Job

The book of Job deals with the use that God intends for man to make of suffering that he encounters in this life. When we conclude our study of the book, we'll have learned that there's not one verse of its 42 chapters that tells why man suffers. Hopefully, we will have learned how to not misbehave like Job and his three friends did on the occasion of his suffering, but hopefully we will have learned how to conduct ourselves properly in the midst of suffering, both our own and that of our friends, and the uses that God intends for us to make of it. Suffering, of course, is a problem that everyone has to deal with at times in his life. To the atheist, suffering may prove that there is no God, for it may be his view that a righteous God would not allow people to suffer. To the polytheist, suffering presents no problem because, believing in many gods, he simply asserts that good gods don't cause or permit suffering, while bad or inferior gods do cause and permit it. For you and I, though, suffering may present serious problems: how could a righteous God permit his people to suffer in this life, and what use does he want us to make of it? That's what we learn from our study of this great book. A Brief Explanation of the Title of This Book You may be asking, "Why in the world would someone assert that an divinely-inspired book of the Bible is a large collection of false doctrine? It's a good question. First, because something is "inspired" doesn't mean it's true, just that God intended for it to be in the Bible, II Tim. 3.16. The book of Job begins with God's testimony that Job is a righteous man. However, when Job falls on horrible times, he does what many of us do in such circumstances, and shoots his mouth off, falsely accusing God for what has happened to him. Job also has three godly friends, who in their enthusiasm to defend God against Job's false accusations, embrace a prevalent false doctrine in their time, in New Testament times (Jesus encountered it in Jn. 9.2), and ours, that holds that any great sufferer is a great sinner. Since Job is greatly suffering, they reason, he must be a great sinner, and they accuse him of great sin. To them, Job's sin is as clear a s bell, regardless of God's pronouncing Job blameless Though he had been blameless, now that Job's in the depths of his suffering, he falsely and at length accuses God of not caring about his situation. Thus, this long book is composed of speeches by Job and his three friends that are filled with false accusations against God, and false doctrines used to defend God. It's a great debate between four godly people that fails. Finally, God sends a young prophet to rebuke Job for his sin of falsely accusing God, and his friends for their well-meaning but false statements in defense of God. This young prophet then sets forth the proper use that godly people are to make of suffering in this life, and that's the value of the book to us: to prevent us from falsely accusing God when we encounter suffering (either our own or that of others), and to help us use our bad situations in the way God would have us to.