The Interruption of Blessing // Blessed to be a Blessing, Part 2

They say that God is a God of Blessing. Hmm. So how come there’s so much suffering in the world? What went wrong? How come I have to suffer? Where’s God’s blessing then?

The classic dilemma when we talk about God’s blessing is, "Well okay, so if God is a god of blessing, how come there is so much suffering in the world? How come I've had to go through this and this and that? How come there are natural disasters? Come on, how come?" And you know something, that's a very real and a very reasonable question. How come?

And it's something that's always in the back of my mind when I talk with people about God’s blessing because chances are someone who is listening is going to be suffering right at the moment. And that person may well find any notion of God being a god of blessing, pretty difficult to swallow just now. So let’s unpack that just a bit today. How come?

Right from the beginning God was a god of blessing. Yesterday on the program we had a look at the very, very first chapter in the Bible, Genesis chapter 1. And when God creates the first living creatures he blesses them and gets them to multiply and fill the earth. And when God creates us, male and female, he blesses us by handing over the whole creation to us. “Here, take all the birds and the fish and the beasts and have it all, it's yours to use, subdue them, fill the earth, multiply.”

And when you look through the Bible, the whole concept of blessing, the word bless, appears over 350 times but at the same time there's plenty of bad stuff that happens to people right through the Bible, and plenty of bad stuff that happens to people today, here and now.

Sometimes we look at them and quietly think, “Well, you know, he deserved that.” But other times they're innocent people – really bad things happen and we wonder, "Well, if God is a loving God like those Christians say that He is, this God who wants to bless us, supposedly, if that’s who He is, how can He let those things happen to people like that?" That is a really good question.

One of my favourite actors, (I grew up as a baby boomer) one of my favourite television shows of all time is MASH. It's an American program and it ran for, I think, 11 seasons. And the star of MASH is a man called Alan Alda, an actor whom I just enormously admire and respect. He played Hawkeye Pearce in MASH and played a whole bunch of things afterwards. I saw him recently interviewed on a program called, "Inside the Actors Studio". The interviewer was a man called James Lipton and he asks Alan Alda a question like this, he says, "If there is a God, what do you want to say to him when you get to heaven?"

Now, Alan Alda is a really friendly, warm, engaging kind of guy and it's been a really warm and friendly and engaging kind of interview until Lipton asks this question. And Alda's face goes black and dark and serious and he says something like this, "God. God, tell me about the earthquakes and the tsunamis and the suffering. Tell me all that was just a bit of a joke."

And a lot of people feel like that about God. Christians talk about a God of blessings, Christians talk about a God of love but there's a whole bunch of bad stuff happening in this world. How do you explain that away? Okay, why? If God is a god of blessing, how come all this suffering is going on?

So we've looked at God’s own account of his creation in Genesis, chapter 1. The very first living creatures he creates he blesses them and says, "Go and multiply and fill the earth." He creates us and he hands the whole thing over to us, enormous blessing. And here are you and I, joint owners in creation because God created us in his own image and he handed the whole thing over to us. And when you stop and think about that that was a huge blessing.

Right at the point of creation, God was in the blessing business. It's profound. It's a plan for us to live in relationship with him. But then something happens. Even though God has given Adam and Eve the Garden of Eden, to keep it, to till it, to be blessed there – He has this perfect plan of blessing – Adam and Eve rebel! They do the one thing that God says, "Don't do this” but eat the apple from this one tree. And there were consequences. Rebellion against God always does have consequences.

And God to the woman said, "Well, I will greatly increase your pains in child bearing. With pain you will give birth to children, your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you." And he turns to Adam and he says, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat of it, cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field, by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken, for dust you are and to dust you will return."

Enter pain and suffering into the history of humanity and it's been there for all of humanity ever since. Now you might say to me, "Berni that is just so insensitive. What about when there's a still-born baby? What about the tens of thousands that are killed in a tsunami? What about the young teenager who gets raped and murdered? How can you say that it's sin? How can you say that it's punishment from God? How can you say that?"

Here it is, God made us in His image but when we don't like who He is, when it doesn't suit us, we try and remake him in our own image. God's a god of blessing but that blessing happens when we're in a relationship with Him. It's really well laid out in a part of the Bible and I encourage you to go have a look and read this, Leviticus chapter 26. It's one of the first books of the Old Testament. It's a perfect summary of where God stands on this. The old covenant was the promise between God and his people of Israel and he lays that out in this chapter, let’s go there beginning in verse 1. He says:

Don't make idols or set up sacred stones and bow to them because I am the Lord your God. Observe my Sabbaths and have reverence for my sanctuary because I am the Lord your God. If you follow these decrees and you are careful to obey my commands, I'll send you rain in its season and the ground will yield its crops and the trees of the field their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting and you'll eat all the food you want and live in your land in safety. I'll grant peace in the land and you'll lie down and no-one will make you afraid and I'll remove the savage beast from the land and the sword will not pass through your land ...

You'll pursue your enemies and they'll fall before you. Five of you will chase a hundred and a hundred of you will chase a thousand and your enemies will fall by the sword before you. I'll look on you with favour, I'll make you fruitful, increase your numbers and I will keep my covenant with you.

You will still be eating last years harvest when you will have to clear it out to make room for the new. I'll put my dwelling place with you, I'll be among you, I'll walk among you. I'll be your God and you will be my people because I'm the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you wouldn't live in slavery anymore BUT if you will not listen to me and carry out all these commands, if you reject me and my decrees and abhor my laws and fail to carry out my commandments and so violate my covenant then I will do this to you. I will bring upon you sudden terror, wasting diseases, fevers that will destroy your sight and drain away your life. You'll plant seed in vain because your enemies will eat it. I'll set my face against you so that you'll be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you and you will flee even when no-one is pursuing you.

You see? God is a god of blessing. God wants to have a relationship with YOU and with me and that's the greatest blessing of all. I was talking to a man recently, my own age, he's a really good businessman. He has three adult sons and he wanted to bless his sons, form a company with them and do this and do that. One by one they rejected him, they turned their backs on him and they walked away and he said, "I wanted to bless them but I couldn't.”

The greatest sadness of his life and that's what God's like. God is a god of blessing but when we reject him, when we turn away from him, there are consequences. Now, how do God’s blessings still fit into this world that's turned its back on him? Well we'll look at that tomorrow on the program.