The Bible Provocateur
The Bible Provocateur
LIVE DISCUSSION: Introduction to Job (Part 3 of 4)
What if the hardest moments in life aren’t payback but preparation? We open Job and 2 Corinthians 1 to reframe suffering as God’s tool for refinement, not retribution. Rather than chasing explanations, we pursue encounter: the God who never explained Job’s pain still revealed his sovereignty, wisdom, and majesty. That shift changes how we walk through affliction—submitting to God, practicing gratitude in the storm, and learning to “vindicate” him when circumstances look hostile.
We press into the mystery of providence and Satan’s limited reach, the image of “a dog on God’s chain” resetting our fears with theology. From Israel’s exile to Job’s losses, catastrophe from the ground can be restoration from above. We talk about eternal hope that outlasts every wound, and the practical fruit of trials: endurance, patience, self-examination, and a deeper intimacy with Christ. True faith isn’t about quantity; it’s about the object. Even a mustard seed anchored in Jesus cannot be snatched from his hand.
Job 19 becomes the heartbeat: “I know my Redeemer lives.” In the Bible’s oldest book, resurrection breaks in, and we trace Job as a type of Christ—innocent suffering, felt abandonment, and the mediator’s intercession. We also warn against leaning on human wisdom to decode pain; it’s vanity without God’s revelation. The throughline is simple and demanding: take your trials as from God, look for the lesson he intends, and expect him to meet you with himself. If this conversation strengthens your endurance and renews your hope, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can find it.
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Right. Praise God. I mean, you know, it's faith. My faith comes out even more. It's like, okay, you're gonna blow against me, and I'm gonna stand there and take it. Right. Because it's for my good.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah, that's that's what I think about it. Yeah, so you again once again you hitting on that theme of uh constant constancy and faith. And uh that's a good one. Sister Meg, what do you think? How do we smart under God's rod?
SPEAKER_04:I think that we need to understand that suffering can be for refinement and not retribution, meaning that that when it comes to suffering, that it's all things work for his good. And I and I think that like when in like Job chapter 38 through 41, we uh we see that Job that God never explained why he suffered, right? But instead, he showed him who he was, he showed him his sovereignty, he showed him his wisdom, he showed him his majesty. And I think that's what he does for us in our suffering. That even when we're suffering, sometimes we may not know why, but the Lord is going to reveal himself to us and who he is, just like he did for Job. So I think sometimes we always look at things in a bad way instead of looking at it as something to refine us.
SPEAKER_09:Right, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:So we need to rejoice in these things because our suffering it produces endurance, and Christ tells us we must endure till the end. So we can expect a lot of tribulation, a lot of suffering if we're gonna endure to the end. So um, this is our process. It's it's it's what lets us know we belong to him, you know.
SPEAKER_09:Yep, absolutely. Sister Candy, I think I got everybody but you. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, it's loud. Will you read 2 Corinthians 3 through 6 for me? 2 Corinthians chapter 1, 3 through 6. I'm training, so uh it's gonna be loud right here where I'm going in here. Yeah, you'll do that for me. 2 Corinthians 3, 3 through 6. No, chapter 1, 3 through 6.
SPEAKER_09:All right. Chapter 1, 3 through 6. Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, um, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds in Christ. And whether we be afflicted, it is for our it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer, or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. So there you go. Um so yeah. So, and Brian K, he mentioned in the in the chat uh box the the word submission or submitting. And I think that's a big one because this this is what starts all of this. Oh, you forgot Jeffrey, brother. Pardon me? Forgot the encouraging servant. I know I'll get to him. Don't worry about it. I'll get to him. Thanks, Meg. I'll get to him. So I wanted to mention Brian before I forgot it because he he wrote it twice in there, and it's an important one submission. And uh, we have to submit to God, and I think that that ends up being that the the ground, the foundational um characterization of ourselves that we need to have, the the disposition that we need to have that that from which all these other things, other things that we talk about proceed. Brother Jeffrey, encourage and surfing. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_06:Well, John, I just want to uh take this thought maybe a step further. Yep. How willing are we to say thank you, Lord, when suffering, pain, trial, and difficulty comes our way. Yep. I want to step up and tell everybody I really stink at it. I could sit here and talk about it. Right. I'm not very good at it. Right. But that's I had I had an old uh pastor friend tell me a long time ago, when you're going through trials and tribulations like that, if you want to speed the process along, start thanking God for it. Start thanking him for it. Right. Oh, do you am I saying I want more? No, but you're saying to God, thank you for what you're showing me here that I haven't understood or comprehended yet. Right. So there is the silver lining, so to speak, for you and I. But sometimes the enemy is so good at deceiving us with the dark clouds that we miss that silver lining or that lesson that God is trying to bring to us. Right. We have to be careful, brother Jonathan, and vigilant that we find that that nugget of truth that God is trying to reveal to us when the trial and the testing comes.
