses us to bless others. Am I saying that suffering is good, and by extension, that sin is good? No. Not in themselves. But as they drive us—flawed people in a fallen world—toward God who allowed them to occur, even they can be used for his glory and our good; both here and in heaven. In this way, “there is beauty in the fall of man.”

Readings from Job

Like many in our Providence family, I'm reading the Bible through chronologically. Right now we're in Job. I've enjoyed it more than I ever have--particularly the "middle" part. It seems I always think of Job in terms of the beginning and ending being the "good part" and the friends' advice and struggle of Job as being the long dry part in the middle. Not this time. Here are a few passages and thoughts from the last few days.

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Job 23:8-9
8“Behold, I go forward, but he is not there,
and backward, but I do not perceive him;
9on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him;
he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him.

Where is God?
A common experience when we suffer is to ask, "God, where are you? I don't see you in this." Feeling abandoned by God while in pain is how God grows us. Like a parent watching when her child looks around and thinks he is all alone, God is watching. Even more, he is in control of all variables.

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Job 23:10-12 ESV
10 But he knows the way that I take;
when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.
11 My foot has held fast to his steps;
I have kept his way and have not turned aside.
12 I have not departed from the commandment of his lips;
I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food.

God knows I've kept his ways.
Another normal way we handle suffering, we make our case to God. "I've been really trying to do things your way, Lord. You know how much progress I've made." Although I'm not able to say like Job that "I have kept his way and have not turned aside" completely, I have sought God's pity by citing my good deeds or intentions as if that makes it unfair that I should suffer. And isn't the point of Job that pain comes to both the just and unjust? That God has providential purposes in blessing and hardship?

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Job 23:13-14
13 But he is unchangeable, and who can turn him back?
What he desires, that he does.
14 For he will complete what he appoints for me,
and many such things are in his mind.

God's unchangeable purpose.
What a great statement by Job of God's determination to accomplish his purposes. What he has decreed can not be changed. In his providence, all variables are working together for good.

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Job 23:15-17
15 Therefore I am terrified at his presence;
when I consider, I am in dread of him.
16 God has made my heart faint;
the Almighty has terrified me;
17 yet I am not silenced because of the darkness,
nor because thick darkness covers my face.

I'm afraid of what else God has for me.
Job comes full circle, in a sense. He starts wanting to see God and to present his case. Now, after thinking about it, he is afraid of what God might do if he actually did show up. Perhaps he is afraid of what secret sins exist in Job's heart that he doesn't know about. More probably he's afraid that God's will holds more suffering for Job.

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Job 24:1-4, 12-17, 21-22
1 “Why are not times of judgment kept by the Almighty,
and why do those who know him never see his days?
2 Some move landmarks;
they seize flocks and pasture them.
3 They drive away the donkey of the fatherless;
they take the widow's ox for a pledge.
4 They thrust the poor off the road;
the poor of the earth all hide themselves.
12 From out of the city the dying groan,
and the soul of the wounded cries for help;
yet God charges no one with wrong.
13 “There are those who rebel against the light,
who are not acquainted with its ways,
and do not stay in its paths.
14 The murderer rises before it is light,
that he may kill the poor and needy,
and in the night he is like a thief.
15 The eye of the adulterer also waits for the twilight,
saying, ‘No eye will see me’;
and he veils his face.
16 In the dark they dig through houses;
by day they shut themselves up;
they do not know the light.
17 For deep darkness is morning to all of them;
for they are friends with the terrors of deep darkness.
21 “They wrong the barren, childless woman,
and do no good to the widow.
22 Yet God prolongs the life of the mighty by his power;
they rise up when they despair of life.

It's not fair.
This whole chapter is Job pointing out the irony: Bad people oftentimes prosper—in this world.

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Job 25:1-6
1 Then Bildad the Shuhite answered and said:
2 “Dominion and fear are with God;
he makes peace in his high heaven.
3 Is there any number to his armies?
Upon whom does his light not arise?
4 How then can man be in the right before God?
How can he who is born of woman be pure?
5 Behold, even the moon is not bright,
and the stars are not pure in his eyes;
6 how much less man, who is a maggot,
and the son of man, who is a worm!”

