Amos 5:6-15; Psalm 90:12-17; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31, Psalm 120, Psalm 121
This is the sixth of 8 sermons on a series Entitled “God Solves our Problems”.
We’ve heard how the promise of eternal life changes our perspective on problems, allowing us to see problems with an eternal, godly perspective instead of an urgent, human perspective. And we saw how, with our permission, God puts us into a training program to help us learn to live godly, holy lives. Then we saw how God’s model of the servant leader drives us to help other people rather than look upon others as our servants. We saw how understanding our relationship to God keeps us from becoming arrogant, and how prayer keeps us humble. We talked about how God requires and helps us keep our integrity, and we found out that following Jesus is far more important than following rules.
And today? Today we go back in time to a particular day, long, long ago. You are sitting around, listening to a middle-aged man tell a story. The man came to your town a while back and he tells stories. Today, he is telling the story of a specific day, a day in the springtime of the year 34 AD, a day when he was a young man caught up in an exciting time, a time of passion, a time of change. You can see his eyes flash as so many older men do when telling a story about their younger days, and you know that his story is true, because you know this man and his stories are always true. He’s in the middle of the story when you come up and hear him speaking. He’s talking about a day when he was on a journey, on a pilgrimage. He had already talked about events on the journey, but now he spoke about a town, an old, old town. He talked to us about how him and his friends had been staying in an ancient town called Jericho….
“…And so we left Jericho. Such an old city, Jericho. Jericho was the city at the base of the mountain that led up to Bethany and then over to Jerusalem. Jericho, just north of the Dead Sea near where the Jordan River flows into that body of killing salt water after plunging a thousand feet down from the Sea of Galilee over a distance of a hundred miles. They say it might be the oldest city in the world. It certainly was a city full of history – the place where Joshua, the great leader of ancient Israel had marched the great army of Israel around the city seven times, the city walls had fallen, and the army had ransacked the place – all but the home of Rahab the prostitute. Joshua had protected a prostitute because she worshipped God and helped Israel.
We were following a Joshua – Yeshua of Nazareth, the man the Romans called Jesus. He also took care of prostitutes and he took care of beggars and he was nice to collaborators and those men who collected the taxes for the Romans – he even had recruited one of them to join our group, Levi, the one the Romans called Matthew. There must have been a hundred people in our group walking along with the Rabbi Jesus.
Jericho is a beautiful place. There is a large spring there where water comes pouring out of the ground – they say that’s why the town was founded there thousands of years before King David. It’s a place with good water, wonderful fertile ground that comes from the dirt when the Jordan river overflows, and a long history. Too bad the Herod’s have their summer palace there, though I can understand why. If I were a king, it’s the sort of place I’d build a summer palace.
The road was busy. Everybody was headed toward Jerusalem for the Passover. Everyone from Galilee takes the road down in the valley to Jericho and then up, up, up the steep cliff road to Bethany and then Jerusalem, because if you try a more direct way, you have to meet with Samaritans. And you know that Samaritans are evil people. They claim to be descendents of Jacob, but don’t worship in Jerusalem.
As I said, the road was busy. The air was pleasant and the sunshine was bright. Families had their luggage on their donkeys or were riding on an oxcart. I’ll tell you, the dust was flying and the smell was something else. You put more than ten thousand people on the road for a week without a bath and that is some smell. Plus, you have all their animals and what they leave on the road.
But just as we left Jericho, the magical thing happened. Just as we were starting to walk uphill, the beautiful thing began. Just as the road began to get tough, the people of God came together and the most beautiful song poured out of them, the first of the Songs of Ascents that we sang as we ascended from that hot valley up, up, up on the way to the Temple of God, where God’s glory can be found, where life and hope are found on this earth.
The hill was steep and hard to climb, and so we sang the 120th Psalm:
I call on the Lord in my distress,
and he answers me.
2 Save me, O Lord, from lying lips
and from deceitful tongues.
3 What will he do to you,
and what more besides, O deceitful tongue?
4 He will punish you with a warrior’s sharp arrows,
with burning coals of the broom tree.
5 Woe to me that I dwell in Meshech,
that I live among the tents of Kedar!
6 Too long have I lived
among those who hate peace.
7 I am a man of peace;
but when I speak, they are for war.
Meshech – the lands of far Assyria where the Romans fought the Parthians and Kedar, the tents of the desert people, always at war. Oh, yes, O Lord! I was glad I lived in fair Galilee, a land of beautiful olive trees and grapevines, a well-watered land with the beautiful lake of fresh water and the safety that comes from living in a secure country. But I could feel arrows and burning coals beginning in my thighs as I climbed that long hill.
Yes, the 120th Psalm they sang and there was a pause. A wonderful pleasant breeze blew up from the valley, moving around the sparse vegetation as though an invisible Being were walking past us, letting us know that God was indeed with us, as God’s breath filled the people and moved the new leaves on the trees back and forth as they danced to God’s gentle music. It was clear to all of us in the company that the Lord was with us, for Jesus had taught us to see God through the things His Father does in this world.
Then, all the people began to sing the 121th Psalm:
I lift up my eyes to the hills—
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
And at that moment we heard the shout:
“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
It was a blind beggar sitting beside the road. He’d heard that Jesus was passing by and he had shouted just as the song was being so beautifully sung.
We told him to be still, we wanted to listen to the song and he was interrupting, but he kept yelling “Son of David, have mercy on me!” over and over again. We were trying to worship God, the singing was beautiful, the view was wonderful, we were enjoying ourselves thinking about the wonderful sights and sounds and smells of the temple to come, with the roasting lambs and the glittering golden decorations and the incense and the sounds of the chofar – the ram’s horn blowing. We were trying to worship on the road, getting in the festival mood, when that irritating, constant, note of discord came blaring at us.
“Son of David, have mercy on me!” He kept shouting over and over and over again!
I looked at him. He was dirty – much dirtier than those of us on the road. I doubt if he’d bathed in months. His clothes were rags. He had a simple pottery bowl and not much else. His eyes rolled around as the eyes of the blind do, dull and lifeless. It made you wonder about the soul inside that dirty, stinking body.
Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.”
Jesus had heard the blind man’s cry. Jesus stopped at the blind man’s cry. Jesus, leader of thousands of people, had paid attention to this man because the man called out to Him.
We all stopped with Him. When Jesus stopped, we all stopped. The song stopped, too. The road noise stopped. The adults stopped talking and the kids were quiet. The animals were even silent.
So James and I walked over and called to the blind man, “Cheer up! On your feet! He’s calling you.” Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. I had to lead him – man, he stank!- but he walked straight and tall, not caring that he was being watched by dozens and hundreds of people. We all watched to see what would happen.
Here was a poor, stinking, blind beggar – and the greatest Rabbi of his time, face to face. But the beggar wasn’t the least bit concerned, he didn’t bow down, he wasn’t scared at all. Yet he had called Jesus “Son of David”. He knew that Jesus was of the royal line. It was as if the blind man – we found out later his name was Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus. It was as if blind Bartimaeus knew the character of Jesus, as if he knew that Jesus loved all men and women, as if he knew already that this Rabbi, this leader, this royal prince of the house of David was different and cared for all people – not just the wealthy, or the fit, or the lovely or the powerful or the well-educated. Bartimaeus approached Jesus as a beloved child would approach a friendly, loving parent.
