Introduction to the book of Job
1st April Roger Forster.
Roger has recently returned from , where one is treated with respect and generosity, and now he is here talking to us. Meanwhile his wife is visiting , suffering many deprivations with the living conditions out there. This illustrates the disparity of life, life is unfair.
One of the messages of Job is that bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people. We object to suffering and think that the wrong people suffer.
But it’s a testament to the God of love that we object to suffering. We think that if God is all powerful and all loving he should do something about it. But to be all loving and all powerful means to be lovingly all powerful.
Job was the best of all men at the time, God said he was.
The heart of the book of Job is Jesus. But Jesus spent 30 years doing no miracles, when he started teaching he met situations of suffering head on, and then spent many hours suffering himself. God identified with human suffering, and he tasted of death for every person. Took upon himself all the problems and consequences of sin.
The fact that we object to suffering is evidence that there is a loving God. It is God in us which objects to it, why should the innocent suffer, why should anyone suffer.
Imagine that you walk amongst the ruins of a beautiful building, maybe a church or cathedral. You can see that there was once beauty and order, but now it's all fallen down, bad, you trip over some fallen masonry, so even what once was once good now causes harm.
We know nothing about Jesus unless it is revealed. He reveals himself to us. We sometimes make pronouncements about God which come out of our own speculation, but we need revelation. His person, his character. In Jesus he is shown to be noble and lovable.
Read Job 1 v 1 onwards
Satan sometimes makes out that he's about God's work, when he's not.
It was Satan's hand dealing with Job (verse 12) not God's hand. We blame God for things but sometimes it's Satan.
Round 1 – Job lost his property & family
Round 2 - his body is attacked
Round 3 – Job thought he'd lost God, ‘friendly’ theologians have a go at Job, his reaction is to fight back with words, in his pain he starts to get glimpses of Jesus, even though it's centuries before Jesus will walk the earth. Job said if God is worthy of the name of God, he needs to look like Jesus.
An angry young man comes on the scene; God knows how to deal with angry young men, it's if you're an angry old man you’ve got problems!
There is no place where Earth’s sorrows are more felt than in heaven.
The issue is not ‘I'm suffering because of my sin’, or ‘because I am being educated’ but ‘I'm suffering because there is a battle on’. In warfare there is no claim to being in a place of safety, the enemy throws everything he's got randomly, one person will die and another will live. One building will be bombed and another survive unscathed. It's chaotic.
Innocent people suffering is meaningless but God will still use it.
Picture of a man whose wife is dying of cancer. He holds her hand right up until the last moment, he suffers maybe even more than her. Another man in the same situation thinks because his wife isn't benefiting him any more he can start an affair.
In the battle taking place, Satan says nobody loves you for who you are, only for what they get out of you, that's the world’s philosophy. Even with love you're supposed to get something out of it; calvary love, pure altruistic love, doesn't exist in the world’s view.
In the ‘committee room’ in verse 6 Satan is accusing the character of God. He tries to demonstrate that God is wrong. God didn't throw him out of the meeting because then he would be dealing with the universe the same way that Satan deals with it, ie. might is right. Instead he says that even though all power comes from himself, he gives away some of his authority.
Jesus talks of the government of love. It's a bit untidy, allows certain freedoms, some of the sheep get left behind and he has to go back to collect them. Disorder of love, not order of power,
War is on every page of the Bible, and is in every page of our lives. Whatever it is we're doing, that's where the battle is raging to put Satan out and put God in. Satan no longer has any grounds to come to the committee meeting.
In the book of Job, there are 14 references to Jesus or Jesus-like qualities. eg
Job 9 v 32-33 - there is now an umpire in Jesus.
Job 10 v 4 - God does know what it is to be mortal.
Job 19 v 25 - God has stood upon the earth.
Chapter 19 v 25 redeemer = nearest kinsman. If Jesus is our nearest kinsman, our defender, we are also his, we need to stand up for the God of love.
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