Made to Know God (Job 13:2; 23:3-7; 38:4-7, 34-41)

Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Sunday, January 8, 2017

         I began 2017 by inviting the church to join me on a quest.  We seek to see God.  Just as an iceberg looks impressive, and yet we only see above the surface all the while knowing there is much more beneath, so then, God is that much more amazing.  Yet for all the wonders we know of God, there is much more we do not know. 

Together, we go into this year seeking to know more of God.  We are made to know God.  Each one of us was created by God intentionally.  God made us to be in relationship with him.  Our quest, this morning, brings us to a man who got to know more of God than he bargained for.  In fact, he wasn’t even looking as we are and yet he saw more of God than most ever do.

Turn with me to the book of Job.

Job 13:3

³ But I would speak to the Almighty,^[a]
    and I desire to argue my case with God.

Job 23:3-7New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

³ Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
    that I might come even to his dwelling!
⁴ I would lay my case before him,
    and fill my mouth with arguments.
⁵ I would learn what he would answer me,
    and understand what he would say to me.
⁶ Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power?
    No; but he would give heed to me.
⁷ There an upright person could reason with him,
    and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.

Job 38:4-7New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

⁴ “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
    Tell me, if you have understanding.
⁵ Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
    Or who stretched the line upon it?
⁶ On what were its bases sunk,
    or who laid its cornerstone
⁷ when the morning stars sang together
    and all the heavenly beings^[a] shouted for joy?

³⁴ “Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,
    so that a flood of waters may cover you?
³⁵ Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go
    and say to you, ‘Here we are’?
³⁶ Who has put wisdom in the inward parts,^[a]
    or given understanding to the mind?^[b]
37 Who has the wisdom to number the clouds?
    Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens,
³⁸ when the dust runs into a mass
    and the clods cling together?

³⁹ “Can you hunt the prey for the lion,
    or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,
⁴⁰ when they crouch in their dens,
    or lie in wait in their covert?
⁴¹ Who provides for the raven its prey,
    when its young ones cry to God,
    and wander about for lack of food?

There is a gorilla named Koko who learned signed language.[i]  She was able to communicate complicated concepts.  Think about how remarkable this is: an animal, not human, having a real conversation with humans. 

However, an earthquake hit scaring the poor primate half to death.  She had never been taught the word for earthquake.  All she could say, that is ‘sign’, is “Floor.  Big bite.”  I think Koko the gorilla is to be appreciated and even admired.  Using what vocabulary and concepts she did have, she tried to say what happened and how it made her feel; obviously terrified.  She couldn’t possibly know things about tectonic plates or seismographs.  She gets high marks for saying what she knew even though we know an earth quake is more than the floor taking a bite out of us, however apt the metaphor may be.

We are like Koko when we try to describe God.  We lack the words and the experience.  Still, we try.  With our insufficient vocabulary, we speak about God and attempt to know God because God created us for relationship with Him.  From my reading of scripture to my study of the history of Christian theology to my own logical conclusions to longings deep within my soul, I am thoroughly convinced that God wants relationship with us and wants us to reach to Him. 

Even pronouns are insufficient.  God is Him.  Some might be upset if I said God was “her,” but either pronoun fits and at the same time falls short.  For tradition’s sake, when pronouns are necessary, I will use the male, but rest assured.  I don’t think God is male.

As I have talked to others about this launch into 2017 – a quest to see more of God that we might be drawn closer to God and also grow in our ability to speak about God and for God in the world – I appreciated counsel I have received.  More than one person has reminded me – we only see of God what God chooses to reveal.  One book in the Bible is called “Revelation,” but the content of the entire Bible is what God chose to reveal.  Jesus is God revealed in human flesh.  In upcoming weeks, we’ll look at bits from Jesus’ life and see what we can learn about God.  We’ll probe, inch by inch, beneath the iceberg’s surface.  This morning we do the same following what is revealed in the book of Job.

In the beginning of the book, Job’s life is ideal.  His 10 children – 7 sons and 3 daughters are young adults who all get along with each other.  They dine in one another’s homes.  And Job oversees it all.  Chapter 1 verse 5 says Job makes a point of sacrificing on behalf of his children in case they have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.