Bildad's right.
I agree. God is great. By comparison to his holiness (or, "light") no man is pure. We are maggots and worms by comparison.

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Job 26:2-4
2 “How you have helped him who has no power!
How you have saved the arm that has no strength!
3 How you have counseled him who has no wisdom,
and plentifully declared sound knowledge!
4 With whose help have you uttered words,
and whose breath has come out from you?

Sometimes speaking truth isn't what the hurting need.
After Bildad speaks sound truth to Job, he gets a well-deserved ear full. Job, in what seems to be a very sarcastic tone, makes a good point. Sometimes we offer truth to people hurting when it is not truth that they most need. Maybe these friends would have gone down in history differently if they would have just kept their self-righteous mouths shut. I can learn here. Being right is sometimes not as important as being there.

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Job 27:3-6
3 as long as my breath is in me,
and the spirit of God is in my nostrils,
4 my lips will not speak falsehood,
and my tongue will not utter deceit.
5 Far be it from me to say that you are right;
till I die I will not put away my integrity from me.
6 I hold fast my righteousness and will not let it go;
my heart does not reproach me for any of my days.

Stubborn determination for integrity.
I love that Job persists in his determination to do right. He will not lie by conceding to his friends that there must be some buried sin in his life.
Sometimes being falsely accused can be as painful as loss or physical pain. Sometimes more. Job is undeterred in his insistence of innocence.

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Job 27:8-10
8 For what is the hope of the godless when God cuts him off,
when God takes away his life?
9 Will God hear his cry
when distress comes upon him?
10 Will he take delight in the Almighty?
Will he call upon God at all times?

The wicked ultimately lose.
Even though Job struggles in previous chapters with the fact that wicked people sometimes prosper, he recognizes an important truth. Ultimately they lose. And when bad things do happen (as they do with both good and evil people), the ungodly cannot "call upon God" or "take delight in the Almighty" as can those who trust in him. I don't think we appreciate this truth as we should. Even in the darkest days of the believer, we can "take delight in" and trust our God.

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Job 28:12-13, 20-21, 23-28
12 “But where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
13 Man does not know its worth,
and it is not found in the land of the living.
20 “From where, then, does wisdom come?
And where is the place of understanding?
21 It is hidden from the eyes of all living
and concealed from the birds of the air.
23 “God understands the way to it,
and he knows its place.
24 For he looks to the ends of the earth
and sees everything under the heavens.
25 When he gave to the wind its weight
and apportioned the waters by measure,
26 when he made a decree for the rain
and a way for the lightning of the thunder,
27 then he saw it and declared it;
he established it, and searched it out.
28 And he said to man,
‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom,
and to turn away from evil is understanding.’”

Man's wisdom...and God's
Even though humankind has figured out how to do so much, we don't understand all of God's ways. His wisdom is much higher. It is hidden from us.
Job seems to state these truths in realization of the fact that the God of all wisdom can be trusted even when we are clueless about what he is doing. What is wise for us is to fear him and turn from evil. Good focus, Job.

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Job 29:2-17
2 “Oh, that I were as in the months of old,
as in the days when God watched over me,
3 when his lamp shone upon my head,
and by his light I walked through darkness,
4 as I was in my prime,
when the friendship of God was upon my tent,
5 when the Almighty was yet with me,
when my children were all around me,
6 when my steps were washed with butter,
and the rock poured out for me streams of oil!
7 When I went out to the gate of the city,
when I prepared my seat in the square,
8 the young men saw me and withdrew,
and the aged rose and stood;
9 the princes refrained from talking
and laid their hand on their mouth;
10 the voice of the nobles was hushed,
and their tongue stuck to the roof of their mouth.
11 When the ear heard, it called me blessed,
and when the eye saw, it approved,
12 because I delivered the poor who cried for help,
and the fatherless who had none to help him.
13 The blessing of him who was about to perish came upon me,
and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy.
14 I put on righteousness, and it clothed me;
my justice was like a robe and a turban.
15 I was eyes to the blind
and feet to the lame.
16 I was a father to the needy,
and I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know.
17 I broke the fangs of the unrighteous
and made him drop his prey from his teeth.

