READINGS FOR APRIL 8, 2024: JOB 35, 1 CORINTHIANS 2, PSALM 28:1-5
JOB 35
This chapter is a continuation of a speech by Elihu. In this section, Elihu again misunderstands Jobs cry for help.
Elihu asserts that nothing that human beings can do will affect God’s essential nature. The sins we commit will injure us and hurt other human beings. Our sin does not impact God’s nature of justice and love. This statement is true. Nothing that creation does impacts the nature of God.
However, it really is not helpful in this instance. The knowledge that God in unchanging does not really help Job who is struggling and suffering. Job needs comfort and not to be talked down upon.
Elihu questions Job as to why he is crying out for help from God. What makes Job think that he has the right to question God about what is going on. However, as part of our faith journey, it is acceptable to question God. In Psalm 42, the psalmist who thirsts for God in verses 1-2, asks God why they have been forgotten:
I say to God my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”
(Psalm 42:9, NIV)
God would rather us ask him questions than to stop praying. God would rather us be frustrated and help console us than for us to go silent.
1 CORINTHIANS 2
This chapter is a continuation of Paul’s instruction on Godly wisdom. Paul uses the device of hyperbole to make a point. He overemphasizes the fact that he “resolved to nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2, NIV). The point is that Paul did not want the spotlight on his wisdom but on the message of Christ.
The fact that Paul claims that his preaching was not particularly good (to paraphrase), should help us in our faith journey as well. When we share the gospel of Jesus Christ to our friends and family, we do not need to have eloquent words or a polished speech that will leave the hearers in awe. If we rely on the Holy Spirit to help us to talk to someone about what it means for me to follow Christ, God’s power is in those words.
Paul uses a quotation from Isaiah 64:4, to suggest to the people that the philosophers and Greek and Jewish religious elite of his age were ignorant of the wisdom of God. Because they did not know and love God, these people were not able to see, hear, and comprehend the knowledge of God. And, on many levels this is true. We cannot understand the love of God until we have accepted it freely. We cannot comprehend the sacrifice of Christ until we know that Jesus did it for me/you.
When talking like this, one must be wary of coming off sounding like gnostic teaching. Gnosticism was/is a heresy of the church that emphasized a hidden personal spiritual knowledge that only the enlightened received. They considered the material world as evil and the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of God (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism). The main problem with this teaching (in its
simplest form) is that Gnostics believe personal revelation from God as more important than the teaching of the church (i.e., if what I think God is telling me is different than what I was taught in Sunday School then I should automatically reject what I was taught in favor of the self-revelation).
We are not called to that kind of understanding. As Christians, we believe that the Holy Spirit has opened the scriptures up to us as a collective body. We believe that the Holy Spirit helps us to take this book that was written over two thousand years ago and use it to understand how to live in this world right now. We believe that as a church, we can read those Biblical scholars over the centuries and through prayer we can figure out how to live as a follower of Christ in this world today. Through the Holy Spirit, we have the mind of Christ (verse 16).
PSALM 28:1-5
This psalm begins as a song of lament. To lament is “a passionate expression of grief or sorrow” (www.google.com/lament). It is a plea by David for deliverance from his enemies. David pleas that if God does not act on his behalf that he will not survive.
David is asking God to repay David’s enemies in the way David believes that he has been mistreated. This request fits the Old Testament theology of “eye for an eye” (Exodus 21:24). In verse 5, David expresses confidence that God will protect him and will destroy his enemies.
This may be a hard psalm to read. In our modern sensibilities, we may struggle with the call for God to destroy our enemies. And yet, David’s plea may be the precise thing we need to remember. God hears us when we are angry. God hears us when we are hurting. God hears our lament and is there for us in our time of need. We do not need to sugarcoat our words to God. We can bear our true feelings and desires.
