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What’s In It For Me? (Job 38:4-18) |
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Written by Pastor Fausel
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Sunday, 10 August 2008 07:28 |
Grace, mercy and peace …
Why do we worship? We all know the Right answer to that question. Because we love God. But let’s dig a bit deeper. Or maybe look at our secondary motives …
I worship because I always have, it’s been a family tradition for generations. Because everyone else does, and I feel I don’t have much choice … call it peer pressure. Because God told us to do it, and I feel guilty if I don’t go to worship … or I feel that God won’t smile on me if I don’t go. Hit a chord?
Many times we may think that our fortunes in life are directly related to how we have pleased or displeased God. That problem is the crux of the story behind the Book of Job that we heard a portion of in our Old Testament reading for today. Why was Job doing such a good job of worshipping God with his heart and with his life? Because He loved God? “NO …Because it pays!” … the Devil argued.
“God, You have been so good to Job, what else is he going to do? Let me turn all his fortunes around … let me make it seem that loving You is worthless … that for all his devotion to You all he gets is more and more pain and anguish … and then … I’ll bet he’ll curse You to Your face!” and God said, “Go ahead and try it.”
And so begins 30 some chapters of pain and anguish, of Job’s property, family, honor, and even health being destroyed. And in all that, Job lamenting his losses to God while his friends tell him to repent of whatever sin he committed to bring about this disaster.
But, Job insists on His love for God, and his innocence of any great sin … And yet, still, he is mystified why God should be so seemingly cruel in his dealings with him. And then comes Chapter 38, and our reading for today … there God turns the tables and questions Job for the next 4 chapters.
“Where were you, Job?” God asks. There’s a certain level of sarcasm in those words implying … if you know so much about Me, Job … so much about the world in which you live, the world that I created, established, and now preserve … then perhaps you do have the right to question my actions, my motives … and my love.”
And so then, after 4 chapters of God questioning Job, Job recants his words and relents from his complaints.
But one thing, the most important thing, has become clear to all through this … That Job worships God “for Nothing.” Not to avoid punishment. Not to gain rewards or favors or possessions or prestige. But He loves God … for who God is … and for nothing else.
The Devil is proved wrong in his accusation of Job, that Job’s worship of God is a give and take thing, that Job earns blessings by worshipping God His worship is ultimately self-serving. No, Job’s love for God is authentic. And so, the Devil is vanquished, this time, and in the end, God restores all of Job’s fortunes.
Now … if we were to go back to Chapter 38 and read on through all those questions that God posed before Job, we’d see that God was using picture language to point out all the things that He made and all the things He’s in charge of for our benefit … although we often take many of them for granted or don’t even notice … or give Him any credit.
Now, when we read in that picture language about things like foundations of the earth, we may be tempted to just discount all of it saying, “Oh, isn’t that quaint, but that ancient cosmology just doesn’t cut it today!”
But it does. You see, through all that God was showing Job, and us, that if He can create a universe for our good and on our behalf, He can also take care of those things in our lives that sometimes block our view … and make it hard to see His love for us.
The truth is, God wrote two books for us. One Book we talk about all the time is the Book of Scripture, God’s specific love letter to mankind. There we learn of our relation to Him as our creator and sustainer in the physical realm … as well as the creator and sustainer of our faith, in the spiritual realm.
But God wrote a second book as well. We might best call it the Book of Nature or the Book of Creation. This was the book that God was showing Job. Why? Because Christ had not yet come in Job’s day. Job hadn’t had the chance to see God’s love for him in Jesus’ life and His sacrificial death on the cross.
You might think in this modern day, people would see in that Book, the Book of Scripture, God’s love so plainly visible that everyone would acknowledge it. Yet, often they don’t. Why? Well, today, more often than not, the whole concept of God is at question.
Science tells us that there are no foundations of the earth. Many in science would also lead us to believe that there is no creator, either. No one in charge. We, and our earth, are just some evolutionary product of a billion chances.
Let’s explore that a little with the help of a little object lesson. This is a model of our earth … its roughly 8000 mile diameter has been reduced down to just 12 inches.
Now, this globe is just a model of the seas and the land masses ,.. What if we wanted to model the clouds and the thunderstorms? Where might they be?... and how high above our globe should we put them?
Well, we know that our atmosphere is a little over 7 miles thick. Or, about 37,000 feet.
Now, many of you have been in an airplane at 33 to 35,000 feet. A little better than 6 miles up. Up there you’re above most of the clouds. But if you’ve take the plane up even further to about 38 to 42,000 feet you see something awesome … when you look up, the sky is jet black. Why? Because you are at the edge of the atmosphere, and at that altitude, above you there’s nothing to scatter the light from the sun, to give the sky that blue color.
So how high would that be on this globe? Well if 8000 miles, the diameter of the earth, is now 12 inches. Only 7 miles would be about a hundredth of an inch … the thickness of 2 index cards! There’s where all our weather … would be … where all our airplanes would fly.
Hard to believe? Here’s another one I like. We spend millions or billions every year to send the space shuttle into space. Where does the space shuttle go relative to our model of the earth? Out here, or out here? No,
The Space shuttle flies at about 300 miles above the earth. How high is that? Well, 300 miles is about the distance from Chicago to Detroit. Or if we wanted to do the math … 300 miles comes out to about ½ of an inch on this globe. About Here … this is how high into space we send the shuttle.
Here’s another one. We have our model here of the earth, but we need its companion in space … the moon. If the Earth is this big, how big would a comparable moon be? The size of a ping pong ball? golf Ball? a tennis ball? A base ball? A volley ball?
It would be a little smaller than what we call a 12-inch softball. So that’s its size … so now, how far away from the earth would it be? 3 feet? 6 feet, 12 feet? More?
Some help here. The distance from our earth to the moon is actually roughly 240,000 miles, on the average, or in our scale here, about 30 feet … let’s see what that looks like.
Now, why did we do this? To show you what a delicate balance we live in. If our moon were not … of just that size and just that distance … guess what? There would be no life at all on earth. Why?
Because the gravitational attraction of the moon on the earth’s seas causes our tides. Tides too big … and the land would be quickly eroded away … tides too small, and the oceans would not be able to cleanse themselves, and life in the world would die … because with dead oceans, the whole eco-structure could not sustain itself.
So that little moon out there is just the perfect size and at just the perfect distance …for life on earth as we know it. And oddly enough … by another odd coincidence that science doesn’t explain … our moon appears in the sky to be exactly the same size as our sun.
That allows us to experience perfect solar eclipses, the moon getting between us and our view of the sun. Each time it does that, it’s sort of a subtle reminder that we do not live in a chance universe … but in one that exhibits the mind and the love of God behind all and in all things.
So where were you … when God put that all together, so perfectly, that we could exist on this earth?
The truth is, even back then, even before all this came into being … you were already in His mind. God is saying through His Book of Nature, Creation, if you will, that I love you I will never leave you, never forsake you.
See, the point that God was making to Job … and to us … is, that all the wisdom and power and knowledge necessary to put all this together and keep it going is all now directed to your eternal good.
And so, you need not fear. That if God can put all this big stuff together this perfectly, He’s not only able, but He has also promised, to be involved with all the other things in your life.
Want Proof. Look no further than the Cross. It’s proof that God didn’t create this world like a watch, and then stand back and let it run on its own. He is a God who is intimately involved in the affairs of mankind… and more than that … the life of every human being.
And as we talked last week … He’s not only involved … HE wants to be in a loving, intimate relationship with you … with each one of us. And when it finally comes down to it … THAT’s why we worship Him.
In Him, Amen. |
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