sermon – Page 4 – jeffersonvann

ARE YOU THIRSTY?

ARE YOU THIRSTY?

Psalms 63 NET.

A psalm of David, written when he was in the Judean wilderness. ¹ O God, you are my God! I long for you! My soul thirsts for you, my flesh yearns for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. ² Yes, in the sanctuary I have seen you, and witnessed your power and splendor. ³ Because experiencing your loyal love is better than life itself, my lips will praise you. ⁴ For this reason I will praise you while I live; in your name I will lift up my hands. ⁵ As if with choice meat you satisfy my soul. My mouth joyfully praises you, ⁶ whenever I remember you on my bed, and think about you during the nighttime hours. ⁷ For you are my deliverer; under your wings I rejoice. ⁸ My soul pursues you; your right hand upholds me. ⁹ Enemies seek to destroy my life, but they will descend into the depths of the earth. ¹⁰ Each one will be handed over to the sword; their corpses will be eaten by jackals. ¹¹ But the king will rejoice in God; everyone who takes oaths in his name will boast, for the mouths of those who speak lies will be shut up.

Seven years ago, when Penny and I were hiking the Appalachian Trail, we had a night when we lacked drinkable water. We traveled over a thousand miles, but that was the only night I recall having trouble finding water. Usually, there’s a stream, spring, pond, or river nearby where we hike. However, that night I saw some deer, and I was so thirsty that I followed them to see if they would lead me to water. They did, but it was just a puddle, and the water looked very yellow. Despite our thirst, we couldn’t bring ourselves to drink it, so we poured it out. The next day, we came off the mountain and into a city. The first place we stopped, I drank so much! I couldn’t get enough. I remember that day when I read David’s experience here.

David wrote this when he was thirsty for God.

He is in the Judean desert, and he describes it as “a land that is dry, desolate, and without water.” But David sings about gazing not on a stream, lake, or river, but on God’s sanctuary. He is thirsty for the presence of God. His experience with living in a place where water was scarce serves as a symbol for the thirst he was experiencing as he writes this psalm. He is thirsty, but not for the water you can get out of a faucet. He is thirsty for the real and powerful presence of God in his life.

He had experienced God’s active presence in his life before. He talks about being in the sanctuary and seeing God, witnessing his power and splendor. But it was not just God’s greatness that impressed him at those times. He also experienced God’s goodness, particularly his loyal love. That is how this version translates the Hebrew word חֶסֶד that we have encountered several times in our walk through the Old Testament so far this year. It speaks of God’s loyalty he shows to his covenant. He is loyal to the agreement he made with the ancestors of the Israelites – the Patriarchs. He is also faithful to the descendants of the Patriarchs because even though they have strayed away from that covenant many times, his love for them and his own integrity demand that he remain loyal to it, and to them.

To David, his relationship with God is better than life itself. An authentic relationship with God can do that to a person. It can make a person seek God above all other pursuits. It can make a person thirsty for the kind of water that Jesus said would make a person never thirst again.

Jesus encountered a woman in a Samaritan village who was looking for that kind of relationship with God. She didn’t know that was what she needed, but he knew. He came to the well and asked her for a drink. But the real reason he was at the well was that she needed a drink—not from the well, but from the living water that only He could provide.

The prophet Isaiah spoke the heart of God when he wrote, “Hey, all who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come! Buy and eat! Come! Buy wine and milk without money and without cost! Why pay money for something that will not nourish you? Why spend your hard-earned money on something that will not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is nourishing! Enjoy fine food! Pay attention and come to me! Listen so that you can live! Then I will make an unconditional covenantal promise to you, just like the reliable covenantal promises I made to David (Isaiah 55:1-3). As God’s prophet, Isaiah appealed to all who recognize their need for a relationship with God to come to him, because he is available. A real relationship with God is available, and it does not cost anything. It is free because the God of the Bible does not need anything that you and I might own, because he owns everything. So, we have to approach God and ask for this great gift on only one basis. We need it, and God offers it on the basis of his divine grace.

Jesus’s encounter with the woman at the well repeated the same message. He used the imagery of thirst because it was a clear metaphor for what this woman was truly facing. She had many men over time, but she had no husband. She was an outcast, never fitting in, which is why she chose to go to the well during the heat of the day when no one else would be there. She had a whole village around her, but she was lonely. What happened when she decided to listen to her thirst? She chose to drink from Jesus Christ himself, the Messiah. Suddenly, she was satisfied—so much so that her attitude changed completely. She became an evangelist, urging others in her village to come and see Christ as well.

When Jesus stood and spoke at the Feast of Tabernacles, he made the same invitation to everyone who would listen. He said if anyone was thirsty, they could come to him and drink. The truth is, we are all thirsty for this, whether we think we are or not. When John commented on Jesus’s statement, he said that Jesus was referring to the Holy Spirit. He took it as a reference to the miracle of Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit appeared visibly and the church was born.

But I want to ask a fundamental question here because someone might assume that now that we are living post-Pentecost, the Spirit has arrived, and the church has been established, the offer no longer applies. My question is this:

Are you feeling needs you cannot meet?

I’m not asking if you have ever asked Jesus into your heart. I’ll assume most of you did that a long time ago. I’m not even going to ask if you have ever had any experience with the Holy Spirit in your life. Most of you can probably recall a time when the Holy Spirit spoke to you clearly and made a difference in your life. My question is more about all the doors to your house that you might not have thought about opening to God. I don’t know about your home, but I know that in my house, I have rooms I keep more presentable because they are rooms someone might reasonably enter. I also have rooms that are mainly for storage. I don’t spend much time making those rooms look nice because nobody sees them.

Our spiritual lives can become that way, too. We might keep up a respectable religious appearance that everyone notices, but there are parts of our lives we choose not to share with others because doing so might bring us shame. That’s why my question is quite open-ended. “Are you feeling needs you cannot meet?” Some of us might have a strong Christian life in most areas, but we might still have areas where we haven’t allowed God access. We might have needs that we have always considered too shameful to seek God to fulfill. A follow-up question might be:

Are those needs giving you a thirst for God?

If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us would admit that we rarely consider letting God handle many of our deepest needs. He is holy, and many things that truly disturb us we see as unholy, even profane. We’ve learned to compartmentalize ourselves. We tell God he can have us for an hour or two on Sunday, but the rest of our time is reserved for someone else. Could it be that the reason we’re still thirsty for the same things after all these years in Christ is that we refuse to trust him with those needs?

Isaiah challenged all of us to seek the LORD while he makes himself available; to call to him while he is nearby! He said that the wicked refuse to do that because it would mean abandoning their lifestyle and their plans. Here, he identifies the root cause of the lack of revival in 21st-century Christianity. God does not revive us because so much of the way we live reflects a dependence on something else besides the Holy Spirit. It does not have to be a bad thing in itself. All it has to do is take the place of the presence of God in our lives.

I’m reminded of the story of the little boy in Sunday School. His teacher asked him what is gray, lives in trees, and collects acorns. The boy said, “I know the answer is Jesus, but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me.” Our problem is not the same as that little boy’s problem. We don’t know that the answer is Jesus. We have all these needs that we are looking for the answer to, but we think those needs are off limits to Jesus. But Jesus himself proclaimed that he is the way, the truth, and the life.

Jesus calls for all who thirst to come to him.

From the most fabulous kings to the lowest servants, we all need an active relationship with God. It’s what we thirst for even when we don’t realize we’re thirsty. But now and then, one of us becomes like David in today’s psalm. We finally recognize that we long for God himself—our souls hunger for him.

The thing about thirst is that it makes you look outside yourself. You might go through your day, handling everything you need to do, but then you start to feel thirsty. You can’t convince yourself to ignore it. You can’t wish your thirst away. Your focus simplifies. Water is what you need, and your eyes turn toward finding a water source. You decide to obey your thirst – not for Sprite, but for God.

The 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal spoke about a God-shaped vacuum in every person’s heart. Augustine prayed, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” That is why we all thirst for God. His creation reveals His existence, and His word shows what He desires. Every day, you and I meet people who live anxious lives, searching for something they don’t fully understand. But we have met the Savior, and He is what they need. We have the living water within us, and they are dying of thirst.

LORD, teach us how to share your Holy Spirit with our thirsty world.

LISTEN TO THIS!

LISTEN TO THIS!

Psalm 49 NET.

For the music director, a psalm by the Korahites. ¹ Listen to this, all you nations! Pay attention, all you inhabitants of the world! ² Pay attention, all you people, both rich and poor! ³ I will declare a wise saying; I will share my profound thoughts. ⁴ I will learn a song that imparts wisdom; I will then sing my insightful song to the accompaniment of a harp. ⁵ Why should I be afraid in times of trouble, when the sinful deeds of deceptive men threaten to overwhelm me? ⁶They trust in their wealth and boast in their great riches. ⁷ Certainly a man cannot rescue his brother; he cannot pay God an adequate ransom price ⁸ (the ransom price for a human life is too high, and people go to their final destiny), ⁹ so that he might continue to live forever and not experience death. ¹⁰ Surely one sees that even wise people die; fools and spiritually insensitive people all pass away and leave their wealth to others. ¹¹ Their grave becomes their permanent residence, their eternal dwelling place. They name their lands after themselves, ¹² but, despite their wealth, people do not last; they are like animals that perish. ¹³ This is the destiny of fools, and of those who approve of their philosophy. ( Selah) ¹⁴ They will travel to Sheol like sheep, with death as their shepherd. The godly will rule over them when the day of vindication dawns; Sheol will consume their bodies and they will no longer live in impressive houses. ¹⁵ But God will rescue my life from the power of Sheol; certainly he will pull me to safety. ( Selah) ¹⁶ Do not be afraid when a man becomes rich and his wealth multiplies! ¹⁷ For he will take nothing with him when he dies; his wealth will not follow him down into the grave. ¹⁸ He pronounces this blessing on himself while he is alive: “May men praise you, for you have done well!” ¹⁹ But he will join his ancestors; they will never again see the light of day. ²⁰ Wealthy people do not understand; they are like animals that perish.

We are continuing our reading of the Psalter (the book of Psalms) in the Old Testament. Although it contains poetry, the Psalter is more than mere poetry. It is the source of many of the predictions about the coming Messiah that are revealed in the New Testament. For example:

This book teaches that Jesus was called to a permanent priesthood that would replace the Aaronic priesthood.
This book teaches us that Jesus was passionate about his Father’s house, the temple at Jerusalem.
This book teaches that the world’s leaders would rise against King Jesus. He would have many enemies and be hated for no reason. It predicts that a close companion would betray Jesus.
This book teaches that Jesus would die an agonizing death on the cross, that the soldiers would gamble for his clothing. He would cry out to God, asking why he had forsaken him.
This book teaches some of the most essential New Testament truths about theology: the revelation of God in nature, the need for a Savior, justification by God’s grace, and the supremacy of Christ.

