Spiritual Minecraft

Thanks very much, Emma. Good morning, everyone. Really good to have you with us, whether you're in person or online.

Are you a survivor or a creator?

Will your world be one where every achievement is hard won and you're struggling against lots of forces that are beyond your control?

Or will there be one where you can sort away uninhibited and be as creative and inventive as you want and really express yourself?

That might sound like the start of a rather bad motivational talk, but I suspect some of you have recognised it's the choice you have to make in Minecraft.

Minecraft is the most popular online game in the world, I believe, played by millions and millions of people.

And you build your own world or realm and interact with it.

And you have a choice to make at the beginning. Are you going to be in survival mode or are you going to be in creative mode?

If you're in survival mode, you start with nothing. You start by punching trees to get some wood and build a shelter and some basic tools.

And you're constantly on the lookout for adverse forces, mobs and so on that could derail you.

If you're in creative mode, on the other hand, you can fly, you've got unlimited resources, you're invincible, and you can build and create to your heart's content.

It's a great game in both forms, particularly if you've got a grandson who can do all the hard work for you.

And perhaps it has some elements of realism in it.

I think one of the things we've learned as we've gone through Job, and which will be evident against this morning,

is that we're all in survival mode.

That life is tough and there are lots of things that are beyond our control.

And sometimes we do look around and say, well, why is this happening?

Why do I have to put up with all these things?

But we also learn, particularly from chapter 28 and subsequent chapters in Job, but we've seen it already,

that there is a creator.

That there is someone who has that power and that freedom.

And for us to make the most of life, we need to have a relationship with the creator.

And that's very much what we're going to learn from chapter 28 today.

Life is hard, but if we know God, if we have a relationship with him, we can begin to have wisdom and understanding in it.

Now I'm sure you've noticed if you've been to previous services like this,

that chapter 28 is very different from any other in Job.

So I think it's worth just taking a couple of minutes to look at the context and to orientate ourselves.

Now what I'm going to show you is very simplistic,

but I think it might be helpful in helping us to see how the book of Job is structured.

So I'd like the book of Job.

It is, as has been said in previous weeks, it's mostly poetry,

but at the beginning and at the end, there are narrative sections.

And I've called them the prologue and the epilogue.

So the prologue is about Job's downfall from being wealthy and having a really good life

to ending up in the gutter, all his possessions and family gone and his health gone as well.

And then at the end of the book, Job is restored to his former greatness and he is fully vindicated.

In between, there are two main sections, which I've called dialogues and monologues.

So what we've looked at mostly in the book of Job so far is the dialogues.

Job has three so-called friends.

We've met two of them, Eliphaz and Bildad.

There's another called Zophar.

And these three friends, the sum total of their contribution to the book of Job

is to reiterate again and again that Job must be suffering because of some secret sin in his life.

He is being punished by God because if you suffer, it must be because you've done something wrong.

And Job is reiterating again and again,

No, I haven't got any secret sin in my life.

I'm a man of integrity.

I don't understand why this is happening.

It's a conflict of kind of theoretical head knowledge and practical experience.

And there are three rounds of dialogues with the friends

and it gets more and more fractious and people are just digging their heels.

And some insights from Job, which we've looked at in previous weeks,

but basically these friends are saying,

Job is being punished for your sin.

And Job says, No, that can't be right.

What we're going to be looking at over the next few weeks is a slightly different one.

It's a series of monologues.

First by Job, then by an angry young man called Elihu,

and finally by God himself who responds to everything that's happened.

And the key question has really moved on.

It's not, is Job being punished for sin?

It's why is Job suffering, even though he's not a worse sinner than other people?

Elihu has many of the faults of the others whom Job interacts with,

but he has the helpful insight that suffering can have a purpose beyond punishment.

That God can use suffering for our good.

And of course, we learn a lot of that in the New Testament,

and Graham will be talking to us about it next week.

And then at the end, God comes in,

and he basically says to Job,

Who are you to question me?

But at the end, he vindicates Job, and he condemns his friends.

So we have these two main sections, dialogues and monologues.

And then we have chapter 28, which is what we're looking at today,

which I've said is about the pursuit of wisdom.

Now what are we to make of it?

It doesn't talk explicitly about suffering.

It's about wisdom.

How does it fit in with the book?

Well, not everyone agrees on this,

but I think that the most straightforward way to look at this chapter

is to think of it as being a commentary by the narrator of the book of Job,

rather than the words of Job himself.

It's very different from where Job is at this point,

in his mindset and in his understanding.

