While many of Job's speeches may be seen as an affront to
God, this one shows that Job was well aware that nothing mattered as much as
wisdom and only the Lord had true wisdom or knew from whence it comes. Job knows where wisdom may be seen, "Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from
evil is understanding.” The fear of Lord
is in the knowledge of His greatness, His holiness, His righteousness and His judgment. We must come humbly before Him if we would
get wisdom. We must lay aside all our
own claims to wisdom and knowledge, we must cease believing we know good and
evil apart from Him. We must cease
leaning on our own understanding and receive all things from Him with gladness.
The crowd understood Jesus' words about
being lifted up as He meant them, crucifixion.
They also knew from Scripture that the Christ remains forever. The two things they knew or understood didn't
fit together in an intelligible way. No one
believed in resurrection from the dead. They
knew that Jesus had raised Lazarus but who would raise Jesus? A little bit of wisdom and understanding can
be a real problem for us. We extrapolate
a great deal of our understanding and then we fail to remember that God said
His thoughts aren't our thoughts and His ways aren't our ways.
Paul and Silas are worshipping in prison,
in chains, singing hymns and praying. The earthquake shook the prison, opened the
cell doors and loosed the bonds of all the prisoners. The jailer knew that if the prisoners escaped
under his watch his bosses would put him to death so he chose to end it
himself, it would be far more painful if he left it to others. Paul, however, implored him not to take this
action, there was no need as all remained in prison. This became the opportunity to preach the
Gospel to the man and his family. He went
from prepared to die to truly living for all eternity in just those few minutes
and instead of lording it over Paul and Silas he became their servant in
treating their wounds. Then the
magistrates faced a dilemma, Paul was a Roman citizen and they had deprived him
of his right to a fair trial. Perhaps many
of those who participated in the beating and imprisonment were not themselves
citizens, and if so, there would be hell to pay. Paul accepted their apology and their escort
from the city and the nascent community rejoiced, God used this awful episode
for much good.
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