An Intro to Job (Job 1:1-5)

I’ve been fascinated with the book of Job for a while now. My first interest in the book was mostly apologetically. I wanted to prove how a loving God could allow suffering. I wanted there to be a nice, clean, irrefutable answer. I wanted Job to be the reason why bad things happen to good people. I wanted that because I had suffered. Not exactly like Job, but enough that I warred against the idea of a loving God allowing His children to suffer for no darn good reason. As I look back on my wrestling with the theological dilemma of suffering, I can clearly see where I was trying to justify my self-righteousness more than I was trying to understand God’s purpose for our suffering.

As we study the Scriptures, we are constantly confronted with two undeniable truths: there is no one righteous and God does all He pleases. I resisted those truths in my life for so long. I wanted to be righteous without God’s help. I wanted my own goodness. I felt I could earn God’s love because I wasn’t a bad kid. At the time of my deepest suffering I was confident in my own righteousness. And because I was so righteous, God naturally loved me, answered my prayers almost exactly how I wanted Him to, and would protect me from suffering. God owed me for being so good. This unbiblical, Judeo-Christian Karma could not hold up against the reality of what the Lord had prepared for me in His grace.

Too many of us in our considerations of God want to pit God’s goodness and grace against His allowing suffering. We want the argument to be if God is good He will not allow suffering, especially for those He loves. Instead the reality tends to be God will allow suffering especially because He loves us. This truth the book of Job blasts in our faces. God will use suffering to move us closer to Him and further from our self-righteousness. If we are willing to let go of our own personal, unbiblical views of God and trust who He has revealed Himself to be, the book of Job can be balm for our souls instead of simply being a commiseration of our suffering. Job is not about the human bond of suffering where we can take comfort in knowing someone better than we are suffered too. Job is healing for us in knowing that our suffering is working for our good as God’s grace moves us from sandy self-reliance to solid faith in the sufficiency of God alone (see Matthew 7:24-27).

2 Timothy 3:16-17 – Part 2; May 4, 2014

2 Timothy 3:16-17 – Part 1; April 27, 2014

Abiding in Mission; January 19, 2014 at Grandview Fellowship

Abiding in Community; January 12, 2014 at Grandview Fellowship

Abiding in Prayer; January 5, 2014 at Grandview Fellowship

Abiding in the Word; December 29, 2013 at Grandview Fellowship

Abiding in Immanuel; December 22, 2013 at Grandview Fellowship

James 1:2-15 – Wisdom

James 1:2-15 – Wisdom

 

One of my favorite parts of James is his straightforward approach to the Christian life.  Have trials, count it joy.  Don’t have something you need, ask for it.  Don’t think God will or can actually give you what you need, probably not the best approach.  Have faith but don’t have a life to back it up, might not have as much faith as you thought.

At the heart of this opening passage to Jewish Christians, James writes some potentially unconnected statements about wisdom, double-mindedness, and some economic discrepancies in his target audience.  But I think verses 5-11 are tightly woven together in the theme of wisdom.  James comes right out of his introduction of “count it all joy” with a statement of perfection gained by steadfastness (or endurance, patience, etc.).  Obviously, if we were all perfect we wouldn’t need his letter much less the instructions he gives in the rest of the book.  James knows us better than that.  He knows his readers better than that.  He knows that we’re not perfect and the thing that often pushes us off course is a lack of wisdom.

Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  Wisdom begins when the Lord is feared.  A lot of people try and soften this idea by dumbing down “fear” like it’s just a respect or an honoring, like there’s really nothing to be afraid of.  The biggest problem with that is the BIBLE and what God actually says about Himself.  I love how CS Lewis puts it in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as Mr. Beaver responds to the children’s question about the safeness of Aslan, “Safe? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe.  But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”  There’s nothing safe about God.  He is infinitely holy.  Infinitely different.  Wisdom can only be found in first understanding how small we are compared to the God of the universe.  But smallness isn’t enough.  Jesus warned us that we should fear the Father who is able to throw us into Hell (Matthew 10:28).  So fear is not just knowing that God is bigger, it’s knowing two vital things simultaneously: God is holy, perfect, righteous, and just and we are not.

This understanding, according to James, keeps us from falling into the trap of pride.  The poor man can rejoice in his humility when his hope is in Christ and not comfort in this life.  The rich can rejoice in the loss of their possessions for the same reason.  There is no economic status that accompanies or proves the favor of God.  Christ paid the price for all His children despite their tax bracket.

Wisdom teaches us this.  Wisdom levels the playing field.  There are no first stringers in the kingdom of God.  You either play or you’re not on the team.  This truth that James communicates must have been profound in his day and it has the same effect today.  In our day though, it may not be economics that drives our favoritism.  It could be race, social status, denomination, generation, job description, or favorite football team.  The heart of James message is one of humility and fear of the Lord.  This is the heart of wisdom that is blown around in the wind.  The heart of wisdom is firmly established on the Rock of Christ, the Cornerstone.  If we try building on any other foundation, crumble under the weight of the cross.  As we strive to count our trials as joy, may we remember to look past what we like or dislike about a person on the outside and allow the Lord to give grace through us to others.  Grace and peace,

 

JOT

A Few More Thoughts on James… CBC; September 25, 2013

A Few More Thoughts on James…

 

One of the greatest and most profound aspects of the letter that James writes to the early church is the fact that James was most likely Jesus half-brother.  There are two other less likely writers in the New Testament named James, but most of the evidence is going to point to James the Just, the leader of the church in Jerusalem and son of Mary and Joseph.  This may seem like a small thing to some, but being one of five kids makes the fact that James was a Christian extraordinary.  Even if James isn’t the writer of the epistle, it is an historically documented fact that James was a follower of Christ after His ascension and James led the church in Jerusalem before it was burned in 70 AD.

I have a brother.  He’s a great guy, one of my best friends.  I believe that he’d do just about anything I asked him to do within a certain type of reason, but he’d never worship me.  He probably thinks I’m a pretty good guy, too.  He might even like me more than a lot of other people, but he doesn’t write songs about me.  He doesn’t go around telling people that they should worship me, he’s just my brother.  And there aren’t many people in history who have convinced their family to worship them.

A lot of people believe that Christianity is a religion that requires blind faith.  They discredit our beliefs because they say it’s not logical or doesn’t have enough evidence.  The Bible tells us otherwise.  We have a guy in James the Just who believed that Jesus was God even though he had grown up with Him.  If there was anyone who could have dispelled the rumor of Christ’s deity and perfection it would have been James.  James and his family had at one point questioned Jesus sanity (Mark 3:21) and the Scriptures clearly point out that Jesus’ brothers did not follow Him in His earthly ministry (John 7:5).  James is a crucial witness in defense of our faith and his letter stands as God’s inspired Word to us about how to live in accordance to faith in Jesus.  How awesome is God for His grace to James in saving him, calling him, and speaking through him.

There is so much to be learned from the book of James, but one of the greatest lessons comes in what’s not explicitly said.  This lesson teaches us about the realness of our faith.  It is not a blind faith.  We trust God’s use of eyewitnesses like James to communicate to us who Jesus is, and hope that by His Spirit we may come to life as James did.  Grace and peace,

 

JOT