Week 14: Job

Bible Journey 14: Job

Pre-understandings

·      The story of Job describes relationship with and understanding of God

Apart form the religious institutions of Judaism

·      Theology in its most basic form

·      The book presents earthly “reality” and spiritual “reality” in parallel

Have you considered My servant Job?

God’s assessment of Job “Blameless and upright-fears God and shuns evil”

1:1, 8, 22, 2:3, 10b

God brought Job to Satan’s attention-why?

Satan’s assessment of Job: he doesn’t fear God for nothing (1:9, 2:4)

Job and his Comforters

Sat silent for seven days

Job’s honest expression of a hurting heart

            Followed by a defense of God and his ways

Theology of Reciprocity

People love (serve, fear, honor) God for what we can get from Him

Good people are blessed, bad people are cursed

            Therefore: if you are blessed you must be good. If you are cursed you must be bad

Job’s response “Can I just die and get this life over with?”

The Trilemma:

God is Omni benevolent (all good), God is Omnipotent (all-powerful), Evil exists-any two can be true, but not all three

The answer is beyond our earthly reality

Job 42:3

Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.

When “Bad Things” happen to “Good People” remember this-we don’t have enough information (or any business) to decide who is “good”-and we don’t have a long enough timeline to know how God might redeem the “bad things”