19-05-2017, 11:49 PM
(This post was last modified: 20-05-2017, 06:59 PM by Scott Kaiser.)
We have now reviewed two of the three books in the Bible known as the wisdom literature. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and now we come to Job.
In our review we learned in Proverbs, it TEACHES us that God is wise and just. The righteous are rewarding and the wicked is punished, in other words, you get what you deserve. Then we come to Ecclesiastes the critic who tells us that people don't always get what they deserve. He says life isn't always fair and life is unpredictable, and hard to comprehend, in other words, life is like smoke, and this makes you wonder is God really wise and just and it's that question that gets explored in the final book of wisdom, Job.
All right, so let's dive in.
Job begins with a strange story that takes place up in the heavens which is described something like a heavenly command center. God is there with these angelic creatures called the sons of God and they're all there reporting for duty. God points out that Job is his faithful servant, God is practically bragging on Job about how righteous and good he is. So, within the heavenly command center one of these angelic creatures described as saton approaches God. Saton is questioning how God is running the world. He proposes that Job may not actually love God, that he's only a good person because God rewards him, if God were to take away all of the good things he gave to Job then we would see his true colors.
Saton believes that Job is just working the system, maybe he's obeying just to get what he wants, so God agrees to this experiment and allows saton to inflict suffering on Job, so Job loses everyone, and everything he cares about, it is devastating, remember, he deserves none of this and God even said so. The remarkable thing is that in the mist of all this suffering, Job still praises God, after his suffering, or within a while we begin to really see how Job is feeling inside. He reveals this pawn that releases this devastation, it's a long elaborate curse on the day he was born. After this some of Job's friends comes to visit him, they all want to offer up their help, some of them are even talking among themselves wondering what it was that Job did so horribly wrong to deserve what he's going through. Some have implied after all, we know God is just, and we know the world is ordered by God's justice and fairness, so you must be getting what you deserve.
So, the friends of Job interact with each other back and forth on some very dense Hebrew poetry. His friends keep speculating on why God sent such suffering, so they begin to make a list of all the hypothetical sins that Job may have committed, but after each accusation Job defends his innocence, and Job really is innocent and he's also on an emotional roller coaster, at some moments he feels very confident that God is still wise and just, and at other moment he's doubting God's goodness. He even accuses God of being reckless, unfair and corrupt. So by the end of this book Job demands that God comes and explain himself, and God does so. He comes in the form of a great storm cloud, now God doesn't give Job a direct answer, he doesn't tell Job about the conversation God had with saton, instead, He does something very different, he takes Job on a virtual tour of the universe. He shows Job how grand the world is, and he asks him if he's capable of running it, or understanding it just for a day. He begins to show Job just how much detail there is in the world. Things that we might see everyday, but we really don't understand. That's where the beauty of all of this comes in because God understands it all in ways we could never imagine or places we will never see.
Then to conclude, God shows Job two wondrous beast. God brags about how great they are, yeah they are dangerous, they would kill you without thinking about, and God says, they're not evil, they're actually apart of His good world, and that's it, that's God's whole defense. It's kind of weird so what is this all about, so from Job's point of view it looks like he's saying God is not just, but God's perspective is infinitely bigger, He's dynamically interacting with the whole universe and its complexity when He makes decisions, and this is what God calls His wisdom, so for Job to call on God to defend himself is kind of absurd. Job couldn't comprehend this kind of complexity even if he wanted to. So, where does this leave us? It leaves Job in a place of humility. He never learned why he suffered, and yet he is able to live in peace, and in the fear the Lord.
That's not where the bookends, God restored to Job double of everything he lost, and again this was surprising, is this supposed to be some reward, or God saying congratulations Job, you passed the test. No! The whole book just made the point, that Job losing everything was not by punishment, and so now getting it back is not a reward, so why does he get it back? Well apparently, God in His wisdom decided to give Job a gift, we don't know why, but what we do know is, Job is now the kind of person no matter what comes his way good or bad he can trust God's wisdom, and that's the book of Job.
