Job 31:1-33:33, 2 Corinthians 3:1-18, Psalm 43:1-5, Proverbs 22:8-9
Today is the 29th day of August, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is wonderful to be here with you today, it’s wonderful, wonderful, this is a wonderful place to be on any given day as we gather around the Global Campfire, and so, glad that we can have some more time. What a gift we can have this time together, isn’t it? It is for me. It’s a gift that we can have this time together and I’m excited for us to take the next step forward. We have been working day-by-day, step-by-step through Job and I just kind of dealing with human suffering and thinking about our own lives and the things that we face. Listening to Job’s friends and hearing the echoes of things that have been said to us and things that we’ve been said. And Job is just deeply committed to what he thinks is impossible, that he might find God. That he might be able to talk to God directly because human wisdom is failing and is coming up short. And so, let’s continue with the dialogue. As we begin today, Job is still speaking, he was speaking all of yesterday’s reading. He continues to speak today, Job chapters 31, 32, and 33 today.
Commentary:
Okay so, we had a fairly short reading in second Corinthians today that packs a punch because of the implications. I mean, we understand what Paul’s actually saying here. The implications of the gospel become really clear. And so, Paul was discussing veils today and he’s using that example of vail and we know what a veil is right. You put a veil over your face, like a bride, she has a veil over her face and she walks down the aisle. So, we know what a veil is. So, Paul is contrasting the Mosaic law and the redemptive work of Christ to fulfill it, and he goes back to the early stories that we’ve read, as we began our year. He goes back to the origin stories. He goes back to Moses because this is where the law flowed from, and so, this is where the allegiance is. He goes back to Moses and says look, here’s the story though. Like if we go back to our own text, here’s the story. God wanted to speak to His people around the mountain and they were terrified of Him speaking to them. And so, they told Moses, you go, you go up the mountain and you hear from God. And you come back and tell us what God has to say. And then we will obey you. You be the mouthpiece for God. The invitation was this direct interaction, they chose this prophetic voice, Moses. Moses went into the presence of God, but when he came back down the mountain, his face was glowing from being in the presence of God, which freaked all of the people out. So, Moses put this vail over his face to cover his face. And he would look through the veil and see the people and people would look at him and see the veil. And Paul is essentially saying, yeah and we’ve been looking through the veil ever since. Paul says it like this, and I quote, “their minds became closed. In fact, to this day the same veil is still there when they read the Old Testament. When they read the Torah, the law. It isn’t removed, because only Christ can remove it.” So, let’s just remember where Paul is always going. We learned a lot about this when we were reading through the letter to the Romans. Paul’s conviction is that the Mosaic law, which is what governs the people trying to figure out obey those commands, that that is a good thing, and that it is a valuable thing. It’s just a miss purposed thing. The law shows our failures, it reveals our transgressions, it shows us that we have stepped over the line into sin. It leads to death because the only thing that it shows is our repeated pathway to death by transgressing the law. So, it’s a good thing because it shows that. But the only thing that it ever shows is that we’re going in the wrong direction, a direction that’s moving away from righteousness before God.