Does what goes around come around? Do people get what they deserve? Does life balance itself out? Do good actions lead to good outcomes and evil actions to bad outcomes? Is the world just? Or is life a lottery of action and consequence where you never know what you’re going to get?
Karma has a lot to answer for. But it isn’t just a Buddhist idea. It’s saturated our culture. It’s seeped into our churches and warped our understanding of following Jesus and loving and enjoying God. It’s become the disciples default way of thinking. If you live a good life, if you follow Jesus, if you obey his will then you’ll be blessed. If you don’t, if you deny God or disobey him then you’ll get punished.
And when we read the Bible we see God promise Israel blessings for obedience – long life in the land if they obey their parents, opening the storehouses of heaven and pouring out blessings if they tithe. Or we read a Proverb that states “Blessings crown the head of the righteous. But violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.” Or “Start children off in the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” And we think there you go, it’s biblical, God says you get what you deserve. We even go further and reverse engineer those promises, so if children depart from the faith there must be something deficient in the parenting, or if someone suffers they must have sinned.
Our problem is we take an Old Covenant nation state promise and apply it to a new covenant counter cultural people. We take one proverb out of context, naming and claiming it, bathing our theology in it, when other proverbs challenge it by stating the opposite because life isn’t always fair and it was never all God had to say on that issue.
But look honestly at the way you think. Do you expect a thinly Christ covered Karma – like wood covered with gold leaf – to govern the world? Do you assume others get what they deserve, and you’ve got what you deserve? That when they suffer they must have done something to deserve it? And when you’re blessed you’ve done something to deserve that too?
What does that way of thinking say about God? Does it stand up when you look at the world – when you really look? I wonder sometimes if we adopt that operating system because it lets us imagine we can control suffering, it means we don’t need to live by faith. How blessed we are, or how much we suffer, depends on what we do – like our thermostat, we can dial it up or down by our actions. We fear what it would mean to just trust in the goodness of God and his grace, and so we live as if we get what we deserve rather than as if we deserve nothing and its all gift.
But look carefully at the world. Spend time with sufferers, like Job, and that doesn’t work. Spending time thinking carefully about God and the cross tells us otherwise. Think like that and you’ll shipwreck your faith either on the rocks of self-righteous pride or the sandbars of suffering which lead to bitterness and anger. Think like that and you’ll never have any comfort or compassion to offer to your suffering brothers and sisters just a pride hardened cold pull your socks up.
As we look at Job 3-37 we’ll see the flawed friendship and compassionless cold comfort that way of thinking provides to a man fighting for his faith.
Do you love God or just the stuff you get by loving God? If everything else was stripped away and you just had God would that be enough for you? They’re some of the uncomfortable questions Job asks of us? When we sing God’s praise, when we serve him in practical ways, is it because we love him or because we think it earns his blessing and that’s what we really want?
We meet Job in(1). He lives in Uz. He’s “blameless, and upright;” for “he feared God and shunned evil.” Job is a prototype disciple. His faith is real and practical in caring for others – 29v11-17 tells us that he fed the homeless and cared for the orphans among other things. Job is a faithful friend of God who delights in God.
He has 7 sons and 3 daughters and is hugely wealthy. In fact he’s the Jeff Bezo’s of his day but with added godliness. The greatest man in the East.
And we get a glimpse into his love for God and what he treasures most in(4-5). If you went away and left teenaged children at home to have a party what would you worry about most? The state of the carpets, the furniture, the neighbours, a visit from the police or other emergency services? What’s Job most worried about? “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts?” and so post-party he’d make burnt offerings for each of them. Job’s greatest treasure was his friendship with God and he feared his children would lose that.
There’s a challenge for us; what do we pray most for our children? Is it for their health, career, education, comfort, happiness? Or like Job are we most committed to their knowing God and following him? Is that our greatest treasure?
But suddenly the picture shifts in(6-12). It’s like a bomb has gone off in our theology. We see God’s throne room and God’s supernatural servants gather to report to him and do his will. They’re all created beings; that’s what sons of God means. And Satan comes with them.
