January 29
Job 35:1-37:24
Though God is infinitely more holy, more loving, more intelligent, wiser, etc. than any of His creation, it is a mistake to render Him so big that we render Him emotionless. We would not want to be married to an individual devoid of emotions. We would be concerned if one of our children seemed devoid of emotions. The truth is in any true relationship both parties have emotions or it wouldn't really be a relationship. So, being in a relationship with God, not simply observing Him as a religious entity, we must understand that He has the full range of emotions, though He never loses control. Personhood indicates that the individual possesses intellect, emotion, and volition or free will. God, is three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each person of the trinity is personal with mind, emotion and His own free will. To deny God's emotions is to deny that He actually has a personality. Though I will not write out each verse for the sake of space, we see the Father's emotions displayed in Scripture. We see His grief in Genesis 6:6, His love in Jeremiah 31:3 and John 3:16, His anger in Psalm 7:11 and Deuteronomy 9:22, His compassion in Judges 2:18, His hate in Proverbs 6:16, and His joy in Isaiah 62:5. Though God does indeed have emotion, He doesn't have mood swings. He is never threatened and His character never wavers despite our actions because He is indeed perfect and holy. But never mistake, like our actions on earth have an emotional impact on our fellow man, they also have an impact on our loving God.
To be fair, when the characters in the book of Job were speaking there was no Bible. We get a glimpse at the timing of the book of Job in Job 32:2, "Then Elihu son of Barakel the Buzite, of the clan of Ram,..." We read back in Genesis 22:20-21, "Soon after this, Abraham heard that Milcah, his brother Nahor’s wife, had borne Nahor eight sons. The oldest was named Uz, the next oldest was Buz,...". Buz became a group of people called the "Buzites", and Elihu was the son of a Buzite, which gives us the timing of these events in Job to around the time of Abraham. We then read Elihu's comments in Job 35:6-8, "If you sin, how does that affect God? Even if you sin again and again, what effect will it have on him? If you are good, is this some great gift to him? What could you possibly give him? No, your sins affect only people like yourself, and your good deeds also affect only humans." Though some of what Elihu said was correct, this statement was wrong. Our personal God, whom we walk with, who sees our every move is indeed emotionally affected when we sin. So affected is He, and so demonstrative of His love, we read the familiar verse of depth of this love in John 3:16, "“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life."
So often people make the same mistake concerning the Son, Jesus Christ. They render Him the mascot on the cross that signifies our faith and remove what it is that He was willing to withstand out of love to free us from the bondage of sin and death, by allowing Himself to be persecuted and suffer death on our behalf. Do we miss His agony as He was overcome with sorrow to the point of actually sweating drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane in Luke 22:44? Do we miss His weeping over the scene of His friend Lazarus' death in John 11:35? Do we miss in Acts 9:4, that Paul was not just persecuting the Christians, but he was persecuting Jesus, Himself? Don't miss the words in Isaiah 53:5, "But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins; He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed." Yes, it was because of our sins that He was scourged, and it was because of our sins that He withstood the agony and the humiliation of His death on the cross. So, yes we sin and we will continue to sin, because of our flesh, and our inability to achieve perfection this side of eternity. But may we never minimize the impact that it has on all three Persons of the trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit. When you enter into a relationship with God it is a real relationship with real emotions.
Messages from Pastor Lloyd Pulley: