What happens in heaven (Job 1)

Who rules in heaven?

I used to ask that question to kids when the Trophy Wife and I led Children’s Worship at the church we attended in East Lake, a community in Birmingham, Al., that could best be described as ‘transitional.’ The children’s ministry did not reflect the attendance of the church as a whole because it was decidedly mixed. Our Vacation Bible School drew kids from the neighborhood, which was racially mixed, while Sunday morning worship was very White.

When I asked that question, these kids would kind of look at me as if unsure of what to answer, like it was a trick question. Eventually, someone would answer “God?” in a quiet voice, turning the answer into a question.

Then I would ask, “Who rules in hell?” And it was amazing – without missing a beat, with no pause whatsoever, I’d get a very loud, confident response from both the kids who grew up in church and those who didn't: “The Devil!”

Which is incorrect, of course. God rules in Hell just as He rules in Heaven. God created Hell as a place of punishment and separation where, eventually, the Devil (or Satan or Lucifer - pick your name) himself will be cast into for all eternity. How can the character we call “the Devil” rule in a place where he is being sent as punishment for his rebellion?

But what amazes me about this is how much our theology is shaped by popular culture. I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons that often depicted this fiery-red, pitch fork wielding, horned Devil sitting on some kind of throne in this place called “Hell,” directing his demons.

The character of Satan, in John Milton’s epic “Paradise Lost,” at one point says, “Here we may reign secure, and in my choice to reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”

I put that last line in bold face, because it has been oft-quoted. And I wonder if that isn’t where this concept began that permeates our culture that somehow Heaven and Hell are equal and opposite reflections of each other, the one where God reigns over streets of gold while the other is a place where Satan reigns over fire and brimstone.

Even our concept of Heaven gets twisted. In the popular book “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” by Mitch Albom, a newspaper columnist I really admire, the story is told of a man who feels unimportant, who dies and goes to heave and meets five people who tell him how much his life really did matter. There the man discovers what his life was all about – but nowhere in this story do we get a glimpse of God or Jesus Christ.

Even in our Christian churches, when a member dies we often hear people say, “They’ll be welcomed in Heaven by …” and we’ll go on to list a lot of family and friends who preceded this person in death – spouse, maybe a child, mother and father, a dear friend – without mentioning the only person that matters: Jesus.

The Trophy Wife and I went to see a really wonderful movie recently called “Paul, the Apostle,” which has to do with the apostle Paul in prison in Rome, and the plight of Christians being persecuted in that city yet converts being added to their number daily. In the end – and I hate to be the spoiler – Paul is executed, and we get a glimpse of Paul awakening in this place that we assume is heaven, and all these people who are lined up to meet him. Off in the distance, finally, we see this person coming over a hill that we assume is Jesus, as if Jesus is waiting to let these family and friends greet Paul before Paul sees the one person that, if you’ve read Paul’s writings, you know Paul was most longing to see and who is the focal point of a Believer’s afterlife.

I am afraid I am sounding critical here, and I guess I am. I'm not saying we won’t see other people in Heaven. I assume we will – Jonathan Edwards put it this way: “The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things . . . but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in anything else whatsoever, that will yield them delight and happiness, will be what will be seen of God in them.” In other words, all these other things will be secondary gifts that God gives us, and our happiness in those things will only be part of our happiness in being in the presence of God.

But I know that the one person who, according to Scripture, will welcome me and who will be the focal point of it all is God, with His Son Jesus by His side. As the Apostle John wrote of his experience in viewing Heaven: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead” (Revelation 1:17).

But for some reason, we have trouble putting Heaven and Hell in a proper, Biblical perspective.

That was a long introduction to get to where I what I really want to talk about, which is the first two chapters of one of my favorite books of the Bible, the book of Job. I encourage you to read the first two chapters, because it's a strange, strange story with a lot of implications.

Job gives us this glimpse into Heaven, into the presence of God. And when I read this passage with people in church, I always ask “What bothers you about this passage?” And there is a lot to be bothered about.

But one thing that always gives people pause is the line that says “One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”’

Wait. Satan in Heaven? Presenting himself to the Lord? And God not only acknowledging Satan, but having a conversation with him?

I have had people say that can’t happen, that God cannot tolerate the presence of evil. I have had people say that God banished Satan from heaven and would not allow him to return. I have had people tell me this is just a story, a prologue to an allegory if you will, not to be taken literally because Satan would not be in Heaven.

Yet in the book of Zechariah (3:1-2) we read, “Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. …” and in Revelation (12:10) where it says, “Then I hear a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night …”

Satan is throughout the Bible story – blinding minds (2 Cor 4-4); stealing God’s Word (Matt 13:19); opposing God’ work (1 Thess 2:18); tempting God’s people (1 Cor 7:5), attacking God’s word (Gen 3:1) spreading false doctrine (1 Tim 1:3), persecuting God’s church (2:10).

But throughout it all, Satan’s main purpose seems to be spelled out in that verse in Revelation: accusing. If indeed, as Zechariah and Revelation say, Satan stands beside God making accusations, then clearly there is something going on we don’t often hear about in our churches.

And if you go on to read the story of Job, it’s kind of a scary idea. Because while Job is certainly “upright and blameless,” I wonder if Job isn’t a picture of all of us, to some extent; I wonder if Satan doesn’t stand there accusing even me to God, trying to prove me unworthy in God’s eyes (which I am of course, except for the fact that my unworthiness has been replaced by the ultimate worth of Jesus and his Sacrifice, redeeming me in the sight of God and even, I assume, before the eyes of Satan himself).

And while I love that God is so confident in Job’s faith that God even says to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job?”, and I pray that would be worthy of that kind of faith in me by God, I also fear that kind of attention by Satan and God. Do I really want God to say to Satan, “Consider my servant Ray?” Especially when I see what happens to Job next?

Maybe Job isn’t such a strange story. Maybe it’s our story – all of us who are followers of Christ. Maybe this is just part of the plan - We commit to being followers of God, so God choses, for whatever reason, to risk His reputation – His glory – on our actions.

And I have to ask, what is God thinking? Doesn't He realize how weak and willing to sin I am?

Yet from the beginning, didn’t Satan believe he could turn Adam and Eve against God? Didn’t he even believe he could tempt Jesus himself to turn against God? Isn’t that the essence of the whole cosmic battle?

Job was an ordinary man, flesh and blood. But he was asked to endure something with cosmic consequences.

For some reason, what we do here in this life matters to God. Paul says in 1 Cor 4:9 - “We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men.” There are verses about the cloud of witnesses that observe what we do. Maybe that’s the gathering that takes place at the beginning of Job, that presenting of the beings to God.

It’s an amazing responsibility we’ve been given.

I wonder if I really comprehend what my faith means to God. In some mysterious way, Job’s ordeal was worth it to God, because God took a risk in giving human beings like you and me free will, giving humanity a value to God that we can’t imagine. I’ve often wondered about that passage in Matthew 13:58, where Jesus’ power seems limited by a lack of faith.

We need a right understanding of God, of Heaven, of what our lives mean in the sense of eternity and what it means when the Westminster Shorter Catechism says that our chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy Him forever.

See, true faith is not about getting God to give me the life I want.

True faith is about putting me in a position to glorify God in whatever comes my way.

Ravi Zacharias said it this way: Faith is confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and in his power so that even when his power does not serve my end my confidence in him remains because of who he is.

Because Satan is indeed in heaven – for a time, anyway – accusing us before God, saying we’re not worthy and ready to make a bet with God that we will reject God when things don’t go our way.

The question we must live with every day is, who is going to be proved correct? Satan? Or God?

Know thyself

Self-discovery. Self-esteem. Self-fulfillment. Self-expression. Self-knowledge.

Library shelves –if not entire libraries – are filled with books helping us as individuals to learn more about ourselves, discover ourselves, look inside ourselves to feel better about ourselves.

And a certain amount of self-awareness and introspection is healthy.

But I fear there is a huge difference between a ‘certain’ amount and the amount of introspection that many of us engage in, that our cultural know-it-alls tell us we need to do in order to be emotionally healthy and well-adjusted.

