Introduction

The trouble human beings have in dealing with loss is largely a matter of our five senses.

They dominate our perceptions of our world and massively condition our lives and our values, but in truth our five senses don’t always talk that much sense to us.

You see, the things your five senses can tell you about are things that you are going to lose.

Sooner or later, in one way or another, the things your senses of touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste lead you to most appreciate will be gone … and the things that these senses have taught you to appreciate and build your life on will be (as we say) toast.

Hen Mamgu, my great grandmother, used to love to say ‘you can’t take it with you when you’re gone’, and then she proved it … and we had to clear up the stuff that she’d cherished when she’d ‘gone’.

All of it.

And this deception that our senses play on us about the security of the things they tell us about underlies and complicates the whole issue of what we as humans consider to be ‘loss’, and how we experience it.

I suppose if you want an example in the Bible of people who seem qualified to talk about loss you go first to the book of Job in the Old Testament, then second to the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3 in the New Testament for the mature Christian take on the issue.

So those are the two texts of our sermon today … a ‘buy one get one free’ look at the issue of dealing with loss.

1) The Old Testament archetype - Job, a principle taught

a)    Job – a man with an awful lot to lose

Job is introduced to us as a man who has an awful lot to lose, and the worry that some member of his family might lose it all because they’d sinned and annoyed God.

Job 1:1-5

“In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. 2 He had seven sons and three daughters, 3 and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.”

So that’s the bit about how much Job had to loose, and following the ancient principle, the thing we’re told first about a person is the salient point that we get to pick up first.

He had a LOT of what his senses could say something about that he could lose.

So you know what’s coming next, don’t you?

NOT, surprisingly, that he lost the lot, but that he was WORRIED about losing the lot …

b)    Job is WORRIED about losing the lot

To summarise so far … in the world of story, then, we KNOW Job has got an extreme amount of this world’s stuff and as we know there’s a story coming, and this is the first stuff we’re told, we’re watching that stuff because we KNOW something’s bound to be going to happen to it!

But Job has been spoken of by God as God’s precious servant.

How can this happen?

Is there a contradiction or a tension in the plot line there? What do you think?

Well, the story moves straight from telling us Job had a lot to lose to the second point we need to understand about where this story is all going, with a preoccupation this stuff Job had that God was easy but dangerous to offend:

“4 His sons used to hold feasts in their homes on their birthdays, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 

Well, they could do because their father (and therefore those who shared his household wealth) had got an awful lot.

But Job knew the moral instability of youth and how risk taking follows merriment … s it bothered Job his kids might have over indulged and offended the God who gave him and them the stuff to get merry with.

There is a clear link in Job’s mind (a false one) between being good and getting the goodies from God, and therefore a paranoid concern that being bad would mean losing the lot.

So we read in Job 1:5

5 When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” This was Job’s regular custom.”

When Job loses it all in the next chapters, and when his ‘comforters’ come around to counsel him, their CENTRAL mistake is that they’re sure God has judged him and that this alone could be the reason he’s lost his goodies.

You see, Job has a huge sense of his obligations to God, but no firm and certain grasp of the faithfulness of God’s patronage, God’s care and provision, for Job.

He really thinks that all the stuff God has given him is unsafe … and judging from what happens next in the court of Heaven itself, it is obvious that Job is seen to like his material possessions, his ‘stuff’, quite a lot.

Now look, if we build our lives on the material ‘stuff’ we can sense in this world, and if ‘being good’ is the key to having and keeping it all … but being bad is the sure way to lose it … what sort of sandy foundation will we have for our life?!

None of us has got a life worthy of loads of goodies from God and if we have to earn them with our goodness, life will see us lack them.

Job might suspect how insecure this way of looking at things is making him, because there he is frantically making sacrifices just in case his kids have sinned while enjoying good things.

In Job God sees that more clearly than the devil does, who urges God to see how faithful Job will be if God takes Job’s goodies away.

c)    Learning loss in the book of Job?

The very NEXT salient point we hear is from the mouth of God Himself as He addresses this curious character ‘the satan’, describing Job as God’s prized and precious servant.

What’s going on?

Let’s be quite clear here.

Job is not about the origins of evil or about satan, which in Hebrew means “the one opposed.” 

It is the OPPOSITION to God that presents this satanic lie that behaviour determines whether you get goodies or not … the slot machine, ‘automatic’ approach to how people relate to God.

It is God Who declares Job to be an admirable and righteous man, but the satan dismisses this by saying that Job is only in it for what he gets.

The opposer is sure that if God stopped treating Job so generously, Job would curse God. God knows that Job’s faithfulness is not based on circumstance, so he allows the satan to inflict suffering on Job’s life, affecting his family, riches, and health.

Now STOP right there!

We need to fill in the background a bit.

Here’s a story that is coming to us from a PATRONAGE culture.

