Who can lay a charge against God? Does the good of mankind add to Him? Does evil diminish Him? He assists the righteous and punishes the wicked as He wishes. Can you see Him, His majesty in the coming storm? In Elihu’s words you can hear the thunder and feel the heightening winds that will usher in the majesty of the God Who will respond to Job in the storm of the next few chapters.
Paul, who are you? What is it that you mean to say about Jesus? What is all the uproar about? Nothing that really matters to the empire is going on here. Agrippa, listen to this man and his story. Paul believes the importance of this issue to be so great that he invokes the Roman citizen’s right to be heard by the Emperor. What does it mean?
In our “enlightened” and “post modern” age these passages may seem blasé, irrelevant. A “god” who will not be judged by any? The great sovereignty of the Creator appears always to be on trial. Philosophers have considered that God is dead, literally, and no more good exists; that God is dead in the minds and hearts of modern man and that man is now truly free from myth to become his best self. I shudder thinking of how man’s best self without God has been demonstrated in the past. We may know why the sky is blue, or what makes up rainbows, or what muons are — isn’t that what cats do all night? Yet why do we wonder at the beauty in the sky? Feel awe over the refraction of light rays through mist and water — OOOOhhh!! A double rainbow!! Who gives us that personal sense?
One may try to condense the wonders of the universe into a formula. Yet if we could Who has made the powers of that formula we would discover? The world around us puts God on trial every day. In His gracious choice to give men reason to turn to Him, God has given the world His witnesses. Am I one?
Prayer: Holy, Righteous, Father, Today may others see You at work in me, to Your glory and to turn their hearts to You.