SPEAKER_09:Right. My brother brought in the comments that he says trial should bring us closer to the Lord. And this is this is true. This is what this is what afflictions and persecutions and trials and these things, this is what this should do. These things should bring us to the Lord. They should bring us to our knees. And they should be these are typically the means whereby God uses to communicate his blessings to us in addition to prayer. You know, because listen, you can pray for God, you can pray to God for something, and his answer can be affliction. And we don't know. But that's how we have to look at it. We, in other words, as I was saying earlier, we look at whatever happens to us. The believer should look at whatever happens to us as being something that we should never curse God for, and we should never lead anybody else to believe that we're being punished by God, but we should vindicate God in the sense that we let people understand whatever he is doing, it is for my good. Whatever he is doing for this or that other person who believes and trusts in him, if it looks bad on the outside, God knows what he's doing. And that's what we do. We go to defend him. We go to vindicate him. We don't defend ourselves. We say whatever the Lord does brings our way, we deserve a whole lot more than what we're getting. But he knows what is intended, what he intends these things to do for us. And and the other thing I love about this book is the opening part when when you see, because there is so much in this section about God's interaction with Satan. Because you notice that God didn't, you know, Job did not have to deal with Satan himself or make an argument with him or you know have this you know back and forth with him. This was an issue between, everything that was happening with Job was an issue between God and the devil and Satan. And Job sort of became this arena, so to speak. And so, and it's meant for us to see this spectacle that's taking place of what the devil is trying to do and what how Job is going to respond and what certainty God plays in all of this. Because as I tell people quite often, and I and I borrow this myself, Satan is a dog on God's chain. He's on a leash, and he has always been on God's leash, and he only does what God permits him to do. God knows exactly what he does and how he does it, and so when he lets him go, it's to do exactly what his nature calls for him to do, and he will do it. And so if the Christian understands this, it makes us lean more into our faithfulness to the Lord and to rely upon him and to and to submit to him and to have it more uh like uh brother uh Michael brought up, to be more introspective, more self-examining. And so some of the words that we came up with were endure, self-examining in terms of dealing with these afflictions, um, being grateful, maintaining hope, maintaining patience, maintaining a constancy and faithfulness, not seeing it as retribution, but refinement, submission, and rejoicing. And I think that all of these are absolutely correct. This is what we should be doing, and it's hard because when you're going through the situation, when you're going through these trials, it is never easy. But the challenge is, the challenge is always going to be, it is always going to be to take it from God, take it as coming from God, and it will affect your whole perspective on the whole matter. Brother Michael, go ahead.
SPEAKER_08:I think the the big picture here is whatever we go through, this is a this is the only this is a God and the only living God. This is God that can restore it. So when we look at things, when we look at like Israel being exiled and just destroyed by the uh Chaldeans and things like that, and and all this stuff. And when we see it through our human eyes, we see these as like just catastrophes beyond catastrophes. You know, men and women are are being uh uh taken out and things like that, and all these things, all these atrocities, what we would consider atrocities and stuff. But this is a God that can restore it all and restore it better than what it was before.
SPEAKER_05:Right.
SPEAKER_08:We come into a repentative heart towards him.