And I think it's best viewed as the writer of the book

preparing us for the next section of monologues that's to come,

and particularly preparing us for what God has to say

a few chapters down the line.

In other words, he's saying to us,

let's take our eyes away from the gutter where Job is,

and we've got this silly argument going on

about whether Job's a bad sinner or not.

Let's lift our eyes to God

and recognize his greatness,

and let's prepare for the overwhelming response

that God will give in a few chapters to Job.

So it's a kind of positioning chapter in the book.

If you're familiar with Hebrew poetry,

you know that quite often the core of a poem is in the middle.

That's where the core truth is shown,

and then the rest expands on it.

Something similar, I think, happening here.

But what about the chapter itself?

I think the best way to orientate through chapter 28

is through two key verses,

which are verse 12 and verse 20.

They look the same, but they're not quite the same.

So in the first 11 verses, verses 1 to 11,

we've got what I've called the search for wealth.

This thing about mining for iron and gold and copper and so on,

we'll come back to that.

But it is saying to us that human beings put a lot of effort

into getting things that they consider valuable.

And then you have verse 12.

And in verse 12, the key question is,

where can wisdom be found?

Where can wisdom be found?

Where does understanding dwell?

You can dig into the earth,

and you know that at some stage you'll get minerals and rocks

and gold and silver and so on.

People know where they are.

But where can we go to find wisdom?

That is the question that Job is about to address.

So the next few verses are not the search for wealth,

they're the search for wisdom.

Where can we find it?

And a reiteration of just how much more valuable wisdom is than wealth.

And then we have verse 20.

And verse 20 says to us,

where does wisdom come from?

So it's slightly different.

It looks at first as just a repetition of verse 12,

but it's not.

Verse 12 says, where can wisdom be found?

So go out and look for it.

Verse 20 says, where does wisdom come from?

And then the rest of the chapter is telling us that.

It is talking about the source of wisdom.

And of course, the source of wisdom is God himself.

And it goes up to the words of the Lord at the end.

The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom.

And to shun evil is understanding.

So that I think is a simple way of looking at this chapter.

It moves from the search for wealth to the search for wisdom,

and from the search of wisdom to the source of wisdom,

and ends up with God himself as where we find true wisdom.

Let's just take a few minutes to go into a little bit more detail.

This is a difficult and deep chapter.

We're only going to scrape the surface this morning.

But let's just dig a little bit into it.

So in the first 11 verses, we have this mining analogy.

Let's go back to Minecraft for a second.

If you're in survival mode in Minecraft, you can achieve a certain amount above ground.

You can cut down trees and build things.

You can grow crops.

You can kill animals for food.

But you're quite limited.

The real treasure, and this is why the name is Minecraft,

the real treasure is when you dig underground,

and you find these rocks and precious stones and so on below the dirt that's on the surface.

Here's my big tip if you ever play Minecraft.

If you dig down, don't dig straight,

because you just end up in a hole you can't get out of.

That's the voice of experience for you.

But it's actually not irrelevant to this chapter.

Because the first few verses actually are saying,

men do wonderful things to get things from the ground.

They don't just dig down and look around hopelessly.

We're looking at very, very old technology here.

But we are looking at people who are clever and inventive.

And the writer in this chapter isn't saying,

humans don't have intelligence, or they're not ingenious.

He's saying, actually, they are clever,

but they're still not always wise.

We can maybe identify with that.

We have a world where all sorts of wonderful things

that the writer here couldn't possibly have imagined

have been done and created,

and yet we've messed up our climate.

We're very clever.

We're not necessarily wise.

So the writer in talking about people being clever,

he talks about them swinging on ropes around beneath the ground.

He talks about them using fire.

Not sure whether that fire is for light

or possibly to kind of get access into the more precious metals and so on.

He talks about following the course of rivers.

It's possible that means they actually divert rivers,

sometimes for their own ends,

to help them to get to things better.

People are clever when they put their mind to it.

But actually, the key message of these verses

is that if we think something is really valuable,

we will go to an awful lot of effort to achieve it.

And what the writer is saying here is,

look at how much effort people go to

to get gold and silver and precious stones and so on.

They go into the furthest recesses of the earth.

They go into the blackest darkness.

They go where no self-respecting animal or bird

would even think of going

and deprive themselves of all sorts of things

just to find these physical treasures.

And that's still true, isn't it?

We're not really a mining country in the UK anymore.

That went in the 1980s.

But mining around the world is still very important.