“What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus asked him.
The blind man said, “Rabbi, I want to see.” - “Rabbi, I want to see.”
Bartimaeus simply stated his need before Jesus. Nothing fancy, no wonderful speech. A simple statement. “Rabbi, I want to see.”
It reminded me of when Job had called out that he wanted to see God and argue his case before Him. This man wanted to see – and I don’t think he wanted to see the crowd or the animals or the road.
I think he wanted to see the Son of David that was standing before him:
· he wanted to see the One who had performed so many miracles,
· he wanted to see the One who had healed the paralyzed,
· he wanted to see the One who had walked on water,
· he wanted to see the One who had turned water into wine,
· he wanted to see the One who had healed sick men and women,
· he wanted to see the One who had driven out demons,
· he wanted to see the One that would be high priest.
· He wanted to see the One that he KNEW could heal his eyes.
· He wanted to see the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of all humans, the One that would inherit the throne of David!
· He wanted to see GOD walking on this earth!
52 “Go,” said Jesus, “your faith has healed you.” Not “my power”. Not “my wisdom”. Not even “my Father”. But “Your faith has healed you.”
Immediately, poor, dirty, stinking, blind Bartimaeus received his sight and followed Jesus along the road, walking up the steep road that leads to Jerusalem and the difficult things that would happen there, just as we followed Jesus up that road – just as you follow him up that road. Baritmaeus, his eyes now glistening with joyful tears now was one of us, walking along beside me, looking back and forth, smiling as brightly as the sun. And as we walked along, the pilgrim’s song began again…
I lift up my eyes to the hills—
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
But as bright-eyed Bartimaeus walked along with me, he was singing a different song, a song that poured from his heart. It was a very happy song – the man was smiling and looking all around, looking down over the edge of the cliff at Jericho far below. He was looking at the beautiful blue sky, he was looking at the pretty girls – but most of all he was looking at Jesus. Bartimaeus was singing, but he wasn’t singing one of the pilgrim songs, and so I moved over closer to him to hear what he kept singing in that crowd of people heading toward God’s house.
He was singing a part of the book of Job…what Job had said to God at the end of the book after God arrived in the whirlwind, after Job had been tormented by Satan and Job’s four friends…
4“You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’
5 My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
So many people I know have heard of Jesus, yet they have never tried to get close enough to see Jesus. Most people don’t even ask – they just walk along, many of them even claiming to follow Him, but they don’t even ask to see Jesus, to see Him made real to them, to ask for Him to come into their presence. They just assume that He is too busy or important or high-and-mighty to come to them. And so they just listen to what other people say about Jesus and never talk with Him in person, even though – as I’d seen over and over again – He really is a wonderfully pleasant person to talk to, and He doesn’t care who you are. If you want to meet Him, He will meet you. And just like Job, God’s power flows through your life and does the most good AFTER you have come to face-to-face with God.
So many times I’d seen Jesus come to people who had nothing – no farm, no home, no money, no possessions, no love – yet they had faith in Him. And it always seemed that the faith they had in Jesus gave them everything they needed. That faith led them to do great things, even though they were nobodies.
And I? I wondered how that blind man had such faith. Would YOU ever have such faith to believe in a Man you had never even seen? And that day I wondered - would I ever have such faith?
About that time, James came over to me and said, “Thomas, isn’t it a beautiful and grand day?”
And I suppose it was.
…
And so today, in this place, I’d like you to consider: Do you keep your distance from Jesus? Are you content to know from others that He is around, hearing what others say about Jesus, listening to their stories of Him, hearing about Him pass by in the distance - or do you want to be close to Him, walking beside Him, talking with Him directly, seeing Him?
Like blind Bartimaeus, to get close to Jesus, to speak with Him, and to see Him means that you need to take action. When Jesus passed by Bartimaeus, he did not contentedly sit in his seat and listen to others tell Him that his King was passing him by. Bartimaeus called to Jesus and then He walked to Jesus. And then Bartimaeus simply stated his need.
And so, when the wind blows the grass, remember that it is God’s breath in action. When everything goes right for you one day, remember that it is the Holy Spirit clearing the way for you. When that nagging voice in the back of your mind says, “Stop, don’t do it!” and because you listened, you avoid something bad, it is the Living Spirit of the Living God speaking to you, walking beside you, touching you ever so gently. We see the invisible Creator by God’s actions in this world. And to see His Son, we look at the actions of His body, the people of the church.
And so I’m asking you – Do you want to speak to Jesus? Do you want to see Jesus? Do you want to become close to Jesus? If so, then pray to Him. You don’t have to kneel – Bartimaeus stood in front of Jesus. And I realize that you can pray in your seat, but there is something about taking a step forward, about standing up which tells Jesus that you are serious and no longer content to just hear about Jesus, but that you now want to meet Jesus. So, even if you have attended a church for 50 years, even if you were saved and baptized 40 years ago, even if you show up every Sunday – today you should take the action to show Jesus that you are serious about Him and that He is worth a walk forward. Stand up or kneel and pray to Him
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
What is Important?
Amos 5:6-15; Psalm 90:12-17; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31
Today we will answer the question of what is important.
As many of you know, I grew up on about 2 acres on the hilltop above St. Marys, WV. When my parents moved there and built their home, it was simply another pasture. In fact, the place was still fenced and actually divided into two by barbed wire and locust post fences. Old Man Wilson grazed cattle on half the land and Dad mowed the other half. When you crossed the fence about a hundred feet outside the back door of the house, you were in a 50 acre cow pasture on a hillside that sloped down to a run that had been dammed up to form a small pond. Across the road in front of the house was an overgrown field, with about a hundred acres, mostly of multiflora rose.
Beside the house, there was about a half acre that was ideal for playing softball or kickball. You know, there are special challenges to playing soccer or kickball in West Virginia.
We’d take a soccer ball or a dodgeball and kick it around using baseball rules. But there was one very important rule that we played with – If you kicked the ball foul, you chased it. Because if you kicked the ball too far foul, it began to roll downhill, bouncing faster and faster, jumping over the barbed wire fence and down through the pasture, hopping over cows and calves, hitting everyone of those parallel cow paths as the ball bounced down, down, down a quarter of a mile to stop on the edge of the pond. If you kicked the ball foul, you had to chase it, and everybody else waited and watched while you jumped down the hill from cow path to cow path, dodging cows and cow patties, and eventually disappearing from sight below the curve of the hill and then five minutes later, your head would appear as you slowly climbed back up the hill, and fifteen minutes later, you climbed across that barbed wire fence oh-so-carefully, lifting each leg high over the top line of wire so you wouldn’t get caught, and then, finally, the game was ready to begin again. We got very good at kicking those balls in fair territory, because that was important!
Years later, I was trying to explain this to some friends in Atlanta. You know, they just didn’t get it, because they had always lived in subdivisions on flat land and played on baseball fields that were several acres in size – once again on flat land. But I knew you’d understand.
