Psalm 18:25-30

With the merciful you show yourself merciful;

with the blameless man you show yourself blameless;

with the purified you show yourself pure;

and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.

For you save a humble people,

but the haughty eyes you bring down.

For it is you who light my lamp,

the Lord my God lightens my darkness.

For by you I can run against a troop,

and by my God I can leap over a wall.

This God -- his way is perfect,

the word of the Lord proves true;

he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.

(Psalm 18:25-30, ESV)

I love how it talks about God showing his qualities of mercy, blamelessness and purity to the merciful blameless and pure.  He just shows what he is.  

But to the crooked he makes himself seem tortuous.  Because he is not tortuous.  Yet, to those who spit in his face, he seems as though he is.

Also:  "...and by my God I can leap over a wall." 

How fantastic is that?

This God.  My God.

Selections from Zephaniah

I read Zephaniah today.  I enjoyed it more than I remembered.

I really liked this part, because I love the seashore:

The seacoast shall become the possession 

of the remnant of the house of Judah

on which they shall graze,

and in the houses of Ashkelon

they shall lie down at evening.

For the Lord their God will be mindful of them

and restore their fortunes.

Zephaniah 2:7 (ESV)

This was a part I had never noticed before... God promises to undo the effects of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) on The Day of The Lord:

For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples

to a pure speech,

that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord

and serve Him with one accord.

Zephaniah 3:9 (ESV)

And last, I will leave you with the most famous verse from Zephaniah, and one of my personal favorites:

The Lord your God is in your midst,

a mighty one who will save;

He will rejoice over you with gladness;

He will quiet you you by His love;

He will exult over you with loud singing.

Zephaniah 3:17 (ESV)

Micah 7:18-19

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over transgression
for the remnant of His inheritance?

He does not retain His anger forever,
because He delights in steadfast love.

He will again have compassion on us;
He will tread our iniquities underfoot.

You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea.

Micah 7:18-19 (ESV)

*********

God loves His children.  Those He calls, He justifies.  Those He justifies, He will glorify.  (see Romans 8:29-30)

How do you know if you are called, if you are part of the beloved remnant of His inheritance?

If your heart has a desire for God, you are called.  

Nobody who wants to come to Him will ever be turned away.

Jesus said:

"All that the Father gives me will come to me, 

and whoever comes to me I will never cast out." 

 ~John 6:37 (ESV)

If you want Him, He is waiting for you.  

Come to Him.  

He will forgive you and cast your sins into the depths of the sea.

The Suffering of Christ

I have been writing about what I believe.

But not very often.  (Although I think I have not yet fallen to less than once a month...)

I got into a "mini-series" about suffering, and found that I was over my head.

On this blog, my only aim is to share a little thought about a Bible verse (if one pops into my head), after I do my daily Bible reading.  Somehow it turned into something bigger than I had intended.  Bigger than I could adequately handle.

Instead of trying to grapple with huge thoughts, I want to get back to dealing with daily Bible verses, even if I don't quite do it on a daily basis.

But I could not end this series without writing about the most important part of all:  Jesus.

I've already written about the suffering of Joseph and the suffering of Job.  But the most important suffering that ever took place was the suffering of Jesus.

This suffering series began as a reaction against the notion that, "A good God would never allow all the awful suffering we see in the world."  This is what people say: atheists, agnostics, people.  They look at the suffering in the world, and they decide that they have invincible proof: because there is suffering, therefore there is no God, or at any rate, not a good God whom anyone would care to follow.

And they completely miss the most important aspect in all of Christianity:  Jesus is the central focus of our faith.

Jesus is the Messiah promised throughout the entire history of the Old Testament.  Jesus is the culmination of all God's promises kept (2 Corinthians 1:20).  Jesus is God's perfect provision to bridge the gap between a Holy God and hopeless, helpless, sinful humans.  Jesus is our Savior, our Redeemer, our Hope, our Friend and our Example.

And Jesus suffered.

Hebrew 12:2 says,  "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." (NIV 1984)

God looked at this world, this sinful, fallen world.  He had created it perfect and beautiful, and because He graciously allowed us the freedom to make our own choices, we fundamentally ruined it.  Of course there are remnants of His beauty all over.  It's not that easy to eradicate perfect beauty entirely.  So somehow, in our sinful foolishness, we get the idea that we can take credit for the beauty and the goodness that remain.  And in our perverted minds, we wrongly pin on God the blame for the effects of sin.  This is exactly backwards.  But be that as it is, God looked down and had mercy on us, and He sent His only begotten Son to die in our place, taking the punishment we deserve, so that we could have a restored relationship with our Creator.

"For our sake he [God the Father] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him [Jesus] we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21. ESV) ~~this must be one of the most wonderful and mysterious verses in all of the Bible.

