Who? When? Where?: No one knows who wrote it, when events occurred, where Job lived… tons of mystery. I only go through this exercise, since it’s part of how we should study the Bible.
WHEN?: Some clues lead to likely during patriarchal (Abraham, Isaac, Jabob-ish...) times
Literary format
- Narrative in the beginning
- Prose (poetry) in the middle- debates between “friends”!
- Repeated themes in Job’s speeches
- Disappointment in friends (horizontal)
- Declaration of God’s greatness (vertical)
- Disillusionment with God’s ways (personal)
- Despair with life (or being born, or desire to die) (personal)
- Desire for vindication with God. (personal)
- Narrative: the epilogue
- God condemns Job’s friends for wrong (42:7-9)
- God restores Job’s losses (42:10-17)
Simplified outline:
- God and Satan talk
- Job loses everything
- Job’s 3 friends do an AWFUL job “consoling” him while Job tells them so
- Job’s 4th friend comes and says it better, but not perfect.
- God corrects it all
Some underlying principles:
PRINCIPLE: Bad theology never leads to good advice.
- Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar were legalistic liars who operated under unbiblical premises.
- You suffer, so you must have sinned.”
- APPLICATION: Is our Biblical knowledge up to par for speaking truth into others?
PRINCIPLE: Lack of approval from some friends is not always a bad thing.
- Job says “I am a joke to my friends” (12:4, 17:6, 30:1,9,10,34:7), BUT we know: 1Thes2:4
- Application:
1. Where am I or have I been Eliphaz, Bildad or Zophar?
2. Where do I need to silence the critics and listen to the Lord instead?- Martin Lloyd Jones in Spiritual Depression, “Stop listening to yourself and start talking to
yourself.” - Paul David Tripp talks about the horizontal relationships need a backseat to the vertical
relationship! - Friends and family come and go, but the Lord never leaves.
PRINCIPLES:
- God may have other purposes in our adversities beyond crushing our perfect plans.
- His ways and His thoughts are higher than ours. (Is 55:9)
- We don’t have to understand His world to trust His hand.
APPLICATIONS:
Where are we lacking trust, because things aren’t going according to our plan?
Where are we so focused on the horizontals that we have lost sight of the verticals?
- Nothing can give us an eternal focus like suffering. Nothing but eternity matters.
Where are we questioning God, not just asking questions of God?- John Piper; “it’s wrong to question God, but it’s not wrong to ask questions of God.”
- Weirsbe: “Doubting and unbelief are different. Doubting is struggling to believe;
unbelief is stubborn will turning from God.”
PRINCIPLE:
- God’s creation displays God’s omnipotence, God’s omniscience, and God’s omnipresence.
- Application: How could looking at God’s creation remind us to focus on Him?
Final theme: Finding Jesus
- Job is Old Testament, and we cannot make it mean to us what it could not have meant to the original audience.
- Job didn’t know Jesus, so I am not trying to make this book into a book about Jesus. However…
- I relate to Job who wanted:
- A mediator (Job 9:33) (1 Tim 2:5)
- To be washed with snow (9:30) (Is 1:18)
- Someone who brings light into darkness (12:22) (John 1:9)
- Someone to stand before the judge (14:3) (Rom 8:1)
- Someone who makes clean out of unclean (14:4)
- Someone who makes man rise (14:12-14) (John 11:25-26)
- An advocate on high (16:19)