In our Gospel story today in Mark 10, Jesus and His disciples had traveled in their regular journey from Caperneaum in the region around the Sea of Galilee to travel south a hundred miles to the area near Jerusalem. They had walked in the towns outside Jerusalem, the area known as Judah, and they had gone down in the Arabah, the great valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, and spent time on the other side of the Jordan, in what is today known as Jordan. And then they started on their way back across the Jordan toward Jericho, which lies at the foot of the road which leads up thousands of feet to Jerusalem.
As they started toward the Jordan River, “a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Now, a normal man would have addressed the question before him. But Jesus was no ordinary man and liked to call our attention to details that most people would just skip over. “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.”
This statement sounds almost like a joke at first reading. But Jesus makes two deeply profound theological statements with this point. “No one is good – except God alone.” Jesus answers. People aren’t good, Jesus is saying. Only God is good. The Apostle Paul would take up this theme in the Book of Romans, and 1500 years later Martin Luther would also take up this theme, and the other Reformers such as Zwingli, Calvin, Menno, and Jacob Amish, all of whom established Switzerland as the center of the Reformation, and it has become one of the core principals of Protestant Christianity – as Paul put it: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”.
We are all flawed – only God is perfect. For the rest of us, in our natural life, we only do good things accidentally, or for selfish reasons. The natural person is not good – a child is not good – an infant is not good. All of us are selfish creatures, damaged by our contact with other people and the world which has been damaged by those people. The rot that began with Adam has spread to all humanity, and “No one is good—except God alone.” And because of this alone, we should all bow down in humbleness before the God who made us.
And the second deeply profound statement was made at the same time. “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.”
“Why do you call Jesus good?” Is it because you recognize that Jesus was indeed good? And if you think Jesus is good – then Who are you claiming that Jesus is? If you think that Jesus is good – and you already know that only God is good – then you must be claiming that Jesus is God – which is exactly what Jesus claimed repeatedly. Jesus is not just a particularly wise man – Jesus is God Himself walking upon this earth! And if Jesus is God, than everything He says and does is particularly important for us to listen to – and when Jesus says to do something, it is truly the Word of God speaking!
“And the Word was with God and the Word was God.” “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” as the Apostle John put it in the beginning of his Gospel.
After this powerful beginning, Jesus finally answers the man’s question – the question of “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Oh, what a question. Entire books have been written on this question throughout the ages. Movies and television shows have been filmed on the question – and you’d heard and seen and read the answers:
The movie and tv shows Highlander – the movie starred Sean Connery – says that immortals dwell among us, but if they are beheaded, they will die.
The movies Armageddon, Saving Private Ryan, The Magnificent Seven, the book “The Greatest Generation” all say that we live eternally through the memories of those people who remember the sacrifices we made for them.
The Buddhists and Hindus believe that everyone naturally lives an eternal life, that every life IS suffering and the goal of every soul is to stop living eternally. A rather sad outlook, in my view.
Existential philosophers say that this question of eternal life is the most important question of existence – How can I be certain that I will continue to exist?
Jesus answered practically:
19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”
20 “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”
And Mark tells us that 21 Jesus looked at him and loved him.
Can you imagine that look! Can you imagine God looking at you with those eyes that have seen everything, Him holding up the hand that would soon have a nail hole in it, His clean brow and clean hair that would soon be filled with blood, the look of love and compassion that Jesus gave to that man? Can you imagine Jesus looking at you with that same look of love?
But the look was tinged with a bit of sadness, for Jesus knew what was coming next as He spoke once more to the man, knowing the man’s innermost heart, his pride, his arrogance:
“One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
The man had been honest every since he was a boy. The man had been kind ever since he was a child. The man had been exceptionally good about following the rules and he had become rich and wealthy and successful and he had a name he could be proud of. He was known far and wide as a particularly good man, a man that you could trust, a man who could give you good advice.
But he was not willing to do the last thing he needed to do to follow Jesus, and he was very sad, for following Jesus is the way to eternal life.
The man was like many of us.
Because our parents and Sunday school teachers taught us the Ten Commandments in church growing up, we often think that following those commandments or other rules are the key to becoming a good person. But Jesus tells us that no one is good, except God.
Perhaps following those rules are the key to success in this world. Perhaps this is true. But Jesus told the man, His disciples, and us that no matter how good you are, no matter how successful you are in this world, no matter who you are – this is simply not important.
What is important is to follow Jesus. Just like kicking the balls in fair territory is important when playing kickball in West Virginia, following Jesus is what is important in life.
And following Jesus does not mean that you take a walk with Him every Sunday. I follow my little dog Brownie several times a day around the parsonage and around the church, but this is not what Jesus meant by following.
Following means that you are focused upon the actions of Jesus and you imitate Jesus and you do what Jesus did that is in your power to do. Like the Twelve, who left everything behind, their boats, their homes, their tax collections, their wealth, their families – a follower of Christ follows Christ – daily, even hourly. They rearrange their lives to become more and more able to do what Jesus asks. They listen closer and closer to the Holy Spirit and to what the Spirit says.
My pastor when we lived in Atlanta was Doug MacIntosh. When he was in seminary, Doug and his wife lived in a high-rise dormitory in Dallas with other seminary students. As graduation approached, one particular man became troubled because he could not discern what the Holy Spirit wanted him to do with his life, and so about 11 o’clock every evening, he would start praying in his dorm room – loudly. “God, what do you want me to do with my life!” he would shout.
After a week or so of this, one evening Doug, Cheryl, and some friends were in the room above the man’s room, and one of them got the bright idea to shout back in a deep, God-like voice: “Go to Switzerland!”
“What’s that Lord? You want me to go to Switzerland?”
“Yes. Go to Switzerland!”
The man went to Switzerland as a missionary and was very successful in his ministry, for he was committed to following the Holy Spirit, Who spoke through some godly friends.
But it is difficult to truly follow Jesus. Even Jesus recognized this and said as much:
“Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Now, there are some people who argue that the eye of the needle is a Jerusalem gate that was a bit of a tight fit for camels, but I don’t buy this. Jesus was not in Jerusalem, and He wanted to make a point about how God needed to act – and how wealth makes something which is difficult even more difficult.
26 The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?”
In the ancient world, the general understanding was that those who are wealthy are those who have been blessed by God because of their goodness. Those who are poor have been somehow cursed by God because of something they have done. And though we intellectually think today that the poor are preferred by God over the wealthy, our hearts and our actions toward each group of people do not agree. Although we may believe in our hearts that the most wealthy people must be evil, we still believe that the well-off, the upper middle class, if you were, are doing the "right" things in front of God, and the homeless, the poor, the poverty-stricken are doing something wrong and that God has punished them for their actions. The crime which keeps people out of our living rooms is the crime of being poor, for in our hearts, we "know" that they have sinned.
Today we will answer the question of what is important.
