Day 13 – Job’s Suffering; God’s Answer

When I wrote about Job, I received some interesting feedback that I thought might be good to revisit.

• One person asked: “How much time passed before Job was able to say that??” – Actually it happened immediately.
• Another said: “Job knew that he’d done wrong and humbly accepted the consequences.” – Actually it states in the next verse that “in all this Job did not sin.”

Look, I quoted only a small portion of the passage, so I’ll take the blame for these little misunderstandings.  I jumped into it without giving much background info.

So today, I’d like to remedy that.

And actually, I think it’s crucial to our discussion of forgiveness.

The book of Job is my favorite book of the Bible because it helps me understand the deep and painful “why” questions of life.  Forgiveness definitely falls into that category.

You see it begins with a kind of divine bet between God and Satan.

God brags about his servant Job and how righteous he is.

Satan disputes God’s claims saying that “Job only follows you because you reward him.”

Game on.

But it’s not a game is it?  Job is a real person and he suffers greatly in this story.  And his questions are OUR questions.  What is God going to answer?

Please watch this incredible summary of the book, but be warned, it’s not going to answer all your questions.  But in just 11 minutes, you’ll have another tool for forgiveness in your tool belt.

Even if you’re familiar with the book of Job, it’s a great refresher.  Kudos to the Bible Project for this great resource.