I get a sense that from the outset, the book of Job presents God as a distant, punishing deity Job appeases both for himself (by not sinning) and for his children (by offering sacrifices on their behalf).  God holds Job in high esteem, but I don’t get the sense that Job has a prayer relationship with God.  God is impersonal. 

Then things fall apart.  Satan and God talk and God allows Satan to harm Job and wreck Job’s life in order to prove Job’s righteousness.  After Satan kills Job’s children and afflict Job’s health, chapters 3-37 are commentary.  Job talks about his plight with his three friends.  The friends think Job’s problems are God’s punishments for sins Job must have committed.  Job insists he is innocent and repeatedly demands an audience with God. 

We see in the opening verses a comfortable Job who is happy with life and happy with keeping God distant and appeased.  That placid Job is contrasted with the agitated Job who occupies the central portion of the book.  The agitated Job is much more motivated to have a personal encounter with God.  The agitated Job wants to have a face-to-face with God and to give God a piece of mind.

Various theological perspectives led me to think of Job in terms of contrast – placid, comfortable Job v. agitated, insistent Job.   First, the great reformer John Calvin from whom we get the term ‘Calvinism.’  Calvin believed that God directs everything in life – even our misery.  In his most famous work, ‘Calvin’s Institutes,’ he writes, “Whether poverty or exile or prison or insult or disease or bereavement, or anything like [these things] torture us, we must think that none of these things happen by the will and providence of God.”[ii]  This view accord with the theology of Job.  Job would need to sacrifice to a God like this because he would fear this God’s discipline upon his children.  Job’s friends appeal to this retributive theology when they urge Job to confess his sin and thereby alleviate, or at least understand his suffering. 

Against is a 20^th century theology that has appeared at various times in church history.  The 20^th century version, represented by Clark Pinnock is called open theism.[iii]  Open theists believe that God, as an act of supreme love, has created beings – humans – who are capable of choosing to love God.  God is affected, we might even say changed, by the way his created being act toward him.  Open theists believe that God knows all that can be known.  However, since the future hasn’t happened yet, it cannot yet be known.  Thus God doesn’t know the future.

Calvin severely limited human free will.  What happens is predetermined by a sovereign God.  Pinnock and other open theists limit God’s sovereignty.  I don’t believe either position can be defended with certainty.  I don’t know all that God knows.  I don’t know if it is possible that there are things God doesn’t know.  I find both positions uncomfortable.  I am uneasy about the thought that my very words and ideas were predetermined by a sovereign God who micromanages the universe.  And I am equally unsettled by the thought that there are limits on God’s power and knowledge. 

Job dealt with the tension between a distant punishing God and the frustrated desire to get up close and personal with that God.  Calvin presented an all-knowing, all-controlling God and open theists respond with a God who is in process and experiences new things.  A third contrast I found comes between a wholly other God v. a familiar and close God. 

In the book Reaching for the invisible God, Philip Yancey shares his experience in Russia shortly after communism fell in the early 90’s.  He went with a Russian Orthodox priest to visit prisoners.[iv]  One of the others in their party requested that the Orthodox priest have prayer with the inmates.  The priest brought out an icon.  He donned an elaborate prayer outfit involving gold crosses and other vestments.  He went through a complex ritual.  I have visited people in prison.  When it’s time for prayer, I and the inmate each bowed our heads and prayed.  That’s too simple and too cozy for the Orthodox priest Yancey described.  For that priest, God is ‘wholly other.’  Conversation with God is not like conversation with another person and it should not be approached that way.

Contrast this with the way many popular American praise songs approach God.  Yancey quotes from Chris Tomlin’s song “In the Secret.”  “I want to know you more/I want to touch you/I want to see your face.”  It is a very intimate reaching for God.  Yancey observes and I have observed this too, that some praise songs are indistinguishable from teen-aged romance songs.   Just insert God’s name for the name of the intended lover.[v]  One of my seminary friends often joked that these are “Jesus-is-my-boyfriend” songs.  Yancey goes on to remark, “Nowhere in the Bible do I find a promise that we will touch God or see his face.”[vi]

Which is true?  Is God so removed that like Job the best we can do is offer sacrifices?  Or find a priest who will don gold crosses and kiss them in elaborate rituals as he prays on our behalf because God is unapproachable?  Or is the relationship to which God invites us so intimate, we dare to liken it to romance? 

