Buiding on the last three weeks in Colossians, today we explored the meaning and application of the Word of Christ dwelling in our hearts richly. That it ALWAYS manifests itself in acts of goodness and perpetual devotion to God in reverence and in prayer.
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We finally hear from Job’s thrid friend Zophar. While a little more cutting and derisive than his other two friends the pattern of advice remains the same.
All three friends LARGELY offer theologically sound counsel to Job IF, as Job and they all believe, these afflictions were due to judgment. However, Job’s trials are due to a satanic attack against Job’s devotion, reverence and trust in God.
Job at this point has lowered all forms of decorum and is freely speaking his mind against God and man. He believe’s he is righteous and that God is judging him unjustly. Job also is responding to his friend with greater pride and defensiveness.
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Prayer is a dialogue NOT a monolgue. God commands and encourages us to come and converse with Him without ceasing and that is the force behind Paul’s last words to the believers in Colossea.
Paul had just told them to allow Christ to dwell with understanding in their hearts and live out what they know of Him in their homes and at work. But ALL of this was impossible to accomplish in a way which is pleasing to God, if it is done FOR God rather than with and by Him.
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By chapter 7 Job has come to the point in his calamities where he is reconsidering the nature of God.
The lines Job begins to cross are in thinging that even if he had sinned and repented, God would simply plunge him back into the mire of guilt since He is determined to destroy him. He believes that God protects the wicked and punishes the innocent and that God literally laughs and takes pleasure in the adversities of the blameless.
Making matters FAR worse is that Job keeps wishing for an audience with God to present his case, as if God cannot hear him and as if he could not just do so at any time in prayer.
Bildad is the friend who addresses Job in these chapters. He steps in and offers very solid counsel. However, like their friend Eliphaz, he comes to wrong conclusions because of he believes Job’s troubles are due to unconfessed and un-repudiated sin.
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To the Colossian believers Paul describes what it looks like when a person has truly died with Christ.
After this, he goes on to describe the same regarding those who have truly risen with Him!
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