SPEAKER_09:Right. I mean, that's a beautiful picture because we we we know because we've all read Job, I hope we've all had, and if not, you definitely will this time, but we see what the outcome is gonna end up being. And you're right, he gets this, he gets double what he had before, which is nothing compared to what we're all gonna get, including Job, when Christ comes back and to restore all things and to renew all things. And so there's gonna be infinite, eternal blessings which can which will never um cease. And it's unimaginable how that is going to be, how that's going to affect us. It's unimaginable to understand how we can go on into eternity and never have a dull day, never be sad, never be broken, never have anything to mourn for, to be continuously joyous, to be continually in celebration of the salvation that we have throughout eternity. I have no idea what that's like. I can't even imagine what that will be like. None of us can. It's just an amazing uh notion to try to entertain, but it's too overwhelming for our finite minds to lay hold of, even if we were to put them all together. So, but in this book, we're gonna be looking at, you know, I made a list of about seven different doctrines that I wanted that I want to see us um improve upon in our own in our own understanding, and I wrote them down. One of them is the sovereignty of God, because I believe that the sovereignty of God should be the first place that we start in any approach that we have to the word of God, knowing that he is sovereign in all things, and that all his sovereignty and that everything that he does within this sovereignty is to glorify himself through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything. So there's no way not to see not to see God's sovereignty tied to Christ in everything, and it's impossible to detach his sovereignty to how it pertains to us because those of us who believe are in Christ. And so we're gonna see his sovereignty. So throughout this passage, throughout this book, you're gonna see his sovereignty over and over again. A big one that that opens up the book, the big one, is the mystery of his providence. The mystery of his providence. We see here in this in this story of Job, we see God working in heaven and giving us this perspective about what's going to happen in Job's life, without, you know, from the heaven perspective, from the divine perspective. And that's really that's the real perspective of how things look. So we see that all those things that happened to Job had to do with something that God had intended. And remember, God is the one who initiated the whole thing. He called us, he called the sons together to go to say who was going to go try Job. And then Satan comes up in among them and says, Let me do it. And and and God gives him way to do so. And so in this, we see the mystery of God's providence. And so this just starts to help us to understand that when things happen, whatever trials you're going through in your own life, whatever they may be, you have to understand that there's that there is there is that mystery of God's providence that hovers over it. And what makes you what should give you comfort is knowing that it is his providence that is doing, that is doing it. It's his providence, that he decreed, that he ordered, that he, and this it is his way of governing all of his creation. Everything that everything that happens comes under his sovereignty and comes under the mystery of his providence. Another thing that we want to learn, if we we want to understand that that so satanic oppression is real. It is real. But if you understand his providence, you understand that even Satan's oppression, no matter how bad it may be, no matter how severe it may be, no matter how severe it may be, you need to understand that it falls under the first two things that I just said, which is the mystery of God's providence, which flows forth from his sovereignty. This is how the Christian can know that God will never leave us or forsake us. He is always with us, he is always there to carry us through it all. It is all him. It has nothing to do with your faithfulness, it has everything to do with his faithfulness. His faithfulness. Always. We're also going to be learning what genuine faith is about. The nature of true faith. The nature of true faith, what is it what does it mean? The nature of true faith means that no matter what happens to you, no matter what troubles you, no matter what assails you in this life, you are going to cling to Christ on the tiniest sliver, but you will never be let go. You may feel that you're about to give way and fall under all kinds of pressure, but you will never fall that way because you belong to him. And Christ Himself said, No one can snatch you out of his father's hands, and no one can snatch you out of his hands. It is an absolute impossibility. So the faith has nothing to do with the size or the magnanimous perspective that you may think somebody has. Somebody will say, You need to have more faith. If you had more faith, you would do this. That's not how it works. Because Christ said, if you have faith the size of a mustard grain seed, you can move mountains. It is not about how much faith you have, it's about the object, is about who is the object of that faith you have, whether it be little or whether it be a lot. The object is the same, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. It never changes. And then we're gonna look at the vanity, the emptiness of human wisdom. How no matter how much human wisdom is injected into any narrative, we need to understand that it is all vanity. It is all vanity. And when you read the book of Job, when you read the book of Job, you're gonna see so much that is spoken about, even scientific type things. The type of a book that the person who has a science mind would really enjoy. But you will find out that all of it is vanity. Leaning on that for finding truth and for understanding and seeing God will never get you there. So in this book, you're gonna see that there's nothing but vanity in human wisdom and the conclusions that human wisdom comes to. And then, like Meg brought up in chapter 19, uh, one of the great verses of the Bible, when Job's, and the reason why I say one of the great verses in the Bible is because it happens in the oldest book of the Bible. When Job says that I know my Redeemer lives, and that I will see him face to face in my flesh. That's a massive verse to be had in that particular book because of how old it is. And so when we look at, when I deal with that particular passage, and I can't wait till we get to that chapter, but when I deal with that chapter, and I deal with that particular verse, and this is another verse that I would or I would sort of tie into the uh the heartbeat of this book. Because Christ is right smack dab in the center of it. Think about it. Chapter 19, he talks about Christ. I know that my Redeemer lives, and I'm gonna see him in my flesh. And this book is the first, is the being the oldest book, you find it there, you find resurrection being talked about. Because when we get to that passage, I'm gonna make it very clear that that verse is dealing with resurrection, is talking about resurrection because how else could Job believe that he was gonna see his redeemer in his flesh? So that's gonna be a great challenge to have. Meg, go ahead.