The world of Job viewed chaos and evil as the result of cosmic conflict between warring gods. You just had to make sure you backed the right one. But here we see reality – there’s only one God and he’s sovereign and every other supernatural being can only do his will and only act as he permits.
(8)God praises Job to Satan, Job is a trophy of faithfulness and discipleship. It’s important as readers we get this and remember for what follows; how does God feel about Job? He’s delighted in him, pleased with him, he calls him blameless and upright. So what follows can’t be because God is angry with him.
But Satan isn’t impressed, ever the cynic, he claims it’s not real love for God. It’s love for blessings masquerading as love for God. He loves God the vending machine of blessings not God himself. So take away the blessings and he’ll curse you(11). Isn’t that a challenge? If everything I had was taken away, if all my comforts were gone, would I still praise God or would I curse him?
But the bigger shock comes in(12). We expect God to say ‘No’ but he permits Satan to strike at Job, though he sets limits on what he can do. It’s a shock to us because it confronts us with our creatureliness compared to our creator. The UN Human Rights charter doesn’t come into play when it comes to our relationship with our God. We have no rights, He can do as he pleases. This isn’t a one off teaching, it’s not an biblical anomaly.
In Jeremiah 18 God sends the prophet to the potters house to see the potter at work reshaping a marred pot and he says “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does? …Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel.” God is sovereign over everything, the creature has no right to question the creator or what he does.
That’s humbling. Don’t rebel against it be humbled by it because there’s also immense comfort here for us. God is sovereign over evil, so nothing will happen that he doesn’t permit. Satan doesn’t have free reign. God is so sovereign that though he permits evil his will is the good and glory that will result from that though we may never see what that is.
Those twin truths, that God is sovereign over all, including our lives, without challenge, and so Satan does not have free reign but is only permitted to do what God will work to his purposes ought to cause us to do four things.
Firstly it ought to humble us before God, we’re creatures, he’s the creator. We have no rights. No entitlement. We’re utterly dependent on his goodness.
Secondly, it ought to cause us to want to know what God is like. If I have no rights and am in God’s hands then I want to know that I can trust God. We will only be able to rest and not be anxious about my lack of control when we know God is so good that we rest in that goodness rather than trying to control.
Thirdly it must lead us to rejoice in our salvation because it’s all of grace, all because of God’s love in sending his Son not because we deserve it or we were owed it. Praise God for his grace, revel in his love and totally undeserved mercy.
And finally, it must lead us to pray. In the Lord’s prayer Jesus teaches us a line that I think Job shines a new light on “deliver us from the evil one.” That’s not a weak anaemic wish, it’s not like the wish you make when you blow your birthday candles out. That’s a prayer to God who in unparalleled power rules over evil, so what a privilege as God’s children adopted by grace to be given that dynamite line to pray.
And so Job, in one day, (13-19)loses his livestock and servants, and all 10 of his children one after another in a staggering series of blows.
Yet Job’s reaction is humbling; (20-21)he grieves as he tears his robe and shaves his head and worships:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I shall depart.
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
may the name of the LORD be praised.”
Job loses everything and he grieves but his greatest treasure is God. He doesn’t sin by charging God with wrongdoing.
And so we get round 2 (2v3)as the heavenly court gathers, God boasts again to Satan of Job; “He still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.” You were wrong Satan, Job worships me for me, he treasures his friendship with me, not the blessings I give him.
So Satan tries again, he knows that physical pain is debilitating, and that the physical, emotional, and spiritual are all linked together, that we’re embodied souls, and so he says strike his flesh and bones and he’ll curse you. Again we see the limits of his power and the sovereignty of God as he permits it but limits how far Satan can go(6).
(7-8)Job is afflicted with terrible sores. Don’t think heat rash or chicken pox. He’s not just a bit poorly, he’s so ill that he describes himself a number of times in the following chapters as being close to death. And to make matters worse, it’s a sickness that makes him unclean, that separates from God.