Simply sign on to Facebook to see how many “selfies” – pictures we take of ourselves – are posted. I was on a flight recently with a women's college athletic team. The young lady across the aisle spent the entire two-hour flight scanning pictures on her phone – of herself. She zoomed in, cropped, turned, and did all the things we can do on our phones to see ourselves. I saw an article recently that said 30 percent of pictures taken by young people age 18-24 are “selfies.” In fact, "selfie" was the 'word of the year' recently, indicating how important and used that word became in today's world. The very word reeks of narcissism.

Most Christians are familiar with the verse where Jesus said he can sum up the law and the prophets in a couple of sentences: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Unfortunately, the words from that verse that seem to stick with us are “buzz buzz buzz love noise noise noise yourself!”

I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t love ourselves. What I am saying is that loving ourselves is pretty easy. Even those of us who are not happy with the way we are seem pretty consumed with our own misery and insecurities and how we don’t think we match up to whatever the “ideal” is. We can be consumed with both how great we think we are as well as how lacking we think we are, and both are indications of an over-absorption with self.

That verse we usually call “the Greatest Commandment” (there is one, followed by "a second that is like the first") says nothing about loving ourselves, except that we should love others as we love ourselves. And I’ll come back to some thoughts on that idea in a minute.

There is a real value in some amount of self-study. Scripture acknowledges this: we're told to examine ourselves in 2 Corinthians 13:5; examine our ways in Lamentations 3:40; keep a close watch on ourselves in 1 Timothy 4:16; keep our hearts with all vigilance in Proverbs 4:23; look carefully at how we live in Ephesians 5:15, and to not think more highly of ourselves than we should in Romans 12:3. These commands require us to do some soul-searching and looking inside ourselves.

But not to the extent society says we should. Today, everything is about "how I feel" and "respecting my feelings" and "being real'' (whatever that means), and this type of extreme over-kill of self-study reinforces our own natural self-centeredness and self-absorption, which is the crux of sin.

In a previous blog I wrote about knowing God, and how our focus is supposed to be on knowing Him, not Him knowing us. He doesn’t need an introduction to us. He created us. The very hairs on our heads are numbered.

I don’t think the Bible is there to teach us about ourselves. I think the Bible is there to teach us about God – and to learn about human nature. The Bible teaches us more about ourselves than we can ever learn by constant introspection.

The most important things we can learn about ourselves we learn by focusing on Christ.

We’re called to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for focusing on our self.

The second part of that verse – love your neighbor as yourself – helps us, I believe, to find our true worth.

Maybe I’m wrong, but if you are confident and happy with yourself, then love others with the same confidence and happiness in them. See them as you see yourself – and encourage them to be confident and happy. Don't make your self-confidence based on how you compare to other people (thinking more of yourself than of others); see others as being just as capable and worthy as you see yourself.

If you have what we call a “poor self-image,’’ meaning you think of yourself as lacking and worthless and unlovable, and you want to overcome that, then start by treating other people the way you wish you could treat yourself, the way you'd like to see yourself. Look at them as if they believe they are lacking and worthless and unlovable, and help them get over that by encouraging them, telling them how wrong they are, reminding them of what they have and how worthy they are and how much you love them. I have to tell you, I can be around people who tell me how much they believe in me all day, and no matter how I feel about myself I always walk away wondering if they might not be right!

In turn, you just might find yourself. Psychologists or psychiatrists or whoever it is that studies people always point out that the people who are involved in other people’s lives tend to be happier and better adjusted. Maybe it’s getting involved in a program that feeds and clothes and builds houses for other people; maybe it’s as simple as talking to a stranger and telling them how great you think they are. But it’s been proven over and over again that when you focus on other people and get engaged in causes outside yourself, you end up feeling happier about yourself, better about yourself, and what we call “well adjusted.”

Crazy, isn’t it? The less we focus on ourselves, the more in-focus we seem to become.

The disciple John often referred to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Now, John may have thought of himself as being special in some way – and there are conversations he had with Jesus and the other disciples that could lead you to believe that – but I think John was simply saying what all of us can say; we are all the “people that Jesus loves.”