We don’t know the tune for today’s song, but we do know its authors. It was composed, not by David, but by the sons of Korah. You might remember the name Korah from our reading of the book of Exodus. If you do, you might be asking yourself why we have psalms from this group. Korah was a rebel Levite who tried to overthrow Moses. The ground swallowed him and all his followers as punishment. But Moses had allowed any of the sons of Korah who would dissociate themselves from their father’s sin to be saved. Three of them did. We even know their names: Assir, Elkanah, and Abiasaph. Abiasaph was an ancestor of Samuel. But mostly we know about the sons of Korah from the psalms that they wrote. So far, we have read eight of them: one in 1 Chronicles 6, and seven in Psalms. Four more will appear in the Psalms as we keep reading.

I’m glad we have psalms written by this group because they remind us that God can redeem anyone. It doesn’t matter who your parents were or who your ancestors were. God can use you. He can take the mistakes of your history and turn them into a message of hope and mercy for today.

But what did the sons of Korah write about in today’s psalm? What was the focus?

This is a song for everyone.

The psalm challenges us to listen. One of the most memorable passages in the Old Testament begins with the same word: the Shema. Deuteronomy 6:4 says: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” It’s called the Shema because the Hebrew word for hear or listen is Shema. The sons of Korah use the same word to begin this psalm. It starts with the phrase שִׁמְעוּ־זֹאת, which could be translated “Y’all listen to this.” So, the message that the sons of Korah teach in this psalm is not directed merely toward the nation of Israel. It is for all the nations, all the inhabitants of the world.

When I get an email from someone who has a message for me, I can reply to that email, and my reply will go to the original sender of that email. But if the sender includes a bunch of people in the same email that he sent to me, I have the option to send my reply not just to him but to everyone who got the original message. If I want to do that, instead of hitting the reply button, I can hit the reply-all button. That’s what the sons of Korah are doing here. They have looked around all over the world, and they have learned a valuable lesson about life. They want to share that message with everyone it applies to. So, when they say “Listen to this”, their song is not going out to an individual “you.” It’s not even going out to a collective nation of y’all. They’re saying, “All y’all listen to this.”

This is a song for everyone: the great and the small, the wise and the simple, the rich and the poor. The sons of Korah say, “Put this on your playlist.”

The rich need to listen.

Some people in this world never have to worry about which bills get paid this month and which stay on the stack. They get a bill, and they pay it. They don’t have to consult their accounts to see if they have enough because they always have enough. The sons of Korah have met these people. They know about wealthy people. They probably were not rich people, but they knew about them.

One thing they had learned about rich people was that they tend to be overconfident. Since they never met a problem that they could not fix by throwing money at it, they tended to trust in their wealth and boast in their great riches. They never met a wall they could not scale because there was always money to build another ladder. But the sons of Korah discovered that there was a limit to even what a millionaire’s money could buy.

They can’t buy a better coffee than Chock full o’nuts. No, that’s not it. Even a millionaire gets stopped in his tracks when he comes face to face with the enemy, death. If his brother gets sick, then all his money cannot rescue his brother from the danger of death. If he gets ill or injured, and death comes a’calling, he’s not going to prevent that inevitable appointment.

Even if you are lucky enough never to lose your fortune, one day it’s going to go to someone else. You can’t keep it where you are going. You’ve never seen a hearse pulling a U-Haul, and you never will.

So, the song of the sons of Korah is a song to the rich. It tells them that their money cannot buy them the one thing that they need more than anything they now have. They can contribute some of their money to God and his ministry, but that does not make them like God. Money cannot buy immortality.

They might have all the money in the world, but when they lie in that hospital bed, they will discover that it cannot reverse the curse. Sin’s penalty is death, and no amount of money paid will commute that sentence. They are like sheep being led by death as their shepherd. They can’t turn around. They can’t run in the opposite direction. They are headed to Sheol – the state of death.

The rest need to listen.

The rest of us need to listen to this song, too. What is true of the rich is also true of the not-so-rich. We also have a date with the undertaker, and we will keep that appointment.

When my father died, my mother purchased a headstone for him and included another with her name on it. For years, she would go to the cemetery and stare at a tombstone with her name on it. It was creepy, but it was also a reminder of the reality that she was going to Sheol, too. She kept her appointment. We laid her to rest in 2019. A few years ago, when I was studying this chapter, I noticed that one of my study Bibles said that the unrighteous go to Sheol when they die, but the righteous go to God. That’s just not true. The hope that the sons of Korah had was not that they would automatically float up into God’s presence when they die. Verse 15 says that their hope was for God to rescue them from Sheol, to pull them to safety.

David shared the same hope, stating in Psalm 17 that he planned to see God face to face when he woke up from the sleep of death. His hope was not going to God at death, but being raised to life by God. That is the biblical hope. When his friend Lazarus had died, Jesus didn’t tell his disciples that Lazarus was in God’s presence. He said, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. But I am going there to awaken him.” He says the same thing to us today about those friends and family who are out in the cemetery.

In our responsive reading this morning, we read what Jesus promised in John chapter 6. Jesus promises something four times in that chapter, and it is not that he will welcome our loved ones to heaven when they die. The promise is that he will raise them on the last day—the day of his second coming.

