Read Psalm 146
One of the things that church does really well is help people. My family and I have been helped by the church many times over the years. When Kristi gave birth to our still born son in 1994, the Boulevard Church of Christ in Lake Charles Louisiana where I was the youth minister helped us get through that tragedy. Over the years the church has helped me and my family in a variety of ways, and I’m guessing you have stories, too of how the church has helped you. Now our family is involved with managing Jared’s cancer treatments, and we are receiving help from the church. Churches we haven’t been a part of for years, like the Boulevard Church of Christ have responded to our needs, and even churches we’ve never been a part of, or knew of until we received a card from them, or a care package. The Church knows how to help people.
I don’t understand how people go through what my family has been through, or is going through without faith, without the church. I don’t have any presence of mind to even begin to understand how a parent who is facing a terminal illness in their child could only believe that their child if they died would just be gone. I know that many in our world believe we are just a cosmic accident, a mass of cells without any purpose other than to sustain a temporary existence and then die. My hope and my joy is found in Jesus Christ and the resurrection of these cells in a completely different eternal life form known as a spirit or a soul.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:13-20 “if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless. And we apostles would all be lying about God—for we have said that God raised Christ from the grave. But that can’t be true if there is no resurrection of the dead. And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost! And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died.”
I believe in a Creator God who purposefully crafted all matter on earth and in the universe, formed it with this one purpose that all He created would make Him happy. All our praise, our behavior and our motives should encompass this one purpose; we simply want to make God happy.
I know that this sounds simplistic. But any time we use words like “glorify” or “praise” or a phrase like, “We want to bring God more Glory” “We want to make His Name more famous” “We want to please God.” What these words and phrases basically mean is that we want to make God happy. When we obey Him, please Him, love Him, glorify Him, praise Him, worship him, remember Him, and serve others in His Name we are making God happy.
But what does this have to do with God’s justice? What is one of the first complaints that you hear from your child from almost the moment they can put words together in coherent sentence. “it’s not fair!” Every human being has a sense of fairness seemingly woven into the very fabric of our DNA. The fact that life isn’t fair is one of our very first life lessons, along with the fact that when mom is using the iron, it hurts a lot when we touch it. We find out that life isn’t fair even before we are potty trained.
A child’s sense of fairness is the central theme to a series of TV ad’s by Ally Bank. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4TVRPvFGt0&feature=related)
So is it God’s fault that life isn’t fair? This is a difficult question that has plagued the thoughts of human beings since our beginning. We talked about Job a few weeks ago. Most Biblical historians believe that Job was one of the first books that was written, even before Moses wrote most of the first five books of the Old Testament. What is Job about? Job is a guy who loves God, who wants to make God happy and is blessed with a great family and wealth and is well respected in the community. Satan believes that Job makes God happy because God is making Job happy. “Take away all his wealth, respect and his family, and he’ll curse you”, Satan says to God. But God knows the heart. God knows Job will not curse Him, so He allows Satan to take everything from Job. We’re told that Job did not blame or curse God. He asked why. He certainly didn’t feel that life was fair in that moment. But Job didn’t do what Satan thought he would.
Why did God allow Job to suffer? In short, because Job through His suffering, made Satan into a fool. He denied Satan the opportunity to gloat. Satan has never been able to say, “I told you so” to God. Even confronting Jesus personally Satan must have felt a certain sense of home field advantage. He had Jesus in human form, and he tried to tempt Jesus with what had worked on everyone else, but, Jesus didn’t give in. Like Job, Jesus showed up Satan proving that the evil one was on the wrong side. Jesus conquered death on the cross and in doing so put the victory in our hands over death.
“ For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.” 1 John 5:4-5
And what is our one purpose for living? To make God happy; and it makes God happy when we stick it to the evil one like Job and Jesus did by keeping our faith through tragedy or tough times. God blesses us in our trials and suffering by providing hope in our eternal life with him in heaven.
This is why the Psalmist says in Psalm 146:2
“I will sing praises to the Lord until my dying breath.”
Let’s ask this ancient songwriter why he will sing to the Lord until his dying breath.
Because God is my ultimate source of help – 146:5
God is my help to conquer death
Our God is just. Here is a description of what the word “just” means according to an online dictionary:
guided by truth, reason, justice, and fairness
done or made according to principle
based on right
in keeping with truth or fact
given or awarded rightly; deserved, as a sentence, punishment, or reward
If we put God into the above definition the one that scares me is the last one. God will give or award what I deserve whether punishment or reward.
