Job 16:1-19:29, 1 Corinthians 16:1-24, Psalms 40:1-10, Proverbs 22:1
Today is the 25th day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is a joy as it is every day, an honor, a privilege, it’s great to be here with you today around the Global Campfire and let’s just come in and warm ourselves. If it’s first thing in the morning, this is the first thing that we’re doing and we are setting our course, if it’s halfway through the day and we’ve gotten beat up already by life, then it’s just a time to step away from all that, if we’re closing down our day, it’s a time to step away from all of the things that we could be thinking about, all the things we could be worrying about, just all of the issues of life on planet Earth and just set it aside for a minute, reorient ourselves to God through His word and come out refreshed. And, so, let’s get to it. We’re reading from the Voice Translation this week. We’re working our way through the book of Job. Pretty aggressive, direct conversation is happening between Job and his friends. Job is defending his innocence and he doesn’t want the answers of his friends. He wants God. His friends try to tell him that’s probably not gonna happen or what’s probably the problem with Job. And yet steadfastly, in fact, what we read yesterday is riveting, “even if he’s slays me, even if I can’t find Him and ask Him, even if it kills me I’m still going to hope in Him”, which is Job’s way of saying there is no other hope. And, so, we continue our journey today. Job chapter 16, 17, 18 and 19.
Commentary:
Okay. So, as we continue the book of Job and our journey through it and the conversations between Job and his friends centered around Job’s unbelievable suffering, we’re seeing Job hold true to his innocence and his deep desire, like his single-minded focus to find God and ask these questions of God because nobody else can give the answers that he’s seeking. And his friends are trying to tell him like, “even if you could see God, even if you could ask Him these questions, even if you could have that conversation you are to blame essentially for your own downfall and you need to see that. Like, you need to come to this place of humility.” And Job is like, “the thing is, I’m not. I’m innocent.” And just about in every day that we read in Job, the way that Job kind of concludes something that he’s saying is, so spectacular in revealing his heart. So, he is going off today about how God has hunted him down, beat him up, put him up for target practice. Like there’s nowhere he can go, there is no place to escape, he’s withering away. So, we can tell for sure that, yes, Job…Job has lost everything but the battle, a lot of the battle is in Job’s mind. Like he is unbelievable down, like completely depressed. We can read some of the words that we read today and commiserate. Like no, we haven’t experienced probably the hardships of Job, but the sentiments that are coming out of his mouth, the things that he is saying, they feel true. Like, we don’t often say them. We try to keep them inside, but they feel true to some of our experiences. And his friends, they are trying to comfort him, but Job’s being direct, so they’re being direct back. Like they feel like a need to defend God against the accusations Job is making and they’re trying help Job understand like, “dude, you have…you have a part to play in this. There’s no way you don’t have a part to play in this.” And, so, we get to the end of the reading today and Job is frustrated but his heart comes sailing out. He’s like, “I wish…I wish that my words were just words that aren’t flying away. I wish these words were immortalized. I wish they were written down.” Obviously, we’re reading this book, so we have this we have this book. But he’s saying, “I wish they were written down. Better than written down, I wish they were chiseled into stone. I wish that what I’m saying could be heard because I know my redeemer lives and, in the end, He will rise and take His stand on the earth. I know that even if my skin is stripped away and I wither away, I know in my flesh I will see God, not somebody else, me, with my eyes. This is what I am looking for. Again, it’s like there are these sections in Job that I just…don’t know what to say about them, you stand speechless. You’re like, “Okay. that reorients me.” Because Job doesn’t understand. He cannot get the understanding for what’s happening, and his friends cannot explain it to him. And, so, in spite of pain and suffering and unbelievable depression and hopelessness, like hopelessness he’s reaching beyond his experience and beyond his understanding and saying, “I know…I know my Redeemer lives because there is a knowing that is beyond circumstance, a knowing that is beyond experience, a knowing beyond what we can understand and knowing beyond our mind.” So, what we’re seeing kind of emerge here, at least in Job’s convictions are, “I don’t understand. I really don’t. But I do know that God is there and I am seeking and I will find Him.” May we all live into that today.