The sons of Korah were not looking for a transition at death; they were looking for a rescue at the resurrection. They said, “God will rescue my life from the power of Sheol; certainly he will pull me to safety.” Like Job, they were looking for their redeemer to come and restore their lives so that in their flesh they could see God (Job 19:25). Like Isaiah, they encouraged the righteous with the promise that their dead will come back to life, their corpses will rise (Isaiah 26:19). Like Daniel, they encouraged believers to look forward to the day when those who sleep in the dust will rise to eternal life (Daniel 12:2). Their goal in life was not to die. Their objective was to live again. Like Paul, they aimed to experience the power of Christ’s resurrection and to attain to the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:11).

This is the gospel, and it applies equally to the rich and the poor because nobody is rich enough to avoid death. But the gospel good news is that we have a redeemer. We have hope after death because God does not intend for death to have the last word. Death is the last enemy, and all of God’s enemies will be destroyed. The question for you and me today is not how much money we have, because money can’t buy everything. It may not be able to purchase much happiness, but it certainly cannot buy eternal life.

Today’s psalm talks about rich fools who work their whole lives for something that they will all eventually lose. But the rest of us can live like that, too. You don’t have to be wealthy to focus your life on making money. Poor people can throw away their lives, too. The lasting message of this psalm is sometimes missed. Jesus once pronounced a woe upon the rich because they had received their comfort already (Luke 6:24). He told a parable about a pearl of great value. When the merchant found it, he went out and sold everything he had and bought it (Matthew 13:46). The Christian life is a life of sacrifice because the goal of eternal life is worth the sacrifice. Everything else pales in comparison to that great salvation.

The sad thing is that most people will not try it. They would rather waste their lives on temporary things that they cannot keep. It takes faith to go against that current. It takes faith to tell Jesus, “Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee.”

HIS MAGNIFICENT REPUTATION

HIS MHIS MAGNIFICENT REPUTATION

Psalm 8 NET.

For the music director, according to the gittith style; a psalm of David. ¹ O LORD, our Lord, how magnificent is your reputation throughout the earth! You reveal your majesty in the heavens above!² From the mouths of children and nursing babies you have ordained praise on account of your adversaries, so that you might put an end to the vindictive enemy. ³ When I look up at the heavens, which your fingers made, and see the moon and the stars, which you set in place, ⁴ Of what importance is the human race, that you should notice them? Of what importance is mankind, that you should pay attention to them, ⁵ and make them a little less than the heavenly beings? You grant mankind honor and majesty; ⁶ you appoint them to rule over your creation; you have placed everything under their authority, ⁷ including all the sheep and cattle, as well as the wild animals, ⁸ the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea and everything that moves through the currents of the seas. ⁹ O LORD, our Lord, how magnificent is your reputation throughout the earth!

We are now in the 19th book of our English Bibles, the Psalms – the songbook of the Bible. It is poetry, but our translations rarely rhyme or have a metrical rhythm. The originals are not about that either. Hebrew poetry focuses more on pairing two or more expressions of the same idea than on rhyming sounds.

We recognize poetry in the 1784 anonymous nursery rhyme: “The rose is red, the violet’s blue, The honey’s sweet, and so are you.” Over time, the poem has changed a bit, but it still says what people wanted to say. The original used rhyme and paired similar syllables in 4-3-3-4 meter. Our modern version is a 4-4-4-4 meter.

Many Hebrew words of the same type rhyme, so rhyming is not a characteristic of Hebrew poetry. Instead, they pair statements of the same idea. For example, here is what that poem would look like if written in Hebrew poetry:

Roses are red, like a brilliant sunset

Violets are blue, the color of berries

Honey is sweet, as sweet as syrup

And you are sweet and precious to me.

The emphasis is shown by the repetition of an idea, using different words. In today’s text, verses 3-4 are good examples:

³ When I look up at the heavens, which your fingers made,

and see the moon and the stars, which you set in place,

⁴ Of what importance is the human race, that you should notice them?

Of what importance is mankind that you should pay attention to them?

That gives us insight into the structure of what we are reading. But what is the purpose of the Psalms? As poetry, the Psalms focus not on historical facts but on the feelings connected to them. In the Torah, God speaks to humanity. In the Psalms, humans talk back to him. They share their feelings. They use these words to encourage others to trust God and continue obeying him. Songs can sometimes inform us, but their main purpose is to go beyond instruction. They are meant to make us feel something – to evoke emotion. They are expressions of emotion.

Reading the Psalms can be difficult because they include feelings we might prefer not to acknowledge. These songs often involve a lot of complaining. They were written by people who experienced suffering and brought their laments to God. Consequently, they give us a view of a God who is large enough not to be bothered by our honest frustrations. He loves us and wants to hear from us, even if what we say falls short of praise.

The Psalms are also meant to bring us back to God when we’re distracted by our problems. When we struggle to make ends meet, it’s comforting to remember that we have a Shepherd watching over us, leading us to still waters, and guiding us with his rod and staff. When we feel confused and everything around us seems dark, we are encouraged to think of the LORD as our light and salvation.

Many of the Psalms were written by David, and this seems to be one of them. The inscription informs us that David wrote this song, dedicated it to the music director, and composed it in the Gittith style. Some parts of the psalm make sense when we consider that David was the author. The writer clearly understands musical styles. David was a skilled musician. The writer also reflects on the importance of human authority. David was a king. The writer has gone out at night, gazed at the open sky, and thought about the moon and stars. As a young boy, David was a shepherd and likely spent many nights watching over the flock.

As we explore the details of this ancient poem, it helps to visualize not just the facts David conveys, but the feelings they evoke in him. These feelings are what David wants us to experience.

The Shepherd King looks up.

