At the end of God's soliloquy Job can only say, now that I have
seen you rather than just heard of you, I will be silent, my wisdom and
knowledge is so limited I can't comprehend all that I don’t know. Afterwards, the Lord rebukes Job's friends
and commands them to sacrifice before Job seven bulls and seven rams for their
folly of speaking wrongly of Him. When we
counsel with those in grief or in the midst of a calamity, it is important that
we speak rightly of Him, that we present them with a truthful picture of the
Lord. That includes a truthful and
honest understanding of this world and His love for it. Ultimately the Lord prospers Job more in the
end of his life than in the beginning. There
has been great loss, including his children, yet Job now has no more questions
for the Lord, only worship.
Greeks who had come to the Passover festival in Jerusalem
seek out Jesus via His disciple Philip. When
Philip presents their request to "see Jesus" he doesn't get the answer
he might have expected. It begins well,
"The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified." Surely Philip's expectations were high in
interpreting that particular statement, particularly as it was just after the
triumphal entry where Jesus was hailed as the Messianic King, the Son of
David. Immediately, however, Jesus speaks
of dying, losing this life, hating this life, and eternal life. Can't you just see Philip going back to the
Greeks saying, "I don't have any idea what's going on." Even at this late date it seems doubtful that
the disciples understood that Jesus was really going to a cross, especially in
the short term when all looked like it was going well. These Greeks, who were probably proselytes to
Judaism, had heard of Jesus, just as Job had heard about God, but they wanted
not only to hear of Him but see Him. They
would, but what would they make of what they saw?
The spirit of prophecy and the spirit of divination are two
different things as they come from two different sources. Divination always points to itself, glorifies
itself and the one who possesses the spirit and frequently is used to make
money. Paul is annoyed with this spirit
that speaks truly, he and Silas were servants of the Most High God and were
proclaiming the way of salvation, but they needed no one else to witness to
that, particularly one who had not received this salvation herself. Paul spoke to the spirit and commanded it to
come out of the girl in the Name of Jesus and it obeyed, a sure sign that the
spirit was not of God. Her owners, whose
servant she was, and for whom she was a profit-center, were angry about their
loss, even though it had meant the girl was demon-possessed. When she was giving a word, it didn't matter
what Paul and Silas proclaimed, but now, they must be arrested and
punished. They, like so many others, saw
but did not see.
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