We looked at that idea in some depth a while ago as we tackled the book of Ruth and the obligations of Boaz and Ruth in such a culture and if you want to go int it I highly recommend looking at Jayson Georges and Mark Baker’s book Ministering in Patronage Cultures.

Fundamentally, as they fluently demonstrate, “The Bible presents God as a patron, sin as ungrateful clientage, and salvation as divine patronage”. (Georges and Baker,  p. 77

In simple terms, in times before policing and civil obedience faithful clients were rewarded by the rich and powerful for their faithfulness, and faithfulness to your patron obliged the patron to show patronage.

This was a foundational principle of social organisation in much of the Bible’s times and if you don’t grasp how that worked you will not understand the major metaphor describing how the God of the Bible related to his clients and they to Him.

Clients owed loyalty (we call it faith) to the One Who gave them patronage and He obliged himself to be their God and take care of them in all their mess and need in return.

Violation on His people’s part violated that covenant and all too often (though He is patient) resulted in the loss of His favour.

Of course, He always PRONOUNCED that judgement was about to fall, but the thing about the bible’s god was He was faithful to His clients NOT because of anything about them, but because of His mercy … and THAT is the clear outcome of the Book of Job.

God violating HIS responsibilities was never going to happen because He is the always faithful One … but His people sometimes panicked that they’d brought trouble on themselves.

The outcome of the book at the end of chapter upon chapter of Job’s friends correcting him or … as God put it … confounding wisdom without knowledge, teaches two things about loss.

            •          C) God shows Job’s loss is not the sufferer’s fault

God SPECIFICALLY says in that dramatic interaction with the satan that Job IS a righteous man.

It is Job and (especially) his first three ‘comforters’ who are committed to that thought, not God.

It CAN be the case that hardship arises from sin and God withdrawing for a while his benefits, but it is FAR from necessarily the case and it isn’t in Job’s case.

When he finally speaks out about the situation God does NOT tell Job that He is experiencing loss because job is a sinner and needs to repent.

God instead does two things:

            •          D) God shows Job 

           •          i) He is the Almighty

God’s first point in chapters 38-39 is indirectly made by demonstrating that God’s attention is constantly on every small detail of what goes on in His universe.

Job’s life is DIRECTLY superintended and overseen by the same God who is committed to Job in caring and sustaining covenant relationship … Job’s Patron is not asleep on the job!

God is on top of and in control of all sorts of things that go on in the world that Job definitely is not.

So Job corrects his response to his Patron shows proper client loyalty, stops his mouth and waits.

God’s second point is that

·       ii) Job wouldn’t do a better job in God’s place

Job hasn’t got a clue what he’s asking when he demands God should run the world in Job’s way … using the strict principle of retribution and reward to punish every bad deed and reward every good one.

In theory it sounds right, but in practice it would create a universe where human beings’ continuous failures would result in unutterable loss, no human being would ever be able to learn by trial, error and mercy … and there would be no room for learning, growth and change living constantly under the cosh.

And that leads into this second point were God introduces Job to two rather terrifying monsters, one of which is called Behemoth (Job 40:15) and the other of which is called Leviathan (Job 41:1).

They are huge, chaotic, powerful and threatening beasts.

In Job, Behemoth is a powerful grass-eating, river-dwelling beast with bones likened to bronze pipes and limbs likened to iron bars. 

Similarly Leviathan is a sort of mythical sea monster crossed with a dragon.

In the Ancient Near East, Leviathan was a mythical symbol of violence and chaos in God’s good world (Psalm 74:14, Isaiah 27:1)

God can put it on a fishing line or take it for a walk!

It will bite your arm off as soon as look at you, but God’s control in His creation … which can be very threatening to us … is just ABSOLUTE.

There is no explanation offered for Job’s losses, just an illustration that the fallen cosmos is chaotic but God has it tamed.

And He is the believer’s competent ‘Patron’, if you see the point?

God asks for trust and loyalty not understanding, given that the cosmos runs and is founded on His wisdom and capability … way beyond anything we can think of to explain or remove fallen pain out of our own experience.

Job isn’t about explaining why Job encounters loss, far less why what we think are bad things happen to those we think are ‘good’people.

But it calls on us to live as loyal and faithful clients of our faithful and gracious patron … and THAT is the challenge of faith which can’t exist where there is 20-20 sight.

What the book does is to get us to prioritise our relationship with our powerful and committed Patron, because he is trustworthy and knows exactly what He is doing.

And as it happens, in the closing chapter, once Job has done this thing God calls for …

            •          iii) God proves to be an amazing patron

What Job comes to learn is that he has fundamentally misunderstood the nature of his relationship with God.

He has learned that God is the almighty patron (first thing) and the Covenant keeping patron, who sticks with his clients through thick and thin.

He can deliver on it because He is the Almighty, SOVEREIGN God.

And He does this because he is pledged to be our patron God is an amazingly faithful patron who sticks by those who ARE His clients through thick and thin … because He is the faithful One and his faithfulness in being our Patron depends on the faithfulness of His commitment to His clients rather than theirs to him.