What has been your own experience?  How have you experienced God as all-knowing, all-powerful ‘wholly other’ who inspires and awe and fear? How have you experienced God as close, personal relation?  What would the word be?  Father?  Friend?  Disembodied Spirit that dwells within? 

“Oh that I might find him,” Job lamented in chapter 23.  “That I might even come to his dwelling.”  He knew the theology that ran through the Old Testament beginning with Moses.  Anyone who sees God will die.  Job knew this.  His wife, as a wrought with grief as him, told him to “curse God and die” (2:9).  She spoke out of her pain, not out of malice.  But Job wouldn’t take that easy route.  He would accept death, but he wanted a word with God first.  Though he lived in an era dominated by the Calvinist-type of Sovereignty of God theology which the Orthodox priest would also appreciate, Job broke the paradigm by demanding an appointment with God.  Only the select few – Abraham, Moses, the real heavyweights – came that close to God.  Job did not care.  He would not rest until he had his audience.

God gave Job what he asked for but it didn’t happen as Job thought it might.  Remember his self-assurance?  He said, “An upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.”

When God came to Job, it says God spoke out of a whirlwind.  Have you ever been in a tornado?  I haven’t and don’t want to be.  And yet, I propose that we do what Job tried to do – see God and speak directly to God.  I don’t know if we are like the Orthodox priest or like one of today’s praise song writers.  God came to Job in the whirlwind, but never ever answered a single one of Job’s questions.  Remember, as hard as we look, we only get to see what God chooses to reveal. 

“Where were you, when I laid the foundation of the earth?”  God asks Job, and us.  Yes, God is wholly other.  No, we weren’t there when God, with tender care, formed every creature, made the earth in a way that it truly is good.  But in the end, Job was found to be righteous.  It wasn’t because of his sacrifices.  He was, I believe, because he sought God. 

If out of our brokenness, out of our confusion, out of our pain, out of our curiosity we seek God, here is what we will find.  We will find that God will not give us everything we ask for.  God will not fix everything the way we think it ought to be fixed.  God will give us what God gave Job; not in the way it was given to Job.  Each person’s encounter with God is unique.  But God will do for each person who seeks Him, what He did for Job.  God will give us God’s very self. 

“Would God contend with me in the greatness of his power?  No.  But God would listen to me.”

When we explore beneath the surface and begin to see a bit more of God we discover that God created us to be in relationship with Him.  And when we call out Him, God hears us.

AMEN

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[i] Student’s Life Application Bible (1997), Tyndale House Publishers, p.984.

[ii] John Calvin, Institutes, Book 3, Chapter VIII, section II.

[iii] C. Pinnock (2003), chapter 6 in the book Alister E. McGrath & Evangelical Theology, edited by Sung Wook Chung, Paternoster Press (UK), p.147-164.

[iv] P. Yancey (2000), Reaching for the Invisible God, Zondervan books (Grand Rapids), p.26.

[v] Ibid, p.31.

[vi] Ibid, p.32.

Declared Innocent (Hebrews 10:1-10)

You’re in a tough graduate school class – the subject matter is really advanced and the professor has high expectations. There are numerous quizzes but the major portion of the final grade is determined by the three exams. You must make at least a ‘C’ in this class to earn your degree. It is a required course. Going along, you do alright on the quizzes, making 9 out of 10 most of the time. But you’re nervous on the day of the first exam and with good reason. It is comprehensive. Everything that was covered in the course to that point is on this exam. The professor is tough, remember?

You fail it badly! Now what? You have to have this class. Your score was so low, mathematically it will just about take a miracle for you to pass. Even if you ace the next couple of exams – and oh by the way the material is getting more and more difficult –you’re still not sure it will pull your grade up to a passing grade. And you cannot see how you will possibly ace the exams. Your performance to this point has made that prospect pretty doubtful. The failing grade sticks to you. It clings and won’t release you. The ‘F’ in the class, or ‘D’ if you’re lucky, affects your overall GPA. And you will have to retake the class and pass it to graduate. Even though you admitted your failure, admission is no help. You have to make up for it.