John, in 1 John, writes “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as he is.”

Looking to Jesus is not only how we learn who Jesus is, and what love is, but also who we are and who we are meant to become.

I can't learn that by studying myself.

Speaking the truth about God (Job 42)

Do you want God to know you?

Or do you want to know God?

In today’s church and among younger Christians, I often hear people talk about having a “relationship” with God – which is absolutely correct. However, most of our culture seems to think of “relationship” as something that is casual and doesn’t take any real work. Too many of our relationships end when one party gets dissatisfied, usually because they feel the other party in the relationship has quit caring about their feelings, or “just doesn’t understand me.”

I read this quote recently from a student at Calvin College, a Christian college in Michigan, who said, “When I realize that my faith wasn’t necessarily about the Christian Reformed church and it wasn’t even necessarily about the Bible, but about my relationship with God and that God is all-compassing and loving, I felt very free.”

See what I mean? "My faith wasn't necessarily about the Bible, but about my relationship with God."

But how does this young person know God? By his emotion, by what makes him feel loved and affirmed and even approved. It's like we think the important thing is that God knows us, as if we're some kind of mystery to the God who, according to Scripture, knows the very hairs on our head (Luke 12:7).

The issue isn’t God knowing me. He knows me; heck, He created me.

The issue is, how well do I know God?

Occasionally I like to ask the following trick question: How many stories are in the Bible? The answer, really, is just one – the story of God. All Scripture is designed to reveal God to us, through many mini-stories, if you will.

And how do we get to know God? It’s rather old-fashioned, of course, but the best way is to read His Word.

I know, I know. That’s what your fundamentalist grandfather always said. But where is the emotion in reading Scripture? Where is the feel good?

Oh, it’s not that folks are against a structured, daily reading of The Bible, but there sometimes seems to be a “feeling” that it isn’t really critical, because, they argue, God only cares about our heart.

I was going through the book of Job – again – and something in the last chapter hit me in a way that I hadn’t thought about before. It’s pretty simple and straightforward, but maybe because the book is so long (42 chapters), with so much dialogue, I was ready to simply skip through the resolution and hadn’t given the last chapter the complete study it deserves.

But right there after God finishes his long monologue where he reminds Job that He is God and no one else – least of all Job – is, God turns to Job’s friends and “After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has.”

We get so caught up in God talking to Job that we sometimes forget that Jobs’ friends could apparently hear God, or that God actually talks to the three friends and says, in essence, “You thought you were speaking about me and on my behalf to Job, but you were only speaking from your own wisdom and foolishness.” And God says to them, “You better ask Job for forgiveness, and if Job forgives you, I will forgive you.” There is a whole chapter’s worth of implications in that passage, but I’m not going there right now.

No, what struck me is God getting angry because these three well-meaning and pretty knowledgeable men did not speak the truth about God, and God didn’t (doesn’t) like being spoken of incorrectly.
For some reason, I started reading the book of Ezekiel the other day.

And if you want to know what makes God unhappy, read Ezekiel. It’s really pretty brutal. More specifically, in the context I’m trying to make, read Ezekiel 13 from The Message, the passage that says (and I’ve edited for space), “Son of man, preach against the prophets of Israel who are making things up out of their own heads and calling it ‘prophesying.’ Preach to them the real thing. Tell them, ‘Listen to God’s Message!’ God, the Master, pronounces doom on the empty-headed prophets who do their own thing and know nothing of what’s going on! …. All they do is fantasize comforting illusions and preach lying sermons. They say ‘God says . . .’ when God hasn’t so much as breathed in their direction. … Aren’t your sermons tissues of lies, saying ‘God says . . .’ when I’ve done nothing of the kind? Therefore—and this is the Message of God, the Master, remember—I’m dead set against prophets who substitute illusions for visions and use sermons to tell lies. The fact is that they’ve lied to my people. They’ve said, ‘No problem; everything’s just fine,’ when things are not at all fine. …”

If that doesn’t put some fear into you, I don’t know what does.