In our review we learned in Proverbs, it TEACHES us that God is wise and just. The righteous are rewarding and the wicked is punished, in other words, you get what you deserve. Then we come to Ecclesiastes the critic who tells us that people don't always get what they deserve. He says life isn't always fair and life is unpredictable, and hard to comprehend, in other words, life is like smoke, and this makes you wonder is God really wise and just and it's that question that gets explored in the final book of wisdom, Job.
All right, so let's dive in.
Job begins with a strange story that takes place up in the heavens which is described something like a heavenly command center. God is there with these angelic creatures called the sons of God and they're all there reporting for duty. God points out that Job is his faithful servant, God is practically bragging on Job about how righteous and good he is. So, within the heavenly command center one of these angelic creatures described as saton approaches God. Saton is questioning how God is running the world. He proposes that Job may not actually love God, that he's only a good person because God rewards him, if God were to take away all of the good things he gave to Job then we would see his true colors.
Saton believes that Job is just working the system, maybe he's obeying just to get what he wants, so God agrees to this experiment and allows saton to inflict suffering on Job, so Job loses everyone, and everything he cares about, it is devastating, remember, he deserves none of this and God even said so. The remarkable thing is that in the mist of all this suffering, Job still praises God, after his suffering, or within a while we begin to really see how Job is feeling inside. He reveals this pawn that releases this devastation, it's a long elaborate curse on the day he was born. After this some of Job's friends comes to visit him, they all want to offer up their help, some of them are even talking among themselves wondering what it was that Job did so horribly wrong to deserve what he's going through. Some have implied after all, we know God is just, and we know the world is ordered by God's justice and fairness, so you must be getting what you deserve.
So, the friends of Job interact with each other back and forth on some very dense Hebrew poetry. His friends keep speculating on why God sent such suffering, so they begin to make a list of all the hypothetical sins that Job may have committed, but after each accusation Job defends his innocence, and Job really is innocent and he's also on an emotional roller coaster, at some moments he feels very confident that God is still wise and just, and at other moment he's doubting God's goodness. He even accuses God of being reckless, unfair and corrupt. So by the end of this book Job demands that God comes and explain himself, and God does so. He comes in the form of a great storm cloud, now God doesn't give Job a direct answer, he doesn't tell Job about the conversation God had with saton, instead, He does something very different, he takes Job on a virtual tour of the universe. He shows Job how grand the world is, and he asks him if he's capable of running it, or understanding it just for a day. He begins to show Job just how much detail there is in the world. Things that we might see everyday, but we really don't understand. That's where the beauty of all of this comes in because God understands it all in ways we could never imagine or places we will never see.
Then to conclude, God shows Job two wondrous beast. God brags about how great they are, yeah they are dangerous, they would kill you without thinking about, and God says, they're not evil, they're actually apart of His good world, and that's it, that's God's whole defense. It's kind of weird so what is this all about, so from Job's point of view it looks like he's saying God is not just, but God's perspective is infinitely bigger, He's dynamically interacting with the whole universe and its complexity when He makes decisions, and this is what God calls His wisdom, so for Job to call on God to defend himself is kind of absurd. Job couldn't comprehend this kind of complexity even if he wanted to. So, where does this leave us? It leaves Job in a place of humility. He never learned why he suffered, and yet he is able to live in peace, and in the fear the Lord.
That's not where the bookends, God restored to Job double of everything he lost, and again this was surprising, is this supposed to be some reward, or God saying congratulations Job, you passed the test. No! The whole book just made the point, that Job losing everything was not by punishment, and so now getting it back is not a reward, so why does he get it back? Well apparently, God in His wisdom decided to give Job a gift, we don't know why, but what we do know is, Job is now the kind of person no matter what comes his way good or bad he can trust God's wisdom, and that's the book of Job.