And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?"
Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face."
Thus opens the book of Job, a fairly controversial book of the Bible in the eyes of many believers. Job was an extraordinarily faithful and righteous man who was also extraordinarily blessed and wealthy. He lived as a virtual poster-boy for the "prosperity gospel" (in a nutshell: have faith in God and He will bless you materially) until one day when we are told the conversation above took place between Satan and God. Immediately following it, Job loses everything. Literally. His family, his possessions, his wealth, his status, are all wiped out at a stroke in a single day. God never offers an explanation of any kind to Job. Job has done nothing wrong: he argues for the rest of the book that he has done nothing wrong and God's introduction of him in chapter one shows that he's right in that assertion. Still, God has allowed him to lose everything he has, and later allows him to be struck by a crippling and humiliating disease. Satan predicts that Job will curse God. A lot of people in less dire situations do. But Job says instead, "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD" (Job 1:21).
What the testing of Job reveals about him is that his devotion is really to God Himself, and not to the things God has blessed him with. When those things are lost, he remains faithful. God can give to him, and take from him, and he will still bless His name!
But what about us? This Sunday, our chaplain pointed out that many approach the promises of Matthew 7:7-11 as a magic formula to get whatever they want out of God. "We treat Him like a vending machine," he said. "We only go to Him when we want something out of Him, and if we can't get what we want when we want it, we think He's broken and worthless." But God, he pointed out, is a Person who wants a relationship with us. "How would your spouse feel if you only ever talked to them when you wanted something? How would it effect your relationship if you got mad at them every time they didn't give you whatever you wanted immediately?" Indeed, the Bible ties so many of its promises of answered prayers to exhortations that we obey God's commands (and also states warnings that our prayers will not be answered if we disobey). Christ, and later John, restate these commandments in their most basic and vital form several times for our convenience: love God, love each other. But when we only talk to God when we want Him to give us stuff, what do we really love: God, or the stuff? When we get angry with God when He doesn't give us what we want now, or at all, then who do we really love: God, or the things we asked Him to give us? Is our love of God an end in itself, or a sham designed to wrap Him around our little fingers and trick Him into giving us all the cool material blessings we really crave? If our love of God is thus, it is not really love of Him at all, but love of ourselves: we only love Him to the extent that it gets us whatever we want at the time.
Already, a lot of us fail the test of Job. I know there are plenty of times when I do. There are plenty of times when I, by my peeved attitude toward God when He unsettles my life, reveal that a part of me loves an ordered (by me), controlled (also by me), and peaceful (by my standards) life more than it loves a God who is so wonderfully disruptive, bringing in His own order, putting things in His own control, and inviting me into His peace and life. Even if we can accept loss or unanswered prayers from God, we so often demand an explanation from Him. Job did this later as well, but when God answered him out of the whirlwind, he was forcefully reminded of Who it was he was talking to. God is not a peer we can criticize. Our understanding is not on a level with His, so that we could dissect His reasoning or even (many times) comprehend it. When we think we will make Him explain Himself to us, we are like the pot demanding of the potter "Why did you make me like this?" (Romans 9:20) What does a pot know anyway? How would one explain the purpose of firing to clay?
But jumping to Romans 9 brings us to other questions and other tests. Material blessings, both tangible (a car) and intangible (a pleasant drive) are gifts of God that surely should not eclipse our affections for the Giver. But what about spiritual blessings? Romans 9 isn't talking about questioning God in material matters. It's about questioning God in matters of predestination. Speaking of the lost spiritual state of his fellow Jews, Paul writes, "So then it does not depend on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy....So then, He has mercy on whomever He wills and He hardens whomever He wills." (Romans 9:16 & 18). It is in this context that finding fault with God is said to be like a lump of clay finding fault with a potter, for making it a chamber pot instead of a vase. A poster on Facebook recently expressed a similar attitude, stating explicitly, not that he would not love God if God had not chosen to save him (which his unregenerate heart would not be capable of doing), but that God would be unworthy of his love and worship if he hadn't chosen to save him. When other Christians did not express similar sentiments on the thread, he was incredulous. When it boiled down to it, it seemed that he loved the spiritual blessings God had given him more than God.
Do we do the same? Perhaps thinking of ourselves not being saved is a bit extreme, but there are more subtle forms. If we don't get a spiritual high off of reading, prayer, or church attendance, do we get upset? Do we do these things because we love God in doing so, or do we love them more than the one they worship? If Jesus walked into our worship and praise service and disrupted it by healing a crippled kid in the third row, causing the band to stop and stare and the music to fall silent, what would our reaction be? Would we cheer because it was Jesus--the one we're actually supposedly there for--, or ask Him to leave because He's interrupting the spiritual experience we actually came to achieve? And what about the extremes of salvation itself? If we agree that God chooses those on whom He has grace and does not choose everyone (as the Bible seems to indicate), then what if He had not chosen us? Would we say He'd be at fault, if that were the case? Would we find Him an unworthy God, objectively? If we do, then we believe in our own inherent worth, and any worthiness we find in God is directly related to how much He recognizes and rewards our inherent virtue with spiritual and material blessings. This also is love of self, worship of self, rather than love of God.
But Job, despite his questioning all through the middle of the book, demonstrated a different love, one that proved Satan wrong. He blessed God even when God took away everything he had--proving that he loved God more than he loved the things God had given him. Even when God allowed him to be struck with horrible disease, he did not curse Him. His estimation of God's worth did not rest on how well God recognized his own inherent worth, but instead he recognized God Himself as being inherently worthy of His love, trust, and praise--even if God killed him.
