00:00:00:31 – 00:00:17:57
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for being with us. Thank you for being a part of this study. We will be concluding today the book of Job, and then we will be taking the summer off. Be back with you in the fall. We’ll put out notices and let everybody know when that’s happening. If you found us lately, it might be worth mentioning.

00:00:17:57 – 00:00:46:26
Clint Loveall
We do have a there’s a catalog of things if you’ve enjoyed us going through job, if you’ve learned something, if you want to take a look at our other stuff, we’re grateful for that. But however you got to us and however long you’ve been with us, we’re grateful to study scripture with you. We have now made it through the Book of Job, and I had an earlier study today, Michael, and someone said that they had really enjoying it, and that job had always confused them, and they felt like they had a better handle on it now.

00:00:46:26 – 00:01:12:26
Clint Loveall
And and I very grateful for that comment. But what it made me think is, I do think that job is a book that is often highly misunderstood. A lot of people, I think, believe they might understand what job is about, or maybe what job says, but they haven’t actually dug in and done the work and done the reading.

00:01:12:28 – 00:01:38:05
Clint Loveall
And it is. It is a very different book, I think, than you assume it will be. If you’ve heard, oh, jobs about, you know, why we suffer and the meaning of suffering and the questions of of why. And again, we said it a million times. But if you go into this book thinking that’s what it’s going to answer, I think you’re inevitably going to be a little you’re going to be disappointed.

00:01:38:07 – 00:01:40:57
Clint Loveall
And that’s not what you’re going to get.

00:01:41:02 – 00:02:01:55
Michael Gewecke
I’ve got to be careful here so that I don’t lose you all. I hope that this is interesting. I’ll be brief about it. In case it’s not in the Gospels. It’s a very different kind of study because there’s such coherent themes through those books that you can see threaded that often lead to some kind of resolution. In the Old Testament.

00:02:01:55 – 00:02:49:43
Michael Gewecke
I think you can look at some examples in, say, the historical books where scholars will talk about different voices that have been interwoven throughout. You know, they’ll say, well, this has this author and then this has another voice or style, and then it sort of just goes back and forth. I think what makes job unique is the way in which even relatively novice readers of the Scripture, in terms of study material, are going to see how radically different these sections transition so bluntly and so rapidly, and you don’t really need to be sort of looking for the shades, and you don’t have to understand the original languages to get that.

00:02:49:43 – 00:03:21:16
Michael Gewecke
There’s a lot happening behind the scenes. Now, we said this in the beginning. If you do understand the original languages, there’s even more. I mean, it’s nearly limitless because of the complexity of the original language that scholars are trying to muddle through, because this book is difficult to translate. But it’s just to say this, I think when you’re studying this book, it’s a helpful primer that when we are in the scriptures, we should not bring our own questions as the normative things that the scriptures are trying to answer.

00:03:21:16 – 00:04:01:33
Michael Gewecke
We have to try to allow our questions in Scripture interact. That’s good and helpful. And the church has always done that. But we also and simultaneously need to open ourselves up with some humility to ask the scriptures whether you have to say to us, and I would submit to you, if you do that with the book of job, what job wants to tell us is it’s more complicated than what you think, that trying to resolve it down to the answer to the question is a task that is not only fraught, I think job would argue is impossible from the first step, and that ultimately, job invites us to reconsider an understanding of God and God’s

00:04:01:33 – 00:04:27:38
Michael Gewecke
work in the world in which we are not the ones who hold God to account, but the other way around. And even in life circumstances where we’re most driven to demand an account in those moments to with all of its complexities and, quite frankly, sometimes unsatisfying conclusions, this book wants to point us to a bigger story than what we might get to if we only brought our own questions to the text.

00:04:27:43 – 00:04:57:28
Clint Loveall
Pull me back if you think this is overstated, Michael, but anybody who’s tried to read Scripture seriously has run into passages that are hard to understand. There are some other passages that are just difficult to come to terms with that say things that are troubling and that are hard to hear. And there are, of course, some sections that are just out of step with our current experience.

00:04:57:28 – 00:05:42:14
Clint Loveall
So we have to do some historical cultural work. I think job, probably the Book of Revelation, maybe Song of Solomon, but that’s kind of its own thing. I think there are very few books, maybe only those two, where you get to the end and you’re not even sure what it was trying to tell you like that. Even biblical scholars have to guess at what we think this means, or what we think the author was trying to say, or what we think the interpretation should be.

00:05:42:19 – 00:06:17:45
Clint Loveall
There are lots of difficult places in Scripture, but job from start to finish just keeps us off balance. It provides more questions than it does answers about life, about God, about people, about suffering. And that may be its point. That may be what it’s trying to do. But we can’t say with confidence even what its intention is. And I think that that makes it fairly unique, makes it stand out.

