It
is a privilege to be able to speak with you this morning. I love
that our church is taking this year and focusing it on the family.
You know that with us, that is what God wanted in the garden. He
wanted a family. A loving, living, God breathed family that would
tend to His creations and each other. The strange thing is He still
wants that today. No you say? Well the bible tells us that God is
the same yesterday, today, as He is forever (Heb 13:8). When this
current world passes and the new heaven and earth are formed we will
pick right back up in the garden of Genesis. Isn’t it just and
loving that God could so love the world that He would press pause on
His desires for everyone to show us His goodness through one for
everyone? What a brilliant God we serve. Some of us here have been
met with all kinds of questions involving God’s goodness or loving
character. Few of us today can combat the questions that are being
thrown at us about God and the “if He is love then” questions.
Let me give you an example of one that I get asked. This doesn’t
have anything to do with my message, but someone here needs to hear
this because you’ve been asked a question like this at work and you
are ashamed to admit that not only are you stumped but you share the
same questions about God. Don’t be embarrassed to have hard
questions. If your God is the God of everything, then it stands to
reason the He can handle your questions. I promise you, you have a
God that is not afraid or scared that you will find out He is a liar.
He is not a man that He should lie (Num 23:19).
The
question: “If your God is love, then why does it say in 1 Samuel 15
that God tells the Israelites to kill everyone and everything?
Doesn’t God say not to murder or shed innocent blood? But, kids
are innocent, so why did God break His own commandment?” Anybody
ever had a question like that? If not, then good! That’s a hard
question that you could be sucked in by. If you are not careful, you
will approach the question from the position of agreement with the
presumption of their question; that God must have broken one of His
words. The truth is we do not have to agree with their pretext. 1st
realize that God does not violate His word nor His character. He is
loving, merciful, long suffering and at the same time, a judge and
righteous God with wrath and anger at His command. So anybody want
to answer this besides Pastor Ken?
I
know we could fish this answer out, but for the sake of time and the
fact that I like to give answers to hard questions, let me tell you
how I’ve answered this question with great results when asked by
people of other eastern religions and atheists.
1st
– Without presuming to know God completely, I would saying that in
this as in all things, God demonstrates all of His attributes at
once.
2nd
– The facts – God is long suffering. Look at Genesis 15:16, He
shows that the cup of the iniquity of the Amorites has not been
filled and God gives them more time (mercy and grace). This shows us
a pattern that God follows even with the Amalekites. There was a ban
placed on them. This meant they were not to be plundered by the
Israelites but everything destroyed because God had judged them from
their iniquity 400 years earlier until now (Long suffering and
judgment). God wanted everything destroyed because of two factors.
One - that no one would gain from such a hard (judgment). Two - that
He could demonstrate His (love). What love do you ask? The love for
the children of the Amalekites; they were both innocent and stood in
danger of being guilty one day. A loving God, knowing the choices
and upbringing they would receive would cause them to reject Him and
hate His chosen nation. To avoid them falling under His judgment
because the sins of the parents would have visited (punished) them as
well, He plucked them up to be raised in the arms of a loving God.
This is good preaching.
We
can ill afford to have our blessed hope robbed by such questions that
we don’t even agree with the premise. More and more today, our
children are being faced with these and other questions. How will
you prepare yourself and your family? Get into the word and let your
mind be open to Him, not the world. Let yourself ask Him hard
questions and then start with the whole of the Bible and work your
way down to a single verse. Not the other way around. Don’t build
your life on a verse that you can’t even quote the context. That
is sinking sand and we stand to fall if we don’t build a strong
foundation of word. What makes a foundation strong is not just the
substance of the materials used but the wide and depth of it as well.
Go deep and wide with God by making you and your family available to the Bible (source of the materials), godly friends (width of the
foundation), and the study of its contents in our services, Sunday
School, and personal time (depth).
For
years and years, I heard it in almost every church said I needed to
“plead the blood of Christ.” While growing up I never questioned
whether I needed to or not, I also never questioned myself as to what
it meant, why I need to, or even how. In fact, the only frame of
visual reference I had was that of an exorcism where the priest would
shake a scepter with holy water at a levitating girl and scream “the
power of Christ compels you.” Well, little did I know that I would
find myself with a holy scepter and a levitating…? No, no nothing
like that. Last year as I began to read, study, pray more than I
ever have before, God began to speak to me about this little known topic of pleading the blood of Christ. I took a broad brush to
the word like before thinking OK, I’ll do it, but something inside
of me popped up and said, one thing; “how?" I realized that I
had no clue. This started for me a journey of truth to find out the
what, the how, and when we as Christians should be “pleading the
blood of Christ.”
