During our readings this week, we are well over halfway through the Book of Job and about halfway through the Gospel according to Matthew.
During the past week we have read what must be one of the most wonderful moments of light in the whole dark experience that was Job's life. In chapter 19, verses 23 through 27, we read:
Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh shall I see God,
whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
Job's ringing expression of hope and confidence in God comes in the middle of the second cycle of interrogations from his three friends: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. With friends like this, we might think, who needs enemies! Job cries aloud as if to reject their misguided attempts to explain the reasons for Job's misfortune - and to illustrate the righteous man's response to God in the midst of things he cannot understand.
Job's proclamation is reasonably understood by Christians to be a fore-shadowing of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ - and the future hope of all faithful people to be raised from the corruption of death just as the LORD himself was on the third day.
Jesus, in Matthew's gospel this week, having concluded the first major discourse of his ministry (the Sermon on the Mount) by articulating the nature of kingdom life (blessed are the meek, etc.), has called the Twelve to follow and sent them out as emissaries of the Kingdom (Chapter 10). The Lord begins to face opposition from the religious establishment, characterized by his confrontations with and challenges from the Pharisees.
Matthew presents a series of teachings by Jesus in the form of parables. A parable is a narrative analogy meant to convey a moral or spiritual lesson, and the lesson(s) are often noticeably missed by the hearers - even occasionally by the disciples. Beginning as he does with the Parable of the Sower (Chapter 13), Jesus points out the reality that not everyone who hears the Truth of the Gospel will take it to heart. Nonetheless, the challenge is to become Kingdom people.
Jesus speaks in challenging ways here - using language of good/bad, in/out. These "exclusive" declarations may not sit well in our modern and "enlightened" ears, but they are words of the Lord which we must consider well. Becoming trees which bear good fruit is the principal goal of the lives of disciples who follows Jesus Christ.
As you read this week, consider the question: How should I pray for the Holy Spirit to conform me more and more into the likeness of a Kingdom citizen, that I may bear fruit pleasing to God?
Taking comfort with Job in the confidence of knowing our Redeemer lives, we stay faithful in His Word.
Darin+
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