SPEAKER_04:And the other thing, too, that gets me excited, it makes me go back to Matthew chapter 16. When Jesus answered Peter, he says, Blessed thou Simon Bart Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, that which is my father in heaven. And we know who revealed that to Job. And I'm telling you, every single time those things happen, he says it that Abraham saw him in his day. How? Like all of these things start running through your mind in scripture. And when it when he told the when he told the Pharisees, he says, you search the scriptures thinking in them you have eternal life, but they are wits that testify of me. And I'm like, woo, yeah, you know, gets me pumped up. Yeah, I am. Sorry.
SPEAKER_09:I'm sitting here doing the dishes just be good. That's good. That's good. And so the so one of the last doctrinal doctrinal lessons I want to talk about is gonna be what the final, what the, because what we see throughout this book, we're gonna find out at the end what the Lord's design actually was. And so, and this is important because what happens is we go through trials and we go through tribulations and we go through these afflictions, these afflictions, because not only do they bring us closer to God, but they do something else. They do something else, they give us more insight into who He is. The sufferings that we go through, this is what I'm saying here. The sufferings, the afflictions that we go through, those are the things that we learn that that teach us about who God is. This is something that no matter what, if you understand nothing that I've said today, understand this afflictions, trials, and tribulations, persecution, all these things by design, the Lord's end in these things is for us to know him better than we did before. I will challenge anyone to make an argument that you've learned more from all the quote-unquote blessings that we call blessings, then we learn more from that than we did through the trials and afflictions that we had. I don't think that any of you are gonna say, Man, I got this new car and it's really taught me so much about my Lord. Man, I got this bonus, or I met this beautiful woman, or I met this handsome guy, or I got this this or that or the other. Nobody ever think about it. In your lifetime, how does any of those things really bring you closer to God outside of outside of you going through dire straits and seeing him bring you through it? But generally speaking, I would render a guess. I'd be shocked if somebody were to say that they learned more from getting these outward blessings, these material blessings, than they did from receiving these afflictions, whether they be internal or external. Sister Hannah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00:I was just gonna say um the people in the wilderness, they receive blessings every morning in the matter of manna and quail and a cloud to cover them from the sun. Uh, and they still didn't believe in God. They didn't believe him.
SPEAKER_09:Right. Absolutely. I mean, this is like this is when you think about it, what we're talking about is the exact opposite of the way the world thinks. The exact opposite. Whatever you get, whatever good you get, you deserve. Or, and or whatever good you get is because God is smiling on you in contradistinction to his not smiling on you when you're going through triumph. But that's not that's not necessarily the way that it is. We understand from this book of Job that afflictions are not necessarily the marks of God's divine wrath, but more often than not, they are the they are the result of his divine love and affection. And he makes us know that. And he gives us a better insight into who our Lord is. Remember, when when you get when we get to the end of the book, when God breaks in, he starts telling Job who he is. But Job had to go through what 38 chapters of all these of going off in the wrong direction, and God comes down and breaks it down. Like Brother Jeff encouraging service said, who is this that darkens words, darkens counsel with words without knowledge? And then God starts to tell him, starts reading him the riot act. This is who I am. Where were you? This is who I am. And this is what happens. You go through these trials, Job went through all these trials to get to the end and to have his Lord revealed to him in the most illustrious way possible. And it was then after coming to that realization that the Lord re rewarded him with twice what he had before. Brother Jeff, man of God, go ahead.