Reminiscing about the good 'ole days.
Job is still doing what all of us experience when we suffer. He daydreams about how good he had it before things went wrong. He longs to have it as it once was. God's blessings were his and so were the praises of men. He speaks of how he was able to help the poor and needy.
He's still making a case to God that allowing these things to happen was a bad idea. Not only is it not fair, it is hurting the advance of good in the world.

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Job 30:1-2, 9-11
1 “But now they laugh at me,
men who are younger than I,
whose fathers I would have disdained
to set with the dogs of my flock.
2 What could I gain from the strength of their hands,
men whose vigor is gone?
9 “And now I have become their song;
I am a byword to them.
10 They abhor me; they keep aloof from me;
they do not hesitate to spit at the sight of me.
11 Because God has loosed my cord and humbled me,
they have cast off restraint in my presence.

Job pities his loss of esteem.
When times are bad, we all tend to look around ourselves and imagine that everyone derides us. Everyone considers us losers.

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Job 30:20-21
20 I cry to you for help and you do not answer me;
I stand, and you only look at me.
21 You have turned cruel to me;
with the might of your hand you persecute me.

God is silent and cruel to me.
I have to think that every believer has felt this way. As soon as suffering comes we pray like we have never prayed. As it continues, we begin to think that God is not hearing--because nothing happens. Like Job, we wonder why an all-seeing God would let us hurt like this. Our sinful hearts (with Satan's assistance) whisper to us that God must be less than concerned with our plight. He must be cruel.
This is a significant change of tone from Job's laudatory proclamation at the beginning of his suffering: "The Lord gives and he takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord." Continued pain, like waves of a stormy sea, erode our nobility. Even the best of us can lose some battles in the war with despair.

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Job 31
1 “I have made a covenant with my eyes;
how then could I gaze at a virgin?
2 What would be my portion from God above
and my heritage from the Almighty on high?
3 Is not calamity for the unrighteous,
and disaster for the workers of iniquity?
4 Does not he see my ways
and number all my steps?
5 “If I have walked with falsehood
and my foot has hastened to deceit;
6 (Let me be weighed in a just balance,
and let God know my integrity!)
7 if my step has turned aside from the way
and my heart has gone after my eyes,
and if any spot has stuck to my hands,
8 then let me sow, and another eat,
and let what grows for me be rooted out.
9 “If my heart has been enticed toward a woman,
and I have lain in wait at my neighbor's door,
10 then let my wife grind for another,
and let others bow down on her.
11 For that would be a heinous crime;
that would be an iniquity to be punished by the judges;
12 for that would be a fire that consumes as far as Abaddon,
and it would burn to the root all my increase.
13 “If I have rejected the cause of my manservant or my maidservant,
when they brought a complaint against me,
14 what then shall I do when God rises up?
When he makes inquiry, what shall I answer him?
15 Did not he who made me in the womb make him?
And did not one fashion us in the womb?
16 “If I have withheld anything that the poor desired,
or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail,
17 or have eaten my morsel alone,
and the fatherless has not eaten of it
18 (for from my youth the fatherless grew up with me as with a father,
and from my mother's womb I guided the widow),
19 if I have seen anyone perish for lack of clothing,
or the needy without covering,
20 if his body has not blessed me,
and if he was not warmed with the fleece of my sheep,
21 if I have raised my hand against the fatherless,
because I saw my help in the gate,
22 then let my shoulder blade fall from my shoulder,
and let my arm be broken from its socket.
23 For I was in terror of calamity from God,
and I could not have faced his majesty.

God knows I've been good.
In this chapter Job makes a case for his character by citing ways that he has disciplined himself and lived with integrity where most other men have compromised. He has not looked at a young woman lustfully, lied, taken advantage of a subordinate, not helped the needy, loved riches, etc.
He says in effect, “If I have committed any of these common sins, then let something treacherous happen to me or my wife.” He becomes even bolder in daring God to accuse him.
Like David, Job seems to be growing angry with God over the unfairness of his great suffering. Again, he expresses what many have felt.

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Job 38:1
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind...

Whirlwind
Is this a literal whirlwind, or figurative? I know that God "speaks" to me in the midst of confusion and pain. When I am at wits end and all my pat answers and proof-texts have failed to bring comfort or understanding, that's when God impresses on my heart his truth.