As many of you know, I grew up on about 2 acres on the hilltop above St. Marys, WV. When my parents moved there and built their home, it was simply another pasture. In fact, the place was still fenced and actually divided into two by barbed wire and locust post fences. Old Man Wilson grazed cattle on half the land and Dad mowed the other half. When you crossed the fence about a hundred feet outside the back door of the house, you were in a 50 acre cow pasture on a hillside that sloped down to a run that had been dammed up to form a small pond. Across the road in front of the house was an overgrown field, with about a hundred acres, mostly of multiflora rose.
Beside the house, there was about a half acre that was ideal for playing softball or kickball. You know, there are special challenges to playing soccer or kickball in West Virginia.
We’d take a soccer ball or a dodgeball and kick it around using baseball rules. But there was one very important rule that we played with – If you kicked the ball foul, you chased it. Because if you kicked the ball too far foul, it began to roll downhill, bouncing faster and faster, jumping over the barbed wire fence and down through the pasture, hopping over cows and calves, hitting everyone of those parallel cow paths as the ball bounced down, down, down a quarter of a mile to stop on the edge of the pond. If you kicked the ball foul, you had to chase it, and everybody else waited and watched while you jumped down the hill from cow path to cow path, dodging cows and cow patties, and eventually disappearing from sight below the curve of the hill and then five minutes later, your head would appear as you slowly climbed back up the hill, and fifteen minutes later, you climbed across that barbed wire fence oh-so-carefully, lifting each leg high over the top line of wire so you wouldn’t get caught, and then, finally, the game was ready to begin again. We got very good at kicking those balls in fair territory, because that was important!
Years later, I was trying to explain this to some friends in Atlanta. You know, they just didn’t get it, because they had always lived in subdivisions on flat land and played on baseball fields that were several acres in size – once again on flat land. But I knew you’d understand.
In our Gospel story today in Mark 10, Jesus and His disciples had traveled in their regular journey from Caperneaum in the region around the Sea of Galilee to travel south a hundred miles to the area near Jerusalem. They had walked in the towns outside Jerusalem, the area known as Judah, and they had gone down in the Arabah, the great valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, and spent time on the other side of the Jordan, in what is today known as Jordan. And then they started on their way back across the Jordan toward Jericho, which lies at the foot of the road which leads up thousands of feet to Jerusalem.
As they started toward the Jordan River, “a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Now, a normal man would have addressed the question before him. But Jesus was no ordinary man and liked to call our attention to details that most people would just skip over. “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.”
This statement sounds almost like a joke at first reading. But Jesus makes two deeply profound theological statements with this point. “No one is good – except God alone.” Jesus answers. People aren’t good, Jesus is saying. Only God is good. The Apostle Paul would take up this theme in the Book of Romans, and 1500 years later Martin Luther would also take up this theme, and the other Reformers such as Zwingli, Calvin, Menno, and Jacob Amish, all of whom established Switzerland as the center of the Reformation, and it has become one of the core principals of Protestant Christianity – as Paul put it: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”.
We are all flawed – only God is perfect. For the rest of us, in our natural life, we only do good things accidentally, or for selfish reasons. The natural person is not good – a child is not good – an infant is not good. All of us are selfish creatures, damaged by our contact with other people and the world which has been damaged by those people. The rot that began with Adam has spread to all humanity, and “No one is good—except God alone.” And because of this alone, we should all bow down in humbleness before the God who made us.
And the second deeply profound statement was made at the same time. “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.”
“Why do you call Jesus good?” Is it because you recognize that Jesus was indeed good? And if you think Jesus is good – then Who are you claiming that Jesus is? If you think that Jesus is good – and you already know that only God is good – then you must be claiming that Jesus is God – which is exactly what Jesus claimed repeatedly. Jesus is not just a particularly wise man – Jesus is God Himself walking upon this earth! And if Jesus is God, than everything He says and does is particularly important for us to listen to – and when Jesus says to do something, it is truly the Word of God speaking!
“And the Word was with God and the Word was God.” “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” as the Apostle John put it in the beginning of his Gospel.
After this powerful beginning, Jesus finally answers the man’s question – the question of “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Oh, what a question. Entire books have been written on this question throughout the ages. Movies and television shows have been filmed on the question – and you’d heard and seen and read the answers:
The movie and tv shows Highlander – the movie starred Sean Connery – says that immortals dwell among us, but if they are beheaded, they will die.
The movies Armageddon, Saving Private Ryan, The Magnificent Seven, the book “The Greatest Generation” all say that we live eternally through the memories of those people who remember the sacrifices we made for them.
The Buddhists and Hindus believe that everyone naturally lives an eternal life, that every life IS suffering and the goal of every soul is to stop living eternally. A rather sad outlook, in my view.
Existential philosophers say that this question of eternal life is the most important question of existence – How can I be certain that I will continue to exist?
Jesus answered practically:
19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”
20 “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”
And Mark tells us that 21 Jesus looked at him and loved him.
Can you imagine that look! Can you imagine God looking at you with those eyes that have seen everything, Him holding up the hand that would soon have a nail hole in it, His clean brow and clean hair that would soon be filled with blood, the look of love and compassion that Jesus gave to that man? Can you imagine Jesus looking at you with that same look of love?
But the look was tinged with a bit of sadness, for Jesus knew what was coming next as He spoke once more to the man, knowing the man’s innermost heart, his pride, his arrogance:
“One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
The man had been honest every since he was a boy. The man had been kind ever since he was a child. The man had been exceptionally good about following the rules and he had become rich and wealthy and successful and he had a name he could be proud of. He was known far and wide as a particularly good man, a man that you could trust, a man who could give you good advice.
But he was not willing to do the last thing he needed to do to follow Jesus, and he was very sad, for following Jesus is the way to eternal life.
The man was like many of us.
Because our parents and Sunday school teachers taught us the Ten Commandments in church growing up, we often think that following those commandments or other rules are the key to becoming a good person. But Jesus tells us that no one is good, except God.
Perhaps following those rules are the key to success in this world. Perhaps this is true. But Jesus told the man, His disciples, and us that no matter how good you are, no matter how successful you are in this world, no matter who you are – this is simply not important.
What is important is to follow Jesus. Just like kicking the balls in fair territory is important when playing kickball in West Virginia, following Jesus is what is important in life.
And following Jesus does not mean that you take a walk with Him every Sunday. I follow my little dog Brownie several times a day around the parsonage and around the church, but this is not what Jesus meant by following.
Following means that you are focused upon the actions of Jesus and you imitate Jesus and you do what Jesus did that is in your power to do. Like the Twelve, who left everything behind, their boats, their homes, their tax collections, their wealth, their families – a follower of Christ follows Christ – daily, even hourly. They rearrange their lives to become more and more able to do what Jesus asks. They listen closer and closer to the Holy Spirit and to what the Spirit says.
My pastor when we lived in Atlanta was Doug MacIntosh. When he was in seminary, Doug and his wife lived in a high-rise dormitory in Dallas with other seminary students. As graduation approached, one particular man became troubled because he could not discern what the Holy Spirit wanted him to do with his life, and so about 11 o’clock every evening, he would start praying in his dorm room – loudly. “God, what do you want me to do with my life!” he would shout.
After a week or so of this, one evening Doug, Cheryl, and some friends were in the room above the man’s room, and one of them got the bright idea to shout back in a deep, God-like voice: “Go to Switzerland!”
“What’s that Lord? You want me to go to Switzerland?”
“Yes. Go to Switzerland!”
The man went to Switzerland as a missionary and was very successful in his ministry, for he was committed to following the Holy Spirit, Who spoke through some godly friends.
But it is difficult to truly follow Jesus. Even Jesus recognized this and said as much:
“Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Now, there are some people who argue that the eye of the needle is a Jerusalem gate that was a bit of a tight fit for camels, but I don’t buy this. Jesus was not in Jerusalem, and He wanted to make a point about how God needed to act – and how wealth makes something which is difficult even more difficult.
26 The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, “Who then can be saved?”
In the ancient world, the general understanding was that those who are wealthy are those who have been blessed by God because of their goodness. Those who are poor have been somehow cursed by God because of something they have done. And though we intellectually think today that the poor are preferred by God over the wealthy, our hearts and our actions toward each group of people do not agree. Although we may believe in our hearts that the most wealthy people must be evil, we still believe that the well-off, the upper middle class, if you were, are doing the "right" things in front of God, and the homeless, the poor, the poverty-stricken are doing something wrong and that God has punished them for their actions. The crime which keeps people out of our living rooms is the crime of being poor, for in our hearts, we "know" that they have sinned.
When He talked about the camel and the eye of the needle, Jesus was saying that God needs to act for anyone to make it into God’s kingdom. We need the Holy Spirit to draw us into the kingdom before we are even interested. That’s why it’s so hard to talk people into coming to church – most of them aren’t Christians, they don’t have the Holy Spirit, and they don’t understand why they need to be here. And so you look at me the same way the disciples looked at their leader and you say, “Who then can be saved?” "How can anyone be saved?"
27 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”
And thus I tell you to pray for help with the dozen or so people you are trying to lead to Christ. Pray for God to melt their hearts. Pray for God to give you the words that need saying. Speak to them of the Gospel, but pray for God to save your friends, neighbors and family.
You know, in every crowd, there is always someone who wants a pat on the back. You may feel like you’ve done a lot for God. You may feel like you are well on your way to being God’s pet, like a good student is the teacher’s pet. I may feel like I’ve been working hard and following Jesus very well. And we want to say so, like Peter did:
28 Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!”
Once again, Peter has confirmed that Jesus is God. Jesus called each of the Twelve disciples. God, in the form of Jesus Christ, has saved them. The Holy Spirit has called me to be a pastor and writer. Christ has saved me. And God is calling you to minister to people also, perhaps full-time, perhaps part-time, perhaps in the church, perhaps outside the church, perhaps in a ministry of works such as Food pantry, perhaps in a ministry of caring such as being the listening friend who leads people to Christ, perhaps being the prayer warrior who goes onto your knees every morning and every evening and prays wonderful prayers that God listens to as a music lover listens to a symphony. Whatever it is, you can be sure that you are called, for God does not waste a willing heart. If you want to serve God, God will find a calling for you.
And what is the reward for turning over your life completely to your God, to following Jesus wherever He leads you, to leaving behind all your possessions, your family, your fields, your jobs, your homes?
29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
The rewards will be there – a hundred times – and persecutions – and also eternal life in the age to come. Jesus Himself, God who is good, walking upon this earth has promised this.
And it does not matter whether you are the poorest, least educated, most miserable, most ignored, most hated human being in the world – or whether you are a billionaire politician who owns entire cities and has a hundred personal servants – God will reward all those who follow Jesus, for as Jesus said:
31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
So what is important?
How strongly do you follow Jesus? Is Jesus the center, the core, the everyday purpose of your life? Or is Jesus just on the outer edge of your life, a boundary which keeps you from stepping over the cliff edge of despair and evil-doing?
Keep your eyes upon Jesus. Look to further God’s purposes every day. Be clear for Whom you work – is it yourself, your family, or Your Lord?
27 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.”
And thus I tell you to pray for help with the dozen or so people you are trying to lead to Christ. Pray for God to melt their hearts. Pray for God to give you the words that need saying. Speak to them of the Gospel, but pray for God to save your friends, neighbors and family.
You know, in every crowd, there is always someone who wants a pat on the back. You may feel like you’ve done a lot for God. You may feel like you are well on your way to being God’s pet, like a good student is the teacher’s pet. I may feel like I’ve been working hard and following Jesus very well. And we want to say so, like Peter did:
28 Then Peter spoke up, “We have left everything to follow you!”
Once again, Peter has confirmed that Jesus is God. Jesus called each of the Twelve disciples. God, in the form of Jesus Christ, has saved them. The Holy Spirit has called me to be a pastor and writer. Christ has saved me. And God is calling you to minister to people also, perhaps full-time, perhaps part-time, perhaps in the church, perhaps outside the church, perhaps in a ministry of works such as Food pantry, perhaps in a ministry of caring such as being the listening friend who leads people to Christ, perhaps being the prayer warrior who goes onto your knees every morning and every evening and prays wonderful prayers that God listens to as a music lover listens to a symphony. Whatever it is, you can be sure that you are called, for God does not waste a willing heart. If you want to serve God, God will find a calling for you.
And what is the reward for turning over your life completely to your God, to following Jesus wherever He leads you, to leaving behind all your possessions, your family, your fields, your jobs, your homes?
29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
The rewards will be there – a hundred times – and persecutions – and also eternal life in the age to come. Jesus Himself, God who is good, walking upon this earth has promised this.
And it does not matter whether you are the poorest, least educated, most miserable, most ignored, most hated human being in the world – or whether you are a billionaire politician who owns entire cities and has a hundred personal servants – God will reward all those who follow Jesus, for as Jesus said:
31 But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
So what is important?
How strongly do you follow Jesus? Is Jesus the center, the core, the everyday purpose of your life? Or is Jesus just on the outer edge of your life, a boundary which keeps you from stepping over the cliff edge of despair and evil-doing?
Keep your eyes upon Jesus. Look to further God’s purposes every day. Be clear for Whom you work – is it yourself, your family, or Your Lord?
The answer to this question is important.
Monday, October 5, 2015
The Integrity of Job - Praising God in Times of Trouble
Job 1:1 - 2:1-10; Psalm 26; Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16
This is World Communion Sunday. Today, we share Holy Communion with Christians around the world – and remember the martyrs whose bodies were broken and blood was shed that our God might be glorified. In particular, we remember the martyrs of Oregon today who had the integrity to answer “yes” when a weapon was pointed at them and they were asked, “are you a Christian?” – and therefore, I am dressed in red and the Communion Table is decorated in red in their memory and in memory of all persecuted Christians around the world.
This is the fourth of 8 sermons on a series Entitled “God Solves our Problems”.
We’ve heard how the promise of eternal life changes our perspective on problems, allowing us to see problems with an eternal, godly perspective instead of an urgent, human perspective. And we saw how, with our permission, God puts us into a training program to help us learn to live godly, holy lives. Then we saw how God’s model of the servant leader drives us to help other people rather than look upon others as our servants. And last week, we saw how understanding our relationship to God keeps us from becoming arrogant, and how prayer keeps us humble.