David is sitting on his throne, but in his mind, he is back in the fields, watching his flock by night. Once the stray sheep are brought into the fold, there isn’t much to do. You spend most of your time just standing around. It gives you time to think. You probably get to know the night sky very well. David is not an evolutionist. He looks up into the night sky and does not see a bunch of random orbs that accidentally came together to make up that sky. He sees the heavens that the LORD God has made. He sees the moon and stars that the LORD God has set in place. The night sky is a testimony to the divine artist who created it as a testimony to his existence, greatness, and power. No human being could do that. The sky (as it says in another psalm) declares the glory of God. It displays his handiwork.

In the Psalms, the sky is where God sits, laughing at the proud claims of mere mortals. Birds are up there, along with the sun, moon, and stars, but even above all these wonders is the glory of God. His throne is there, and from it, he looks down on humanity. He spoke, and the sky came into existence. Now, he looks down from there to see if anyone understands and seeks him. The sky joins the divine chorus of all creation in praising its creator, even when human voices are silent. From the sky, the LORD speaks, and it rains water onto the ground. From the sky, God provided manna for his people to eat. All the gods of the nations are just dumb idols, but the LORD made the sky.

The sky symbolizes God’s character and work. Just as the sky is high above the earth, God’s mercy is great toward those who fear him. His mercy, truth, and glory are as boundless as the space between the ground and the stars. He also possesses infinite power. He is in the sky and does whatever he chooses. The sky represents the highest realm we can reach, and the psalmist says that even if he were to go there, he would find the same God as here. There is no escaping his presence.

King David authored this psalm. He once faced a giant and did not fear him because he knew someone greater and more powerful than Goliath. David had reached the pinnacle of the metaphorical ladder — he was king. No one was more powerful or more prominent. Still, King David looked up. Later kings would look down on their insignificant subjects and declare themselves gods. But David knew better. One of the healthiest lessons leaders can learn is that there is a God on the throne in heaven, and they are not him.

What is the Shepherd King feeling as he gazes up at the sky? He feels humbled by God’s greatness and understands his responsibility to Him. But that feeling of responsibility is more than humbling.

The Shepherd King looks around.

David was once in charge of a flock of sheep. Now he oversees an entire nation. He is amazed that small humans like himself have been given the authority to rule over anything in God’s creation. He mentions sheep first, which I find important. Then he talks about cattle, wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the fish and other creatures in the sea.

David sees himself as a model of exemplary leadership because he leads others by following God. He believes dominion is possible because that is what God designed all humans to do. He created us (as David mentions in verse 5) a little less than the heavenly beings, but he gave us charge over all the earthly beings. David is in awe that God even pays attention to us. He is amazed that God would delegate such power into our small hands.

Here we are, the human race. We have the potential for greatness, but we can also fail miserably. We can build, but we can also destroy. We can clean the air and water, but we can also pollute them. We can heal diseases, but we can also infect others and cause pandemics. We can blow up a mountain and mine its jewels. Yet, we can also use that same dynamite to blow up our neighbors. We can get it right, but we can also get it oh, so wrong.

God’s reputation is magnificent. But the strange part is that he has not chosen to protect that reputation by restricting us. Instead, he has entrusted us with the task of controlling this world. God’s power is impressive, but the fact that he has delegated some of that power to us is unbelievable. Compared to him, we are all children and nursing infants.

The Shepherd King looks beyond.

After David considers all that he and other humans are responsible for, he becomes prophetic. We only get hints from the Holy Spirit in this psalm, but the hints are there. Those children and nursing babies are praising God for something. When the crowds shouted Hosanna, welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem, the religious leaders were furious at them. But Jesus said that they were fulfilling the prediction in Psalm 8:2. David was a great king, but he also knew that one of his descendants would be an even greater king— the Messiah himself. He would come to Earth to redeem the lost and restore humanity, and God had prepared praise for himself because of this coming king (Matthew 21:16).

Another hint that David is becoming messianic in this Psalm is his use of the word translated as “mankind” in verse 4. The Hebrew phrase is בֶן־אָדָם – son of man. We know that Jesus often used that phrase as his own title. What’s happening in this psalm is that David is saying that God gives humans authority, but we all fall short of ruling with God’s perfection. However, there will come a human being in David’s future who will embody all that humanity is meant to be. He will reign with God’s glory and perfectly reflect God’s magnificent reputation.

The New Testament passages we read in today’s responsive reading[1] highlight that theme and expand on it. The author of Hebrews tells us that we don’t yet see everything under Jesus’ control, but that day is coming. Paul says that Jesus will reign until all of his enemies are defeated – with death itself being the final enemy. He also mentioned that Christ currently serves as the head of the church. As we submit to him, we are simply acknowledging him as the rightful King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Eventually, every knee will bow to him, so it is right and fitting for us to bow our knees to him now. David did not live to see his descendant begin his reign, but he will be raised to life to witness the moment when that reign becomes universal.

If we want to live out the message of Psalm 8 today, we should keep looking up at the sky and recognize God’s greatness and that everything belongs to Him. Then, we should look around to see how we can bring God’s order to the chaos caused by sinful humanity. But, most importantly, we should look beyond what we can do and long for the day when the rightful King of the universe will restore things to God’s original design. When Jesus returns, He will bring the world back to a state where we all reflect God’s magnificent reputation.

[1] Hebrews 2:5-9; 1 Corinthians 15:25-27; Ephesians 1:22.

WHERE IS UNDERSTANDING?

WHERE IS UNDERSTANDING?

Job 28:20-28 NET.

