The majority of the book of Job is like a game of tennis - Job on one side of the net and his three 'friends' Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar on the other. The friends take turns hitting the ball to Job, telling him that's it is the wicked and the sinner who suffer in this world under the judgment and hand of God, not the righteous, God fearer. Therefore, because of everything Job is suffering he must be among the wicked and therefore must repent and turn back to God.

Each time Job's hits their 'words of comfort' 'back over the net' saying they are wrong - his own experience and the experience of many others proves that the innocent do suffer and the wicked often do prosper. For the reader knows from Job 1-2 that his suffering is not because of his sin or wickedness, for Job was 'blameless and upright, he feared God and shunned evil.' (1:1)

While it is generally true that those who are righteous and fear the Lord enjoy peace and blessing (Prob 11:19), Job shows us that the worldview that suffering is a direct result of one's sin is far too simplistic. The reality is, in this fallen world, tainted by sin, the innocent do suffer.

The gospel (the good news of Jesus) shows us that innocent suffering not only exists but God often uses it for his good plans and purposes. For in Jesus, we see the ultimate act of innocent suffering. He was pure and without sin, and yet he suffered the humiliation and injustice of not just suffering ... but dying - being executed by those he made.

Job teaches us that following Jesus doesn't guarantee health, wealth and prosperity (although some preachers teach this). Suffering still comes to those who fear and follow the Lord - either because of the effects of sin in this world, or even as in Job and Jesus' case, to bring about the plans and purposes of God.

The atheist has no answers or hope in the face of suffering. However, the good news of the gospel is that Jesus innocent suffering gives us hope in our own suffering. For Jesus death was followed by his resurrection - meaning he has paid for sin, and has overcome death, and therefore is able to pave the way for a new creation without sin, suffering and death.

The innocent suffering of Jesus gives us sure and certain hope that the righteous will enjoy the peace and blessing of God - not just for a lifetime, but forever. Therefore, our suffering, we ought to reach out to Jesus, and take comfort in the fact that he experienced suffering himself, he knows our suffering and will one day deliver us from our suffering.

In the story of the Prodigal Son, the younger son was lost but was found and returned to the joy and love of his father. The spotlight’s on him for the first part of the story. Despite treating his father in an unforgivable way, his father forgives and welcomes him home. 

But there are two brothers in the story. The older brother does what’s expected of him, but when his lost brother comes home he refuses to come in and share his father’s joy. He's miffed that the father’s lavishing his wealth and love on his younger rebellious brother after he’s wasted his share of the estate doing whatever he wanted, while he (the older brother) didn't get to do anything he wanted with the father’s wealth. 

The two sons both wanted the same thing – they wanted what their father had with no strings attached – no responsibility to him. One brazenly took the money and ran. The other thought he could manipulate the father by his good life. Neither was interested in the father. He was just the means to get what they wanted. And that attitude isolated both of them from the father – they were both lost.

Some of our lives look like the younger brother – thumbing our nose at God and living however we like. Some of us look more like the older brother – we live a good life and do the right thing and expect God to leave us alone. Some of us flip back and forth between the two. But both ways leave us lost – away from God and outside his love.

The good news is that we all have a much better older brother who came to seek out lost people and save us from an eternity away from God. His name is Jesus. He brings the lost children of God from both near and far away back to the Father who loves us and longs to welcome us home. 

Jesus’ death and resurrection is the way home into the eternal love and joy of the father. He’s seeking you to save you. Will you let him find you?

In Christ’s love,

Paul

Nearly three years ago I bought a bike from the Two Monkeys Bike shop in Penshurst. It was a flat bar road bike that I thought would be a good hybrid bike to commute to the office on and go on weekend rides. When I was invited to go out riding with the boys on Saturday morning I turned up on my hybrid, wearing tennis shorts and a tee-shirt to be met by a bunch of guys on carbon fibre road bikes, wearing lycra and all looking very serious. I was duly dropped on the very first hill and watched the group rapidly ride off into the distance!

Since then, I’ve traded the hybrid for a road bike, ride 2 or 3 times a week, have swapped the tennis shorts for lycra and have become somewhat of a cycling fanatic. Not only is the Tour de France compulsory late night viewing, but also the Giro d’Italia, Vuelta Espana and various one day classics.

My growing fascination with the Tour de France (TDF) and other professional bike races has led me to appreciate the intricacies of road racing – especially the different tactics, team selections and roles of different riders in the peloton.