"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed." (1 Peter 2:24)

"Surely he took up our infirmities
    and carried our sorrows,
"yet we considered him stricken by God,
    smitten by him, and afflicted.
"But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
"the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
    and by his wounds we are healed. "  (Isaiah 53:4-5) 

In bearing our sins, Jesus suffered.

Jesus suffered.

"But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.  For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering." (Hebrews 2:9-10, ESV)

Jesus suffered

• for our sake
• in obedience to His Father
• for the joy set before Him.

When Jesus was praying in the garden on the night He was crucified, He prayed, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will," (Mark 14:36).  He knew how terrible His suffering would be.  He wished there were a different way to accomplish the Father's will.  But there was not a different way.  The cross was the Father's will, and Jesus surrendered Himself in perfect obedience.

We think about the lashings, the crown of thorns, the spitting and slapping and cursing.  We think of the long walk up the hill of Golgotha, the heavy, rough-hewn cross pressing into His already excoriated shoulders.  We think of the nails pounded into His hands and feet, the suffocating pressure of being raised to hang in agony under the hot sun.  

All these things produced intense suffering.  But even so, I believe that an even greater suffering fell upon Jesus when He was crushed under all the sins of the world.  He, Jesus, the perfect, unblemished Lamb of God, the One who never sinned, even under the utmost duress from Satan in the wilderness (Matthew 4, Luke 4).  He was God Himself, in human flesh, and God cannot look at sin (Habakkuk 1:13).  Yet, Jesus bore in His body the brunt of all the sins of mankind, while the Father had to turn His face away, and the Son cried out, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46).  This is suffering indeed.

Jesus suffered and died because He had a greater hope.  He knew that this life is just a shadow of the life to come.  He knew that God would make everything perfect and beautiful and eternally right forevermore in the age to come.  Jesus did not suffer because He was a masochist.  Heavens no!!  He suffered because He knew that He was investing in something that would totally, completely, astoundingly make up for it in the future.  He did it to accomplish the perfect, holy, magnificent will of God for the Redemption of His people.

And here is a sobering thought.  Jesus is our example.  We are to become like Him, just like Him.  Remember that "cup" about which He said, "...if it be possible, let this cup pass from me..." ?  Well, earlier, Jesus told his disciples, "You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with..." (Mark 10:39 NIV 1984)  

We are called to pour ourselves out, just as Jesus did.

Paul wrote, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death..." (Philippians 3:10 NIV 1984)

We are called to "complete the sufferings of Christ," (Colossians 1:24), which means that although Christ's work on the cross was perfect and complete, we are to expend our lives in this temporal world reaching out to share the good news with all who will listen and respond.  And we are to do this without holding back for our own comfort or survivial.

Just as Jesus suffered,

we are to suffer

• for the sake of those yet to come into the Kingdom
• in obedience to our Father
• for the joy set before us.

As Jim Eliot wisely said, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

Yes, ours is a religion of suffering.  But it is suffering for a purpose: for truth, for beauty, for peace, for joy, for eternal life.  After our suffering, the full glory of God will be revealed.  Then, like a mother with her perfect newborn baby, only 100,000,000,000 times more wonderfully, we will forget the pain and bask in the splendor of the King forever.

Jesus said, "I have told you these things, 

so that in me you may have peace. 

In this world you will have trouble. 

But take heart! I have overcome the world." 

                          (John 16:33, NIV 1984)

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_

Goodness, writing can be hard.  

This is so long, probably nobody will read the whole thing, 

and yet I feel that I left out many important points.

Nevertheless, I am leaving this "What I believe" series for now.  

And I will try to write more often and more concisely.
Would you believe it?  This was my 100th post.

The Suffering of Job (part 2)

Quite a long time ago, I began writing about Job.

I've been trying to explain how God uses suffering for good in our lives.

The curious thing about Job:  It is the oldest book of the Bible, the first book of the Bible ever written.  And it deals with suffering.

God's first written revelation of Himself was through a story whose theme is suffering.

Why would God do this?

I think God wanted us to know, from the beginning, that He is not predictable.

That's right:  God is not predictable.

We cannot control Him.  All we can do is respond to Him.

Job was a really, really good guy.  The Bible says,

"In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil."  (Job 1:1 NIV)  

The Bible also tells us, 

"His sons used to hold feasts in their homes on their birthdays, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, 'Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.' This was Job’s regular custom." (Job 1:4-5 NIV)

(Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why the book is dated so early... it had to be before the revelation of the Law of Moses when God explained how the Levitical priesthood was to function, since Job, who--presumably--was not a Levite, was offering sacrifices with impunity.)

Anyway, Job was doing everything right.  The Bible even calls him "blameless and upright."  What would you expect to happen to a man like this?