When it comes to judging me, I don’t want God to be just, I want him to be merciful, and abundantly so. And the good news is that He is merciful and abundantly so, but He is as just as he is merciful. This is the reason He gave us Jesus Christ. God in His justice demands punishment for disobedience. His Perfection demands absolution for our imperfections, and Jesus Christ was the perfect One to offer His own life as a sacrifice for you and I.
If you break the law and you’re caught you will be entered into the court system. At some point you will face a judge who will declare you guilty or not guilty. If the judge believes you’re guilty based on the evidence presented at your trial the judge will then render a sentence according to what the law allows for the crime you committed. James 1:14-15 says, “Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.”
Death is the consequence of sin. Death, eternal death, is what we deserve for our sinful actions. God has judged the world and found it guilty, including you. Hebrews 2:14-15 confirms, “Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.”
Why do we praise God? Because as the judge in the courtroom when you’re pronounced guilty because of your sinful actions, He won’t look to you, He’ll look to Jesus. Jesus will confirm His relationship with you, then God will turn and look at you, but He won’t punish you for your sin; He will offer complete and total absolution. 1 John 5:11-12, “And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life.”
God is my help to do His Work
There are a lot of people in our world who suffer. According to worldhunger.org there are approximately 925 million hungry people in the world. There are about 7 billion people living on the planet so this is about 13 percent of the world’s population that lives hungry. On their website worldhunger.org reports and I quote, “Children are the most visible victims of undernutrition. Children who are poorly nourished suffer up to 160 days of illness each year. Poor nutrition plays a role in at least half of the 10.9 million child deaths each year--five million deaths. Undernutrition magnifies the effect of every disease, including measles and malaria. The estimated proportions of deaths in which undernutrition is an underlying cause are roughly similar for diarrhea (61%), malaria (57%), pneumonia (52%), and measles (45%) (Black 2003, Bryce 2005). Malnutrition can also be caused by diseases, such as the diseases that cause diarrhea, by reducing the body's ability to convert food into usable nutrients.”
There seems to be a serious discrepancy here. According to this Psalm in verse 7, God feeds the hungry. God is our help. So then, why are there hungry people? Many would claim that world hunger and suffering is one reason they can’t bring themselves to believe in God. If God wanted to eliminate hunger, pain and suffering in the world, could He? I believe the answer to that is yes. The creator of the earth can do anything He wants with His possession. But what would God have to do in order to eliminate pain, hunger and suffering? He would have to make evil people good. He would have to change their will. The same folks who claim that they want to believe in a God who would eliminate hunger would have to believe in a God who would make them do stuff they don’t want to do. Evil people create hunger.
In India hundreds of thousands of children suffer from hunger simply because they live on the wrong side of the tracks. Here is one reason there is hunger in our world, “(The Dalit’s) India's Untouchables are relegated to the lowest jobs, and live in constant fear of being publicly humiliated, paraded naked, beaten, and raped with impunity by upper-caste Hindus seeking to keep them in their place. Merely walking through an upper-caste neighborhood is a life-threatening offense. Nearly 90 percent of all the poor Indians and 95 percent of all the illiterate Indians are Dalits, according to figures presented at the International Dalit Conference that took place May 16 to 18 in Vancouver, Canada.” National Geographic News
According to this Psalmist in verse 3 we shouldn’t trust the politicians to do the right thing. So who should do the right thing? The answer is obvious.
We started by talking about how good the church is at helping people and I believe this is true. But can the church do better? There is plenty of food to feed people according to worldhunger.org. God has provided an earth that is capable of feeding everyone living on it. I believe we struggle with a perspective problem.
Your attitude regarding God’s church should not be about attendance, or volunteering for some activity, your perspective should be that you are a part of a Kingdom movement to preach Jesus to the lost and to provide resources for the needy. Jesus said in Matthew 24:34-36 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. 36 I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.” How are we doing with this?
What if it’s not enough to be a church member or attender? What if it’s not enough to raise our kids to be Christians? What if it’s not enough to simply study the Bible or belong to a small group?
I believe it’s time for us to think bigger, to be more in tune with Jesus and His mission. Instead of thinking like a member of the church, think like a missionary. Instead of raising kids to be a part of church activity raise them to be preachers, teachers, elders, pastors, and missionaries. Instead of just studying the Bible ask, “Who can I help with this truth?” Instead of just being involved in a small group, involve your small group in a mission effort to share the truth of Jesus in our community. Think different than just a church member. You are so much more than that. “you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.” 1 Peter 2:9
God is Just. He helps people. He has given us Jesus. He has given us His Holy Spirit. Now His justice demands our response. Living out the mission of Jesus on the earth makes God happy. “Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose.” Philippians 2:1-2