I write about God, my faith, and even teach a bit when asked. There are all kinds of passages warning people who teach about the extra burden put on them, but these two – the reaction of God at the end of Job and God’s reaction in Ezekiel – really hit me. Because the truth is, I have talked about God my whole life, and I know that things I believed to be true about God 15, 20, 30 years ago were not correct. It’s what I believed at the time, but age and study and learning have shown me where I was wrong, and I am afraid I’ll have to answer for not telling the truth about God, even if I meant well (as I believe Job’s friends meant well).

So how do we know about God?

Now we get to the point.

The primary way we get to understand God is by reading the Bible. God’s Word. Holy Scripture. As Luther would say, “Sola scriptura,” which means that Scripture alone is authoritative for the faith and practice of the Christian. The Bible is complete, authoritative, and true.

I’m not talking memorizing Bible verses, although that’s not a bad thing. Personally, I can’t give you chapter and verse, yet when someone starts quoting a verse of Scripture chances are I know it and can say it along with them (in one translation or another). I know people who can give you chapter and verse and I wish I was like them. I even bought a little book called “52 Verses Every Christian Should Memorize” or something like that, and really worked on memorization. At the end, I knew the verses – but still couldn’t recall book, chapter and verse!

What I’m talking about is just reading. Letting the words seep into your brain, your heart, your soul. It’s reading with a purpose – not to make ourselves smarter, but to know God better.

Jesus, in Matthew 22:37-38 (I know the verse by heart, but had to look up the reference), said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”

All your heart, soul and mind, which is pretty thorough. And as we have seen in Job and Ezekiel, wrong thoughts about God produce wrong belief about God. You can’t really love what you don’t really know.

Paul writes in Philippians 1, “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” Love “abounds” with knowledge and discernment.

Paul, again, in 2 Corinthians 3:18, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

We become what we behold. When I was a kid, I wanted to be like the characters John Wayne played in the movies. So I watched and studied them, and tried to walk and talk like John Wayne (which conjures up a pretty funny image, I know).

Likewise, when we read and study God’s Word, we find it transforms us. We find ourselves suddenly losing interest in doing things we used to do; find that better person that reflects the image of God that resides in us. We start to actually look more like Christ! (Paul even says we should be “imitators” of Christ in Ephesians 5).

Paul, in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, writes, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

Most of us want to do “good works.” Young people today, in particular, seem more interested in getting involved in making the world a better place to live than they are in getting a good job, a career, etc. Many young people honestly desire to do something for God. But what Paul said is pretty clear: you can’t be equipped to really do good work until you are immersed in the word of God.

The Bible shows us God’s priorities, His values, His mission, His heart. It shows us what he has been doing in the world, and what He is doing. It shows us, as one writer said, how to love “the forgotten and the misfit. It shows us the value of shepherding our families. It introduces us to the generosity of other Christians (2 Corinthians 8:1–7), and calls us to be openhanded with what God gives us. It heralds the sanctity of every human life and inspires us to fight for the unborn. It declares that race should not be a barrier to Christian unity, but a beautiful occasion for it.”

But along the way, we have to know how to speak correctly about God. And that only comes from knowing God’s Word.

I don’t know exactly where I heard this so I don’t know who to give the credit to, so let me just say this isn’t my original idea. But the words went something like, “This world is not falling apart; God’s plan is coming together.” I like that. It is a great reminder, and a great comfort. But I don’t understand what God’s plan is unless I see the picture presented in Scripture.

When I find myself in those times when I struggle with prayer or reading Scripture, I know down in my soul that I must continue.

It’s like talking to my wife – sometimes I have to stay with the communication process even when it seems we’re on totally different levels. And eventually, because of our commitment, we get back on the same page.

I like the way John Piper put it when addressing the loss of joy in your relationship with God: “… I am reminding you (1) that God is present in the darkness, (2) that he is holding on to his people when they feel barely able to hold on to him, and (3) that though you may feel unsure of your salvation in this struggle, you may be totally sure you will not have salvation if you give up the struggle and walk away.”

You can’t have your relationship with God without the Bible. You can’t grow in your relationship with God without the Bible.

The good news (quite literally) is that we do indeed have access to the Bible - and, therefore, to being able to speak truthfully about God.