Eliphaz continues to accuse Job of sin with the promise if
he will agree with God, confess that sin, the Lord will again bless him. In the larger speech (some of the verses that
are omitted) Eliphaz makes specific allegations against Job that he has not
cared about widows, orphans, strangers, and the needy, he has neglected justice
and that he has been a greedy man. Here,
he says that if Job will lay down his greed for gold and make the Almighty his
treasure then all will go well for him again.
Jesus said much the same in Matthew 6 when he spoke of not being anxious
about what we will wear or eat but to seek first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness and all those things will be added to us. The problem is that Eliphaz clearly is urging
Job to seek the Lord so that he might have those other things, his motives are
wrong. It is the loss of those things
that drives his theology, his conclusion that Job has sinned is based on his
earthly circumstances. Job only wants
justice, he doesn't bother to engage with Eliphaz.
These eighteen verses are as pregnant with theology as any
other in the entire Bible. First Jesus
uses the metaphor of the shepherd to explain why all do not follow Him and why
some will only follow Him. At night a
group of shepherds would gather their sheep inside a sheepfold for mutual
protection. Each shepherd would call out
his own sheep the next day and they would follow only his voice. Next, Jesus says He is the door of the
sheepfold, the only way for a sheep to enter the fold, the wall was
intentionally too high for them to leap over so that they might have the sense
of security necessary to rest. The thief
would come some other way and his motives would be to steal, kill and destroy,
not so that the sheep would have abundant life.
He is also the good shepherd and there is only one such, the Lord is my
shepherd. In Ezekiel 34 we see the Lord
promising to come and be their shepherd to replace those bad shepherds who are
only in it for themselves. Finally,
Jesus speaks of calling other sheep who will join the flock though they now are
not part of the flock, but in the end they too will hear only his voice and
there will be one flock and one shepherd.
Is that clear enough that there aren't many ways to God?
Paul proves via Scripture that Jesus is the Messiah. He argues that Jesus alone fulfilled the
prophetic word because of His resurrection from the dead. His appeal is to the word of God as He speaks
to this primarily Jewish audience. The
Jews among the crowd are intrigued by the message and would like to hear more
but the ones who are truly interested are the "devout
converts to Judaism" and many of the Jews who followed the two men. Paul urged them to continue in the grace of
God. What he wanted for them was to keep
seeking, they were on the right path, and all they needed was God's grace to
make right decisions now about this message, about Jesus. They had received it as Good News, they
needed to continue to pursue truth.
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