All that he has left is his wife who tempts him, acting as Satan’s mouthpiece “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die?” Who is right; Satan or God? Does Job love God or what God gives him? When everything is gone, everything stripped away, when he’s in emotional and physical agony will he still cling to God? Is he still the same God fearing disciple?
“You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?” In all this Job did not sin in what he said.” As Job’s friends arrive they’re horrified by what they see, what their friend has gone through, and they sit with him in his grief. These 7 days of grieving silence in compassionate partnership with Job are the best thing they do.
Job has lost everything but his relationship with God. He still clings to God. What will trouble him going forward isn’t what he’s lost, but what he has lost might be saying about his friendship with God, the way it causes him to wonder if the God he knew is changed. But chapter 1-2 show us a blameless disciples; one who loves God, clings him, worships him and does not curse him, who has not sinned and is not being punished for his sin but who suffers.
So what? What’s the relevance of Job 1-2. Let me give you 5 take-aways:
Suffering isn’t as simple as we think and we need to grasp the bibles complexity and God’s sovereignty and not reduce him and his ways down to manageable trite answers. To speak less, pray more, and humbly seek him as we face suffering and look to help and comfort those walking through suffering wisely and well.
We must grapple with the sheer staggering scope of God’s sovereignty and by contrast our limited creaturely-ness. God is totally sovereign over everything including evil, and he will work out his good purposes for his glory and that gives us confidence and hope though it may not give us answers.
Everything God gives us is a blessing by grace, never deserved. But it’s not to become ultimate, it mustn’t be the reason we worship him or when we lose it we’ll turn on him.
We live everyday life under God’s protecting sovereign care largely unaware of what he protects us from. We need to pray “deliver us from evil.” and humbly trust that he does so.
Get to know God. Our greatest need when suffering hits is to know God and his character and his goodness and grace so that we cling to what we know of him even in the face of almost overwhelming suffering. Get to know God in all his splendour and glory and goodness, enjoy him and who he has made you, before suffering hits so you can comfort others and share his grace and compassion. And we get to know him best as we gaze on the supreme expression of his goodness and grace, the cross, where we’re declared to be blameless, and Jesus is punished for our sin so that we have the certainty of adoption as God’s children and that nothing separates us from his love or his certain promises.
Too often our theology of suffering is deficient. We think there are only one or two types of suffering, when in reality the Bible’s teaching on suffering is far more complex. The Bible gives us at least 5 categories of suffering, though there is overlap within and across categories, and none of those categories has hard edges:
Suffering for sin. Ever since the fall there’ve been consequences for sin. Both generally because the world is broken and we all suffer along with it, but also specifically where our sinful actions cause us to reap painful consequences. A godly response to this type of suffering is to examine ourselves, confess our sin and it’s consequences and repent and sin no more, and God joyfully meets us with welcoming grace.
Suffering for spiritual growth. Another way God uses suffering is to grow us in Christlikeness. Romans 5v3-5 tells us God can use our suffering to produce perseverance, character and hope. The Joseph account shows us an arrogant young teen transformed into a godly grace giving God fearer by his suffering. A godly response to that sort of suffering is to keep on seeking God and fix our eyes on Jesus.
Suffering for Christ’s sake. The world hates Jesus followers, we see that throughout the Bible, and Jesus warns us we’ll suffer if we follow him. Persecution is the norm for the disciple of Jesus. A godly response is to keep preaching and living the gospel, doing good and not shrink back even when we are slandered or attacked for doing good (See 1 Peter).
Suffering as sojourn. Another type is the suffering of the pilgrim, the wilderness wanderings of Israel are a picture of this. God takes his people on a journey that’s long and hard so they’re weaned off the love of stuff or trust in self and learn to totally rely on God like we never have before. A godly response in this type of suffering is to keep pursuing God, keep appreciating his provision and see those things we need to be weaned off so we learn to trust him more.
Suffering the loss of God’s presence. Not all suffering is physical. Some is spiritual. The lament Psalms show us suffering that comes when God feels distant, when prayer is hard, when it feels as if God has forgotten all about us. The godly response modelled for us in the Psalms is to lament the way we feel but long for the God who has proven himself faithful and keep meeting with God’s people and seeking him.