Eleven years ago this weekend,

we first heard of the Chilean miners.

A group of miners in Chile digging for copper

and the mine collapsed behind them.

And on Sunday the 8th of August 2010,

we woke up to the news there'd been a further collapse

and the situation looked dire.

Well, two weeks passed and with frantic effort,

they managed to locate the miners

and amazingly found they were all still alive.

They'd survived for two weeks

on two days' worth of emergency rations.

It was over two months

before they were able to bring them to the surface.

And does a terrible experience like that,

albeit with a happy ending,

mean that people no longer go

and take these risks under the ground?

No, it doesn't.

And we hear again and again

of similar things in China and elsewhere,

not always ending so positively.

When we treasure something,

we will go to great steps to get it.

We will put ourselves to great inconvenience

and even to great danger.

And that is the message of the first 11 verses.

It's about physical wealth and the search for it.

And then the writer switches without any real warning

and he says,

OK, this is all very well,

but what about wisdom?

He says,

actually, wisdom is a lot more difficult to find

than gold and silver and precious stones.

You go to the places where you find

in these precious things

and imagine asking them

and they say,

no, not here,

not under the ground,

not under the sea.

It is really difficult to find.

But he says also,

it's really, really valuable.

You can't buy it with these most precious things

that humans spend so long looking for.

It is much more valuable than that.

And the book of this section

is taken up

with this praise of wisdom,

this thing that is beyond compare.

But I think that something is very important here

before we move on to the last section.

And that is

that we can't find wisdom

without effort.

We can't get wealth,

physical things,

without effort.

We can't really become wise

unless we work at it.

We are not innately wise.

Yes, we have intelligence,

we have judgment,

but we don't have true wisdom.

And to achieve true wisdom,

we need to be willing to do hard work.

Now, how do we get wisdom?

Well, we're going to look later on

and we get wisdom primarily

by knowing our Creator

and fearing Him.

And we can have a living relationship with God.

We can have the Holy Spirit guiding us

and helping us to live our lives wisely.

We also gain wisdom through this book.

The book that is full of God's wisdom

and that says to us the things

that God wants us to know.

And that's where a lot of the effort

needs to come in.

It's great at church on a Sunday morning

to read the Bible together

and to think about it.

It's great to spend time each day

reading the Bible

and taking devotional thoughts from it,

letting God speak to us through it.

But to get the best treasures,

to really get the value that is in the Bible,

is going to take study

and it's going to take hard work.

And we need to be prepared for that.

There's a book I found really helpful in that.

We don't usually have book reviews at our services,

but this one is on theme

and it's an exceptional book.

It's called Dig Deeper

by Nigel Bennion and Andrew Sack.

And what it is,

is quite simply a toolkit

for mining spiritual things.

We're going into the Bible

and for understanding it.

So among the tools, for instance,

are some we've used this morning.

We've used the context tool for Job 28.

We've used the structure tool.

We've used the repetition tool

with these two verses

that were quite similar.

There are lots of tools in this book

that will help us

as we seek to understand God's Word

and to dig deeper into it.

It's simple.

It's easy to read.

It's got lots of examples and exercises.

I thoroughly recommend it,

though only if it results

in you going to read your Bible.

It's not a substitute for the Bible.

It's something to help us

to get into Scripture.

But we need to put a bit of effort

into getting the wealth

that God wants us to have

and to gaining wisdom through Him.

So that was the search for wisdom.

Let's move on then to the source of wisdom,

which is from verse 20 onwards.

So we've looked down

and we've been down the sea

and the earth,

and the writer says,

you can't find wisdom there.

Wisdom is very elusive.

It's very difficult to find.

So where then does it come from?

Where does understanding dwell?

And he re-enters again

how difficult it is.

Living things,

birds don't see it,

distraction and death personified.

Say, yeah, we've heard of it,

but we don't really know too much about it.

And then he says,

the way to wisdom is through God.

Being wise in life

is having a relationship with God

that is right

and recognizing Him for who He is.

And we have a bit of a preview

in these verses

of what we'll see in much more detail

in two or three weeks' time

as we see God responding to Job

and just presenting His majesty

and His greatness

and how superior to us He is.

And the writer says,

where is wisdom?

It's in the Creator.

It's in the one

who made this wonderful world,

who made all of us

and who has complete understanding

of everything.

And so at the end,

the last verse

is another key verse in the chapter.

God says,

the fear of the Lord,

that is wisdom

and to shun evil

is understanding.

