Before we get too far from our series in Job, Walking Wounded, I wanted to take a brief moment to look back and think about what we’ve learned. Coming out of 2020, a year in which many of us experienced deep, prolonged periods of grief and loss, we turned to the book of Job to see how God meets us even in unfathomable hardship. By the end of the book we saw how Job encountered the living God. Our prayer is that through Walking Wounded you and the other members of our church family would have similarly encountered the living God, and in doing so beheld the one in whom our only hope resides.

Below you’ll see a few questions I posed to the local pastors of each congregation, just to get some snapshots of how our time in the book of Job was meaningful for our church family.

Shaun, what’s something the story of Job can teach us about the gospel?

Job’s story teaches us about the complexities of suffering in God’s universe, but it also points us directly to the gospel. In Job 42:8, God confronts Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. They’ve spoken wrongly about God and incurred his anger. Yet in his grace, God tells them to bring a sacrifice to Job who will pray for them and God will hear Job’s prayer on their behalf and forgive them. Job, the suffering servant of God, intercedes on behalf of his friends and God forgives them. Likewise, Jesus, the Suffering Servant of God, intercedes on our behalf and God forgives us. Jesus is the better Job and that’s really good news.

Jordan, how do you think reading Job contributed to our understanding of and love for the scriptures?

I had the privilege of preaching Job 2:11-13 and looking back at how Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar sacrificially planned to sympathize with and comfort Job (2:11), wept with Job (2:12), and were silently present in Job’s suffering (2:13) points us directly to Jesus. Jesus is able to sympathize and comfort us (Heb. 4:15, 2 Cor. 1:3), he weeps with the brokenhearted (John 11), and is present with us in suffering (Heb. 13:5). Jesus is the true and better Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. The Bible is amazing and every story in God’s word whispers Jesus’ name!

Jared, what’s one way that reading Job can help us walk through grief and suffering, either individually or collectively?

The obvious answer is to embrace the mystery. My younger, less mature, more arrogant, and less experienced self always wanted to have the answer for everything, especially theologically. I wanted to be able to give the answer or reason for every verse and word of Scripture. In the process of growing in my faith, walking through suffering, and walking with others through suffering I have grown to not just accept the mystery of God’s immanence, but to delight in it. That delight has grown significantly in spending the past two months studying and preaching Job. There is a level of trust that is necessary for that unknowing not to become maddening. Job arrives at that place of trust in chapter 42, and my prayer for our church is that we would so trust the Lord, specifically in times of suffering, that we would delight in Him simply for who He is!

David, what’s something that Job taught us about faithfully following Jesus with our whole lives?

The Book of Job teaches us that our circumstances may not always be good, but Jesus is always good.  We serve a God who not only JOINS us in our suffering—that alone would be incredible—but a God who suffers FOR us, for our redemption, salvation, and renewal.  Our circumstances may not change, but when we fix our gaze upon his life, death, resurrection, and the empty tomb, we ourselves change by encountering the Lord and his goodness. The world around us may not always be good, but Jesus is, and he’s worthy of our lives.