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- [00:00]
Scott
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Shelby
Hey, you're listening to A Year in the Bible with Daily Grace. And we absolutely love walking through Scripture with you each and every day. We hope that you love it, too. Leave a review. Let us know. That means a lot to us. Today. We're beginning a new book, the Book of Job. Scott, so glad that you're going to guide us through this book. This. You're talking about this. This can be a challenging book at times. There's a lot of. A lot that we can learn from this book, practically a lot that we can learn about God's character. But it can be challenging at times. So what should we keep in mind just in general, as we begin this
- [00:37]
Scott
book of the Bible, it's important to note, first of all, we've entered into a whole new section of Scripture, which is often called the wisdom books. So that's Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. And, you know, this might be oversimplifying a little bit, but these wisdom books really kind of give us a view from the ground up, perhaps perspective. And by that, I mean this is just a lot of human beings wrestling with life's big issues and just what it means to live in God's world. And I think it's important to remember when it comes to Job, you know, many of us are used to thinking of Job as a book about suffering, as a book that asks the question, you know, why does. Why do the righteous suffer? And it's actually. And that's true, but it's a bit more than that, too. You know, for starters, that question of why do the righteous suffer Is never answered in Job. And Job never gets an explanation for why he goes through what he goes through. It is a book about suffering. But I think Job's suffering is the occasion to consider a bigger question, which is this, that where is wisdom found? And the answer, according to the book of Job, is wisdom is found in God alone. And so, you know, one of the big issues in this book is, is this, that as God's creatures, will we accept that there are some things we will simply never understand, or are we willing to live within our limits as creatures? Like will we be content to acknowledge the extent of our wisdom and leave the rest to God and not demand explanations for everything that happens in life?
- [02:07]
Shelby
Big questions, Scott. Difficult questions. But I'm thankful that this book guides us to wrestle with them because we will wrestle with them as humans. So is there anything else we should know as we read this book?
- [02:21]
Scott
Yeah, I love to kind of paint a Picture of where we're going in this book. So Job has two really big sections. So the first section is a series of dialogues between Job and his friends. Then you've got a series of monologues to round out the book. After the first three chapters, which we're going to talk about here in a second, we get this cycle of speeches. And the cycle follows a predictable pattern. You've got one of Job's friends will address Job. Job will respond. Friend number two speaks up. Job responds. Friend number three speaks up. Job responds. And so that cycle happens three times in this book. And then after that's concluded, we get these monologues by Job, a guy named Elihu, and then God himself speaks to round things off. And then kind of in the middle of all this is chapter 28, which is all about that question of wisdom and where wisdom is supposed to be found.
- [03:07]
Shelby
That is super helpful. I love having a good framework to go through a book. So I appreciate that. Let's talk about today's chapter, specifically Job one through three. What's happening there?
- [03:19]
Scott
So, yeah, I mentioned one of the big questions of Job is where's wisdom found? I think the other big question of this book is will people only serve God if they get something out of it, like, do people love God for God or for God's benefits? And that's the test that Satan presents in chapters one and two regarding Job. And it's really important to notice in these chapters that God calls Job blameless and upright. God is pleased with Job, and that's going to be really important for us as readers to remember as we start getting into the speeches to come. I think it's also, Shelby, a really important just reminder for us as Christians today that, like, suffering is not necessarily a thermometer on our faith. Not at all. That's what Job's friends are going to assume. And if we're honest, I think that's something we often assume as well. If someone's going through a hard time, they probably did something to deserve it. But Job pleased God and Job suffered greatly. Both of those things can be true.
- [04:17]
Shelby
Yeah. Okay, so can you speak to Job's response to his suffering at all?
- [04:23]
Scott
Yeah, it's really interesting. Job's wife does what Satan had assumed Job would do. She says, curse God and die. Job won't. Job is not going to sin. He does not curse God. And said he worships, but he still gives just full vents to his pain. Like chapter three is a very hard to read chapter. Essentially, he won't curse God but he will curse the day he was born. He wonders why he's been left to linger on in life in such misery. He says, I cannot relax or be calm. I have no rest, for turmoil has come. It's. It's sobering to read. It's an important reminder that we can though and should voice our pain to God. So much of the wisdom books in general do this, and that's something I love about them. It's just the raw honesty of people living in a fallen world. And, you know, I'm just reminded here that voicing our pain is not off limits to God. He welcomes it. He wants it. You know, I also just think these chapters just make me think of Jesus, God in the flesh, who came into this world and suffered greatly. Excruciating pain. He wept at his. You know, just. There's the cross, obviously most visibly. But it's the pain of walking through this world, of seeing his friend Lazarus die, weeping at his grave, being treated unjustly. Like, I think Jesus, even more than Job, is proof that the righteous do suffer, but that God is still involved in their lives. That doesn't mean something. They've done something wrong. Wrong necessarily. And I think Jesus also just reminds us that God will not forsake us even in our suffering.
- [06:00]
Shelby
Yeah. Yeah. This has been a great intro to the book of Job, so thank you, Scott. And I think my takeaway is very similar to a couple of things that you have already said. One, I find the belief just creeping in my life, that suffering in my life or. Or someone else's correlates to God being absent or careless. And in Job we see that that's not the case. God is neither. He's not absent, he's not careless. Yet Job is suffering. And at the same time, I also see is, just as you said, that Jesus enters suffering, that he bears suffering. And we see God's care and presence with Christ. We see that that was for the sake of salvation of his people. And so I'm just echoing a lot of what you've already said here, but I think Job corrects theology that sometimes gets twisted in my mind about suffering. So I'm really looking forward to walking through this book with you. We'll have more in Job tomorrow.