Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship · October 19, 2008

Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost

Prayer of the Day

Dear God, we feel your presence as we worship this morning. We know we cannot change the external circumstances of our lives, but we can transform ourselves simply by believing in you. Today we seek to align ourselves with your infinite presence. As we feel your Living Spirit within us, help us to focus on what we might do to serve our sisters and brothers as we seek to help you create a more peaceful world. Amen.

Scripture

Job 40:10-17

Deck yourself with majesty and dignity; clothe yourself with glory and splendor. Pour out the overflowing of your anger, and look on all who are proud, and abase them. Look on all who are proud, and bring them low; tread down the wicked where they stand. Hide them all in the dust together; bind their faces in the world below. Then I will also acknowledge to you that your own right hand can give you victory. Look at Behemoth, which I made just as I made you; it eats grass like an ox. Its strength is in its loins, and its power in the muscles of its belly. It makes its tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of its thighs are knit together.

Message

Living with an Attitude of Faith

Larry Gallamore

Don’t you just love hearing about an amazing breakthrough in someone’s life? Most of us have to live out our lives in less than ideal conditions. We are often handed some “second best” we would not have chosen. That’s life, isn’t it? There are two kinds of elements in every situation. (1) The things you cannot help. You must take what life hands you. (2) The things you can help – your attitude. Rebellion gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. But the insight to see that something can be done with life’s “second bests” and to live in an attitude of faith always leads to a breakthrough.

Robinson Crusoe did not want to land on a desert island. Who wants a desert island – even if you are tired of beautiful Columbia? But while many a story rises and falls and passes away, that old tale retains its endless fascination because to be handed life’s “second best” and to make something out of it is fascinating. This is why I’ve chosen the book of Job to preach on. It’s a work of literary genius. Victor Hugo once said of Job, “If all the literature was to be destroyed, and it was left to me to retain one work only, I should save Job.”

Job is about a man who suffers unjustly when he refuses to deny his own integrity and the integrity of God. There are 42 chapters in the book of Job. Job’s life is going downhill in 41 of those 42 chapters, and then suddenly an astonishing thing happens. Job is healed; he is made whole. People around him, who observed from the sidelines, don’t know what to think. They’re shocked out of their minds. They had watched him go down for almost a year. In less than a year, he had lost his health, his job, his family, and his body was covered with boils. He was in perpetual pain. No one knew how to help him. He had been closer to death’s door than anyone they had ever seen. In fact, they had all written him off. He was as good as dead. 

One day, out of the blue, everything, all of his fortunes, his health, and his family was restored. Now you know why Tennyson called the book of Job the greatest poem, a masterpiece, whether of ancient or modern literature. The Bible concludes after everything was restored, the guy lived for 140 years; long enough to see his children and grandchildren for four generations.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could get in touch with Job’s philosophy for living? Most of you will never face what Job did, but you will have your own struggles. There are some things you need to know. That’s why God gave us this literature. I read the book several times before I discovered Job’s amazing philosophy for living. Job says in his darkest hour God granted him life and steadfast love, and God’s care preserved his spirit (Job 10:12).

Here is Job’s first secret. In Job’s darkest hour, he had the grace to trust God and life. His religion was solid. If you say it takes great faith to live like this, you’re right! It doesn’t come easy. Job struggles over and over again to keep his faith. More than once he asked why, more than once he sank deeper and deeper, more than once he was at the point of giving up, and God touches him and keeps him afloat. Some of you have been there.

When trouble comes, no matter the cause, there are just two ways to meet it. You may face it hopefully with the sure faith that God will give you strength and you will emerge stronger than ever, or you stand before the trouble without faith and go down in defeat. When faced and mastered, your hardships make you strong.

Years ago, in Minnesota, there were some poor farmers unable to make a living on their little farms. The government offered them new homes in the Matanuska Valley in Alaska. But it went too far in its paternalism. It moved them up there, cleared their land for them, built their snug little houses, moved in new machinery and supplies of every description. When the first repayments came due, the settlers refused to pay. They would not even consider a token payment. They were buying cars and going to movies, but they assumed that the government was rich and didn’t need to be reimbursed. 

Some of the sturdy pioneers who drove their covered wagons into the Far West to settle this country in the early days would turn over in their graves if they heard a story like this. The very hardships the pioneers faced and mastered made them self-reliant and strong.

I have to tell you I’m always astonished at how current the literature of Job seems to be. He has some wonderful insights for us as we face a financial meltdown. The coming of our present recession has baffled even the most intelligent economists.   Some people have started to ask, “Doesn’t God care? Why doesn’t God do something before millions lose their life savings?”

I want to assure you, God cares. I certainly don’t want to be political with you. Politics has no place in the pulpit. I will say some of our present-day politicians are no more helpful than Job’s friends. 

Remember what Job’s friends said. One (Bildad) said Job should repent. One (Eliphaz) said Job undermines religion, and one (Zophar) said Job deserved God’s punishment. Neither of the three had any real answers. They all lacked vision. Job continued to believe that God knew what to do. How’s that for faith? Job knew one touch from God could turn anything around. This same faith applies to our present financial meltdown. God knows what to do. We need more leaders praying and asking God for a solution.

