26 August 2010
Psalm 18:1-20; Job 8:1-10, 20-22; Acts 10:17-33; John 7:14-36

What a horrible group of friends/counselors Job has in these three! Bildad rips Job right from the start, essentially telling him to shut up, the words of his mouth are a great wind. He has one point to make and he makes it in multiple ways, Job’s sufferings, all of them, are a result of sin in his life. His children died because of sin in their lives, everything is traceable to sin. The only theological concept Bildad knows is retributive justice, sin brings punishment. The problem with his concept is that it knows nothing of the mercy and love of God. All Job’s friends share this myopia, they fixate on a particular aspect of God and fail to see the complete and complex picture before them. Job is a man whom God said was blameless and upright although these three don’t know that, they have it all figured out, bad things don’t happen to good people, they only happen to sinful people. They are explaining a false god to Job and he won’t accept their caricatures.

All through Jesus’ earthly life we see that people don’t understand spiritual words and have only a temporal frame of reference for their thinking and understanding. They want to know where He got His teaching since He had never been taught. They know He wasn’t in the Jerusalem rabbinic schools and they are the ones that mattered, the Ivy League of Judaism. Jesus says He gets His teaching directly from the Father and like any good disciple, is so enamored of His teacher that His teaching points to the one who taught Him. His frustration boils over with their statement that they know where He is from but no one will know where Messiah is from and He cries out, urging them to know the One who sent Him. Finally, we see their utter confusion when He says He is going to the One who sent Him. If it weren’t life and death serious, it would be an Abbott and Costello, Who’s on First routine.

Peter wonders what this vision of the sheet coming out of heaven means for him when suddenly the men show up and Peter is commanded to go with them. Peter is challenged to do what he has never done, go to the house of a Gentile and still he doesn’t know why. God had commanded both men, Peter and Cornelius, and has manifested Himself to them both, for what purpose Peter must have wondered. Cornelius seems to know that Peter has come to share a word with him and the rest and he treats him like a king when he arrives, bowing before him in worship. What an extraordinary thing for a Roman centurion to do before a Jewish fisherman! We are told that “many” have assembled and are waiting for Peter and he has no idea why he is there. We are about to witness the Gentile Pentecost.

I love you, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,
my God, my rock in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised;
so I shall be saved from my enemies.