As with all the speeches of the friends of Job, there is
truth in them but the truth then gets perverted. Zophar speaks of the great wisdom and
mysteries of God, exactly what God Himself will speak of with Job, but then he
comes to a conclusion that is not warranted.
He concludes that if Job puts away sin he will stand fearlessly before
the Almighty. We happen to know Job is
not a sinful man, he has done nothing that deserves this situation. That, however, does not mean that he is
perfectly righteous in his heart, and fearlessness before God is not ever our
posture.
The teachings of Jesus here in the Sermon on the Mount tell
us much about who we are, or at least who we are supposed to be. Zophar would have a hard time recognizing the
theology of Jesus as it shows that we are to be poor in spirit, mourning, meek,
merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and willing to be persecuted. Nowhere do I see anything like standing
fearlessly before the Lord or the promise of the easy life, carefree and
blessed as the world counts blessings.
We live in a fallen and broken world where there is no correspondence
between righteousness and the simple life.
Righteousness doesn't mean that we will protected from all harm, there
is no health and wealth Gospel, our reward is in heaven but no less real and,
even better, that reward is eternal.
There is no one found in heaven, or in the earth, or under
the earth who was worthy to take the scroll from the hand of the One who sits
on the throne until the lamb looking like it was slain appears. The appellations given by the angel, Lion of
the tribe of Judah, root of David who has triumphed are heard, a lamb looking
like it was slain is hardly the image expected to be seen. It seems like an incongruity and yet heaven
explodes in worship for this One, ascribing the same worship and the same
blessings to Him as they had to the One on the throne in chapter 4. If this is the posture of Jesus before the
throne, what does that tell us about our own posture before the Lord?
No comments:
Post a Comment