Job’s God has the capability and the commitment to keep his covenant with a client creature like Job.

         •        2) Job’s principle applied in Philippians 3:4-14

a)    What Paul had to lose, vv. 4-6

i)               His spiritual inheritance, v. 4-5a

“If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews;”

These are the things of alleged excellence that Paul was born with.

This is his privileged heritage … the ‘stuff’ he inherited.

It is a system of inherited spiritual ‘credits’ that a person could take enormous (though misplaced) pride and satisfaction in, if you were one of their hyper-religious crew.

But it doesn’t last you reliably and safely for good.

You die with it, but it doesn’t come with you when you do.

It belongs in a world that passess.

ii)              His spiritual CV, vv. 5b-6

“in regard to the law, a Pharisee;6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.”

These are the things Paul chose to excel by.

Within the religious system he was born into Paul created for himself a record of the creed he espoused, the rigour with which he defended it (in his once-held view) from heretics and the strict moral and ethical code he espoused.

It is a system of self-made spiritual ‘credits’ that a person could take enormous (though misplaced) pride and satisfaction in, if you were one of their hyper-religious crew.

But look what Paul came to understand about this ‘flesh’ system of ‘blessing’ and benefit …

b)    What Paul came to understand, v. 7

v. 7: “But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.”

The gains he relied on and worked so hard for, the same idea Job had that he relearned about what the relationship between himself, God and good things, were dross.

ζημία (zēmia) 'damage/loss'

It’s not simply pointless.

This idea that being good gives goodies (and being bad brings loss) isn’t right … but HOLDING to that idea of how to walk with God is itself DAMAGING, is itself ‘LOSS’, and now Paul considers it such because …

d)    The principle Paul came to apply, Philippians 3:8-11

v. 8 “What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ …”

Paul KNOWS that being in that dependant client relationship with God in Christ not only makes the ‘stuff’ Job had and that Paul had worthless by comparison and definitely not worth allowing to get in the way of that relationship, but fades in comparison with living your life trusting not in the ‘God for stuff’ model but for the model that I commit to being His ‘client’ and He commits to being my beneficent patron on a COVENANT basis.

A covenant is not a contract.

And it was when Job realised this and when Paul realised this that God’s blessing flowed into their lives.

What is the difference between a covenant and a contract?

Fundamentally a contract is an arrangement, where you’re in it for what you get out of it.

A covenant is a commitment to sustaining the relationship or the undertaking you commit to REGARDLESS of the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of the commitment of the other person.

When we commit our life to Christ He receives the promise from us that we turn from sin ti trust in Him. 

When Christ commits His life to us, it isn’t conditional on our obedience.

You didn’t get THAT from patronage relationships in the ancient world because those WERE between mere humans who were NOT faithful nor always powerful enough to fulfil the patron’s obligation faultlessly and were in any case understood to be conditional on their criteria of performance … if a client didn’t keep their end of it that might very well get ditched.

Not so with God, for reasons of His faithfulness and Almighty power.

But having received the benefit of all His Divine patron had done for him Paul powerfully aspires to loyalty …

e)    Paul’s loyalty in waiting for his Patron to act, Philippians 3:12-14

“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Why Paul?

WHY do you put your life on the line for the Lord in this way?

vv. 10-11 “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”

The KEY issue for Paul is not the goodies that his Heavenly patron can dispense but the eternity transforming relationship which is the key to the ‘goodies’ you CAN take with you, the ‘goodies’ that last.

In a world where the ultimate statistic is that a hundred in every hundred people are going to die leaving all their material blessings (like all of Job’s listed ‘goodies’ and also Paul’s) behind them, the ultimate issue rapidly becomes to KNOW Christ.

To BENEFIT from the covenant of commitment t me for eternity that the ultimate patron with his ultimate patronage faithfully and omnipotently supplies.

         •        Conclusion

Here’s the thing:

You can take nothing with you from this world, and you can’t even reliably keep what your five senses set value on in this world … so where is the substance, the actual security, in them?

It’s a delusion.

That stuff is not security because it disappears in a moment.

What does ultimately count as reliably yours to keep is what you CAN gain here that STICKS with you due to the grace of the Covenant keeping God.

THAT is what carries forward reliably into eternity and cannot be lost, on the basis that it is GIVEN you rather than depending on your perfect performance to win it and that your grasp of it is guaranteed by not only the gift but the faithful and omnipotent patronage of the One Who graciously provides it.

It's the things you cannot keep that you might lose here.

We lose nothing in this life but that which we cannot actually keep, as Job learns.

But as Paul learns, and as Jesus teaches, we get loss-proof by storing up for ourselves treasure in heaven … which comes from beginning and seeking to live here within this Patron- client relationship that Job and Paul (Jesus too) knew all about, but that is an uncommon model for relationships  in our own culture and society.