Many of you, I imagine, know at least the bare outline of Job’s story. He was the most godly and righteous man in all the land of Uz, but as a test of his faithfulness God allowed Satan to strip him of every worldly comfort. Finally, as you’ve just heard, his wife left him in disgust, and he was joined by three friends: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. After sitting with him in silence – which, by the way, is genuine comfort – these three friends stopped comforting Job and started comforting themselves, by looking for explanations. How could a just God could allow Job to suffer so? Now, usually when we talk about this book, we talk about it as a study in the problem of suffering, which it is. But it is more than that. Whether the book is a record of a historical person or a piece of inspired fiction, it is a deep and powerful work, with many layers of meaning. I want to look at a secondary theme from the book today: the question of authority. Where do we go to seek knowledge of God and God’s ways?
Sermon Notes