Not only are there different ‘races’ happening within the race itself, there are different race strategies being implemented depending on the type of riders in the team. One type of rider is the sprinter. He is normally a strong rider with explosive speed who is able to launch his sprint out of the bunch for a stage win on flatter courses (e.g. Andre Griepel, Marcel Kittel and Mark Cavendish)

Then there is the climber. These guys are lightweight mountain goats who have huge stamina levels that mean they can go up long steep climbs real at real pace. Alberto Contador, Nairo Quinatana, Chris Froome are the best climbers around and are normally the guys who take the overall win in the grand tours, like the TDF.

Puncheur’s are more alrounders who can punch up short steep climbs with a short explosive burst and sprint to victory from a reduced bunch (e.g. Philippe Gilbert, Simon Gerrans, or Alejandro Valverde).

It’s all well and good to have climbers, sprinters and puncheur’s going for the victory, but every team needs a number of riders who can help their #1 guy get the victory – and these riders are called domestiques.

The role of the domestique is to work for their lead rider. They ride in front of their leader to protect him from the wind, helping him to save energy. They go back to the team car to get any drinks, gels, and clothing he needs. They will give him their wheel or even their whole bike if he has a mechanical problem. They will chase down breaks by opposition riders. In short they will sacrifice themselves all for the sake of their lead rider. Some domestiques are good enough to be the #1 rider but they sacrifice their own ambition to ride in the service of another; these guys are called ‘super domestiques’. Riders like Michael Rogers, Richie Porte and Luke Durbridge are domestiques for their teams.

As I was watching all this play out in the recent TDF, it got me wondering, if Jesus was a cyclist, then what would he be?

Many people might think Jesus would be a sprinter. After all, he was a carpenter’s son, so he would have been strong. But the nature of Jesus mission was not fast and furious. He came to run a race that that goes for eternity.

Maybe he would he have been a climber? After all these guys are the winners of the grand tours. As God the Son, he would certainly deserve to be the teams #1 rider and designated leader to go for glory.

But as I thought about it was obvious that rather than being a sprinter or climber or puncheur, Jesus would most definitely have been a domestique. Here’s why ...

• Like a domestique, Jesus sacrifices himself for others. He puts his ambitions and desires to the side and serves the needs of others. While domestiques will do it riding into the wind or chasing down a breakaway, Jesus sacrifices himself on a cross.
  
• Domestiques serve their team leader at great cost – they smash themselves for him; they sacrifice their own chances of victory to enable victory of their leader; they get no glory for themselves because it goes all to their #1 guy. This is what Jesus did. He saved people for eternal life and it cost him his life, and he did it so those who trust in him can have the victory of eternal life.
  
• Even though domestiques don’t win the stages, they still have to climb all the mountains to ensure they can stay in the race and they often do it carrying extra drink bottles and energy gels for their leader. Jesus also had to climb a mountain. Not a mountain in the French Alps, but a mountain outside Jerusalem. He wasn’t carrying drink bottles and energy gels but a wooden cross on which he would be crucified.
  

When you look at the life of Jesus, his whole mission in life was to sacrifice himself for others. As Jesus says about himself in Mark 10:45
     “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

He didn’t come for his own glory, he came for his Father’s glory. He glorified him by dying for sinners to take the judgment they deserved. He came not so he could have the victory, he came so those who trust in him could have the victory. And even though he is God the Son who deserves all our honour and praise, he gave up that right and came not to be served, but to serve us.

It made me realise that if life was a bike race, Jesus came so that weekend warriors like you and me who plod along on Saturday mornings in our lycra, could win the ‘TDF of life’. In doing so we will stand on the victory dias – not in Paris, but in heaven. When we trust in our ‘super domestique’, then our victory is guaranteed. Not because we worked and trained and earned our eternal victory, but because Jesus sacrificed himself on a mountain to set up the victory for us.

So if Jesus was a cyclist, I’m convinced he’d be a ‘super domestique’. Just like every team needs a super domestique if they’re ever going to win the TDF, so you and I desperately need Jesus if we’re ever going to win the prize of eternal life.

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Over the past few weeks we’ve begun looking at the letter of 1 Peter. This letter gives Christians a new perspective on life – a new perspective on who we are and on where our lives are headed. This week as we look at chapter 2 of the letter we’ll see what a present privilege it is to be who we are – the community of God’s people, saved by him and precious to him. Wherever there are little communities of God’s chosen exiles around the world, God is there with them, building them together into something worthy of great honour – his dwelling place.

