The Honest Faith of Job (Sermon)
Honest
Faith
I remember back in my high school days
seeing people from my church youth group go off to college and come back after
one or two semesters having completely rejected their faith. Their parents were
beside themselves not knowing how to answer the questions their sons and
daughters were raising. Whether their kids were questioning the sexual mores of
their parents or the truth of the creation story. Their parents just could not
understand why this was happening.
Today we are going to use the book and
life of Job as a paradigm of an honest faith. A faith that indeed seemed
unshakeable. After all as we just read Job was a called a blameless and upright
man who fears God and turns away from evil not once, not twice, but three
times. And you may remember hearing that triple repetition of a saying means
that the saying is the highest level of intensity in Hebrew. (Take Holy, Holy,
Holy for example meaning God is the holiest of all beings.) How can we use the
lessons of Job’s faith to keep our own faith strong? What can we learn from Job
that might keep Our faith strong no matter how deeply it is tested.
Let me state one thing up front. The
only way to salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ. As Paul would say to
the church at Corinth, “I resolved to know nothing among you save Christ and
him crucified.” The first crises of faith is often that we don’t have our faith
centered in Christ. If we don’t really trust Christ for our salvation then our
faith will never get off the ground and we are defeated before we even begin.
It is surprising to me how many Christians I meet whose faith is centered in
the Bible, or a Saint or anything else but the person and work of Christ. Such
a faith centered in any of these (otherwise good) things will fail when tested.
Here is Job 13:1-28 “13 “Behold,
my eye has seen all this,
My ear has heard and
understood it.
2 What you know, I also know;
I am not inferior to
you.
3 But I would speak to the Almighty,
and I desire to argue my
case with God.
4 As for you, you whitewash with lies;
worthless physicians are
you all.
18 Behold, I have prepared my case;
I know that I shall be
in the right.
19 Who is there who will contend with me?
For then I would be
silent and die.
20 Only grant me two things,
then I will not hide
myself from your face:
21 withdraw your hand far from me,
and let not dread of you
terrify me.
22 Then call, and I will answer;
or let me speak, and you
reply to me.
23 How many are my iniquities and my sins?
Make me know my
transgression and my sin.
24 Why do you hide your face
and count me as your
enemy?
25 Will you frighten a driven leaf
and pursue dry chaff?
26 For you write bitter things against me
and make me inherit the
iniquities of my youth.
27 You put my feet in the stocks
and watch all my paths;
you set a limit for the
soles of my feet.
28 Man wastes away like a rotten thing,
like a garment that is
moth-eaten.
In this passage Job lets his so called
“friends” have it. They have been trying to tell him that the reason all of
this calamity has come upon him is that he has secretly sinned against God and
he must repent in order for his good fortune to be restored.
It only takes a moment to find the
error in that line of reasoning. Even if we didn’t know why Job was really
suffering from reading chapters one and two we can see where their error lies.
We have such people in the church today. We call their theology the prosperity
gospel. They go around telling folk that if they have enough faith and
eliminate all sin from their lives God will bless them.
That whole theology gets blown up when
you consider folk like Saint Theresa of Calcutta, the lives of all the martyrs
down through the ages. And the suffering of the first Apostles and the ultimate
sinless suffering of Jesus on the cross. Being right with God often causes
downward mobility not upward. Having material possessions is not automatically
a sign of God’s blessing and neither is poverty the sign of God’s displeasure
with someone.
Yet Job’s friends were certain that
sin had to be the reason Job was suffering. Beware of certainty masquerading as
faith. Simple logic tells us that if we are certain of something we are no
longer acting on faith but have confidence in our own flesh. So it would seem
that doubt has its place in the realm of faith. Faith is not credulity. It is
not believing in something you know is not true. Neither is faith a substitute
for knowledge. Christian faith operates in the realm of meaning, not in the
realm of fact. Faith recognizes fact but it is not out to obtain, contradict,
or prove facts. Saint Augustine knew this when he said, “I believe in order
that I may understand.”
Job understood this in chapter 19 he says” 23 “Oh
that my words were written!
Oh that they were
inscribed in a book!
24 Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in
the rock forever!
25 For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will
stand upon the earth.
26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall
see God,
27 whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall
behold, and not another.
