God Will Protect Me?
Recently, I read an interesting
research conducted by Chicago Divinity School/AP-NORC. The research finds a
majority of Americans who believe in God think the pandemic is a divine message.
God is sending a message that humanity needs to change. The research also finds
this: 73% (with 43% saying so strongly and another 30% saying so somewhat) of
those who identify themselves as born-again Christians believe that God will
protect them from being infected with coronavirus.[1]
In other words, about two thirds of born-again Christians view “godly
protection” as not getting the virus. But in reality, we see both the righteous
and the unrighteous are infected with the virus. In the Bible God does promise
that He will protect His people and watch over them. But what does it mean by
that, since God’s people don’t necessarily avoid infectious diseases, natural
disasters, trials and tribulations in life? The Book of Job gives an answer for
this question.
The story of Job begins in this
way:
“There was once a man in the land
of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared
God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1)
So the Bible tells us that Job was
a righteous man. But still, he had to suffer greatly. He lost his possessions.
He lost his family – his children and his wife. He lost his health. Basically,
he lost everything. If we interpret “godly protection” as not getting into
trouble, there is no way to explain the problem of suffering in Job’s life.
The Invisible World
The Book of Job explains the
problem of suffering in a different way. It takes us behind the scenes of
suffering and shows us that there is an
invisible world. Job’s friends have never seen this invisible world. All
they can see is a visible world – governed by the law of cause and effect. So
they firmly believe that those who suffer adversity that it is the result of
sin. They believe that if Job was truly upright before God, he would have never
had to suffer like this. They falsely accuse Job of being a hypocrite and ask
him to repent. Job is greatly shaken. But somehow Job is allowed to see the
glimpse of the invisible world. And he accepts
the mystery of suffering, even though he doesn’t understand fully why all this
is happening to him, saying, “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and
not receive the bad?” (2:10)
This past week I read a biography
of Billy Graham. There was a time when he almost gave up on the Bible. It was
his crisis of faith. In the early years of his ministry Graham had a close
friend, whose name was Charles Templeton. Many people thought that Templeton
was going to overturn the world with the Gospel. Templeton seemed to be more
eloquent, talented, intelligent than Graham. But, Templeton ended up leaving
the Christian faith, eventually becoming an atheist. He challenged Graham and
asked many difficult questions such as the biblical account of creation,
religion and science, the problem of suffering and evil, and so forth. Graham
couldn’t find an answer. He struggled. One night he walked out into the woods
and set his Bible on a stump and he cried out: “O God! There are many things in
this book I do not understand. There are many problems with it for which I have
no solution. There are many seeming contradictions. There are some areas in it
that do not seem to correlate with modern science. I can’t answer some of the
philosophical and psychological questions Chuck and others are raising.” And
then, Graham fell to his knees and said, “Father, I am going to accept this as Your Word—by faith! I’m
going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I
will believe this to be Your inspired Word!” That’s how Graham overcame his
crisis of faith. That’s how Job overcame his crisis of faith. That’s the
difference between Job and his friends. Job sees
the invisible world by faith, accepts
the mystery of suffering, and believes
God’s faithfulness.
God Is on Your Side
As I shared earlier, Job is greatly
shaken. He questions. He doubts. But still, he firmly believes God is an advocate, not an avenger. On an ash-pile
Job cries out, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him” (13:15a KJV). With
everything going on, he feels distant from God, but again we hear his cry, “For
I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the
earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see
God” (19:25-26 NRSV). His friends rebuke him and condemns him. Again we hear
his cry, “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I shall come
out like gold” (23:10 NRSV). Job is sure God knows and cares. Job is sure God
is for him, not against him. Actually, that’s the main message of the Bible: “God
loves you. He's on your side. He's coming after you. He's relentless.”
In his first letter John proclaims
this same message with his language in this way:
“We know that those who are born of
God do not sin, but the one who was born of God protects them, and the evil one does not touch them” (1 John 5:18).
John uses the same word “touch”
only in one other place, that is, in his Gospel 20:17, where the risen Christ
was recognized by Mary. Mary took hold of him. And he said to her, “Touch me
not. Do not hold on to me. Don’t keep clinging to me.” In other words, the evil
one may tempt us, try us, torment us. He may make us unhappy and miserable and
depress. But he will never get hold of us. He will never cling to us. He will
never get us back into his clutches. That’s what John is saying here. The evil
one can do many things to us, but he will never hold us again. We may be
infected with the virus. We may even die from it. But for those who are born of
God, even death is a blessing, a direct passage toward heaven. We are safe in the arms of Jesus!
The Best Is Yet to Come
We know the end of the story of Job.
Job’s fortunes are restored twofold. His health is restored. His family is
restored. Here the point is not that God wants us to be healthy and wealthy.
No! The story of Job teaches us that the day will surely come when each of us must
give a personal account to God. For those who endure and trust and stay
faithful, that will be the day of vindication and restoration. And for those
who don’t, that will be the day of judgment. In Hebrews 11 we see faithful
ones, those who lived by faith, not by sight. The Bible testifies about them in
this way:
“All of these died in faith without
having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them.
They confessed that they were strangers and
foreigners on the earth, for people
who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland…. They desire a
better country, that is, a heavenly
one” (Hebrews 11:13-16).
Our hope is not in this world. Our
hope is not in a vaccine. Our hope is in God and His everlasting kingdom. Some
of you may have heard a story about an old missionary couple who had been
working in Africa for years, and they were returning to New York City to
retire. They had no pension; their health was broken; they were old now and
afraid. They discovered they were booked on the same ship as President Teddy
Roosevelt, who was returning from one of his big-game hunting expeditions. When
the ship docked in New York, a band was waiting to greet the President. The
mayor and other dignitaries were there, but no one noticed this missionary
couple. They slipped off the ship and found a cheap flat on the East side. That
night, the missionary’s spirit broke. He poured out his heart to the Lord. He
said, “Lord, I can’t take this. You are not treating us fairly. The President
received this tremendous homecoming, but no one met us as we returned home.”
But when he finished it, God simply said, “My son, you’re not home yet!”[2]
Yes, we are not home yet! May the
Lord open our eyes, that we may see an invisible world. May the Lord open our
eyes, that we may see Jesus who loves us and watches over us. May the Lord open
our eyes, that we may know that the best is yet to come. Amen.
[1]
Source: AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, quoted from Christian
Century (June 17, 2020), p. 19.
[2]
Ray Stedman, Talking To My Father (Barbour
& Co. 1997).
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