And today we will talk about integrity.
What is integrity?
When I was single, I bought a kitten. After a year or so, that now-grown cat had several kittens. I kept one and gave the rest to the local pet store to sell. About a year later, Saundra and I married and we made the first of what now add up to thirteen moves. And, of course, we had problems finding apartments and houses over the years because of the cats.
At any time, we could have given the cats – and later, the dogs – over to the Humane Society. It would have saved us much money, it would have been easy, it would have made finding homes much simpler and cheaper – but it would have broken an implied contract that I made the day I bought that first cat, which was to take care of that cat until she died. That cat lived 16 years until I had to have her put to sleep. And the last few years, she was not a very pleasant beast. But integrity meant that I had to honor my contract with her.
A long, long time ago, before Moses led the people out of Israel, there lived a man named Job. Job was a man of perfect integrity, blameless in all of his dealings – a good man who could be completely trusted. He even conducted a burnt offering sacrifice after the birthday parties of each of his children in case they had sinned or cursed God in their hearts. Just in case. Job was fully committed to God – not 50% committed, not 90% committed, but Job had figured out how to trust God completely and yet he worked as a livestock owner. And, largely because of his integrity, everything had gone right in life for Job – he had great wealth, he had a large family, and many servants.
In the first chapter of Job, Satan comes to heaven and talks to God. God points out Job and praises him. But Satan says that “of course Job loves God, because God has blessed him.” And so, to teach Satan a lesson, God allows Satan to take away all of Job’s wealth.
In the course of an afternoon, Satan has raiders steal his livestock, kill his servants, and sends a tornado to destroy the house where his children are having a party, killing them all. Job is left with his wife, four frightened servants, and his health.
Job’s response was not very satisfying to Satan. Job said,
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
may the name of the Lord be praised.”
And Job did not say anything against God.
A while later, there is another gathering in Heaven, and Satan again shows up. God once again points out Job and how Job has kept his trust in God.
This time, Satan says, “Yeah, but if he were sick, he’d curse you.”
And God says, “fine do what you want – just don’t kill him”
And so Satan puts a disease on Job like smallpox or chickenpox. He’s completely covered with painful, itchy sores.
And so Job goes and sits in some ashes and scratches himself with a piece of broken pottery. (There is actually some medical benefit to this – older folks will remember that ashes are used to make strong lye-based soap, and the dried ashes would probably reduce infections in the sores.)
Job’s wife is very helpful. 9 His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”
Job replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
And the Bible tells us that “In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.”
Job’s time of trouble did not end that day. In the Book of Job, Job’s four friends come over to visit and console him, but their conversation is the sort of conversation from friends that you’d rather not have. You see, his friends are all convinced that Job must have done something evil and wrong or he wouldn’t be in the shape he’s in. They talk about how God hates evil people and torments them. And for over thirty chapters, they take turns examining different possibilities of what Job might have done wrong – and Job patiently answers them by saying, in effect – “No, I didn’t do anything wrong. And God, who is always good, must have had a good reason for doing what God did.”
And we still do this today, don’t we? When someone has a heart attack, we immediately assume it is because they smoked, or ate too much pork, or too much butter. If someone has skin cancer, we assume it is because they went out in the sun too much when they were younger. If someone becomes addicted to pain pills, we assume it is because they have a moral weakness. And if someone is killed in a bar fight, we assume it is because they went to those bars too frequently.
We are particularly strong about assuming that when a person loses their job, it is because of some laziness or moral problem on their part.
Yet sometimes, you are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve seen an entire factory get shut down just because the company sold the division at to another, more efficient company who could make the products at their own factory more efficiently because they were ten times larger than the shut down factory. It was no fault of the people in the shut-down factory – they had succeeded for years despite their small production volume because their product designs were that good.
Our text – and the remainder of the Book of Job, though, tells us that sometimes God lets Satan attack us – and it has nothing to do with us. It appears that God let Satan attack Job to teach Satan a lesson. But what happened in the end?
Near the end of the book, Job says that he wishes God would speak to him and let him know what he has done wrong.
(“Oh, that I had someone to hear me!
I sign now my defense—let the Almighty answer me;
let my accuser put his indictment in writing.
36 Surely I would wear it on my shoulder,
I would put it on like a crown.
37 I would give him an account of my every step;
I would present it to him as to a ruler.)—
Job’s fourth friend, Elihu, cannot take this. Job’s three older friends have condemned Job – yet Job persists in claiming he has done nothing wrong. Yet Elihu is convinced that the situation demands that either God or Job must be in the wrong. So Elihu states that :
“So listen to me, you men of understanding.
Far be it from God to do evil,
from the Almighty to do wrong.
11 He repays everyone for what they have done;
he brings on them what their conduct deserves.
12 It is unthinkable that God would do wrong,
that the Almighty would pervert justice.
A storm builds up and approaches, and out of the storm, God speaks to Job:
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
After pointing out the many things that God knows that no other person knows,
The Lord said to Job:
2 “Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?
Let him who accuses God answer him!”
God, when God answered Job, had a different answer for Job – and for us. God said, in effect: “I, who created this Universe, don’t need to answer to you, whom I created.”
Isn’t that an answer that is difficult to take? God has just allowed Job’s life to be wrecked, God has allowed Job’s friends to mock him, and God has allowed Job’s wife to speak to him with zero respect. And through it all, Job has maintained his confidence in God’s goodness. Job holds his faith together and does not falter. Job continues to trust God.
And so, after God has finished chewing out Job, God says: “Don’t dare question me, for I am God – and you’re not!” It is a difficult message - one that is difficult for us today in a land where we feel everyone is equal - perhaps even our God?
Job got the message, the message that Job was the created person and God was the Creator. Job understood just how small he was compared to God.
Then Job replied to the Lord:
2 “I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
5 My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
6 Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.”
Job knew how small he was compared to God. And Job had the integrity to say so. But do we? Do we truly see how we compare to God? Or do we still want to demand answers from God for what God has done?
And so what should we take away from the story of Job’s integrity?
First of all, believe in the goodness and love of God with all your heart, and keep on believing through good times and bad times. Hold onto that belief – that faith – with everything you have no matter what your friends may say to you. Remember that your very existence is proof positive of God’s love for you and God’s goodness. Elihu was right - it is inconceivable that God would do wrong.
Second, hold onto your own goodness. If you have done evil in the past, pray to God to forgive your past evil and move forward, changing your ways and doing nothing but good as you move forward. You will mess up! But if you truly focus upon doing good, on being in God’s will, on becoming holy, and daily ask for God’s help in this, you will grow better and better until you, too will have the integrity of Job.
