2. Economic Turmoil

The second thing that inclines me to preach on this just now is that few things have had a more pervasive effect on our lives nationally and globally in recent years than the financial turmoil around the world. We need to hear at least some of God’s perspective on this.

And that is all we ever have—some of his perspective. He is God and we are not. He has told of some of what he is doing in this recession. But most of what he is doing—billions and billions of God-designed effects—he does not tell us. But what he does tell us is crucial for living amid the providence of what he does not tell us.

3. “Finishing the Million”

Third, I want to put the present financial sprint to finish the North Campus—the sprint we are calling Finish the Million by March—in a larger biblical and contemporary context, to guard us from a kind of ecclesiastical myopia.

So those are the reasons for this message.

(Some of) God’s Purposes in This Recession

Now what are some of God’s purposes in this recession? I will mention five:

1. He intends for this recession to expose hidden sin and so bring us to repentance and cleansing.
2. He intends to wake us up to the constant and desperate condition of the developing world where there is always and only recession of the worst kind.
3. He intends to relocate the roots of our joy in his grace rather than in our goods, in his mercy rather than our money, in his worth rather than our wealth.
4. He intends to advance his saving mission in the world—the spread of the gospel and the growth of his church—precisely at a time when human resources are least able to support it. This is how he guards his glory.
5. He intends for the church to care for its hurting members and to grow in the gift of love.

1. To Expose Sin and Bring Repentance

The book of Job in the Old Testament begins, “There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1). But in the last chapter of the book, Job says, “I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). He was “blameless,” but later he repented. What does that mean?

It means that the most godly people in the world are like a clear glass of water with a sediment of sin hidden at the bottom of the glass. And when the glass is struck—with Job’s suffering, or with our recession—the sediment of sin is stirred up and exposed, and the water becomes cloudy. That’s one of the things that recessions are for.

And it works both individually and socially.

Individually Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9, “We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”

God brought his own faithful servant Paul to the brink of death so that he might learn more deeply to rely not on himself but on God. If that happened to Paul, we may be sure that God is doing that for us as well in this recession. That we may rely on him and not ourselves.

At the bottom of every Christian heart—no matter how advanced in faith and godliness—there is the sediment of self-reliance. Then God shakes our lives, sometimes to the foundations, to show us our self-reliance and clean it out with a new, deeper reliance on him.