00:06:17:57 – 00:06:35:50
Clint Loveall
I think makes it interesting, but certainly makes it difficult. It it again, it is not a book that one should go into thinking, oh, jobs going to clarify a bunch of stuff for me because I that’s likely not going to be your experience.

00:06:35:55 – 00:07:04:09
Michael Gewecke
I think that what job does as a service to every one who reads it, Clint, is it pushes back against our desire for there to be a simple answer to, why is this so hard? And why is life so unfair? And why is this suffering so deep? How can this be if God is good, if God is in control, how?

00:07:04:12 – 00:07:31:07
Michael Gewecke
How can this possibly add up? And in a way, our heart’s desire would be for the scriptures to take us on, on its knee and to say, now here, here, listen, I’m going to give you the explanation. And yet when job wants to come and give the response, there’s moments in this book of great warmth and encouragement and hope.

00:07:31:07 – 00:08:01:38
Michael Gewecke
There’s moments of this book of great anguish. There’s moments in this book of great pride and self-confidence that’s unwarranted. There’s moments in this book where humans have reached the end and they just can’t take it anymore. And so it’s a combination of anger and grief and sadness and pain. I it’s all in there. And one way of living the faith is to try to live under an umbrella where life doesn’t get to you.

00:08:01:43 – 00:08:44:40
Michael Gewecke
And that’s simply not a narrative that job is interested in telling jobs, not interested in telling a story about how when one follows a spiritual faith formula, then God is obligated to result in some kind of outcome in a person’s life. And that’s an idea that’s been in vogue for as long as there are humans. There have been humans worshiping gods who get angry at us, and I have wrath on us, and we have to appease and and this is a thing that is baked into our imaginations for as long as there’s been humans, and certainly as a Christian reads job.

00:08:44:40 – 00:09:07:57
Michael Gewecke
And I think that that’s an interesting conversation is how Christ might shape and form our understanding of that book as he’s in our background conversation. I do think that job leaves open the door to say that this is not going to be a resolved chord. And so since it’s not going to be a resolved chord, there’s going to be left open.

00:09:07:57 – 00:09:31:33
Michael Gewecke
Room for mystery and faith will be required, and not everyone will find that compelling. And quite frankly, I don’t know if job, the writer or writers, the the piece that now comes to us. I don’t know if it would be troubled by someone saying this is unsatisfying. I think it might admit that. And I think it might say, welcome to the circle.

00:09:31:38 – 00:09:32:40
Michael Gewecke
Let’s wrestle together.

00:09:32:43 – 00:10:07:02
Clint Loveall
Well, I think that’s a thing, Michael, that makes jobs stand out so much in the Old Testament, which does tend to be a little bit formulaic, right? If God is pleased, then Israel and the people of Israel prosper. And when God is not, then they are corrected or punished. Job stands that on its head a little bit. And if you follow the flow of the book of Job, there’s a man named job who is righteous and blessed, and then he suffers terribly and struggles with it while his friends don’t understand.

00:10:07:07 – 00:10:51:19
Clint Loveall
And then God shows up and job still doesn’t really have answers. But he’s blessed again and lives some more life. And that. What do you take out of that? That the God who was God at the first page of job is still the God at the end of it, and does as he pleases throughout all the middle. And it’s a it’s a long trip to get there, but it’s a, it’s a profound presentation of a God beyond our, our biggest questions, our greatest attempts to box him in with our theology and our he has to.

00:10:51:19 – 00:11:31:16
Clint Loveall
And this is how life works. And and God simply doesn’t do that, doesn’t participate God. God does as God wills, and God does as God does as God wants. And we are sometimes sidetracked seeing the questions and the struggles, but losing sight of the God beyond them. And job is willing to. I think, to the author’s credit, job is willing to throw all that in a bag, shake it up, and toss it out in front of us saying, yeah, I don’t know either.

00:11:31:16 – 00:11:49:52
Clint Loveall
But here’s a story about it. And I love this book. I find it challenging. I’m humbled by it. I get something out of it each time I go through it, and I think there’s a lot there. But man, it’s it’s a little bit like painting for gold. Just a tiny little nugget here and there with a lot of work.

00:11:49:55 – 00:12:33:07
Michael Gewecke
One of the encouraging things for me in jail is that ultimately, job is commended for reaching the end and being faithful, not cursing God. But Clint, the breadth of jobs, anger and frustration and accusations is, in some cases, I think, maybe even fairly shocking. And I think that’s an encouraging thing for people who often find themselves in the moments of suffering and struggle, and they find their own heart and soul angry and upset, and they will point that at God, then they’ll feel guilty about.