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Job 38:3
Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.

Suck it up.
Something in me really likes how God finally addresses Job. Like a coach to a slacking player, a sergeant to a private, or a dad to his whining son. “Get ready and be a man!” Without ever giving an answer to Job, God starts asking JOB questions. They are all questions Job can’t answer. All of them are to prove a point: some things are for God to know. He is under no obligation to explain why he does what he does or tell us how it will turn out. The point God makes is obvious. We can be confident in him. He knows what he’s doing when we don’t. Our only proper response is to trust him.

Learning from Arick

Arick is a special member of our church. He is both physically and mentally handicapped. He probably loves Providence more than anyone and there are a few selfless men in our church that take turns giving him a ride to and from church. He lives in a small group home on Washington Pike.

This past Sunday, Joe Denton was slated to give Arick a ride home after church. He and I both had daughters playing in a big soccer tournament so we rushed to see the last of the game after church. Joe brought Arick with him to the soccer game. At church, I found out that it was Donna’s (Joe’s wife) birthday, so I offered to give Arick a ride home so Joe could be with Donna. Arick, satisfied and happy to be there, just joined right in and watched the game (the field was muddy and there were muddy hills to walk up and down to get there, so it wasn’t easy for him and he got mud on his shoes and pants). By the end of the game, we were hungry, so I took him to get something to eat.

I had a great time with Arick. While eating, we talked. He talked about how much he loved Providence. He told me all these things he had learned that were “in the Bible.” We talked about Jesus. We laughed and talked. To me the rest of the world went away. Often while talking I couldn’t help but think about what I had JUST preached about from John 9. How God had allowed suffering and disabilities (as in the man born blind), for the sake of his glory. Here with me was a REAL example. Internally, I struggled a little. It was one of those moments where my own words almost didn’t pass the smell test. I had the feeling of the injustice of it all as I remembered that humanity’s sin had corrupted the world. I felt regret and anger that Arick’s condition somehow results from this. Arick struggles to see, eat, and walk, although he is completely content. He is so kind. He always wants to hug me vigorously, no matter who’s watching or what’s going on. “Maybe God uses guys like Arick to show me how beautiful a person can be who is simply satisfied and joyful despite his circumstances.” I thought. Nothing in my heart was really resolved.

On the way to his home, I played Jason and Bryan’s CD “Beauty in the Fall” (Joe had warned me that Arick had a Christian Rap CD that he had asked Joe to play, so I thought I would be preemptive!).

I wish you could have been there for the rest.

I didn’t know that Arick knows EVERY SONG on that CD by heart. We both sang the whole way to his home along with Jason and Bryan. I don’t think there was another word spoken. Just singing. I was moved to the point of battling tears as Arick sang every word of the songs.

The last song before Arick got out was “Beauty in the Fall.” He sang aloud with Jason:

Creator of Life, you spoke and it was.
The Image of God given to us.
Fallen and cursed, naked we run.
Into the arms of the Son.

(Chorus) There is beauty in the fall of man. There is grace enough to rise again.
Cause underneath it all we are resting in the palm of his hand
There is beauty in the fall, beauty in the fall of man.

Dust to dust, cradle to grave.
We breath in, the story of grace.
A song that’s made for those who believe.
A song that the angels cannot sing.

[Chorus repeats]

That you would trade the splendor of heaven for a manger,
This is the beauty in the fall.
That you would pay the cost through the power of the cross,
This is the beauty in the fall.
That we are sons and daughters loved by you the Father,
This is the beauty in the fall.

I fought my emotions while he sang loud and clear (I couldn’t sing with him). I walked in with him, hugged, and said goodbye. When I got back in my truck I burst into tears almost uncontrollably.

I learned more from his example than he could ever learn from me. I can’t wait to spend time with Arick again. I think he is closer to God than I will ever be this side of heaven. And IN heaven...Arick will not have any handicap at all. And neither will I.

Thanks, you guys who bring Arick, for your ministry to him. I know you say, “No big deal.” but it is. And God is pleased.

If you haven't gotten the CD, you can pick one up from church or search "Beauty In the Fall" on iTunes.