All Job wants is for this to end, for God to end his life,
the pain is too much to bear. He has
come to see God as His enemy but has God indeed done this to Job or has He
allowed it? Does it matter in the end
which it is or is that nothing more than semantics to let God off the hook for
blame? Worse yet from Job's perspective
is that his "friends" have withheld kindness and instead have sought
to find fault in Job commensurate with the situation. Job's response to their words is that the
pain is the problem and they have ignored that in order to find the reason,
that isn’t their prerogative. Our role
is to comfort one another in affliction unless the Lord has given us a very
particular word to speak, which Eliphaz claims he has received.
Jesus is a bit testy here, even with the disciples. What He has said, that in order to have life
you must believe that He was sent from God and that you must also eat His flesh
and drink His blood, is indeed a hard saying if the last part is to be taken
literally. There are two groups here to
whom He speaks, the disciples and the twelve.
The disciples are clearly a larger group of those who were following
Jesus more closely than the multitude.
In other Gospels we see a group of 72 who are sent out on one occasion,
perhaps this is that group. We also see,
at the close of Matthew's Gospel a group of disciples, some of whom don't
believe even as they see Him after the resurrection and ascending to
heaven. The twelve here are called out
to see if they will leave as well and Peter makes a confession of Jesus as the
Holy One of God, a powerful statement but even here Peter had no idea what that
entailed.
So exactly when did signs and wonders cease? Peter is authenticated by these signs, the
healing of Aeneas and the raising of Dorcas from the dead. People come to faith through these signs,
that the proclamation of the kingdom of God is more than words, it is also the
power of healing and resurrection. The
kingdom of God will be fully realized when Jesus returns but in the meantime it
should also be breaking into our world, startling us, awakening us and
revealing His power. Lord, show us Your
power today in order that our unbelief might be healed and that the world may
know that Your are still working in this world.
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