This exact scenario happened to one of my best friends in seminary. We were required to pass one semester of Biblical Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament. The story is exactly as I laid it out. My friend made something like a 37 out of 100 on the first Hebrew exam. He and I had an emotional talk about him dropping out of seminary and giving up the dream of being a pastor. He knew he couldn’t pull that grade up. The professor knew it too, and he called my friend into his office.

My buddy was shaking in his shoes as he approached that meeting. He was a wreck. Surprisingly, this hard core academic professor was kind. He was pastoral. He said to my friend, “You’re averaging between 85 and 90 on your quizzes and you never miss class. If we get past the anxiety, I think you can get at least a ‘C’ on the next two exams. If you promise never to try to go into ancient languages as a specialty, we will not count the first exam against your final grade.”

My friend had no hope. But then, because of the professor’s grace, he passed. The failing on the first exam was washed away and not counted against him.

From Hebrews 10:10, “We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.”

Sanctified means made holy as God is holy. Sin is what makes it impossible for a human being to be holy. Made in God’s image, declared very good at the creation, we have marred what God has made by worshiping that which is not God, by going our own way instead of God’s way, and by doing harm to one another and to ourselves in large and small ways. We all sin. Most of us make mistakes and in some form or fashion disobey God every day. We cannot ever, ever be holy. We have no place in God’s new heaven and new earth. We will be banished from that place, sent to outer darkness, because our sin sticks to us. But, like my seminary friend who had the professor, a notoriously strict prof, mercifully forgive an awful exam, through what Jesus did on the cross, ours are forgiven and forgotten. As verse 2 implies, when we are in Christ, we no longer have any consciousness of sin.

I realize that saved persons still sin. We all do. Even though Hebrews says we are made perfect, we know that beleivers aren’t perfect. Churchgoers are not better than other people. But we are free from sin’s clutches and consequences. With the Spirit in us, we have help, so we can commit fewer sins and do more good things, acts that show we are God’s service as he works at establishing His kingdom. Because of His grace and mercy, we get to be part of what God is doing.

At the risk of declaring the obvious, one of the reasons we are acceptable to God is Jesus takes care of our sins by taking the punishment on himself. Now in the post-crucifixion/post-resurrection world, the sins of all who trust in Jesus are erased. Yes, we sin, but those sins don’t count against us in God’s eyes, and it is because of Jesus.

Looking at Hebrews 10, especially the first five verses, and several other passages, the great reformer John Calvin in his monumental work Institutesdescribes an important distinction he sees in the passage. “In the Jewish ceremonies,” referred to in verses 1-6, “there was confession of sin rather than atonement for them.” Yes, the sins of individuals and the community were acknowledged. But as he reads Hebrews 10, Calvin says that in confession which happened in the old sacrificial system, “there was no release” from sin.

The sin was named and passed on to an animal that was then butchered. But that act did nothing for future sins and did nothing to change the status of the person. He or she was still a sinner, completely unable to be seen as holy in God’s presence.

Imagine the scene. You and I and all of us here are seated along with all others we have ever known. The room is large, but one by one we are called before God to be judged for all we have done in our lives. How many times have we spoken rudely? Or shouted “God,”only not in prayer but as an expression of anger or surprise? That would qualify as taking the Lord’s name in vain. How many times have we despised another human being or looked down on someone? Do these seem like nickel and dime sins? Maybe we could throw in pre-marital sex or cheating on an exam or gossip or gluttony. We might be tempted to be appalled that God would condemn someone for such fluff. But is it fluff, as it piles up over the course of a lifetime, year after year? Greed, selfishness, drunkenness, lust, sloth – without going into $20 and $50 sins like theft, rape, and murder, we can see we are indeed sinful and over the years we build up a sin record.

So, then our name is called and it is that sin record we carry in before God. It is on that record we stand when it is time for final judgment – a judgment that is repeatedly forecast in the Old Testament and the New. What do we say? O Lord, I went on 10 mission trips! But God, I gave not 10% to the church and other ministries, but 12% and some years even 15%. Our good deeds don’t outweigh our sins and even if someone did more good than bad, the bad is still there. The mistakes and times of disobedience and moments when we decided our way was better than God’s way or we just weren’t into the ‘god-thing’ right then – it all continues to soil the good creation God has made. In the renewed earth and new heaven, there will be no soiling, no spoiling, no polluting, no profaning – no sin. With our sin caked on us, we must go away. We cannot enter the kingdom. God won’t have us. We are banished to an outer, lonely, dark, miserable place.