²⁰ “But wisdom — where does it come from? Where is the place of understanding? ²¹ For it has been hidden from the eyes of every living creature, and from the birds of the sky it has been concealed. ²²Destruction and Death say, ‘With our ears we have heard a rumor about where it can be found.’ ²³God understands the way to it, and he alone knows its place. ²⁴For he looks to the ends of the earth and observes everything under the heavens. ²⁵When he made the force of the wind and measured the waters with a gauge. ²⁶When he imposed a limit for the rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, ²⁷then he looked at wisdom and assessed its value; he established it and examined it closely. ²⁸And he said to mankind, ‘The fear of the LORD — that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding.'”

This is our final peek into the Book of Job (for a while, anyway), so I decided to focus on chapter 28. In this chapter, Job comes closer than anywhere else to the message of the other wisdom literature books. The subject is wisdom, or its synonym, understanding. But the other wisdom literature books tend to encourage people to seek wisdom. Solomon wrote his Proverbs to teach people how to be wise and make discerning decisions. In Ecclesiastes, he says that wisdom is like a sharpened axe head, which makes one’s work easier and makes it more likely for one to succeed.

But in Job, the people who claim to be wise are Job’s “friends” who are proven to be fools. They were experts in the conventional wisdom of their day, but they used their wisdom to condemn Job. The Bible never calls Job wise. Ezekiel calls him righteous, and James praises his endurance. But the point is not that Job was wiser than his two friends. The fact is that wisdom is only one tool in the box. There is a tool that is even more important than wisdom – even more vital than understanding.

Truly wise people understand this. After all he wrote about wisdom, Solomon revealed that humanity’s whole duty can be summed up as fearing God and keeping his commandments. Wisdom is a helpful tool, but respect and obedience finally get the job done. So, Job encounters the wisest of the wise, and he prevails over their arguments, not because he was wise but because he had a right relationship with God.

Job argues that you cannot find wisdom.

If you want some silver or gold, or iron, there are places on the map where you can go, and there are mines you can mine. You can dig deep enough into the mountains that you can bring out precious jewels. You can pan for gold along the streams and get the valuable items you desire. But there are no places on the map where you can go to find wisdom.

This is Job’s point in the first eleven verses of this chapter. At first glance, we might want to object to Job’s argument, though. Some of us have paid good money and gone to several places of higher learning. I, myself, have paid out lots of cash and gone to several educational institutions and added some degrees to my title. Is Job saying that I wasted my time, energy, and resources? No, he is not saying that. But he is saying that if my educational pursuits only get me as far as they got his wise friends, then they were futile.

Job is saying that there are always limits to our understanding. We might find some valuable nuggets along the way, but we never strike the mother lode. Wisdom is a good thing, but it should never be the only thing. Even Solomon eventually conceded this. He had made several fortunes, collected all the wise sayings he could find, written many books, planned and supervised many building projects, but in the end, his reputation was tarnished by his bad moral choices.

Job argues that you cannot buy wisdom.

Again, if we have invested a lot of our resources in education, we might be tempted to counter Job’s argument. But Job is arguing that a wisdom exists that is not part of any school’s curriculum. Even if we had the money to go to every university on every continent, we could not purchase the wisdom that Job is describing. It exists, but it might as well not exist for us, because we cannot access it. There are limits to what we can know.

One of the reasons God gave us the Book of Job is to reveal this fact. The whole plot centers around an event that neither Job nor any of his friends were aware of. They could not figure out what was happening to Job. For the miserable comforters, the lack of that information was not a problem. If they did not know why Job was suffering, they would guess. They figured that they already knew all the data they needed in order to make an approximate guess as to why it was happening. But we learned about the conversation between the LORD and the devil. If Job’s friends had known about that, they could have been actual comforters for him. But the point of Job is that they did not know. They angered God by their proud assumptions. Instead of displaying true wisdom, they displayed their ignorance.

By way of application, we should all remember this fact and learn to keep our assumptions to ourselves. If we do not know the whole story, we should not be quick to accuse others of causing their problems. As I suggested last week, when people are suffering, we should seek to help them, pray for them, and share Christ with them. We should not make the mistake that Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar did. We should not assume we know more than what has been revealed.

Job argues that only God has wisdom.

What Job had experienced had humbled him and put him in his place. Job’s question was, “Wisdom — where does it come from? Where is the place of understanding?” His answer was, “Only God knows.” Not a creature created has ever accessed that divine wisdom. Before we even dare to proclaim that we know anything, we should bow our knees to the heavenly Father. To fear him is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding. That is the least we can do because that is where wisdom begins.

“Fearing the LORD is the beginning of moral knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7).
The LORD created wisdom before he made the dust of the world (Proverbs 8:22-26).
“The beginning of wisdom is to fear the LORD, and acknowledging the Holy One is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10).

Knowing how much we don’t know should humble us as it did Job. It should make us cautious about the cause of anyone’s problems – even our own. We should go to prayer – not as a last resort, but as our first response. Being quick to pray acknowledges that only God has the whole solution to any problem. The doctors have their place, medicines have their place, our wisdom has its place, other people’s advise can help, but we have to start with acknowledging our limits and deficiencies.

Knowing how much we don’t know should make us more compassionate when we see others suffering. Instead of looking for the obvious solution and seeking the quick fix, we should be willing to stay beside the sufferers and be there for them as they face their trials. It is sad, but many of us have grown up in a culture that tends to hide our suffering. When we have problems, we try to avoid bothering others with those problems. We get sick, and we might go to a doctor or two, but we often keep it from our loved ones and fellow believers. Sometimes those closest to us only find out what we had when they read our obituary! That culture of hiding suffering keeps us away from sharing the compassion of Christ with others.

