Sermon 21, Job 5:17,18
It’s a blessing to feel bad. Also, not everything is a hardship.
Let’s take the first one first. Calvin says “God is granting us a special blessing and that it is a privilege he gives only to his children when we are made to feel his hand and be humbled by it.” He speaks about two things happening. 1) God chastises us because of our sin. He has to. He hates sin and we are full of it and live oblivious to that fact. But 2) the Holy Spirit stirs up repentance in his children as a result of the punishment-induced realization of our sin. This is of great comfort. In short, if bad things happen to me and it causes me to think along the lines of “I deserved that” or that interaction made me feel bad, and “I’m a rotten person”, then that’s evidence that I’m on the right path.
As for the second one, not everything is a hardship. Calvin states “When we suffer hunger, thirst, cold, or heat, we say they are just so many hardships. Why? We would like to have everything we desire and wish for.” We perceive a hardship as something that is just counter to our wants. But most of our wants are stupid. Arthur Brooks defines happiness as haves/wants. Most folks pursue happiness by trying to increase the “haves”, but the easier and better way is to decrease the “wants”. Not everything that is counter to our desires is a punishment sent from God.
So, I’m going to better evaluate what is and isn’t a hardship. What actually is a hardship I need to use to motivate repentance and, amazingly, thank God for caring about me. One of Calvin’s other points in this sermon is that, actually, what is the very worst, uncaring, unfatherly thing God could do to me? He could leave me alone to my own devices.
“Must we not justly say that there is such a profound corruptness in men that God cannot be their Saviour and Father unless he deals harshly with them?”
“Corrections are found everywhere, but where is repentance?”