A religion dependent on our ritual observance does nothing for us on that day. We’re only as cleaned as our most recent act of worship and even the admission of guilt does nothing to remove the guilt. Calvin juxtaposes the confession of sin that accompanied the worship rituals we read about in the Old Testament with the atonement Jesus achieves in his death on the cross. As Calvin holds side by side a sacrificial worship system and the sacrifice of Jesus, it becomes clear that Jesus’ death was a permanent solution whereas the sacrifice in the tabernacle or temple is only good until the person sins again.

Calvin says the people of faith from the Old Testament era were “partakers of grace” just as we are, but not because of their diligent worship practices but because of God’s love. God did not suddenly become loving and merciful. He has always been so. But the coming of Christ changed everything for everyone. Calvin’s point is not that Christians have a superior spirituality over Old Testament believers. His point is the sacrifice of one man one time – Jesus erases all sins for all time for those whom Calvin refers to as the elect. I believe – and I am sure I diverge from Calvin on this – any and all who turn to Jesus in faith are among the elect. God sent Jesus to die for the sins of all people. His grace is for all and all are intended to be elected by God. There is no limited atonement, at least not a pre-planned one. There is no irresistable grace. We choose to live in the election granted us when we bow before Jesus; we opt to increase our sin when we reject Jesus and thus reject God’s grace. God created us and sent Jesus to redeem us so we could be free from the sins we can’t shake even when we try. God chose us out of deep, deep love for us. When we choose to receive what God gives and live in faith, his Spirit fills us, we are born again, and we are free. We are free from guilt and free to live for God.

That means we are free to bask in God’s joy when we go on mission trips; we aren’t going to earn salvation. We’re going because Jesus earned our salvation and we know how good it is to be saved.

We are free to give our money and some among us experience God’s joy in a uniquely wonderful way when they give; all of us are freed and invited into the joy of sharing. We don’t give 10 or 12 or 20% of our incomes to earn salvation. We give because we have been saved and we want our financial gifts to empower the church and empower international ministries to carry the gospel of salvation to the world.

By God’s will, we have been sanctified – made right, made holy. Hebrews 10 takes us from the frustration of having to repeat worship rituals over and over to the declaration that we are made to be holy. Just as Jesus said before his death on the cross so we now repeat, “it is finished.”

The last day then is different than we previously imagined. Go there with me to the final scene, the very end. We’ve died, and in death, we’ve waited. In sort of sleep, or in a place called Paradise, we have waited for God’s final consummation, and it arrives – the final judgment when God sets all things right in the world. Along with all others that we know, we wait in a large room. Individual names are called, and one-by-one, we enter. Carrying the burden of a lifetime of sins, we know this isn’t going to go well.

Entering in fear, we are surprised to see Jesus himself, and even more surprised to see his smile as he welcomes us. Suddenly we remember a theological term – justification. In means the court rules in your favor, sees you to be in the right. Here, at your final judgment and mine, Jesus looks at us and rules in our favor. He sees us to be in the right. But what about God’s demand for holiness? What about our sins, our mistakes, and our failures? Jesus has it covered for us – all of us. Because he took on himself the penalty for all our sins and we put our trust in Him, we are sanctified and he declares us innocent.

It means we are free to enter His kingdom, inhabiting our resurrected bodies as we live in glorious relationship with God.

If we have confessed our sins and received Jesus into our hearts and acknowledged him as Lord, we know that’s how it will go. Obviously I don’t the specifics down, no one does. But at the judgment, because of what Jesus did for us, the verdict will go in our favor.

That future hope and future freedom frees us to live as Kingdom people, resurrection people, today. We are free from sin’s hold and death’s shadow. In the here and now, sin still hurts, but it doesn’t stick to us at all. We’re forgiven and made new. We are free to go on mission trips, give our money to God’s work, to invest our lives in loving people and sharing the gospel. We’re free to be completely sold-out for Jesus in every phase of life.

His verdict? Innocent of sin, holy before Lord. Knowing that, we are free to follow the Lord and do His work in the world right now.

AMEN