2 September 2010
Psalm 37:1-18; Job 16:16-22,17:1,13-16; Acts 13:1-12; John 9:1-17

Job sees that here there is no hope for him, his only hope, his only true friend and advocate is in heaven. Alone in the world, among friends who have become not friends and advocates but accusers before God, the role of Satan, Job’s hope continues to be in God. Although he is crying out to God about the unfairness of the situation and sees his misery as God-inflicted, he remains steadfast in his belief that there is some explanation for this and that it is not sin. He is, however, losing the hope that his “friends” will see his vindication as his death seems to be imminent. We have an accuser whose delight it is to point to our sin in anticipation of the judgment of God that has been pronounced from of old, in Jesus we have an advocate with the Father whose testimony is His own blood on our behalf. We cannot maintain our innocence as Job is able to do, but we always plead the blood of the innocent victim, Jesus.

The disciples are looking for answers to suffering in the same place Job’s friends looked, “Who sinned?” The issue here isn’t sin, it is that God’s glory might be displayed in this healing. We like a tidy cause and effect world that makes sense to us and here we see that it only makes sense in light of the work of God. The defect was a work of God just as the healing was a work of God. The blind man could have asked Jesus to explain why he was chosen to bear this burden but he does not. The Pharisees are concerned not with the healing of a man born blind but the method Jesus used, the making of mud was prohibited as work on the Sabbath. The man was also forced to work to wash the mud off his eyes. The man’s eyes are opened to see and confess Jesus but the eyes of the others are closed because they are only looking for sin not righteousness.

Paul and Barnabbas are sent out on mission by the church at Antioch. They immediately encounter opposition in the form of the magician Elymas at Cyprus. For his sin of opposing the Gospel, Paul asks that he be struck blind, just as Paul himself had been, as a sign to the proconsul of the power of God. This man had “powers” that made him important to the official and here the power of God is proven to be greater than whatever power worked through the magician. In the Gospel lesson we see God using the healing of blindness as a sign and here we see Him causing blindness as a sign. In all things we see the sovereignty of God.

The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord;
he is their refuge in the time of trouble.
The Lord helps them and rescues them;
he rescues them from the wicked, and saves them,
because they take refuge in him.