00:12:33:09 – 00:13:04:00
Michael Gewecke
I think job is encouraging to me because yes, he was faithful. Yes, he did not curse God. And yet the the bounds of cursing in this book were very, very wide. And I think that there is a kind of expansiveness that if one seeks to be faithful, if one seeks to live out their life in a way that’s got honoring, even when that weight falls on them, even when they respond as a human will respond, God is gracious in this book there.

00:13:04:02 – 00:13:27:12
Michael Gewecke
It may not be an explicit framing, but God is gracious with this man job. Even if God is part and parcel to this thing that’s come upon job, that jobs response is not a thing that particularly flutters God. Though God calls job to account and says, hey, now when you get the address, is that what you actually want?

00:13:27:16 – 00:13:39:09
Michael Gewecke
I think that that this is not the kind of book that a person in suffering likely looks to read. I think that’s probably more the Psalms themselves, which function as prayers and are much easier to use as a prayer.

00:13:39:12 – 00:13:41:19
Clint Loveall
Some of job speeches might be.

00:13:41:21 – 00:13:48:38
Michael Gewecke
They could be, yeah, maybe just slightly less accessible than that, but I think no less meaningful than that.

00:13:48:48 – 00:14:16:43
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think, you know, Michael, we begin early on. We hear Jobe say, should we accept good from the hand of God and not bad. And there’s something to aspire to in that. If if we would have if we would strive to have a faith that is consistent on our best days and our hardest days, I think that’s admirable.

00:14:16:45 – 00:14:47:55
Clint Loveall
But I think that’s a fruitful idea. And then, you know, Jobe ends the book saying, my ear had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. And I think if we could navigate any of the seasons of our life, be they blessed or difficult, and on the other side of those seasons, be able to say, I’d heard of God.

00:14:47:55 – 00:15:27:38
Clint Loveall
But now I have seen God at work. I have had conversation. I haven’t had an encounter with the living God. That is beyond my complaints and my questions and all of my experience, good and bad. There, that’s a wonderful idea. And I think if we could do that, if we were able to do that, then, then we too would have learned something about the God that we that we, you know, that we worship, that we follow, that we look to, that we bear life from.

00:15:27:43 – 00:15:35:36
Clint Loveall
Yeah, it’s a job ends in a good place, though. Very hard road to get there.

00:15:35:40 – 00:15:59:48
Michael Gewecke
If you’re looking for some of our other books where we will have an ending conversation, I’ll walk away with a idea that maybe was threaded through some, sometimes a set of themes that I think, oh man, I hadn’t seen that before. I think my ending of this study, Clint, is more of an affect or like my orientation to the text.

00:15:59:48 – 00:16:35:19
Michael Gewecke
I think I’m humbled by this reading of job. I think it, for me, is a moment of recognizing that though I want answers, God does not always give them, though I want clarity that’s not always on offer. And also, though I want to have things figured out, sometimes the task, as in jobs case, is to enjoy the family that he has live, the moment of suffering that comes to him, and then also try to live in that new chapter on the other side.

00:16:35:19 – 00:16:54:31
Michael Gewecke
And each one of those is an important part, and none of it can be told without the whole, that’s enough. And for me, the humility of recognizing that we don’t get to control the outcome, we don’t get to understand all the pieces. That’s not our place. It’s not our we’re not capable of that. Though we deeply yearn to.

00:16:54:40 – 00:17:02:43
Michael Gewecke
The task that we have is merely the task of today. And that, for me is a is a humbling and a constructive task.

00:17:02:48 – 00:17:35:14
Clint Loveall
Yeah, well, I do think there are some practical takeaways from job. Try not to explain suffering to people who are suffering. Be willing to sit in silence like the friends do. You know, there are a few things that I think the author subtly helps us with. Ultimately, each time I enter the book of job, I feel like I exit thinking I don’t know any more than I did.

00:17:35:19 – 00:18:06:19
Clint Loveall
But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the idea is I don’t need to. I don’t need to understand the ins and outs of how God works, nor could I. I need to seek to be faithful and to seek to be appraised of God by God, as job was a righteous man who strives to do what is right. If God says that over your life you’ve done pretty well.

00:18:06:24 – 00:18:07:21
Clint Loveall
Yeah.

00:18:07:26 – 00:18:23:04
Michael Gewecke
Thanks for being with us here today, friends. Certainly like comment. If you go to the comments, let us know what studies you might be interested in. Do check the channel to see if we’ve already done that before. Certainly subscribe so you don’t miss when we get kicked off in the fall, but we will have a few months off here.

00:18:23:04 – 00:18:28:09
Michael Gewecke
As Clint said at the top of the show. Look forward to seeing you all then. Until then, be blessed.

00:18:28:09 – 00:18:28:52
Clint Loveall
Thanks everybody.