Resolutions | Job
So I’m on my chronological reading plan. It’s slow going, which is good because Genesis is so rich, and so much of the Bible points back to these early chapters. I finished Genesis 11 yesterday, which tells the story of Noah’s descendents and introduces us to a young boy named Abram, son of Terah, who would become Abraham, the father of God’s people. I opened my reading guide this morning and found an abrupt shift to the middle of the Bible, as I saw that my next passage is Job 1-5. In a chronological Bible, The Book of Job is integrated with Genesis because Job lived before Abraham. So following our introduction to the child Abram, we run into an elderly man named Job, a man of tremendous wealth, power, and godliness. It is generally agreed that Job lived prior to the time of the patriarchs, perhaps between the building of the Tower of Babel and the call of Abraham. The Book of Job is a story of suffering, trial, endurance and redemption. It is widely acknowledged to be a literary masterpiece. One of the best bible studies I’ve ever heard is John Piper’s exposition of the Book of Job in his 2000 conference Holding on to Your Faith in the Midst of Suffering, held at the Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove, in Ashville, NC. I commend this resource to anyone who desires to come to a deeper understanding of God’s love, mercy and sovereignty in suffering, and a greater grasp of how to rightly divide the Word of God.