Jesus’ teaching on divorce in Mark 10 is related to this: According to Jesus, there are some very adverse consequences to divorce. If you have married, and decide you want to divorce your husband or wife, you need to consider that just because divorce is legal, just because Moses allowed a certificate of divorce to be given, just because you can legally walk away, you will need to recognize that more people than yourself are affected. Integrity demands that we work through the consequences, never taking divorce – or marriage – or even what we would call today “intimate relationships” lightly. Integrity demands that we hold onto our vows, even when things get difficult. Do we never get a divorce? No, there are a few sound reasons to get a divorce – abandonment, adultery on the part of the other, consistent abuse, when your life is in danger from your spouse, and a few other circumstances. But even then, the consequences to all involved – yourself, your spouse, your children – need to be considered. What are you promising when you first become close to another? What are you promising when you become engaged, when you say, “I do”? Your integrity is on the line, and your personal integrity is nothing to be considered lightly. God commended Job for his exceptional integrity. Integrity is important to God.
And finally, let us learn from Job to recognize that sometimes evil will be allowed to come your way. Bad things do happen to good people. But just as in Job’s case, not everything bad that happens to you is about you. Job’s troubles were largely because God wanted to teach Satan a lesson and God had tremendous confidence in Job. Sometimes, you see, the troubles in your life are merely a shadow of the great spiritual warfare that is constantly going on between the arrogance of Satan – and the love of God for all people. Trust in God’s goodness always, for hell happens when the evil of this world exceeds our belief that God can stop it!
You may want to read more about Job – I encourage you to do so. I try to reread the Book of Job once a year, and every time I do I get more out of it.
Our integrity is involved in almost everything in our life. One part of it is in our call by Christ to love others. Because God loved you so deeply that God forgave all of your sins and allows you into Heaven, if you have integrity, you recognize your debt to God and are grateful for God’s love. Christ has asked us to tell other people about God’s love, to bring people to baptism, and to teach them everything He commanded. Our integrity tells us that following this command is a reasonable response to our debt to God. And so we begin to turn our life’s focus from what we want – to what God wants.
As you go about your life this week, remember to pray for your twelve people on your list. And as you visit them or speak to them over the phone, remember to praise the God who is always good. Always praise God to your friends, your neighbors, and your families.
And so we come to the final questions to ponder for our self-examination.
Do you have the integrity of Job? Why not? If not, perhaps you might ask God for help in keeping your integrity from this day forward.
Do you trust in God completely and keep that trust through good days and bad days?
Do you trust in God’s goodness and love for all people? Or do you attribute evil to God and other people? Why? Is it perhaps because you often have evil thoughts or do and say evil things?
Jesus Christ so loved us and God that He walked to the Cross where He died. His integrity was perfect, as He sacrificed His body and His blood for us. And this past week, others, including some people in Oregon, also had the integrity to sacrifice their bodies and blood for the glory of God. They stood strong despite their fear, despite their innocence. There is urgency in what we do, my friends. We must work to share the Gospel widely, lest the evil overwhelm us in this country.
Today, we will have the opportunity to share the love of Christ among us. We will have the opportunity to remember what perfect integrity can do. We will have the opportunity to take the spiritual nourishment which is the body and blood of Jesus Christ within us, letting Him spread throughout our body and soul, changing us into a more perfect image of Him.
Take this time to pray for your twelve people you are leading to Christ. Take this time to pray for them to come to know Christ and His love for us. Take this time to pray for God to save their souls. Take this time to pray for the martyrs and to thank God that you have not had to show the same integrity, the integrity of Job, the integrity of Christ.
This is World Communion Sunday. Today, we share Holy Communion with Christians around the world – and remember the martyrs whose bodies were broken and blood was shed that our God might be glorified. In particular, we remember the martyrs of Oregon today who had the integrity to answer “yes” when a weapon was pointed at them and they were asked, “are you a Christian?” – and therefore, I am dressed in red and the Communion Table is decorated in red in their memory and in memory of all persecuted Christians around the world.
This is the fourth of 8 sermons on a series Entitled “God Solves our Problems”.
We’ve heard how the promise of eternal life changes our perspective on problems, allowing us to see problems with an eternal, godly perspective instead of an urgent, human perspective. And we saw how, with our permission, God puts us into a training program to help us learn to live godly, holy lives. Then we saw how God’s model of the servant leader drives us to help other people rather than look upon others as our servants. And last week, we saw how understanding our relationship to God keeps us from becoming arrogant, and how prayer keeps us humble.
And today we will talk about integrity.
What is integrity?
When I was single, I bought a kitten. After a year or so, that now-grown cat had several kittens. I kept one and gave the rest to the local pet store to sell. About a year later, Saundra and I married and we made the first of what now add up to thirteen moves. And, of course, we had problems finding apartments and houses over the years because of the cats.
At any time, we could have given the cats – and later, the dogs – over to the Humane Society. It would have saved us much money, it would have been easy, it would have made finding homes much simpler and cheaper – but it would have broken an implied contract that I made the day I bought that first cat, which was to take care of that cat until she died. That cat lived 16 years until I had to have her put to sleep. And the last few years, she was not a very pleasant beast. But integrity meant that I had to honor my contract with her.
A long, long time ago, before Moses led the people out of Israel, there lived a man named Job. Job was a man of perfect integrity, blameless in all of his dealings – a good man who could be completely trusted. He even conducted a burnt offering sacrifice after the birthday parties of each of his children in case they had sinned or cursed God in their hearts. Just in case. Job was fully committed to God – not 50% committed, not 90% committed, but Job had figured out how to trust God completely and yet he worked as a livestock owner. And, largely because of his integrity, everything had gone right in life for Job – he had great wealth, he had a large family, and many servants.
In the first chapter of Job, Satan comes to heaven and talks to God. God points out Job and praises him. But Satan says that “of course Job loves God, because God has blessed him.” And so, to teach Satan a lesson, God allows Satan to take away all of Job’s wealth.
In the course of an afternoon, Satan has raiders steal his livestock, kill his servants, and sends a tornado to destroy the house where his children are having a party, killing them all. Job is left with his wife, four frightened servants, and his health.
Job’s response was not very satisfying to Satan. Job said,
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart.
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
may the name of the Lord be praised.”
And Job did not say anything against God.
A while later, there is another gathering in Heaven, and Satan again shows up. God once again points out Job and how Job has kept his trust in God.
This time, Satan says, “Yeah, but if he were sick, he’d curse you.”
And God says, “fine do what you want – just don’t kill him”
And so Satan puts a disease on Job like smallpox or chickenpox. He’s completely covered with painful, itchy sores.
And so Job goes and sits in some ashes and scratches himself with a piece of broken pottery. (There is actually some medical benefit to this – older folks will remember that ashes are used to make strong lye-based soap, and the dried ashes would probably reduce infections in the sores.)
Job’s wife is very helpful. 9 His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!”
Job replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
And the Bible tells us that “In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.”
Job’s time of trouble did not end that day. In the Book of Job, Job’s four friends come over to visit and console him, but their conversation is the sort of conversation from friends that you’d rather not have. You see, his friends are all convinced that Job must have done something evil and wrong or he wouldn’t be in the shape he’s in. They talk about how God hates evil people and torments them. And for over thirty chapters, they take turns examining different possibilities of what Job might have done wrong – and Job patiently answers them by saying, in effect – “No, I didn’t do anything wrong. And God, who is always good, must have had a good reason for doing what God did.”