In the end, the test of Job is less about enduring suffering than it is about loving God over the blessings He gives. We don't have to lose everything to undergo this test. We go through it every time we pray (do we just want blessings, or the God who blesses?), we undergo it with every disappointment (do we get angry at God for not doing what we want, or do we trust Him to have a plan?), we face it at the end of every worship service (are we miffed that we didn't get the good feelings we came after, or content that we got to express our love for our God?), and we see it every time we think on the fate of ourselves vs unbelievers (do we pat ourselves on the back for our own virtue, or humbly say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I"?). What do we really love?
What the testing of Job reveals about him is that his devotion is really to God Himself, and not to the things God has blessed him with. When those things are lost, he remains faithful. God can give to him, and take from him, and he will still bless His name!
But what about us? This Sunday, our chaplain pointed out that many approach the promises of Matthew 7:7-11 as a magic formula to get whatever they want out of God. "We treat Him like a vending machine," he said. "We only go to Him when we want something out of Him, and if we can't get what we want when we want it, we think He's broken and worthless." But God, he pointed out, is a Person who wants a relationship with us. "How would your spouse feel if you only ever talked to them when you wanted something? How would it effect your relationship if you got mad at them every time they didn't give you whatever you wanted immediately?" Indeed, the Bible ties so many of its promises of answered prayers to exhortations that we obey God's commands (and also states warnings that our prayers will not be answered if we disobey). Christ, and later John, restate these commandments in their most basic and vital form several times for our convenience: love God, love each other. But when we only talk to God when we want Him to give us stuff, what do we really love: God, or the stuff? When we get angry with God when He doesn't give us what we want now, or at all, then who do we really love: God, or the things we asked Him to give us? Is our love of God an end in itself, or a sham designed to wrap Him around our little fingers and trick Him into giving us all the cool material blessings we really crave? If our love of God is thus, it is not really love of Him at all, but love of ourselves: we only love Him to the extent that it gets us whatever we want at the time.
Already, a lot of us fail the test of Job. I know there are plenty of times when I do. There are plenty of times when I, by my peeved attitude toward God when He unsettles my life, reveal that a part of me loves an ordered (by me), controlled (also by me), and peaceful (by my standards) life more than it loves a God who is so wonderfully disruptive, bringing in His own order, putting things in His own control, and inviting me into His peace and life. Even if we can accept loss or unanswered prayers from God, we so often demand an explanation from Him. Job did this later as well, but when God answered him out of the whirlwind, he was forcefully reminded of Who it was he was talking to. God is not a peer we can criticize. Our understanding is not on a level with His, so that we could dissect His reasoning or even (many times) comprehend it. When we think we will make Him explain Himself to us, we are like the pot demanding of the potter "Why did you make me like this?" (Romans 9:20) What does a pot know anyway? How would one explain the purpose of firing to clay?
But jumping to Romans 9 brings us to other questions and other tests. Material blessings, both tangible (a car) and intangible (a pleasant drive) are gifts of God that surely should not eclipse our affections for the Giver. But what about spiritual blessings? Romans 9 isn't talking about questioning God in material matters. It's about questioning God in matters of predestination. Speaking of the lost spiritual state of his fellow Jews, Paul writes, "So then it does not depend on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy....So then, He has mercy on whomever He wills and He hardens whomever He wills." (Romans 9:16 & 18). It is in this context that finding fault with God is said to be like a lump of clay finding fault with a potter, for making it a chamber pot instead of a vase. A poster on Facebook recently expressed a similar attitude, stating explicitly, not that he would not love God if God had not chosen to save him (which his unregenerate heart would not be capable of doing), but that God would be unworthy of his love and worship if he hadn't chosen to save him. When other Christians did not express similar sentiments on the thread, he was incredulous. When it boiled down to it, it seemed that he loved the spiritual blessings God had given him more than God.
Do we do the same? Perhaps thinking of ourselves not being saved is a bit extreme, but there are more subtle forms. If we don't get a spiritual high off of reading, prayer, or church attendance, do we get upset? Do we do these things because we love God in doing so, or do we love them more than the one they worship? If Jesus walked into our worship and praise service and disrupted it by healing a crippled kid in the third row, causing the band to stop and stare and the music to fall silent, what would our reaction be? Would we cheer because it was Jesus--the one we're actually supposedly there for--, or ask Him to leave because He's interrupting the spiritual experience we actually came to achieve? And what about the extremes of salvation itself? If we agree that God chooses those on whom He has grace and does not choose everyone (as the Bible seems to indicate), then what if He had not chosen us? Would we say He'd be at fault, if that were the case? Would we find Him an unworthy God, objectively? If we do, then we believe in our own inherent worth, and any worthiness we find in God is directly related to how much He recognizes and rewards our inherent virtue with spiritual and material blessings. This also is love of self, worship of self, rather than love of God.
But Job, despite his questioning all through the middle of the book, demonstrated a different love, one that proved Satan wrong. He blessed God even when God took away everything he had--proving that he loved God more than he loved the things God had given him. Even when God allowed him to be struck with horrible disease, he did not curse Him. His estimation of God's worth did not rest on how well God recognized his own inherent worth, but instead he recognized God Himself as being inherently worthy of His love, trust, and praise--even if God killed him.
In the end, the test of Job is less about enduring suffering than it is about loving God over the blessings He gives. We don't have to lose everything to undergo this test. We go through it every time we pray (do we just want blessings, or the God who blesses?), we undergo it with every disappointment (do we get angry at God for not doing what we want, or do we trust Him to have a plan?), we face it at the end of every worship service (are we miffed that we didn't get the good feelings we came after, or content that we got to express our love for our God?), and we see it every time we think on the fate of ourselves vs unbelievers (do we pat ourselves on the back for our own virtue, or humbly say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I"?). What do we really love?
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