So Elihu has waited as long as he can to speak into Job's
situation and all he has to offer are the same basic arguments? “Man is also rebuked with
pain on his bed and with continual strife in his bones, so that his life
loathes bread, and his appetite the choicest food." He believes the Lord is speaking to Job in
this trouble if he will care to hear Him and allow himself to be convicted and
then redeemed. It is difficult to see
what he thinks he brings to the party that hasn't already been said. He begins with what sounds like humility but
soon becomes arrogant, claiming a wisdom that exceeds that of all the older men
present, including Job.
They can't make up their mind about
Jesus. The same is true today, people
want Him to be a great teacher, a moral exemplar, a social reformer,
wonder-worker, champion of the poor, whatever, and yet He doesn’t leave that
option open to them, either then or now.
Jesus is clear that He has told them that He is the Christ and also done
everything that should prove that claim to be true and finishes by saying,
"I and the Father are one." We
don't have the freedom to say that such claims were made by the disciples after
Jesus' death, they were writing and preaching Him to a group of people who
could have refuted it and the movement would have died on the vine just like
Gamaliel suggested it would. It is the
height of arrogance to say, two thousand years after the fact, that Jesus never
made such claims. On what basis could
anyone dismiss the Gospels? Just like
these, they don't want the responsibility that comes with believing.
Paul was apparently the talk of the city in
the week following his debut in the synagogue, as "almost the whole city
gathered to hear the word of the Lord."
The Jews were jealous of the response Paul and Barnabas' message was
receiving and attempted to contradict them.
Their response was that they were acting just as their compatriots in
Jerusalem had done and, even though He came to His own, His own received Him
not. When Paul announces that they will
turn to the Gentiles he receives an enthusiastic reception and sees a great
harvest among them. That reality is why
so many have turned to church planting to re-invigorate the church, that the
Gospel receives a warmer reception among those outside the church than within.
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