Job continues to make his defense, beginning with he has not
worshipped idols or false gods of any sort, money or the created order. Further, he has never even celebrated at the
misfortune of others, not even those who have hated him. No one can complain that Job has failed to
offer hospitality of any sort. He has
not lived in fear of man and kept silent in order to keep the peace. What is it he wants? "Oh, that I had the indictment written
by my adversary!" His adversary? Who is Job's adversary? Job has concluded that God is his adversary
and in so doing has made a great mistake.
God is on Job's side but Job is looking at the evidence and making the
wrong conclusion. The adversary is satan
and he has accused Job of one simple thing, loving God for the gifts and
protection He has given Job rather than because of Himself. Perhaps there was some degree of truth in
that accusation. Job has loved the God
he thought was God, the God who paid out favors to the people who kept the
rules. He needs a new understanding of
God.
Now that Mary is present the time has come for Jesus to
act. Can't you just hear the little
sniping side conversation that we see here: “See how he loved him!” But some of
them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept
this man from dying?” There is faith but
doubt about Jesus' goodness all at the same time. Was that same basic idea behind the word of
both sisters when they saw Jesus, "If you had been here my brother would not
have died." We know their faith in
Him was great but it had limits. It
seemed to all particularly rude that Jesus would ask for the tomb to be opened
and Martha clearly stated the reason, "Lord, by this time there will be an
odor, for he has been dead four days.”
Amazingly, what looked like a failure of love and concern became the
occasion for the greatest manifestation and proof both of His love and of His
identity. Everything else was prelude to
this moment until His own resurrection.
James has now become the leader of the Jerusalem church and
it is then his statement that carries the day in regards to the Gentiles. It is their considered decision that only a
few things are to be observed in regards the law by these converts, "to
abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from
what has been strangled, and from blood."
There has always been the need for a certain amount of separation from
the world by God's people in order to reveal Him and these were the things the
council chose to enforce because these were the things that reveal different
gods and different ethics of the kingdom of God. In our day we hear things about sexuality
like Jesus never mentioned such things but when the church first had to decide
what set it apart, sexual ethics was one of the prime issues. Can it be much simpler than that? God reveals Himself in these prohibitions in
that He is one God not one of many and He is a jealous God, not sharing His glory
with any other. He cares about life, all
of life, including animal life, and the Word has always said that the life of
anything is in the blood, this prohibition was one of the first in the entire
Bible once meat was allowed into the diet.
As in the garden, the prohibitions were few and, not surprisingly we
have come to focus on the thing prohibited rather than the great freedom we
have been given.
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