God Created Everything

We are continuing today with our sermon series “What About God?” We are allowing the book of Job to help us look at attributes of God and how those attributes should impact our lives. This week we will focus on that “God Created Everything”.

Our scripture comes from Job 38:1-7 and 34-41. Hear these words from Job

38 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: 2 “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? 3 Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. 4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. 5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? 6 On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone— 7 while the morning stars sang together and all the angels j shouted for joy?

34 “Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water? 35 Do you send the lightning bolts on their way? Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’? 36 Who gives the ibis wisdom or gives the rooster understanding? 37 Who has the wisdom to count the clouds? Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens 38 when the dust becomes hard and the clods of earth stick together? 39 “Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions 40 when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? 41 Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?

Please pray with me…

We are doing a little better this week than last because we only skipped 17 chapters to get to our text for today. I want to begin with chapter 25 to get us caught up on what we missed. Job has continued to offer his insights into how he has not deserved the treatment he has received.

We have one of the friends in chapter 25 say these words which set up our discussion for today:

“Dominion and awe belong to God; he establishes order in the heights of heaven. 3 Can his forces be numbered? On whom does his light not rise? 4 How then can a mortal be righteous before God? How can one born of woman be pure?”

The friends may not have been the comforters that they were originally supposed to be but at the same time we have them speaking truth to Job. Job believes that he is “to good” to have something like this happen to him.

We have one of the friends named Bildad point out to him that there is no one that is a part of God’s creation that should believe that they have the right to offer to God what is fair and what is not.

We can get so wrapped up in our own “goodness” that we can also believe that we are “good enough”. We are “righteous enough” to deserve what we want instead of having to receive the good or bad that occur in our lives.

This can be a slippery slope towards becoming like the Pharisees during Jesus’ time. We can begin comparing ourselves to others. We can start to consider ourselves “righteous” in the eyes of God.

(Transition)

Jesus points this out in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector where we have these two in the Temple at the same town praying. The Pharisee’s prayer is him thanking God for not having him be like other people, those sinners.

The tax collector takes a different approach. He knows he is a sinner. He asks for God to have mercy upon him. Jesus points out at the end of the parable that it is the tax collector who left their “justified before God.”

The tax collector knew what scripture teaches us, no one that walks the earth is “good enough” to deserve the gift given to us by God. No one deserves to be forgiven of their sins. No one deserves to be free from the power of sin.

We are saved by grace. We have received an unearned, undeserved gift from God. Why did we receive this gift? We received this gift because our creator loves us enough to be willing to forget those times that we have failed him and forgive us for those things we have done against him and against those around us.

Job’s friend is pointing this out to Job by saying “dominion and awe belong to God.” This is explained even more clearly in our first reading where the focus turns to Jesus and the roles that he has played in the world.

(Transition)

Paul wants to make clear to us in Colossians how God through the actions of Jesus has changed the world. It is through God’s willingness to come down to earth that we are able to live out the life that God desires for us.

Paul begins with a recognition of Jesus as the “first born of all creation.” He wants us to see Jesus for who he is. He and his father along with the Holy Spirit, three in one, made the place that we reside and formed everything upon it. Jesus helped form humanity into who we are.

Jesus is the head of the church. We as the church are the vessel that helps God lead those around us into a closer or new relationship with him. The church is not ours and should not be about us. We are the church, and the church is about following the lead of the one who created humanity and who through his actions created the church.

Jesus is the reconciler. He reconciled the relationship between us and God. We use the word justify within the church today. We call it justifying grace. It is through justifying grace that we have been saved from the power of sin. Justifying grace allows us the ability to become right with God. This does not mean we are without sin. It does mean that our sins are forgiven.

Jesus as the Justifier was needed due to the decision made by Adam and Eve to eat from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. This decision made the relationship between God and humanity out of sync.

It led to God to no longer being able to become as close to us as he desired. It caused him to have to discover ways to attempt to lead humanity into having our actions be a representation of his desires.

But in the end, all failed and Jesus had to come down to become our example and our Savior. To bring peace between God and humanity. To allow God to not only walk beside us but to be able to be within us as the Holy Spirit.

Paul continues by pointing out what this should mean to us. This means that we should become a servant to God. We should be willing to live our lives with God as our king who we are called to serve. That is why the church is not about us.

The church should be about serving the one who created us, saved us, and is currently helping us become the person He desires for us to be. We are called to be the hands, feet, and voice of Jesus to the world today.