But let me take you back to that first mark of the Christian’s identity – chosen by God to be his exiles in the world. This world is not our home. It’s easy to become comfortable in this world, especially here in Australia. But as we look at the world news of the last week, it should give us more reason to long for our eternal home, and to want to see everyone else longing for it too. As we look at a world where fights over small tracts of land claim the lives of families who live in constant fear… as we see efforts to retrieve the remains of family members from an aircraft shot down in cold blood hampered by ongoing conflict, while those responsible remain unidentified… as we see a child ‘acquired’ under a surrogacy arrangement rejected because of Down syndrome.

The words of 1 Peter are a comfort to Christians that a world like this is not our eternal home. We should need no more convincing of this than to look at our Christian brothers and sisters who have been driven out of the city of Mosul in Iraq for no other reason than that they are Christians. They were given the option to renounce their Christian faith and convert to Islam, but they refused to disown the true God who they know has their eternal future safe and will keep them safe to inherit it. They have stood firm as God’s chosen exiles. They have lost just about everything of earthly value, yet they have lost nothing of eternal value. 

As we stand firm, neither will we. This world is not our home. Let’s keep our eyes fixed on our real home and seek to bring as many people with us as we can.

In Christ’s love,

Paul

Recently I caught a bit of the movie ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’ on TV which we saw at the movies a few years ago. It’s based on a true story and stars Will Smith and his real-life son playing a father and son who go through some very troubled times in which Smith’s character is often in tears, as he loses his money, his wife and his home during the economic downturn of the early 1980s, while struggling to take care of his young son. 

His aim is to find happiness (misspelt ‘happyness’ on the wall outside his son’s day care centre). At the end of the movie his happiness is restored as he gets a job with a stockbroking firm. The closing sequence shows father and son happy again as we read on screen that he subsequently started and then sold his stake in his own firm for a multi-million dollar sum. Apparently, there were no more tears in his story.

We might not experience the same depths of despair that this man did. Yet there will be tears for each of us at various times in our lives – whether it be through financial difficulties, relationship problems, illness or the loss of people we love. Amongst the joy of life there are tears that we don’t want to shed. For most people, the answer to the tears is the pursuit of happiness. If it’s not through money, we look for happiness in relationships, or in possessions, or whatever else helps mask the pain of our tears. However, nothing we try can actually take away the pain that eventually spoils everyone’s enjoyment of this life.

But there is something better than the pursuit of happiness – it’s to know the joy of life that Jesus brings. While believing in Jesus won’t mask the pain of life in this fallen world, it delivers something better. It delivers what our souls are telling us we really want but are looking in the wrong places for.

Jesus brings the joy of knowing a life free from all the tears and pain of life as we know it. And though we won’t fully experience that tear-free life now, we can rest in the deep-seated joy of knowing that tear-free life is what we’re heading for as we persevere in trusting ourselves to Jesus. The pursuit of happiness in anything in this life will ultimately disappoint us. The pursuit of true joy in a restored relationship with God through Jesus Christ never will.  

Paul

“There’s no rest for the wicked” so the saying goes. It’s an expression that so many people use to describe their busy lives, without understanding where it comes from or what it means. 

It actually comes from the Bible, in Isaiah 48:22. In our modern NIV translation it reads as ‘”there is no peace,” says the LORD ‘for the wicked”’. In context it’s a word of judgment against the enemies of God and his people. Those who continue to oppose God will ultimately have a rest-less existence. 

It’s not about being busy. It’s about missing out on the rest-full life that God created all people to enjoy.

The theme of rest begins in Genesis 2 when God rests from creating the world and blesses this day of rest for people to enjoy with him. The writer to the Hebrews in chapters 3 and 4 says that this rest God created remains open for all who believe, but closed to those who are hard-hearted towards him. 

In the light of the cross, that means that the rest God created us for is only available through believing in Jesus. If we refuse to believe in Jesus, trusting our lives to him, we miss out on the eternal rest that God has made us to enjoy with him. 
There is no eternal rest for those who refuse to believe in Jesus. That’s what the saying means.

We all need rest. Many of us lead busy lives. And so we seek to make the most of our rest time. However we fool ourselves when we think that we’ll ever be able to achieve rest like the eternal rest only Jesus brings in this life. If we’re looking for the perfect, peaceful, restful life now – in the leisure activities we pursue, in holidays, in retirement, etc. – we will always be disappointed. 

The rest we’re rightly longing for can only be found in a right relationship with God through faith in Jesus that leads to the life of eternal rest – rest from not only the busyness of this life, but from the thing that prevents us from true rest in this life – our sin. The first people lost the enjoyment of God’s rest when they sinned. Life has been wearying for all people ever since because we, like them, are sinners. 

But Jesus brings true rest for the wicked – for weary sinners like us.

In Christ’s love,

Paul