Job 34:1-36:33, 2 Corinthians 4:1-12, Psalms 44:1-8, Proverbs 22:10-12
Today is the 30th day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it is great to be here with you today. We’re in the middle of the week but we are definitely at the end of the month. And obviously we’ll be concluding the month tomorrow. We’re also really navigating ourselves to the end of some of the territory that we’re in in the Bible. We’re reaching the conclusion of the book of Job. A couple more days. We’re reaching the end of second Corinthians. So we’re about to just reset everything over the course of the next week. But, you know what, we’ll navigate that all that together. And we are here right now around the Global Campfire today for this next step forward. And our next step leads us back into Joe. And we met another character in the story of Job yesterday. A person named Elihu has been sitting and listening to Job talk to his friends, but he’s younger. So he’s trying to be respectful, but as things are winding down, as the argument gets more and more circular and more frustration is happening Elihu finally says, hey it’s my turn to talk. And, so, he has plenty to say, as we have already heard. And we will continue to listen to Elihu today. So, Job, chapters 34, 35, and 36.
Commentary:
Okay. So, we have some profound advice in a couple of sentences in one verse from the book of Proverbs today and it reads, “drive out a mocker and conflict will leave. Quarreling and abuse will stop.” I mean this verse stops me at “conflict will leave”. Like, that’s got my attention. And you go on, “quarreling will stop. Abuse will go away.” Like what…what are we talking about here? You have my attention. The answer is drive out a mocker. And you probably agree with it. We might have to sit here and think about it for a minute but we probably agree with all this. That…that’s true. Mocking does inflame things and then…and then things just go crazy. So, we could agree until we have to go look in the mirror and realize that sometimes that’s us, the mocker, the lengths that we’ll go to to be right in an argument. So, now the proverb should have pretty much all of our attention. So, let’s just think about conflict for a second. I mean conflict is when people are kind of moving in a direction and they cross paths and…and there’s an impasse of some sort. Conflict is present, a problem is being surfaced. And resolving these conflicts are what we spend a heck of a lot of our energy doing all day every day in some form or another. But when we’re not getting a conflict resolved the way we wanted to be resolved and we’re not willing to give ground a compromise or try to find a way forward…well then we bring out the special tools, right? We put on the mocker mask. We bring out the scorn. We bring these awful things as strategies for resolving a conflict because we couldn’t do it the way we wanted and we’re not getting what we want so now it’s down to domination. And, so, we’re no longer looking at a problem that needs to be resolved, a problem that is causing a conflict that we have to find a way forward on. We instead diminish the person so that we can attack the person and dominate the person and be right. And mocking does that. The mocker has contempt against the other person or people. And, so, their position, their point of view is diminished. We judge it inferior as we rise up in our righteous indignation and scorn and contempt and mocking and we have lost the battle at that point because now it’s person against person and the problem is just sitting there. And then the gloves come off, and things get personal, and things get vicious, and things get hellish. The ancient wisdom from the book of Proverbs tells us that if we don’t invite the mocker into the mix then fighting and quarrels and abuse and insults will disappear, which allows people to participate in resolving a conflict. The mocker is in each of us in any number of ways.