The fear of the Lord

in this context,

I believe,

means recognizing God's greatness

and how superior to us He is

and putting our trust in Him,

recognizing that He knows

what He's doing

and that what He does

is always right.

If we just get a little bit technical

for a minute,

when it talks about wisdom here,

it's a slightly different phrase

from what's used earlier in the chapter.

Earlier in the chapter,

it talks about the wisdom.

So verses 12 and 20,

we say the key verses,

it really says,

where can the wisdom be found?

Where can this thing

that is called wisdom be found?

In this verse,

there's no articles,

it's just that is wisdom.

And really what the writer is saying

is the same as the Proverbs say

several times,

that the fear of the Lord

is the beginning of wisdom.

Fearing the Lord

is a wise thing to do.

So in other words,

you don't,

as soon as you fear God,

you don't suddenly become

all wise and God-like.

But it is the starting point.

Unless you recognize God

for who he is

and trust in him,

then you will never get

to the heart of wisdom.

So you start with your trust in God

and then that's where

the hard work starts

we were talking about earlier

as God leads you

further into wisdom.

Let's go back to Minecraft to end.

In Minecraft, as I said,

you have a choice

of whether you're in

a survival mode

or in creative mode.

And if you've got

a group of friends

playing together,

they've all got to be

in the same mode.

You're either survival

or you're creative.

In the real world,

the thing that truly

demonstrates God's wisdom

is that the Creator

came into the world

of survivors.

That the Lord Jesus,

who is the one

who made everything,

who is responsible

for our whole universe

and the way

in which it works,

he chose to take on

the limitations

and the frustrations

and the sufferings

of being part

of creation.

He even allowed himself

to be rejected

by a mob

and put to death.

And that is the ultimate

demonstration

of God's wisdom.

I think the great passage

of wisdom in the New Testament

is in 1 Corinthians chapter 1.

1 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

And a key verse

is the one

that is on the screen now.

God chose the foolish things

of this world

to shame the wise

and chose the wise things

of the world

to shame the strong.

In other words,

what God did

was totally against

human wisdom.

He sent his son

into the world

to die on a cross

and Paul says

that's a stumbling block

to Jews

and it's foolishness

to the Gentiles.

It's something

that is utterly degrading

or appears utterly degrading

for the creator

to do

and such a stupid thing

to be involved in.

And yet,

it's in the cross

of Jesus

that we truly see

the wisdom

of God.

That we see

what God

is really about

and how he

has this

all-wise

view

of creation.

He's not

a God

who just sits

and soars above us

the creator

and looks on all of us

as pawns

and things

just to be moved around

and things happen to us

for his pleasure.

Rather,

he's a God

who recognized

our suffering

and recognized

the consequences

of our sin

and chose to come

and be part of that

through Jesus.

And as we go through Job

and we've not talked much

about suffering this morning,

we'll be back to it

in future weeks.

But as we see

the suffering

of Job,

we need to think also

about the suffering

of the Lord Jesus.

that the one

who was the creator

chose to suffer

in ways

which we can never

fully understand.

And he is wise

and wisdom

is to be found

in him.

And we can only

be wise

in this world

if we have that

relationship

with the living God

that recognizes

he is in control,

he has done

everything that we need

to have a relationship

with him

and to be wise.

But we need to fear him.

We need to trust him.

Our prayer this morning

as we finish

is that everyone here,

everyone who's watching

on YouTube,

that we will come

to know

and to fear

and to love

the Lord,

to recognize

his sufferings

and that only

through them

can we have

forgiveness

for our sins

and when we suffer

to keep our trust

in him

and retain

our confidence

that he

is wise.

That is wisdom

for us

to know God,

to love him

and to obey him.

Let's pray together.

Father,

we thank you

for your word

to us today.

We thank you

for this great chapter

extolling the value

of wisdom

but particularly

pointing us to you

as the true source

of wisdom.

We thank you

for the way

your wisdom

is displayed

through the coming

of the Lord Jesus

into the world

and his death

on the cross

for us.

Help us all

to make sure

that we have

the starting point

of wisdom

which is coming

to put our faith

in the Lord Jesus

entering into

a living relationship

with the God of heaven.

And then help us

when we go through

all the difficulties

that surviving

in this world entails

that we may

nevertheless

retain confidence

in you

and recognise

that although

we may not see it

you have a purpose

in everything.

Thank you

for your presence

with us this morning.

We pray for your blessing

on us as we part now.

in the name

of the Lord Jesus.

Amen.