Job’s second secret is when we fail and turn to God, God is eager to smooth the rough way. God has always worked throughout history. Let’s travel in our minds back to 1787. Let me show you how God works. 

You know the history. The thirteen colonies had become states, and each separate state was jealous of its national sovereignty.   Each had its army and its ruler. Rivalries grew to the point that conflict looked imminent. A Constitutional Convention was called. Few believed it would succeed. After four weeks of deliberation, the delegates couldn’t agree on a single point. In July 1787, Benjamin Franklin arose and addressed George Washington, the chairman of the convention, suggesting that the time had come for them to take the whole matter to God in prayer. He closed a masterful three-minute plea with this motion: “That hereafter prayers, imploring the assistance of heaven and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business.” 

Washington arose, as Franklin sat down, and made his famous two-sentence speech that put his seal of approval upon Franklin’s motion: “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hands of God.” 

From that moment, insurmountable difficulties were miraculously ironed out and the Constitutional Convention was assured of success. Do you see how and when God does something? When men fail and turn to God, he is eager to smooth the rough way.

With Job, we realize, thirdly, with an attitude of faith, the road to complete wholeness is by way of surrender. Let me explain. In Chapter 1, we find Job described as blameless and upright. He had turned away from evil and trusted God. Notice, the text does not say Job was perfect. He had some more things to work out in his life. We see him struggle in the next 41 chapters. I suggest to you this struggle revolves around the whole process of psychologically surrendering to God. Notice what happened. Job struggles with the popular creed that assumes suffering was always a direct result of sin. He struggled with the age-old question why does God allow the righteous to suffer? He worked to subject the painful experience of human existence to a meaningful analysis, in the end, concluding that the only way to tie up all the loose ends is to surrender to God. In the end, God rebukes his critics and restores Job’s wealth. In the end, Job doesn’t get an answer to why God allows the righteous to suffer, but he does get an answer to how should the righteous suffer. The answer is surrender to God. Maintain fidelity to God under great trials, especially when you do not understand what is happening. You must surrender to God, and God will bless you.

The late William James said, “The crisis of self-surrender has always been and must always be regarded as the vital turning point of the religious life.”

We must trust God not only when we do not understand but also because we do not understand. I know surrender is not a popular word. We got rid of it way back in the 1960s. We need to bring it back. We substituted the word “commitment” for surrender. Surrender means to yield to the power and control of God. It means much more than commitment. Unfortunately, we’ve learned to take our commitments lightly, but surrender can never be taken lightly. I’m asking you to do as Job did and surrender your life to God. Let me show how that worked with a man in the crowd at Capernaum listening to Jesus.

On the outskirts of that crowd was a man, past middle age, whose face we can tenderly read. You notice the lines under his eyes. You notice that he drops his eyes if anybody looks keenly at him. You notice that the corners of his mouth turn down, and there are heavy lines there, too. You notice the stooping figure and the shuffling gait as he walks homeward when the crowd breaks up. You catch the glint of tears in his eyes.

Everybody despises this man, and that has gone on so long that he despises himself. The name of his profession is a term of abuse. He is a tax collector. He has stooped to the depths at which a man takes money from his own countrymen and hands it over to the hated invader, Rome. This man’s name is Matthew. But when he listened to Jesus, something that was still splendid and not quite dead fluttered within his breast, and as he is going home he is saying to himself, “Yes, it was very beautiful, and I should love to be like that, but I am too old. The tracks of habit are too deep. How should I get my living? What would people say?”

He has caught a glimpse of the world that Christ offers, but rather sadly he is shutting the gates, not passing through them. Heavily he turns back to his books, slipping back into the groove that was becoming a grave of a soul. 

As Jesus passed by, he saw Matthew sitting at the receipt of custom. A shadow fell across Matthew’s ledger onto a page on which the tears of a man growing old had made the ink run. Matthew looked up into the eyes that are the homes of all men’s dreams, and looking into the face of Jesus he realized in a flash two things: Jesus believed in him, and Jesus knew what was keeping him back. Knowing his worst, Jesus believed in his best. The finger of the Great Physician went unerringly to the spot. The eyes of Jesus were saying, “This is what is stopping you.” And then a voice that drove out all his fear – fears of the past, fears of the present, fears of the future. They all fell away. A voice that breathed incredible strength, a voice that took responsibility for all consequences said to him, “Follow me.” 

And Matthew went through the gates into the new world that Christ offered, the world of power and joy and peace and love. It contained martyrdom, but it contained Jesus, so nothing else mattered. That very day Matthew was with Jesus in paradise. In the same way on this day, he calls you. What are you going to do?

So be it. Amen.

Benediction

God of All, we come to this house to offer you our thanks and praise. Thanks for the way you shoulder the sorrows. Thanks for the way you magnify the joys. Thanks for the way you comfort us when the night is dark and restore our hope in the dawning of a new day. Your grace is a balm and your Spirit renews us. Let us live the example of Job and hold fast to you, and not let go. Amen.