You would expect, I think, that such a man would receive blessings and honor from God.  You would expect a good God, a loving God, a fair God, to look at Job and say, "Hey, Job!  You are doing a great job there!  Thanks for working so hard to live a clean life, a testimony to my righteousness.  Just because you're doing so well, I'm going to shower you with riches and fame, and make your name great... my way of saying thank you!"

You might think that's what God would do.  You might even think that's what God should do.  But what does God do?

One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”
Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”
Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” 
“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”  The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”
Then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. (Job 1:6-12 NIV)

Notice:

1. Satan did not notice Job and ask for permission to torment him.  God pointed Job out to Satan.
2. God pointed Job out precisely because he was "blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." 
3. Satan told God, in essence,  "The only reason Job is so good is because you have blessed him so much.  You made him rich, but if you take away his riches, he will curse you to your face."

If you read the account, you will see that God first gave Satan permission to take away Job's possessions, and when Job did not waver in his faith, God then gave Satan permission to strike Job's health and well-being.  (Job 1-2)

When Job was stricken in every way and miserable beyond belief, three of his friends came to visit him and cheer him up (yes, I am being sarcastic).  They looked at Job's plight, and their interpretation of it was this:  "Wow, man.  You must have really messed up.  God would only do this to a really, really wicked person.  What secret sin have you been hiding, anyway?"

Here begins, in the book of Job, a circular argument in which Job's friends repeatedly tell Job that God punishes the wicked and blesses the righteous, and that if Job will only repent and turn from his sin, God will surely start to bless him again.

This is the paradigm of their religion, and it continues to be the paradigm of most religion to this very day:  Good things happen to good people.  Bad things happen to bad people.  If bad things happen to you, say you're sorry and let the good times roll again.

With a religious paradigm like this, I say it's no wonder there are atheists.  Because clearly we can look around and see bad things happening to good people and good things happening to bad people every day.

But from the very beginning of recorded scripture, God was letting us know that, no, this is not the way it is.

We cannot control God through our actions.  We can never behave well enough to deserve and earn His blessings.  Job's friends told Job that if he would just give up his sin and cooperate with God, God would give him mercy instead of punishment.  However, in Exodus 33:19 (and quoted again in Romans 9:15), God does not say, "I will have mercy on the good people," or "I will have mercy on the sorry people."  No.  God says, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy."

Right from the very beginning, God started teaching us that we cannot do this in our own power.  It is not about what we do.  It is about what He does.

Right from the very beginning, God used the suffering of Job to illustrate the strength of real, God-bestowed faith.  In his own strength, Job surely would have cursed God and died.  But God had placed His mark on Job.  Job was one of His, one of the elect.  God knew that Job would persevere through the suffering because God knew that the faith Job held was not faith from within Job.  It was faith granted by God.  That is why God could point Job out to Satan and have complete confidence that Job's faith would endure.

"Have you considered my servant Job... ?"

Right from the beginning, God used suffering to enable Job to develop the conception of an afterlife.  It is quite fascinating to read through the book and see how tiny seeds of the idea of an afterlife grow and blossom in Job's consciousness until he can state with triumph, "I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes —I, and not another.  How my heart yearns within me!" (Job 19:25-27 NIV)

This development of thought is not unlike the logic Abraham used when he took Isaac up the mountain to sacrifice him.  Abraham knew that Isaac was the child of the promise.  God had made this perfectly clear to him.  God clearly and definitely promised, covenanted with Abraham to make a great nation from the line of Isaac.  So when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, He was not asking Abraham to part with his son.  He was asking him, (a) "Did I promise to make a great nation from Isaac?"  and (b) "Do you believe I can and will keep my promise?"  Abraham did.  Hebrews 11:19 tells us that Abraham figured God would raise Isaac from the dead if that was what He needed to do to keep His promise, and Abraham had unwavering faith that God would keep His promise.

In a somewhat similar reasoning style, Job figured that (a) God is fair and (b) life is not fair, therefore, (c) there must be another life, in which justice is restored.

God used suffering to point Job towards everlasting life.

Ultimately, God used the suffering of Job to get a hold of Job's face and turn it upwards to where Job could experience God in a new and amazing way: God his Creator, Redeemer, Restorer and Savior.   (Read Job 38-42, one of my ultimate favorite Bible passages.)  

At the same time, God decisively trampled the pride of Satan by showing that faith from God can withstand any storm the evil one can muster... and prevail in victory!  (This I get from John Piper, but I'm not sure where he wrote it so I can't provide a direct quote, although I'd like to give him credit.)

God uses suffering.

final post in series

The Suffering of Job (part 1)

There exist many atheists and agnostics who say, "There can't possibly be a god.  How could a loving god allow all the suffering that exists in the world?"

Well, the Bible certainly never says that there will be no earthly suffering.

