What is the point of the story of Job?

I've found that Job answers the perennial question: "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Another wisdom book in the OT, Ecclesiastes, answers the corollary question: "Why do good things happen to bad people?" The same answer occurs in both: God keeps us on our toes. Have faith, and don't try to go further than that.

 

The point?

"God is always right." And "There is a purpose to suffering, though
we may never know why...but He knows why."

Satan was trying to tell God that Job would renounce God
if all he had was taken away.

God disagreed and basically let Satan take all the he had
to prove the point. Job never cursed God.

We all suffer. Some more than others. Sometimes we get mad
at God, or ourselves, or our life circumstances. God knows best
and we have to accept that.

When we buried our only child, I felt like Job must have.
I don't hate God for it because it is in His plan. I'm not happy that
our daughter is gone ( I think about her every day and I will for
the rest of my life and beyone) but I have joy in my heart because
I believe she went right back to God where she came from. And
I'll get to see her then.

Back to what I said, God KNEW.... Satan didn't and out of his pride
he challenged God. Satan should have just shut his pie hole.

 

...because the book begins describing how Job was good and bad things happened to him anyway, much to the surprise of conventional wisdom at the time (i.e., his friends).

I've viewed it as self-evident in reading the book. I've never researched much on it to back me up, but I bet I'm not alone in viewing it this way.

BJ

 

I think it is possible to get multiples applications from any one book or even passage of Scripture. One meaning, many applications. So I agree with the previous posters, but I will also add that an underlying theme throughout Job, and one that is shouted to us in chapters 38-41, is the sovereignty of God.

 

What I get from Job is the fact it's easy to praise God and serve Him when everything is going great...but God expects this same thing in our trials and trubulations.
I also get that God will allow bad things to happen to His to test the extent with how we respond and how we depend on him.

 

I find in Job that the "tradition of man", his philosophies, theologies, and the teachings of what are called of the "fathers" to be just that. Our answers can only be found in God. So many today, even of faith, are types of Job, and his three friends, and yes I am also there in some cases. The answers we hear from those of high esteem, or of longevity in knowledge, are not always of wisdom. I find in Job, what Christ revealed to Paul of justification.

Who is it that justifies? Does God justify all the same? In all of our studies, outside of His Word, don't we as Job tend to justify ourselves, not finding the answers, condemning others?

 

Job is about the greatness and sovereignty of God.

 

I've just been having a look around npetreley and found out about double justice.

...the concept of double justice posits a higher hidden justice in God which transcends the Law and could condemn even the angels. This idea appears in Calvin's works before the sermons on Job but always grows out of his fascination with Job 4:18; namely, that even the angels are not clean in God's sight. In the 1559 Institutes Calvin added the concept of double justice as a further explanation of his 1539 citation of Job 4:18 (3.12.1), which proved that creaturely justice cannot satisfy the justice of God.

...the text led him in a direction he did not want to go. The further he progressed through the sermons, the more he worried that this canonical text might depict a God who could arbitrarily cancel the divine order of justice and act "without cause."
http://www.questia.com/googleSchola...SvvlNh1j!1226986790!-280665348?docId=96510236

(3.12.1) This has repercussions on the 'what ifs' I thinks. I can feel an heresy coming on.

john.

 

I would say that this is God's reponse in the last 5 chapters to the questions presented in the rest of Job.

The narrative in Job wrestles with the question of why do the righteous suffer. God's response is not to give an answer in the form of "The righteous suffer because...". Instead he describes his greatness and sovereignty for 4 chapters.

In response Job says:

It leaves us with an unsatisfying but truthful answer to a more general question of "Why God?". Why does God do anything? The answer Job came to at the end was that God is sovereign, his purposes are beyond our comprehension and we are to trust him.

 

While it is not the main point, one thing that stands out to me about the book of Job is the strong evidence it gives toward creationism.

 

I just assumed it was Job speaking because Calvin was using it. I think I assumed wrongly.

It did. Col 1:20 was used in support of it, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

I'll go with the Dragon and the Pastor then. Job is about the greatness and sovereignty of God.
The answer Job came to at the end was that God is sovereign, his purposes are beyond our comprehension and we are to trust him.
With reservations on the bold.

john.

 

Was it God's faith or Job's that was being tested; would there be any sense in the thought that Satan was being allowed to challenge God Himself in this situation as Satan had asked if Job had a hedge around him?

 

I thought it was a brown sock