And then also today we concluded the letter known as first Corinthians. And just…just a little…kind of a side story…a little bit of an undercurrent side drama in these…some of these letters of Paul. As this letter ends today Paul’s like, “hey don’t forget the money”, right? “Don’t forget money that I have promised to the church in Jerusalem.” That collection that he’s taking up, that appears in a number of his letters and in some of those letters he’s kind of defending himself. Like, it’s like the people are not sure about Paul’s intentions and why he needs the money. So, like even in first Corinthians he’s like basically, “get the money together. I’m coming through. Here’s when I’m gonna be coming through. And you can take this to Jerusalem. We can send it to Jerusalem. Maybe…maybe you can choose some people to take it to Jerusalem and…and maybe I can…can go along with them.” Like, he’s trying to like, “I…I’m not gonna steal the money.” But it gives us some clues into the early church that that was some of the suspicions going on in the early church. More than likely what’s actually going on here in this early church is that Paul, being a Jew, being raised up and educated in the Jewish Mosaic law, having converted to follow Jesus and then going out among the Gentiles, like this causes problems. We have talked about this and we will talk about it more. Paul is a very controversial figure, has always been a controversial figure, but remember in the book of Acts where there was this first church council. And Paul was a part of that counsel. The apostles, the church, the Jerusalem church, the mother church, the first church was a part of that, was making those decisions. And the ultimate decision was can Gentiles follow Jesus without first converting to Judaism and getting up to speed their understanding of the law and then start following Jesus? The ultimate decision was that, of course, “the Holy Spirit is moving among the Gentiles. God has made that decision. Who are we to stand in the way? Like, we don’t get to decide. God already decided. So, it’s gonna…it’s gonna tip things upside down and we’ll see where it goes, but we gotta follow what God is saying.” Probably during that counsel and Paul’s sharing of his work among the Gentiles, and the establishment of the churches Paul probably shared like…like we can…we can collect resources from all over the world to help here in Jerusalem because Paul’s collection is for the Jerusalem church. That’s how it is in his letters and this is a very poor church as we…as we understand from the Scriptures. So, many scholars believe like this collection is important resources for the work of Christ, yes, but not all of the Jewish believers were on board with some of these decisions and the idea that Gentile believers would give back but basically understand that this all started among the Hebrew people. Jesus was a Hebrew person and this first church this Jerusalem church is fighting a battle against their own people and against the whole world, and they should be honored in that, that Paul being able to go out and bring back resources to help the church helped some of those people who were absolutely against this decision, the Judaizers as they’re called in some translations, help them either one, just be quiet because they were going to get something or two, understand God is at work, no church is gonna be an island, this is the body, everybody needs to help everybody. But even out among the Gentile churches we see in Paul’s writings when he’s talking about the money, when he’s collecting the money, that even they get a little bit prickly. And it…so there’s no theological thing I’m trying to say here. Like I’m not trying to say, “so here’s the truth and here’s how we should think about that today.” I’m just saying like interesting pieces of the story emerge if we’re looking for them and we get a more comprehensive view of what’s actually going on as we systematically go through the Bible together like we are. So, we finished first Corinthians today which means tomorrow we will begin the letter known as second Corinthians.
Prayer:
Father we thank You. We thank You for Your word and we just circle back to Job for second and we declare, because some of us are in the depths of depression and suffering and anxiety and hopelessness, and all of us gets challenged in these areas. Some of us are in deep depression. All of us have experienced it in some way. And, so, to cry out beyond our understanding, beyond what we think we know and to know that our Redeemer lives, it’s certainly comforting but something wells up from within us. It’s a knowing that is beyond knowledge. Holy Spirit lead us into that today we pray. In the mighty name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.
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