Job looks back over his life, in search of sin, and finds
righteousness. He is willing to find
sin, looking for obvious sins like adultery, mistreatment of his servants, or a
failure to help the poor. He finds
himself innocent of all these potential accusations. As I have continually reminded us, Job was
blameless and upright. He isn't falsely
or superficially acquitting himself of sin.
Underneath all his thoughts on the matters at hand, however, is the
little problem that has been the problem all along in Job's argument. The last sentence sums it up, "For I was
in terror of calamity from God, and I could not have faced his majesty." Several times in this defense he says similar
things, "Is not calamity for the unrighteous, and disaster for the workers
of iniquity?... if my step has turned aside from the way and my heart has gone
after my eyes, and if any spot has stuck to my hands, then let me sow, and
another eat, and let what grows for me be rooted out." Has Job's righteousness more to do with fear
and a belief that his actions bring and deserve either blessing or curse or is
he pursuing righteousness for its own sake because God wants that from him?
What must Mary and Martha have thought when now, finally,
too late to do anything, Jesus comes?
Four days Lazarus has been dead and now in the tomb. We sent word, if you had come when we called
you could have done something. Our hope
and faith were in you and your love for us and you ignored us and because of
that Lazarus is dead. Really dead. Four days is too long in Jewish theology for
resuscitation. They believe the soul keeps vigil for three days to see if the
body will reanimate and then leaves without hope for the place of the
dead. Martha says, however, even now God
will give whatever you ask. Jesus, far
from comforting her, seems to almost crush her hopes by saying "I am the
resurrection and the life and if anyone believes in Him they will not die and
if they die they will yet live and asks if she believes that. She believes He is the Christ, but at the
moment death is too real to speak to such matters directly. At this confession Jesus weeps because death
is so powerfully soul crushing.
The first apostolic council of the church has to deal with
the matter, "What about the Gentiles?" Some, from Judea, have gone out and are
teaching that all must be circumcised in order to be in the covenant while Paul
and Barnabas dispute with them over the matter.
Wouldn’t you love to know the arguments mustered by Paul and Barnabas
since, ultimately, they won the debate?
The matter has to be decided in order to know how the Gentile mission is
to go forward and it required the apostles, those who had been with Jesus, to
settle it, so to Jerusalem they went.
Peter finally decides the matter decisively, circumcision is submitting
to the yoke of the law and Jesus set us free from that yoke. No one but Him was able to carry it and
therefore the only salvation is by grace.
God's sovereignty, what we call monergism, is affirmed forever by the
council.
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