We plan on living that out at The Church of the Good Shepherd through our mission statement which has us connect with those around us in love, focus on loving all people, and having our desire be to grow in faith together. We are called to show the love of God to those that meet here at the church and in our communities.

(Transition)

Job offers a very human response to the statement made against him. He attempts to prove to Bildad that he has no right to tell him about God. He begins first to offer up ways that he serves God better than Bildad ever did and follows that up with how he is aware of how great God is.

How often do we end up doing the same? We face criticism for something and instead of considering the possibility that the criticism may be correct we lash out and attempt to degrade the person who may be trying to help us.

God can and will place people in our lives to help us become the person that he desires for us to be. Sometimes these individuals may be led by God to say something that we don’t want to hear. It is not that these voices are always going to be right, but we still need to ask God to help us discern if there is some truth in what is being said.

This can be difficult for us to do. We may have to be willing to humble ourselves enough to believe that we don’t have all the answers. We need to be willing to believe that it is possible God placed this person in my life at this moment for a reason.

(Transition)

We have Job continuing to try to prove why he is right until we reach chapter 32 where we find out that a fourth friend is with them. This is a man who was younger than the rest name Eli-Hue. He has become frustrated with this back and forth between Job and his friends and begins to speak.

He ends up lambasting the friends and Job. He begins by pointing out that the friends keep saying that Job must have offended God in some way, but they have no examples of what he did against God. He is basically saying maybe Job is right and he has done nothing to deserve the events that have occurred against him.

(Transition)

This should be a reminder to us that we don’t know why bad things happen to good people. We can come up with reasons with most of them going back to the fact that the world we live in is not perfect.

What I have discovered for myself is that this is not helpful. All I can do is believe in faith that in some way God will use the bad of the world for good. That God will repair the hurt and the pain and offer peace and love to enter into the troubles we face.

God is with us through whatever we are facing even if we don’t believe we deserve what we have received. He does not abandon us during these times of struggle. He is with us in all of the good, bad and ugly that we face around us.

(Transition)

Eli-Hue does not let Job off the hook. He makes sure that Job knows that he is not good enough to say he does not deserve what he has received. Here is what he says to Job…

8 “But you have said in my hearing— I heard the very words— 9 ‘I am pure, I have done no wrong; I am clean and free from sin. 10 Yet God has found fault with me; he considers me his enemy. 11 He fastens my feet in shackles; he keeps close watch on all my paths.’ 12 “But I tell you, in this you are not right, for God is greater than any mortal.

Eli-Hue is making the point of our scripture. God created you. God created everything. You are not perfect. You do not deserve to believe that you deserve any special treatment. You are human just like the rest of us.

(Transition)

This may be good for us to also remind ourselves from time to time. God created me. God created everything. I am not perfect. I do not deserve to believe that I deserve any special treatment. I am human just like everyone else.

We are no different than the rest of society. We can all become children of God. The only difference between us and those around us is that some of us have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We have the love, joy, peace, and hope of Jesus down in our hearts. We have acknowledged that we are loved by God.

(Transition)

It’s taken us a while,but we have now reached today’s scripture. We have God speaking directly to Job. In case you forgot this is what Job asked for in chapter 11. I have a feeling he wants to change his mind.

God is saying to him that young whipper snapper that you just heard from is right. I created all things. You have no right to tell me what you deserve. He asks Job a series of questions, basically saying to him that until you can do what I can do you are not righteous enough to believe you don’t deserve what anyone else in humanity deserves.

God is the creator of all things and therefore he is in charge. What we know is that we are blessed because we may not deserve things from God, but God still is willing to help us overcome the troubles of the world.

What should this mean to us today? First, that we should worship God and praise God for what he gives us that we do not deserve. We have a God that loves his creation so much that he is willing to serve us and help us even though we do not deserve it.

Second, Election update time. God can use anyone who God desires to use in whatever government entity they are in. God used Pilate for good. He needed a Roman governor to sentence Jesus to death in order for the sacrifice he made for humanity to come about.

We need to believe that God can use any mistake that you may believe we make as a country. God can have that person serve him and help him overcome obstacles no matter which one of the candidates wins.

Third, we should ask ourselves the question is our God big enough? Do we believe that God can and will help us under any circumstances? We should be willing to trust that God is with us and can overcome no matter how big a problem we find ourselves in.

We should believe that if God calls us to serve those around us in a way that we don’t believe is possible for us individually or as a church, that he has prepared the way. He will be with us. He will help us. Let us believe that the God who created everything will never leave us or forget about us.

Let us pray…