Knowing how much we don’t know should make us more intentionally evangelistic. We can’t figure everything out for others, but we can lead them to the one who has figured everything out. In the Book of Job, the story significantly shifts when God appears and sets the record straight. Even before Job experiences his healing and the restoration of all his blessings of family and wealth, Job is vindicated. We find out what we already knew. God is sovereign over the affairs of humanity; He rules over everything. But knowing that there is a God who knows everything and we do not is not really a problem. There is a way to God. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and we can come to God through him! No one comes to God through anyone else. The best thing you can do for your non-Christian neighbors is introduce them to Christ. In John, chapter 12, we learn of a group of Greeks who approached Philip. They said, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” That was a very wise request. Like Philip, we can tell people about Jesus, but what we really want is to lead people to get to know Jesus himself.

Each of us has the responsibility not to push our agendas and flaunt our wisdom. We have one primary goal: to get others to know Jesus. Once we lead them to Jesus, we can turn our attention to spreading the gospel among others. We should have the attitude of John the Baptist. Once he introduced Jesus and the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, John stepped back. He said Jesus must increase, but John must decrease.

We have to be comfortable with our limits. That does not mean that we should be willfully ignorant. We should always ask God to open our eyes to the wonderful things he has revealed. But everything we learn is not to magnify our own position and status. Our purpose is to reflect his light, not to draw attention to ours.

I don’t know how true it is, but I read a story this week about a little town in North Carolina called Pershing. This town had just built a new high school and installed the latest technology—a series of generators that powered the latest battery-operated lights. The city was so proud of its new technology that it decided to rename itself after the brand of lights—they were called Delco lights.

The Book of Job begins by introducing a man named Job, whom God had blessed. It ends by saying that God blessed Job again. The LORD blessed the second part of Job’s life more than the first. You and I may not experience that kind of blessing in this life. But we can know the same God that Job knew. We cannot know everything, but we can have a relationship with the one who does know everything. What we know is not half as important as who we know.

HOW OFTEN?

HOW OFTEN?

Job 21:17-26 NET.

¹⁷ “How often is the lamp of the wicked extinguished? How often does their misfortune come upon them? How often does God apportion pain to them in his anger? ¹⁸ How often are they like straw before the wind, and like chaff swept away by a whirlwind? ¹⁹ You may say, ‘God stores up a man’s punishment for his children!’ Instead let him repay the man himself so that he may know it! ²⁰ Let his own eyes see his destruction; let him drink of the anger of the Almighty. ²¹ For what is his interest in his home after his death, when the number of his months has been broken off? ²² Can anyone teach God knowledge, since he judges those that are on high? ²³ “One man dies in his full vigor, completely secure and prosperous, ²⁴ his body well nourished, and the marrow of his bones moist. ²⁵ And another man dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted anything good. ²⁶ Together they lie down in the dust, and worms cover over them both.

Since we’re reading two chapters of the Bible each day, we’ll find ourselves in the book of Job for three Sundays. It’s going to take a little longer for us to get through Job because there are 42 chapters. But once we’re finished with Job, we’ll move on to the Psalms, and we won’t be done with them until November.

Last week, I explained how the Book of Job plays an important role in our biblical understanding. It is part of wisdom literature but acts as a counterbalance to many other books in that genre, which focus on what I call conventional wisdom. As we go through Job, we’ll see that all of his miserable comforter friends are experts in conventional wisdom. However, each of them views the concept of conventional wisdom from a different perspective.

Today’s text is part of Job’s reply to Zophar’s argument. Zophar argues that Job is guilty of a secret sin but that God knows about the sin and has brought this calamity on him as punishment.

Zophar’s argument.

Before we examine Job’s words in today’s text, let’s review the context. Zophar’s second speech is in chapter 20, and I want to highlight some of what he said there.

Zophar acknowledges that wicked people exist and sometimes prosper, but he argues they won’t prosper for long before their sins catch up with them. Zophar states that “the elation of the wicked is brief, the joy of the godless lasts but a moment” (20:5). This view is ancient and common in many religions worldwide. It reflects the principle of karma – what goes around comes around. A person’s evil actions are the cause, and they lead to suffering as the effect. In many of these religions, this effect appears in the person’s next reincarnation. It can also be seen in the troubles a person faces, which might otherwise be blamed on bad luck.

Zophar did not believe in reincarnation, but he did believe that Job had committed a secret sin, and all the calamity and pain he experienced were the result of God’s effecting a balance in his life. He was telling Job that even though he had experienced elation and joy for a while, it was now time to pay for his sins, and this suffering was all his fault.

Zophar tells Job that his ill-gotten gain was sweet when he devoured it, but it turned into snake venom in his stomach, so he had to vomit it out. “Nothing is left for him to eat; that is why his prosperity does not last. In the fullness of his sufficiency, distress overtakes him. The full force of misery will come upon him. While he is filling his belly, God sends his burning anger against him, and rains down his blows upon him” (21-23). He implied that lasting blessing only goes to the righteous. In a sense, that is true. But Zophar infers from that principle that the righteous would never experience the kind of calamity that Job did. The book of Job teaches against that inference.