You may say that the Bible is balderdash, that it could not possibly be true, that you have no time for it.  You can say all that, and I can't stop you.  All I'm saying is:  for those of us who worship the Judeo-Christian God, who get our information about Him from the Bible, the Bible says that there will be suffering, and not the opposite.  So the existence of suffering cannot be used as proof against our religion, or the existence of our God.

In fact, there is a whole book of the Bible that is entirely about suffering: the book of Job (pronounced Jobe, with a long o).

Here is a very interesting detail:  The book of Job is generally considered to be the oldest book in the Bible.  Scholars date it prior to the Torah which is the collection of the five books of the Law (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) which Moses wrote after God spoke to him on Mt. Sinai.

The book of Genesis is Moses' account of what God told him about the origin of all things, and the beginning of the history of humanity.  It covers Creation, the span of time and lineage of humanity up until Noah, Noah's Flood, more lineage, the call of Abram, and then the stories of Abraham's descendants: Isaac, Jacob, and the sons of Jacob, particularly the story of Joseph.  All of this business was finished approximately 400 years before Moses came on the scene to write it down.

I tell you this because the book of Job is usually dated at the time of Abraham.  As I have heard one Bible teacher say, "Job and Abraham played together when they were little boys."  Not necessarily, but that is the time frame where most people place the book of Job.  My study Bibles, in the introductions they provide for the book of Job, date it at around 2000 B.C., although one says 2000-1800 B.C. and the other allows for the possibility of it being written as late as 500 B.C.  Traditional, conservative scholars quite consistently place the date of the book of Job 350-550 years earlier than the Torah, which was written around 1445 B.C.

I tell you this, because it is exceedingly remarkable to me that the earliest recorded part of the Word of God, which probably existed hundreds of years prior to any other revelation, deals with the matter of suffering.

Do you know what that says?  It says that the first thing God ever revealed about Himself or His character was directly related to suffering, and not only to the existence of suffering.  At the very beginning of Job, the writer tells us all about what a great guy Job was, how righteous, how diligent, how responsible, how wealthy...

And then... then God says to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job?"

Satan did not ask God if he could torment Job.  Satan simply presented himself before God along with the angels one day, and God looked at him and said, "Have you considered my servant Job?"  Testing Job was all God's idea.

Not only does this seem very strange, and very contrary to our mental image of a good and loving God, but this is the first revelation of God that was ever put down on paper.

What was God doing?  Why did He reveal Himself this way??

We will get into that next time.  In the meantime, read Job, chapters 1-2, and while you do, think about how this was probably God's first big move to show Himself to mankind.   Why???

for part 2, click here

Tripod

I will get back to my series about what I believe.  Soon.  I promise.

Overwhelmedness shut me down temporarily.

Today I'm going to write a short, simple post to try to get back into the swing.  This sometimes works.

Our pastor has been teaching us that there is a tripod of necessities for the growing Christian.  He says these three necessetiies are:

(A)  The Savior
(B)  The Scriptures
(C)  The Saints

In other words, we need God, specifically His revelation of Himself through Jesus Christ.  We need to know Him and love Him, to pray to Him and to seek Him.

We need God's word, the Bible.  We need to read it, learn it and practice it.

We need the body of Christ, the church, the fellowship of believers. We need to meet together, to love each other and be loved.  We need to encourage each other and hold each other accountable.

Our pastor said, though, the other day, "I don't think these things are exactly equal... not exactly a tripod that holds equal weight in each direction."

I would agree.  I've been thinking about it, and I think these spiritual necessities correspond to some physical necessities that we have.  Our spiritual needs for the Savior, the scriptures and the saints correspond to our physical needs for air, water and food.

Our need for the Savior, for Jesus, is like the need for air.  If you can't breathe, you die quite quickly.  Without Jesus, we have no hope of salvation.  No hope.  Jesus is everything.

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."  (John 14:6, NIV)

Our need for the scriptures is like our need for water.  We can go a little while without them, but not long.  They are crucial for our spiritual survival, just as water is crucial for physical survival.

I will never forget your precepts,
    for by them you have preserved my life.
(Psalm 119:93, NIV) 

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. (1 Peter 1:23, NIV)

...and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.  All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:15-17, NIV)

And lastly, our need for the saints, for Christian fellowship, is like our need for food.  If we have air to breathe and water to drink, we can survive for quite a few days, even weeks.  So it is with Christian fellowship.  In a way, we can get along without it, as long as we have Jesus in our hearts and the Bible in our hands.  But we will not be healthy.  We will not thrive.  We will not be strong.  We will not grow.

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.  (1 Thessalonians 5:11, NIV)

Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you. (2 Corinthians 13:11, NIV)

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another —and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:24-25, NIV) 

If you are a Christian, you know Jesus; you are spiritually alive.  You are (metaphorically) breathing.  

Don't neglect the scriptures (metaphorically drinking).


And don't neglect the fellowship of the saints.  Like a (metaphorically) good Jewish mama, I say, "Eat!"