Job has
faith that God will ultimately redeem him. Even though he hasn’t seen God. And
Christ won’t come on the scene for thousands of years.
The
second type of misplaced faith is what I call Christian magic. You see this
quite a bit on the internet especially on Facebook. Someone will forward you
some prayer and the note will say if you forward this to 10 of your friends God
will answer your prayer or make you rich or famous or whatever. This type of
faith says that our actions can force God to take some action. One thing we
should know as Presbyterians is that God is sovereign. God cannot be put into a
bottle like some genie and called forth to do our bidding. Job’s friends were
treating God that way. If Job would just repent of his sin the right way then
God would be obligated to restore Job.
Having
faith in God is not magic, it is a relationship; trusting God that he will hold
up his end of the bargain. Not because of anything we do, but because of who
God is.
Job
seemed to know that God was the kind of God that the Apostle John would write
about in his Gospel some two or three thousand years later saying:
“16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his
only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
17 For God did not
send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world
might be saved through him. 18 whoever
believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned
already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
Our temptation is to make an idol of
our faith. To believe in our beliefs rather than in our triune God. We as
humans like certainty. Most of us would prefer that we would not have to make
changes that are necessary as we grow older. But that doesn’t stop the changes
from coming. In the same way our faith may have to make some changes along
life’s way, but we can celebrate the changes and grow deeper in love with the
savior who calls us to make those changes so that we may fall more and more in
love with God and out of that love we would be propelled into action on behalf
of our God!
If true faith then is not based on
performance, nor is it magic, nor is it absolute certainty about what life will
have in store for us. Then what is an honest faith before God?
And
the Lord said to Job:
2 “Shall a faultfinder contend with the
Almighty?
He who argues with God,
let him answer it.”
3 Then Job answered the Lord and said:
4 “Behold, I am of small account; what
shall I answer you?
I lay my hand on my
mouth.
5 I have spoken once, and I will not
answer;
twice, but I will
proceed no further.”
6 Then the Lord answered Job out of the
whirlwind and said:
7 “Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and
you make it known to me.
8 Will you even put me in the wrong?
Will you condemn me that
you may be in the right?
9 Have you an arm like God,
and can you thunder with
a voice like his? . . .
Then Job answered the
Lord and said:
2 “I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of
yours can be thwarted.
3 ‘Who is this that hides counsel without
knowledge?’
Therefore I have uttered what I did not
understand,
things too wonderful for
me, which I did not know.
4 ‘Hear, and I will speak;
I will question you, and
you make it known to me.’
5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the
ear,
but now my eye sees you;
6 therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and
ashes.”
Here we see God rebuking Job for some
of the statements he made about God. And Job turning and repenting of some of
his beliefs about God. Because God was no longer an abstraction to Job. God was
a certain fact. To be in the presence of God is a fearsome and awesome sight,
no one walks away from it unchanged.
But most of us will never encounter
the living God this side of the grave, so how can we be sure that we have an
honest faith before God. First we must be willing to wrestle with God. In both
God’s word and in prayer we must be willing to be go to the mat to increase our
understanding of God and his love.
Second we must remember that it is ok
to scream at the sky. Beseeching God is never a bad thing. Be persistent in
your prayer and in your supplications. Remember there are no stupid prayer
requests. Bring everything you have including your doubts to the God who loves
you no matter what.
Third,
remember your relationship with God is a covenant love. One that binds both
parties. We tend to treat our relationship with God like a contract. Contracts
are meant to protect the parties from each other. Covenants bind the parties
together in mutual trust. We have a new covenant that Jesus instituted by his
death and resurrection. We have the pledge of that new covenant in the form of
the Holy Spirit which is a deposit from God of our future hope of resurrection.
Finally
remember that your faith should be an embodied faith. One can know that one’s
faith is real by the impact it makes on your life and on the life of others.
Jesus’ life was embodied faith incarnate. While we will never reach that state
of perfection we can imitate Christ and those we know who imitate Christ.
Let us pray: God help us
to have an honest faith. One that abides with you. Help us to have a faith that
is open and honest about our doubts and our fears, but never fails because it
is a faith in the person of Jesus. Lead us forward in an honest and forthright
relationship with you. Amen
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