There’s nothing wrong with once in a while leaving the place of worship awestruck. It would become tiring on a weekly basis, but now and then, it is good to tremble at the threshold of the throne of God.
I wonder this morning Wesley Does anyone come to worship expecting to encounter the living God?
I mean, not just talk about God or come away with a cozy feeling that one has been loved somehow, but to actually hear the voice of God or catch a glimpse of God’s full glory? I don’t even think many of us really want an encounter whit God because when God speaks sometimes he speaks in grown up words.
When a whirlwind of adversity strikes, how do you deal with it? We often ask “why?” Or “why me?” Some folks may keep silent or feel guilty about questioning, but most of us seek answers. I want to suggest that sometimes God is in the whirlwind and sometimes God gets tired of us no acknowledging his presences.
What are you saying Rev? Well Glad you asked. Sometimes you go looking to find God when you are in the midst of suffering and God has been there all along. As a matter of face God is using the moment of suffering to speak to you anyway.
The Old Testament account of Job reveals that sometimes the whirlwind is the answer, sometimes God is speaking through the illness, death, war, bankruptcy, or natural calamity? Our assigned text barely do justice to the speech. Read the whole chapter; read two chapters; or even better, read four chapters and maybe you’ll come close to approximating the full effect of the visitation.
Some of the greatest poetry in literature anywhere can be found in these chapters of the book of Job. Bask in the wonder and the beauty and majesty of these words for a moment. Stand in open-mouthed awe at the scope of creation, presented here as a divine, no, as THE divine work of art since time began.
So, Job you want your answer, here it is! Two things you Need to do to get Answers.
I. Remember Who We Are
We don’t have all the answers. A couple lost their son in a tragic motorcycle accident. Friends of the mother found it easy to say, “God needed a flower for his garden.” The “friends” of Job had easy answers. They offered conventional wisdom— “sin brings adversity; righteousness brings prosperity.”
Righteous Job didn’t know what was happening, but he didn’t buy the fake gospel of his friends.
Job stood defiantly before God and sought an audience to plead his case. He demanded a judicial hearing (31:35) but got far more than he expected.
That’s when God said, “Who do you think you are . . . ? Gird up your loins like a man; Put on your Big Boy Pants I will question you” (38:2-3).
Ill: This reminds me of one of the early years in my ministry the Rev. Ed McDowell was my superintendent and had call several Black Pastors into a meeting and told us we were being rebuked for missing a district meeting. We at the time were in Revival and had chosen to go to service rather then come to the meeting. At some point I recall telling Rev McDowell that he was only writing us up because we were black. At that point the yellow brother turned red he was highly peeved and proceeded to explain to me that my ‘wet behind the ears’, ‘leaning to preach yesterday’ didn’t have a clue about being mistreated over race and that I also had no clue about who he was and the Junk(maybe he used another adjective) he had to go through to be a Ds and Pastor in the United Methodist church. It was in that moment that I learned you might want to know the person whom you charge with mistreatment before you make that Kinda declaration.
You know, we often consider ourselves “the masters of our fate,” it is easy to slip into pride and self-sufficiency when adversity strikes. We defend ourselves, justify our actions, point to past faithfulness. We demand an answer or give out easy answers. God reminds us of who we are—a person limited in knowledge and power whom he may be teaching some lessons with adversity.
God placed Job on the witness stand and displayed multiple exhibits of creation’s mysteries.
“Where were you . . . ?
Have you commanded the morning . . . ?
Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up?”
Since none of us can fathom the mysteries of life, we ought to keep more silence in the midst of the whirlwind of suffering. It’s very much ok to ask, but it is also your responsibility to listen when God speaks. God Speak! Is not like man’s words and God is not always in the comforting business.
Many make the mistake of thinking when God speaks to me, God is goanna speak in some gentle angelic form of heavenly mush-mouth. I want you to know that sometimes when God comes, God comes for real in real talk and with real life examples.
Yes, God might come in a yet small voice, but God might also come in the car wreak that kills loved ones or the bomb that goes off at the capital building or the virus that kills over 5 Million worldwide.
In this powerful text what I really want to know is “What is the mood in which these words to Job were spoken?” You know what I mean? Our assumption, or perhaps our best guess, is that God is angry, shouting at Job for daring to question, for daring to challenge, the divine hand at work in the world and in his life in particular. But are we Sure.
“Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” That doesn’t sound like a happy dance going on behind those words. Certainly, there is plenty of evidence for this strident, booming divine wind of a voice flattening trees and leveling mountains as it rages from the very mountains the speech discusses. The whole thing comes at Job from a whirlwind, for heaven’s sake. You don’t get cheerful pats on the back from tornadoes. Yet maybe this is an aspect of God we have been missing. Maybe God is this way sometimes maybe God is not being angry but simple being direct. Being Real speaking is reality and not fantasy.
II. Remember Who God Is
With the splendor of creation spread before him like an Imax theater, Job realized anew the power of God. But what he needed even more—and what we need as well—was the presence of God. The Powerful One became the Present One. “Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind” (38:1). Our God is “a very present help in trouble” (Ps. 46:1).
Job’s attention was directed to the rhinoceros and the crocodile. Nevertheless, they are part of God’s order for the world, and he knows what he is doing in allowing it to be.
We need to know enough about God to know we don’t know God.
• Baha’i leader ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (1844-1921) said: “Essence of God is incomprehensible to the human mind, for the finite understanding cannot be applied to this infinite mystery. God contains all: He cannot be contained.”
• German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), in “Letters and papers from prison” (Macmillan, New York, 1971), wrote: “The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us. The God who lets us live in the world”
• The Quran, which Muslims believe God’s final word, mentions that Allah sees, hears, loves, gets displeased, and so on. But we should not misunderstand the use of these words as indicative of a human-like being.
• ElizaBeth W. Beyer, N. Tahoe Hebrew Congregation & Temple Beth Or rabbi “G-d is farther than the farthest most star yet closer than the air we breathe.” (Prayerbook). Though G-d is incomprehensible, G-d is also comprehensible, close to each of us and intimately aware of our thoughts.
And Still In the beginning of John’s gospel we find how God let himself to be discovered in the person of Jesus Christ, “And the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1, 14).
There is no way of knowing anything about God, except what God wants us to know about him and revealed to us.
God will remain God always to our human understanding but he reveals himself in so many ways to those who believe in him that no matter how limited we are in our knowledge you can still have an understanding about him.
No human mind can fully understand God but to those who are open to enter into his mystery he will reveal himself enough to give you the certitude conviction that he is real.
If we are willing, we can find the reality expressed in the old hymn, “He walks with me and talks with me, and tells me I am his own.”
I close when I tell you this that’s why I have problems sometimes with simple teaching about God like when they tell you to say ‘God is Good’ in Church Because of the Whirlwind.
In Sunday School a little later on the psalm uses an often-referenced line as its opening line, “O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.” This line appearing in multiple places in the canon gives rationale for God’s praise (Psalm 106:1, 118:1, 136:1, etc.).
Simply, God is good. For those who have gratefulness at the center of their being, this is not a difficult acknowledgment.
However, for the one who believes that somehow or someway that God’s goodness is not responsible for their well-being, he or she may not give thanks because it is not a part of who they are.
Yet Church God is Good because God is the being is who is perfect, eternal, and changeless. Thus, to say God is Good is redundant because by the very definition of God, He would have to be good because God is all that the good entails. There is no Good without a Good God. Therefore celebrate the Whirlwind with me today Maybe this whirlwind is not the destructive tornado that punishes and destroys, but instead a new wind that blows in a new vision of God and a new way of relating to the one who loves us so completely.
