Job is giving up on the potential for pleading his case with
God. He continues to believe, however,
that his witness is in heaven and the one who testifies for him is on
high. His real problem is these friends
who have made his life more miserable and who testify against him. I have known people whose lives have been
made miserable by either circumstances or disease and their friends have
concluded that there is some hidden or unconfessed sin in their lives that
causes this situation to persist and indeed they add to the misery
immeasurably. Our role is not to be the
accuser of our brothers unless we know something either by experience with them
or by a special revelation from the Lord.
We are to preach the Gospel at all times to encourage one another to
live above the circumstances as much as possible.
The disciples theology needs correction. "Who sinned, this man or
his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus' answer tells us everything we need to know, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works
of God might be displayed in him."
The man could certainly protest the unfairness of such an answer, it
seems arbitrary that he was chosen for this privation in order that Jesus might
heal him. He had to live forty years as
a blind man in order that this moment might bring healing while others had all
their faculties and senses intact. Jesus
uses the healing as a teaching moment on light and darkness, spiritual sight
and spiritual blindness. The Pharisees
see the man is healed, surely a miracle of God, but they conclude that the
healing is not from God because Jesus worked in making mud on the Sabbath and
then caused the man himself to sin by washing off the mud. They missed the forest on account of the
trees.
The Lord had blessed the church at Antioch
with five men who were preachers and teachers.
They prayed and heard the Lord saying to set apart Paul and Barnabas for
other work. Their first inclination was
to preach in the synagogues of the Jews and along the way they came into
contact with a man described as a magician and false Jewish prophet. He was with the proconsul, government
official, and was seeking to keep the Gospel from his patron or
benefactor. Paul spoke directly to the
spirit within the man and pronounced a prophetic word that he would be blind
for a season of time. The word was
fulfilled and the proconsul believed because of this sign of power. Why should we not expect God to move in such
power today? There are barriers to the
Gospel, people who would seek to hinder the work of mission, and does not the
Lord still have power to do these things to remove the obstacle?
No comments:
Post a Comment