Zophar is essentially acting as a prosecuting attorney, presenting Job’s suffering as evidence that he had committed a crime. The suffering proves that Job’s claim of innocence is a lie. All the while, we have been presented with evidence to the contrary in chapters 1-2. We know that Job is not suffering because of his own sin. He is not being punished because God is angry at him. He is being tested because God is proud of him, and the devil hates him.

Job’s question.

When we get to Job’s reply in today’s text, we discover Job acting as his defense attorney. He needs to present evidence that contradicts Zophar’s accusation that his suffering is evidence of his guilt. The prosecution has made its case and presented its evidence. It is now up to the defense to poke holes in that evidence – to create reasonable doubt in the jury by showing that there is some evidence not accounted for in the prosecution’s theory.

Job does that by asking questions of Zophar. One of his questions is found in verse 7: “Why do the wicked go on living, grow old, even increase in power?” That question suggests that if Zophar were correct in his assumption, there should be plenty of examples of evil rich men who wind up like Job. But Job says that is not the case. Plenty of rich evil people keep getting richer and never experience the significant reversal Zophar says is bound to happen. Those prominent religions that teach karma recognize this fact as well. That is why they invented reincarnation, to teach that the reversal occurs in the next life.

Another question Job asks Zophar is found in verse 29: “Have you never questioned those who travel the roads?” Job asked Zophar if he had actually surveyed to see if evil people finally get theirs. The evidence actually shows something different. Plenty of people actually get away with their crimes because they are rich. That was true in Job’s day, and it is just as true today. Justice is supposed to be blind, but she has a bit of a hole in her mask.

But I want us to focus for a bit on the other question that Job asked Zophar. He actually repeats the question four times in today’s text. Look again at verses 17-18:

Zophar has accused Job of sinning and presented as his evidence the principle that God judges sin by punishing the sinner in this life. The sin that goes around in a rich man’s life eventually comes around and punishes him in that same life. Job’s question is, “How often does that actually happen?”

Now, Job is not asking, “Can such a thing ever happen?” He knows that God is sovereign. Our Bibles tell us that God can punish sinners like Pharaoh and Saul, Haman, Nebuchadnezzar, and Herod. But we all know that these are actually exceptions to the rule. They are not evidence of any principle of Karma that is taking place in the world.

If we actually do survey the stories on the road, we find that most of the time, evil rich people keep getting more and more evil and richer and richer. Prosperity is not proof that you have done the right thing.

Job does present evidence of a kind of leveling that happens at the end of life. He says that when rich, healthy people die, they lie down in the dust, and the worms cover them. When poor, sick people die, they lie down in the dust, and the worms cover them.

Job is arguing that Zophar has not made his case. There is no evidence that people are always held accountable for their sins during this life or that they experience judgment for their sins at death.

The gospel answer.

The book of Job leaves us there, but Job’s question still stands, challenging everyone who believes that people experience God’s judgment and that we can judge if someone is righteous just by their outward appearance.

We have to fast-forward to the New Testament for a gospel answer to Job’s question: “How often are people judged for their sins in this life?” The ultimate answer is never. Some criminals are caught and punished, and some sinners are found out. But God’s judgment is not taking place now, and it will not take place at death.

The texts we read this morning in our responsive reading[1] describe another time and day. They talk about Jesus the Judge, sitting on a large white throne, with both the great and the small standing before Him, being judged based on what was written in the books. The graves are emptied, and the sea releases its dead. The Lord has returned and called all our names. We have risen from our tombs because Judgment Day has arrived.

Everyone has their day in court. There are no exceptions. The wealthy cannot buy their way out of this trial. The powerful cannot use their influence to escape it. Each of us will give an account of himself to God. There are only two verdicts: life or condemnation. Those who are chosen for life will be set free from death forever because their names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. Those who are condemned will face the second death in the lake of fire, never to live again.

Job’s question was, “How often are people judged for their sins in this life?” The ultimate answer is never. That is because judgment for personal sins awaits that judgment day. What goes around does come around, but it’s going to take a long time. So, if we see people who are suffering today, we would do well not to turn our backs on them. God is not judging them; that comes later. It may be that we see someone suffering because God wants us to help relieve their suffering. Like the Good Samaritan, we may have encountered the sufferer so that we can be a neighbor to them and show love to them.

Or perhaps, when we see someone who is suffering, God has placed that person in our path so that we can pray for them. God has brought that poor sufferer to our doorstep so that He can perform a miracle in that person’s life. All He asks from us is that we pray.

Or, it could be that when we encounter someone who is suffering, God has placed that person in our path so we can introduce them to Christ. The hardship they are experiencing might be God’s way of grabbing their attention so they seek the salvation they need. If we turn away or cross to the other side to avoid the difficult situation, we might miss the opportunity to share Christ.

All of these responses to suffering are good and healthy. But the sad fact is that many of us, even if we are Bible-believing Christians, tend to react to suffering the way Zophar did. We don’t show love, pray, or share Christ. Instead, we judge those who are suffering. We assume that if something bad is happening to these people, they must have done something to deserve it.

Our Lord instructed us not to judge. He understands that when we act like Zophar, we are condemning ourselves. We are depriving ourselves of the joy that comes from helping the helpless, witnessing God’s work through our prayers, or lifting the lowly by leading them to Christ. That joy arises from seeking opportunities to love others in Jesus’ name.

Judgment Day is coming, and when the day arrives, we will all be there. But today isn’t judgment day. It’s not a time for us to judge others or ignore their pain. Today is our opportunity to show love, heal the wounded, and save those who are lost.

[1] Rev. 20:11-15; 2 Cor. 5:10; Matt. 12:36; Rom. 2:16.