The Bible is multi-layered in it’s understanding of suffering, it’s causes and responses. And yet we can too quickly misdiagnose and misapply and wound others. We’re not alone in doing that, Jesus has to tell his disciples that neither this more nor his parents sinned, another time he tells the crowd that the tower didn’t fall on people because they were worse sinners, but when they heard of that disaster they ought to be moved to repent not victim blame.
Maybe this is particularly painful because that’s been done to you, you’ve been told you need to repent because you’re suffering because of your sin, or that you don’t have enough faith, or that you obviously aren’t learning the lesson God wants for you, you’re not heeding his discipline. Please hear me; God is good, he’s not a moral monster, the cross proves his love and his compassion and that he is for you not against you if you are trusting in Jesus as your Saviour and Lord and seeking to follow him.
The Bibles view of suffering is complex, it takes humility, time, wisdom and prayer to discern what’s happening not simplistic off the shelf applications based on a limited grasp of the Bible’s teaching.
In Job we see how complex suffering is, how harmful misapplying theology is and how dangerous a graceless view of God can be. And we’ll see a totally different type of suffering to those above. A type of suffering we rarely think of.
I’ve spent the last 9 months or so wrestling with the book of Job. It’s a book that has always intrigued me but which I’ve always found hard to get my head around. I always sensed that somehow there was much more to it that a treatise on suffering. That there was so much more treasure for us as God’s people. We began a sermon series on it last week, we’re preaching it in 5, not because it doesn’t deserve a longer series but because I want us to get the contours and big picture as I think we need it as a church family. As we go through the book I’m going to blog bits of my sermon, addition thoughts and discoveries and reflections on the rich deep theology of the book I’ve come to treasure.
Sam and Joanna, sit in tears, as they pour out the pain of their childlessness after they’re told that their latest and last round of IVF has failed. Later that week John phones to let you know that his best friend has been killed in a car crash, you pray on the phone and arrange to meet him tomorrow for coffee. That evening you answer the door to a tearstained Kate who tells you her husband has just announced he’s leaving her and their severely autistic son because the strain’s been too great on their marriage. What do you say to them? How do you help them face suffering wisely and well? Each suffering is different but what comfort could you give them?
If one of them expresses anger with God, wondering if their lives are out of his control, or if he’s punishing them for something, or trying to teach them something and if so isn’t there an easier way? What would you say?
Sometimes Christians say the most unhelpful things to those who are suffering. Sometimes we say nothing. Sometimes we misapply a truth. Or are too quick to speak and correct and slow to listen and mourn. Sometimes our theology simply isn’t big enough for what we or our friends are going through.
Job both is and isn’t a book about suffering. It is a book about the all surpassing worth of knowing God and being his friend. Job’s greatest struggle isn’t the loss of his family, his stuff or his reputation, it’s the overwhelming sense that he’s lost the friendship of God. It’s a brilliant book that becomes more precious the more you dive into it. We’re going to spend the next 5 weeks in Job, but there’s also a reading plan with 3 questions for each day to accompany the series.
Job is so important because it shows us a totally different type of suffering than we expect. It exposes how our faulty theology, or the faulty application of theology, can severely wound God’s already suffering people. One of our problems when we face suffering or when we’re with someone who suffers is that we want to fix it. But we can’t. The other problem is that we want a nice neat answer to the why question. But too often our theology is neater than the bibles because it’s smaller, less realistic and less compassionate than the bibles. The bible doesn’t give us a why though it does show us different types of suffering and godly responses to them.
The latest iteration of the chat bot can apparently produce sermons. You tell it your passage, how many points you want and point and shoot and away it goes. What you end up will be grammatically correct and may read well, though I think it comes across as a bit sterile. But to think that it is a sermon is to think wrongly about what preaching is.