And we still do this today, don’t we? When someone has a heart attack, we immediately assume it is because they smoked, or ate too much pork, or too much butter. If someone has skin cancer, we assume it is because they went out in the sun too much when they were younger. If someone becomes addicted to pain pills, we assume it is because they have a moral weakness. And if someone is killed in a bar fight, we assume it is because they went to those bars too frequently.
We are particularly strong about assuming that when a person loses their job, it is because of some laziness or moral problem on their part.
Yet sometimes, you are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve seen an entire factory get shut down just because the company sold the division at to another, more efficient company who could make the products at their own factory more efficiently because they were ten times larger than the shut down factory. It was no fault of the people in the shut-down factory – they had succeeded for years despite their small production volume because their product designs were that good.
Our text – and the remainder of the Book of Job, though, tells us that sometimes God lets Satan attack us – and it has nothing to do with us. It appears that God let Satan attack Job to teach Satan a lesson. But what happened in the end?
Near the end of the book, Job says that he wishes God would speak to him and let him know what he has done wrong.
(“Oh, that I had someone to hear me!
I sign now my defense—let the Almighty answer me;
let my accuser put his indictment in writing.
36 Surely I would wear it on my shoulder,
I would put it on like a crown.
37 I would give him an account of my every step;
I would present it to him as to a ruler.)—
Job’s fourth friend, Elihu, cannot take this. Job’s three older friends have condemned Job – yet Job persists in claiming he has done nothing wrong. Yet Elihu is convinced that the situation demands that either God or Job must be in the wrong. So Elihu states that :
“So listen to me, you men of understanding.
Far be it from God to do evil,
from the Almighty to do wrong.
11 He repays everyone for what they have done;
he brings on them what their conduct deserves.
12 It is unthinkable that God would do wrong,
that the Almighty would pervert justice.
A storm builds up and approaches, and out of the storm, God speaks to Job:
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.
After pointing out the many things that God knows that no other person knows,
The Lord said to Job:
2 “Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?
Let him who accuses God answer him!”
God, when God answered Job, had a different answer for Job – and for us. God said, in effect: “I, who created this Universe, don’t need to answer to you, whom I created.”
Isn’t that an answer that is difficult to take? God has just allowed Job’s life to be wrecked, God has allowed Job’s friends to mock him, and God has allowed Job’s wife to speak to him with zero respect. And through it all, Job has maintained his confidence in God’s goodness. Job holds his faith together and does not falter. Job continues to trust God.
And so, after God has finished chewing out Job, God says: “Don’t dare question me, for I am God – and you’re not!” It is a difficult message - one that is difficult for us today in a land where we feel everyone is equal - perhaps even our God?
Job got the message, the message that Job was the created person and God was the Creator. Job understood just how small he was compared to God.
Then Job replied to the Lord:
2 “I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
5 My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
6 Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.”
Job knew how small he was compared to God. And Job had the integrity to say so. But do we? Do we truly see how we compare to God? Or do we still want to demand answers from God for what God has done?
And so what should we take away from the story of Job’s integrity?
First of all, believe in the goodness and love of God with all your heart, and keep on believing through good times and bad times. Hold onto that belief – that faith – with everything you have no matter what your friends may say to you. Remember that your very existence is proof positive of God’s love for you and God’s goodness. Elihu was right - it is inconceivable that God would do wrong.
Second, hold onto your own goodness. If you have done evil in the past, pray to God to forgive your past evil and move forward, changing your ways and doing nothing but good as you move forward. You will mess up! But if you truly focus upon doing good, on being in God’s will, on becoming holy, and daily ask for God’s help in this, you will grow better and better until you, too will have the integrity of Job.
Jesus’ teaching on divorce in Mark 10 is related to this: According to Jesus, there are some very adverse consequences to divorce. If you have married, and decide you want to divorce your husband or wife, you need to consider that just because divorce is legal, just because Moses allowed a certificate of divorce to be given, just because you can legally walk away, you will need to recognize that more people than yourself are affected. Integrity demands that we work through the consequences, never taking divorce – or marriage – or even what we would call today “intimate relationships” lightly. Integrity demands that we hold onto our vows, even when things get difficult. Do we never get a divorce? No, there are a few sound reasons to get a divorce – abandonment, adultery on the part of the other, consistent abuse, when your life is in danger from your spouse, and a few other circumstances. But even then, the consequences to all involved – yourself, your spouse, your children – need to be considered. What are you promising when you first become close to another? What are you promising when you become engaged, when you say, “I do”? Your integrity is on the line, and your personal integrity is nothing to be considered lightly. God commended Job for his exceptional integrity. Integrity is important to God.
And finally, let us learn from Job to recognize that sometimes evil will be allowed to come your way. Bad things do happen to good people. But just as in Job’s case, not everything bad that happens to you is about you. Job’s troubles were largely because God wanted to teach Satan a lesson and God had tremendous confidence in Job. Sometimes, you see, the troubles in your life are merely a shadow of the great spiritual warfare that is constantly going on between the arrogance of Satan – and the love of God for all people. Trust in God’s goodness always, for hell happens when the evil of this world exceeds our belief that God can stop it!
You may want to read more about Job – I encourage you to do so. I try to reread the Book of Job once a year, and every time I do I get more out of it.
Our integrity is involved in almost everything in our life. One part of it is in our call by Christ to love others. Because God loved you so deeply that God forgave all of your sins and allows you into Heaven, if you have integrity, you recognize your debt to God and are grateful for God’s love. Christ has asked us to tell other people about God’s love, to bring people to baptism, and to teach them everything He commanded. Our integrity tells us that following this command is a reasonable response to our debt to God. And so we begin to turn our life’s focus from what we want – to what God wants.
As you go about your life this week, remember to pray for your twelve people on your list. And as you visit them or speak to them over the phone, remember to praise the God who is always good. Always praise God to your friends, your neighbors, and your families.
And so we come to the final questions to ponder for our self-examination.
Do you have the integrity of Job? Why not? If not, perhaps you might ask God for help in keeping your integrity from this day forward.
Do you trust in God completely and keep that trust through good days and bad days?
Do you trust in God’s goodness and love for all people? Or do you attribute evil to God and other people? Why? Is it perhaps because you often have evil thoughts or do and say evil things?
Jesus Christ so loved us and God that He walked to the Cross where He died. His integrity was perfect, as He sacrificed His body and His blood for us. And this past week, others, including some people in Oregon, also had the integrity to sacrifice their bodies and blood for the glory of God. They stood strong despite their fear, despite their innocence. There is urgency in what we do, my friends. We must work to share the Gospel widely, lest the evil overwhelm us in this country.
Today, we will have the opportunity to share the love of Christ among us. We will have the opportunity to remember what perfect integrity can do. We will have the opportunity to take the spiritual nourishment which is the body and blood of Jesus Christ within us, letting Him spread throughout our body and soul, changing us into a more perfect image of Him.
Take this time to pray for your twelve people you are leading to Christ. Take this time to pray for them to come to know Christ and His love for us. Take this time to pray for God to save their souls. Take this time to pray for the martyrs and to thank God that you have not had to show the same integrity, the integrity of Job, the integrity of Christ.
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