SPEAKER_03:Well, what occurred to me as you were talking about this too is that when, you know, taking us back to the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, I mean, he's life particularly was afflicted all the way through. Number one being the fact that he knew from before the foundation of the world that he was going to come to earth as a man and be crucified. Now, to become the earth as a man was bad enough. Right. As we talk about in Hebrews. Uh but you know, to undergo all that agony and you know, he was deemed afflicted, as it says in Isaiah 53. But I mean, why should we expect any difference? You know, he he underwent the most horrible thing that could possibly ever be, and we belong to him, so why would I expect any difference? I mean, if if somebody comes to my house and takes me out and crucifies me and kills me, I wouldn't be any any, you know, I would have to praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_05:Right.
SPEAKER_09:Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, and and and you know, I was gonna say this for for the end, but I'll do it now. Because you brought it up. Because I take, and you know, I say this a lot in our in a lot of our our discussions, that we need to find Christ throughout the scripture. Now I definitely see Job being this type of Christ. And so what I'll do now is I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna go around everybody, go around and ask everybody how, from what you know about Job, what he's going through, what we've been discussing, how you would see him as a type of Christ. So let me start with uh Sister Candy. How do you see how do you see Job as a type of Christ? She might be busy. All right, let me go to um uh Michael. How do you see Job as a type of Christ?
SPEAKER_07:Hmm, well, we know that the typologies are never perfect, so I would say that he suffered due to the Father's will.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_07:Uh a lot of people believe that he did end up dying. And the restoration part was him being uh uh raised up alive again, and so you can see those obviously. If uh if that interpretation is correct, then obviously that is a typology of Christ, there also.
SPEAKER_09:Yep, absolutely. Um brother, oh look at this. Oh, my wife jumped in here. She said selflessness, denial of self. Excellent one. His whole his whole ministry was selflessness and denial of self. His whole ministry was a an expression of his complete, unfettered selflessness. And and he everything he did, he did for his people. Brother Jeffrey, encouraging surgeon, what do you think? How was how was Job a type of Christ?
SPEAKER_06:Well, he suffered, as you were saying, I I would only say it this way, through no fault of his own. There was no sin, even though his three friends came and accused him, yada yada yada. He he did nothing. He was doing and living his life the way he was supposed to, and then all of these catastrophes befall him. Jesus lived his life, doing what the Father called him to do, what he uh he was supposed to do, then catastrophe befalls him. He goes to the Christ or to the cross and is crucified and died.
SPEAKER_09:But amen, brother. That that that that's that right there is a big one because Job really was not being he was not being punished. This was not what he went through wasn't for retribution for for sin. But what it was was to bring him closer to God. You know, now it's not to say that Job didn't have any sin. That's not that's not the issue at this this particular you know sequence of events. Because we know what happened before. We know what happened. Sister Meg, what do you think?
SPEAKER_04:Oh man, there's so many.
SPEAKER_05:There's many.
SPEAKER_04:There's so many. I'll just give two. Um, Job's suffering was innocent. Right? So Job's suffering basically refuted the belief that all pain is punishment for sin. And Christ's suffering revealed that sometimes pain is for salvation, not punishment. And and um the other thing is um abandonment because Job felt forsaken. He says, he said in Job 16, 11, God has turned against me. And so when the Lord Jesus Christ said, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He sees they were both felt abandoned. There's so many, brother.
SPEAKER_09:Right. Yep. Nope. Sister Hannah, what do you think?
SPEAKER_00:Wow, I I never heard someone ask it like that because like when I read this the first time, the the most immediate thing was like Job showing the need for a mediator between man and God.
SPEAKER_05:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00:But y'all were talking about this earlier. So now with this question is at the end, you know, God says pray for them. And that's the intercessor role, that's the priestly role of uh Jesus, our Lord.