Two weeks out of the pulpit was refreshing for me!  Vacation with family always fills my soul and makes me so proud of the family Dave and I started 36 years ago!   We are still in the book of Job and the following is my sermon from 7/24...

What kind of God do you Serve?

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God who is Creator, Christ and Comforter.  Amen

I certainly am enjoying this six week study on Job!  I hope you are, too.  For those of you who haven’t been here for the last 4 weeks (including me – we were on vacation, too), here’s where we are to date: 

Job was an upright, pious, devout man who loved God with every inch of his being.  His life was perfect!  Perfect children, perfect flocks and herds, perfect slaves…living the good and upright life of a servant of God. 

Until…until The Accuser (NOT the devil as we understand him – but one of God’s angels whose job it was to seek out those NOT living God’s way and bring them to bear for their sins)…the Accuser got hold of him with the one caveat that Job could not be touched. 

So in a span of just a few short minutes, everything was taken from Job – children flocks, herds and slaves.  Job said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”  He did not sin or turn away from God. 

So…The Accuser comes back to the heavenly court and this time asks that he be allowed to mess with Job himself.  God allows it…with the caveat that Job’s life had to be spared.  So…Job is covered with hideous sores from the sole of his feet to the top of his head.  He sits in an ash heap, using broken pieces of pottery to scrape his sores.  Job’s wife is fed up with his pious lifestyle and tells him to curse God and die!  Job’s reply is, “…Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”

Then Job’s three friends show up: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite….They met together to go and console and comfort him.  They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

They talked together from Chapter 3 to Chapter 37.  Then God answers from a whirlwind in Chapter 38 from our reading for today.  (I wonder if it was similar to the whirlwind that took Elijah to heaven?!?!)

I also often wonder if we have the right ideas about God. (I am sure we don’t but God loves our effort!)   When I was studying religion in college, we were given the three “Omni’s” of God: Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence defined as follows:

Omnipotence means all-powerful. God can do what God wants. God is not subject to physical limitations like humans are. Being omnipotent, God has power over wind, water, gravity, physics, etc. God's power is infinite, or limitless.

Omniscience means all-knowing. God is all all-knowing in the sense that God is aware of the past, present, and future. Nothing takes God by surprise. God’s knowledge is total. God knows all that there is to know and all that can be known.

Omnipresence means all-present. This term means that God is capable of being everywhere at the same time. It means God’s divine presence encompasses the whole of the universe. There is no location where God does not inhabit. God is distinct from the universe, but inhabits the entirety of it. God is everywhere at once.

Does any of this sound familiar to you? 

When you think of God like this, how do you think God’s voice sounded to Job from that whirlwind?  Strong?  Angry?  Righteous?  Annoyed?  Authoritative? 

Our all-knowing, ever-present, all-powerful God is who we serve and who Job served!!!  We, like Martin Luther said in his Catechism, “are to fear and love God” because of ALL that God is..and ALL that we are not! 

It wasn’t until I was in Grad School and we were in Gospel as Performance class,  and working on this passage from Job 38, that I came across another “Omni” of God.

One of my classmates presented God as a father instructing his son – in total love and acceptance.  It was like God, in that whirlwind, reached God’s arm out and put it around Job’s shoulders and began to speak, “²“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? ³Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. ⁴“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.

He showed God as …omnes pia…which means all-loving.  It changed everything my reading of Job’s last chapters.  It was out of love that God spoke!  And, it is out of love the God continues to speak to us today. 

Love so amazing and so divine that this whole universe was created; that the prophets came to bring Israel back to the fold; that Jesus came to bridge the gap between God and humanity forever; that we serve and love and strive to become more and more like Jesus. 

In the light of the events that have happened these past weeks, in our nation and around the world, I pray that we cling even more to the Omnes Pia – the all-loving love of God…and convey that love everywhere we go and to everyone we encounter.  We have more than enough: fear, hate, skepticism, sarcasm, and hopelessness in our world. 

We need so much more: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, generosity, and self-control – all gifts of the Holy Spirit readily available to everyone from our…omnes pia…our all-loving God. 

I pray that we will be bearers of this love, in our circles of life, this week.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen