09/18/2024
What Kind of Love Do You Have For God?
In Sunday’s message about Job, I talked about how important relationship is when it comes to getting answers to our questions about God. The question that Job is really being tested on is this: can he love God for who God is—or does he only love God for what God can do for him?
It got me thinking about the various kinds of love.
1. There is the love we offer because I get something positive in return. This is a relatively selfish and transactional kind of love.
2. There is the love I offer because I enjoy our time together; because you are funny, interesting, insightful. I am even pleased when good things happen to you—especially when I am part of those good things or when those good things make you more generous or affectionate toward me. This is slightly better, at least the one I love matters a little more, even it is still a bit self-serving.
3. And finally, there is the love I have for you simply because of who you are. I love you because are my child, you are my spouse, my parent, my church, my country. This is the kind of love of which God is worthy. This is the kind of all-encompassing love that God brought us into this world to share and enjoy with Him.
At one point, Job’s wife tells him to curse God and die. His friends tell him to just admit that you’re a sinner and God is just in punishing you. But Job has too much integrity and too much faithfulness to do either. In the end, Job sticks with God, learning first hand what it means to be loved for who he is and what it means to love God for who God is. In that sense, it is a book that ends more or less happily ever after.
Archived Posts
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I had one too many examples yesterday. Here’s the "Ask Pastor Tim" scenario that didn’t make the cut for Sunday’s sermon: (read more)
Not If, But When, the Crisis Comes
One of the best Bible commentators alive today is N.T. Wright or Tom Wright. When reflecting on the parable of the wise and foolish maidens, he wrote this:...
What I wanted to say
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Here is the benediction I was going to use before discovering the excellent MLK Jr. video.
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I want to share with you a small portion of my conversation with Artificial Intelligence online. Some of you know, I use Chat-GPT as a thoughtful sounding board for the questions and insights I’m working with on whatever scriptures I’m studying each week. What follows is an example of those discussions...
One Final Scene About Scrooge
There was one more scene in Dickens’s novel that reveals something of what has happened to Scrooge over the years. I did not have time to share it on Sunday, but I believe it reveals a great deal about the regrets in Scrooge’s life....
What Jacob Marley Would Do,
If He Could Do It…
I thought about using the following for a benediction—since Jacob Marley was warning Scrooge about the danger of loving money and what it could buy. Ends up with the Cantata and everything else going on, I didn’t have the time. So here is what you might have heard if the sermon itself was 5 minutes shorter!
A Confirming Word on Old King Herod
I just want to echo what Rick said in his fine sermon yesterday (Nov. 23). Herod was a ruthless tyrant and skilled politician. When the Magi don’t report back to him, he decides to kill all the male children of Bethlehem under the age of 2. That’s one paranoid dude.