Turn
with me to the book of Job. A lot of scholarly work has been done to
unlock the secrets of this mysterious book. Many of you might be
asking yourselves why I would say mysterious. The reason is two fold,
1st
– it’s hard to determine with any certainty the origin and time
frame in which this book was written. There is great debate on it.
2nd
– why has this book been canonized in the Bible? It is classically
thought to not have any real applicable reference to Jesus and
therefore is questioned as to its validity as scripture. While there
is still some question as to the authorship and origin, I believe
that there is a great message and believe the book of Job could be
the OT key to unlocking the importance of the pleading the blood of
Christ. If you have your Bibles open to Job, follow along…
The
book opens with Job, a righteous, wealthy man who loved God and
shunned evil. Well let’s read it
Job1:1 There
was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was
Job; and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God
and shunned evil. 2 And
seven sons and three daughters were born to him. 3 Also,
his possessions were seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels,
five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very
large household, so that this man was the greatest of all the people
of the East.
4 And
his sons would go and feast in
their
houses, each on his appointed
day, and would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink
with them. 5 So
it was, when the days of feasting had run their course, that Job
would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning
and offer burnt offerings according
to
the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my sons have
sinned and cursed[a]
God in their hearts.” Thus Job did regularly.
If
we aren’t careful we will miss the point of the book of Job and its
application to our families today. Let’s break this down into
three parts to see how we should treat our family before God.
- Sanctify Them
Your
children need to be set apart for God. That is why we do baby
dedications here. But that is just for a moment. This
sanctification is for a lifetime. If you notice Job’s kids are
grown and gone. It says “their houses,” but that didn’t stop
Job from sanctifying his children. You see, we are not owners of our
children. Yes they are born through us, but not from us. They are
God’s own breathed spirit that is meant to worship Him as a created
being of faith, hope, and love. Since we are not owners, but have a
great responsibility still, we become stewards of these gifts from
God. We have a God commanded responsibility to sanctify them until
God.
- Plead the Blood
This
is the important part that is overlooked by so many. Job makes
sacrifice to God on his children’s behalf. He covers his children.
Rev.
Allen Brummel says in his commentary of Job 1 “Job's concern for
the spiritual welfare of the children went to the root of the matter:
their hearts. Not just the outward actions, but their hearts. There
was no evidence that they had sinned or fallen into temptation. But
Job knew that sin was deeper than the deed. Sin was a matter of the
heart. Even though his children were living uprightly, were doing
that which was not outwardly sinful, he was concerned that their
hearts be right with God. For Job was one who eschewed all evil, that
is, he shunned and avoided all evil, not only the outward deeds but
any evil thought or desire. And Job is concerned that it may be that
his children have sinned in their hearts. The very possibility of
their sinning brought concern to the heart of Job. Job knew God as a
righteous, holy God who demands perfection and holiness of His
people. And Job's godly concern was the spiritual welfare of his
children as they stood before that holy, righteous God.”
- Do it regularly
We
see this as a model for success. From David to Jesus, they would get
up early and seek God continually. There is something to be said
about the earnest fervent prayers of righteous people… it would
seem that they break through the heavens and into the throne room of
God.
But
some of you might say to yourself, “wait a minute, Job’s kids
died?” to which I say yes they did. This is where we see that the
book of Job goes quiet. If Job did these three things, why did God
take his children from him? Well, to be honest, I don’t fully
know, but the Hebraic understanding paints a better understanding of
the truth of God’s mercy, justice, and love through this account.
The Talmud offers this about the death of Job’s children; they had
just finished a birthday party for one of them and Job had just made
a burnt offering when Satan came and pulled the house down on them.
Later, when Job’s wife has had enough, supposedly after 17 years of
him sitting in the dust and his wife having been deceived by Satan
into having her head shaved in public, she tells Job it would have
been better for her and her family if he would just curse God and
die. Job prays asking God to show her their children. The heavens
part and there are all of her children clothed in white linen with
God. She goes to a stable in perfect peace, lies down and goes to be
with them in heaven. It’s a tragically beautiful picture of the
goodness of God.
Smith,
James E. "First & Second Samuel." Google
Books. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.
Brummel,
Allen. "THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR." "Job:
Sanctifying His Children" Job 1:4-5.
Www.reformedwitnesshour.org, 5 July 1998. Web. 22 Feb. 2014.