What is preaching? What is it for and who is it to? I wonder if the reason there are some who think AI may be helpful for writing sermons is because we’ve developed a misshapen view of the sermon. It’s not an academic piece of writing. It’s not mere information retrieval, arrangement and then download/sharing. It is the word of God at work to transform the preacher in his spirit filled wrestle to understand the text and what God is saying through it both then and now and so fill his heart as applied by the Spirit so that he can bring God’s word to God’s people so they in turn are transformed by God’s word and become more like Christ.
That means there ought to be something transformational about the nature of sermon preparation itself that leads to worship, repentance and prayer in a way other work does not. When I was a teacher my lesson preparation did not lead to worship, repentance and prayer. But preaching is a different task all together. I don’t want to mythologise it, but I also don’t want us to think it is just like writing any other speech or presentation.
In the same way the act of preaching ought to drain us. I am often physically and emotionally drained after preaching simply because I have worked hard emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually to discharge the burden that God has been laying on my heart for the people he has given me to shepherd from his word and that is no easy thing and nor should it be.
None of that can be replaced by AI. And if our sermon prep could, if it’s little more than information collection and our sermon delivery is little more than an information dump. Then maybe, just maybe, preaching isn’t for us.
I’ve been doing some thinking about leading better bible studies, wanting to give a bit of training to folks in church in preparation for launching more bible study groups. I thought it may be helpful to share some of that here:
There are different types of questions that compose a Bible Study, effective use of these is vital:
Observation – These will be based on your observations of the text, they are deliberately easy to answer building confidence is speaking within the group and help the group see the basic flow, structure and content of the passage. (e.g Acts 8 – What are the results of the persecution? What is the Ethiopian reading?)
Interpretation – these questions take the next step, require a bit more thought and are designed to cause the penny to drop. (e.g Acts 8 – What is the gospel that Philip preaches to the Eunuch? Is God in control in Acts 8 where and how?)
Context – These questions can be easy to miss, but they are vital because they show how the passage being studied is related to the rest of the book and the whole Bible. (e.g Acts 8 – How does Acts 8 fit with Jesus stated mission in Acts 1:8? ‘In Acts 8 we glimpse for the first time that God is a mission focused God.’ Do you agree or disagree and why?)
Summary – Thus type of question is designed to clarify and draw a passage together and lead people to central truth.
Application – I always want at least a third of any bible study to be about application – moving from the implications of the text – what it meant in practice for them then to application – what it means to us now where we are not just generally but specifically. What does it mean for our church, our community, our workplaces, our attitudes? These questions focus on the belief, thinking and behaviour changes the passage calls for.
Launching – 1st question – can be topical, post a dilemma, or raise issues which are textual, or simply start by asking what surprises you in the text or what haven’t you seen in this text before? Be creative because this is a great opportunity for kinaesthetic learning!
The above will form the framework of your bible study. But you will want to use other questions to supplement the above. These won’;’t necessarily be written down, but are useful tools to have in your toolbox:
Extension – Could you explain that?
Clarifying – What does justification mean? How would you explain that to a friend?
Justifying – What makes you say that? Where do you find that in the passage?
Re-directing – What do others think? What about verse…?
Reflecting – So you are saying that… is that right?
Here are another few things that are worth thinking about as you prepare:
Don’t be afraid of silence – whereas we have had time and thought through our answers the group need time to process, think and formulate their answers so don’t fill the silence.
Handling wrong/inadequate answers – We need to be careful if we correct every wrong answer people will not answer. If we add to every answer to make the complete answer people will just wait for us to answer.
You cannot just leave wrong answers, they need dealing with by:
a. temporarily ignoring the error but correcting it later in the study. (Make sure you do so).
b. ask the group what they think, hoping they will correct it.
c. or probe further ‘If that’s true then what about…’
Handling Right answers – We need to welcome answers and affirm people, whilst also challenging them to explain it so that others see it too. We need to welcome answers in such a way that the whole group understand.
Encourage the group to question –One good way to start is by getting the group to question the text, and to encourage them to keep asking questions and answering them as a group.
Dealing with tangents – Don’t always stamp on any tangents these can reveal a lot about the group that helps with application, they can also raise issues you can study later. But don’t allow them to dominate, be prepared to say ‘Let’s get back to …’
Al Gooderham 